The transition was jarring. One moment, Leo was sloshing through a brick-lined sewer pipe; the next, he stepped into a corridor that felt ancient. The curved walls gave way to flat, meticulously laid stonework, the bricks smaller and darker, fitted together with a precision that spoke of forgotten craftsmanship. The sluggish stream of filth receded, draining away into grates set into the floor, leaving the stone walkway damp but eerily clean.
The air itself was different. The stench of sewage was gone, replaced by a cool, neutral smell, like a deep cellar or a natural cave. The constant dripping stopped. The only sound was the faint hum of his flashlight and the whisper-soft slide of his slime-coated boots on the stone.
It was the silence that put him on edge. The Drowned Creepers, the Goblins, even the Kraken—they were all part of a grotesque ecosystem. This place felt sterile, divorced from the chaos above and behind. An animalistic part of his brain, now amplified by a Wisdom stat of 25, screamed that clean, quiet places in a world of monsters were not safe havens. They were territory. They belonged to something that didn't tolerate pests.
He moved forward, his baton held at the ready, his flashlight beam cutting a nervous path ahead. The corridor stretched on, unnervingly straight. There were no side tunnels, no junctions. It was a subterranean highway, and he seemed to be its only traveler. He kept his senses on high alert, his enhanced perception straining against the oppressive silence, listening for the scrape of a claw or the vibration of movement.
He heard nothing. And then, he did.
It was faint at first, a whisper carried on the still air, so soft he thought he was imagining it.
"...eo..."
He froze, killing his flashlight. He stood in absolute darkness, straining his ears, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. The silence returned. It must have been the echo of his own movements, a trick of his frayed nerves. He was about to turn his light back on when it came again, clearer this time, seeming to emanate from the walls themselves.
"...Leo... help..."
It was Sarah's voice.
His blood ran cold. It was impossible. She was in the hospital, barricaded on the third floor. He had seen her. The map showed a direct path to the nexus below her building. This corridor was the path.
But the voice... it was hers. It held that specific note of strained desperation he remembered from when she called him late at night, exhausted and overwhelmed by her residency.
"Help me... please... I'm trapped..."
Reason fought a losing war with instinct. The map, the logic, the plan—it all felt flimsy compared to the raw, emotional pull of his sister's voice. What if she'd tried to escape? What if she'd found a maintenance shaft and ended up down here, lost and alone? The thought was a shard of ice in his gut.
He turned his light back on, the beam trembling. Ahead, he saw something he hadn't noticed before. A side passage, a perfect archway set into the right-hand wall. It hadn't been on the schematics. It looked... wrong. The stone was too clean, the edges too sharp, as if it had been cut yesterday.
[A faint sense of dread emanates from the passage. Something feels… artificial.]
The System's warning was a cool splash of water on his frantic thoughts. He trusted his instincts, but the System had never been wrong. He stood at a crossroads. The logical path lay straight ahead. The path of his heart lay through that dark, suspicious archway.
"Leo, please... it's so dark..." Sarah's voice pleaded, weaker now, but clearly coming from within the archway.
He couldn't risk it. He couldn't live with himself if he walked away and left even a one-in-a-million chance that it was her.
"I'm coming," he whispered, the words tasting like ash.
He entered the side passage, his baton held in a two-handed grip. The tunnel was short, only about thirty feet long, and it opened into a small, circular chamber. The acoustics in here were strange, the air dead. The voice was louder now, seeming to come from the very center of the room.
His flashlight beam cut through the darkness, landing on the source.
It was not Sarah.
In the center of the chamber sat a pulsating, fleshy polyp, about the size of a pumpkin. It was a hideous tangle of pale-pink tissue, mottled with blue veins. At its peak, a complex, organ-like structure vibrated, a grotesque imitation of a human larynx. As he watched, it trembled and spoke again in Sarah's voice. "Leo..."
The illusion shattered. The hope that had propelled him forward curdled into revulsion and white-hot anger. He had been baited. He had let his emotions override his training and the System's warning.
He raised his baton to smash the disgusting thing, but as he stepped forward, he noticed something else. The floor. The circular pattern wasn't just decorative. It looked like... teeth. Not sharp fangs, but massive, interlocking ridges of bone-like material.
[Threat Detected: Lvl 8 Grave Snapper (Camouflaged)]
[Sub-Unit Detected: Lvl 3 Siren Polyp (Lure)]
The room was the monster.
Leo started to backpedal, his mind screaming at his own stupidity. He took one step back, then two. The Siren Polyp let out a final, piercing shriek—not of a human, but of an alarm.
The trap sprung.
With a deep, resonant GROAN of moving stone and a wet, fleshy tearing sound, the walls of the chamber began to contract. The archway he had entered through began to close, the seemingly solid stone on either side grinding together. It wasn't a door; it was a jaw.
He broke into a desperate sprint. The archway was ten yards away. The walls were closing fast. His enhanced Agility kicked in, his legs pumping, his frictionless boots gliding over the strange, bony floor.
Five yards.
The opening was now only a few feet wide.
He threw himself forward in a desperate, flying dive. He felt a rush of air as the stone jaws slammed shut behind him. The sound was a deafening CRUNCH that vibrated through his entire body. The tip of his boot was sheared clean off. A sliver of pain shot up his leg, but he had made it. He had—
He hit the floor of the main corridor and scrambled to his feet, panting. He turned, aiming his light back at where the archway had been.
It was gone. The wall was a seamless, solid expanse of ancient stonework once more. He had imagined it.
But the tip of his boot was still missing. And down the corridor, behind him, where he had come from, an identical archway had just opened up, the Siren Polyp within already beginning to whisper his name in Sarah's voice, starting the trap anew for anyone else who might follow.
It was a regenerating, self-baiting monster-trap.
He had escaped, but a cold realization settled in his heart. The creatures down here weren't just feral beasts. They were intelligent. They were coordinated. And they were using his greatest weakness—his love for his sister—as a weapon against him.
He turned away from the mocking, ghostly voice and continued down the one true path, his jaw set in a line as hard as the stone around him. There would be no more detours. No more falling for tricks. The next monster that used his sister's voice against him wouldn't be so lucky. He would find a way to clean it up. Permanently.