Chapter 42: The Blind Spot

The emergency stairwell was a vertical coffin.

With the Stadium’s power grid completely dead, the narrow, spiraling shaft was swallowed by an absolute, suffocating blackness. The air was freezing, biting at exposed skin, and it tasted like rust and centuries of dead dust. But worse than the cold was the smell. Major Sterling’s dried arterial blood was caked thick on Ren’s ruined clothes, mixing heavily with the putrid, lingering stench of the Abyssal Glutton’s stomach acid. In the tight, unventilated concrete cylinder, the odor was thick enough to chew.

Every step Chloe took felt like dragging her legs through wet cement.

My thighs are burning. The muscle is literally tearing, Chloe thought, her teeth gritted so hard her jaw ached. Three hundred feet. Fourteen pounds of armor. Just keep stepping. If I stop, the dark is going to crush me.

She clung to the freezing iron handrail, her right hand gripping the nylon sling of the P90. The night-vision goggles strapped over her eyes painted the pitch-black shaft in a grainy, sickly green. Through the lenses, she watched Ren climb.

He didn’t move like a machine. He moved like a shadow given weight. His massive, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame took the steep, rusted steps two at a time, entirely silent except for the heavy crunch of his combat boots. He didn’t breathe hard. He didn’t sweat. The massive influx of energy from the Level 18 core had pushed his endurance so far past the human baseline that the climb didn’t even register as physical exertion. Through the green tint of her goggles, the glowing sapphire veins crawling up his forearms pulsed with a slow, steady, terrifying rhythm.

“Breathe through your nose,” Ren said quietly. His voice drifted down the dark shaft, flat and calm. “You’re panting. You’re starving your blood of oxygen. Forty feet left.”

Chloe swallowed the dry, metallic taste in her mouth and forced her mouth shut, drawing the freezing air in through her nose. The sharp ache in her lungs dulled, just a fraction.

They climbed the final spiral in complete silence.

The stairs ended abruptly at a heavy, reinforced steel bulkhead. Faded yellow paint spelled out [SUB-LEVEL 1 – MAINTENANCE]. It was a heavy security door, designed to seal the lower levels in case of a subterranean breach. The biometric lock bolted to the frame was dead, the keypad completely dark.

Ren didn’t touch the handle. He stepped onto the small grating of the landing and pressed the side of his face directly against the freezing steel plate.

He didn’t need a digital map. He closed his glowing violet eyes and let his newly spiked Perception stat process the raw, physical vibrations bleeding through the heavy metal.

Sub-Level 1 was terrified.

He could hear the frantic, uncoordinated shuffling of dozens of heavy combat boots on polished marble. He heard the harsh, jagged breathing of frightened men, the metallic clatter of rifle magazines being slapped into receivers, and the low, anxious murmurs of squad leaders trying to maintain order in the dark.

Forty men, Ren calculated, isolating the distinct heartbeats drumming through the concrete floor beyond the door. Thirty yards away. Facing the wrong direction.

The Warlord’s Battalion had bottlenecked their entire defense. When the lights died, they panicked and rallied at the only choke point that mattered: the massive tungsten doors of the primary freight elevator. They were stacking sandbags. They were racking the bolts on heavy machine guns. They were staring down the barrels of their rifles, waiting for the elevator dial to tick upward, completely convinced the monster would ride the cage right into their crosshairs.

They had entirely forgotten the emergency maintenance hatch sitting in their blind spot.

Ren stepped back from the door.

If he kicked the steel bulkhead off its hinges, the massive, booming crack of the metal would echo across the marble depot. Forty men would spin around and pull their triggers. Even with his Iron Skin, wading through a wall of concentrated assault rifle fire would burn massive amounts of stamina.

He looked at the three thick, exposed steel hinges securing the door to the concrete frame.

[Skill Activated: Corrosive Saliva]

Ren stepped close. He pulled the volatile, highly acidic enzymes up from the back of his mutated throat. He spat a thick, viscous glob of glowing green fluid directly onto the top steel hinge.

The acid clung to the metal and immediately began to eat. It didn’t explode. It didn’t crack. It just hissed—a low, wet, furious sizzle. Thick, acrid white smoke curled off the joint, smelling like burning pennies. In four seconds, the heavy steel cylinder melted into a toxic, bubbling grey sludge that dripped down the doorframe.

Ren repeated the process. He spat on the middle hinge, then the bottom.

“Stay in the shaft,” Ren whispered, looking back at Chloe over his broad shoulder. “They have heavy ordnance. Your armor won’t stop a fifty-caliber round. Do not step onto that marble until the heavy guns are dead.”

Chloe nodded once, pressing her back hard against the freezing concrete wall of the stairwell, her knuckles turning white around the grip of her P90.

Ren turned back to the door. The hinges were gone. The heavy steel slab was completely detached, held upright only by friction and its own weight.

He placed his calloused, blood-stained palms flat against the freezing metal. Pressing gently, he tipped the two-hundred-pound door outward. He caught the top edge before it could slam against the marble floor, lowering the massive steel plate silently to the ground.

He stepped out of the freezing dark and into the rear flank of the Coalition army.

Sub-Level 1 was a sprawling, cavernous logistics depot. The polished white marble floor was currently cut to pieces by the frantic, sweeping white beams of forty tactical flashlights taped to the barrels of M4 carbines.

Thirty yards ahead of him, the defensive line was fully entrenched. A curved wall of sandbags faced the sealed freight elevator. Behind the canvas bags, two massive M2 Browning heavy machine guns sat on thick steel tripods. The heavy gunners had their thumbs resting nervously on the butterfly triggers, their eyes wide and completely fixated on the elevator doors.

Not a single soldier was looking behind them.

Ren didn’t pull the Crimson vibro-sword from its magnetic scabbard. The hum of the blade would give them a warning. He wanted to break their minds before he broke their bodies.

He dropped into a low crouch, the rubber soles of his combat boots gripping the polished marble.

[Skill Activated: Dash]

[Skill Activated: Rending Claws]

The air cracked. Ren didn’t just run; his Level 16 Agility tore him across the thirty yards of open space so fast his body became a blur. The sudden displacement of air created a sharp, violent snap that echoed off the vaulted ceiling.

He appeared directly behind the sandbag barricade, standing squarely between the two Heavy Gunners manning the right-flank .50 caliber machine gun.

Before the soldiers could even twitch, before their brains could process the sound of the vacuum crack, Ren struck.

His hands shot forward. The ten-inch, pitch-black talons didn’t bother trying to pierce the thick ceramic plates on their backs. He drove his claws directly into the soft, exposed gap of flesh between their tactical collars and the base of their ballistic helmets.

The dark talons punched straight through their spinal cords, anchoring deep into their lower skulls.

CRUNCH.

Ren wrenched his thick arms outward in opposite directions. The sickening, wet sound of shattering vertebrae and tearing cartilage was deafening. He snapped both of their necks simultaneously, instantly short-circuiting their nervous systems.

The two dead gunners went completely limp, their faces smashing heavily into the receiver of the massive machine gun, their hot blood immediately pooling over the canvas sandbags.

[Targets Dead: Human Heavy Gunners x2 (Lvl 5)]

[Experience Gained: 200]

The sudden, brutal violence shattered the quiet tension of the barricade.

“Contact rear!” a Coalition officer shrieked. His voice was shrill, completely breaking with raw terror. He whipped his assault rifle around, the harsh beam of his tactical flashlight catching the towering, gore-soaked nightmare standing right inside their defensive line. “He’s behind us! Fire!”

Ren doesn’t reach for his sword. He grabs the thick, perforated barrel of the hundred-pound M2 Browning machine gun, rips it entirely off its heavy steel tripod with a brutal wrench of his shoulders, and turns to face the screaming, panicked mass of thirty-eight trapped soldiers.

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