The air in the parking garage was cold and dead. It was a stark contrast to the recycled, climate-controlled air of the tower. Here, the smells were of cold concrete, stale gasoline, and the faint, unsettling undertone of decay. The heavy steel door clicked shut behind them, cutting off the sounds from the lobby and plunging them into a vast, echoing darkness.
The garage was a forest of concrete pillars and steel beasts. Hundreds of cars, from modest sedans to ostentatious luxury SUVs, sat in perfect rows, shrouded in shadow and dust. The only light came from a few emergency fixtures on the ceiling, casting long, distorted shadows that made every vehicle look like a predator crouching in the dark.
"I never thought I'd miss the office," Evelyn murmured, her voice unnaturally loud in the silence. She instinctively lowered it to a whisper. "This place... it feels wrong."
"It's the echoes," Leo said, his own voice a low hush. His heightened senses were on overdrive. Every drip of water from an overhead pipe, every rustle of wind through a broken window far across the garage, sounded like a footstep. "Sound travels. Nowhere to hide from it."
He took a moment to let his eyes adjust, his gaze sweeping the cavernous space. They were on level P-1. According to the faded map near the stairwell door, the breaker room access was on P-4, the lowest level. Four floors of this.
"That move you pulled," Evelyn said, looking at him with a new kind of respect, tinged with awe. "With the slime. 'Professional-grade floor stripping,' you called it. You neutralized that thing without even really fighting it."
"Fighting it was a losing battle," Leo replied, checking the makeshift spear in his hand. The broken end was getting dull. "My class isn't [Warrior]. It's [Janitor]. My best weapon isn't strength, it's finding a way to make the other guy slip on a banana peel."
He was half-joking, but the words held a profound truth. He was starting to understand his place in this new world. He wasn't meant to be the sword; he was the unforeseen hazard, the spanner in the works.
As they began to move toward the ramp leading down to P-2, a sound cut through the quiet. It was a high-pitched, chittering noise from above, followed by a flutter of leathery wings. Leo looked up. Flitting between the concrete beams of the ceiling were small, dark shapes. They were fast, moving like bats, but their silhouettes were wrong—too many angles, too sharp.
"More friends?" Evelyn whispered, her eyes wide.
Leo didn't answer. He focused, letting his Wisdom stat filter the sensory data. The creatures weren't paying any attention to them. They were circling, hunting, but their patterns were erratic. A new System notification faded into his vision, providing a name for the new terror.
[Lvl 4 Shrieker]
[Traits: Blind, Echolocation, Extreme Auditory Sensitivity, Swarm Tactics.]
Blind. But they could hear everything. Everything.
Leo froze, holding up a hand to stop Evelyn. "Don't move. They're sound-hunters."
As if to prove his point, a loose piece of metal trim from the ceiling, weakened by a tremor, chose that moment to fall. It clattered onto the hood of a nearby sedan with a series of sharp pings.
Instantly, the chittering above them ceased. A dozen dark shapes dropped from the ceiling as one, converging on the car with silent, terrifying speed. They swarmed the vehicle, their claws making faint scratching sounds as they searched for the source of the noise. Finding nothing, they let out a synchronized, frustrated shriek that echoed through the garage, then returned to their circling patrols.
Evelyn's face was pale. "A car alarm," she breathed, the realization dawning. "If we set off a single car alarm..."
She didn't need to finish. It would be a dinner bell, and they would be the meal. They were standing in a minefield where every mine was a multi-ton metal box wired to a siren.
They were trapped. They couldn't risk walking through the maze of cars. But the ramp down was the only way.
Leo's mind raced. How do you move silently? You reduce friction. He thought of the vial in his inventory, the sample he'd taken from the Corpse-Guzzler. The ultimate lubricant.
"I have another messy idea," he said. He pulled the vial of Preserved Corpse-Guzzler Slime from his inventory. It was viscous and shimmered with a faint, greasy rainbow hue. "Give me your shoes."
Evelyn looked at him, then at the slime, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "You can't be serious."
"Do you have a better idea?"
She sighed and slipped off her practical flats. Leo carefully uncorked the vial and tipped a small amount of the slime onto his palm. It was slick beyond belief, cool to the touch. He meticulously coated the soles of his work boots, then Evelyn's flats. The slime didn't seem to soak in; it just sat on the surface, a perfect, frictionless layer.
He stood up. The effect was immediate and deeply unsettling. His boots made absolutely no sound on the concrete. No scuff, no scrape, no crunch on the gritty surface. He felt like he was gliding, his feet floating just above the ground.
"Okay," he whispered, handing Evelyn her shoes. "Put these on. Walk slowly. Don't touch anything."
She slipped on the slick-soled shoes, wobbling for a moment as she adjusted to the complete lack of traction. "It feels... like walking on ice."
"That's the point."
They began to move, a pair of ghosts gliding through the automotive graveyard. The silence of their passage was absolute. They navigated between the cars, their soundless feet leaving no trace. The Shriekers continued their patrols above, completely oblivious to the two humans passing directly beneath them.
They made it to the ramp and began their descent to P-2. The process was agonizingly slow. Every step was a deliberate, controlled motion. Leo's enhanced Agility made it manageable, but he could see Evelyn struggling to keep her balance.
Halfway down the ramp, disaster nearly struck. Evelyn, trying to avoid a patch of shattered glass, shifted her weight too quickly. Her foot slipped, and she started to fall, her arm flailing out to catch her balance. Her hand brushed against the wing mirror of a pristine black Mercedes.
The mirror folded with a soft but distinct click.
Above them, the chittering stopped.
Every Shrieker in the area swiveled its head in their direction. They hadn't pinpointed the source, but they knew the general area. They began to descend, their leathery wings beating the air, using their echolocation to scan the area in widening circles.
They were caught. Trapped in the open on the ramp.
Leo's mind went into overdrive. He couldn't fight them. They had to be misdirected. He needed a louder noise, somewhere else, right now.
His eyes scanned the area. Below them, on P-2, was a red sports car, a low-slung convertible. It was at least fifty yards away. A perfect target.
He acted instantly. [Improvise Tool]! He didn't have time for anything complex. He grabbed a jagged piece of concrete from the floor and a length of rubber tubing from a nearby pile of debris. The System guided his hands, his mana flowing into the materials. He didn't create a weapon. He created a simple, powerful slingshot.
He then reached into his pocket for a piece of gravel. Before loading it, he dipped his fingers into the slime vial and coated the small stone. A silent projectile.
The Shriekers were getting closer, their clicks growing more frequent as they honed in.
Leo took aim. He pulled the rubber sling back, his muscles straining. He wasn't aiming for the car's body. He was aiming for the most fragile part: the side window.
He released the sling. The slime-coated stone flew through the air, a silent, invisible missile. It crossed the fifty-yard distance in a heartbeat and struck the sports car's window.
There was no sound of impact. Just a spiderweb of cracks that appeared on the glass, followed by a loud CRASH! as the entire window disintegrated and fell into the car.
A second later, the car's alarm shrieked to life.
WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO! WEE-OOO!
The sound was deafening, a piercing electronic scream that ripped through the garage. Every Shrieker, their sensitive hearing now completely overwhelmed by the new, loud, and persistent noise, abandoned their search for Leo and Evelyn. They swarmed, a vortex of black wings and furious clicks, descending upon the screaming sports car, tearing at it with impotent rage.
The distraction was total.
"Go!" Leo urged, his improvised slingshot dissolving in his hand.
They practically slid the rest of the way down the ramp, their frictionless shoes carrying them swiftly and silently away from the chaos. They repeated the nerve-wracking process down to P-3, and then to P-4, the shrieking of the car alarm and the enraged monsters growing fainter above them.
P-4 was darker, colder, and damper than the other levels. This was the bottom. And there, in the far corner, was their goal. It wasn't just a door. It was a heavy, circular steel hatch, like one on a submarine, set into the concrete wall. It was rusted, ancient, and sealed with a large, spoked wheel-lock. A small, faded plaque above it read: "SUB-LEVEL B-1: CENTRAL POWER CONDUIT."
This was the entrance to the guts of the building.
Leo stood before the hatch, the silence of the deep earth pressing in on him. The air that seeped from the edges of the seal smelled of ozone, damp soil, and something else… something metallic and vaguely organic, like old blood.
He looked at Evelyn, who nodded grimly. This was it.
He gripped the cold, rusted metal of the wheel-lock with both hands. It was stiff, probably hadn't been turned in decades. With a grunt, he put all his strength into it and began to turn.