And wait for whatever the noise brings.

  The generator coughs twice before catching. A diesel rumble fills the stairwell, echoing off concrete, loud. too loud, much too loud. The sound of an idiot announcing exactly where he lives to every hungry thing within ten blocks.

  Fifty-three seconds. That's how long the generator runs before something came to investigate.

  I'm already moving down the stairs when I hear it.

  A roar, low and wet. A sound that shakes your chest before it reaches your ears. Something followed us home. Already in the building clearly. Ground floor, at least.

  I heft the spear so it doesn't clink of the stairs. Eight feet of modified steel, weighted for thrusting, grip wrapped in electrical tape for purchase.

  Not elegant but functional. Like most things that work.

  The roar comes again. Closer, approaching the stairwell now. All I can hope for now is a single pair of eyes.

  I descend. Reaching the ground floor in a blur. The maze I built to slow intruders. Create chokepoints. Give me positional advantage.

  None of it was designed for what's standing in the lobby as I make my way through to it.

  Nine feet tall, maybe ten. Shoulders too wide for the double door doorframe it tore through. Its body is wrong in ways the System seems to prefer. Flesh that doesn't sit right on the bones beneath, like a suit two sizes too small. Arms that bend at angles evolution never intended. Eyes glowing faint amber in the patchwork moonlight.

  The System whispers.

  Four levels above me. Mass advantage, reach advantage and a strength differential I don't bother calculating.

  But it's overexposed. Too big for the position it’s going to find itself in.

  Way top big for the spaces I'm about to lead it through. It doesn't understand what a federal building means. This isn't some residential construction with wooden frames and drywall. This is brick, concrete, and rebar. Built to last. Built to survive bombing runs back in the day of the post war boom.

  Our eyes meet.

  The Brute lurches forward, trips over the dry fountain in the lobby center. As it recovers, it follows me down the route I chose, forcing it to crouch. Its shoulders catch on every filing cabinet, every doorframe.

  I circle left. Keep three rows of cubicle walls between us.

  My ability causes a bloom from The System overlay as data spins across my vision. Tracking the Brute's movement patterns. The way it favors its right side. The half-second delay between when it sees me and when it swings.

  Not enough. I blink the notification away.

  The Brute charges again. Cubicle walls explode around it, particle board and cheap fabric disintegrating against its mass. I'm already moving, sliding between two desks it can't fit through, coming up on its flank.

  In a flash my spear connects with the Brute's hamstring. The tip catches the muscle as it tries to turn and it opens a gash that leaks something darker than blood.

  It screams, spins. An arm the size of my torso scythes through the air where I was standing.

  I'm not there. I'm two rows back, circling, keeping the furniture between us.

  The Brute attacks a few more times before it stops. Clearly it can’t figure out the maze.

  Its new strategy is simpler. Destroy everything. It wades forward, crushing desks, hurling filing cabinets, clearing a path through sheer violence.

  Effective, yes, but expensive. Every piece of furniture it destroys is energy spent. Every swing that hits, particle board instead of me is stamina that it won't recover.

  I've seen traders blow up their accounts the same way. Brute force against a market that punishes impatience.

  My fourth ability activates on its own.

  I keep moving. Strike when it overcommits. Fade when it recovers. A dozen cuts open along its arms and back. None deep enough to matter individually. But all of them, bleeding.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Compound damage now. Time is on my side.

  Until an external scream reminds me that more monsters are coming.

  The Brute is slowing. Not much but enough to notice. Blood loss and exhaustion compounding. Its swings are wider now, less controlled. Surprising even myself, I had expected to be short of breath now, at the very least but my new levels were doing the work.

  I position myself at the end of one of the corridors. Clear sightline. Nowhere to hide.

  It sees me, bellows, then charges.

  Exactly what I needed it to do.

  I wait. The Brute closes the distance. Twenty feet, fifteen, ten. I can smell it now, rot and copper and something chemical the System added to make it worse.

  Five feet. I ignore all of it, none of it matters if I’m dead.

  I step left. Let the Brute's momentum carry it past. Drive the point into the soft tissue beneath its jaw.

  The spear lengthens for a mere second. Up through the palate. Into whatever the System uses for a brain.

  The 99% damage bonus alongside the benefits from my braced stance do most of the work.

  The Brute drops, slides really. Comes to rest against one of the few desks I couldn't have moved if I'd tried. Old federal furniture from the 1800’s. Older than the building it sits in.

  Silence.

  Then, from eight floors up, I hear the generator still running. Still announcing my position to everything else in the district.

  I pull my spear free. Stab the creature several more times until I get the kill notification. Then wipe the blade on what's left of a cubicle partition.

  One down. But the night is young and the screams are getting closer.

  I will hold the line, exhaustion be damned.

  Gray light bleeds through the lobby windows, the first site of dawn. This is the first time I've watched it from this angle at least. Standing in the wreckage of my own defenses.

  Around me stands a graveyard of particle board and bent steel, cubicle walls scattered like broken teeth across the floor. Four hours of on and off fighting will do that to a room. But at least I won’t be cleaning up the corpses, plenty of scavengers around to take care of that.

  Heading to the front I find them, executive models chairs, with real leather. The same ones the EVP had back in the offices I used to work for. The ones, us, the cubicle workers, would have never been provided. My spear resting across my knees, blade dark with fluids I stopped caring about. My arms burn. My lungs burn. Everything burns. Level 14 and four hours of fighting will do that.

  But the generator is still running. And Sofia hasn't called down.

  I pull up the System log. The night's work, rendered in cold notation.

  Twelve kills, seven different species across four and a half hours. Perhaps it was the System's version of a diversified portfolio. All bent around trying to kill me.

  I review it now, in detail, both the Attercops and Lupine Howlers came in a pack. Another brute arrived, alone, territorial, probably sensed the first one dying.

  The Hollow Warden was the outlier, level 13. Highest yet I've faced solo. It arrived at the tail end of blue hour, right when the generator's fuel tank hit the quarter mark and the engine note changed pitch.

  Coincidence? Or do they understand what the pitch changing means?

  I file it away. Fuel level affects engine frequency. Some of them might recognize the pattern. Or maybe that species simply likes the pitch. Not enough data points to know.

  The System doesn't explain itself though. Three weeks in and I'm still building models from scratch. Inferring rules from outcomes. Treating every fight like a data point in a pattern I can't quite see.

  Old instincts, my brain looking for the edge. The spread behind the numbers no one else has noticed. The same spreads that earned promotions, bonuses or extra stock options.

  What I wouldn't give for a machine running calculations. Hell, even one of those LLMs to talk to. Would have made carrying for Lilly easier.

  The System then reminds me of the many many levels I’ve not had time to resolve.