The cubicle was an island in an ocean of parodied corporate monotony. This place was an endless, soul-crushing labyrinth of grey fabric walls and worn grey carpet, a corporate hellscape rendered in fifty shades of beige and despair. Corridors would stretch into infinity if you weren't paying attention, cubicles would shift and rearrange themselves when you weren't looking. It was a non-Euclidean nightmare designed by a middle manager with a god complex.

Inside, a creature that looked like a monstrous fusion of a bee and a businessman sat hunched over a desk made of polished black stone. Its wings shimmered with the iridescent colours of an oil slick, folded tightly against its back, somehow contorted into a shape that vaguely resembled a pinstripe suit jacket. Its spindly arms ended in delicate claws that tapped away at a keyboard made of human teeth, with a jawbone for the space bar.

The repetitive clack clack clack was a maddeningly slow metronome in the quiet office. The monster was utterly engrossed in its work, its multifaceted eyes fixed on a monitor that displayed a cascading waterfall of glyphs. Like the Matrix, but blood-red.

From the corridor, John activated Shadow Stream. The world faded into a familiar greyscale. The oppressive hum of the lights faded, replaced by the whisper-soft rush of oily darkness coiling around his arms.

He moved forward, his boots making no sound on the stained carpet, a ghost gliding through a graveyard of ergonomic chairs and dusty monitors. He held a hand out, palm forward, and a thick, inky tendril of shadow uncoiled from his fingertips.

The liquid darkness of his Shadow Stream crept across the floor until it reached the entrance of the cubicle. With a silent command, he shaped it, raising the tendril into an impenetrable wall of black that sealed the small office off from the rest of the labyrinth.

The giant bee didn't notice. It was too absorbed in its Sisyphean task. A good little office drone.

John stepped closer, with Ninja and Shadow Stream working in concert to render his movements completely silent. The others remained hidden, watching, waiting for their turn.

He drew the scythe he'd looted what felt like weeks ago. Stealth was the name of the game here. The kind of flashy kills that showered him with Aura when performed in front of an audience were a luxury they could not currently afford.

Ttheir first attempt at clearing a cubicle, not two hours ago, had showed them that. He had teleported directly into the office of a large beetle abomination and decapitated it with nary a flourish. Even with his Shadow Stream, the shower of bug blood and the crack of shattering chitin had been just loud enough to break the monotonous droning of the office.

The result had been instantaneous and catastrophic. Every monster in a fifty metre radius had stopped what it was doing. A hundred pairs of multifaceted eyes had swiveled in their direction. The bees had been the worst. With the deafening buzz of a hundred giant flying insects, they had unfurled their shimmering wings, lifting from their desks in a swarm of black and yellow death. The initial reaction had gained the attention of more monsters further away, and then those monsters had in turn alerted more, and then the problem had cascaded outwards until an unbelievable quantity of enemies was bearing down on them it what felt like seconds.

John had been forced to grab the others and Teleport them a hundred meters away before the swarm had descended on their position, stingers the size of swords ready to strike.

The warped nature of the office, which had seemed like a curse just moments before, had ironically become their salvation. Unable to navigate the shifting corridors, the swarm had quickly lost them. But the lesson had been learned. This was no battlefield. It was a minefield. One wrong step, one sound too loud, and the entire floor would come down on them.

Which would not exactly have been conducive to the XP grind they'd set out to do.

This place was far more volatile than his relatively easy farm back in the school had been. Back then, the insectoid creatures had been forced to remain at their desks as long as he didn't activate the classrooms.

Here, the monsters had their own routines; they occasionally got up, oozed or scuttled down the corridors, and interacted with each other in grotesque parodies of office life. The swarm had proven they were anything but passive.

So, he and his team had adapted.

John entered the sealed cubicle, his footsteps making no sound on the grimy floor. The bee-creature was still typing, its focus absolute. He stepped in close and drew the blade across its neck in a single, fluid motion.

There was no sound, just a clean, wet parting of chitin and flesh. The monster's head, slid from its shoulders and landed on the desk with a soft thud, silencing the maddening clack. The body remained upright for a second longer, its forelimbs still poised over the keys. A single tremor thrummed through its body, and then it slumped forward, thudding softly against the desk. A thick ichor began to pool around its motionless form as its body began the process of dissolving.

+200 Aura

The notification was a mere whisper of the validation he usually received. Less than he'd get for a particularly well-executed yawn. But it was safe. It was progress.

He withdrew his scythe, returning it to his Inventory, and, with another gesture, dissolved the wall of shadow, leaving the dead creature to its eternal work, the colours of the bleak office bleeding back into his vision.

He waited only long enough for the green monster's loot to spawn—confirming it was yet another 'Sales Stinger' he could leave behind—before he stepped back into the corridor where the others were waiting, their expressions a mixture of boredom and tension. "Clear," he murmured. "Doug, you're next. Two cubicles down, on the left. Slug. Should be an easy one."

Doug nodded, cracking his knuckles. "Got it, kid."

They had spent the last few hours refining this system, a painstaking process of methodical extermination. They moved from cubicle to cubicle, taking turns dealing the final blow. It was the only way to ensure a fair distribution of points. One person would act as the killer, while the others stood watch, ready to intervene if something went wrong. It was slow, it was tedious, but it was working. Their point totals were steadily climbing, and with each new level, each new skill purchased, their chances of surviving this hellscape increased.

John watched as Doug crept towards his designated target, his massive frame surprisingly stealthy. While the others farmed, John found himself with an abundance of time to think, a dangerous proposition under the best of circumstances. He suppressed a flicker of irritation.

A part of him, the selfish, greedy part that his System had so carefully cultivated while he wasn't looking, chafed at this new arrangement.

Every kill they made was Aura he wasn't getting. Every point that went into their Systems was a point that wasn't going into his. Aura he could be using to get stronger, to prepare for the inevitable rematch with the manager, and strengthen him for whatever other challenges awaited in the world beyond. There were still plenty of narrative threads he felt tied to.

He knew it was petty. They needed to get stronger too. A stronger team was a safer team. He knew all this, logically. But the greedy little gremlin in the back of his mind, the part that was a product of a lifetime of being powerless, still whispered its envious complaints.

But he pushed the thought down by focusing on the upside, rationalizing it with a new, more complex calculus.

He was still the leader. He was the one calling the shots, directing their movements, orchestrating their slow, bloody crawl through this corporate labyrinth. And he already knew that there was more to gaining Aura than combat. Killing monsters in impressive and flashy ways wasn't the only way to act cool. It was just the easiest.

He'd taken to issuing his orders with detached authority. He would stand with his arms crossed, his shadow cloak draped artfully around him, observing their progress like a general overseeing a battlefield, making it all look effortless. And the Aura would trickle in.

+100 Aura

It was a pittance compared to what he earned in combat, but it was consistent. Draining in its own way, but it was a necessary adaptation in times like these.

There was also another complication, of course. A new variable in his complex social equation.

Lily.

Ever since their conversation in the horror-show café, something had shifted between them. The knowledge that she saw past the sunglasses and the stoicism to the fumbling fool beneath was a constant source of anxiety drilling into the back of his skull.

Did she look at him differently now? Was there pity in her eyes? Or, even worse, mockery? He obsessively checked his Aura gains, searching for any fluctuation, any sign that her awareness of his act was somehow invalidating the performance in the eyes of the System.

The +100 for his pose felt low. Was it her fault? Was her knowing he was a fraud making him objectively less cool? It was like performing a magic trick for someone who already knew the secret. The illusion felt fragile, ready to be shattered at any moment.

He was so lost in his own internal turmoil that he didn't notice Doug returning.

"Done," the older man grunted from beside him, shocking him halfway to death while nonchalantly wiping a smear of viscous slime from his knuckles. "Thing never even saw me comin'. Lily, you're up."

Lily nodded, her expression grim but determined. As she moved past John, she gave him a small, almost imperceptible smile. It wasn't a mocking smile, or a pitying one. At least he didn't think so.

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He liked to believe it was a small acknowledgement of the shared burden of their respective performances. John's heart did a nervous little flip-flop, and he quickly looked away, his cheeks flushing with a heat that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature of the office.

This was all so much more complicated than just killing monsters.

Lily didn't need to stalk her prey with shadows. Her skill was in precision. She paused at the entrance to a different cubicle, across the aisle from where Doug had made his kill. Peeking around the corner, she raised the crossbow, sighted for a fraction of a second, and loosed a bolt. There was a soft thwip, followed by the muffled thud of a body slumping to the floor. No mess, no fuss. Those paralytic bolts she'd unlocked were effective.

She stepped back, her face now impassive under the brim of her helmet, and nodded to the group.

It was Jade's turn. The most problematic system out of their little group, in these circumstances. At first, John had assumed she would receive the least penalty in terms of points, since hers was, supposedly, all about killing anyway. He'd even pointed it out when they were in the early stages of figuring out how best to go about all this.

But she'd looked at him with terrible, haunted eyes, and said simply, "Do you really think you're the only one who lied about their System, John?"

It hadn't taken him long to put the pieces together, after that. Unfortunately, they couldn't afford to let Jade torture her targets to death. He imagined she was probably fine with that.

A golden projection lopped a bee's head from its shoulders, and they moved on.

Hours bled into one another, marked only by the steady cycle of their grim work. Kill, move, kill, move. The endless maze of cubicles seemed to stretch on into infinity, a monument to bureaucratic horror.

At least they made good progress, their individual power growing with each passing hour. Doug unlocked a new ability that allowed him to harden his skin to the consistency of grey stone, which seemed to bring him some considerable amusement; apparently, he'd very briefly fought under the name Granite Grant. Lily purchased a skill that let her enchant her bolts to ricochet off surfaces, allowing for impossible trick shots. Jade, quiet and withdrawn as ever, invested her points into strengthening her golden projection, its form becoming more solid, its attacks more potent. It was obvious she didn't want to add any further horrors to her sadistic repertoire. John didn't know whether to pity her or be frustrated with her.

John, for his part, held onto his Aura, watching his total climb with indecision doing somersaults in his stomach. The temptation to spend it was a constant itch in the corner of his attention, but he wanted to build up a truly massive cache before making any decisions.

Despite their success, a heavy tension lingered. With every cubicle they cleared, with every corridor they traversed, the hope of finding Chester dwindled, replaced by a growing certainty.

The office was vast, but it couldn't be infinite. They had cleared dozens of sections, slaughtered hundreds of the monstrous drones, and they had found nothing. No body, no blood, not even a discarded piece of his equipment. It was as if he had been erased from existence.

The silence between kills grew heavier. The brief hints of banter that had occasionally popped up in their earlier journey through the supermarket aisles had vanished, replaced by a sombre preoccupation. They were all thinking it. They were all feeling it. Was this what the others had gone through when he'd been the one separated?

John looked at the empty space in their formation, the spot where the hulking, terrified young man should have been. A pang of something uncomfortable twisted inside him.

Should've talked to him more. The thought was unbidden and unwelcome. He hadn't known Chester, not really. The guy had been a bundle of nerves and hockey armour, a walking contradiction who seemed as surprised as anyone that he was still alive. They had barely exchanged more than a few dozen words.

He consoled himself with the familiar thought that it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. He would have just fucked it up.

What would I have even said? 'Hey, Chester, nice hockey pads'? He probably would've thought I was making fun of him. Would have been awkward as hell. He could picture it now: the stuttering attempt at conversation, the long, uncomfortable silence, the mutual retreat into their respective shells of anxiety.

He would have made the situation worse, not better. It was what he did. It was who he was.

As they continued their grim, silent advance, John's mind transitioned to strategic calculations. His Aura count had long since ticked past a threshold he once would have considered a fantasy.

104,350 Aura.

The number was dizzying, a testament to hours of methodical work. Back when the world first ended, a few thousand Aura had felt like a fortune. Now, he possessed enough power to fundamentally rewrite his own capabilities, and the weight of that choice was mountainous on his shoulders.

He pulled up his menus. The list of available abilities was a tantalizing display of destructive potential, a catalogue of ways to inflict violence and bend reality to his will. But with so much at stake, the choice felt less like upgrading and more like disarmament, deciding which weapon to leave behind.

His eyes immediately went back to Clairvoyance. The 32,000 Aura price tag still made him wince, given its lack of direct combat utility, but its potential was undeniable. This office was a puzzle he couldn't solve with his current senses. He was navigating blind, relying on the brute force of his Teleport to bypass a geography that actively resisted comprehension.

There was a very real possibility that they were simply moving in circles, that this labyrinth had no exit. Clairvoyance offered a potential solution, a way to see the 'true' layout of the maze and, with any luck, a direct path to Chester. It could be their only way out.

He scrolled down, his gaze lingering on the other Level 7 spells, all priced at the same exorbitant 32,000 Aura. Eruption. Hurricane. Monsoon. Plague. Telepathy. Telekinesis. The names were blunt, promising elemental devastation on a massive scale.

What would Eruption do in a supermarket? Would Hurricane be controllable in these confined corridors? Large area-of-effect spells seemed like the logical counter to a single, impossibly fast opponent. The manager could dodge a projectile, but could it dodge an entire, room-filling cataclysm? It was a tempting thought, but a costly gamble.

And then there were the more esoteric options. Telepathy was an unknown quantity. Could he read the manager's mind and anticipate its movements? Or would he just be flooded with incomprehensible alien thoughts? Telekinesis seemed more straightforward, but he couldn't imagine being able to exert enough force to restrain a red-souled creature, not at this level.

He dropped down to the Level 6 list, the 16,000 Aura price point feeling almost reasonable by comparison. Pyromancy, Hydromancy, Aeromancy. Judging by how Biomancy and Geomancy had worked so far, he didn't see these being massive difference makers at Level 6, useful as they were in their own ways.

Then came the real wild cards. Demon Claws. Shinigami Eyes. Basilisk Scales. Phantom Form. These were even more mysterious, their names hinting at physical transformations but not necessarily how that would manifest, and with what side-effects. Draconic Wings, obviously, granted flight. What would these do?

Would Demon Claws give him a melee option that could actually damage the manager? Would Basilisk Scales grant him a defence that could withstand its blows? Would Shinigami Eyes allow him to see a creature's weakness? Its lifespan? Phantom Form seemed obvious enough, and, actually, quite useful.

Another option was to take the more pragmatic path: upgrades. He could pour his Aura into the tools he already knew, the spells and skills that had kept him alive this long. He could level up Aurora Blade until it could slice through reality itself, or Adamant Defence until he was a walking fortress. He could enhance Sanguine Clone, creating decoys powerful enough to hold their own.

Or, and this was the option that called to him the most, he could upgrade Dragon Breath. It was the only thing that had made the manager flinch. If he could amplify its power, increase its duration, widen its beam, maybe he wouldn't need a new trick. Maybe he just needed to perfect the one that worked.

And then there were the Skills. So damn many of them it made his head spin.

From the Level 7s, Triple Casting was almost tempting enough in its own right, regardless of the boss monster and the predicament they were in. Opening himself up to an extra Spell running at once could be crucial. Passives like Warlord and Conqueror were somewhat intriguing too, since any kind of combat boost would be pretty bloody welcome. Adaptive Musculature and Cellular Regeneration called to him as well on that front.

Level 6 boasted intriguing prospects like Speed Demon, Magnificent Bastard, and Archmage on the passives side, while Atomic Slash, Adamant Stance, and Vector Calculation stood out on the other end. At another, less risky, time, he might have considered Sacrifice, too, just to see what the hell it did--it was in the slot that typically affected Arcane abilities, so it would be something to do with sacrificing Spells, somehow? Couldn't risk spending the points to test it, right now.

Even at the lower Levels, there was stuff he was tempted to test out. Part of him wanted to buy up all the "weaker" Skills just to see how they could benefit him. Guesswork felt way more problematic than it usually did, given the circumstances. But he didn't want to risk that they would all end up being worthless against the stickbug in the end. Even with over 100,000 Aura to play with, he felt like he had no room to waste a single point.

And even after all that, there was Combine to consider. Cross-combines between Spells and Skills, even. He was pretty sure his brain was going to melt and dribble out of his ears if he wasn't careful.

He closed the menu, the text fading from his mind's eye, but the strategic dilemma remained. To solve the puzzle of the manager, he had to first understand the nature of the beast itself. He replayed the battle in his mind, his Level 7 Mind-enhanced memory providing a perfect recall.

The creature's speed wasn't just physical. That spinning attack, the way its entire body became a single, bludgeoning weapon. It hadn't moved like an insect. It had moved like a staff in the hands of a master martial artist. As if it were a puppet, and some vast, unseen entity was the puppeteer.

Like all red souls he had encountered, its primary directive was almost certainly the protection of the portal core. That had seemed to be the case with The Headmaster and the Crab. They were guardians, powerful but somewhat limited.

But there was a leeway, a disturbing hint of personality within their programming. The Crab had let him go, its objective evidently deemed redundant once the cores were gone. But the Headmaster had kept him there for its own reasons. Even after the core was destroyed, it had remained, taking one last, spiteful shot at him. It hadn't needed to. It had chosen to.

That was the key. They weren't just mindless drones. They were players in a game, following a set of rules he was only just beginning to comprehend. The manager's corporate-speak, its obsession with KPIs and synergy were all part of its persona, its role in this particular circle of hell. But beneath that absurd facade was a cunning, malevolent intelligence. An intelligence that had surely priorities of its own.

And right now, he reckoned somewhere amongst its highest priority was him. He had hurt it. He had challenged its authority.

Even if they found Chester, even if they found a way to the portal core, he suspected—and, in a way, hoped—that the manager wouldn't let them just leave. It would hunt them. It would make them pay for their insubordination.

This wasn't just about escape anymore. He had to kill it. Not just to save his team, but to satisfy the vindictive fire that seemed to be burning him from the inside out.

The question wasn't if he would fight it, but how. And the answer was locked away in a menu of choices, waiting for him to place his bet.

Nothing for it. Can't hum and haw over the decision forever.

With his heart thundering harder than it had in the midst of any battle so far, John started spending his Aura.

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