Runebound Reverse Tower of The Dead-Chapter 115: Stalkers

Kael’s axe was warm from having used it so long, the heat building over time the longer he’d been swinging it.

The smoldering passive was doing its thing. The edge had a faint red glow that came and went depending on how much he moved it. It was reliable, it was good and it did its job well. And he needed it for what is to come. After all, he had a feeling that something was very wrong here.

The weapon felt good in hand, but Kael could feel the durability bleeding away in the back of his mind like an itch he refused to scratch.

He had Brokk’s hammer if it came to it, but he didn’t want to keep repairing in front of Peter. Repairs raised questions. Questions raised greed.

His mini-map was the only thing he trusted completely, and even that he didn’t trust like a friend. He trusted it like a leash. It showed him where to look, not what to expect.

"Stay close," Kael said.

Peter gave a small nod, not because he was obedient, but because the silence had crawled under his skin too.

They went up. Three more floors with nothing but broken cubicles, twisted metal frames, shredded carpet that had turned to dust, and daylight slanting through missing walls in pale bands.

The building was less "office" and more "skeleton." Beams exposed, pillars cracked, sections missing as if something massive had scooped chunks out and left the rest behind out of boredom.

From certain gaps, the city was visible. Destroyed, damaged, broken. Fire pillars stood in the distance like stakes hammered into the world. Even if the air up here was cooler, Kael could still feel the heat out there like pressure on his face. It wasn’t burning yet, but it promised it would. And it promised hell on this floor if they didn’t kill the Ifrit fast enough.

"Up, more," Kael said, eyes flicking to the mini-map.

Three red dots on the next corner at the stairs. Awake dots, not grayed out. That meant movement. That meant noise should exist. But there wasn’t any noise yet.

"Be ready," Kael said as he peeked the corner.

Peter tightened his grip on his weapon preparing for anything, bringing the hatchet off his shoulder and down into both hands like he’d seen in movies. He was trying to look like a fighter now. Trying to look like someone who belonged.

Kael’s frown deepened, and that alone made Peter’s stomach turn.

"What?" Peter asked.

"There... is nothing here," Kael said, eyes scanning the landing and the stairwell and the floor beyond.

Empty.

Yet the mini-map insisted those three red dots were right there. Close. Awake. Not far ahead. Not far below. Right there, right where they were.

Kael didn’t have time to wonder if the map was wrong, because the map was never wrong in the ways that mattered. If the dot existed, the thing existed. If the thing wasn’t where it should be, then it meant only one thing...

It was positioned where Kael couldn’t see.

That thought hit like cold water. It wasn’t a sixth sense, it wasn’t a heroic nor divine intervention. No, it was human, far too human. It was realization of fear itself.

Kael yanked Peter and jumped back in the same breath.

Peter didn’t get to argue or brace. One moment he was upright, the next his feet were dragged out from under him and he slammed into the nearest cubicle partition hard enough that the brittle frame snapped and bent. Pain flashed across his back, sharp and immediate, and his hatchet clanged as it hit the floor. Air left his lungs in a rude burst.

"Fuck was that for man!" Peter barked, half pain, half panic, trying to push himself up.

Kael’s own retreat was not graceful. He hit the floor on his back, spine jolting, teeth clacking, but he didn’t care. His eyes were already locked on the spot where they had been standing. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The floor was punctured from above.

Four, no six, thin black limbs stabbed through the cement like spears, each one banded with that sick phosphorous green sheen that made them look poisoned.

The tips weren’t shaped like claws. They were shaped like tools designed for puncturing: narrow, hard, precise. Cement cracked outward in jagged lines around each strike, dust puffing up in little clouds that immediately drifted into the light.

The sound was wrong too. Not the wet crunch of flesh. Not the rough scrape of goblin feet. This was a metallic tap, followed by a dragging click as each limb adjusted its weight and found purchase. Like steel needles testing the strength of the world.

"That’s bad..." Kael said as he stood up, voice low, already shifting his stance.

Three large bodies that belonged to those limbs made Kael feed in the horror of what he was seeing. Spiders, gigantic spiders, with limbs at least five feet long each. Three of them slowly, gracefully and creepily fell down to the ground.

Peter’s eyes found the creatures and widened in recognition the way a person recognizes a car coming at them too fast. "Shit... Arachnids...Atrax Stalkers!" Peter said.

"What are those?" Kael asked, and he didn’t like how steady his own voice sounded. Steady meant he was already calculating. Calculating meant he was already accepting a fight he didn’t want.

"Atrax Stalkers are fifteenth floor monsters. This shouldn’t be in a first floor. We’re not strong enough for this. We have to run!" Peter said, the last sentence coming out like a plea.

Kael’s gaze snapped to the mini-map again. The three red dots were still there, but now he saw more. More than he wanted to see. Angles. Approach lines. Dots shifting from the edges.

"Well, as much as I would like to do that too..." Kael said, and his mouth pulled into something that wasn’t a smile, "Looks like that won’t be possible." He turned his head to the side of the building.

Movement clung to the open frame outside.

Long shapes descended along the building’s exterior, legs unfolding in slow, deliberate increments. They didn’t drop like goblins. They didn’t rush. They lowered themselves like they owned gravity. Their bodies were thin, wrong, built for silence and sudden violence. They hung from strands that looked too taut to be silk, almost like wire in the way they held shape.

One landed on a beam and the metal tapped under its weight, a sound that went straight into the nerves. Another slid down and vanished below the lip of the floor, only for its legs to appear at the edge like it had stepped into the room from the ceiling itself.

Several other Stalkers were slowly coming down the sides of the building. Surrounding the whole floor.