The smell reached him before the noise did, old grease cut with fresh blood, drifting up the service stair from the cafeteria level. His stomach answered it with a hollow twist that reminded him breakfast had been a plan rather than a meal.
The marker wanted him past the cafeteria anyway, so hunger and the route had finally agreed. He came down the last steps and stopped at the edge of the swing doors. One door had lost its glass, giving him the hall without asking him to enter it.
Twelve of the grey things worked the long room in a loose spread, dragging trays and packaging across the tiles. Ten ran the same size as the ones upstairs, while two stood taller, leaner through the shoulders, their hides gone dark along the spine.
Appraise settled the question of what the taller pair were before he risked the room.
[ Gobdog Stalker: Rank F+. Weak seam: throat. Alert radius: high. ]
Faster, then, and harder to surprise, which ruled out walking in across the open floor. He pulled back from the glass and let the geography do his thinking for a minute.
The serving line ran behind a steel counter, and the kitchen narrowed into a galley with one door at either end. Anything that wanted him in there had to come single file past the burners. Twelve enemies stopped being twelve once a doorway made them take turns.
The kitchen door on his side gave without noise, and the pilot smell inside told him the gas lines had survived the Merge. He set the largest stockpot under the tap, filled it two-thirds, then lit a burner under it while he worked through the drawers.
Among the drawers the best blade was a boning knife with a worn grip, lighter than he wanted but honest steel. It would reach a throat seam if he put his weight behind it, which was the only job he needed it to hold.
He wedged the far galley door shut with a mop handle so the funnel kept a single working mouth. Four rounds sat in the magazine, and he set himself a budget of two before the first tray left his hand.
The plan needed the pack curious rather than frightened, which made noise the right bait. He skimmed a steel tray out through the swing doors and let it clatter across the tiles of the open hall.
Every feeding sound in the room stopped at once, and claws began ticking toward the serving line. He stepped back into the galley mouth with the knife low in his left hand.
The first head came through the swing doors at floor height, reading the room before its body followed. Two more pushed in behind it, and the three of them found his scent in the same breath.
They came at the galley the way he had wanted, crowded into single file by the counter's steel. He met the first with the stockpot, swinging the boiling weight of it into the leading skull at the turn.
Scalding water did the work his fists could not, searing its eyes shut and dropping it under the feet of the second. He put the knife through the second one's throat seam while it stumbled, then dragged the blade free before the third could reach him.
The third got a claw into his shoulder before he reset his feet. Cloth tore, skin under it, but the counter edge behind him kept the strike shallow, and he drove the knife up under its jaw until it stopped pulling.
The scalded one was still trying to rise when he opened its throat on the way past. Three bodies now lay across the galley mouth, which suited the funnel fine.
[ Enemies defeated: 3. ]
[ EXP +60. (100 / 100. Level 2 reached.) ]
Warmth moved through him with the level, tightening things that had always sat loose. His shoulder kept bleeding all the same, which answered one question about levels before he had asked it aloud.
Out in the hall the pack had gone quiet in a way he liked less than the feeding. The two Stalkers were thinking, and everything that came next would be their plan rather than his bait.
Four of the ordinary ones came together in the next rush, two over the counter, two through the mouth of the galley. The pairing was too clean to be an accident, and it told him the dark-spined pair understood flanking.
He gave ground along the burners, keeping the counter pair on his left where the steel slowed them. A thrown tray took the first leaper across the eyes, and the knife met it under the jaw as it landed short.
The second one over the counter caught his forearm in its teeth, the same arm the morning had already opened. He jammed the arm deeper instead of pulling, gagged it on its own grip, then cut its throat out while it choked.
Pain arrived in a clean bright line, worse than the claw had been. The two coming up the galley mouth reached him in the same breath, and the narrow ground was the only reason they arrived one head at a time.
He crushed the first one's skull with the emptied stockpot, swung flat like a bell. The last of the four took the knife through the seam while it scrambled over its packmate, close enough that its weight carried them both into the burners.
He shoved the corpse off and came up with his shirt smoking where the grate had kissed it. The room had gone quiet again, five bodies deep in his corner of it.
[ Enemies defeated: 4. ]
[ EXP +80. (180 total.) ]
Movement behind him arrived as a scrape of wood on tile, the sound of a mop handle being worked loose. The Stalkers had not been waiting at all, and one of them had spent the whole second wave prying at the wedged door.
The door banged open behind him while three ordinary ones filled the galley mouth in front. Caught between the two, he stopped saving his budget and spent the first round through the Stalker's open throat as it came through the frame.
That round dropped it across the doorway, which bought him the turn he needed. He met the front three in the narrow ground, tray in one hand, knife in the other, giving ground a step at a time.
The first died the way the others had, funneled onto the blade by the walls he had chosen. The second dragged the tray down with its full weight, so he let the metal go, then took its throat while its jaws were busy tearing steel.
Claws found his hip as the third bore him back into the counter. It was under his chin before the knife could turn, and he spent the second round of his budget straight up through its jaw.
Silence came back to the kitchen in stages, dripping off the counters and slow to settle. One signature remained of the twelve, and the last Stalker did not intend to be funneled anywhere.
It circled the serving hall instead, watching him through the gap where the door glass had been. Patience was a weapon exactly as long as your enemy had none, so he gave it a lure worth breaking cover for.
Nox stepped out of the galley into the open serving line, then turned his back on the room to dig through the shelving. The wrongness of the picture must have read as exhaustion, because the Stalker committed within three breaths.
Claws hit tile in a fast run behind him, closing the floor he had refused to fight on. He pivoted off the counter at the last stride, inside the leap instead of under it, and the knife met the seam with the turn's whole weight.
The Stalker's momentum carried it past him into the shelving, where it thrashed twice before it went still. He stood over it until the blood stopped, because assumptions were a debt the morning had already collected on once.
[ Enemies defeated: 5. ]
[ EXP +140. (320 / 300. Level 3 reached.) ]
[ 10 assignable points available. ]
Two levels in one room, paid for in his shoulder, his forearm, his hip, and one burn across the ribs. He pushed five points into Strength, five into Agility, then watched the wounds keep bleeding through the warmth to confirm the rule.
Levels sharpened the tool without repairing it, so the pantry shelf of bandages was worth more than the applause of any screen. He cleaned the forearm first, wrapped it fresh, then ate standing up, working through bread and a can of peaches with the knife for a spoon.
A sound above the shelving stopped him mid-swallow, small and human, the click of a phone shifting against glass. Faces lined the window of the pantry mezzanine, six of them at least, and one girl held her phone against the pane with its lens aimed down at him.
They had watched the whole room from up there, every wave of it, from behind a locked door he had never noticed. The pantry door opened while he ate, letting the survivors down the stairs in a knot that kept the counter between his knife and their retreat.
"Are you with a rescue?" a boy asked, holding a dented tray in front of himself.
"There's no rescue, the school is sealed," he said, and went back to the peaches.
The girl with the phone kept it raised, tracking him the whole way down the counter without letting the lens drop.
"You're Nox, from 2-C," she said, closing the distance by a step, "and you took twelve of them apart with a kitchen knife."
Eleven with the knife, the pot, the water, two bullets, and a room shaped like a trap, but he saw no profit in correcting the arithmetic. A story that grew in the telling was a wall he did not have to build himself.
He loaded a backpack from the shelves with water, bread, and cans while they watched him do it. The rest of the stock he left where it stood, which was mercy enough for people who had locked a door and filmed.
"The east stair is nested, so go up the middle if you have to move," he said at the door, since corpses drew scavengers to a larder he might want intact later.
A new screen unfolded before the swing doors had stopped moving behind him.
[ School Dungeon Contribution: Nox, 1st. ]
The line burned there for two full seconds, ranked above names he had never bothered to learn. Then it folded itself away, replaced before he could read the numbers under it.
[ Leaderboard locked pending dungeon completion. ]
The System had shown him the shape of the prize anyway, a board where the whole building could watch the counting. He shouldered the pack, turned back toward the marker, and went to find out who else the board had counted.