The two silver signatures darted through the labyrinth of pipes, their multi-jointed limbs adapting perfectly to the claustrophobic geometry of the 49th floor. To a normal man in the pitch black, they would have been invisible executioners.
But behind the bone-white Hollow Mask, Ace was already calculating their trajectories.
The first Walker launched itself from a high steam vent, aiming a cluster of serrated claws straight for Ace's neck. The Hollow Instinct flared, slowing the creature's arc in Ace's mind to a crawl. He didn't retreat. He stepped into the attack, dropping his center of gravity.
He pivoted on his reinforced Waraji Striders, using the creature's own momentum against it. He delivered a brutal Taekwondo spinning back kick, his heel connecting squarely with the Walker's chest. The impact sounded like a sledgehammer hitting wet drywall. The creature folded in half, rocketing backward into a mess of exposed wiring.
Before the second Walker could react, Ace was already moving. The Silent Tread made him a ghost. He blurred forward, leaping off a rusted water pump to gain altitude. He flipped in the narrow space between the ceiling and the machinery, drawing the black blade of Tensa Zangetsu at the apex of his arc.
Gravity and momentum did the rest. He came down with a devastating vertical strike, cleaving the second Walker cleanly in two before landing silently in a crouch.
[PROXIMITY SIPHON SUCCESSFUL]
Target: Tier 1 Variants (Walkers) x2
Essence Purified: +2 UP
Ace flicked the black blade, though no actual blood had stained it—the creatures dissolved into that familiar black ash. He sheathed the katana with a sharp click that echoed in the dark.
"Too easy," he muttered.
But his swagger faded as he looked up through the silver-and-blue filter of his mask. He had assumed the 49th floor would be a quick detour—a straight shot to the rooftop access stairs. He was wrong.
The entire western half of the mechanical floor had collapsed. Massive, fifty-ton water filtration tanks had ruptured and tipped over, tearing down the ceiling and bringing tons of concrete, steel rebar, and ventilation ducting with them. The direct path was a graveyard of impenetrable rubble.
If he wanted to reach the roof, he was going to have to go through the maintenance crawlspaces, shimmying under warped flooring and climbing through the jagged, unstable ruins of the tower's guts.
What should have been a five-minute sprint turned into a grueling, half-day siege.
Hours bled together in the lightless labyrinth. The silver-and-blue dichromatic vision of the mask was the only world Ace knew. He navigated the wreckage with the agility of a gymnast, using his heightened senses and parkour to vault over jagged concrete, slide under hanging webs of rusted rebar, and squeeze through ventilation shafts that smelled of stagnant water and decay.
It was an endurance test. The air grew thicker and hotter as the hours dragged on. Sweat soaked the white shihakusho beneath his heavy crimson coat, but he refused to take the coat off. It was his armor.
Every time he found a small clearing, he found more Walkers. They nested in the dark, twisted wreckage. It became a rhythm of attrition.
Drop from a vent. Draw Zangetsu. Sever a limb. Roundhouse kick into a wall. Sheathe.Crawl through a pipe. Ambush from the shadows. Parry. Sweep the leg. Thrust. Throughout the grind, the two "passengers" in his soul remained quiet, but their presence was undeniable. The predatory instinct of the Hollow guided his every reflex, while the stoic, quiet edge of Zangetsu kept his mind sharp, preventing the claustrophobia and the endless dark from breaking his sanity. He was hunting in their element now.
By the time Ace finally found the primary maintenance hatch leading to the roof, his internal clock told him it had to be late afternoon, maybe early evening. His muscles ached with a dull, satisfying burn, and his UP bank had swelled from the scattered encounters in the dark.
He stood before a heavy steel door marked ROOFTOP POOL ACCESS. The metal was warped and buckled, framing a sliver of the outside world.
The rhythmic thrum... thrum... thrum... that had been vibrating through the ceiling all day was now a deafening, wet pulse echoing from the other side of the door.
Ace reached up and gripped the edge of the Hollow Mask. With a sharp tug, he broke the seal.
Hiss.
The mask popped off his face, and the grainy, silver-and-blue world vanished, replaced by the sudden, overwhelming reality of natural light. Ace squinted, letting the mask hang from his belt.
He peered through the gap in the buckled door. It wasn't the sickly violet of morning anymore. The sun was setting. The heavy fog outside was illuminated in a fiery, bruised palette of burning orange and deep purple. The shadows were growing long, bleeding across the rooftop.
Ace took a deep breath of the air slipping through the crack. It didn't smell like chlorine or rust anymore. It smelled like ozone, ozone and something ancient.
He gripped the warped steel of the door with both hands. The system's reinforcements made his grip unbreakable. With a guttural shout, he ripped the heavy door completely off its hinges and tossed it aside.
The wind howled as Ace stepped out onto the roof, the crimson leather of his Demon Hunter's Coat whipping violently around him. The sun was dipping below the shattered Seattle skyline, casting long, fiery reflections across the surface of the massive luxury pool.
But the water in the pool wasn't water anymore. It was a thick, viscous black tar, bubbling and pulsing in time with that deafening heartbeat.
Ace slowly reached over his shoulder and gripped the skeletal hilt of the Rebellion replica.
"Alright," Ace said, the wind carrying his words away. "Let's see what was making that noise."