I moved closer through the flooded tunnel, keeping the dead roach balanced over my head and shoulders.

From fifty meters away, the swarm had looked large. From thirty, it looked endless.

The reason the collapsed junction behind me had been empty was suddenly obvious. The flood hadn’t scattered the roaches throughout the tunnels. It had driven nearly all of them toward the same place: spawn.

The barricade stretched across the half-flooded tunnel ahead, built from sharpened logs, heavy planks, metal scraps, and lengths of wire. Players crowded the raised ledges and what little dry ground remained behind it while Cistern Roaches covered everything in front of them. They surged through the water, clung to the walls, and layered themselves across the curved ceiling. Every few seconds, one dropped onto the barricade or landed behind the frontline, forcing the defenders to turn.

“Right side!”

“Get it off the wall!”

“Shield down! Replace him!”

A spear punched through a gap in the wood and struck a roach beneath the head. The creature recoiled, only for two more to climb over it. An arrow struck one of the ceiling roaches, but the shaft glanced off its shell and vanished into the water.

The barricade shook as more roaches piled against the sharpened logs.

I had underestimated the size of the swarm. Quietly assassinating a few from behind had sounded reasonable when I thought there were fifty. Now I could see at least that many in the water alone, with more covering the walls and ceiling. Without my shield or anyone supporting me on this side, I might kill two or three before the rest turned and buried me.

The good news was that none of them were looking at me. Every roach faced the barricade, leaving its rear exposed.

The defenders had all the aggro. I only needed a way to make that matter.

I lowered myself behind the dead roach and examined the debris around me.

The flood had carried half the entrance camp into the tunnel. Broken sections of the barricade drifted among torn canvas, snapped poles, and empty crates. Several heavy planks had wedged against the wall beneath a torch that still flickered above the waterline.

One of them was roughly the size of my old shield. It wasn’t black iron or spider carapace, but I wasn’t feeling selective.

I caught it before the current carried it away and pulled the roll of duct tape I had bought with the trash bags from my inventory. The tape wouldn’t stick properly to the soaked wood, so I wrapped it around the entire plank and my left forearm several times until the board held against my armor.

[Wooden Shield] Equipped
[Gadgeteering XP +25]

I tested it with a quick shove. The board shifted against my arm but remained attached.

“Good enough.”

The rest of the debris gave me another idea.

I collected three shorter planks to form the basic frame, placing one across the front and angling the other two along the sides. I reinforced them with several smaller boards and broken lengths of sharpened log, then bound everything together with wire salvaged from the barricade.

The result was a crooked U-shaped floating fortress built from the wreckage of the barricade. It floated badly and remained upright only while I held it from behind, but the front reached my chest, and the uneven gaps between the planks and logs gave me enough room to see and thrust my dagger through.

I draped the roach corpse across the front and wedged two broken shells beside it.

From a distance, the result looked less like a player hiding behind debris and more like a destroyed section of barricade carrying dead roaches downstream.

At least, that was the theory.

Crouching behind it, I began pushing the makeshift barricade toward the swarm. The remaining current helped carry it forward while I placed each boot carefully. The boards creaked whenever they rubbed together, but the battle ahead swallowed the noise.

One of the rear roaches turned toward the movement behind it.

I stopped pushing.

Its black eyes caught the torchlight while its antennae swept through the air in my direction. For several seconds, it watched the floating debris from a distance.

Then a hammer struck something near the player barricade. The impact echoed through the tunnel, and the roach immediately turned back toward the defenders.

The players still held the swarm’s full attention. My disguise only needed to keep me from looking important enough to investigate.

I resumed pushing.

At twenty meters from the rear of the swarm, the roaches were packed so tightly that I could smell them over the sewage: damp shells, old blood, and the sour residue coating the concrete.

There was no chance of slipping through unnoticed.

I needed to open a path.

The wall torch flickered, briefly catching the oily sheen across the roaches’ shells. It reminded me of Aureophis, which then brought to mind the laboratory alcohol I had used during my slime experiments.

I had refilled the bottle afterward. It was meant for cleaning tools, preserving samples, and testing reactions, but it contained enough high-concentration alcohol to be useful.

I pulled it from my inventory.

Throwing it at the floor would accomplish nothing. Anything that landed in the water would be diluted almost immediately. The ceiling was different. Roaches covered the curve above the center of the swarm, packed closely enough that a single splash could reach several.

I combined the bottle with a strip of dry cloth left over from making the camouflage cape and created a basic molotov. Project Babel accepted it without argument.

[Gadgeteering XP +55]

I studied the distance to the barricade. The defenders were approximately five meters beyond the center of the formation. Throwing too far risked splashing the players or setting their wooden defenses on fire. Throwing too short would alert the rear before the flames created an opening.

I needed the bottle to break against the ceiling above the middle-rear of the swarm, where a dense cluster of roaches crawled along the curve directly over the water channel.

First, I needed the defenders to notice me.

Through gaps between the moving shells, I could make out several name tags behind the barricade. There was no time to type a direct message in the middle of the battle, but sending a friend request only took a few quick selections.

I sent requests to every frontline player whose name tag remained visible long enough to select.

[Friend requests sent: 6]

The notifications shouldn’t block their vision during combat, but they might make someone wonder why a stranger was adding them from the middle of the swarm.

That would have to be enough.

I pushed the floating barricade forward until only a few meters separated me from the rearmost roaches, then let it drift ahead on its own.

One roach touched the corpse. Another climbed halfway onto the wood before the barricade tilted and dumped it back into the water.

Several antennae turned in my direction.

Subtlety had taken me as far as it could.

I rose behind the boards, grabbed the wall torch with my left hand, and held the molotov in my right. The temporary plank shield remained strapped along my forearm.

“Heeeeeey!”

My voice carried farther than expected.

Several roaches turned immediately. So did three players behind the barricade.

I waved the torch above the floating debris.

“Look up!”

More faces turned toward me.

I touched the flame to the cloth.

“Fire in the hole!”

I threw.

The bottle spun over the rear of the swarm and shattered against the curved ceiling above my target.

Fire spread across the concrete in a bright orange sheet, then fell.

Burning alcohol rained over the ceiling roaches and the packed bodies beneath them. Flames ran across overlapping shells and slipped between their plates.

The reaction was immediate.

Roaches screamed as those clinging to the ceiling released their grip and dropped into the swarm below. Some landed in the water, where the flames hissed out around them. Others crashed onto the roaches beneath them while still burning, spreading fire across shells, antennae, and exposed joints.

The center of the swarm broke apart.

[Battle Scientist XP +500]

The roaches scrambled away from the flames with a panic I hadn’t seen before. Living beneath Aureophis had taught them to fear fire, and that instinct remained even with the cockatrice gone.

A narrow passage opened through the middle.

It wouldn’t stay open for long.

I shoved the floating barricade ahead and charged.

A roach lunged from the right. Its mandibles struck the plank shield on my arm and tore a strip from the edge, but I kept moving and drove the floating barricade into its body, knocking it aside.

Another dropped from the wall ahead. I rammed through its legs before it could recover.

Fire dripped from the ceiling around me. A burning roach fell across my path, but I shoved it aside with the barricade and continued charging.

The player-built barricade was only a few meters away.

“CHARGE!!!!”

A section near the center of the barricade was pulled open just as I reached it.

I veered aside, and several players carrying hammers and heavy axes rushed through the gap, passing me on their way into the swarm.

The roaches were still facing the defenders behind the barricade.

Their backs were completely exposed.

The first hammer came down across a roach’s wing cases with a sharp crack. An axe struck the seam between another roach’s thorax plates, splitting the armor before it could turn.

More heavy-weapon players poured through the opening and spread out behind the swarm. The defenders at the barricade kept the roaches’ attention fixed forward while the new group attacked from the rear.

I turned with them and drove the fang dagger through the eye of a roach trying to wheel around. A hammer crushed its back a moment later.

The swarm was caught between the barricade and the players who had charged through it.

Spears continued stabbing from behind the sharpened logs, archers fired into the roaches clinging to the walls and ceiling, and the heavy weapons broke apart anything still facing the barricade.

I stayed near the edge of the group, using the openings they created to strike. However, the plank shield was already splitting, but it offered enough protection to redirect bites instead of absorbing them with my armor.

One roach climbed over a shield user and dropped behind the line.

I turned and slammed the plank into its face.

The board cracked down the middle.

The impact stopped the roach for less than a second, but that was enough for a woman with a two-handed axe to bury the blade between its wings.

She pulled the weapon free and glanced at the broken board hanging from my arm.

“Nice shield.”

“Best I got.”

A player behind the line threw a flask of green liquid on the ground near us. The glass shattered, releasing a pale green mist filled with drifting mushroom spores.

It rolled through the formation and settled over everyone nearby.

My health rose by only a sliver, but my cuts tightened and the pain dulled wherever the mist touched. The effect was weak, yet it had healed the entire frontline at once.

The next roach came from the wall.

An arrow struck its head. As it recoiled, I drove the fang dagger into the soft underside of its abdomen, and a shield user knocked it into the water. Three players finished it before it could recover.

The swarm continued shrinking.

The remaining roaches tried to retreat toward the ceiling, but the last flames burning along the curve forced them back down. Those scattering across the walls were knocked into the water by arrows and spear thrusts. The rest became trapped between the barricade and the frontliners.

The final roach had lost half its legs and all its health, yet it continued dragging itself through the water with its mandibles snapping.

A hammer ended it.

Then the hammer user tore his weapon free and raised it overhead.

“CLEAR!!!”

The tunnel erupted with cheers as players shouted, raised their weapons, and struck them against their shields. Someone behind the barricade screamed, “We did it!” while another joined the celebration with both fists raised overhead.

The celebration burned through the last of their energy almost as quickly as it began. As the noise faded, players leaned against shields, walls, and one another while exhausted breathing mixed with dripping water and the crackle of the remaining alcohol burning out along the ceiling.

The barricade still stood.

I tore the remains of the plank shield from my arm and dropped them into the water.

I moved through the bodies until I found a good specimen near the wall. A spear had entered through one eye and penetrated deep into its head, but the rest of the corpse remained mostly intact. Both antennae were attached, along with all six legs, the abdomen, and nearly the entire carapace.

The specimen I had carried earlier was nowhere to be found. This one would be far more useful in an IMR laboratory.

I stored the corpse in my inventory.

At first, none of the other players paid much attention to me. With the torn trash bag hanging from my helmet and shoulders, I probably looked like one more battered player who had fled back toward spawn.

Then a hand caught my shoulder.

I looked up at one of the tower-shield players from the charge. His armor was covered in scratches, and one side of his shield had nearly been chewed through.

His gaze moved from my black armor to the soaked trash bag around my shoulders, then to the half-eaten roach corpse floating beside the wreckage of my barricade.

Finally, he looked at my name tag.

“Cloud?”

A player beside him glanced up from the corpse he was looting.

“That’s the name from the friend request.”

“The guy behind the swarm?”

More heads turned toward me.

“That was you with the molotov?”

“He charged straight through them wearing a trash bag,” someone said.

Recognition spread through the entrance camp. Several players pointed while others abandoned their loot long enough to get a better look.

The shield user stared at me again.

“You’re that reckless idiot.”

“The reckless idiot who opened the swarm for us,” someone nearby corrected.

“He can be both.”

Laughter broke out around the barricade.

The shield user shook his head.

“I can’t decide whether that was brilliant or completely insane.”

“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

I peeled the remains of the trash bag from my helmet and shoulders, unfastened the helmet, and tucked it beneath my arm.

“I’m Cloud.”