I didn’t have time to linger.

The flood had carried Aureophis away, but that didn’t mean it had killed it. For all I knew, the cockatrice was already digging its claws into the tunnel somewhere downstream and preparing to return even angrier than before.

I pushed myself away from the wall and looked over the flooded junction below.

Behind me, the emergency water gate remained open, spilling the last of the reservoir into the cistern. Straight ahead, the current disappeared into an unexplored tunnel. Aureophis had been swept in the same direction. The cavern where I had found it lay to the left, while according to my minimap, the route back toward spawn was to the right.

The water had dropped just below the platform, and the current was slowing.

That left me with three options.

The cavern was temporarily safe because the roaches avoided Aureophis’s territory, but it had no known exit, and the cockatrice could return at any moment. The conduit behind the open water gate might connect to an inspection corridor or maintenance route, but it could just as easily end at the emptied reservoir.

The right-hand tunnel was the only route I knew reached spawn, and the flood might have cleared it for me. Most of the roaches between here and the spawn should have been swept away, injured, or forced into hiding. They could swim, but they moved far better on concrete.

That opportunity would disappear as the water drained and the surviving roaches crawled back into the tunnels. Time was money, and at the moment, it was also survival.

I opened my inventory and found the item I had bought specifically for this dungeon.

Before entering, I had considered bringing the camouflage cape I had made near the Forum. Then I remembered that it was a fishing net covered in leaves. A moving bush inside a sewer wasn’t camouflage. It was an announcement.

The general store had offered a much cheaper alternative: a pack of heavy black trash bags. They were waterproof, easy to carry, and close enough to the color of the tunnel walls and sewage that they might break up my outline in the dark. I had originally planned to use one as a crude covering while scouting and save the others for wet loot.

I hadn’t planned to swim through a flooded dungeon wearing one, but plans changed.

I pulled out the largest bag and used the tip of my fang dagger to cut two armholes near the sides. I opened a narrow slit for my eyes and another beneath it so I could breathe, then pulled the entire thing over my helmet and shoulders.

The plastic settled across my armor with an ugly wet shine.

[Black Trash Bag] equipped
[Gadgeteering XP +20]

“If a fishing net counts, I guess this does too.”

The disguise was ridiculous, but Project Babel respected player creativity. My armor was already almost entirely black. With the bag covering my helmet, shoulders, and the brighter damaged sections, the murky water should conceal most of what remained below the surface.

At least, that was the theory. I climbed over the railing and jumped, and the cistern swallowed me whole.

Cold water closed over my helmet and forced its way through every gap between the leather and carapace. The last of the reservoir current moved around me in uneven waves as it mixed with the stagnant water already inside the tunnels.

I kicked upward and broke the surface beneath the platform, immediately regretting the breath I took. The air reeked of mold, roach waste, and the oily residue left behind by Aureophis’s fire.

The current pulled straight toward the tunnel ahead. I kicked away from the platform and angled hard to the right, using the wall to guide myself into the route toward spawn.

My headlamp swept across the tunnel, making every wet surface flash beneath the beam. I had turned myself into floating garbage with a lighthouse attached to its forehead.

I switched off the lamp, and darkness swallowed the tunnel.

For several seconds, I could see almost nothing. Then my Night Vision skill began separating the darkness into shades of gray. The curved walls appeared first, followed by the waterline, pipes, ladders, and vague outlines of debris moving around me.

It wasn’t good vision, but it was enough to keep me from swimming into a wall.

I pushed away and began following the spawn marker on my minimap, letting the current do most of the work while using slow kicks to keep my face above the surface without splashing.

The first few sections of the tunnel were empty. Broken roach shells floated past me alongside splintered wood, loose straps, and pieces of equipment the flood had torn from somewhere deeper inside.

A maintenance ladder appeared ahead, descending from a narrow ledge into the water. Something dark hung across its lower rungs.

At first, I mistook it for another piece of debris.

Then one of its antennae moved.

A Cistern Roach had become caught between the ladder and the wall. Two of its rear legs were twisted through the rungs while the rest of its body hung half-submerged. Its shell was cracked along one side, but its mandibles still opened and closed whenever the water pushed something within reach.

I was already only a few meters away.

I stopped moving my arms and let them sink beneath the bag. My feet continued paddling slowly below the surface, keeping me just far enough from the wall.

One antenna swept across the water and passed within centimeters of my face.

The roach snapped toward the disturbance, but the current had already carried me beyond the ladder. Its trapped legs scraped violently against the metal behind me.

I kept moving.

The water continued receding as I traveled. Before long, my boots began brushing the tunnel floor between kicks.

That seemed like an improvement until the floor moved.

Mandibles clamped around my lower leg.

Pain bit through the leather above my boot, and my health dipped before I understood what had happened. I kicked hard and looked down.

A roach was pinned beneath a fallen section of pipe. Most of its body had been forced against the floor by the flood, but its head remained free. Its mandibles were locked around my calf while its legs scraped uselessly beneath the metal.

I drove my other boot into its face. The first kick did nothing, but the second knocked one mandible loose.

I twisted, pulled my leg free, and swam before it could bite again. The roach thrashed beneath the pipe, sending vibrations through the water and concrete.

Something answered farther ahead.

A dry scraping noise traveled along the ceiling, followed by another.

I slowed.

The water reached only my chest when I allowed my feet to touch the ground. Swimming was becoming more difficult, but standing would expose most of my body and make every step strike the floor.

I stayed low and continued paddling.

The noises multiplied as I approached the collapsed junction where the swarm had surrounded me earlier. Legs clicked against pipes. Claws scraped over concrete. The sounds came from above, beside me, and somewhere beyond the reach of my Night Vision skill.

Without my shield, I could handle one or two roaches, maybe three if they approached politely.

Anything more would end badly, especially while I was half-submerged.

Something thin brushed across my left forearm. An antenna.

I stopped moving.

It withdrew, then returned and dragged lightly over the trash bag.

A harsh rasping screech erupted directly above me.

The ceiling came alive.

Through my Night Vision skill, faint red eyes appeared in the darkness, one pair after another, as roaches raced along the curved concrete toward the disturbance. Their legs struck the ceiling in rapid bursts while their antennae swept across the tunnel ahead of them.

I couldn’t outrun them in the water.

I opened my inventory window, and the first Cistern Roach I had killed appeared in my arms.

I had stored the body intact because I planned to bring it to an IMR laboratory for analysis. Using it as camouflage was either perfect or completely insane. I turned it belly-up and wedged myself beneath it like the world’s most disgusting raft. Its legs draped across the black plastic while its pale underside faced the ceiling. I slid both hands beneath the trash bag and gripped the edges of its shell from underneath, hiding my arms from the antennae.

Then I stopped kicking and allowed the remaining current to carry me forward.

The first roach crawled directly above me.

Its eyes glowed faintly red through my Night Vision skill. Another appeared beside it, followed by several more. I could make out at least eight shapes clinging to the ceiling, their bodies flattened against the curve while their antennae reached down toward the water.

One touched the dead roach. Another dragged across the trash bag near my shoulder.

I held my breath as more antennae descended. They tapped the corpse’s legs, traced the edge of its shell, and brushed against the wrinkled plastic surrounding it.

One roach lowered its head and bit into the corpse.

The dead shell cracked inches above my head, and every muscle in my body urged me to move.

I stayed still.

The living roach tore away a piece of the damaged underside and began chewing while the others continued probing. None of them struck the bag or traced the shape beneath the shell far enough to find me.

The current pulled me beneath them one meter at a time.

An antenna slid across the eye slit.

I closed my eyes.

It lingered, then withdrew.

A few seconds later, the scraping began to fade behind me. I waited until the last pair of red eyes disappeared from my Night Vision before allowing myself to breathe again.

[Stealth XP +50]

“I cannot believe that worked.”

I kept the corpse over my head. Taking it off now would unwise.

Farther down the tunnel, a weak orange glow appeared through the darkness.

One of the player-placed torches was still burning. The torch route had started near the spawn camp, so seeing one meant I was getting close to spawn.

The water level had fallen to my stomach by the time I reached the four-way junction. The collapsed passage was still blocked by broken concrete, but the roaches that had surrounded me earlier were gone.

For once, something had gone according to plan.

I could have stood and walked from there. Instead, I kept my body low, pushed the dead roach ahead of me, and continued through the water with careful kicks.

The tunnel toward spawn remained dark beyond the next torch.

Water dripped from the pipes overhead. Fresh scratches cut through the grime above the flood line, and one of the shadows along the ceiling shifted deeper into the tunnel.

That was when I realized I had made a fatal miscalculation.

The flood had been deep enough near the emergency gate to fill most of the passage and rip Aureophis from the ground. Farther from the release point, the surge would have spread across adjoining tunnels, lost height, and weakened.

Any roach caught on the floor would have been pushed forward.

The others only had to climb.

They had walls, pipes, ladders, and an entire ceiling above the waterline. The flood hadn’t cleared the swarm near spawn. It had simply pushed every roach that failed to escape upward toward the spawn.

Eventually, something would stop them.

Something like the barricades players had built across the spawn tunnel.

A metallic crash echoed from ahead, followed by shouting.

“Hold the line!”

“Left side! More on the left!”

“Get the healer back!”

A roach screeched, followed by the heavy impact of something striking wood.

I kicked gently through the water and followed the tunnel around the final bend.

Torchlight filled the passage ahead.

At least fifty Cistern Roaches covered the walls, ceiling, and water channel around the spawn barricade. Some attacked the players holding the front while others crawled over the bodies beneath them, climbing toward any opening they could find.

Spears stabbed through gaps in the wood as arrows struck shells from behind the line. One section of the barricade had already begun leaning toward the gate.

The flood hadn’t cleared my escape route.

It had delivered the swarm directly to the spawn.

And I was floating toward the back of it wearing a trash bag with a dead roach on my head.