Roy took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. While pressing a piece of cloth to the cut on his shoulder, he fixed his gaze on the metal door at the end of the corridor. "The name's Roy," he said, his voice still trembling slightly. "If we're going to act together, I’d prefer you call me by my name. And you?"

  I rolled my eyes and wiped the blood from my knife onto my pants. "Don't act like you haven't been watching us all this time, Roy," I said in a cold voice. "You know who I am and what I can do. Stop the small talk and tell me what you know."

  Roy let out a heavy sigh, a weary expression of an old soul appearing on his face. "Kids these days... clearly, respect went down the drain along with the rest of the world." He paused for a moment, then continued seriously. "As I said, that creature can use weapons. But it doesn't exactly have a finger that pulls a trigger. The guns are fused to its body, like they're part of its flesh. It uses them like limbs."

  Elara’s light wavered for a moment as she asked with a mixture of fear and wonder, "So... it shoots?"

  "It's not a very fast creature," Roy continued, warning us. "In fact, it's quite slow; it looks like a disgusting pile of mud oozing across the floor. The hard part is that it can attack from every direction. There are holes and fixed weapons all over its body. It's like a turret made of meat."

  Elara let out a bitter laugh. "Great! We're fighting a shooting pile of mud. What's next? A walking airplane?"

  Ignoring her dark humor, I turned back to Roy. "Does it have a weakness or something? How do we stop it?"

  Roy rubbed his chin. "It needs to reload when it runs out. Back upstairs, it had only swallowed a few pistols. Since I know the magazine capacity of police pistols, I managed to use my invisibility to lure it here during those short gaps when it reloads. Finally, I locked it in the armory. But no matter how much I shot at it, it didn't die; it swallowed the bullets I fired and spat them back at me like a mirror."

  "So bullets don't work," I muttered. "Maybe it's more logical to attack with something cutting or crushing. We need to tear that muddy tissue apart."

  Roy nodded with a pained smile. "Yeah, I think so too, but I'm not crazy enough to get close to that thing."

  I sheathed my knife and adjusted my backpack. The outlines of a plan were beginning to form in my mind. "The plan is clear. Elara, you take a defensive position by the stairs. Use your light only when necessary; save your mana. We'll come to you if we get wounded. Roy and I will fight the monster. I'll draw its attention, and Roy will turn invisible, sneak behind it, and deliver the final blow."

  Roy thrust his hands forward in panic. "Wait, wait, wait! I told you I can't get close to that monster! I'm telling you it's a death machine, and you're talking about sneaking behind it!"

  I took a step toward him, making sure he looked into my eyes. "You're the only one who can turn invisible, Roy. If you want, you draw its attention, but I doubt you can withstand the bullets. The choice is yours."

  Roy was silent for a while, then let out another one of those deep sighs. "Fine... damn it, fine. But what about you? How are you going to stand up to those bullets? How will you get close to that thing without being turned into a sieve?"

  A dark, confident expression settled on my face. "I have a plan," I said.

  The door at the end of the corridor gleamed ominously under the fluorescent lights. The muffled, metallic clicks coming from inside reminded us that the monster in the armory was still there, busy with its weapons. While the 14-hour countdown ticked silently in the corner of my mind, I was determined to leave this station—which I had entered without a spear—as a true hunter.

  Elara took her place at the head of the stairs, beginning to gather a white glow in her hands. Roy took a deep breath and appeared beside me, his body slowly becoming translucent, shimmering like a heat wave in the air.

  "Let's go," I said in a low voice. "It's time to open that door."

  As I placed my hand on the door handle, the coldness of the metal spread through my body. Only a few inches of steel stood between us and the "shooting pile of mud" inside.

  My hand on the handle was shaking, but this time it wasn't from fear; it was from the anticipation of what that damned wheel in my mind would create. I closed my eyes as Roy and Elara looked at me. "Please," I murmured internally. "Give me something to increase my speed or durability. If my speed increases, I can dodge those bullets; if my durability increases, at least I can reach that thing without turning into a sieve. I have a plan for both... Come on, Genetic Roulette! Use those Luck points I added and give me something truly useful!"

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  In my mind, that chaotic, neon-lit wheel began to spin madly. I was praying for my Luck stats to help me in this gamble. The wheel slowed, slowed, and that familiar "ding" echoed in my brain.

  [GENETIC ROULETTE ACTIVATED.] [TRAIT ACQUIRED: MUTANT EYEBROW LOSS] [DURATION: 5 MINUTES]

  Suddenly, I felt a strange coolness and tingling in my eyebrow area. When I opened my eyes, those slight shadows at the top of my field of vision were gone. Within seconds, dozens of hairs fluttered past the tip of my nose like autumn leaves and fell to the floor.

  Roy, partially translucent, froze. His eyes were wide as he stared at the face of the man who had just been making a charismatic plan with furrowed brows, now suddenly "naked." "Is this..." Roy said, his voice trembling. "Is this eyebrow loss... part of the plan or the skill? I mean... does it reduce wind resistance?"

  I didn't answer. I couldn't. I gritted my teeth, looking at my eyebrow hairs on the floor. Then silently, as if the whole world had collapsed on me, I walked toward the darkest corner of the corridor. I turned my face to the cold concrete, crouched down, and leaned my head against the wall. I was questioning the meaning of life. Did I give my Luck points for this? Did I slaughter all those monsters for this?

  Roy looked completely bewildered, glancing back and forth between me and Elara. "What’s happening? Why is he crying at the wall? There’s a shooting mud pile inside and he... he’s sulking there?"

  Elara had her lips pressed together, struggling to suppress an explosive laugh. Her face had turned bright red. She went over to Roy and placed a hand on his shoulder consolingly, a single tear trickling down her cheek (likely from laughing).

  "You'll get used to it, buddy," Elara said, her voice muffled and shaky. "You'll get used to it..."

  My muffled voice echoed from the wall: "Just... just wait 5 minutes. In 5 minutes, I will destroy that monster, you, and this world."

  "But why the eyebrows?" Roy whispered to himself.

  "I SAID DON'T ASK!" I shouted toward the wall, the hopelessness in my voice echoing down the hall. In the middle of the apocalypse, in front of an armed monster, I was mourning, eyebrowless.

  Five minutes had passed. In the corner of the room, as my mournful bond with the wall ended, I slowly stood up. My eyebrows hadn't come back; my reflection in the mirror probably looked like an egg, but I had no time left to care about that. My eyebrows, just like my hair, would grow back in time, inch by inch. Right now, the only thing I needed to focus on was the bullet-spewing heap of flesh behind that door.

  I spun that wheel in my mind one last time, with all my fury. "Come on," I whispered. "Don't play jokes this time."

  [GENETIC ROULETTE ACTIVATED.] [TRAIT ACQUIRED: MUTANT MUSCLES (HIGH EFFICIENCY) - DURATION: 5 MINUTES] [DESCRIPTION: MUSCLE FIBERS ENTER HYPER-CONTRACTION MODE. STRENGTH AND AGILITY INCREASE BY 40%.]

  Finally. I felt every muscle in my body tighten like a spring, the fibers beneath my skin thickening into steel cables. That pathetic, eyebrowless kid from a moment ago was gone; in his place was a kinetic energy bomb ready to detonate at any second. I turned my gaze to Roy and Elara. Roy was still trying not to look at my face, but it didn't take him long to notice the sudden change in my body, the savage aura radiating from me.

  "Get ready," I said, my voice now deeper and more threatening. I gripped my combat knife firmly. "3..."

  Roy began to turn translucent, his fear still palpable.

  "2..."

  Elara took her stance at the head of the stairs, ready to heal at any moment.

  "1... Now!"

  I pushed the handle down and lunged with my shoulder. As the steel door swung open with a great crash, Roy and I dived inside, but within seconds we threw ourselves back and took cover behind overturned metal desks. The room was filled with a heavy smell of oil and gunpowder.

  There was a deadly silence for a while. Only the flickering of the fluorescents and Roy's rapid breathing could be heard. Roy peeked his head slightly over the edge of the desk into the darkness.

  "No monster?" Roy whispered. "Maybe it died of hunger?"

  The moment he finished his sentence, a metallic screech rose from the dark depths of the armory, and then hell exploded. TATATATATATA! Bullets rained like a storm onto the desk Roy was behind; sparks flew across the metal surface, and steel bullet cores ricocheted right past Roy's ear, punching deep holes in the wall.

  "Shut your big mouth, Roy!" Elara shouted from behind; she was hidden behind a pillar.

  "Oh fuck, god damn it!" Roy wailed. He lunged out like a bullet, sprinting toward the other end of the corridor, and at that exact moment, his invisibility kicked in, causing him to dissolve into the air.

  It was my turn. With the explosive power of my mutant muscles, I lunged out from behind the desk. That disgusting creature, looking like a pile of mud, was slowly taking shape in the middle of the armory. Small and large barrels had sprouted from all over its body; it was like a fusion between a police depot and a swamp. As it moved, it left a black, sticky liquid on the floor.

  By the time the monster tried to turn its barrels toward me, I had already reached it. Performing a somersault in the air, I drove my knife into the creature's gelatinous, thick torso.

  SHRED!

  The knife cut the flesh, but it didn't feel like hitting bone; it was like entering thick mud. The cut was very superficial, I hadn't gone deep, but the creature shuddered in pain and began to fire randomly from all its barrels. I threw myself to the floor and rolled behind the nearest crate of ammunition.

  "Just as I thought," I said, breathless. "Cutting tools work, but we need deeper strikes to hurt this thing. The damage is too small!"

  I heard Roy's voice, sounding like it was coming from somewhere near the ceiling: "Weren't you supposed to draw its attention? That thing almost blew my brains out!"

  "How much longer can you stay invisible?" I shouted, praying the bullets wouldn't pierce the crate.

  "Three minutes! Three minutes at most!"

  I took my knife between my teeth and tried to feel that massive strength in my muscles again. Three minutes... I thought. Three minutes is more than enough for me to turn this mud pile into mincemeat...

  As at least five different pistols on the monster turned and began to spray the crate I was behind, I prepared my mind for my plan.