The patrol data Caleb had collected over two days was good enough to not get killed.
That wasn't the same as good enough.
His essence counter sat at six; the repairs had cost more than he wanted to admit.
He pulled up the Ruinwarden movement logs he had compiled on a custom overlay and pinned it to his HUD's bottom-right corner. East alley, north plaza approach, and the collapsed tram junction. Approximate windows. Rough estimates. Close enough to still get him killed if one of them ran early.
He needed exact numbers. He had 87 days left to pay off his tuition.
Caleb logged back in at 11 PM. He skipped dinner to catch an open pod. The community college pod block was mostly empty. Nobody ran sessions this late on a Thursday.
The Hollows loaded in the usual sequence. Cold first, followed by the horizontal rain. Then the low amber glow of his Iron Bastion Shard pulsing through the mist like a heartbeat two blocks south.
He looked at this character, still the same appearance, white hair, black bodysuit, and a face that wasn't his.
He oriented himself around the Iron Bastion Shard.
The wall was a landmark. His landmark.
He went north, toward the east alley mouth, and he waited.
The first Ruinwarden appeared six minutes later. Thirty meters of fused concrete and rebar moving at a pace that should not have been possible for something that large. Billboard head cycling, the crane claw dragging a shallow trench through the ferrocrete.
Caleb crouched behind a collapsed transit shelter and counted under his breath. The giant reached the alley mouth, turned west, and disappeared around the bend.
Fourteen seconds of clear lane.
He wrote it down.
He repositioned to the north plaza approach and ran the same sequence twice. A 31-second window. Then he went to the collapsed tram junction at the district boundary. The gap there was tighter. Eight seconds. The kind of window that required full commitment with zero hesitation. He logged that too and flagged it in red.
By the time the third patrol passed the tram junction, he had what he came for. Three routes. Three windows. He converted them into a timing chart overlay and pinned it permanently to his HUD.
[87 DAYS]
[PATROL WINDOWS: 14s / 31s / 8s]
The map felt like money. Not because it was worth anything yet. But because it meant the Ruinwardens were no longer unpredictable. Even the strongest monsters still had their own AI they were programmed to follow.
He looked east toward the alley where the first Ruinwarden had turned. He had a question the timing data couldn't answer. The aggro radius. He had rough estimates from the plaza fights, but that was the same as not having any information.
"Time to do something either really stupid or smart."
He started walking toward the alley.
The Ruinwarden was somewhere in its circuit, moving away from him. He had a 14-second window at the mouth, which meant the giant was approximately forty meters into its westward pass by now. He moved fast, keeping low, angling toward a splintered cell of collapsed wall on the alley's northern face.
Thirty meters out, the patrol window tracker on his HUD ticked silently.
Twenty meters. The ferrocrete was wet and loud under his boots. He cautiously slowed down.
Fifteen meters. He could hear it. The deep rhythmic impact of the Ruinwarden's return circuit. It was coming back, earlier than the window suggested.
"Was my routing wrong?"
He checked the timer he set. It was still on schedule; his perception was warped around the adrenaline he was feeling.
Twelve meters. He stopped.
The Ruinwarden passed the alley mouth going east. Massive. Close enough that Caleb could see individual corporate logos on the billboard head flickering between a telecom ad and a food delivery service. Its single eye swept the space in a sixty-degree arc.
He counted.
One. Two. Three.
At four seconds the eye passed over him without locking on. No red outline. No aggro chime. The giant moved along its route, heading east. Caleb did not move until the footstep impacts faded to a low rumble.
He was about to push back toward the plaza when he noticed something. The Ruinwarden had clipped the corner of a collapsed storefront on its return pass. Rubble scattered across the alley mouth. The giant had walked within two meters of its own debris and not broken stride.
He crouched next to the fresh rubble pile. Orange glow from his [Forge Sense] lit up the edges. Harvestable material. But that wasn't what he was looking at. He was looking at the sight line. From where the Ruinwarden's eye would be during its next pass, the rubble pile was directly between its field of view and the alley's blind corner.
He waited for the return circuit, standing behind the rubble rather than the collapsed wall.
The Ruinwarden passed by eleven meters out; its eye did its sweeping arc motion and continued to walk, not locking onto him.
He moved one meter closer. His HP bar flickered, but the aggro indicator stayed cold. He was close enough to see individual cracks in the concrete torso and smell the ozone from the billboard head. Still, it did not lock onto him.
He retreated and did not breathe for thirty seconds.
The Ruinwarden's aggro radius shrank inside the debris field of its own destruction. It treated rubble it had made as home terrain. Not a threat zone. Its own mess was its blind spot. Caleb scribbled that in his notes, making it his longest entry yet.
If he could build something that mimicked the material signature of Ruinwarden destroyed infrastructure, he might have an active cloaking mechanic. The forge could produce destroyed-looking structures. He had enough Warden debris samples to attempt an essence match. He wrote that this was a future exploit he should test out, but that was still a week away at minimum. He had more immediate problems.
He was three blocks from the plaza when the Ashcrawlers found him.
Two of them. Wanderers who had found each other. No flanking formation, just bad timing. He came around a blind corner, and they were already priming their acid attack.
He was 30 meters from any cover. The nearest wall was a collapsed building face that would take twelve seconds to reach at a sprint. The Ashcrawlers could launch their acid twice in twelve seconds.
He dropped to one knee and placed his palms flat on rubble. He began to pull the harvestable essence in raw, with no setup and no positioning. Just harvest and hammer.
The forge kicked in ragged and fast. A rebar wall slammed up between him and the crawlers. Ugly. Not even a full rectangle; it looked like a jagged wedge.
It held the first spit volley. The second hit the edge and skipped off, corroding a two-inch gouge in the top surface.
[Improvised Field Barrier (Common)]
[Durability: 18%. Not designed for repeated engagement.]
Caleb was already moving laterally while it held. He mapped the alley with a fast scan. If he kept it between himself and the crawlers while pushing them backward, the alley's natural funnel would do the work for him.
He sprinted left. The crawlers were still locked onto him. One spat and missed, going just wide of him. The barrier was still upright, forcing them to reposition around it.
That was his gap.
He hit the leading crawler from the side as it circled the barrier, club coming down in a short, controlled arc across its primary sensor cluster. Ruin Fracture stacked twice. The crawler's movement stuttered. He crushed the second stack into the ground with a downward finish and turned immediately.
The second crawler had backed itself into the angle between the barrier and the alley wall. The exact corner he had been moving it toward. It had nowhere to go that wasn't out of his reach.
He gave it no time to figure that out.
[Ashcrawler Drone defeated. x2]
[Essence Harvested: +3 Low-Grade]
[Total Essence: 9 / 50]
He stood in the aftermath and looked at the improvised barrier.
He had never used the forge as a movement tool before. As a way to reshape the space of a fight in real time rather than before it started.
His DM icon pulsed. A new message from ta1lorath.
[ta1lorath: Update. Player traffic is testing your outer boundary. They're low level scavengers. They die to Wardens before they get close enough to see what you're building. The Wardens are functioning as your perimeter security and they don't know it.]
Caleb read it twice. Then he wrote his own response.
[Make sure nobody tells them.]
The reply came in four seconds.
[ta1lorath: lmao. ok]
He pocketed the exchange and headed back toward the plaza. The rain was easing. The mist was thickening to replace it. The Hollows cycled through its weather the way a sick building cycled through its ventilation.
The plaza came into view two blocks out. His [Iron Bastion Shard] glowed steadily through the mist. The repaired barricade section was holding. The rebar club leaned against the inner face where he had left it. Everything where he put it. Small confirmation that the session had not cost him anything on the home front.
He was fifteen meters out when the patrol Ruinwarden completed its north circuit.
He stopped.
The Ruinwarden reached the plaza boundary and did not turn.
It stood at the edge of the open space, and its billboard head cycled through a rotation of dead advertisements. Telecom. Food delivery. A fitness brand. The eye swept the plaza in a slow arc. Its eye passed over the [Iron Bastion Shard.] The repaired barricade. The rebar club. It looked at the rebar club for two full seconds.
Caleb did not breathe.
The eye moved on and completed its arc. The giant's patrol pattern called for a westward turn at this point. Standard circuit. Fourteen-second window back at the east alley. He had the data. He knew what it was supposed to do.
It stood still for eleven seconds.
Then it turned west and resumed patrol. No aggro. No attack. No sound beyond the steady impact of its retreating footsteps.
Caleb watched it go.
He stood in the rain for a long moment after the impacts faded. Then he walked to his wall, picked up his club, and sat with his back against the Iron Bastion Shard while the stamina passive ticked his bar upward.
The HUD counter rolled over in the corner of his vision.
[86 DAYS]
He stayed there until the stamina hit full.
Then he wondered what it meant when a Ruinwarden stared at something it had no reason to see. That wasn't patrol behavior. That wasn't aggro logic. That was curiosity. And Ruinwardens weren't supposed to be curious.