The narrow service staircase had fast become a stone-and-iron slaughterhouse. Five hound-fox carcasses lay wedged together on the landing, their dark, thick blood oozing down the granite steps and pooling in the grooves of the walls.
Behind Michael, the twelve students of his team were stunned and stared with wide, terrified eyes at the pile of flesh and bone. A single man had orchestrated a massacre using nothing but a simple recruit's spear.
"M-Michael..." whispered the veteran student on the left. "There's more. A whole pack is moving down there."
*Thud. Thud. Scratch.*
The frantic breathing and clicking claws grew deafeningly loud from the darkness below. Driven by their raw, instinctual hunger, a massive second wave of hound-foxes was rushing up from the deep basement archives.
Michael didn't blink. The notification for his new global milestone talent, **[Iron Will]**, hovered at the edge of his vision, but he left it unread.
He glanced down at his floating status sheet. 10 unassigned attribute points.
*No,* Michael thought coldly, dismissing the screen. *I am not spending a single point until I see the Class. Mindless spending of points is how a build gets ruined in a game. In reality it shouldn’t be any different. I don’t even know if I can reset them. I have twelve fighters behind me—it's time for them to contribute.*
„Are we going upstairs?“ asked one of the ten fighters.
„No, not yet.“ Answered Michael. They had the ultimate defensive high ground right here on the stairs, and he was going to exploit it to ensure they wiped out this entire second wave with zero casualties.
"You two, move down and flank me," Michael ordered the two veterans bluntly. "The rest of you, lock your spears over our shoulders. Form a layered wall of iron."
The two veterans swallowed hard, their faces pale, but thinking back about what he had already done they believed in him. They stepped down into position, and leveled their weapons. The ten terrified students behind them scrambled into a tight, overlapping formation with their long shafts in their hands.
"The pile of carcasses is our shield," Michael said rapidly, his eyes tracking the stairs. "It forces them to scramble upward single, destroying their balance. When they mount the crest, don't just thrust—pin them down."
The first hound-fox of the second wave burst over the pile of corpses. Its glowing red eyes locked onto them, but as it tried to spring forward, the clumsy footing of the slippery dead flesh ruined its trajectory.
"Thrust!" Michael commanded.
Three spears flashed forward simultaneously into the tight bottleneck. Michael’s iron tip punched cleanly through the beast’s open jaws, while the two veterans' spears drove into its chest and shoulder. The overlapping force stopped the monster dead in its tracks, its screech of pain echoing violently off the granite walls.
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
*Thrust.*
The iron point pierced the chest of the second hound, its ribs snapping under the linear force of Michael’s strike. Dark blood sprayed across his boots, but his stance remained unyielding.
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[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
The third beast, utilizing its packmate’s dying body as a stepping stone, lunged directly over the barricade of corpses toward Michael's throat. Its jaws were open wide.
Michael didn't flinch. Instead, he snapped the shaft upward, slamming the heavy blunt end of the recruit's spear cleanly underneath the hound’s lower jaw. The impact cracked the bone instantly, deflecting the beast’s head toward the granite wall. As its momentum died against the stone, the two veteran fighters on his flanks drove their iron tips straight into its exposed neck.
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
Suddenly, a violent chest-heaving gasp echoed from the veteran student on Michael's left. Right after, the second fighter on his right shuddered, nearly dropping his spear as a warm wave of translucent energy surged through both of their bodies.
The two fighters had been accumulating XP from the first waves in the Audimax and the initial corridor skirmish. With these assisted kills in the bottleneck, they had finally crossed their first real threshold.
The fighter on the left stared blankly into the dim air, his wide eyes tracking floating text only he could see. "I... I leveled up," he breathed, his voice a mix of sheer shock and sudden, euphoric relief. "My arms... the fatigue is just gone. The system says I hit Level 2."
"Me too," the second veteran whispered, his knuckles tightening around his shaft with newfound strength. He looked down at his own trembling hands, realizing the dull aches from his previous fights had completely vanished. "Five unassigned attribute points... Michael, the fatigue is completely gone!"
"Eyes on the stairs," Michael snapped. "You can rest and celebrate when the fight is over. Do not open your status screens or assign points yet. Keep your eyes down."
The reminder broke their trance, and just in time. Driven by frenzy, the beasts tried to tear their way through the narrow 1.5-meter passage, oblivious to the trap they were throwing themselves into.
By maintaining the strict defensive formation, the team kept the monsters entirely at arm's length, preventing the beasts from extending their claws or jaws far enough to cause any harm. The bottleneck was becoming heavily congested. Fifteen carcasses now choked the passage, forming a tangled, slippery mound of coarse fur and spilling entrails. The physical obstruction severely slowed down the incoming hounds, entirely robbing them of any clean path to strike.
"Second row, lock your spears over our shoulders! Drive them down!" Michael barked.
The students behind him, fueled by a sudden surge of desperate adrenaline, thrust their weapons over the front line. The sheer density of the layered spears turned the narrow staircase into an impenetrable wall. Hounds were skewered through their soft underbellies as they tried to climb over the mass, while others were pinned forcefully against the stone wall by multiple shafts.
Michael, executed quick and short thrusts to finish off the immobilized beasts whenever an opening appeared. He didn't need superior individual attributes; the sheer weight of a thirteen-to-one local advantage inside a strict bottleneck was doing all the work. System alerts flashed in rapid succession at the corner of his vision.
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
[You have assisted in a kill]
[You have received 5 Experience Points]
At some point, the scratching of claws stopped. The heavy, scrambling noise from the lower vaults faded back into silence. The chaotic momentum of the second wave had been completely broken against the coordinated discipline of the team.
The only sound left inside the narrow stone shaft was the ragged panting of the twelve students.
Michael lowered his bloody spear, exhausted and out of breath. He looked back at his team. They were covered in sweat and splattered with monster blood, but thanks to the rigorous defensive formation, they were all completely unharmed. They had taken no damage at all. The wide eyes that stared back at him were no longer just terrified—they looked at him as if he were their undisputed commander. He had won their acknowledgement.
"Secure the door to the upper hallway," Michael said quietly, turning his gaze back down into the pitch-black descent. "Now we can rest for a bit."
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