The fifteen hound-foxes crashed into the group. Michael was the first one to react. His perception was enhanced by his 14 points in Willpower. Not only did his senses register a lot more details than the others but he could also make faster decisions. Without losing time he thrust his weapon forward, skewering the lead monster straight through the throat. He ripped the blade out before the beast could drag it down, dropping it instantly.
Behind him, the newly leveled students moved into action after him, but the sudden chaos showed their complete lack of experience. They had the raw stats and their new talents, but their control was loose, chaotic, and unrefined. They were not to blame though. It was their first time wielding the talents.
Jakob Wallner was the first to unleash his talent. He thrust his spear at a lunging beast and triggered **[Explosion]**. A loud *bang* echoed through the stairwell as a pressure wave slammed directly into one of the monsters, hurling it backward into the stone wall with a sickening crack. But Jakob hadn’t expected such a shockwave and was not prepared for a recoil. He hadn‘t braced his feet properly. The unexpected recoil of his own explosion pushed him back two steps, nearly knocking over Elena behind him. The monster died, but Jakob was left breathing heavily, shocked by his own power.
Jakob’s actions added fuel to the fire and made matters worse for the rest of the team. No one was prepared for the shockwave and its loud bang. It took them one or two seconds to react to the monsters attacks. Fortunately, the monsters were also stunned for a brief moment, obviously not expecting such an attack from the humans which they regarded as weak prey either.
Amir Al-Sayed activated **[Momentum Burst]**. He meant to close a tiny gap on the left flank, but the sudden influx of speed was too much for him to handle. He shot forward like a rocket, driving his spear completely through a hound-fox’s side, but his momentum carried him face-first into the granite wall. He killed the monster but at the cost of injuring himself. He screamed in pain but instinctively scrambled back into formation, bleeding from his nose.
Matteo Rossi was trying to use his talent and land successful hits to increase his speed. He managed to stab a hound-fox in the shoulder, triggering the first stack of **[Rhythmic Attack]**. He felt his arms move slightly faster, but the unfamiliar speed threw off his aim. His second strike missed the moving target entirely, striking the stone floor and resetting his bonus back to zero. Frustrated, he abandoned the rhythm and simply shoved his spear into the throat of the injured beast by brute force, barely securing the kill. Unlike Amir, he at least didn’t injure himself.
On the right side, Jonas Holzer brought his spear down on a monster’s neck, activating **[Sunder]**. His attack landed heavily on the beasts body and caused a visible fracture. Unfortunately, he couldn’t kill it with this strike. „Hit it there!“ he yelled, but his voice cracked with panic. Sarah Nowak, relying on her **[Precision Focus]** to see the glowing weak points, tried to follow up. However, because she needed to concentrate in order to activate her talent she was forced to stay still to keep the focus active, a second hound-fox snapped at her leg. She panicked, swung blindly, and luckily managed to pierce the eye of Jonas’s targeted monster, killing it, though she had completely lost her focus on the rest of the battlefield.
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Mei-Ling Zhou stood nearby and saw the second monster attacking Sarah. Out of reflex she thrust her spear and hit it by chance. In panic she didn’t really know what she was doing, her hands started to glow. She had accidentally activated her talent **[Cellular Regeneration]** out of sheer nervousness, even though she hadn’t taken a single scratch yet.
In the second line, David Lindner panicked as two hound-foxes tried to leap over the front. He unleashed his **[Gravitational Force]**. Instead of a controlled push, he released too much mana at once. The massive gravity wave blasted the two leaping monsters backward, slamming them into the far wall and breaking their spines, dead on the spot. On the other side, the sudden force also rattled the frontline students, disrupting their actions for a moment. David stumbled, clutching his head from the sudden mana drain.
Rashid and Maximilian acted as the solid anchors of the group. Rashid’s glowing, enchanted blade cleanly sliced a hound-fox in half. Unlike the others, Rashid’s talent just made his spear sharper. He still relied on his spear he was already accustomed to. This made him far more efficient than the rest. Maximilian, using his **[Strength Boost]**, thrust his spear with great power at the lunging beast and impaled it easily.
Rashid and Maximilian were the only ones who fared well. Sophie Dupont was using her talent and screaming positions of the charging monsters with the help of her **[Environmental Radar]**, but it was completely meaningless. Not only, there were too many monsters but no one could hear or at least understand what she was saying because of the chaos. So her instructions weren’t useful at all. „Left! No, right! Guys listen to me!“ she cried, her hands shaking.
Elena Petrova tried to use her **[Stat Transfer]** to help the tiring Jakob, but she pushed too much of her Stamina into him all at once. Jakob suddenly felt an aggressive burst of energy, while Elena collapsed to her knees, completely wiped out and gasping for air.
Within two minutes of ugly, uncoordinated hacking and slashing, the final hound-fox collapsed, its skull crushed by a heavy swing from Lukas Brunner, who had simply used his raw strength without even attempting to use his touch-based weight talent.
The stairwell fell silent again, only interrupted by the heavy panting of the exhausted students. Fourteen more bodies lay on the floor, adding to the previous pile. Almost everyone had managed to kill a monster, but they were a mess. They were covered in sweat, bleeding from self-inflicted mistakes, and visibly shaken by how close they had come to failing.
Michael stood at the front, his breathing completely even. He looked back at his tired team.
„What have you done, guys,“ Michael asked, and continued without waiting for an answer „You are fighting your own talents more than the monsters. You could have easily killed them if you just used your weapons as always. You nearly died. Why? Because you abandoned your practiced fighting style and forced yourself to use your talents you have no experience with. You only have one life. This is no game.“ It was a harsh speech but he needed to remind them of the reality. „Go and grab the crystals from the skulls, and get ready.“
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