The final hound-fox fell with a heavy, wet thud, its skull shattered by a precisely placed thrust from Jakob’s spear. The room went quiet, the silence broken only by the ragged, terrified breathing of the rescued survivors and the steady dripping of dark monster blood onto the floor.
Around them, the twenty hound-fox corpses lay scattered across the floor, some cut nearly in half, others missing limbs where spears had ended their charge mid-leap. One carcass had come to rest against the base of a shattered directory sign, its jaws still locked around the mangled remains of a boot. Fur and viscera were smeared across the tiles in long streaks where bodies had been dragged or kicked aside to clear a path. The overhead lights flickered over the wreckage, throwing long shadows across the pile of dead things.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
The students from Julian’s defense group looked on in absolute, wide-eyed shock. They stared at Michael’s group of twelve, paralyzed by what they had just witnessed. To them, these twenty hound-foxes had been an unstoppable nightmare—a tidal wave of horror that had torn through their ranks, leaving deep wounds and broken bones in mere minutes. They had fought with everything they’ve got. Desperately swinging their spears blindly and losing ground with every passing second. Some of them even accepted death.
Yet, this small group had stepped in and defeated the massive horde like a disciplined army. There had been no screaming, no wild panic, and no injuries. Michael’s group had moved in a formation, using their spears with precision. To the traumatized onlookers, it looked less like a desperate struggle for survival and more like a routine fight. It looked so simple but they knew it wasn’t.
„Check the area,“ Michael ordered, though his voice lacked its usual icy detachment. He was breathing heavily, his chest heaving, the adrenaline from the sprint still hadn’t faded despite the level-up. „Secure the entrances. Hurry.“
„On it,“ Rashid replied, immediately leading Max and Jonas to cover the hallway.
With the immediate threat gone, the heavy tension in the room began to shift. The wounded survivors slowly collapsed onto the floor, clutching their injuries, but the overwhelming panic was finally subsiding. Some of them began to tend to their torn arms and gashed legs, using whatever clean cloth or emergency kit they could find to stanch the bleeding.
Michael walked over to a second-year student who seemed to be leading the shattered group. The young man was shivering uncontrollably, his hands slick and dark with blood up to the wrists — some of it his own. A ragged bite wound tore through the meat of his forearm, the edges already crusting, and a long gash above his eyebrow had bled down one side of his face in a dried red streak. He leaned against an overturned vending machine, using it to keep himself upright, his knees visibly buckling.
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Michael looked at the student‘s trembling hands, then down at the blood-splattered floor, and felt a sudden, heavy knot twist in his stomach. The clarity that usually governed his thoughts fractured for a second, overwhelmed by the suffocating scene and the groans of pain around him. These were his peers—people he sat next to in lecture halls just hours ago.
„What happened here?“ Michael asked. His voice wasn’t flat this time; it cracked slightly under the strain of his own rising emotion before he forced it down.
The student swallowed hard, looking up at Michael with a mixture of awe and residual fear. „We… we didn’t mean to come this far,“ he stammered, his voice hoarse. „But we found people. We found other survivors.“
Michael’s grip tightened on his spear. „Where?“ he asked.
„In the old seminar wing, locked in the basement labs,“ the student explained, wiping his face with a trembling hand. „There were twenty-four of them. Just regular students… but they were completely paralyzed. They didn’t know how to use the system. They were just terrified of the monsters and were holed up in the dark, waiting to die.“
A murmur went through the group as they listened. Michael felt a sharp prickle of frustration and genuine dread hit his chest. *Twenty-four people who couldn’t even defend themselves because they didn’t even think of using the system. If others act like them there is little hope for them to hold on.*
„We managed to get them out,“ the student continued, his expression darkening as tears welled in his eyes. „We saved all twenty-four of them. They’re heading back toward the Audimax now under a small escort… but it’s just twenty four. The hallways out there… those are graveyards with lots of dead.“
The survivor shook his head, a hollow, haunted look taking over his features. „We ran into so many bodies on the way. Dozens of them. Students who got caught and surprised by the first wave. They didn’t even had time to hide in a room. Staff members caught in the offices… just torn to pieces by the intruders. The portals dropped monsters right on top of them. There’s so much blood out there.“
Hearing the sheer scale of the slaughter, Michael closed his eyes for a brief moment. A heavy grim anger and grief gripped him. He once again realized that this was not a game but a horror. *Maybe.. I could have saved some of them if I didn’t go monster farming to level up faster.* He started to regret his early decision. The invasion had stopped being numbers or an abstract simulation. It was real, and meant death.
He opened his eyes, a fierce, raw determination burning away the momentary despair. He looked back at his group, his face tight with emotion. He felt guilty and really wanted to help with all his heart.
„Rest for two minutes,“ Michael instructed, his voice ringing through the blood-stained room with an urgent, intense edge. „Bandage who you can. Help them up. Then, we move deeper. If there are areas filled with monsters and people waiting for help, we are going to clear a path before anyone else dies.“
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