Michael froze at the front of the big group of survivors, his eyes widening slightly as the chaos came into view. Broken glass crunched under the boots of the students behind him, scattered across tiles smeared with drying blood.
He was expecting hundreds of people safely hidden inside the Audimax. Instead, there were hundreds of wounded students scattered in absolute chaos throughout the wide open hallways surrounding the grand lecture hall. The scene before them was devastating. Dozens of students and staff members were lying flat on the cold floor, clutching deep wounds, bleeding out from nasty bite marks, and groaning in pure agony. One young man had lost two fingers to a bite, most likely from a desperate try to defend against a bite attack. His makeshift bandage was already soaked through and dripping onto the tile. A woman nearby pressed both hands over a gash on her thigh, her face pale, her breathing shallow and fast.
“What the hell happened here?! Guys, look for remaining monsters and kill them if you can. Just shout as loud as you can if you can’t handle it. If there are no threats left, help the injured!” Michael shouted without hesitation, his cold tone instantly snapping into a sharp command as the entire group rushed forward. “Spread out! Bandage who you can!”
Michael’s eyes scanned the panicked crowd, looking for Julian, but he knew the organized leader was most likely not here. When they had originally split up back in the Audimax, Julian hadn’t just sent out Michael’s group; he had dispatched multiple combat and scouting teams to cover different parts of the sprawling university. Julian himself had marched out at the head of one of those separate groups, while other teams had branched off into completely different wings of the building. The main pool of survivors had been left behind with barely any protection.
Michael strode up to a shivering second-year student who was desperately trying to stanch the bleeding on a classmate’s arm.
“What happened here?” Michael demanded, his grip tight on his iron-tipped spear. “Why is everyone out in the open?”
“The main portal inside the Audimax didn’t stay quiet after all the groups left,” the student stammered, his voice cracking with terror. “It flared up again. New monsters started crawling out of the tear. But they weren’t like the ones we fought first—the System screens called them Level 2 and Level 3!”
Behind him, someone swore under their breath. Two of the new fighters took an involuntary step back hearing the higher levels.
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“They caught us completely off guard,” the student continued, shaking violently. “With your group, Julian’s team, and all the other combat groups deep in the university wings, there was no one left to protect us here. We just panicked and ran. We dragged everyone out into the outer corridors, slammed those heavy oak doors shut, and piled every vending machine, desk, and bench we could find to barricade them from the outside.”
The student pointed a trembling hand toward a quiet row of motionless shapes covered in blood-stained jackets near the wall. A stiffened hand curled out from beneath one of the jackets, and a dark stain had spread wide across the tile beneath another. Nobody had covered the last one properly; a bare foot, the toes an unnatural gray, stuck out past the hem of the fabric.
“We managed to lock them inside… but the price was brutal. They tore through the crowd before we could seal the doors. We have over forty people severely injured, and fifteen are already dead.”
“Fuck.. It’s already happening..“ murmured Michael and asked with a somehow desperate voice. „What do they look like? Every detail you remember. We need to know what we are dealing with.”
The student swallowed hard, trying to steady his breathing as he recalled the horror inside the auditorium.
“The Level 2 ones are noticeably larger than the first ones we fought—more like heavily built wolves than foxes, with thicker fur and broader jaws. But the Level 3 ones… they are terrifying. They are massive, easily the size of a wild boar. Their bodies are dense, packed with raw muscle, and they have bone-like ridges running down their backs. When they charge, they don’t just bite—they crush right through the furniture.”
Michael listened intently with sharpened eyes as he took in the danger these upgraded variants posed.
*Level 2 and Level 3,* he thought, running through what that meant. *They must have higher stats. If they have stats at all. They might be sturdier, have more mass and greater power than the Level 1 hound-foxes we farmed in the corridors. A simple line of spears won’t hold if a boar-sized variant charges at full speed. That’s going to be though..*
Behind him, the recruits looked at each other, the confidence they had built up while clearing the corridors together earlier starting to fracture. They had learned to handle their individual talents against Level 1 monsters, but the description of boar-sized beasts locked behind the oak doors brought back a cold rush of dread.
Rashid stepped up beside Michael, his enchanted spear tip gleaming faintly, dried blood crusted along his forearm from the fighting earlier and a shallow claw mark crossing his cheek just below one eye. “Michael, if those things break through the barricade, this entire hall becomes a slaughterhouse again. The civilians can’t outrun them, and we don’t have a natural funnel out here to control their numbers.”
„I already know!“ Michael adjusted his stance, pressing his spear so hard against his palm that his skin turned pale. He was angry, very angry.
The safe zone was gone. The Audimax was now a death trap, Julian’s fighters were out of reach, three hundred civilians had nowhere to hide and other than him, there was no one capable of handling the situation.
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