The silhouette in the vortex fully solidified, and another Hound-Fox plummeted onto the wooden desks of the lecture hall. Michael didn’t wait for it to recover from the fall and tried to execute his initial tactic once more; he braced himself and lunged forward immediately, forcing his mind to stay focused despite his growing fatigue.
This time, the fight felt different. Though his muscles still ached from the previous duels, he was no longer the completely inexperienced student who had first grabbed a spear minutes ago. He had learned from his mistakes, recognized how the creature moved, and was getting used to how much faster his body reacted with his upgraded Level 2 attributes.
The Hound-Fox sprang, aiming straight for his chest. Anticipating the straight jump, Michael stepped to the side to let the beast sail past. As it went by, he shoved his spear into its side to wound it and throw off its balance. The monster snarled, landing heavily on a lower row of desks, and whirled around with a fast swipe of its claws. Michael snapped his spear up just in time, the metal-on-claw impact ringing out as a harsh screech.
A rapid exchange of blows followed. The Hound-Fox darted left and right, trying to find an opening, forcing Michael to evade. At some point there was no more room to evade, forcing Michael to rely on short, defensive blocks to keep his guard tight. The beast lunged again, snapping its teeth; Michael tilted the spear shaft, deflecting the jaws downward into the wood before making a quick counter-thrust that shaved a patch of needle-like fur from the creature’s shoulder.
As he drew back to reset his footing, the wider sounds of the lecture hall forced their way into his awareness. The messy battle of the other students was still going on across the room, but the tone of the chaos had shifted, filled with a sudden influx of human screams.
During a momentary pause in his own fight, Michael took a quick glance toward the upper tiers. To his surprise the fifteen armed students had made brutal progress—only a single, heavily battered Hound-Fox was still fighting from their wave. The other monsters were nowhere to be seen, most likely lying dead on the ground.
However, the cost was written in blood. Several young men and women were slumped over the benches or staggering backward, clutching arms and legs covered in deep, dripping bite marks and scratch wounds.
But that second of distraction was a critical mistake for Michael.
Before Michael could observe them any longer, a sharp, white-hot burst of pain flared through his left upper arm. The Hound-Fox had exploited his brief lapse in focus, leaping across the gap and sinking its teeth deep into his flesh. The pain was very intense but Michael needed to react.
Anyone else would have reacted with panic, desperately trying to push the monster away to break the bite. Michael, however, just focused on the reality of the situation, overriding the instinct to pull back.
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Instead of shoving the creature off, he clamped his injured left arm down tightly against his ribs, trapping the Hound-Fox’s head against his side and locking it in place. The monster thrashed violently, trying to tear its jaws free to rip the flesh, but Michael held it fast with a strong grip.
With his right hand, he let go of the usual grip on his weapon, sliding his palm down the two-meter ash-wood shaft until his fingers tightly choked the spear right below the iron tip. Moving with brutal, desperate intent, he jammed the iron point directly into the side of the monster’s skull while its teeth were still embedded in his arm.
He drove the metal tip home until it cracked through the bone and pinned the creature’s head to the desk beneath it. The Hound-Fox’s screams ended abruptly and its body gave one violent shake before going completely limp.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
Michael was exhausted, his muscles burning and his left arm throbbing with pain, but the adrenaline pumping through his veins kept him moving. Instead of stopping to inspect his wound, he gripped his blood-slicked spear and turned toward the upper tiers, intent on finishing off the final threat.
Before he could even reach the other students, however, a young man in the frontline yelled out and slammed his spear directly into the chest of the last remaining Hound-Fox. The beast shrieked, shuddered violently, and collapsed to the floor, dead.
Silence suddenly fell over the large room, broken only by heavy breathing and low groans. No more silhouettes emerged from the purple vortex. The erratic, flashing energy of the rift slowly began to settle, stabilizing into a quiet, hummed glow. For the first time since the crisis began, the immediate danger inside the lecture hall had passed.
The hundreds of students who had hidden in the upper corners, too terrified to fight, slowly peered out from behind the rows of seats. None of them dared to approach the bloody perimeter where the combat had taken place, but they began calling out anxiously, asking if everyone who fought was okay. Murmurs of heartfelt thanks and relief rippled through the crowd.
Exhausted and shaking from the sudden drop in adrenaline, the fifteen spear-wielders let themselves slump onto the benches, dropping their weapons beside them. They were covered in sweat, dust, and dark monster fluid.
One of the fighters, a student named Julian, pushed himself up slightly and raised his voice to address the rest of the room. He was the one who took over the command in the beginning of their fight. He clearly explained to the onlookers how to use a mental command to pull their starting spears from their inventories, just as Michael had explained earlier. Julian then demanded that those who hadn’t fought step up, take out their weapons, and keep watch at the perimeter so the injured and exhausted fighters could finally rest.
While the interior of the room settled into an uneasy truce, grim news quickly reached the front line fighters. During the initial chaos of the initialization, a handful of panicked students had managed to sprint out of the main doors into the university hallways.
A few students who had crept near the exit doors to look for them rushed back into the seating area, pale and trembling. They revealed that the corridors outside were a bloodbath. Multiple monsters were roaming the university halls completely unrestrained, actively hunting down fleeing humans. Hearing the distant, muffled screams from the hallways, the students near the entrance quickly slammed the heavy doors shut and locked them from the inside, trapping themselves in the lecture hall for safety.
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