Will of Vienna

The big hallway was no longer a place for students; it looked like a slaughterhouse.

Michael walked out first. His right hand held the wooden spear tightly, and his eyes looked left and right into every corner. Behind him, the twelve students walked in a messy, tight group. They stayed so close that their spears hit each other with a shaking sound. They were completely terrified.

The corridor itself already told them enough before they saw anything. Chairs from the lecture hall lay knocked over near the doors, and someone's backpack had burst open, books and papers scattered across the tiles. Thin trails of blood, already dark and tacky, ran off toward the side hallways.

They had only walked some meters from the heavy doors of the Audimax when they saw something terrible for the first time.

Three dead bodies lay on the floor. One of them was a male student, while the other two were female. These were students who had panicked and run out of the lecture hall when the portals first opened. The walls were covered in dark red blood, and the air smelled terrible, thick and metallic, with something sour underneath it.

Michael's team stopped and gasped.

"Oh god... no, no, no," a girl in the middle whispered, putting her hand over her mouth.

The dead male student had been torn open at the stomach. His shirt was shredded to rags, and what had been inside him now lay spilled across the tiles in a dark, glistening heap. Four deep puncture wounds circled his throat where something's jaws had closed around it and locked. The girl nearest to him was missing most of her left arm below the elbow; the edges of the wound were ragged, not cut, with a shard of white bone showing at the stump. The second girl lay face-down, her back opened by three long gashes that had gone straight through her jacket and the flesh underneath. Something had fed on all three of them, and the blood pooling beneath the bodies had not fully dried yet.

A student of their group dropped his spear on the floor. He fell to his knees and started to throw up. This was not a game and the dead were not just some npc, but it was real life and the dead were really dead. The two students who had fought before had tears in their eyes, looking away from the floor.

"This can't be. This isn't really happening," some of them were murmuring.

Even Michael felt a cold knot in his stomach.

His high Willpower of 10 did not mean he felt nothing; it just helped him to hide his fear and keep thinking clearly. His heart beat fast, but his mind forced him to stay focused. He could not think about sadness right now. He had to focus on staying alive.

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"Guys, pick up your weapons. This won’t be the last time we are seeing dead people. If you don’t want to end up like them, you need to stay alert all time," Michael said. His voice was quiet and completely calm. He did not even look back at the crying student. "If you stay down there, you will die. Move."

His words reached their minds and landed with a heavy weight, forcing them to reflect for a brief time. After some seconds the first one started to move, the rest followed right after.

But their crying and talking had made too much noise in the big hallway.

From a small side path near the offices, a sharp snarl echoed. Then another.

"Something is coming! Guys, get ready!" one of the fighters yelled.

Three Hound-Foxes ran out into the open hallway. Their mouths were covered in blood, and low growls rolled from their throats as their claws clicked and scraped against the stone floor. They saw the large group of humans, lowered their heads, and ran faster to attack.

In an open area, three of these fast monsters could easily split up and kill a group. But here, the students had too many spears.

"Don't run!" Michael shouted, stepping forward. "Stay together and keep your spears out! Just stab straight ahead!"

The scared students acted on pure survival instinct. As the first monster jumped, it hit four spears at the same time. The iron blades cut deep into its body. It screamed loudly as the students pushed hard, pinning the monster to the floor. Dark blood sprayed across their hands and sleeves as the spearheads tore through muscle. The Hound-Fox thrashed against the tiles, claws scraping uselessly at the stone, until one last shudder ran through its body and it went still. Had any of them faced the monster alone, he would most likely have been overwhelmed by the monsters sheer mass and fallen, even if he managed to strike it with a spear.

The other two monsters tried to attack from the sides, but the group was too large and tight. Michael stepped into the gap without hesitation. He saw exactly where the second monster was moving before it fully committed to the leap, and his spear went in low, piercing clean through the side of its neck. Blood sprayed out, and the monster's legs buckled under it mid-stride. At the same time, the two other fighters drove their spears into the third monster again and again, more out of panic than skill, until it stopped twitching and lay still in a widening pool of its own blood.

In less than a minute, the fight was over.

[You have assisted in a kill : Hound-Fox (Level 1)]

[You have received 5 Experience Points]. ]

[You have killed a Hound-Fox (Level 1)]

[You have received 10 Experience Points]

Michael looked at his blue screen. His XP went up to 27 out of 50. The other students were breathing heavily, looking at the dead monsters with wide eyes. They had won thanks to their numbers. They made quick work of the monsters without taking any casualties.

The students started to feel confident and safe. They had a false sense of security and of being powerful. They thought they could just walk through the university as a giant group and kill every beast easily.

Michael looked at them and shook his head mentally. They were breathing too hard and had no real order. *They just got lucky that they outnumbered them*, he thought coldly. *Too noisy. If ten monsters attack us at the same time out here, these people will trip and die.*

He turned away from the dead beasts and looked at a heavy wooden door in the stone wall just a few meters away. It was the entrance to the old, narrow service stairs that went down into the dark basement. Cold air drifted out from underneath it, carrying the smell of dust and damp stone.

"I have a plan. We are going in here," Michael said, grabbing the door handle. "Follow me, hurry."

The twelve students walked behind him into the small, dark stone stairwell. Their footsteps echoed too loudly against the narrow walls. They had no idea that Michael was leading them there on purpose to create a deadly trap.

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