"Hello."
A timid voice broke the tense atmosphere in the main hall. A young junior-year student stood nearby, clutching her uniform skirt with pale knuckles.
"U-um... a student fainted over in the corner," she stammered, pointing toward a crowded section of the lower floor. "She needs help."
"Tell them to give her space to breathe," Professor Sy said, adjusting his blood-stained collar. "We don’t have medical supplies down here right now. Fresh air is the best we can do."
"If it’s just teaching them how to sense their Qi, I’ll pass," Lothe said, rising from his seat on the stairs. He adjusted his grip on his spear, his dark eyes scanning the crowded hall. If there was one thing he detested, it was being swarmed by frantic crowds.
"When we fight, Qi circulates naturally," Lothe added, his voice flat. "It’s the same principle. They just need to feel that initial flow before trying to control it."
He turned toward the upper staircase. Before his boot hit the first step, Adrian called out from behind him.
"Shouldn’t you at least guide one person first?"
Lothe let out a dry, quiet chuckle without looking back. Too bad... I don’t play hero.
Daniel opened his mouth to argue, but Oren rested a firm hand on his shoulder, shaking his head. They all knew Lothe was right.
Understanding a power and teaching it to someone else were completely different things. In the end, survival depended on individual talent and effort.
Lothe paused on the mid-landing, looking down at the gathered survivors. "One more thing. Any scroll or orb dropped by a beast belongs strictly to the person who killed it."
Without waiting for a response, he pushed lightly off the wooden railing. His body rose effortlessly, landing with a silent thud on the second-floor balcony.
Several students below stared up at him, their mouths slightly open, but no one dared to voice an objection.
"The simplest rule is food and supplies first," Adrian declared to the remaining group after a short silence. "Whoever risks their neck outside keeps what they earn. If everyone learns to pull their own weight, the pressure on all of us drops."
The group nodded. Nobody wanted to stay trapped inside the academy forever.
"We just have to hold out until the military arrives," Nyren said, her posture straight. Coming from the Ashford family, she believed her father’s private forces would sweep the city to rescue her.
"Then what are we waiting for?" Diego said, his broadsword resting against his shoulder.
Professor Sy led Lucan to a quieter side of the hall to begin guiding his internal Qi, while Adrian and the others split into small scavenging units.
At first, quiet complaints rippled through the crowd, but as floating earth hands, hovering steel blades, and freezing air began manifesting around the awakened survivors, the dissent vanished.
Lothe made his way back to the restricted upper archives.
The room looked completely different from when he had left it. The shattered glass and debris had been swept away, and neatly chopped wooden furniture was stacked against the far brick wall.
Ten girls sat quietly on the stone floor, sharing canned rations in silence, exhaustion visible in their eyes.
Their posture tensed as footsteps approached, but relaxed the moment they recognized Lothe.
Not seeing Seana on the main archive floor, Lothe walked toward the secure terminal room that served as their temporary quarters. He pushed the heavy door open and found her inside, methodically organizing their gathered loot.
Her dark steel sword rested neatly against the wall next to his Spear .
For a brief, strange second, the quiet order of the room gave Lothe an unexpected sense of home.
Hearing the door slide open, Seana turned, a faint smile softening her tired face. "I was just about to look for you."
"Need something?" Lothe asked, sitting down on a wooden crate across from her.
"I need to look for medicinal herbs," Seana said, adjusting her red backpack.
"Herbs?" Lothe looked at her with genuine interest. "You know traditional pharmacology too?"
Seana nodded. "I studied it alongside modern anatomy when I was younger."
Lothe looked at her closely. It wasn’t just that traditional medicine was rare; it was the sheer volume of high-level skills she had mastered at eighteen.
"The research forest behind the library is your best bet," Lothe noted, leaning back. "The soil there was treated for experimental flora. There should still be—"
BOOOOM!
The floor beneath them violently buckled. Dust and stone splinters erupted from above as something massive slammed directly onto the roof of the upper archive.
SCRAAASH!
Concrete ripped apart like thin cardboard. Massive, dark metal claws tore through the reinforced ceiling, widening the gap until massive blocks of masonry crashed into the archive floor.
Lothe and Seana reacted instantly, their fingers wrapping around their weapon hilts simultaneously.
Lothe didn’t hesitate. Instead of rushing the dust cloud, he swept his hand across every supply sack on the floor.
In a blur of motion, the food, water, and gear vanished into his sub-space storage, completely secured.
A heavy, suffocating weight landed in the center of the room with a dull thud.
A massive wolf, its fur shimmering like polished silver, emerged from the rising dust. Three more followed behind it.
They were twice the size of apex predators, with curved black horns protruding from their foreheads that crackled with thin, violent arcs of silver electricity.
Four pairs of emerald-green eyes locked onto Lothe and Seana. The wolves dropped low, their leg muscles coiling like steel springs before they lunged together.
"Split!" Lothe barked.
They burst in opposite directions. The pack divided instantly, two wolves pursuing Lothe, two targeting Seana.
The lead wolf on Lothe’s side pounced first, its front claws sweeping down with enough force to shatter granite. Lothe raised the shaft of the Inferno Dragon Spear horizontally to meet the strike.
Clang!
Sparks erupted as metal met armored claw. Feeling the crushing physical weight, Lothe didn’t try to overpower it.
He twisted the spear shaft, using the beast’s momentum to slide its claws harmlessly into the stone floor.
Before he could counter, the second wolf lunged from his flank. A dense bolt of silver lightning shot from its horn, aimed directly at his chest.
Boom!
The floor where he had been standing exploded in a shower of sparks.
Lothe rolled across the stone, springing back onto his feet as wind erupted from his footwear, his newly equipped Gale Boots absorbing the impact and multiplying his agility.
[Attribute Check: Strength 30 | Agility 25]
Lothe felt the raw power surging through his muscles. He didn’t retreat.
As the first wolf charged again, Lothe stepped into its path. He swept his spear in a wide, heavy arc, forcing the wolf to raise its forearm to block.
The moment steel hit claw, Lothe pivoted hard on his left heel and drove a heavy kick straight into the side of the wolf’s jaw.
Bang!
The thirty points of raw Strength behind the kick shattered the wolf’s guard, sending its head snapping sideways.
Without letting it recover, Lothe spun the black spear and thrust the head straight for its throat. But the wolf reacted with frightening instinct, jerking its neck just enough for the blade to carve a deep line across its shoulder instead.
Green-tinged blood sprayed onto the floor.
It dodged... Lothe’s eyes narrowed. That wasn’t reflex. It read my shoulder movement.
A low growl vibrated behind him. The second wolf charged, the silver arc on its horn growing blindingly bright as it aimed a full-body ramming strike at his back.
Lothe pushed off the floor.
The Gale Boots triggered, a blast of compressed air launching him four meters straight up. The wolf crashed beneath him, shattering a concrete support pillar into gravel before skidding across the floorboards.
The instant Lothe landed, both wolves closed in from opposite sides. One struck high, aiming for his throat; the other swept low for his legs.
Lothe remained completely calm.
His black spear spun in his hands like a dark wheel, every block and parry redirecting just enough kinetic force to keep the pair from pinning him down.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Sparks and silver electricity lit up the dark archive.
Every thrust was met by razor-sharp claws; every heavy sweep was evaded by fractions of an inch.
The blood rain... Lothe realized as he parried a lightning bolt. It didn’t just boost their physical stats. It elevated their intelligence.
These weren’t simple beasts anymore. They were hunting like a trained unit.
If I let them drag this out, my Qi will run dry.
Lothe abruptly altered his rhythm. Instead of stepping back, he drove forward directly into the chest of the left wolf. The sudden, suicidal aggression threw the beast off-balance for a fraction of a second.
That single second was all he needed.
He planted his boot against the brick wall, kicking off with explosive force to flip directly over the wolf’s head. He landed behind it, grabbed its thick, muscular tail with his bare hand, and locked his grip.
Thirty points of Strength flared through his forearm.
"Down!"
With a low roar, Lothe slammed the massive wolf over his shoulder, driving its head directly into the stone floor.
BOOM!
Cracks spiderwebbed through the concrete. The wolf let out a choked howl, its body convulsing.
Lothe didn’t give it a millisecond to breathe. He raised the Inferno Dragon Spear, channeling a hot, violent surge of Qi into the blade.
[Technique: Blazing Horizon Spear Art]
The spearhead glowed with a intense, purple-red heat.
Puchi!
The black spearhead drove straight through the wolf’s left eye socket, burying itself deep into the brain.
The beast thrashed once and went completely limp.
At that exact moment—
CRACK!
A thick bolt of silver lightning crashed down from the ceiling. Lothe released the spear shaft instantly, throwing himself backward.
The lightning struck the embedded weapon, exploding the stone around it into dust.
Lothe extended his open palm.
Whoosh!
The Inferno Dragon Spear vibrated, tearing itself free from the carcass and flying back into his grip.
The second wolf was already airborne, its green eyes burning with feral rage as it lunged over the body of its fallen pack-mate, its horn crackling with a lethal storm of silver electricity.
Lothe dropped low, sliding beneath the leaping beast. As he passed beneath its exposed underbelly, his spatial perception flared, condensing two razor-sharp, invisible blades of compressed space at his fingertips.
[Technique: Space Blades]
Slice!
The first space blade carved a deep, clean trench across the wolf’s abdomen.
Slice!
Before the beast could even scream, the second space blade struck the exact same line, tearing through flesh and bone.
Dark blood showered the floor. The wolf tumbled hard onto the stone, skidding several meters before going completely motionless.
[You have slain a Level 3, Tier 2 Silver Horned Wolf.]
[Experience gained: 100 EXP.]
Two green orbs and two yellow orbs materialized over the corpse. Lothe didn’t even look at them.
Behind him, the first wolf, the one with its left eye impaled, slowly dragged itself up from the crater, its single remaining eye glowing with blinding, suicidal fury as a storm of silver lightning enveloped the entire room.