## Chapter 19: The Price of Chaos
As Michaels group advanced past the main lecture halls, the sound of the university changed. The quiet hum of empty corridors was suddenly shattered by frantic screaming and the tumult of a big fight.
Sophie stopped, she was the first to notice. „Up ahead. There is something happening,“ She warned the others, her voice cutting through his team’s sudden tension.
They hurried, rounding the final corner. The scene before them was absolute chaos. A massive horde of about twenty hound-foxes had swarmed a wide open hall, cornering another group of survivors. These were students from the main pool of three hundred that Julian had organized into defense teams back in the Audimax. They had clearly breached their designated zone or been pushed back by a massive wave from an unknown portal.
It was a bloodbath. Overturned tables and shredded backpacks littered the floor, and the tiles were slick with blood pooling out from two bodies near the wall that no longer moved, their throats torn open. Many of the survivors still standing were already severely injured. Terrified students were clutching deeply torn arms, bleeding from nasty bite wounds; one girl pressed both hands over a gash in her thigh that had opened down to the muscle, blood seeping steadily between her fingers. Others swung their wooden spears blindly in pure panic, one boy limping badly, dragging a leg that bent wrong just below the knee. There was no formation, no coordination, and no leadership. It was pure disaster, they were clealry the losing side.
Most of Michael’s group started to panic. Michael’s eyes swept across the battlefield, already calculating priorities, and his next moves. He didn’t hesitate and called out to his team.
„Rashid, Max, hold the flanks,“ Michael gave incredibly short, rapid instructions to his squad. „Team, form a defensive wall right here. Push forward as a single block. Do not scatter. Don’t waste time. Go.“
Before the last word even left his mouth, Michael was already moving. He didn’t join their formation; he broke into a dead sprint straight toward the center of the slaughter.
With his Agility at 9 and his mind perceiving the chaos nearly in slow motion, Michael entered the fray without hesitation. A hound-fox was lunging at a crying girl on the floor. Michael slid forward, his iron-tipped recruit’s spear driving cleanly through the creature’s eye socket before it could land.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
He didn’t pause to celebrate. He ripped the weapon free, spun on his heel, and caught a second beast mid-jump, skewering its throat.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
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[You have received 10 Experience Points]
Three hound-foxes noticed the sudden threat and snapped their attention to him, abandoning their wounded prey. They charged him together. Michael side-stepped the first with, using its own momentum to guide his spear point through its ribcage.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
He kicked the carcass off his blade, sweeping the shaft around to bash the nose of the fourth beast, shattering its skull instantly.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
The fifth and sixth monsters tried to flank him, but Michael’s high Willpower allowed him to track their movements react faster. He turned and thrust his spear, piercing the heart of the fifth monster.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
With his remaining momentum, he pivoted seamlessly to split the head of the sixth creature.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
Immediately after the sixth kill, the final 10 XP pushed his bar past the 100 XP threshold. A larger, gold-tinted notification flared directly in the center of his vision, accompanied by a wave of cold energy that completely erased his fatigue and restored his stamina.
[Ding! You have leveled up]
[Congratulations! You have reached Level 4. All baseline attributes have automatically increased by +1 point. You have received 5 attribute points and 1 skill point]
With his stats fully restored and a surge of new power coursing through his veins, Michael didn’t miss a beat. The seventh and eighth monsters were torn apart in a rapid blur of brutal stabs as he actively hunted down the beasts causing the most damage to the center of the survivors’ group. One after another, the two monsters fell to his spear, their dark blood staining his spear.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
[You have killed a Hound-Fox] (Level 1)]
[You have received 10 Experience Points]
The floor around him had turned into a mess of corpses and spilled entrails.
By completely decimating a third of the entire horde by himself and racking up a massive total of 80 XP, Michael drastically relieved the lethal pressure on the dying group of survivors. The remaining monsters were killed one by one, their unified slaughter broken by the sudden appearance of a single human predator.
In the meantime, his team didn’t stay idle. „Now!“ Rashid roared from the corridor entrance and charged with his group.
With the horde distracted by the desperate group of students, Michaels group launched their coordinated strike. Moving as a single, unyielding line, they pushed into the monsters. Jakob’s controlled explosions popped through the air, Lukas altered weights upon contact, and David used his gravity wave to herd the remaining beasts directly into the spears of the frontline. The hound-foxes broke apart into disorganized pockets, easy work for a coordinated team. Spears found throats and skulls in quick, controlled strikes, and within minutes the last of the horde lay still among the wreckage.
They weren’t just fighting to survive anymore. Under Michael’s cold guidance, without knowing they had become a harvesting unit, cleaning up the rest of the invasion wave with great efficiency, each kill turning into valuable experience points for the entire squad.
When the last hound-fox went still, the room fell quiet except for ragged breathing and someone sobbing near the wall. Twenty hound-fox carcasses lay scattered across the bloodied tiles alongside the two students who hadn’t survived. Survivors who could still stand dragged the wounded back from the mess, pressing torn strips of cloth against bite wounds and trying to bandage them. Michael stood at the center of it all with different feelings. On one hand, he was satisfied with his performance and that he saved a lot of people. On the other hand, looking at the condition of the other group and their helplessness he slowly started to lose hope.