The silence inside the computer lab was broken only by the soft snip of scissors slicing through network cables. Spread across the desk, Allisson organized the components gathered from his inventory and the room: the two [Rigid Chitin Plates] harvested from the Mana Centipede, twelve feet of heavy-duty UTP cable with internal copper wiring, and strips of thick cloth torn to serve as padding.
"Hold this right here, Paulo," Allisson instructed, placing the first plate over the folded cloth along his left forearm. "Keep the binding tight."
"Why the forearm, Mr. Allisson? Wouldn't it protect you better on your chest?" the boy asked, weaving the copper-threaded cables through the natural grooves of the dark chitin.
"Pure biomechanics," Allisson explained, testing the flex of his wrist. "The forearm is the body's instinctive defensive shield. In close-quarters combat with a spear, raising your arms to block a sudden claw or bite is an involuntary reflex. With Constitution at 9.5, my bone density can handle the impact, but the chitin absorbs the direct kinetic force, dispersing the energy and preventing lacerations. Protecting only the forearms keeps the elbow and wrist joints completely unrestricted. Protection without losing mobility."
Allisson secured the second plate to his right forearm. The fit was anatomical, transforming his forearms into custom, high-density armguards.
As he tied off the final double knot in the wiring, Allisson stared at the concrete wall ahead.
"Paulo, our time in this room has a strict expiration date. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours, at most."
"But we have enough food and water for four days, Mr. Allisson..."
"Food supply is a secondary variable. The primary variable is the population dynamics of the predators," Allisson said, standing up and flexing his armored arms. "The school cafeteria is a ticking time bomb. When the blackout hit, the highest concentration of panicking humans and stored food was located there. The lower-level monsters and most aggressive carnivores converged on that single point."
Allisson paused, glancing back at the reinforced steel door.
"However, within forty-eight hours, the cafeteria's biomass will be exhausted. The survivors inside will be dead, and the provisions consumed. Once that primary food source dries up, the surviving mutants won't just be hungry—they'll be stronger, having accumulated XP and leveled up. They will disperse down every corridor in this building. If we stay put for too long, our bunker ceases to be a shelter and becomes a cage."
Paulo swallowed hard, grasping the cold logic. Their isolation wasn't a permanent solution; it was merely a temporary staging window.
BOOM!
A muffled explosion accompanied by the sharp crackle of electricity echoed from outside, rattling the dust on the ceiling fixtures.
Allisson stepped onto the swivel chair beneath the high transom window. Resting his chitin-armored forearms against the iron frame, he peered out into the central courtyard.
Three high school students stood in the middle of the shredded lawn. They had managed to awaken direct offensive abilities. One of them, hands engulfed in orange flames, hurled a [Fireball] that struck a Level 2 Mana Hound squarely in the chest, reducing the mutant to ash. Beside him, a girl extended her hands, releasing arcs of [Electrocution] that paralyzed and fried a second hound on the spot.
"We did it! We killed the bastards!" screamed the third student, hoisting an iron pipe and laughing wildly in the open courtyard.
The three began celebrating loudly, hugging each other in the morning sunlight.
Fatal error, Allisson thought, his expression turning ice-cold. Noise pollution, high-intensity light emissions, and lingering in an open field without checking the perimeter. A celebration built on the illusion of magical power.
Before the echoes of the boy's laughter died down, a shadow over ten feet long projected from the roof of the opposite building.
A deafening hydraulic snap cut through the air.
A dark green beast with a gleaming carapace and high-pressure vestigial wings plummeted from the roof straight onto the group at terrifying speed. The Giant Mana Mantis made no sound prior to its strike.
SHRRRINK!
In a single millisecond, the jagged foreleg blade of the monster swept across the laughing boy's neck. His head separated from his shoulders before his body even hit the grass.
The girl shrieked, trying to raise her hands to channel another shock, but the creature offered no tactical window. The mantis thrust its left foreleg like a biological lance, impaling her chest and pinning her to the earth with a wet thud.
The last student, blinded by panic, extinguished his flame and turned to sprint toward the nearest hallway. The beast didn't even need to leap. With a swift glide of its wings, it closed the thirty-foot gap in half a second, cleaving the boy in two at the waist with its serrated blade.
In under four seconds, the squad of magic users had been wiped out. Their blood and remains painted the central lawn.
With his eyes narrowed through the window gap, Allisson locked his sight onto the chest of the courtyard's apex predator, triggering his cognitive skill immediately.
"[Structural Analysis]!"
The translucent blue interface flickered before his eyes, but instead of revealing the detailed breakdown of stats, weaknesses, and biological traits, the panel distorted into a pattern of jagged red static.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS FAILED]
Target: Giant Mana Mantis
Level: ???
Status: UNAVAILABLE (CRITICAL POWER DIVERGENCE)
Reason: The target's level exceeds the user's reading threshold. Lack of observable comparative data.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The panel collapsed with a dull buzz.
Allisson stepped down from the chair in total silence, his soles touching the floor without making a sound.
The failure of [Structural Analysis] delivered an unforgiving mathematical reality: the Giant Mana Mantis in the courtyard was Level 6 or 7 at minimum. The dominant monsters in the school weren't just hunting; they were harvesting XP from the slaughtered students and evolving at an exponential rate.
"Mr. Allisson...? What happened out there?" Paulo asked, noticing the shift in his teacher's posture.
Allisson tightened the strap of the Twin-Blade Spear across his back and checked the tension of the UTP cables securing his new chitin armguards.
"The monsters are leveling up faster than calculated," Allisson answered, his voice surgically calm despite the horror he had just witnessed. "The courtyard is controlled by an apex predator immune to our status reads. Our forty-eight-hour buffer just got wiped out. We need to plan our extraction route out of this building by the end of the day."