Chapter 33: Fighting Through
## Chapter 33: Fighting Through
The strength from his recent level-up was still fresh in Michael's limbs. All his injuries were gone, wiped away by the system's restoration. He gripped his bloody spear and looked across the hall.
The Audimax was barely recognizable. It resembled a warzone more than a lecture hall. A Hound-Fox carcass near his feet stared up with cold, lifeless eyes, its throat opened by his blade.
He felt the shift in his mind instantly. With his Willpower now pushed to 18, his [Iron Will] talent allowed him to process the environment with frightening clarity. The chaos of the Audimax seemed to slow down even more; he could follow the path of every monster, the rhythm of their attacks, and the openings each one left as it struck far better than any other human here. There was, however, a jarring disconnect; while his mind was sharp and fast, his physical body remained that of a beginner. He still hadn’t distributed any status points. The only physical change was due to the automatic status upgrades through his level ups.
He possessed the vision to execute a perfect strike, but occasionally his muscles failed to match the speed of his thoughts, leading to a stray, unpolished movement that reminded him how far his physical conditioning still had to go. He shook out the ache in his wrist and refocused.
In the distance, through the gaps in the thrashing swarm, he saw them. His team had held the line. Rashid and Maximilian fought at the center of the formation, their movements brutal as they cut down monster after monster. Rashid's jacket was torn at the shoulder, dark stains spreading across the fabric, but he kept swinging. Maximilian fought beside him without a wasted motion, each strike aimed and final. Their formation was still intact, and none of them carried a grave wound. Seeing that, something in Michael eased, a plain, simple relief that had nothing to do with numbers on a status screen. They had survived. That mattered more than any stat increase.
Michael’s actions played a big part in it. He had engaged the monsters next to the portal and interrupted their advancement.
*Keep them alive,* Michael thought. He surged forward, moving with fast steps.
A big Level 3 boar-like variant surged toward him, claws cracking against stone as it charged. Michael read its path and stepped left just in time, flicking his spear upward to drive the tip deep into the soft, exposed flesh behind the beast's ear. The creature collapsed instantly, its legs still kicking against the floor as blood spread out beneath its skull in a widening, dark pool.
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[You have killed a Hound-Fox-Variant (Level 3)]
[You have received 50 Experience Points]
As he pressed deeper, he encountered another Level 3 Variant prowling near a cluster of ruined desks. This one behaved differently from the others, moving in silence with a predatory grace instead of charging outright. It launched itself from a high ledge, aiming to pin Michael to the floor. The monster may have meant it as a surprise attack, but Michael's heightened perception caught the movement anyway. Unluckily, as he twisted to evade, his heel caught on a piece of debris, nearly throwing him off balance. He recovered with a desperate lunge, catching the beast in mid-air with the spear's shaft and using his weight to slam it into the hard stairs, pain shooting up from his own knee on impact. The fall cracked one of the creature's legs at an odd angle, and it shrieked before Michael pinned it and drove the spear through its ribcage, the tip grinding against bone before the monster finally went still.
[You have killed a Hound-Fox-Variant (Level 3)]
[You have received 50 Experience Points]
Not a moment later, a pair of Hound-Foxes closed in from his right side, drawn in by the same scent of blood hanging over the hall. None of them held back to wait for an opening; each simply lunged for whatever flesh was closest, snapping and clawing over one another in the same breath. Michael felt the pressure of his own lack of experience as he blocked the first fox's bite with the wood of his spear, the impact vibrating painfully through his forearms hard enough to leave them numb. He forced his arm to stay steady, then dropped into a crouch to avoid a sweeping claw-swipe from the wolf, driving his spear upward in an arc that cut through the predator's body. Dark blood sprayed across the tiles as it dropped, and the last fox, momentarily thrown off by its packmate's death throes, fell to a quick, snapping thrust through its eye.
System notifications followed but Michael ignored them.
The final stretch was blocked by two Level 3 variants. Both lunged for him the instant he came into view, driven by nothing more than proximity and hunger. Their massive frames filled the narrow gap, forcing Michael into a tight corridor. He spent a grueling thirty seconds trading blows in the cramped space. One swipe caught him across the thigh, the cut was shallow, but it stung with every step afterward, and he could feel blood soaking warm through the torn fabric of his pants. He gritted his teeth and kept moving. When the first variant overextended, he drove his spear through its chest and used its collapsing weight to swing the shaft into the second, shattering its shoulder plate and knocking it off balance long enough for a killing blow to the throat. Both bodies slumped against the rubble, blood pooling black and thick in the dim light beneath them.
He walked the last stretch slower, spear dragging faint lines through pooled blood. The corridor was littered with corpses on both sides, most of them monsters, and some humen. Flies had already begun to gather over the still-warm bodies, and the low buzz was almost louder than the fighting behind him. Michael forced his eyes forward.
Finally, the path ahead was clear. Michael pushed through the last of the wreckage and reached Rashid and his men.