Chapter 66: Hunting Ground

Michael left without looking back. Julian said something behind him — a question, maybe a warning. Michael didn't let it reach him. He turned onto the street leading toward the Ringstrasse and kept walking toward the Juridicum, careful not to think about why.

*Don't think. Don't feel. Just move.*

The city was silent. It had been silent since the first waves — no cars, no human-made noises. The world seemed to be never this silent before. The silence was disrupted at some times. Somewhere to the east there was shouting, and something heavy hitting something metal, another group fighting whatever had found them. He didn't go check. That wasn't his fight today.

He wasn't avoiding monsters anymore. He was looking for them.

Something moved out of an alley to his left — four legs, low to the ground. A Hound-Fox, level two or three by the size of it. Hours ago he would have slipped past while it was distracted and saved his strength. But not today. He stopped walking and let it come to him.

It closed the distance fast, jaw open, claws scraping the asphalt. Michael didn't move until the last moment — a short step to the side, weight onto his back foot, sword already coming around in a flat arc. The Hound-Fox's own speed carried its neck into the blade. The cut didn't take the head off clean, but it went deep enough that the body ran two more steps before it understood it was already dead. It dropped, legs still twitching, blood spreading dark across the pavement.

[You have killed a Hound-Fox (Level 4)]

[You have received 100 Experience Points]

He wiped the blade against his pant leg once and kept walking.

Four more died the same way over the next street. Two Hound-Foxes came at him together — he let the first overextend and opened its stomach, then turned into the second before it could adjust and caught it across the throat. Something larger and slower, more legs than he bothered to count, he simply stepped around and cut along its side as it passed. None of it cost him mana. His jacket was torn at the shoulder where a claw had caught him earlier, a shallow line that stung more than it bled, and his boots were slick with things he stopped looking down at after the second kill. He kept moving.

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*Four more. Five since I left Julian.* He didn't let the thought go further than the number.

The sixth thing didn't run at him the way the others had.

It came around the corner of a burned-out tram stop slowly, low on four legs, a long tail dragging behind it. Scaled, grey-green, a head too wide for its body and a jaw built for tearing. His status sense marked it automatically: Level 5.

*That looks strong. But I'm already level eight. This won't be a problem.*

He was wrong before the fight even started.

He tried the same thing that had worked all this times already — waited for the monster to commit, planned his step to the side, sword rising. But the moment he shifted his weight, the reptile's whole body corrected with him. Its spine bent mid-lunge, its head snapping around to follow the exact line he'd chosen, jaws closing on the space he was about to move into instead of the space he'd left. There was no warning he could read, nothing like the others had given him. It simply reacted faster than he moved.

He felt the air off its jaws pass a hand's width from his throat.

He threw himself backward, off balance, sword coming up too late for anything but a block that never came, because the reptile was already turning, tail whipping around to reset its stance, faster than anything he'd fought since this started. His shoulder hit the ground wrong. Pain shot down his arm. For one full second, on his back, with its eyes fixed on him and its body coiling to close the distance, Michael understood that he was about to die. That is if he did not activate his skill.

...

He was gone before it moved. Mana burned through him, cold and sudden, and the world lurched sideways the way it always did — and then he was standing behind the reptile, sword already swinging, aimed low across the base of its spine where the scales were thinner and the muscle hadn't finished turning to face him.

The blade went through. Not around the bone — through it. The lower half of the body dropped first, tail still twitching against the asphalt, while the front half hadn't caught up to the fact that it was already cut off from the rest. It took another half-second before it collapsed, split cleanly from the rear torso forward, organs spilling dark and steaming onto the pavement.

[You have killed a Bladeback Crawler (Level 5)]

[You have received 250 Experience Points]

Michael stood over the two halves, breathing hard, blood that wasn't his own dripping off the blade.

*That was close. Without Teleportation I'd be dead right now. This is exactly what I save my mana for.*

He tried to work out why it had almost killed him. *Is it just that this species is fast? Or is it the level? We get our class at level five — maybe monsters get something similar.*

He didn't reach the real answer. Whether it was the adrenaline still running through him or simply that he hadn't thought about it, he didn't remember that his own level meant less than it looked like. He was officially level eight — but outside of the four attribute points he'd spent during his very first test, he had never assigned a single point he'd earned since. Every level had added to a total sitting unused. On paper he was eight. In what his body could actually do, he was barely past where he'd stood the day he chose his class. The only reasons the crawler was in two pieces instead of him were the teleport that had caught it from behind, unable to defend itself, and the sword in his hand — level five, the best his class could carry at that tier.

He came to a different conclusion instead. If more of these things were moving through the district, he couldn't rely on the same trick every time. Teleportation wasn't unlimited. Level five and above, he decided, needed more respect than anything he'd fought so far tonight.

He cleaned the blade properly this time, checked how much mana he had left, and kept walking toward the Juridicum.