Standing in the center of the chaos, Lushi did not flinch. She raised both hands high into the air.
"Calm down, everyone!" Lushi ordered. Her voice cut through the terrified screaming with absolute authority. She snapped her head toward the pink-haired girl by the window. "Lize. Report."
Closing her eyes, Lize pressed her ear gently against the freezing draft blowing through the shattered glass. Her breathing slowed to a crawl. For three whole seconds, she remained perfectly still.
"Hundreds," Lize finally spoke, opening her eyes. "Hundreds of monsters are coming this way."
Sitting by the pillar, Krai snapped entirely out of his daydream. The timer read zero, but no spatial portal had opened. He was still sitting on the dirty floor.
Frantic, he stared at the hologram. The soothing blue light suddenly flickered violently. The screen violently shifted from blue to a deep, blood red. Massive blocks of ancient language, similar to what he had seen in CODE during the Level 9 Certification Exam, flooded the display, completely replacing the numbers.
He looked around and checked his canvas bag.
Nothing. He did not have his Translation Staff. He had no way of reading the blazing red warning hovering in front of his face.
Siti placed a pale finger on her chin. "This is very strange. Why are monsters all the way out here in the slums? This has never happened before. They usually stay deep in the cursed woods."
Grip tightening on his wooden club, Ruke grinned. "Maybe it's because they heard we are swordsmen."
"Umu," Anz agreed.
Outside, the heavy thud of massive paws hitting the mud grew significantly louder. The low, guttural growls vibrated against the floor. The younger children began weeping openly, huddling together in shivering masses of absolute terror.
"Everyone, stay right where you are!" Lushi barked. She turned toward the doorway. "Siti! Anz! You two stay here and protect the children. Do not let a single beast cross this threshold."
"Right, got it," Siti smiled dangerously.
"Umu."
"An actual fight?" Ruke practically jumped in place. "Finally. I can test my new sword technique on real flesh."
Lize shot him a deeply unimpressed look. "Except you do not actually have a sword, Ruke. You are just holding a piece of firewood."
"I can still use sword techniques using this!" Ruke argued, his face turning red.
"That's enough!" Lushi yelled, already sprinting toward the shattered front door. "We are going. Try to keep up!"
Bursting out into the freezing mud, the trio met the incoming horde. Through the large holes in the front wall, Krai watched the nightmare unfold. A swarm of Gray-scaled Hounds—vicious, dog-like beasts—charged up the muddy embankment. There were dozens of them, drool flying from their snapping jaws.
Lushi absolutely refused to step into the freezing muck. Planting her boots firmly on the rotted threshold, she simply raised her right hand toward the charging pack.
The temperature in the yard violently plummeted. Thick, jagged frost crackled across the floorboards beneath her heels.
"Hailstorm," Lushi muttered, sounding completely bored.
A wildly spinning vortex of razor-sharp ice erupted directly from her open palm. The freezing storm swallowed the front line of Gray-scaled Hounds entirely. The sheer, unnatural drop in temperature froze the beasts solid mid-leap, followed instantly by the grinding ice shredding their bone-plated skulls into red slush. A secondary cold shockwave washed over the wet mud. Terrified by the sudden blizzard, the surviving monsters skidded to a panicked halt.
To her right, Lize simply vanished. She did not bother with incantations or magical theory. She moved with a terrifying, absolute agility that completely blurred the human eye. A huge hound lunged straight at her throat, its jaws snapping shut on empty air. Lize had already side-stepped.