Chapter 63: Chapter 63: Dive Into Hell [3]

"No, Ken!" A group of terrified students immediately broke their formation, rushing over frantically to save their injured friend, who was thrown aside by the beast.

Zephyr stepped past the panicked crowd with his hands glowing in a golden light, preparing to deliver a devastating punch to the monster.

But a sudden blur of motion interrupted his hero moment.

Lucien moved.

The arrogant noble was a natural speedster, and he used his agility skill to flash right past the golden-eyed boy in the blink of an eye.

Twin daggers reflected brightly in the dim light.

Lucien reached the mutated bull before Zephyr even closed the distance, sinking both of his blades deep into the monster’s large eyes.

"Mooohhhhh," the beast cried out.

Lucien twisted the hilts sharply, causing fatal injuries to the creature’s brain and dropping the beast instantly to the stone floor.

"Hell yes, Lucien," a tall, broad-shouldered boy from his gang shouted.

Other students started clapping and cheering, thoroughly impressed by the quick kill.

A speedster armed with sharp weapons is a nightmare for ordinary mortals in close combat because they can never predict the exact angle of attack.

Lucien pulled his daggers free and flicked the blood off his blades with a practiced spin.

His arrogant gaze turned directly toward Azreal through the crowd.

The blonde boy flashed a smug, irritating smirk, clearly trying to establish himself as the alpha of the freshmen.

’Do you really want to die early, you arrogant insect,’ Azrael thought from within his mind.

He turned his body away, utterly uninterested in the noble’s little show of dominance.

But Azrael could not help letting out a soft laugh from the boy’s throat as he looked over at Zephyr.

The great hero was just standing there with his hands raised, looking foolish after someone else stole his grand moment.

Zephyr shot him a glare, but Azrael honestly did not care about a child’s bruised ego.

Lucien crouched down next to the dead beast, digging his dagger into the monster’s chest cavity to pull out a small red crystal.

"Watch and learn, everyone," Lucien boasted loudly.

The nobles clearly had this training before because the mages in the tower helped these wealthy families experience a mock layer of the caves to teach them how one should consume a core.

Lucien crushed the monster core in his bare hand, letting a faint, warm light wash over his body to indicate a minor level up.

Every single reward for slaying monsters strictly depends on the creature’s rank, and absorbing the core directly strengthens the internal mana pathways.

It was a basic rule of survival in this weak world.

The students reorganized their loose formation and kept moving.

The group walked down the wide tunnel for the next ten minutes without any major problems, and the tension slowly started to fade from the ignorant crowd.

Then the cave narrowed slightly, and a group of small white rabbits hopped out from behind a pile of rocks right in front of them.

"Oh, they are actually kind of cute," a girl with short pink hair whispered, lowering her staff.

But nobody with actual combat experience fell for that pathetic trap.

"Don’t let them get close," a lanky boy named Shiv yelled.

His dark hair was sticking to his forehead with nervous sweat as he drew his iron sword.

The students in the front row immediately started swinging their weapons, frantically trying to kill the small creatures.

The rabbits reacted instantly.

Their innocent green eyes shifted rapidly into a bloodthirsty red, and their small mouths snapped open too wide, revealing rows of fangs that were sharper than actual hunting knives.

They launched themselves through the air like furry missiles.

The monsters latched onto the swinging arms and bit deeply into the hands of a few careless students.

"AHHHHH."

"Get it off, help me," the pink-haired girl screamed.

She dropped her staff as a rabbit tore through the sleeve of her suit.

Panic erupted all over again among the fragile humans.

Some of the students fell to their knees, desperately trying to pry the biting monsters off their skin.

And then the real nightmare began for the mortals.

From the crevices in the cave walls, more rabbits poured out.

Fifty of them emerged quickly, crowding the limited floor space.

Then a hundred followed, and then even more poured forth until it became suffocating.

A living sea of white fur and red eyes surrounded their legs.

The sheer volume of the monsters made it impossible to swing a sword properly without hitting another panicked student. The air grew thin and hot as the swarm pressed in tight, crawling over each other in a desperate frenzy to reach exposed flesh.

They could not even see the stone floor anymore, just a writhing carpet of snapping teeth. It felt like drowning in a shallow pool of fur and blood.

Azrael merely observed the chaos, feeling mild annoyance at the noise.

"They just keep coming," Shiv shouted over the chaos.

He used his sword to slash wildly at the ground, cutting two of them apart, but four more immediately took their place.

Then every single rabbit in the tunnel suddenly stopped moving.

"Wha," Lucien gasped, freezing in place with his daggers raised.

The chattering swarm was instantly lifted off the stone floor.

From every single corner of the tunnel, the monsters floated into the air.

They were dragged aggressively toward the center of the cavern, forming a squirming ball of fur and fangs right above their heads.

The invisible pressure tightened their spacing, packing them closer and closer together until they could not even move their tiny legs.

Azreal looked over his shoulder.

Mia stood still, her pupils had disappeared, leaving her eyes a pure white as veins popped on her forehead from the intense concentration.

Her telekinetic control was highly impressive for a first-year student trying to handle more than a hundred moving targets all at once.

She slowly raised her hand and then closed her palm into a tight fist. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

At that exact moment, all the rabbits suspended in the air smashed brutally into one another.

The ball collapsed inward under the crushing pressure, turning the entire swarm into a disgusting shower of mincemeat and blood.