So many things were happening so very fast. First the shaking ground, then a wind of leaves, the swaying trees, the shrieks and cries of various monkey beasts all heading for their direction.

Elementalist-D all looked at each other, expressions of terror plastered on their faces.

"Kallan," Frieda asked. "What did you do?"

Kallan looked guilty but turned defensive immediately. "That beast nest was going to attack us!"

"It wasn’t a beast nest!" Frieda snapped. "It was a trap! That’s why we don’t kill anything we see in Dungeons! What if we were supposed to rescue those things?!"

Kallan’s jaw locked.

Leslie, her fingers coating with ice, narrowed her eyes at the both of them. "There’s no use arguing about it now. It looks like we’ve triggered some kind of rallying cry. Which means..."

Cecil looked up in time to see a Cragfist Behemoth drop from the lower trees. "...all the beasts are coming here."

...

Indeed they were.

In every corner, all the monkey beasts surged in numbers. The Four-Armed Skull Macaques, the Cragfist Behemoths, the Spider Monkeys, the Thunderback Gorillas, Acid Macaques.

Every primate monster from earlier routes were converging at the Gorilla Crown Hollow.

"Renan!" Ena, the Martial Master called. After Renan pulled his sword free from the insides of an Acid Macaque, he turned to where Ena was pointing.

Renan’s silver eyes widened.

Almost like a disastrous wave of an ocean, dozens of monkey beasts were coming at them. He looked the other way and saw even more; trees fell, the earth cracked.

"Everyone!" Renan yelled. "Hold them back!!"

Frieda left her team and immediately answered Renan’s call. "Frieda! What are you doing?!" Kallan called but the red haired Fire Mage ignored him.

Kallan’s jaw tightened in frustration. He looked around, knowing he had to join the other teams if they wanted to survive.

"We have to join in, Kallan!" Leslie said with a serious look. "We don’t have any choice!"

Kallan was stubborn for a moment, but seeing the monsters get closer, his walls broke. "Alright! Let’s go!"

As they ran back into the center, they saw Enchanter-D running in from the other way. Amira was in front, her expression serene despite the situation. Stacey and Kallan locked eyes, her expression showed anger.

"Create a barricade!" Renan yelled the order. "Anyone who can! Create a barricade!"

Leslie and Lingram stepped forward. Theon, a Rune Carver in Enchanter-D stepped forward as well. They created a barricade of ice, veins and runic symbols around them.

Kallan watched it with a bittersweet, frustrated expression. ’Why do my teammates have to be the ones spending all their Grace?!’

In no time, the beasts crashed into the barricades and promptly started to climb.

"Anyone that comes down, kill it!" Renan cried, swinging his sword and settling to a knight’s pose. "They’ll be much easier to kill this way."

Everyone followed this plan and for a long time, it worked. The monsters fell down in smaller numbers, making it easier for the teams to leap on them and kill them.

But with time, more beasts fell into the circle and killing them grew more difficult—took more time. Even worse, Leslie, Lingram and Theon’s magic were fading off.

The barricade would fall very soon.

...

It did.

The announcer practically shouted in glee.

"Oh, this is carnage!" he roared. "Every beast type they’ve encountered so far is converging! Cragfist Behemoths, Spider Monkeys, the Macaques, Thunderback Gorillas! This is turning into a full-route disaster!"

The stadium above erupted in a mixture of cheers and horrified laughter.

In the dungeon, the students reacted exactly as any sane group would under the same pressure: with panic that turned into survival.

The Enchanter team was hit hardest first. Their support line was torn apart by the swarm. Theon went down when a Thunderback Gorilla slammed into the center of their formation, and the system instantly registered the lethal blow as a defeat condition.

The student vanished in a flash of elimination light before the strike could fully land. Another Enchanter vanished a second later when an Acid Macaque caught her with its deadly saliva.

One by one, the Enchanters were sent back out through the safety mechanism, appearing outside the Dungeon Gate on the Competition Platform in bright pulses of light.

The crowd reacted immediately.

Some cheered.

Some booed.

Some gasped and shouted in disbelief as their class representatives reappeared with shocked expressions and exhausted faces.

"Enchanter-D’s down another!"

"They got overwhelmed!"

"That was brutal!"

Then one of the Specialists, Ena, was caught by a beast surge and sent out in the same way, the elimination light snapping her from the dungeon before the blow could complete.

A few moments later, Lingram was hit as well. He had thrown his vines too far into the beast line trying to rescue the pressure point, and the system removed him the instant a monster’s attack threatened to finish the exchange.

Outside the gate, the leaderboard shifted again.

[ 1. Elementalist-D : 805 ]

[ 2. Specialist-D : 800 ]

[ 3. Enchanter-D : 757 ]

[ 4. Summoner-D : 750 ⸥

The announcer’s voice moved with the escalating chaos.

"And there they go! More eliminations! The platform is lighting up with returns! What a brutal run!"

Inside the dungeon, the remaining students were overwhelmed.

Kallan and the others fought hard enough to keep breathing room in the clearing, but the weight of the monster swarm was beginning to press them down from every side.

Even Renan, who had shown almost stubborn refusal to abandon his team, was now visibly tired. His sword had cut through beast after beast, and the strain was showing in the line of his shoulders and the hard edge of his breathing.

He kept fighting anyway, frustrated and grim, refusing to fall back even when his team had already been hit and the route had clearly turned against them.

"Renan!" Lioris shouted. "We need to pull back!"

"No," Renan snapped, parrying another heavy strike. "We push through."

Another gorilla beast slammed into the ground nearby, its massive fists cracking the earth.

The jungle had become a slaughterhouse. Everyone was brutalized, beaten, forced to spend their Grace to high levels. Renan unleashed unbelievable levels of Skill, but more beasts came.

Then, just as the students looked like they might finally be forced back by exhaustion. Just as the beasts closed in to give them what would be the finishing blow, the air suddenly changed.

It became thicker, somehow, like the atmosphere was welcoming something new, something reverent and dangerous.

"Well, well, well."

A shadow dropped down slowly through the broken canopy, elegant and eerie, descending with a calm that made the violence below seem even more frantic by comparison.

The figure lowered from above as though she had all the time in the world, her white hair catching the dim light, her presence immediately unsettling the entire battlefield.

Spectra.

She hovered just above the fight, looking down at the exhausted students and the roaring beasts with an expression that was equal parts amusement and lazy disdain.

Renan and the other students looked up at her, staring at all of her evil, demonic, glory. "Y...ou."

When she spoke, her thrilling voice cut cleanly through the chaos.

"I didn’t mean to intrude on your fun," she said, a playful curve in her lips sharpening the warning in her tone. "But playtime’s over."