“Get down!” Soise shouted.

  We fell to the ground only moments before the first blast hit. A roar shook the whole building as enchanted brick splintered and the roof blasted from over our heads, crashing on the street below, scattering swarms of tiny black monsters, like an infestation of mice.

  “What’s going on?!” Sip screamed.

  “Hang on!” Sosie summoned her board. “It can’t be too bad.”

  On our side there was a king and two knights, with a queen and a bunch of pawns. On the enemy side there were twenty queens and fifteen rooks, with hundreds of pawns, flowing over the sides of her board.

  The board slipped from her fingers, crashing on the floor.

  “It’s bad,” she whispered.

  Sip swiped the loot into his inventory. “Then what are we doing around here? RUN!”

  He was the first one out the door, followed by the rest of us in a frantic scramble toward safety, brushing past crowds of panicking students with the same fears as us.

  Now that the ceiling had been removed, we could see the rolling black clouds of hostile mana, drifting over the academy.

  [You have been afflicted with [Riot VI : 24:00:00]]

  When Soise tried to summon her board again, it sparked against her hands, dropping on the floorboards. Soise winced. “What—?”

  It had turned a sickly red, sharpening on the corners, bristling with a hostile foreign mana.

  Then it started glowing.

  Catania threw us to the ground.

  The chessboard exploded with a screech, vaporizing a hunk from the stairwell.

  “Sir?” Grey asked, looking down at her hands as they changed tint around the fingernails

  [Instance [Grey] has been afflicted with [Riot 24:00:00]]

  She trembled.

  “Sir?”

  “You’ll be okay.” I gritted my teeth to the burning sensation in the back of my mind. One of my hands lay on her screen, freezing the affliction before it spread to the rest of her body.

  My body shook and my vision started to blur red.

  Why was this so hard?

  I hadn’t seen any affliction I could’ve been hit by…so…

  Had Xoiae…

  Had she seriously…

  I felt the difference in my wrists, overflowing with mental energy like molten stars on tarmac.

  Xoiae had increased the restrictions on my cuffs. By a lot.

  Cool hands pressed against my forehead. Screech leaned out of Grey’s hold, grabbing my face. “Are you sick?”

  “I’m better now,” I said, offering a smile. “Hold on tight to Grey, okay? We can’t have you falling.”

  He nodded.

  “What’s going on?” Toya asked. He created a string on one finger. It pulsed red, one, twice, before blowing apart in a fizzle of heat and light. “It shouldn’t even be possible to use a spell like this…and on this scale…”

  “Platinum,” Catania stated. “Or a really skilled Tungsten.”

  “Well that’s a little extreme,” I chuckled. “It’s just an affliction. Not that bad.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “An affliction on several thousand people? With an effect as versatile as corrupting a player’s mana. This is bad, Grind.”

  Sip swallowed hard.

  Toya sighed. “We need to keep moving.”

  I knelt down, running my hands over the largest cracks in the stairwell, where I found several handholds. “Guys! Follow my lead!”

  I inched over the lengthy gap, step by step, hand over hand, foot over foot.

  By the time I reached the end, Toya and Catania were already mostly done, with Sip behind them.

  The two tried to butt ahead of the other, stumbling, reaching the stairwell by the silver of a miracle, crashing into a heap.

  Sip pointed and laughed. “You idiots—”

  He slipped, bashing his head on an outcropping rock, immediately falling unconscious. I barely grabbed him by the collar of his robes before he plunged into the lower floors.

  Grey just jumped the whole gap, landing with a force that shook the already unstable floor, collapsing parts of the ceiling and breaking several handholds.

  She blinked. “Apologies.”

  Soise covered her head in one hand, struggling with the other as she clung to whatever on the wall she could find. Her steps were much slower than anyone else’s, and her arm and legs had started shaking.

  The building rumbled.

  “Soise! Hurry up!” Toya shouted. “The longer you stay there the less time we have.”

  “Go ahead,” I snapped, nodding to him and Catania. “Find a path. The moment Soise gets across, we’ll run to you.” I turned to Grey. “Please. Protect them.”

  She flickered with a little more white than usual.

  “Grey will.”

  “No!” Soise shouted. “I’m fine! I’m almost—”

  By that point, the others had already left, leaving just me and Soise. And also Sip, but he was still lying unconscious on the floor.

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  Soise increased her pace, scrambling on the wall, less than a yard from the stairs. “Seriously Grind, can’t you wait a moment? I’m perfectly fine—”

  The entire stairwell collapsed, tossing her away from the platform, down into the darkness below.

  I flung Sip over a shoulder and lunged.

  A moment later, we crashed into another, breaking through two floors by sheer force of momentum. Thanks to my durability, nobody took any damage, even as we plowed through concrete and steel.

  Soise pushed out of my arms, brushing dirt from her dress. She huffed. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me quite yet,” I whispered. “We have company.”

  Black blobs milled around the first floor, occasionally bumping into one another.

  “I can see that,” Soise stated. “But they don’t seem particularly…menacing? I assume this is a particularly nasty dungeon break, so these must be the minions.”

  I flattened one with the head of my shovel, releasing a tiny white orb.

  {Lesser Nightmare}

  [Tin]

  [(-100) -900 Hp]

  [This unit has been afflicted by {Unknown Affliction}]

  The orb rolled toward my feet, triggering a faint tremor amongst the other blobs.

  All in an instant, thousands of blobs ripped up from the floorboards, busting holes in enchanted wood, tearing into and through one another as they reached the Exp. Teeth and spikes grew from their bodies, spearing one another, releasing more and more white orbs until the crackling chime of experience was deafening.

  Soise covered a hand over her mouth.

  When the squeaking and breaking finally quieted, one Nightmare pushed itself from the smoldering carcasses of the others, now a hundred times in size. Its spikes and fangs retracted deeper into its body, and the creature moved around harmlessly once again, oblivious to our presence.

  “I know they’re monsters…but…they don’t…it…” Soise shivered. “This is disgusting.”

  “Agreed,” I muttered. “Move very carefully.”

  We slipped away from the large blob, working toward the now-empty halls of broken concrete and wood.

  Above us, the ceiling let out a groan.

  “Why’s this place falling apart?” I asked. “Xoiae enchanted everything, didn’t she?”

  “Maybe she was weaker back then?” Soise stepped over a fatter blob which had fallen asleep in the middle of the hallway. “Maybe the enchantment’s too old?”

  “Or maybe there’s something strong enough to oppose her will,” I stated.

  Soise didn’t have an answer.

  We reached a massive stream of students, pouring from the main buildings into the streets. A pair stood off to the side, squabbling with one another while Grey held Screech at a distance.

  Toya and Catania stopped dead in their tracks the moment they spotted us.

  “What took you so long?” Toya grumbled.

  I shrugged. “We took a shortcut,”

  Grey plucked one of the little blobs away from screech, sticking it back to the wall. “What are these?” She asked, pointing for emphasis.

  “Nightmares,” I said. “They get stronger if you fear them, but if you don’t then they’re not much of a problem.”

  “Grey knows,” Grey said. “What are these?”

  She continued pointing, so I looked closer.

  Everything seemed normal.

  Except…

  I squinted.

  Actually, there was a faint distortion in the air slightly above the spider, reeking of slightly more malicious energy than the monster itself.

  Grey took a step away. “These are sick monsters.”

  “Grind?” Soise asked. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s something weird about these,” I stated. “Grey seems to think so, at least.”

  The academy shuddered.

  “Now’s not the time for discussion!” Catania huffed, grabbing us and running. Toya plucked Sip from my shoulder, huffing to himself while Soise kept both eyes on Grey and Screech.

  We burst out from the apartments to the open stone field.

  The city was covered in monsters.

  Fires enveloped massive portions of the city, illuminating the silhouettes of abstract creatures during the dead of night. The clouds above us had worsened, continuously flickering.

  Everywhere, monsters and players fought. When either fell, all the monsters turned against it, tearing it and themselves to pieces in a mad frenzy of carnage. We sprinted past them, reaching the central campus.

  “Hey!” Sip shouted. “We can’t go there! That’d be suicide!”

  “What are you talking about?” Soise snapped back. “It’s the safest place in the Academy!”

  “We’re surrounded!” Sip screamed. “This whole city is going to get leveled! We need to leave! Now!”

  “And go where?!” Soise grabbed him by the shoulders. “We’re in the heart of the city, understand? That means that if monsters reach this point, they’ve already overwhelmed all the Golds and Silvers defending the area! At least we stand some kind of chance here, in our home. It’s better than just running off into the desert, hoping for the best!”

  “I agree with Sip,” Toya stated. “If the force is really that strong, this isn’t just some dungeon break. The academy is in the blast zone, if not the target itself, so it doesn’t make any sense to stay here.”

  Soise looked to Catania.

  She removed her helmet, scratching the back of her head. “Sorry Soise. The guys are right. The academy is too big and too empty.”

  “B-but,” Soise shivered. “We can’t just leave. We can’t.”

  There was another shudder, this time rattling the whole city.

  “We need to keep everyone safe,” I sighed. “The academy’s no more enchanted than the rest of the Capital. Grey! We need you to look for any signs of trouble.”

  Soise bristled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Majority rules,” I stated. “We need to go.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said. “And I’m the leader, so you have to listen to me.”

  “Why not?!” Toya hissed. “The apartments are already infested! Why would the central building get any special treatment?”

  Soise took a deep breath. “Fine! We can go somewhere else. But we need to stay in the city, okay?”

  “Agreed,” Catania grunted. “The desert is too dangerous at night, especially if we don’t fully understand who is attacking us and from where, and with what. Besides, if the Masters come back, we’ll need to stay in the city.”

  “What do you mean ‘if?” Soise asked. “They’re going to be fine.”

  Catania shrugged. “Where are we going—”

  “Bad.”

  Grey stood on a fence, pointing into the distance.

  “Grey now finds bad monsters. Grey found a bad one.”

  Toya frowned. “Grind. What’s she talking about?”

  At first, we saw only a slightly darker haze, stretching so far over the horizon that it appeared to be just another cloud.

  We almost turned away.

  Then, the Nightmare peeked through.

  One foot met the ground, sending shockwaves through the entire city. Splinters wove up fragile stone buildings, and the metal ones let out a groan in protest as their foundations twisted out of alignment.

  Several buildings fell.

  The giant took another step forward.

  {Greater Nightmare}

  [High Osmium]

  [1b Hp 240m Str 1b Res]

  [This unit has been afflicted by {Unknown Affliction}]

  // {Notice} //

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