Campus Under Attack

The Quarantine Safe Zone had been jointly established by the Magic Association and the Hunters' Alliance. Mage guardians stood watch there, and a great barrier shielded it — roughly three kilometers from the hill where Mo Fan now stood. Three kilometers of city streets already crawling with Demon-Beasts. He was under no illusion he could cross them alone.

*They don't have much experience, but they're still Mages. I need to evacuate to the Quarantine Safe Zone with them.*

If he ran into a single Demon-Beast, he could draw on both Lightning and Fire — he might not kill it cleanly, but it wouldn't kill him either. From where he stood, though, it was plain that the One-Eyed Demon Wolves weren't all working alone. The moment two of them cornered him at once, he'd have no answer for that.

Whatever happened, he needed to regroup with the school's students first. In a disaster of this magnitude, a single person's strength was laughably small — unless he could reach the level of Chief Instructor Zhankong.

Mo Fan moved quickly toward Tianlan Magic High School. The hill sloped down through a few winding alleyways that opened directly onto the school's side gate.

He was lucky — this part of the city hadn't yet been swept by a full-scale Demon-Beast assault. Nearby residents were either sheltering in basements or fleeing toward the safe zone barrier. The catastrophe had struck without warning; many people had barely woken from sleep before opening their eyes into a horror that didn't feel real.

All the students were on campus today. They'd been driving hard for the Magic College Entrance Examination, steeling themselves for brutal competition — and instead, a blood-soaked disaster had come for them. Students who had never laid eyes on a Demon-Beast in their lives, now surrounded by a city full of them. It was hard to imagine how they were holding together.

"Evacuate — we have to evacuate right now! It is not safe here!" Xue Musheng slammed his palm on the desk in the faculty office, trembling with fury.

Principal Zhu and the other senior administrators were nowhere to be found. Authority had fallen to Chen Weiliang, the Director of Academic Affairs — and Chen Weiliang was holding firm: keep the students inside, form a combined defensive line of teachers and students, and resist the Demon-Beast incursion from within.

Xue Musheng disagreed. Yes, their numbers were considerable — but if larger waves of Demon-Beasts arrived, the school simply would not hold. Every truly capable Mage at Tianlan Magic High School was out there fighting across Bo City. Right now, teachers and students were on their own.

"Director — Director! There's a whole pack of One-Eyed Demon Wolves coming from behind the mountain. Teacher Lan has been — been torn to pieces." Teacher Zhou delivered the news, face drained of all color.

Every teacher in the room felt something drop inside them.

These were adult Mages — and none of them had ever seen anything like this. Demon-Beasts prowled freely through the streets, attacking and tearing apart anything that moved. Even these teachers, who were Mages themselves but far from combat-ready, found their legs shaking beneath them.

"The school has no barrier! If even a few dozen Demon-Beasts hit us at once, the casualties will be catastrophic. This is a Scarlet Alert — under a Scarlet Alert, the Safety Barrier is our only hope of survival!" Xue Musheng screamed, voice cracking.

*Does spending years teaching magic drain people of all common sense?* The historical record on Scarlet Alerts was unambiguous — it told future generations in no uncertain terms: do not delude yourself into thinking you can fight Demon-Beasts outside the safe zone barrier on your own. Outside survival rates: under thirty percent.

First- and second-year students had the day off at home. The third-years had been called in to prepare for the Magic College Entrance Examination and handle final exam matters.

In hindsight, that was fortunate. Every student on campus was a third-year. They'd been through Field Expeditions, they'd seen Demon-Beasts firsthand, and they had the most solid magical foundations of any year group. Moving together — fifteen hundred students and over a hundred teachers — there was no reason they couldn't reach the safe zone barrier. It was only three kilometers from the school.

"Evacuate. All homeroom teachers, lead your own classes. Subject teachers, spread evenly across the classes. We move to the Safety Barrier as a unit." Chen Weiliang finally made the call.

Over seventeen hundred people were in this school. If outside survival rates during a Scarlet Alert were under thirty percent, staying here meant over a thousand lives lost. The number was staggering.

The teachers moved fast. They were already rushing to their classrooms, gathering students to assemble in the courtyard for the evacuation.

Less than five minutes after the order was given, a Wind Element teacher came running back looking shaken and disheveled, and told Chen Weiliang: "Another forty-odd One-Eyed Demon Wolves have just appeared in the back hills!"

"Move — move now! Tell the field instructors to hold that line at any cost. Don't let the Demon-Beasts break through into the school." The color drained from Chen Weiliang's face.

The Wind Element teacher's expression was bleak.

Fifty-odd One-Eyed Demon Wolves, and they were supposed to stall them with just the practical instructors. How was that even possible?

Xue Musheng sprinted toward the Elite Class.

The Elite Class had the strongest students — but among the regular classes, plenty couldn't complete a full spell Release. Their supposed fifteen-hundred-strong force of Mages was optimistic at best; those who could actually stand against Demon-Beasts numbered only in the hundreds. And there was every chance some would freeze entirely when the moment arrived.

Just as he was about to enter the room, Xue Musheng nearly ran headlong into a student he recognized. Relief flooded through him. "Mo Fan — what are you doing here?"

"I escaped from the Earth Sacred Spring chamber. I happened to be near the school." Mo Fan was still catching his breath. "Teacher Xue, we need to reach the Safety Barrier now — the longer we wait, the more people will die. From what the Deputy Guard Captain told me, this might not even be the worst of it."

"I agree. We're already organizing the evacuation." Xue Musheng gave a tight nod.

"Good — then let's not waste another second." Mo Fan said. "I just came down from Qishan Park. There are a lot of One-Eyed Demon Wolves in our back hills. No idea where they came from."

"Seriously? Then we need to move even faster." The alarm in Xue Musheng's face deepened.

In Mo Fan's assessment, the situation was far worse than a thousand Demon-Beasts breaching the city. From his earlier vantage point, he'd watched Demon-Beasts surfacing from seemingly nowhere — and not just One-Eyed Demon Wolves. Giant-Eyed Ape-Rats too.

Which meant basements were absolutely not safe. To a Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat, a basement was home turf — it could dig out anyone sheltering inside in minutes and swallow them whole.

"Fan-ge, you're here — thank god." Zhang Xiaohou spotted Mo Fan and looked at him the way he'd look at a long-lost family member, eyes going red. "I'm so glad to see you."

Back when they'd first encountered Demon-Beasts, more than a few students had fainted outright from sheer terror.

Now, hundreds upon hundreds of Demon-Beasts had left a trail of corpses and blood-soaked streets across the city where they'd grown up. Hardly anyone was keeping it together. More than a few girls had already dissolved into tears.

For the students, all of this had descended too suddenly, too savagely — and most of them had no idea whether their families were still alive.

Looking at his entire class drowning in fear and despair, Mo Fan found himself thinking of earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons — the natural disasters from his original world. In the face of nature's fury, human beings were small and helpless. And in the face of a Demon-Beast horde, they were no different.

**"AWROOOO—!!"**

A howl tore through the air from the basketball court below the back hill. The students near the windows turned instinctively — and recoiled in horror as a One-Eyed Demon Wolf launched itself off the slope in one fluid leap, its powerful body slamming down onto a basketball hoop.

The entire goalpost buckled and was driven straight into the ground, shattering on impact. The One-Eyed Demon Wolf's blood-red eye rose slowly, fixing on the students in the classroom with naked, ravenous hunger.

That single gaze held nothing but starvation and predatory greed. Screams erupted through the building —

"De-De-Demon — DEMON-BEAST!!!!" The student at the window — ordinarily one of the hardest-working in class — had gone the color of chalk.

Compared to the Gloom Wolf Beasts from their Field Expeditions, the One-Eyed Demon Wolf radiated a far fiercer, more murderous aura. Just meeting that eye sent a chill crawling all the way down your spine.