Ring! Ring! Ring!

  ‘Again?’

  Lucian awoke the next day once again to a ruckus outside.

  However, he noticed something different about it this time. Instead of one of the night guards walking around the courtyards with clappers, a bell was ringing from somewhere in the academy buildings. Lucian wasn’t familiar with this situation — was something special happening today?

  He sat up from his bed, and began his usual routine — washing his face, brushing his teeth and getting dressed. However, some shouts outside of his window disturbed him from beginning this process.

  “Attack! Attack! Bloodhounds are attacking the academy!”

  Shouts and cries of help came from outside, overlapping with the bloodcurdling screams of those who were unlucky enough to encounter these bloodhounds. Lucian narrowed his eyes instantly.

  ‘This isn’t good.’

  [Alert! Danger is nearby! Recommend action: Run and hide!]

  As if on cue, his AI alerted him to the danger outside. It even sent some signals straight to his retina, with red flashing signals fading and out of his sight. His attention was instantly drawn to it.

  “Tell me everything about Bloodhounds!”

  His facial expression did not change, but his thoughts were hastened, and he quickly moved about his dorm towards his training equipment. He quickly adorned his leather armor, and tightly grasped his rusty blade, before taking a glance at the information the AI had gathered for him.

  [Bloodhounds: Average strength of 2.8, Average Agility of 2.9, Average Vitality of 2.5. Stemming from the Wolf bloodline, these bloodhounds are far more fierce than their ancestors. They travel in packs, working together to take down prey, with an Alpha wolf as their leader being the strongest of the bunch. Alpha Bloodhounds usually harbor double the stats of normal bloodhounds and require the strength of a Grand Knight to overcome.]

  Lucian’s face scrunched up into a grimace when he read the information about the bloodhounds. They were clearly not animals ordinary Apprentice Knights like him could contend with, let alone ones with barely any life and fighting experience like he had. This was clearly a dire situation the academy was in!

  But strangely, Lucian didn’t feel any pressure like any other normal student would. In fact, when he faced danger and death in his previous life, he felt anger, fear, frustration and all other myriad of emotions in his last moments. Back there, society was already near lawless, and people walked about with little worry or knowledge that their lives could end at any moment from all sorts of situations.

  In this world it was different though, things like bloodhounds, Mages and terrifyingly powerful beasts existed that left the human populace of this world trembling in fear and wondering if they could even make it through the night! The largest difference between this world and Earth was that humans were not the dominant species of this one! They were not at the top of the food chain, driving all other species into extinction.

  They were the ones at risk of extinction! Especially in desolate places like the Barren islands, where there were little to no Mages that could contend with the stronger beasts that not even the Grand Knights could deal with.

  But despite knowing all this, Lucian felt adrenaline pumping through his veins. For the first time since his younger years back on earth, he felt like a hot blooded youth again! The idea of facing danger didn’t scare him, instead it fuelled him!

  ‘So this is what people mean when they say they are truly living in the moment! Haha!’

  However, despite feeling this, Lucian wasn’t delusional. He knew these Bloodhounds weren’t something he could face head on at his level. Thankfully, the Bloodhounds happened to pick the one place where there were a sufficient amount of Official Knights to fend them off.

  But the laws of the county were strict — every Knight had to lend their aid in an emergency, regardless of whether they were a measly Apprentice Knight who couldn’t even hurt a fly if they wanted to! This was what scared the students the most, as the moment the news of the Bloodhound’s attack on the academy spread out and the alarm bells started ringing, it meant they were officially called to action whether they liked it or not.

  There was nothing they could do to avoid getting drafted, as not even Sofia, the Count’s daughter, could avoid these summons. The laws were just that strict. If anyone did attempt to avoid such an important matter, then they would be damned if they thought they could avoid strict punishment when things had calmed down!

  ‘I can’t stay in here for much longer… It’s about time I headed out and joined the fight.’ Lucian thought to himself.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  His adrenaline surged through his body but that didn’t make him an idiot. He would avoid facing off against a Bloodhound alone at all costs, as that was what could most likely lead to his death. In a situation like this, the only way he and the other students who were still Apprentice Knights could survive this situation was if they combined their strengths and formed groups to combat each Bloodhound.

  Lucian much preferred to fight alone, but in times like this, his preferences meant shit all!

  The moment he exited his door, he met the gaze of the other students who lived in the same block. They all looked at each other nervously, waiting for someone to take the lead and head outside. All were unnamed, unimportant characters in Lucian’s eyes, as not even the previous Lucian had bothered to learn any of their names.

  “Let’s go!” One of the students suddenly gained some courage and shouted aloud, effectively marking himself as the de facto leader of this makeshift group. There were five of them in total, including Lucian and the student who decided to take the lead seemed to be the strongest of the other four, which was probably the reason he stepped up. Just that little bit of extra confidence from his power allowed his ego to give him that push.

  ‘An average of 1.8 across the board, not bad.’ Lucian made a note of everyone’s stats, starting with the leader. Aside from him, everyone else averaged around 1.5-1.6 in their stats. It became clear to Lucian from scanning each of them that the criteria for passing the assessment that morning was probably to be minimum at 1.5 in each stat.

  “The Bloodhounds have breached the gates! Everyone, attack!”

  More shouts and screams could be heard as the group of five neared the exit to their dorm building, and Lucian could literally hear everyone else’s heartbeats increase in their speed as the neared closer and closer to the exit.

  ‘These guys clearly aren’t going to be reliable at all just judging from how timid they are, how annoying.’ The situation was already bad, which was clear from the fact that the students had to be drafted into the fight, and Lucian felt that fighting as apart of this timid and very clearly unprepared group would only drag him down. If it weren’t for the fact that he had no friends in the academy and he was such an outcast, he could have found much better people to group up with.

  If he was really pushing his luck, he’d have very much liked to be in Sofia’s group, and ride off her and her servant’s coattails, but that was just wishful thinking.

  *BANG*

  Suddenly, the door to their dorm was flung open from the outside, prompting many exclamations of surprise and fear from the group of students who were making their way over to it. If their heartbeats weren’t already rapid enough, this made them hit their breaking point.

  “Aaowoooooooo!”

  A long howl sounded out at that moment, echoing through the hallways and filling the entire atmosphere in that area with intense bloodlust. From outside the now opened door, more howls sounded out in synchronisation and response to the first howl.

  “A Bloodhound!” One of the students cried out in terror when the figure that had just crashed through the door, and let loose that howl, revealed itself.

  However as he cried out, a blood red shadow pounced onto him, with the impact causing him to slam his back against the wall behind him. In just a few moments, the huge, ruthless jaw of the Bloodhound ripped into the neck of the boy, tearing his arteries to shreds before severing his throat entirely. The entire time, the boy had a look of terror on his face — he hadn’t even realised what had struck him before his life was stripped away from him.

  In that one instant, the group of five were reduced to four. The other students had no time to react either, and they turned their heads to look in horror at the sight before them. Any semblance of a group structure they had just a few moments prior were completely thrown to the wind, and they scrambled to turn and run back into the dorm and quickened their pace.

  As the most calm and attentive one there, Lucian had already darted back down the hall before the Bloodhound had even pounced on the first lad and killed him. He knew how these animals operated; they targeted the weakest of a group first, and if that wasn’t an option, they targeted the most isolated. If Lucian had learned one thing from his short time in this world, it was that the most likely way to survive was to be the fastest!

  His agility wasn’t the highest of the group, so Lucian had to substitute that with reaction time; the very reason he was the first to run.

  Lucian even noticed the young boy who — just less than a minute ago had assumed the role of the leader — turned and ran in terror with tears streaming down his face. He was mumbling something too, but his voice was so broken that it was completely inaudible.

  Reading lips was a peace of cake for Lucian though, and he was 100% sure the boy was crying for his mother. But his mother couldn’t save him, as unfortunate for the young lad — the Bloodhound had decided he was its next prey to target. These hounds were ruthless, as they didn’t hunt for survival or food like most other animals did — they hunted purely for sport. Lucian frowned when noticing this, as it was bad news for him and everyone else who fled.

  They had dramatically less time to make a run for it in this scenario. It didn’t even stop for a second to dig into the body of the first boy who died before turning its attention to those fleeing.

  “NOOOOO! FATHER SAVE ME—“ The screams of the leader of the bunch scratched everyone’s ears as the Bloodhound took a pounce at his legs.

  ‘Are these future knights really this cowardly?’ Lucian had already reached the entrance to his dorm, and only looked back for a split second to glance at the situation down the hall before slamming his door shut, locking it and barricading it.

  He ran to the other side of his room before darting his gaze out the window, getting a clear look at the scene unfolding in the rest of the academy. People were dying everywhere. It became apparent that this wasn’t just an ordinary attack, and the academy was being completely and utterly overwhelmed despite having reinforcements from the students.

  ‘Just my luck! Something like this just had to happen after I reincarnate…’

  *BANG*

  *BANG*

  A loud, intense noise assaulted his ears from behind in the next moment though. Lucian didn’t even need to turn around to know what had just happened. The Bloodhound had just knocked down his door after finishing off the other four students already. His crude barricading method crumbled instantly before the power of the Bloodhound.

  ‘So much for being Knights; they couldn’t even buy me an extra few seconds.’