Chapter 77: Chapter 77: Floor 10: The Disaster Beast II

Inside the academy control hall, teachers monitoring the midterm realized something had gone wrong when student signals inside City D began flashing unstable on the main display board.

The board showed two hundred green dots representing active students spread across the fallen zone. Within ten seconds, fifteen dots turned yellow. Five more turned red. Then twenty yellows appeared at once.

Several signals vanished completely.

A teacher shouted across the control room. "Emergency retrieval protocol! Activate mass extraction!"

Staff rushed between control panels while trying to activate the emergency system. Fingers moved across magical interfaces that controlled the mass teleportation array built into the academy foundation. Mana channels lit up beneath their hands as they poured energy into the retrieval network.

The array did not respond properly.

Error messages appeared across multiple screens at once. Coordinates returned corrupted. The teleportation pathways that should have locked onto student markers were finding empty space or solid objects instead of people.

Another teacher tried manual override on a secondary panel. "Spatial disruption detected in City D! Something is interfering with the array!"

The same mass teleportation array that sent two hundred students into City D six hours ago was still in cooldown from the initial deployment. The system needed twelve hours to fully reset between large-scale operations. The sudden massive spatial distortion coming from inside the fallen zone was disrupting what remained of the coordinate network.

The headmaster entered the control hall and saw the main board flashing with too many yellow and red signals. Student names that had been green minutes ago were changing colors faster than anyone could track them.

Thirty-seven yellows. Sixteen reds. Five signals completely gone.

His face hardened while watching more students disappear from the board.

A young teacher looked at him desperately. "Headmaster, the array will not stabilize! We cannot pull them out!"

"Keep trying," the headmaster said while his voice stayed controlled but carried weight underneath. "Route emergency mana from the backup reserves. Attempt individual retrievals on red-status students first."

Teachers split between different stations. Some tried to stabilize the main array manually while forcing mana through backup channels that were not designed for this kind of load. Others switched to individual retrieval protocols that targeted single students instead of mass extraction.

Each attempt failed.

Coordinates came back broken. Students marked for retrieval stayed in place or moved to wrong locations. The system returned error messages that made no sense because the spatial lock should not exist in a controlled exam zone.

Fifty yellows. Twenty-three reds. Twelve signals gone.

The headmaster watched the board change while knowing exactly what was happening. The academy’s controlled midterm exam had turned into something they could not stop, and for now the students trapped inside City D could not be pulled out safely.

The teachers kept working frantically between panels, but everyone in the control hall understood the truth. They were watching students die in real-time while being powerless to save them.

The snake lowered its head toward the gathered students inside the collapsed mall.

For one breath, nobody moved.

Then one academy team attacked first. Not because they were brave, but because panic and greed mixed together in their minds. They still thought if many teams struck at once, they could kill it and take the points.

That broke the room.

Several teams attacked at the same time. Spells flew through the air. Arrows whistled toward the snake’s scales. Blades swung at its body. Skills activated with bright flashes.

Most attacks bounced off or left shallow cuts that closed immediately.

The snake did not retreat or flinch.

Its tail lashed out faster than something that size should move.

Three students were smashed into the wall at once. Their bodies hit hard enough to crack stone. They dropped without moving while blood spread across broken tiles.

The entire mall went silent for half a second.

Then the panic started.

Students broke formation while scrambling away from the snake’s reach. Some screamed for emergency teleportation that would not come. Others ran toward exits they could not reach. Some kept attacking because they were too scared to stop.

The snake opened its mouth and lunged into the crowd.

It swallowed several students in one motion while fangs closed around bodies.

The exam had become a slaughter.

The snake moved through the central hall with terrifying speed for something so large.

It coiled around broken pillars and used the mall’s structure like cover while its body disappeared behind collapsed sections. It burst out from different angles without warning. Students could not tell where its full length was because the snake was too long and the building was too broken to see all of it at once.

A group of five students tried to run up the shattered escalator while pushing each other in panic.

The snake’s tail swept through the lower floor from behind them.

The impact sent bodies flying. A student hit a pillar face-first. Another crashed through a store window that still had glass. A third landed on broken rebar that punched through their chest. Glass and concrete debris filled the air like deadly rain.

Another group tried to force their way through a side exit when they realized the main entrance was too far. Seven students crammed toward a narrow passage between collapsed walls. One student shoved another aside to get through first because panic made people selfish. The shove made both stumble into each other.

The snake’s body slammed through the passage from the side.

The passage collapsed completely. Concrete buried some students while others were crushed between the snake’s coils and the wall. Blood sprayed across broken tiles.

Two students tried to hide behind an overturned store counter. The snake’s head came down from above through the damaged ceiling. Its jaws closed around both of them at once. Their screams cut off instantly.

The gore was ugly and frightening in a way that made it clear this was not a game or a test anymore.

Bodies hit walls hard enough to leave blood marks where they slid down. Pools of blood spread across broken tiles and mixed with the flooded water until it turned dark red. Screams echoed through the mall and then stopped when the snake found more victims. Students vanished into its mouth while their teammates watched helplessly. The floor shook every time the snake’s massive coils wrapped around pillars or crashed through walls.

A student tried to use a teleportation scroll while hiding behind debris. The scroll activated with golden light. Nothing happened. The spatial lock from the Main Story event blocked all escape methods. The snake found them three seconds later.

Another group of four students stood together and tried to fight when they realized running was not working. They cast coordinated spells that hit the snake’s scales. Fire, ice, and lightning all struck at once.

The snake’s scales absorbed the damage without visible injury. Its tail swept across the floor and sent all four students into a collapsed storefront. The building section collapsed on top of them.

The massacre continued while Team Zero moved backward toward the entrance they could not escape through.

Students were dying too fast. The academy’s controlled exam had turned into a slaughter that nobody could stop.

Team Zero did not rush in.

James immediately understood they were not prepared to fight it in the middle of a panicked crowd where they could not move properly.

He signaled his team without speaking. They moved backward toward the entrance slowly while trying not to draw the snake’s attention.

James kept his voice low and controlled. "Back away. Do not run. Do not make noise."

This was not cowardice. It was survival.

The snake was killing trained academy students in seconds, and the environment was full of panicking bodies. Fighting now would get them killed because there was no room to dodge and no way to coordinate.

Finn stayed close to the front while moving backward with careful steps.

James kept the dire wolf restrained beside him even though it growled low in its throat.

They moved backward through broken debris toward the entrance they came from while keeping their eyes on the massacre.

Then James noticed something wrong.

The entrance was still visible fifty meters behind them, but each step toward it felt heavier. The air around the opening bent slightly like heat rising above fire. The space itself was wrong.

The system appeared.

[ESCAPE RESTRICTED]

[MAIN STORY EVENT IN PROGRESS]

[DISASTER BEAST MUST BE ELIMINATED]

James stopped moving.

They could not leave.

Finn saw the notification. "We are trapped."

James did not answer because there was nothing to say. The Tower had locked them inside with the disaster beast.

The snake finished swallowing another group of students and slowly turned its head away from the remaining academy teams.

Its pale dead eyes locked onto Team Zero.

The remaining students were still screaming and running through the broken mall, but the snake’s attention shifted completely. For reasons James did not understand yet, the disaster beast now recognized Team Zero as the party connected to the Main Story event.

The pressure changed when the snake focused on them.

James recalled the dire wolf closer and prepared to resummon the ogre inside the wider central hall where it had room to move.

[CONTRACTED UNDEAD SUMMONED]

[REANIMATED OGRE — LEVEL 10]

The ogre appeared with green energy burning in its eye sockets. The impact of its weight cracked the mall floor beneath it.

Even beside the ogre, the snake looked enormous.

Finn raised his weapon while positioning himself between the snake and the rest of the team.

James moved his hand toward his sword while calculating how much mana he had left.

[HP: 660/660]

[MANA: 1,140/1,140]

The snake opened its mouth. Venom dripped onto the floor and burned through tiles while leaving smoking holes.

Then it attacked.

The snake struck before James could give another order.