They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

Chapter 296: The Day Of Judgment [3]

The afternoon sun filtered through the high, arched windows of the third-floor lecture hall, casting long golden rectangles across the rows of desks.

I sat near the back, leaning back in my wooden chair. Glued right to my side, as she had been all morning, was Emma. She rested her chin in her hand, staring up at me with a soft, affectionate expression, lightly humming a sweet, quiet melody under her breath while twirling a lock of her hair.

Across the aisle, Sira was subtly fanning herself with a parchment notebook, casting exasperated glances our way, while Kyle was already resting his chin on his desk, struggling to keep his eyes open.

The doors at the front of the room swung open, and Professor Aris stepped up to the podium, unrolling a thick leather scroll.

"Settle down, everyone," Aris called out, his deep voice cutting through the ambient rustle of students adjusting their doublets. "Before we begin today’s analysis on multi-tiered magical circles, I have an official announcement regarding the upcoming field evaluation—"

BOOM!

A violent, bone-rattling tremor surged straight through the stone foundations of the building.

The lecture hall lurched hard to the left. Inkwells tumbled off desks, shattering on the flagstones, and several wooden chairs slid violently across the floor. Dust and small bits of mortar rained down from the high arched rafters above.

The entire room froze in absolute silence.

"What in the world...?" Professor Aris stumbled, catching himself against the heavy podium. The calm, authoritative demeanor he usually wore vanished instantly, replaced by sheer shock.

Panic instantly flared among the noble students, a loud chorus of worried murmurs rising like a swarm of bees.

"Silence! All of you, remain in your seats and stay calm!" Aris ordered, his hand resting on the hilt of his shortsword. "It was likely just a containment misfire in the lower alchemy wards. I will go check the main balcony. Do not leave this room!"

He hurried out the double doors, slamming them shut behind him.

I narrowed my eyes, my body instantly shifting from relaxed to combat-ready. My hand subtly dropped toward the spatial ring on my finger. An alchemy misfire doesn’t rattle three-foot-thick stone foundations like that.

Emma shifted beside me, her lighthearted humming gone in an instant. She gripped my forearm, her eyes searching my face.

"Jin... what do you think could have happened? Did a spell array collapse?"

"I don’t—"

I cut off mid-sentence.

The air in the room suddenly plummeted by twenty degrees. A visceral, agonizing chill crept up the back of my neck, making every hair on my arms stand straight up.

This mana signature...

GROOOAAAR!

A deafening, inhuman roar erupted from directly outside, a sound so loud, so guttural, that it shattered the leaded glass windows into a million flying shards.

CRASH!

Before anyone could even scream, the entire back wall of the lecture hall disintegrated inward. Massive boulders of masonry, iron beams, and exploding mortar spewed into the room like cannon shot.

"Get down!" I yelled.

Emma moved with instantaneous instinct.

She didn’t hesitate for a single microsecond. She leaped off her chair, thrusting both palms toward the ceiling as her mana erupted in a blinding, golden flash.

A brilliant, translucent dome of solid golden light expanded from her hands in a heartbeat, snapping shut right over our section of the room.

BANG! BANG! THUD!

Massive, three-hundred-pound stone blocks smashed brutally against the outer curve of her glowing shield, dissolving into dust against the barrier.

A few stray pebbles and shards of wood managed to whistle past the edge of the dome just before it fully sealed, inflicting minor cuts and scrapes across the arms and faces of a few nearby students, but the dome held firm.

The dust began to settle, revealing the total destruction of the room. The back half of the lecture hall was completely gone, opening up a massive, ragged hole straight out toward the sky.

Emma stood tall, her chest heaving slightly, her golden barrier humming with immense power as she shielded the terrified students huddling behind her.

I stepped up right beside her, my eyes locking onto the view outside and the breath completely seized in my throat.

The clear afternoon sky above the Academy had rotted into a sickening shade of bruised violet, crackling with jagged arcs of crimson lightning.

Down in the central quad, total chaos reigned. Dozens of Instructors and upperclassmen were frantically drawing their enchanted steel, forming desperate circle formations as high-tier fire and wind spells detonated across the cobblestones.

And pouring out from massive, tear-shaped rifts ripping open right in the air above the courtyard... were horned abominations clad in jagged obsidian armor, wrapped in pitch-black flames.

Demons...

They were everywhere, invading the very heart of the Academy.

Emma lowered her hands slightly, but her dome remained locked in place over us, glowing with a steady, crystalline warmth that held off the falling debris.

Coughing through the thick dust of pulverized stone, Tobias, Sira, and Kyle scrambled up the broken steps of the lecture hall toward our position, weapons drawn.

"What in the absolute hell are those things?!" Kyle yelled, his hands shaking slightly as he gripped the hilt of his broadsword. He stared out through the shattered wall at the horned figures slaughtering students in the courtyard below. "Those aren’t dungeon beasts!"

"Demons..." Tobias breathed out, his face utterly drained of color as he channeled mana into his wand. "The ancient texts weren’t legends. They’re actually here."

Sira drew two thin, silver-rimmed daggers from her belt, stepping up right beside Emma’s barrier with a sharp, iron-willed scowl. "So much for a quiet morning lecture. Look at the sky!"

Above the crumbling rooftops, the violet rifts rippled like disturbed water. High-pitched, ear-splitting screeches pierced the air, so loud and sharp they made my teeth ache.

Out from the dark tears in the sky, dozens of flying abominations, bat-like creatures with leathery obsidian wings, razor-sharp talons, and glowing yellow eyes plummeted straight toward the academy spires.

Two of the winged beasts spotted the opening in our lecture hall and snapped their wings shut, diving headfirst toward us like black arrows.

"Brace yourselves!" I shouted. "Incoming from above!"

I didn’t wait behind the light barrier. I stepped straight out from under Emma’s protective dome, my boots crunching on stone shards as I thrust my right hand forward into the open air.

[Rolling Thunder!]

Dark lightning erupted from my palm with a deafening crack. The jagged, pitch-black electric current surged forward in a roaring arc, cutting through the dusty air and slamming head-on into the two diving beasts.

The dark electricity detonated on impact, cooking their internal pathways instantly and tearing their leathery wings to shreds. The two creatures didn’t even get a chance to screech before their charred bodies crashed lifelessly onto the broken ledge, tumbling down into the courtyard below.

[Ding!]

[Level Up!]

A translucent blue system box flickered at the edge of my vision, but I didn’t get even a single second to check my updated stats.

SCREEEEEECH!

A deafening chorus of screams echoed from the clouds, so intense it shook the remaining roof tiles loose.

I looked up, my eyes narrowing in sheer disbelief. The sky hadn’t cleared, it was darkening even further. Pouring out from the five massive rifts like an unending swarm of black locusts came a horde of flying demons and winged beasts.

There weren’t dozens anymore. There were hundreds, diving straight down toward our floor.