The Science Block was no longer a school building. It was a machine.
Bhy Khay stood in the center of the Server Room, holding the Guild Flag. The golden fabric pulsed like a heartbeat, heavy with the digital mana it had absorbed from the Stadium.
"Plant it," Elara whispered. She was leaning against a server rack, exhausted but buzzing with adrenaline.
Bhy Khay drove the pole into the metal grating of the floor.
THOOM.
A shockwave of golden light expanded outward. It passed through the walls, the windows, and the roof, wrapping the entire three-story building in a translucent, shimmering dome.
[SYSTEM ALERT: GUILD FLAG PLANTED.]
[TERRITORY CLAIMED: SCIENCE BLOCK (Tier 1).]
[BASE DURABILITY: 5000/5000]
[DEFENSE MODE: ONLINE.]
"We have a castle," Zayn said, looking at the holographic map hovering above the central console. "But it has glass windows. A Level 5 Orc can punch through glass."
"Then we upgrade the glass," Bhy Khay said, cracking his knuckles. "Tomiwa, how much ink do you have left?"
"Enough for three major sigils," Tomiwa replied, spinning a charcoal stick. "Or a hundred small traps."
"Draw a maze," Bhy Khay pointed to the main entrance on the map. "I don't want them reaching the front door. I want them walking in circles until they die."
He turned to the console. This was his favorite part of any RPG. Not the fighting. The building.
[GUILD SHOP: CONSTRUCTION]
[RESOURCES: 2000 COINS (Looted from Heist) + 500 MATERIALS]
Most players would buy "Stone Walls" or "Iron Gates." Bhy Khay looked at the code beneath the items.
[ITEM: REINFORCED STEEL DOOR]
[COST: 500 COINS]
[DEFENSE: 100]
He tapped the [EDIT] key floating in his Admin vision.
>> MODIFY: MATERIAL DENSITY.
>> ADD ATTRIBUTE: CONDUCTIVE.
>> LINK TO: MAIN GENERATOR.
"Zayn, grab the cabling from the ceiling," Bhy Khay ordered. "We aren't building a door. We're building a Tesla Coil."
[TIME REMAINING UNTIL REGIONAL RAID: 12:00:00]
The next twelve hours were a blur of construction and code.
The team worked like a single organism.
The Sniper's Nest:
Zayn took the roof. Bhy Khay didn't just give him a spot; he coded it. He modified the friction of the roof tiles to zero for anyone without the [Guild Member] tag. If a gargoyle or a rival player tried to land on the roof to flank Zayn, they would slide off immediately.
Zayn calibrated his crossbow, setting up lines of fire that covered every approach vector.
The Ink Minefield:
Tomiwa turned the lobby into a surrealist nightmare. She drew doors on solid walls and erased real doors, covering them with sketches of brick.
"If they step on this rug," she pointed to a beautiful Persian carpet she had drawn on the floor, "it turns into a pit of spikes."
"Nasty," Elara noted.
"Art is pain," Tomiwa smirked.
The Freezer:
Elara worked on the corridors. She used her ice magic to lower the ambient temperature of the hallways to near zero.
"It's a passive debuff," Bhy Khay explained as he adjusted the thermostat code. "Any enemy that enters the building gets [Hypothermia: -10% Speed]. It stacks every minute."
The Admin's Touch:
Bhy Khay was everywhere. He wasn't building structures; he was rewriting the physics of the building.
He went to the chemistry lab and overclocked the gas lines.
[TRAP: CORROSIVE CLOUD (Triggered by Motion)]
He went to the elevators and rigged the counterweights.
[TRAP: CRUSHING FALL (1000kg Impact)]
By the time the sun began to set, the Science Block looked the same from the outside. But inside, it was a death trap. A "Kill Box" designed to grind an army into XP.
[TIME REMAINING: 00:05:00]
The team gathered in the Server Room (now the Guild Core). They ate MREs looted from the supply crate—dry crackers and lukewarm water. It felt like a feast.
"It's quiet," Zayn said, cleaning his glasses.
"Too quiet," Tomiwa agreed, sketching a nervous doodle of a demon on her arm. "The campus is usually screaming by now."
"That's because the small mobs have despawned," Bhy Khay said, checking the global feed. "The System clears the memory before a big event to save processing power."
He stood up and looked at the monitors.
The sky outside wasn't dark anymore. It was turning a deep, bruised purple. The clouds were swirling into a massive vortex directly above the university.
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT]
[REGIONAL RAID: STARTING]
[WAVE 1: THE HOUNDS OF WAR]
[OBJECTIVE: PROTECT YOUR FLAGS.]
"Here we go," Bhy Khay said. "Helmets on."
HOWL.
It started as a low rumble, vibrating the glass of the windows. Then it became a roar.
From the edges of the campus, hundreds of red eyes appeared in the darkness.
[ENEMY: HELLHOUND ALPHA (Lvl 5)]
[ENEMY: HELLHOUND PACK (Lvl 3)]
"There are hundreds," Elara whispered, staring at the screen. The radar was a sea of red dots. "Bhy Khay, the durability of the base is 5000. If they all hit the walls at once..."
"They won't hit the walls," Bhy Khay said calmly. "They'll go for the bait."
He pressed a button on the console.
Outside, the massive floodlights of the Science Block—which Bhy Khay had rewired earlier—suddenly blazed to life. But they didn't shine white. They shone Red.
And in the center of the beam, projected onto the front lawn, was a massive holographic image of a Steak.
"You're kidding," Zayn deadpanned.
"They are beasts," Bhy Khay shrugged. "Beasts have high Aggro but low Intelligence. They aren't tactical. They're hungry."
ROAR.
The pack of Hellhounds, seeing the light and the taunt, abandoned their stealth. They charged. A wave of muscle and fire, sprinting straight for the main entrance of the Science Block.
"Zayn," Bhy Khay commanded. "Open the ball."
[THE ROOF]
Zayn took a breath. He adjusted for wind. He adjusted for the speed of the targets.
TWANG.
The first bolt flew. It pierced the eye of the lead Alpha Hound.
[CRITICAL HIT.]
[INSTANT KILL.]
The beast tumbled, tripping three others behind it.
"Kill zone is active!" Zayn shouted into the comms. "They're entering the lobby!"
[THE LOBBY]
The hounds burst through the glass doors. They expected flesh.
Instead, they stepped onto Tomiwa's rug.
RIIIP.
The ink dissolved. The floor vanished.
The first ten hounds fell into a pit lined with jagged, drawn spikes.
YELP. YELP.
The ones behind them tried to stop, but the momentum pushed them forward. They scrambled over their fallen kin, entering the hallway.
[THE HALLWAY]
The air was freezing. The mist Elara had created clung to their fur.
[STATUS: FROZEN (-20% Speed)]
They slowed down. Their magma-veins cooled, turning their skin brittle.
And then, they hit the Tesla Gate.
Bhy Khay watched the monitor. He saw the pack leader touch the reinforced steel door.
"Zap," Bhy Khay whispered.
CRACK-BOOM.
Blue lightning arced from the doorframe. It chained through the wet, frozen bodies of the hounds packed in the corridor.
[CHAIN LIGHTNING: 500 DAMAGE]
[COMBO: WET + ELECTRICITY = x2 DAMAGE]
The hallway lit up like a strobe light. The smell of ozone and burnt fur filled the air.
In seconds, the first wave of fifty hounds was reduced to twitching piles of ash.
[WAVE 1 COMPLETE.]
[BASE DURABILITY: 4950/5000]
"We barely took a scratch," Elara breathed, looking at the stats. "The door took 50 damage from the impact, but that's it."
"Don't celebrate," Bhy Khay's eyes were glued to the radar. "That was the tutorial wave. The System tests your DPS check first."
He pointed to the sky. The purple vortex was spinning faster.
"Now comes the mechanic check."
Something dropped from the clouds. It wasn't a monster. It was a Siege Weapon.
A massive, bone-white catapult slammed into the parking lot outside. Behind it, lumbering figures emerged from the shadows.
[ENEMY: OGRE BREAKER (Lvl 8)]
[ABILITY: SIEGE BREAKER (Bonus Damage to Walls)]
"Ogres," Zayn said, his voice tightening. "Level 8. My bolts will bounce off their skin."
"And they have artillery," Tomiwa added. "That catapult... it's loading flaming skulls."
"They're going to range us," Bhy Khay realized. "They won't enter the Kill Box. They're going to level the building from the outside."
The Ogre loaded the catapult.
"We need to go out there," Elara said, grabbing her staff.
"No," Bhy Khay stopped her. "If we leave the base, we lose our buffs. We die."
He looked at the console. He looked at the Guild Flag.
"System," Bhy Khay muttered. "How much energy is in the Core?"
[CORE ENERGY: 85%]
"Enough for one shot," Bhy Khay grinned. It was a reckless, desperate grin.
"One shot of what?" Zayn asked.
"I'm going to turn the defensive dome," Bhy Khay typed furiously into the admin panel, "into a cannon."
He overrode the safety protocols.
[WARNING: SHIELD INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.]
[MODE SWITCH: DEFENSE -> OFFENSE.]
[ABILITY: MANA DISCHARGE.]
The shimmering dome around the building began to retract. It pulled inward, sucking all the light and energy into the antenna on the roof.
The Ogres paused. They sensed the buildup.
"Aim it, Zayn!" Bhy Khay shouted. "Paint the target!"
Zayn scrambled. He pointed his crossbow—not to shoot, but to mark the catapult with his [Ballistic Seer] passive.
A green laser line from his eye locked onto the siege engine.
"TARGET LOCKED!" Zayn yelled.
"FIRE!" Bhy Khay slammed his hand on the Enter key.
ZZZZZ-KOOOM.
A beam of pure, concentrated Guild Energy shot from the roof antenna. It tore through the night sky, spiraling along Zayn's target line.
It hit the catapult and the three Ogres standing next to it.
There was no explosion. There was simply deletion.
A crater, ten meters wide, smoked in the parking lot. The Ogres were gone. The catapult was dust.
[WAVE 2 COMPLETE.]
[WARNING: BASE SHIELDS OFFLINE.]
[COOLDOWN: 10 MINUTES.]
The lights in the Science Block flickered and died. The energy discharge had blown the fuses.
"We're dark," Bhy Khay said in the silence. "And naked. No shields for ten minutes."
"And look," Tomiwa pointed to the screen, which was running on emergency battery.
The radar wasn't clear. A single, massive red dot was approaching from the south. Slowly. Heavy footsteps that shook the camera.
"It's not a mob," Elara whispered. "It's a Player."
Bhy Khay zoomed in.
Walking through the smoke of the crater, dragging a massive greatsword, was a figure clad in full plate armor that glowed with a sickly green light.
[PLAYER: VIKTOR]
[GUILD: IRON FIST]
[LEVEL: 6]
[STATUS: ENRAGED]
And he wasn't alone. Behind him were twenty Fire Mages, their hands glowing.
"He waited for us to blow our cooldown," Bhy Khay realized. "He's not stupid."
Viktor stopped in front of the unshielded glass doors of the Science Block. He looked up at the camera, his eyes burning with hate.
"KNOCK KNOCK," Viktor roared.
He raised his sword.
"BURN IT DOWN!"