It didn’t take long for Gen to reach the second floor of the building. He rushed up the stairs, dodging people running down in fear. Something had spooked them all.

He smelled what was happening before he even saw it. That stench, like rusted iron, wafted through the air and reached his nostrils, and the moment he turned the corner after climbing the last step, he saw it.

“Please, help, help, help.” One of the third-year students was lying on the floor, his arm completely missing. Not only that, but there was also a small hole, the size of a baseball, in both the ceiling and the floor.

Blood pooled on the tiled hallway floor and slowly dripped into the hole, falling to the lower levels.

Gen didn’t show even a hint of hesitation. He ran toward the student while ripping off his own uniform sleeve to tie it around the fresh stump, trying to make a tourniquet.

“SOPHIA! GET THE NURSE! CALL A FUCKIN’ AMBULANCE!” Gen howled at Sophia, who was still making her way up the stairs.

“GOT IT!” she shouted back as Gen picked the student up from the floor and tried to move him toward the nurse’s office.

That’s when everything almost went sideways. The moment he moved him, something else fell through the ceiling, piercing through the floor and the ones below, leaving a perfectly circular hole through the tiles.

Gen stopped in his tracks, looking up for a moment, feeling a chill—a very familiar one at that.

“FUCK. Not here. Not now.” The young brawler felt sweat pouring down his brow; he didn’t know how, but he always got a strange feeling in the back of his head when a Gainen was close. Maybe it was an instinct installed into him by the Medal he’d begun using.

He froze for a moment, considering the danger, but his instincts kicked into high gear, forcing his legs to move just in time, as another object fell through the ceiling and he barely avoided it while running down the stairs.

Gen rushed down the stairs in a hazardous zig-zag, bumping his shoulders against the wall, not caring about his own safety but always keeping the student out of harm’s way.

The faster he went, the more objects dropped from above, barely scraping him at times, leaving holes in the ground that reached the basement.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOIN’ ON!?” Gen exclaimed, feeling the wind behind him as each falling object left a perfectly circular hole in the steps behind him.

He leaped down the second landing, skipping the lower half, and landed in motion, avoiding the peril behind him. He ran like a man possessed through the school hallways, the echoes of each falling object mixing with the sound of his frantic steps.

“THINK, GEN! THINK!” the young brawler chastised himself. “Try to remember what the old man told you!” he continued, so frantic that his thoughts slipped out as words while he ran for his life.

“Gainen have very keen hunting instincts; they can peer into people’s heads.” Gen remembered his grandfather’s words and decided to take a gamble.

He stopped running and, at the same time, tried to clear his mind of any thoughts. Sophia would say that would be easy for Gen, considering he has nothing between his ears, but the young brawler had to put in effort to empty his mind and calm his heart.

There was a glorious moment of silence before one of the objects hit him right in the shoulder, and all the peaceful contemplation went out the window.

“FUCK! FUCK! FUUUUUCK!” he howled in pain as he went back to running. Clearly, his grandfather’s advice wasn’t as useful as he’d hoped.

“GEN! HERE!” Sophia’s voice got him from the end of the hallway, which connected the main building through a bridge towards the balcony area of the school gym.

The young brawler nodded and ran towards her, as more and more falling objects pierced the ceiling and floor behind him, leaving a trail of empty dots behind him.