They were far enough away for me to use identify.

  The description didn’t give much away — barely more than a warning. It felt deliberate, like the System was only offering a preview instead of real answers. Anything we managed to figure out by fighting them would be knowledge we earned.

  Mana Leech…

  I had a strong feeling I didn’t want one of those things anywhere near me.

  That led to another, more troubling thought. What if different monsters were designed to prey on different classes? Something far more dangerous to a wizard like me might be manageable for a warrior… and deadly to a rogue in a completely different way.

  I did not have time to ponder this as the creepy Leeches were moving.

  Leeches crawled and slithered along the walls and ceilings, their movements wrong in a way that made my skin crawl. They didn’t move like animals — no hesitation, no wasted motion. They flowed, bodies stretching and contracting as they clung to stone with hooked tendrils, gliding upside down as easily as across the ground.

  One peeled itself off the ceiling and dropped soundlessly to the floor. Another slid along the wall, angling to cut me off rather than rush me head-on.

  They weren’t charging.

  They were hunting.

  I moved back, my mind flipping through spells on instinct. Freeze was chosen, locking the one creeping along the side in place.

  I turned to the leech slithering straight toward me and fired Mana Slash. The first cut missed completely — too fast, too close. The second and third landed solidly, tearing into its slick flesh.

  The creature let out a sharp, glassy screech. My ears rang, and I fought the urge to clap my hands over them. The sound vibrated through my skull, unsettling in a way that had nothing to do with volume.

  Then it moved.

  Its body rippled in slow, elastic waves, flesh stretching and folding as if it had no bones at all. The glow beneath its skin pulsed erratically, sliding around the wounds instead of bleeding from them.

  It was, without question, the creepiest thing I had ever seen.

  But there was no time to dwell on that — another leech was frozen nearby, and who knew how long the spell would last

  I raised my staff and cast Arc Lash, targeting the one in front of me. Lightning snapped out, slamming into its body, then arcing sideways into the frozen leech. I hoped the chain would do more than that — hoped it would sniff out anything else hiding in the shadows before it had a chance to move.

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  The one in front of me collapsed, its glow guttering out as it went still. The leech on the side wasn’t as lucky — it lost its grip and dropped from the wall, hitting the floor in a full-body convulsion, writhing and twitching like a thing possessed.

  Closing the distance, I brought my staff down hard. The bash ended it cleanly, and without costing me a drop of mana.

  A sharp sound of pain echoed from deeper in the room. The lightning had found another target.

  I turned just in time to see a leech slithering toward me, wounded but far from slow. It moved with unsettling speed, dragging itself forward in jerky bursts. I backed away carefully, staff up, buying time as my mana began to tick back up.

  When I was almost certain that I had enough Mana, and the leech was too close for comfort, I used Mana Slash and killed it.

  I breathed a sigh of relieve… It was much more difficult than I thought it would be. The first two stages were tedious but easy. This one is pushing my limits.

  I needed to do better.

  I breathed deeply and began climbing the stairs. At the top of the stairs was another room and another door.

  I paused, heart still racing. I needed to know about the night monsters. I would’ve preferred to leave that for later, but if death meant starting over every time, then it made more sense to face them now. Better to fail on the second floor than after pushing deeper.

  With a grimace, I committed.

  “I choose current-world night-class monsters.”

  The words tasted like a bad idea the moment I said them.

  Taking a breath, I pushed the door open.

  The space beyond swallowed me whole. This room was nothing like the last — it was vast. The ceiling stretched so high I could barely make it out, lost in darkness and shadow. Stone pillars rose like the trunks of ancient trees, and the floor extended far enough that distance itself felt uncertain.

  There was no way this much space fit inside a school building.

  Obviously, the System didn’t care about things like physics or square footage. Magic, spatial folding, pocket dimensions — whatever it was, it worked. And standing there, dwarfed by the room, I had a sinking feeling that the monsters chosen for the night needed all that space for a reason.

  A familiar sound drifted down from above. The soft sad sigh that still send chills down my spine. I searched for the source of the chilling sound but found nothing. The space was so big that it echoed a lot.

  The sounds became louder — not sharper, not clearer, just more. A low, warping hum pressed in from all directions, as if the air itself was vibrating out of sync. It wasn’t a noise I could point to; it crawled under my skin, slipped into my chest.

  Breathing suddenly felt… wrong.

  Each inhale came a fraction too late, each exhale a fraction too shallow. My balance wavered, the stone floor tilting beneath my feet even though I knew it wasn’t moving. Panic threatened to rise, sharp and instinctive, my body reacting before my mind could catch up.

  The air around me distorted, rippling faintly, like heat haze in the dark. My ears popped, pressure building and releasing in uneven pulses. My chest tightened, lungs burning as if I’d been running hard — except I was standing still.

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  first Royal Road chapter of each pair. The second one won’t have pictures. If you want to see all the art together (or earlier), it’s on Patreon with the combined chapters!