The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 280: THE WHITE NOISE

Chapter 275: The White Noise

​The black claw, serrated and dripping with a viscous, freezing slush, didn’t tear the roof open further. Not yet.

​It withdrew, sliding back through the jagged hole in the steel with a wet shhh-luck sound.

​In its place, a snout appeared.

​It was pale, hairless, and grotesque—a mass of wrinkled, white flesh dominated by two flaring nostrils that twitched spasmodically. There were no eyes. Where the ocular orbits should have been, there was only smooth, translucent skin stretched tight over a skull built for ramming.

​It sniffed.

​Sniff. Sniff. Huffs.

​The sound was wet and loud in the dead silence of the carriage. Vapor blasted from its nostrils, mixing with the freezing air drifting down into the cabin.

​I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I forced my lungs to lock, holding a half-breath in my chest.

​Around me, eleven students of Arcadia Academy were frozen in a tableau of terror. Leon sat halfway out of his seat, his hand hovering near the hilt of his heavy sword. Lyra had both hands clamped over her mouth, tears leaking from her eyes, freezing on her cheeks. Aiden was staring at the hole, his face a mask of paralyzed shock.

​Snow Stalker, my mind recited, the Wiki entry scrolling automatically through my thoughts. Genus: Sub-terranus. Habitat: Dead Mana Zones. Hunting Method: Echolocation and thermal sensitivity. Danger Level: B- (with mana), A+ (without mana).

​It was blind. It couldn’t see us huddled in the dark. It couldn’t see the fear on Eric’s face or the blood on Leon’s chin.

​But it could hear a heartbeat from twenty meters away.

​The snout withdrew from the hole.

​THUMP.

​A heavy footfall landed on the roof, right above the breach. Then another. The metal groaned under the shifting weight. It was pacing. Listening.

​I slowly, agonizingly slowly, raised a finger to my lips. I locked eyes with Leon, then shifted my gaze to the others. My expression was a command: Do. Not. Move.

​The creature on the roof let out a low, chittering growl—a sound like grinding stones. It was communicating, or perhaps just frustrated by the scent of prey it couldn’t pinpoint.

​The cold descending from the hole was a physical weight. It pooled on the floor, crawling up our legs. The temperature inside the carriage, already freezing, dropped another five degrees in seconds.

​I could see Eric William’s shoulders shaking. He was sitting three rows ahead of me, directly under the section of the roof where the beast was prowling. He was wrapped in his expensive, now useless, enchanted coat. His teeth were beginning to chatter.

​Click-click-click.

​The sound was faint, but in the silence, it was like a hammer striking an anvil.

​I narrowed my eyes. Control it, Eric. Don’t be the extra who dies in the opening scene.

​I moved my hand toward my belt, gripping a small, dense object—a flashbang. Useless for damage, but it created a deafening noise. If he broke, I would have to throw it to the back of the car to draw the beast away.

​Above us, the pacing stopped.

​The beast was stationary now, directly over the center of the aisle. It was waiting for a confirmation. A scuff of a boot. A whimper. The rattle of a breath.

​Time stretched. Seconds felt like hours. The only sound was the white noise of the blizzard howling outside, a muffled roar that battered the windows. But inside, the silence was absolute, a fragile glass construct waiting to shatter.

​My eyes darted to the table in the center of the aisle—the one where I had dumped the meager supplies. The tins of meat. The crackers. The metal tray.

​Eric was staring at the beast’s location on the roof. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated to pinpricks. He wasn’t looking at the table. He was backing away, sliding his boots across the carpeted floor, inch by agonized inch.

​Don’t, I willed him. Don’t move backwards.

​He didn’t look at me. He was lost in the lizard-brain instinct of flight. He shifted his weight. His hip bumped the edge of the table.

​It wasn’t a hard bump. Just a nudge.

​But the table was sleek, magi-tech polished wood. And on top of it, the stack of metal ration tins was precarious.

​One tin wobbled.

​I saw it happen in slow motion. The silver cylinder tipped, losing its center of gravity. It began to fall toward the metal tray below it.

​I couldn’t reach it. I was ten feet away.

​Clang.

​The sound was sharp, bright, and unforgivable.

​It wasn’t loud compared to the storm outside, but inside the carriage, it was a thunderclap.

​On the roof, the heavy weight shifted instantly. The slow, predatory pacing vanished.

​SCREEE—

​The metal roof above the table didn’t just buckle this time. It shredded.

​Three black claws, each the length of a short sword, drove through the steel plating like a fork stabbing into a pie crust. The beast didn’t bother with the hole it had made earlier. It made a new one, directly above the source of the noise.

​"No!" Eric screamed, the sound tearing from his throat as he scrambled backward, falling over his own feet.

​"Move!" I roared, abandoning the stealth.

​I lunged forward, not at the beast, but at the students nearest the impact zone. I grabbed Aiden by the collar and hurled him into the row of seats behind me just as the ceiling came down.

​CRUNCH.

​A massive section of the roof, rivets popping like gunfire, collapsed inward. Snow and freezing wind blasted into the carriage, instantly blinding us with a white haze.

​Through the hole, a nightmare dropped in.

​It landed on the table, crushing the wood into splinters under four hundred pounds of muscle and bone.

​The Snow Stalker was larger than the wiki had described. It was a quadruped, its body covered in pale, leathery hide that looked like frozen armor. Its limbs were disproportionately long, ending in the obsidian claws that had torn our shelter apart.

​It had no eyes, but its head whipped around, the flaring nostrils taking in the scents of fear and sweat. The ears, large and bat-like, swiveled independently.

​It let out a shriek—a high-pitched sonic blast that vibrated in our fillings.

​[System Alert: Enemy Detected.]

[Entity: Snow Stalker Alpha (Variant)]

[Level: 48]

[Physical Resistance: High]

[Magic Resistance: High]

​"It’s inside!" Lyra screamed, scrambling over the seats, her staff useless in her hands.

​The beast’s head snapped toward her voice. It coiled its hind legs, muscles bunching under the pale skin.

​"Eric, get down!" Leon shouted, charging from the rear of the car.

​But Eric was closest. He was on his back, crab-walking away, kicking at the floor. "Stay back! Don’t come near me! My father is—"

​The Stalker lunged. It was a blur of white motion.

​It didn’t bite him. It swiped.

​A backhand blow, casual and brutal.

​Eric didn’t even have time to finish his sentence. He was launched across the carriage, smashing into the reinforced glass of the window with a sickening thud. He slid down, unconscious or worse, a trail of red smearing the frost.

​The beast turned, its faceless head scanning for the next source of vibration.

​It turned toward me.

​I stood five paces away, the steel sword in my right hand. I didn’t have mana. I didn’t have [Flash Step]. I didn’t have [Aura Blade].

​I just had A-rank Strength and the knowledge of where its bones were weakest.

​"Leon, flank it!" I shouted, stepping over a piece of twisted wreckage. "Everyone else, get behind the seats!"

​The Stalker roared, revealing rows of serrated, needle-like teeth, and charged.

​The silence was over. The slaughter had begun.

(To be Continued)