The Royal Army had no intention of taking prisoners. The Emperor Beasts died without understanding what had just happened. A similar scene took place in the adjacent rooms of the military compound, where one or two Emperor Beasts at most had been Warped. While the aerial scouts were rounded up and executed, dozens of mages walked out of Warp Steps at the street level. They sealed the earth and air elements, making it impossible to escape with dimensional magic, flight, or by burrowing through the ground. Lith and the other assault teams had already Warped on the scene while exploiting Princess Peonia’s dramatic entrance. The strike teams charged inside the building the moment the army mages finished setting their magical formations and examining the enemy’s. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢 Lith took point and kicked down the door, setting off the alarms and activating the emergency Warps. The former were pointless since the Knight Guard wasn’t trying to be discreet while the latter failed to tap into the world energy and shorted out. Half the guards died while still trying to call for reinforcements via their communication amulets or take their equipment out of their dimensional amulet. Not many could afford a Skinwalker armor and there was no point cluttering the place with weapons when one could always carry them on their finger. The other half of the guards died of pride. They were all mighty Emperor Beasts and thought nothing of mere humans. Empowered by fusion magic, their thick hide was sturdier than most armor and their razor-sharp claws were deadlier than any non-enchanted weapon. Or so they thought, until Lith and his Demons cut them down like ripe wheat. Even without Ragnarök, he was still a bright violet-cored Divine Beast wielding an Adamant blade. He needed but one swing of his sword to kill an Emperor Beast in human form. His seven-eyed Demons lacked his mass, but the power gap between them and blue cores with no body refining was just too wide. On top of that, all Demons had energy bodies, giving them perfect eye-hand coordination. They aimed for the enemy’s vitals with such speed and precision that the still-confused Emperor Beasts had no time to react. As for Solus, she shapeshifted the Sage Staff into a war mace. Unless an Emperor Beast succeeded in dodging her attack, they would explode in a gory firework of broken bones and gushing blood. Blocking her mace was the same as being hit by a train. To make matters worse, the dead Emperor Beasts reverted to their true form, filling the rooms with their remains and limiting the movements of their still-living comrades. Even with Hatorne’s tattoo potions further boosting their fusion magic, the Emperor Beasts facing the Knight Guards soon found themselves outnumbered and outmatched. Each room was large for humans but too small for more than one Emperor Beast to revert to their true form at a time. Panic and confusion made the beasts ignore such obvious problem and the colossal creatures ended up slamming into each other and just offering the soldiers’ spells huge fixed targets. Pressed on by their enemies and hindered by their allies the helpless Emperor Beasts fell under a barrage of unavoidable darkness spells like lambs to the slaughter. To make the work of the Knight Guard even easier, Lith and the others marked the few Awakened Emperor beasts with dazzling lights. The soldiers of the Knight Guard avoided the most dangerous enemies and let the forces of the Supreme Magus deal with them. In less than five minutes, the ground and first floors had been cleared of the enemy forces. "Casualties?" Lith asked while waiting for a full sweep of the conquered floors. "None." Trion and the other leaders of the assault teams reported one by one. "We encountered minimal resistance. Most beasts wore no armor and had no weapon. By the time they managed to band together, we had already surrounded them." "The real danger starts now." Locrias pointed at a hidden staircase in the floor that was highlighted by an array. "The advantage of surprise is lost and we have no idea what the enemy has prepared for us." "All the more reasons not to rush." Lith nodded. Mages and soldiers double-checked every room for secret compartments, hidden stashes, and magical traps. Not all elements were sealed and now that the resident Emperor Beasts were dead, their leaders might trigger eventual deadly arrays at any moment. The sweep also gave the army the opportunity to clear the rooms of the massive corpses. This way, if the assault team needed reinforcements or to evacuate rescued hostages, they would not have to navigate the current labyrinth of broken bones and spilled innards. *** Meanwhile, three floors below the ground. Thanks to the army’s Hush arrays, no sound or vibration produced by the violent fight taking place on the ground floor had reached the lower levels of the base, Yet Kugoh knew immediately that something wasn’t right. He was bargaining the price of the tattoo potions with one of his best customers when his communicator suddenly became inactive. For a moment, he thought that the client was the one under attack and pitied him. ’What a pity. The Poison Fang mercenaries were among our best customers. They guzzled potions like water. Oh, well…’ Then, the contact runes of his underlings disappeared one after the other like soap bubbles under his now truly worried gaze. While keeping an eye on the increasing free space on his communication amulet, Kugoh placed his hand on the wall behind his desk and tried to activate the Earth Molding array, just to be safe. It was supposed to reshape the affected area into a stable tunnel that would connect Kugoh’s office with the nearest ramification of Kophar’s sewers. A permanent secret tunnel would have been better, but Emperor Beasts were no engineers. Kugoh had hired one for a hypothetical job and learned that not only was the soil so porous that the price for the job would have been astronomical, but also that it would take a lot of time and employ too many people to keep the tunnel a secret. Your next journey awaits at freewebnovel Kugoh had then thanked the engineer for the consultation and locked him in the labs until the experiments had killed the poor man. The Earth Molding array failed to activate and so did Kugoh’s following attempt to open a Warp Steps. "Fuck! I’m the one under attack. Gods, why couldn’t it be the Poison Fangs?" The Emperor Beast raised the alarm while trying to find a way out. ’I can still dig with my bare paws and Spirit Magic, but that would be suicidal. This floor is way below the level of the sewers and I’ve no idea in what direction I’m supposed to move. ’On top of that, if I break the wrong rock or meet a soft spot of soil, tons of ground will fall on my head, the sewage will flood the complex, and more importantly I’ll be buried alive. ’It’s the reason that damn engineer asked more gold than I weight as a price for the job. Why did I put my office on the bottom floor, dammit?’ The answer came to him just as Shasa walked through the door.