8th Floor of the Tower, Demon Continent, Western Area of the Demon Continent, Several days later.
After Samiel finished the mission from The Guild, he opened his Holo-Brain and searched for The Guild's terminal. All communication between mercenaries of The Guild and The Guild was carried via the Holo-Brain because it was the most efficient device for such a purpose.
After dialing some numbers and reporting the situation, he got an answer that they would be transported through a teleportation spell to a specific location in the western area of the Demon Continent, not that far from the Goldtooth City.
Long-distance teleportations may seem complicated, but for some factions like The Guild, it wasn't that really because they all aspects needed to carry such things out, be it in the form of resources, people or knowledge.
After that, they were indeed soon teleported to the place; they needed to walk their part of the journey back to the Goldtooth City on foot, though that wasn't much of a problem for neither of them, as they could enjoy some time to rest and also, the beautiful nature.
Despite the Demon Continent being called the Demon Continent, which could evoke the feeling of dread and darkness, and that the place would be a desolate wasteland without any flora or fauna, with only plants and trees, some twisted ones corrupted by the negative energy or whatever.
It couldn't get more wrong in that case. Even for Samiel, this place was weird and he was just getting sued to it, slowly but surely. Yvraine was much worse on it because the Demon Continent was absolutely disgusting piece of land for her, which she hated and abhorred with great passion. Elves generally preferred to live among nature and even their cities were one with the natural, as their entire architecture was based on such a perfect fusion.
The area where the demons generally lived was the exact opposite of what Elves preferred; for her, it was very hard to get used to it. The only positive thing was the fact that in cities, it was way better because at least they didn't look like a ruin. However, that would probably be attributed to the fact that most cities on the Demon Continent were built and overseen by powerful Demon Tribe who cared about their image.
"That mission was relatively easy if we don't count the annoying wards that were slowing down our progress... Still, those dammed monkeys were a pain in the ass to deal with..."
Samiel complained about that one because if not for the wards that were protecting the trenches, then the mission would have been completed several times faster. This was one thing that greatly slowed down their progress because he needed to spend some time destroying those wards. If not for those, he could just dump his Undead there, lay on a branch of some random tree and take a nap while his Undead would do the job for him.
Not to mention that Samiel wasn't feeling the best right now, as he emptied the majority of his Mana Reserves in a short timespan before regenerating them once more. Doing that was not the most healthy thing because it left a strain on the body if done repeatedly, which, unfortunately, Samiel did during the completion of the Mission from The Guild.
All of this happened in a relatively short time span, which resulted in mild fatigue that also resulted in his bad mood at the reminder of the journey. Nefertari was currently resting in Yvraine's arms, enjoying the pets and scratches that the Silvermoon Princess was giving her, while the Elder Wampus Cat was showing her satisfaction by purring loudly. She loved being spoiled when she was in the mood for spoiling because one could spoil a cat only if the cat wished to and gave you her blessing and approval.
"At least we are finally done with it, and after the Imp Tribe conquers the Two-Faced Monkey Island, the final invasion of the Human Continent could start and we could head towards the main battlefield. It would be much bigger fun there, not to mention all the enemies I can cut down and the slaughter that awaits us..."
It was evident that Samiel was already in his own world while Yvraine rolled her eyes as she continued hugging Nefertari and petting the cute little creature, which immensely enjoyed the affection and attention, as do most cats when they are in the right mood for it.
On a certain long empty road across the field across the plains of the Demon Continent, as they passed through the forests and grasslands of the Demon Continent, suddenly Samiel stopped and looked into the distance as he squinted his eyes at something that he saw, when he got suddenly a very bad feeling.
It was like a promotion that something would be happening right here and now, that he was getting from time to time; it was very subtle at first but gradually became stronger and stronger, and the disturbing feeling was right now, after several seconds crossing the limits of bearability.
And as they were going through the plains and forests of the Demon Continent, on a certain long empty road, across the field, suddenly Samiel stopped and looked at the distance as he squinted his eyes.
He looked in the distance for several seconds as if looking for something, or something looked at him, and instantly, he outstretched his right hand and created a huge and thick wall of ice when an energy projectile crushed into the ice wall.
"Ambush!"
Samiel shouted to Yvriane as he sensed several people approaching their location, all of them were at the Silver-Tier and relatively powerful for that. Instead of doing anything, he let them approach them as much as possible before he summoned his Undead.
It was clear that they were probably unaware of his status as Necromancer, or else they would bet everything on the long-distance attacks to take him out. However, it didn't matter because, clearly, these people were at different Levels.
Just from their Mana, Samiel could tell that they were elites among the Silver-Tier Professionals. Those who were sensitive towards Mana could grasp not only Levels from a bit Mana of Professionals but also his strength if the person was only an average, weak or was a heaven-defying genius or whatever... everything was hidden in Mana.
Just from a single look, he was able to conclude that these people were certainly not from the Human Brotherhood but probably from the Avalon Kingdom. He knew for sure that Magisterium wouldn't be stupid enough to send assassins after members of The Guild, especially if they knew their identities. And the Germinal Order couldn't care less about the happenings on the 8th Floor and the conflict between the Human Brotherhood and the Demon Tribes.
So, logically, the only ones would be the Avalon Kingdom because even though they withdraw most if not all of their support for the Human Brotherhood, Samiel still predicted that they would use some of their assassins and Black Units, meaning those which officially didn't exist to assassinate some key players on the 8th Floor.
After all, they wanted to cause as much damage to the Demons as possible. Seconds later, several more energy projectiles hit the ice walls, and while Samiel's ice wall that he created stood strong, it already started showing cracks, while the first of the assassins already confronted Yvrine and Ashimer, whom he summoned.
The fierce fight erupted as Yvraine was getting pushed back; even though she was pretty powerful and could confront peak Bronze-Tiers, against the elite Silver-Tier Professionals above Level 55 and higher, she could only defend while she left the offensive to Ashimer.
After the person who was attacking them from a distance with some kind of energy-based sniper rifle that kicked quite a punch because each shot could instantly kill even peak Bronze-Tier, meaning the weaponry belonged to the higher-end of the Magetech and only a few factions across the Cosmos have developed the magical technology to such extent.
Due to these factors, it wasn't that hard to deduce who sent these people to operate on the 8th Floor of the Tower because after all factors were taken into account, there were only so few people who would have the capability to carry out such actions against Mercenaries from The Guild or any high profile targets.
When the shots stopped, Samiel immediately conjured an ice trident and lunged at the nearest Silver-Tier assassin who dodged his attack, something which left Samiel surprised, but when he noticed the suit of armor that the assailant was wearing his surprise quickly died down, as he gets more serious in the fight.
All of them were wearing some sort of Power Armors, those things were pretty pricy and it was not easy to manufacture even one of them. Not only would one need specific equipment to manufacture them, but also very skilled people who were Magetech Engineer, Blacksmith, Runesmith and Spellcaster in one person to create a perfect Power Armor that would not fall apart after one battle.
In each grade, the most significant difference between ordinary armor and Power Armor were basically the functions.
The Power Armors were the peak of Magetech engineering combined with a peak of blacksmithing methods and runecrafting, creating a really marvelous piece of equipment. They were invented by the Magetech Civilizations that wanted to create their own version of the Artifact Armor, and thus by combining many disciplines, they created the concept of Power Armors and later even Power Weaponry.
Normally when someone was creating standard armors, they were using single metal, while in the Power Armors, the alloys of various metals and ores that had very high compatibility and complemented each other were used.
Aside from that, the Power Armors were created with not only countless defensive measures, but they also had several offensive ones, as they could increase the power of the wearer because they were called "Power Armor" and also, they contained several supportive systems.
Like the advanced life support system or artificial intelligence, which predicted the combat outcome and helped the combatant to achieve maximal combat efficiency. A Normal-Grade Power Armor was approximately x50 times more expensive than the average armor of the same Grade. This rule applied to all Grades which were created through the magetech.
Of all factions of the Cosmos, there were not many who could afford to arm their units with the Power Armors. For example, among all of them, only the Magisterium and Hall of Kadath were so rich that they could arm their entire Knight Orders with the Power Armors as their standardized equipment. And also, the Vaulbank had a whole Division of Protectors on the same standard as the Knight Orders of two hegemons.
Not even the Nesser Dynasty could afford to arm the entire Silvermoon Knight Order in this fashion, though they were working really hard on that, as that required a tremendous amount of resources to forge hundreds of them that could be worn by the Legendary Level experts, and even those for the Gold-Tiers were very deep cut into the budget.
The prices were absolutely outrageous for even single Power Armor that could be used by a Legendary Level Knight, aside from the fact that there were not many people who could create it in the first place and those who were already in service of some faction, which would be guarding these people with jealousy.
Of course, other Gates or some powerful factions could arm smaller units with the Power Armors too. So when Samiel saw the equipment that the assassins were wearing, he realized that the Avalon Kingdom really like really wanted to kill as many of the higher-ups and younger generation of the Demon Tribes on the 8th Floor, as this was a perfect opportunity for them.
They would be taking out the competition before they could have time to grow. And Samiel could wholeheartedly understand this sentiment because if he had an enemy who was at war against a third party or his own proxy, then he would do exactly the same thing which the Avalon Kingdom was doing. This was a master move because the Avalonians would get at least part of the younger generations who had the potential to reach the Legendary Level killed, and at the same time, they won't be breaching the Covenant because their assassins were only at the Silver-Tier...
Seeing the situation before them, Yvraine started using her Level 3 Ultimate Ability Metamagic and started casting really terrifying and powerful elemental spells, mainly from the Thunder Elements, as she was fusing 5th Level Spells from the Thunder Magic like nothing, boosting them to a ridiculous degree, as she released them at the heavily armored attacker.
Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for them, the second the attacker was hit by that Thunderbolt Spell, he was blasted apart, as his remains fell all around them, with his flesh melted and stuck up to the pieces of his armor.
However, this came with a price, as Yvriane almost fell knelt from overusing her Ability and Mana Exhaustion. It was clear that the toll was too heavy on her because she was not completely used to casting such a huge number of spells subsequently in a short span of time. Something that every proper Magician needed to learn and handle so that they won't be in a state of Mana Exhaustion after every fight, or worse in the middle of the fight.
Seeing this, Samiel summoned his Bronze-Tier Undeads and ordered them to surround Yvraine immediately; as his Undeads organized themselves into a defensive formation, they activated a spell array, where they shared their power with each other and acted as turtles. He knew that she was barely in the state to protect herself if there were more Silver-Tier Assassins from the Avalon Kingdom, about which Samiel was unsure of as they were sneaky as foxes.
Meanwhile, he activated his Level 4 Transcendental Ability Architect. Within several seconds he calculated several possibilities on how the battle could go and analyzed the capabilities of the attackers, all within seconds as countless calculations happened within his mind with the Architect. The moment it finished, Samiel grinned as he gripped his ice trident and slashed at the nearest attacker at full force.
Seeing the incoming attack from Samiel, the Silver-Tier assassin immediately dodged, only to find out that he was flying backward from the 3rd Level Spell, Void Strike, as Samiel used that spell together with the Metamagic Techniques Spell Penetration and Empower Spell, boosting the attacking potency of the 3rd Level Spell up to the standards of average 6th Level Spell.
[Proficiency with the Metamagic Skill - Spell Penetration has been increased by 1%.]
[Proficiency with the Metamagic Skill - Spell Penetration has been increased by 1%.]
[Proficiency with the Metamagic Skill - Empower Spell has been increased by 1%]
[Proficiency with the Metamagic Skill - Empower Spell has been increased by 1%]
During his stay with Yvraine on the 8th Floor, he learned several new Metamagic Techniques from her, with the Spell Penetration and Empower Spell being the ones he mastered to a certain degree, that he could use them in the real-time combat.
Another perk of having a Level 4 Transcendental Ability like Architect, which was greatly enhancing his learning capabilities.
Not wasting the rare window of opportunity, he instantly rushed at the Silver-Tier Professional whom he hit with the extremely powerful Void Strike, which cracked apart his Power Armor, piercing the Silver-Tier assassin with his ice trident; in a split of a second, he used the Winter Ruler to freeze insides of his enemy, that was handing on his ice trident.
Shattering the frozen corpse, he looked at the remaining four Silver-Tier assailants that were wearing the Power Armors, rushing at the nearest one with a powerful kick, strengthened by his Mana as much as possible, with the Nuclear Void Mana Control Method, he sent one of them flying, while he attacked another one with his ice trident.
At the same time, Ashimer burst out with the power, as he ferociously attacked the Silver-Tier Professional Aassasin he was fighting, while Samiel controlled his Undeads to pin down the one whom he kicked away who just now was realizing what had right now happened.
While all of this was happening, Yvraine released the Thunderbolt Spell on the last of the assassin that they were fighting after recovering some of her Mana after she drank several Mana Potions to speed up the regeneration of her Mana.
The Silver-Tier Assassin from the Avalon Kingdom was killed in the same fashion as the one from before without any resistance or means to fight back, meaning that this ambush came to an end.
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