Chapter 246: The Steel Rose and The Breach
The campus was a pitch-black labyrinth of dead ends and roaming death squads.
Lucien led the strike team through the narrow alleyways between the faculty dormitories, avoiding the main cobblestone paths entirely. His [Detection Lv. 8] swept the darkness like a radar pulse, allowing him to weave the Golden Generation through the blind spots of the Valemont patrols.
They moved in complete silence. Kael kept his golden Sovereign Aura deactivated. Bordon muffled his heavy armor with a dampening spell.
They were halfway across the campus when the night sky suddenly ignited.
A massive, blinding pillar of crimson fire erupted from the central plaza, tearing through the suffocating dark mana. The sheer heat of the blast washed over the squad from three blocks away.
Lucien held up a fist. He peered around the corner of a stone archway.
In the center of the massive academy plaza, surrounded by over fifty elite Valemont operatives, stood Instructor Samantha.
She wasn’t wearing her usual strict faculty uniform. She was clad in a reinforced combat tunic. Her Platinum-Rank aura blazed like a miniature sun. In her hands, she wielded a massive, two-handed greatsword wreathed entirely in crimson flames.
"You dare bring this filth into my Academy?!" Samantha roared.
She swung the greatsword in a wide, devastating arc. A wave of white-hot fire erupted from the blade, instantly incinerating six charging operatives before they could even raise their shields. She didn’t stop. She launched herself directly into the thickest cluster of veterans, a literal whirlwind of burning steel and unyielding fury.
"Instructor Samantha!" Kael stepped forward, his hand snapping to the hilt of his sword. "She’s completely surrounded! We have to help her!"
Lucien grabbed the back of Kael’s collar and violently yanked him back behind the wall.
"Are you completely blind, Kael?" Lucien hissed. "Look at the enemy formation."
Kael gritted his teeth, looking back at the plaza. The Valemont veterans were pouring in from every adjacent courtyard, completely abandoning their surgical strikes on the dormitories to swarm the burning Platinum-Rank threat.
"She is drawing the bulk of the vanguard," Lucien stated coldly. "She is creating a massive distraction to buy the surviving students time to hide. If you run out there, you don’t save her. You just invalidate her sacrifice and get us all killed."
Kael’s golden eyes widened. He watched his mentor take a glancing blow to the shoulder from a dark-mana crossbow bolt. Samantha didn’t even flinch. She just grabbed the operative by the throat and crushed his windpipe.
"But she can’t fight an entire army alone," Mariella whispered, tears welling in her eyes.
"Then we make sure she doesn’t have to fight them for long," Lucien said, turning his back on the plaza. "The ritual is the core. We stop it, the barrier falls. Move."
Kael gave Samantha one last, agonizing look. He swallowed his pride and followed the Executioner into the shadows.
They bypassed the main fight entirely, following the dense, suffocating concentration of corrupted mana toward the center of the campus.
They arrived at the main administrative building. Lucien didn’t bother with the upper floors. He led them straight down a heavy stone stairwell that led to the access tunnels connecting to the Academy’s Grand Underground Hall.
The air down here was impossibly thick. The dark mana was so concentrated it felt like breathing water.
Lucien stopped at the landing. His [Detection] skill spiked, screaming with red warnings.
"Formation," Lucien barked, raising the Lumeveil Enforcer.
Before Kael could even draw his sword, the shadows at the bottom of the stairs moved.
They weren’t human.
Three massive, four-legged beasts stepped into the dim light of the stairwell. They looked like grotesque crossbreeds between panthers and gargoyles, their bodies composed entirely of jagged obsidian scales and oozing dark mana.
High-ranking Demonic Beasts.
"Contact!" Bordon roared, stepping to the absolute front and slamming his tower shield down on the narrow steps.
The first beast lunged, a blur of black muscle and razor-sharp claws. It slammed headfirst into Bordon’s shield.
The kinetic impact sounded like a cannon firing. Bordon was a heavy-class knight, but the sheer brute force of the demonic beast sent him sliding backward up the stone steps, his boots sparking against the masonry.
"Hold the line!" Kael yelled, stepping around Bordon’s right flank. He ignited his Sovereign Aura, his longsword glowing brilliantly, and slashed at the beast’s exposed neck.
The blade cut deep, but the beast didn’t bleed. It oozed corrosive, black sludge that hissed as it hit Kael’s armor, instantly eating through the steel plating.
BANG. BANG.
Lucien fired twice over Bordon’s shoulder. The high-grade piercing rounds shattered the beast’s knee joints, dropping it to the stairs. Kael ruthlessly capitalized, driving his sword directly through the monster’s skull.
But two more were already charging up the narrow chokepoint.
"Elisha, suppress the left one!" Lucien shouted, manually reloading the Enforcer’s cylinder on the move.
Elisha drew her bow back. She fired three arrows in rapid succession. They struck the second beast in the shoulder, but the obsidian scales snapped the wooden shafts like twigs.
"They’re too thick!" Elisha cried out, reaching back to her quiver. Her fingers brushed empty air. "I’m out of arrows!"
"Don’t panic!" Lucien ordered. "Condense your wind mana! Fire raw kinetic bolts!"
Elisha hesitated. She pulled the empty bowstring back, forcing her raw, unstable wind mana into the shape of a jagged projectile. The chaotic energy violently cut into her own fingers, tearing her skin, but she released it anyway.
The wind-bolt slammed into the beast’s eye, blinding it.
"Bordon, brace!" Kael shouted, seeing the third beast leap completely over the second, aiming directly for the healer in the back.
Bordon turned, raising his tower shield to intercept the massive gargoyle mid-air.
The beast’s massive claws slammed into the enchanted steel.
CRACK.
The sound was deafening. Bordon’s defensive aura shattered instantly. The heavy tower shield, designed to withstand siege weaponry, violently cracked down the center and splintered into three useless pieces of scrap metal.
Bordon coughed up blood, the blunt force trauma throwing him backward into the stone wall.
"Bordon!" Mariella screamed, rushing to him and immediately casting a heavy healing spell over his crushed ribs.
The beast landed, completely bypassing the broken tank, and swiped its massive claws at Kael. Kael brought his longsword up to parry, but the weight was too much. The claws tore through his left pauldron, ripping a deep, bloody gash across his bicep and chest.
Kael grunted in agony, dropping to one knee.
The strike team was instantly falling apart. The sheer physical stat difference was too high. They were burning through their mana and stamina just to survive a few seconds.
The beast reared back on its hind legs, opening its jaw to bite Kael’s head off.
Lucien didn’t blink. He triggered his [Movement Arts Lv. 6].
He vanished from the top step, appearing instantly right beside the beast. He didn’t aim for the thick obsidian scales.
Lucien shoved the smoking barrel of the Lumeveil Enforcer directly into the beast’s open, roaring mouth.
He pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession.
The hyper-compressed bullets detonated inside the beast’s throat, completely bypassing its external armor. The back of the gargoyle’s head blew out in a shower of black sludge and bone fragments. The massive creature went entirely limp, collapsing heavily onto the stone steps next to Kael.
Lucien kicked the heavy corpse off the Golden Boy.
The stairwell fell eerily silent, save for the heavy, ragged breathing of the Golden Generation.
They looked like absolute hell. Bordon’s shield was gone, his ribs fractured. Elisha’s hands were bleeding heavily from forcing the wind-mana constructs. Kael was gripping his bleeding chest, his golden armor shattered. Mariella was completely drained, leaning heavily on her staff.
Lucien checked his revolver. He had exactly twelve specialized piercing rounds left.
"Get up," Lucien commanded, his voice devoid of any pity. "We are out of time."
Kael used his sword to drag himself to his feet. He didn’t complain. He just nodded, his eyes fixed on the bottom of the stairs.
They walked past the beast corpses and reached the bottom landing.
There were no more guards.
They stood before a pair of massive, twenty-foot-tall doors made of blackened iron. The doors were heavily engraved with demonic runes, glowing with a terrifying, concentrated density of dark mana.
Beyond those doors was the Grand Underground Hall.
Beyond those doors, the Chancellor was actively draining the royal bloodlines.
"Mariella, give Kael whatever mana you have left," Lucien ordered, stepping up to the massive iron doors. He placed his gloved hand against the cold, corrupted metal. "When these doors open, we execute the Chancellor immediately. No speeches."
Kael gripped his sword, his golden aura flaring weakly but stubbornly in the dark.
Lucien took a breath, and shoved the heavy doors open.
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