“What in the name of the Great Pizna did you just say, Baron Linden?” the General shot up from her seat.
That certainly could not have been what she was expecting, Maedoc thought, joining his master on his feet, his hand flying for the laser gun on his holster.
With the signal of a sly smirk from the Anbieter’s lips, dozens of painting popped off the walls as an equal number of massive cannons burst through the holes behind them. Rhona immediately grasped the situation—there was a traitor.
“Shut off your damn kameras!” was the first thing she yelled, directed towards the media groups. As they scrambled to turn off their equipment, General Karesti grabbed Lieutenant Colonel Antelius’s wrist and pulled him to the ground with her.
“W-Wait, won’t you order everyone else to get down too?” he asked.
“If they’re strong enough, they will do it on their own. We have no need for weaklings that cannot think for themselves.” she whispered.
A frenzy of frightened Titanians scampered around the hall, making them easy targets for the motion-detecting cannons. Within 20 seconds, about half of the attendees and media were little more than dismembered limbs and guts scattered around the floor, dying the Linden house’s brown-beige floor a deep red. The Anbieter was not an exception, although he was lucky to keep an arm and leg on one side of his body. He fell to the floor, but his smile did not falter. A few of the more experienced Titanian soldiers neutralised the cannons with their own laser guns, with Rhona herself disabling two with only the flick of a wrist.
Moments later, a sea of black-masked northern soldiers jumped out of the holes that the cannons had just retracted from. Within seconds, hundreds of Black Shield soldiers were on the floor. They chopped and sliced away at the defenseless nobles and media personnel, many of whom were still alive.
“Soldiers, protect the remaining guests to the best of your ability! Push them out of the building!” Rhona yelled out her order and got back to her feet with Maedoc. Armed with little more than her pistol, this was little trouble for the General as she easily produced a level 20 Barrier that would stop any sword slices from reaching her, but only slowed down bullets, be they Utrium-based or actual Reserve manipulated into lasers. Most importantly, though, she used it to prevent blood and guts from ruining her state-of-the-art quality armor.
With her involvement, the Titanians began to gain the upper hand as she effortlessly shot down a dozen Black Shield soldiers in a matter of a minute. But still, more and more continued to emerge from the holes in the walls like a faucet that just wouldn’t stop running. With that, Rhona felt a subtle but very present murmur in her heart.
Someone of my bloodline is here, she thought.
With the distraction, her barrier flickered in and out of existence. A bullet nearly crossed through it, but she was saved when a body shifted in front of her, followed by the sight of a laser being reflected.
“General, keep your head on!” Maedoc cried as the laser deflected off of Utrium-built two daggers he crossed in front of one another.
“Right!” she agreed, with no time and frankly too much pride to offer him thanks.
Frei Squad had long since been deployed by Colonel Gerlachus to go to the aid of their fellow soldiers, quickly donning as much armor as they could from downed Titanian bodies. Sindri’s bloodlust had flowed to the brim, and he had become a berserker—a rare instance of a Titanian retaining their consciousness even though their strength had become nearly equal to that of an Abnormal. To be precise, a berserker was a Titanian innately harboring tremendous levels of strength and were not Abnormalised. The berserker state was activated by bearing witness to a violent scene.
“Round ‘em up for me, Malin!” the boy roared. Waving her hands through the air, she telekinetically forced about 30 Black Shield soldiers into a corner by sending tables and chairs at them at dangerously high speeds. Then, they were encased by pieces of the manor’s walls and pillars. From there, Sindri jumped above the cage, smashing down on it with his two fists. Before they could connect with the walls, though, the five sides had already shattered. As his feet hit the ground, Sindri saw someone prying apart the cage with their bare hands, setting everyone inside free. He didn’t care that they were about to swarm Malin—Lucia would likely come in and help as she always did.
That was because underneath a partially shattered black mask, the face of the person who had just freed his ‘comrades’ was one Sindri knew.
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“G-Glynn?” Sindri stammered. “Meinrad Glynn, is that you?”
Meinrad looked at his old acquaintance with no emotion as what was left of his mask clattered to the floor.
“Hey, Meinrad,” a Black Shield soldier said, shivering. “H-How does that freak know you?”
Silently and with no warning, Meinrad spun around and used his automatic Utrium-bullet gun on the Black Shield. Sindri then joined in and made quick work of the 30 or so Terran fighters together.
“Meinrad…?” Stefan said looking from afar, stopping as he pulled his sword out of the chest of a Titanian brigadier general after he lopped off the head of his personal bodyguard. “No, wait… he isn’t…”
“Well, there’s our traitor!” Jay cried, rushing in before a confused Stefan could be shot in the head with a Titanian laser gun. “Don’t stop, kiddo!”
A renewed anger ripped throughout Stefan’s body, creating a level 20 barrier even though it still required some effort, though nowhere near the paralysis-inducing event he faced against the Abnormal. Someone he considered something of an older brother, a guardian and a wise friend betraying him caused the Reserve in his body to be pumped harder than ever before. He smashed his way through the vanguard of soldiers that had managed to surround themselves around a group of journalists and nobles. Not even some of the Titanian Empire’s most experienced soldiers could save themselves as they were tossed around by the sheer force of his push. Not even the civilians they guarded would be safe.
They would not even have the time to get backup as they were shot down one by one by Vi’s pinpoint accurate sniper bullets while she stayed hidden below the entrances to the tunnels, changing positions often so she would not be found out. Dozens and dozens of Black Shield soldiers sacrificed themselves to provide cover for her as they continued filtering out of the tunnel entrances. These were lives she could not care about—or perhaps, was unable to care about. Most of the soldiers that jumped out of the tunnels would never come back. Valto Dalgaard and Aulis would periodically create small spaces between themselves and the holes in the walls so that anyone with minor injuries could return for treatment. However, those with severe injuries were unsavable.
Ivan Hout pushed towards a group of soldiers guarding Titanian civilians—they were on the defensive. He along with a handful of other Black Shield fighters nodded at each other and agreed to push onto the Titanians together. With guns and melee weapons ready to kill, they charged forward. Some shots were fired by either side, but those with hand-to-hand weapons continued on until a black stripe moved across their field of vision. One after another, Black Shield soldiers fell as the stripe repeatedly crossed Ivan’s field of vision. It had to be as fast as a bullet, but it was much, much larger. And then, it stopped. A fist collided into the face of a female Black Shield soldier, shattering her mask to shatter. Lucia looked at the girl she had punched like she was a bat blinded by the sun. In this miniscule pause of battle, Ivan caught on.
“Klaudia?” both Lucia and Ivan gasped, the Terran because he hadn’t known the girl to be a combatant, and the hybrid because she hadn’t expected the comrade she hadn’t seen in two years to be standing in front of her. Ivan watched in horror as Klaudia walked around him and joined Lucia’s side.
Just as Ivan believed he would be murdered by one of his own medics, both of the girls moved around him, ignoring him and ripping through many of the Black Shield soldiers who charged with him.
Stefan and Jay fought toe-to-toe with multiple Titanian general officers at the front of the hall, Stefan alternating between slicing with his swords and creating barriers and openings for Jay to get close enough and shoot them point blank. Stefan was grazed multiple times by bullets that were just a bit too fast for him defend against, but protecting who was now assumed to be the new head of the Black Shield was more important. Despite all his rage and heartache, he still strived to protect as many as he could. He’d managed to take down a brigadier general, two colonels and their three personal guards on his own, with great effort. These weren’t anything like the young squad he and Gareth had killed months earlier.
Then, through the corner of his eye, a figure much smaller than nearly all the other enemies passed by, moving as though he was invulnerable to all the chaos towards the back of the hall where the Anbieter was supposed to be laying down, dying of blood loss. Stefan turned quickly and saw a face that was all too familiar to him. There was no way his eyes could be deceiving him. In a Titanian military uniform, his older brother was walking, preparing to deliver a final blow to the downed head of the Black Shield.
“Joakim…?” he muttered in sheer disbelief. “Joakim… Joakim!”
The resolute older Laine boy, only a yard away from the dying Baron Linden, stopped as he heard the ever-so known voice, and found himself looking at his long-lost younger brother, who had removed his mask instinctually just so his brother could see his face.
"Stef?" he muttered.
“General!” Maedoc cried as he trapped a dozen Black Shield soldiers in an air-tight Level 35 barrier that filled about a third of the hall. “That… isn’t that the asset? I know that face. Your orders?”
Joakim wasn’t the only person to have recognised his face.
“Do not pursue,” Rhona calmly instructed, refilling her pistol by pricking an ungloved finger on a pin sticking away from her custom-made pistol which only collected Reserve from her own blood so that no one else could use it. Although she was gazing at the face of her stunned nephew for the first time, bigger matters were at hand. “He’s strong, and something worse is coming up. We’ll focus our energy on that.”
Her heart beat hard, and not because of anxiety. She knew another blood connection was approaching the Linden house and fast, so she unsheathed her white-and-gold helmet and put back on her gauntlet.