As the dust slowly settled, Turin slowly regained sight of his surroundings finding himself having being launched into a nearby tree. As he regained a little bit more of his senses he felt his ears ringing like crazy, unable to hear anything besides a loud high pitch he watched on as he saw one after another of his men being shot down.

The situation felt kind of fake to him, like a dream, he could see it all happening and the pain he felt all over his body told him it was real, but it felt so distant from him, as if he was disconnected from the horror playing itself out in front of him. Almost as if he was just an onlooker to his men getting slaughtered, his mind hazy from the blow slowly starting to recover.

His mind too cloudy to process the situation in front of him or take action.

He just watched for a minute, as he sat there by the tree as his men fought back and set up more defenses to protect them from the weird turret.His earth wall having already crumbled long ago. After watching for a while in a hazed state of mind he looked down at his body and wondered about what he saw.

His leg had taken some serious damage, having taken the brunt of the explosion, luckily he had managed to activate earth armor just in time, otherwise, he was sure he wouldn’t even be able to think about his hurt leg anymore.

As soon as he saw his leg he felt another rush of energy which was probably more adrenaline surge through him. As it did he felt his mind clear up as if some sort of fog was getting removed.

During the time his mind cleared up he regained more and more of his senses. The smell of fire and burnt flesh ingraining into his nostrils, The pitch in his ears slowly disappearing and his sense of balance recovering.

As he tried to stand up he surveyed the situation, he listened to the yelling of his men and looked at the angry and scared expressions covering their faces. But at seeing that the fight hadn’t left any of them he felt his own energy and will to fight coming back.

What the fuck had he been doing? Laying down? from just a measly explosion?

He focused on using his earth armor skill and pulled the skills effect towards his damaged leg, and slowly the damaged parts of flesh got filled up with earth. Now it wouldn’t be a permanent or even good solution, but it would at least allow him to stand and walk around to finish this fight

The turret having ignored him this whole time, was just focusing on his men. The turret had a clear pattern to it, it popped up and shot a maximum of three times and then went back underground until ten seconds later it would pop out and shoot again. It would also immediately go underground if an attack was prepared to launch at it.

After seeing and realizing the pattern of the turret he got a great idea on how to neutralize it.

“MEN GET YER ASSES OVER HERE! I GOT ME A PLAN YEAH?”

As he said this he gathered his Mp for his tremor skill and aimed his arms at the turret, the turret that immediately went back underground. But instead of firing off his skill he just kept it aimed at where the turret supposedly was. He stared anxiously at the ground where the turret would pop up, just waiting for it to appear.

When the turret didn’t pop back up even after a minute had passed, a vicious smile spread across Turin's face. It seemed like his idea worked, as long as an attack was aimed at the turret it wouldn’t pop back up.

This would give time for him and his men to recover and prepare to counterattack, since whoever had set up these defenses clearly had something to protect and hide around here. Now he just had to find out what and where it was.

He knew a bit about how people thought, couldn’t be a good bandit leader without knowing how to find some good loot and putting the scare into people after all.

When his men finally got themselves together again he ordered one of his men with a more attack-focused skill to keep an attack skill ready and aimed at where the turret was. Meanwhile, he ordered a few rogues to find the nearby traps and if it was possible to disarm them.

Then he got his tracker and whoever else had suitable skills try to figure out whatever was hidden around here, he himself even helped out with this by using his tremor skill to sense if there was anything else hidden in the ground.

After another 10 minutes his men had found around 10 more land mines that could be remotely primed, so they would be able to activate and deactivate them from a distance. A clever idea if you didn’t want anyone dying to a landmine if you didn’t want them to.

He had to admit it was a good idea, if you didn’t want one small fry or underling to die to a landmine and deal an insignificant blow in the bigger picture but instead wanted to wait for the moment so you could take out the leader, which was exactly what had happened to him.

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This however also told him there was someone else besides the little girl because it wouldn’t be possible for a girl like that to set up something like this. So clearly he was dealing with more than one person, it seemed like instead of going in all angry like earlier he would need to take a slower and more cautious approach.

His mistake in handling his emotions earlier wasn’t something he intended to repeat. And even though he was incredibly angry he forced himself to calm down and keep a calm mind, he couldn’t let the anger cloud his mind and with that his judgment again.

One of his men approached him “Boss! we’ve found some sort of open space behind a wall, one of boys just used a detection skill on the rock and apparently there,s some sort of room behind a spot in the wall!”

Turin grinned at the information, seems like he was right, someone was trying to protect and hide something here. He told his men to gather up everyone and prepare for an infiltration operation.

Even before all this system stuff his men and him had already attacked and infiltrated warehouses and operations of competitors. So they weren’t newbies when it came to infiltrating an enemy building. The only difference this time was that they had what were basically superpowers.

“ALRIGHT YE LOBBERS, WE ALREADY KNOW HOW TO DO THIS YA? SO GET IN FORMATION AND DO YER JOBS!! TAKE EXTRA PRECAUTION SINCE THIS AREA HAS BEEN SNARED YE HEAR?!”

Before he would go inside though, it would be a hindrance if the turret would pop up again and attack them from behind so he left behind one of his men to stop the drone from popping up again.

He and his men got in formation and he was about to give the orders to blow up the wall when something unexpected happened. The wall started to move, first it moved back into the rock a little and then just slid into the sides opening up a doorway and showing up an empty room behind it.

He and his men stood on guard for a few seconds, but when nothing happened they relaxed and some of the men even started to laugh and talk about that whoever was hiding there they were clearly scared and were surrendering.

Turin himself even felt a bit of his anxious feelings go away at seeing that someone had just blatantly opened the door to them. He quickly reminded himself that he couldn’t let his guard down though, so he ordered his men to slowly go inside.

Even after they had started making their way inside the first room though, nothing happened. So they moved on to the second room, this room wasn’t empty though, It was filled with strange holes tiny holes inside the walls.

The rooms themselves were lit up by some sort of light embedded into the walls. Yet even in this second empty stone room nothing happened. So they just moved forwards again into the third room, this one was empty yet again.

His men had let their guards down again a long time ago, blatantly making fun of whoever they were dealing with. Saying they had given up, and that they were just too strong after all. And even Turin started to feel like that was turning to be out true. Whoever they were dealing with had only thrown a turret and some landmines at them, they had even retreated quickly after their surprise attack the night before.

Maybe he was overestimating whoever had done this, still though he kept himself calm. Even if this didn’t turn out to be some sort of strange trap he wouldn’t take the chance. And right as he was thinking this one of his men fell down to the ground.

Immediately Turin shot up from his thoughts and got in a defensive position, activating his earth armor skill and looking around for any signs of danger. All his men doing the same, even after another minute had passed though nothing happened.

So Turin focused on the man that had fallen down instead, the man in question still showing no signs of waking up, and now that he looked at him not even showing any sign of injury. Had it been a skill maybe? He ordered his archer with the tracking skill to check on the man.

But even the archer found nothing that indicated why the men fell down. Although it was confirmed the man was slowly dying right now. Turin had no idea of what was happening.

And then something happened.

First, he heard a short static sound and then he heard it, a voice coming over some sort of speaker.

“Hello raiders, im the owner of this place here and i,ll give you a chance, the turret you saw outside is just a taste of what ive prepared for you all. If you give up now i might spare your lives, if you refuse though.. well im sure you wont like it”

“WHO THE FUCK DO YE THINK YE ARE ODERIN ME ROUND?! YER JUST BLUFFIN YE AINT GOT ANYTHIN THAT CAN HANDLE US DO YE!?” Turin shouted out

“I,ll only warn you guys one more time, leave now or die, ive already shown you i can take care of you at any time, just like how i did with one of your men just now”

“IM COMIN FOR YE, AND YA BETTER BE SCARED YE HEAR?!”

Turin felt incredibly angry after hearing the calmth of the man,s voice. But he knew the man was bluffing, he must have been, whatever had happened with one of his men was just some sort of trick. And it wouldn’t work on him!

Whoever the bastard was that had just spoken to him he would be sure to keep him alive to spend some quality time with whoever he was. He couldn’t let him go easy after this after all.

Right as he finished that thought he heard a bunch of clicking sounds and noises through the walls. And then two panels in the floor in front of his group opened up and turrets rose out.

He quickly ordered his men to set up defenses and a barrier was quickly raised, right in time too as the two turrets started shooting out the bullets coated in some sort of blue energy. The bullets were left unable to penetrate their barrier though, only able to leave cracks where they hit, which regenerated as his men pumped mana into the barrier.

He and others of his men prepared attack skills and aimed at the turrets, unlike the first turret though they didn’t go back underground but just kept shooting. As he and his men launched their spells a wall of blue light appeared in between them and the turrets, their skills hitting the wall and not leaving any damage behind.

He was initially surprised that the blue wall was able to hold up against their attacks, but quickly his mind filled with thoughts about how maybe the man who had spoken to them just earlier might have really been holding back against them.

Then more of his men fell down without any visible injuries, Turin felt himself starting to panic at the situation around him, many of his men doing the same, clearly showing fear on their faces.

Even though he was extremely angry he knew when he was outmatched, they couldn’t even pass one barrier of whoever they were attacking, while their barrier was quickly weakening even fracturing in some places allowing some bullets through now and then.

So instead of fighting a losing battle here, he ordered his men to retreat. They had to get the hell out of here before they were all killed. One of his men threw up a smoke screen and Turin raised a earth wall to protect their backs from the turrets whilst they ran.

They quickly passed through the second stone room again but when they returned to the first stone room they found the exit sealed off, and a whole bunch of metal balls with guns floating in the air behind another blue wall that separated the two sides of the room.

He quickly ordered his men to a halt and told them to set up another barrier. Before his men could begin though the metal balls opened fire on them and immediately 5 of his men fell to the ground dead.

He quickly raised another earth wall. And then it happened, he felt incredibly tired all of a sudden and before he knew it he fell down to the ground. He saw the rest of his men getting slaughtered as his earth wall crumbled and even more metal balls appeared from behind his men.

And the last thought he had was that he should have just left when he was given the chance, whoever had built all this was clearly above his league. And then everything went dark for Turin.