Some of the soldiers reacted with visceral shock at the sudden attack against one of their own, while some had the foresight to try and find cover. Still some others immediately tried to trace the path of my attack back up to me, with different levels of results.

It didn’t really matter.

I wasn’t alone in here, after all.

At nearly the same time I took out the first soldier, a hail of other attacks rained down upon the insufficiently cautious soldiery. Arrows, thrown blades, and energy and elemental attacks from the wide variety of powerful Agents that the Nocturne Division could field. While there were only a few truly elite classers among us that could stand toe to toe with someone like General Longstripe, in general we were a cut above the rest.

It showed.

In moments, nearly a third of the Loyalist soldiers that had invaded our base had been slaughtered. Seeing such rampant death, a number of them immediately broke and tried to flee back through the doors that they had broken. We did our best to prevent them from making out, even if it was obvious that the garrison forces had to know they’d found the right warehouse.

The screams of the dying had to clue them in.

I had never stopped drawing arrows, infusing them with Grinding Crimson Sunder, and then loosing them upon the Loyalists. Arrow after arrow leapt from my borrowed bow, some finding their mark, some not. I wasn’t quite a master archer at this point, and this was the first time I was using a bow in active combat. Some of my shots hit their target, and some didn’t. Even then, not every arrow I landed was a killing blow.

But they always at least managed to wound or maim.

I coldly watched as my latest arrow neatly took off the leg of one soldier trying to flee out the door. I didn’t see what happened to him after that, as he tumbled through the shrapnel of the shattered door, screaming and bleeding.

Things couldn’t remain this way forever, though. While the general soldiery weren’t quite as powerful as we were, they did have one thing going for them that was a staple of their profession.

Discipline.

The surviving troops below us rallied together, forming a dome of shields both physical and Skill or spell-based. They huddled together under their combined defensive front, surrounded by the dead or dying, and began to try and strike back. Attacks of their own began to lash out from their position, aimed widely at all areas of the warehouse they suspected we were attacking from. Some of them were aimed correctly, forcing some of my comrades to abandon their stealthed positions and dive out of the way, but from what I could see, none of us were truly hit.

I myself had to dive out of the way of one conjured and thrown rock the size of my head as it impacted the beam I was crouched upon. Throwing out my golden hand, I conjured a Thorn Grapple that shot out and attached to the roof. I used it to swing away from the collapsing timber and land on another one. As I landed, I felt an impact on my back that caused me to stumble and nearly fall from my new vantage point. Reaching behind me, I yanked out an arrow that my still active Thorn Cloak had managed to stop in place.

I grimaced at the sight of it, but something else drew my attention before I could go back to my sniping.

Movement from the door.

Advancing into the warehouse was a large cohort of Loyalist soldiers, protected by a domed bubble shield being projected by a pair of dedicated casters. I, along with a number of other Agents immediately tried to bombard the second dome with attacks.

It didn’t work. The shield was too strong.

We couldn’t do anything to stop them before they linked up with the surviving force. Supported by the reinforcements, their shield was even stronger now.

I let out a breath at the sight of it. There was no way any of us were going to get through that now. I guess the easy part of this was over.

Now we had to get up close and personal with the Loyalists. That struck me as just fine.

I was more of a melee specialist, anyway.

Two more Agents appeared next to me on my vantage point, as I slung my bow over my shoulder. As I drew my daggers instead, I saw one of my comrades draw a long, curved blade, and the other a whip of all things. We nodded at each other.

We knew what we had to do. The people maintaining those shields had to go.

That shield…it may stop Skills, Spells and Arts. But…

It wouldn’t stop people.

This beam was almost directly overhead of the shield Loyalists, so the three of us simply stepped off the timber.

And dove, weapons first.

In the split second before we passed the membrane, I saw that we weren’t the only Agents to come to the same conclusion on the next phase of the fight. A number of the others dove out of the shadows in lunging blows to crash into the defending Loyalists. I actually saw Jangle and Sylvia working in tandem to drag or lure soldiers from the safety of the dome, using either his chain daggers or her illusions.

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But I had my own targets to worry about.

One of the casters maintaining the shield somehow thought to look up in the split second before I crashed into him, daggers poised like the jaws of a serpent. I saw his eyes widen briefly in panic, but it was too late.

My right Oninite dagger found his throat, while my left his heart. The weight of my impact drove the two of us to the floor as I used his dying body as a cushion to slide my way to a stop, right in the middle of the Loyalist forces. Instantly, I activated Sylvan Vigor at full strength, and sprang upwards using my hands, ripping my daggers from the corpse of the caster as I did so in a spray of blood. Good thing I did, because I saw several Loyalist blades sink into the body of the caster I’d just assassinated below me, right where I’d just been.

If he hadn’t been dead before, he sure as hell was now.

I saw that one of the other Agents that had dove with me had been successful in taking out the other dedicated shield specialist, but not the other. She’d sawed his head straight off with her serrated whip, but the other Agent hadn’t been so lucky. Unfortunately, in the same freeze frame I saw the whip Agent, I saw the other Agent skewered on the end of several Loyalist blades.

He might have been our first casualty in this fight. Not…unexpected, from how risky this maneuver had been. But a loss, nonetheless

I grimaced, but threw out a hand and cast another Thorn Grapple blindly overhead to get me out of this mess.

I’d done my job.

I just barely missed getting skewered by a questing Loyalist spear, but didn’t manage to escape the blade completely. I felt it carve a bloody line along my left calf as I rapidly ascended away from the Loyalist position. Thankfully, I didn’t feel the pain too badly in the depths of my battle trance.

With the shield weakened and flickering from losing the main casters maintaining it, the barrage from those Agents still in firing positions resumed. It rapidly began to weaken from our attacks, flickering in the dim light of the warehouse.

We didn’t get to enjoy our gambit for long.

The right most wall of the warehouse exploded inwards, sending debris flying across the length and breadth of our besieged base. I nearly fell off my vantage point with how the entire building shook from the blow. Below me, I saw huge chunks of masonry and timber shoot across the space underneath, skipping along both the floor and the flickering dome of the Loyalist soldiers. My breath caught in my throat when I saw one of the Agents who had descended into the melee get skewered by a jagged length of support beam, soaring across the hall to get pinned to the far wall.

The fighting paused for a moment, as everyone directed their eyes to the newest breech in the warehouse.

Striding through the smoke and debris cloud was the person we were all fearing to see.

General Atticus Longstripe.

The man had his massive flanged mace hoisted over one of his shoulders, as he surveilled the battlefield in an instant with a scowl under his massive mustache. After a moment of silence as the battlefield held its collective breath from the weight of his presence, the huge man abruptly thrust his weapon into the air. “NO QUARTER!” He bellowed, his voice echoing to all corners of the warehouse. “DEATH TO ALL COWARDS!”

The Loyalist forces cheered, emboldened by the sight of their leader. But more importantly, they were immediately reinforced by a massive force that streamed in from the hole he had created, flooding the battlefield. These new forces began to take wild shots at every space of the warehouse they could see, filling it with holes in the walls and ceilings. More than a few support beams and struts were taken out by these both the attacks of the new arrivals, and the inspired forces we’d already been fighting.

The warehouse began to creak ominously.

It wasn’t safe to stay up here anymore. It wasn’t safe to hide anywhere in here.

Unfortunately, that meant the time for stealth was over. It was time to join in with my comrades on the floor, locked in a pitched melee.

I dove over the side of the beam, extending both of my daggers at once into their short spear forms. As I did so, I activated The Scintillant Blade on both of them.

I pinned one soldier to the ground with my left spear, while simultaneously lashing out at another with my right. The blade of my enhanced weapon cut through his gorget like a knife through butter, as I stood up and yanked my other armament from the corpse of the soldier who had broken my fall. As I did so, I got into the odd combat stance I’d patched together for just this occasion, spears held under each arm and splayed out, pointed downwards.

Time to see if this combat style was actually effective. Azarus had helped me workshop it, all the way back in Helstein, but I’d never had the opportunity to try it before now. He’d thought it was an incredibly odd thing, but said it was theoretically possible with Dexterity as high as mine.

I shook off the pang that the thought of my dwarven friend elicited deep in my rings, focusing on the battle instead.

Out of the corner of my eye, I was able to see through the masses of soldiers towards where the General had been. I wasn’t surprised to find that Serpent had made his move on the other man, and was now locked in combat with Longstripe, barraging him with relentless blows from his twin longswords. Unfortunately, the General was more than capable of keeping up with Serpent’s blinding speed, lashing out at every opportunity and blasting holes in the surrounding area with his destructive might. Serpent was able to dodge these, if only barely, but even I could tell that he was outmatched. I could only hope the senior Agent was able to pull off a miracle. I took a deep breath and readied myself.

Time to see if Azarus was right about my own dual-wielding style.

I got to work.

This style was a great deal more agile than my usual one. It involved more sweeps and twirls using both of the extended spears than a usual spear style. There were still plenty of stabs and jabs involved, but for the most part, I was creating a zone that I controlled, using the length my weapons provided.

It was turning out to be pretty effective.

Sure, more than one enemy soldier thought to try and get in close to me. After all, a weakness of using long weapons was that it was harder to deal with enemies when they got in close. And that would have worked, too, on anyone else.

Not me.

When someone tried to duck and get in up and close and personal, I just retracted the spears and used their own tactic against them. Suddenly finding two blindingly fast daggers closing in on your jugular, when only moments before they were spears, had to be a nasty shock.

Too bad.

I just re-extended my spears once I’d dealt with people who thought they were being clever.

In flashes between opponents and fending off groups of soldiers trying to dogpile me, I occasionally caught glimpses of Serpent's own fight with General Longstripe. It was during one of these flashes that I saw something that caused my stomach to drop.

With a bellowing roar of victory, Longstripe brought his massive mace down upon the head of Serpent in an unbelievably powerful blow. The head of the senior Agent exploded into a cloud of gore as his body slumped to the floor of the warehouse, dead in an instant.

I couldn’t help closing my eyes briefly in despair, as the Loyalist soldiers cheered on their leader for winning his duel. Longstripe himself brought his mace overhead once more in both hands and screamed into the air of the warehouse. “DEATH!” He howled.

We were truly doomed, then. All we could do now was stave off the inevitable before Longstripe did the same thing to all of us.

I steeled myself for a battle to the death, and readied my weapons once more.

We all had to die someday, I suppose.