Seeing a duke’s son cut down completely shocked everyone in the room, soon after a mass panic spread and people began fleeing in every direction. What they found out soon after is any meager attempt to escape was met with an unknown barrier preventing them from leaving.

“Start with the one’s on the top of the list, but make sure to cut any down in your way, Alpha 2 won’t accept failure.” The one who yelled this was the same burly man from earlier preparing the plan.

Only a handful of people in the room had ever been exposed to blood in the first place, so the reaction time and mindset of the children resulted in many more deaths than what should be happening. The only people who maintained a somewhat level head were the teens at the table with Solstice, but even then, they couldn’t calm anyone down enough to properly defend themselves.

“Mom where are yo-” A kid who was near Solstice was cleaved in half before he could finish sentence. All Solstice saw was a slender man with a black mask and uniform looking at him with a bloodthirsty grin.

“You're the runt at the top of the list, I bet I'll get a bonus for killing ya, shame you're too talented for your own good.” The man took his sword and attempted to bisect Solstice but was met with his forearms. Solstice being half dragon made him much more durable than anyone else here, he pushed the sword off and brought his great sword out of his storage ring and began to fight with the assailant.

Meanwhile Luna and the rest were attempting to grab kids and form some sort of defense against the attackers.

“Rina, take these two over there while I try to gather more people!” Luna was trying to save as many elves and humans as possible and the only person she personally knew was Rina, Ivis had his own operation going with Hugo while Lily was hiding behind her brother.

Out of nowhere a man attempted to slice Luna but she barely dodged in time only to get a small cut on her bicep.

The man kept swinging at her, not giving her any time to breathe until finally Luna tripped on a dead body and landed in a pool of blood. As he went to end her, a great sword flew through the air and pierced the man straight into his abdomen and killed him on the spot. Solstice ran over to help Luna but when he saw her state, he began to get angry. He had so much adrenaline going through his body currently that the huge cut on his chest and his forearms weren’t registering yet. After he helped Luna up she attempted to bandage his chest with a part of her dress, but he stopped her before dragging her somewhere away from the screaming mass of teens.

“Solstice…. Your hands are shaking, and you're bleeding badly. Please slow down and let me stop the bleeding.” Luna was trying to reason with Solstice, but nothing was getting through to him right now. Internally he was in turmoil, before today he had never killed a person before and the shock of it all was too much for him, it was finally registering with him that the earlier assailant was actually dead. He couldn’t stop his shaking hand until finally Luna pulled him back and smacked him.

“Get a hold of yourself idiot! We’re all scared here but we need to survive, it's us or them.” Luna was freaking out as well, but she knew as Princess of her people she had to attempt to do something to save them, until now Solstice had never felt that type of duty like she had, and it showed the difference in mindset.

Finally, after a few seconds the pain set in for Solstice and he realized he had cuts all over him.

“You sir are a moron. Glad she actually managed to get through to you.” Victor had been trying to coach Solstice through all of this so far, but Solstice had essentially been fighting on auto pilot and had mentally shut down. Solstice was used to Victor scolding him, but this showed how weak his mindset truly was. Demonic beasts were one thing, but people were a completely different game.

—--On the other side

“Tyrion, where the hell did the kids go!” Irian was furious that something this significant happened while his people were here. All the kids miraculously disappeared. out of nowhere.

“I'm trying to figure this out Irian, yelling isn't going to fix shit.” Tyrion was incredibly demoralized already since something so big happened under his vigil right when he tried to open up humans to other races. All he could do was try to salvage what he could and hope for the kids to be safe.

While the rest of the nobles were freaking out, Ariel was trying to break into the enclosure the kids were in.

“How long till you're ready?” Telarion had no idea what was going on, but he didn’t need to know with Ariel around.

“Around 30 minutes, when I get this open, you're going to be in there alone until I destroy it.” Whatever type of magic or artifact they used was strong enough to lock even Ariel out for a decent amount of time ensuring they could finish their mission, the best she could do was open a breach for a split second for Telarion to make his way in. Telarion just nodded and began to stretch. Irian saw how calm and collected they were and decided to try to reign in the nobles of his kingdom and prepare for whatever Ariel had planned.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

—----Back to the teens

Currently hundreds of bodies were littered across the room, most of which were killed without putting up any type of defense. All that was left was the group Solstice was with and another group led by Ivis, each group had roughly around 50 people turtled up hoping to defend against the masked men. Slowly the burly man walked forward to the two groups and gave them an ultimatum.

“Listen, I’m getting a bit bored here since nobody is putting up a fight. So, here’s how this is going to go, if you little shits just kill these six people, I'll let you all go. I’ve had enough of killing you worthless fucks.” The burly man was trying to convey confidence, but he was getting nervous over his time limit. He wanted to avoid fighting the kids on the defensive and from the earlier show of panic, he knew many of them were weak willed. Shortly after this proved true and both groups began to fight against each other.

Solstice put himself between the mob to save Luna and Rina, while Ivis and Hugo were doing the same for Lily in the other group. Solstice wasn’t willing to kill these teens his age and instead just took hit after hit from them. They were weak enough that their weapons had no effect on him except for little cuts here and there. Finally, some vines shot forward from behind and entangled a bunch of the teens attacking, not many people knew how to control any sort of mana but Luna had been wracking her mind and finally managed to materialize something out of desperation. Once the vines entangled around half the teens attacking, Luna collapsed from burning all her mana. Rina had been trying to replicate something with her magic, but it all failed, and she wasn’t of much use with a sword. All she could muster was small balls of light that could incapacitate the other teens but even then, she couldn’t make that many. Solstice finally decided to use his brute strength and fought back the crowd with the help of a few elven teens who were ardent supporters of Luna.

“You fifteen men go over there and make sure that human group completely dies, I’ll take care of this group myself. The rest of you make sure there aren’t any kids hiding anywhere, we need to inflict as much damage as possible.” Only around 50 attackers were left from the start, Solstice and Ivis had killed the most with Hugo following close behind. The only issue was that the leader of these men was A ranked and they had no way to fight against him.

“Solstice, I hate to say it but if you want to live against this guy, you’re going to have to run or sacrifice some people. It’s been around 25 minutes and we have no idea how long it’ll take for Ariel to get through here. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” Victor was being harsh but this guy in front of them had way more experience than Solstice in every category. He wielded a spear and the clothing he wore offered some protection but not much, Solstice only had casual clothes on and his great sword with him.

Solstice knew deep down that Victor was right, but he couldn’t bring himself to stoop as low as using other people’s lives to get hits in. He knew that was basically how Victor died and it surprised him that he would even bring something like this up.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I hate it as much as you do, but sometimes you can’t avoid these things in life. Would you rather these random elves die, or let Luna die? The choice is yours.” With that Victor began to start walking around and examining the situation. The only thing that Victor could do was offer his insight on the burly man and maybe with enough time be able to analyze his faults. But that’s only if they fought long enough.

With that last message from Victor, he decided to do what he could before needlessly using the other elven teens.

“You shits think you can buy some time? That’s funny as hell!” With that the burly man charged and met Solstice headfirst with his spear, it was so fast it was a blur but he managed to barely move away only suffering a cut on his ribs. Solstice knew he had no chance, so he was going to have to anticipate most of the attacks as he fought him which was something he wasn’t good at yet. He only had experience fighting mindless beasts, not people who have trained in specific styles and can’t use their intelligence to make decisions. After narrowly dodging a flurry of stabs from the man, he spun his spear around as hard as he could, Solstice attempted to block it to mitigate some damage but was sent flying into a wall and caused a huge crash.

“Now that he’s out of the way, why don’t the rest of you just lay down and die like a good long eared bastard should.” The few elven teens that had managed to survive now were ruthlessly slaughtered by the burly man, not even lasting 30 seconds before the last one was pierced through the heart. The burly man kicked the teens body off his spear and swung it to the side to clean off the blood on his spear. All that was left was Rina and Luna who were empty on mana and couldn’t move due to mana exhaustion. Mana exhaustion isn’t fatal but can cripple you for a short period of time.

“I never get tired of killing you elves, man I love my job.” As he went to piece Rina, he felt a mass flying at him quickly and dodged backwards only to see Hugo using his wind to speed himself up in time to save the girls. Ivis and Hugo had managed to defeat their group thanks to Lily using her ice and fire to make a lot of steam and give them a fighting chance.

Lily had reached the point of mana exhaustion while Ivis had only a few seconds of mana left before he would succumb to mana exhaustion also.

“Man, you shit's really are talented, imagine only having mana for a few hours and actually managing to use it somehow.

Regular people took days or possibly weeks to learn how to use mana, even simple things like augmenting your body with no attribute in your mana. Most people begin at making orbs of their mana and from there grow onto that by changing shapes or increasing the power. Infusing into your body was incredibly dangerous for beginners, lightning was incredibly good at increasing speed and reaction time but would damage your body the longer you used it, luckily Hugo could at the very least maintain a tailwind to increase his speed to make up a little bit of the difference between him and the burly man.

“Talent will never beat experience, let me show you, you arrogant brats.” With that, the burly man went on to attack Hugo with Ivis supporting him.