I was standing in the middle of a destroyed hall. There were holes and cuts everywhere, but there were no corpses, only ash. Nicole had been doing that to every dead person that either me or James killed, but so far, she had avoided doing harm to anyone; only being forced to do so when she needed to. It was clear that she didn’t want to kill, regardless of how dangerous they were, so I’d been finishing off anyone she dealt with.

As for James, right after declaring his entrance, an alarm was called, and every person fit for fighting came running from every room and every floor, all gathering in the wide hall of this building near the entrance. It didn’t take long for James to start firing Holy Beams, Holy Spears, and bursting from one place to another in an instant to kill every man that showed up.

Only three people were spared, which were saved because Salrak managed to call them out before they were cut down by one of us. They were currently passed out by the entrance with the other couple of men that we knocked out before.

“Only one place left to check,” James said as he approached me, swinging the spear to one side to clean away the blood. The remaining blood on his armor, he cleared away with a pulse of Holy Light.

With a nod, I turned to look around the hall. There was still the strange magic blocker underground. “Let's find a way down.”

“Why? Just break the floor,” James said, raising his spear up in the air and gathering power to it.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to… just find the way there?” Nicole asked, but James ignored her suggestion and just pierced the floor.

The ground broke in half as he used Earth Magic to split it. Rocks and dirt flew to the side as he dug. I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea… but after a couple of minutes, he opened the way to another place, one that was illuminated with a few white lights.

“See? Easy does it,” he said and jumped into the hole.

With a forced smile, Nicole followed after him, and I did soon after. We landed with a thud. It wasn’t deep enough, so our body strength was all we needed. There wasn’t much in this hallway. It was just a path wide enough for about five people to walk side by side without problem, and tall enough for someone like Bo’guth to walk straight without his horns touching the ceiling.

“The magic barrier is that way,” James said, and started walking ahead into the direction of said magic blocker.

There wasn’t anything besides the concrete walls all around me, and after a turn to the left, we were faced with a large, circular metal door that covered the whole space.

“Is this a vault or something?” James pondered, approaching the door and tapping it a couple of times with the spear, creating a metallic sound that resounded through the hallway. “Seems fairly tough… and…” he placed his hand on the metal. “Fucking—it’s magic resistant. It’ll require a lot of Holy Magic to break this thing…”

Which wasn’t an issue for me. “Step back.”

He did as I said and moved over to stand close to Nicole. After he did so, I lifted my left hand and created a Hellfire Spear.

“If you’re going to waste your mana on it for me, then be my guest…” James said with a shrug, but I just gathered power into it.

With a swing of my arm, the spear flew straight to the middle of the vault door. It exploded, leaving behind a red fiery ball that lingered for a moment. Once it cleared, there was a wide hole in the vault door with burning edges, enough for us to walk through it without an issue.

“Well then…” James said with a low tone of voice.

Nicole smirked as she gave him a side glance. “You seem to forget that she has actual Godly powers and not just mana. It’ll break through things that normal magic might not be able to.”

“And here I thought that all of that was just nonsense…” he said with the same low tone, after which he walked to the door. “Okay then, let's see what they were hiding.”

Suddenly, a beam of golden light was fired from beyond the door. James managed to dodge it by twisting his body backwards at the last moment, while Nicole quickly dashed to the side to avoid it. I, however, didn’t move as I just lifted my left hand and blocked the beam with my hand.

It was a Holy Beam. Not too powerful as it hardly did anything to the gauntlet in my hand, but strong enough to kill any normal person or common mage. The one who did this was walking to the door from the other side; his steps creating a louder metallic sound the closer he got. He was wearing full golden armor and had a large golden sword on his shoulder. The spitting image of a Holy Knight…

“Well, well, well, I didn’t expect you invaders to be easily able to dodge a Holy Beam fired by a real Holy Knight. But I don’t think you’re going to be able to—”

Without letting the man talk, James returned a Holy Beam of his own to the man. The man was surprised as he gasped and took the beam with the sword, which forced him to be pushed back a bit as he grunted to resist the beam.

“Holy Magic…!” he said with clenched teeth, and after a moment, he managed to deflect it. “But it’s not wise to use that kind of magic against someone that has more magic power and experience with it!”

Right after that, he fired a bigger Holy Beam, one that covered the hallway completely. James covered himself up with his arms and a Holy Barrier to his front, but when the beam hit him, he was forced into the wall at the side, cracking it and making a hole where his body was sunken into.

However, the beam wasn’t stopped by that at all, as once James was pushed out of the way, it continued with the same force to us.

Nicole panicked and created a Fire Barrier, not too different from what James had done, but I didn’t want her to be struck by that, so I burst forward and jumped into the beam itself.

By empowering myself with darkness and hellfire, the beam was destroyed as I pushed myself further and further in. The man didn’t know what was going on, so he didn’t realize that I was already a step away. With the large black sword gripped in my right hand, I swung it as soon as I was in reach, and with a coat of both darkness and hellfire, I split the man in half.

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“Wha—”

Was all that he managed to let out as his body fell in two sides. The Holy Beam was, of course, stopped, leaving behind nothing more than a few golden motes of magic in the air. I looked down at the bloody mess under my feet and calmly put away the sword to my back, where it floated in place as always.

Behind me, I heard the steps from Nicole jogging over. “Are you okay?! That seemed dangerous!”

I nodded. “Yes, it was nothing more than a simple Holy spell. It wouldn’t do anything to Salrak’s power.”

Salrak laughed once he heard that. “No, no, it can still do damage to me. The difference is that you have experience using both of those powers, so you know how to handle it with this one.”

“Is that so…?” I replied.

I never considered that. I figured that His Darkness and Hellfire Power was just a natural counter to Holy Magic created from mana, or Holy Power created from the Gods themselves—at least that’s what I thought from my memories of how hard his powers hit me in the past.

As I was pondering those things, I heard the wall into which James was pushed into crack as he stepped outside of it. “God damn it. I didn’t think that there would be anyone strong enough to do this to me.”

“Oh, you’re still alive,” Nicole said, completely unconcerned. “I thought I would have to cremate you too.”

“Ha ha, really funny,” he said with a bit of spite as he removed the dust and rocks from his armor. “Let us continue then.”

I nodded and Nicole stepped to the side to point a finger at the two pieces of body that I left behind, burning them instantly with a bright white beam of fire as she’d been doing with everyone we killed.

Once the man was nothing but ashes, I turned my attention to what could be seen beyond the vault door. There was nothing of note as there was just a wall—not too different from the ones in the tunnel we came from. To the sides of this wall, there were a couple of hallways. The one to the right turned soon after to the left, meaning that it led somewhere further in, while the one on the left turned right in about the same distance, leading in the same direction as the one to the right.

There was more ahead of us, so I turned to look at both James and Nicole. “Should we split to see what’s in both of those paths?”

“I’ll go with you!” Nicole exclaimed with her hand raised in the air.

“Sure. I can handle it alone,” James said and took a step to the right path.

I shook my head, causing Nicole to stop on her tracks as she was making her way to me. “No, you two should stick together. I can handle things alone better.”

“Hey, I don’t need to be with the Fire Chicken,” James replied.

“And I don’t need to be with him either,” Nicole followed, crossing her arms.

With a sigh, I placed a hand on Nicole’s shoulder and pushed her over to James' side. “It’s for the better. Try to get along, will you?”

The two of them looked at each other for a moment, and with sighs of their own, they relented and took a step to the right path. I turned to go to the left one.

“If anything, Salrak can let us know anything important,” I said, giving a half-turn to look behind me.

“Sure… but, there’s nothing important on either path,” he said, causing us all to stop.

“What do you mean?” James asked with a slight tilt of his head.

“Once we passed through the vault door, I managed to take a look at what there was in this place, and… there’s a few concerning things, but it’s a rather simple base. There’s just empty rooms on either path, since they were just emergency bunkers in case something like this happened, but I think that the people who were supposed to be using them died at your hands upstairs,” he said, “As for further ahead, the paths connect once more to lead into somewhere… a bit strange. There’s nothing I can see in there, but the information regarding that place is a bit concerning.”

“What does that mean?” I asked with a frown.

“You’ll know once you get there. I don’t want to say something that might be wrong,” he said.

“Then we shouldn’t split,” I said and turned to join them.

They didn’t say anything in response and we just moved along to that side of the hallways. Once we turned on the corner, we saw a row of rooms, reminding me of the same kind of base that they had back in the base where they had Mirlaneth, since all of these doors were metallic and had numbers on them.

It was as we were walking past these doors that the thought that perhaps the people here were doing similar things to the last base back home crossed my mind, but Salrak didn’t say anything about it… we’ll figure that out once we reach the place that he talked about.

After a couple of minutes, we reached the end of the hallway, which turned to the left and indeed connected to the other path like Salrak said. But in this case, the road split in the middle, with one road leading up a set of stairs to our right, and the other one leading down to the left.

“Should we split here?” Nicole asked once we reached the middle as she looked up the stairs to our right and then down the ones on our left.

“What do you think, Salrak?” I asked, my eyes on the one that led down.

“Up to you,” Salrak said, “Maybe try going up first and then down.”

“Then we won’t split, again,” I said with a nod and walked up the stairs, with James and Nicole behind me.

At the top of the stairs there was only a large metal door. It didn’t have a knob or a handle, so I tried to push it, but it wouldn’t move. I decided to simply break it down with a powerful kick. The metal door deformed and flew inwards to the room beyond it, and I heard a yelp of surprise from people inside.

“W-what is the meaning of this?!” someone shouted. It was a middle aged man with a round belly, wearing white clothes, and a button up shirt that was opened in his chest, revealing the hairs on it and a golden chain with a cross hanging from it.

Next to him were a couple of young women, who looked just as terrified as he was and were wearing white clothes, similar to the ones that the man had, only that they weren’t quite as revealing as he was. They were both blonde women, and from what I could see, they weren’t hurt… in fact, they seemed to be rather well dressed as their make-up looked to be recently applied.

“Who are you?!” the man barked, but I ignored it as I tilted my head to the side.

“Who are these people?” I asked my shoulder, into the camera and microphone that Salrak used.

“They… are the ones leading this place. The older man is just an inspector from the main base who came to see how things were running here, and the women are the ones that run this base,” Salra said, “As for their crimes… The older man has a history of abusing young elven girls before disposing of them, while the women are the ones that lead sacrificial rituals for the Holy Gods by grabbing either Tenebreians or—”

Without waiting for Salrak to finish, James dashed ahead and pierced all of the people by skewering one on top of the other on his spear. The people all looked with widened eyes as they looked down on James, with blood pouring out of their mouths.

“Consider this a mercy,” he said, “Under other circumstances, it would’ve been better to do to you what you did to those people.”

The people struggled to get off the spear, but the weight of their own bodies and the ones on top of them wouldn’t allow them to do so, especially when these ones didn’t have a strong magic power to fight back against James.

There were some wailing and pained shouts from the people, and I started to feel uncomfortable about it, but when I was going to move ahead to give them a swift ending, a fire torrent from my side set their bodies ablaze. They burned for only a handful of seconds before being turned to ashes that just floated down to the ground.

James turned to look at Nicole, the spear still in the same position. “I wanted to have them suffer a while longer.”

“I just didn’t like it,” Nicole replied with a frown of her own. “They might be bad people, but that doesn’t mean that I enjoy seeing people suffering. Better to do it fast.”

“Oh well. Whatever. The important thing is that they’re dead,” James said, putting the spear on his shoulder as he looked around. “It seems like there’s nothing else of importance here.”

I also looked around the rest of the room. There was nothing besides things to be comfortable in, like the red couch that the people were using, wine bottles, food, and even things to be entertained, like a TV, and other tools that I didn’t quite understand what they were for.

“Then, I think we’re done here,” James said and walked back to the entrance of the room.

“There’s still one place left to check,” I said and looked down the stairs to another door that was far on the other side. “Let's check that and then leave.”