As soon as I hit the steel piece, it dropped to the ground in one motion, and from the opening, several golden beams of light were fired our way. I quickly reacted by creating a barrier of darkness, where the shots all hit and exploded into a golden light. They weren’t real Holy Power like the large and loud beams from before, so my barrier was able to withstand it without a problem.
However, they weren’t stopping, so there was no easy way for us to go inside if it continued like this. I also couldn’t know who was attacking us, and I didn’t want to kill someone that was being forced to do this, so I shouted, “Surrender and you shall be spared!”
The shots didn’t stop. Perhaps they couldn’t hear me due to the loud thundering that was happening, the rain all around us, my voice not being loud enough, or… they might’ve just ignored what I said, thinking that if they pressed me harder, they would be able to overwhelm me and my powers.
Having no option but to push forward, I started walking inside, moving the darkness barrier with me as their shots exploded with a higher frequency. Nicole and Super-Demon settled behind me, crouching slightly as I slowly walked deeper.
“Shit! It’s getting closer!” a man shouted from beyond the hole. “Fall back!”
I could hear a handful of steps getting away, but their attack didn’t stop at all, so I tried once more to appeal to them. “Don’t force my hand! Surrender!”
No response, but I knew that they could hear me since I could hear the voice of that man before. I was considering how I should deal with them, but from behind me, I felt the gathering of magic. With an urgent half-turn of my face, I realized that it was Super-Demon gathering his light-purple Soul Magic to his hands. “I’ll deal with these people!”
Without waiting for me to either respond or give him the opening to use his magic, he shot his beam of Soul Magic to the side of where my darkness barrier was. I reacted as fast as I could, lowering the portion of the barrier to where his beam was going to, causing a handful of golden shots to pass through, that were luckily destroyed by Super-Demon’s power.
“Aaaahhhrrggg!” someone shouted at the back of where his beam went, and the attacks on me were lessened.
“Fuck! Where are the Holy Knights?!” someone else shouted, and their attack lessened once more, to the point where I was able to retaliate in one push of my barrier.
The darkness barrier turned into a moving wall that crashed with the people who had been firing at me, and I was able to properly see where we were going.
It was a wide set of stairs that led downwards. They were made out of a metallic material, and the walls were made out of concrete with a handful of lights illuminating the place from the ceiling. The men who had been attacking us were prone on the ground, trying to recover themselves. They were all dressed with similar military uniform to the soldiers that came with us, and just from a quick sense of magic, I also knew that they weren’t Holy Knights or mages.
“Salrak?!” I quickly asked while jumping down the stairs to the platform they were standing.
“No current information about them. All of them were reported as missing children, forcefully recruited into the People’s Liberation Army years ago, but I can’t find anything about them or what they’ve done as adults,” He replied in the time I took to get to them.
As soon as I landed with a metallic clash of my pointy heels with the floor, they all turned fearfully to look up at me. Once more, I decided to extend mercy to them as I pointed the blade’s tip their way. I couldn’t know if they were good or evil, but just being forced into this conflict made me feel like I had to at least give them an opportunity.
“Surrender,” I commanded once more.
A couple of them were stunned in their spots, their hands opened and directed to a man that was apparently passed out with a couple of burn marks on his face, while another couple were about to break into a sprint down the stairs.
The last one, a man with a red and black armband that looked like he was older than everyone else, glared at me. “We’re not going to surrender to you dictatorial bunch!”
He reached for a weapon to the side of his legs, but before he could even pull it out, I swiped my left hand, creating a darkness blade that passed through his head and the heads of the people closer to him. I didn’t kill them. It was the same magic that I learned from Igladith, so after their eyes turned completely dark, they all dropped to the ground, passed out.
“Phew,” Super-Demon let out as he ran down the stairs with Nicole next to him. “I got worried for a second there that I might’ve killed someone accidentally.”
In turn, I glared at him. “You can’t just do something like that without a warning. We’ve not trained together enough to know how to properly react when you act. You could’ve hit me, killed someone by accident or even—”
“Up there!” someone shouted from further down the stairs, interrupting me and causing us to look down. A group of armed people, just like this last group, popped from a hallway that connected to these wide sets of stairs. “The enemy is already inside! And they’ve already killed a few of us! Open fire!”
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Without any other warning besides what was just shouted, they shot us at us. This time, their weapons weren’t shooting a golden beam, as nothing more than simple bullets were flying through the air to us. I wouldn’t need to even put up a barrier, since with both my body’s strength and the strength of my armor, their bullets would just bounce off.
Again, I got Salrak to explain to me who they were, but the same answer was given to me, so I just jumped down the flight of stairs to land next to them. They didn’t stop firing their weapons, even when I was standing just a couple of steps away from them, so while standing tall, once more, I demanded for their surrender.
“You can’t do anything to me. Surrender, and you will be spared,” I said as bullets bounced off of me.
One of the people, another man with a black and red armband, grunted and turned his eyes up the stairs to both Nicole and Super-Demon. He turned his weapon that way and readied himself to shoot. Super-Demon gasped in surprise and Nicole yelped, but I didn’t have to worry about it, since she created a wall of fire that stopped the bullets from getting to them.
“Well?” I asked, since it was clear that they were outmatched.
After a moment of contemplation, they lowered their weapons, but they didn’t drop them.
“We might be nothing more than cannon fodder, but you won’t be able to defeat the ones that are coming behind us,” the leading man said. “We won’t drop our weapons.”
“And we will be forced to do something if you don’t,” I said, the grip in my weapon clear in my intent to cut them down. “Surrender.”
After a moment, one of the men that was standing to my side dropped his weapon and raised his hands. “I give up.”
“What do you think you’re doing?! They’re just going to kill you if you do this!” the leader shouted, but despite his rage, the other ones standing next to him dropped their weapons as well.
“This woman is immune to our weapons… we should just wait to see who wins,” another man said and dropped to the ground with his back to a wall.
“No, you idiots! Those Knights of Leyfall, they won’t—”
The sound of many loud steps could be heard coming from the bottom of the stairs, where I could only see what appeared to be a wide hall. The man stopped talking and turned with wide eyes to look down before turning his weapon to the men that had surrendered. I quickly reacted by gripping the weapon and crushing the tube with my hand, causing the weapon to fail and crumble down.
“You don’t know what you’ve walked into. We will all pay for—”
From the bottom of the wide stairs, a ball of golden light roared as it flew up here. I launched a ball of darkness of my own, and the two crashed in the air, creating an explosion of both darkness and golden light that spread through the stairs, causing the walls to shake. I took that opportunity to knock out the man that didn’t want to surrender, and flew down the stairs, hoping to deal with whoever was down there before they could do anything to the people up here.
I passed through the mist of darkness and the golden motes in the air, and in the next moment, my blade crashed with another blade. It was a Knight’s blade, just as large as mine, and being held by someone dressed in similar armor to the Holy Knights that came with us, the only difference being that this one's armor was white instead of golden.
“Icon of Darkness!” he shouted, and from all around me, Holy Magic started being gathered.
From my quick assessment of the place, it was a tall and wide hall that had a few soldiers like the ones we faced before, as well as a few groups of those White Knights, with more pouring in from different hallways that connected to this place. I didn’t have more time to look around, as the soldiers were the first to shoot me, before the other knights pulled out their weapons from their backs. They carried swords, hammers, axes, spears, and every kind of traditional Knight weapon in their hands, all of them gathering a golden glow.
“In the name of Their golden grace, you shall die here, Icon of Darkness!” shouted the one I had crashed with, and with his shout, all the other knights shouted in turn, their weapons held high as they closed on me.
But I was just one small target, so even if they all came together to attack me, I just had to deal with the ones that surrounded me.
With a parry from the blade of the one that stood closer to me, I moved my blade to deflect the hammer of another knight that came from my left side. It exploded with both elements of darkness and golden light, and the knight was sent flying away.
From my right side, another White Knight with a large axe shouted as he swung it down on me. But it wasn’t fast enough to cut me, so I simply sidestepped and the axe passed right through where I was, cutting the ground instead.
The first Knight that I crashed with, slashed with his sword in a horizontal motion, hoping to catch me if I sidestepped again, but I just blocked with my weapon. Though, seeing me do that, another knight with a spear moved behind, hoping to stab me while I was busy with the Knight in front.
The one in the back didn’t have the opportunity to do anything to me as he was stepped on by a fiery boot, which dropped the man to the ground, before a wave of fire exploded from the boot and spread in every direction, causing the other Knights to gasp and a few of them to stop as they covered themselves.
Nicole looked confidently at me. “You’re not alone in this thing, remember?”
And right behind her, Super-Demon followed as he quickly came down the stairs, shouting as he looked at the stairs and not the people inside. “Villains! I’ve come to take you in for your—”
He stopped himself when he noticed how many people there were here, freezing in his spot.
But there was no time for stopping like that, so while the fire was still spreading, and the few knights were trying to get their bearings, I kicked the Knight that was in front of me, sending him flying back and causing him to crash with the other Knights that were behind him.
“Aren’t you going to ask them to surrender…?” Nicole asked, almost whispering as she leaned in my direction.
In response, I just shook my head. “With this many people… There's no point in saying it. We’re going to have to force them to surrender…”
The Knight that I kicked back quickly stood back up with the help of the ones around him. His helmet-covered head snapped in my direction, and after a moment, he aimed his sword my way. “Finish the Icon of Darkness!”
With a shout, the other Knights rushed once more our way, and I readied myself to deal with them. Nicole set herself ablaze with a powerful orange flame, and Super-Demon just took a fearful stance that could probably cause him to fall dead if they attacked him.
I would have to look after Super-Demon, which would mean that this wasn’t going to be an easy fight if I didn’t want to exterminate everyone, but since I was already here, I took a deep breath, and met their weapons.