“Who are these people?” Thomas peeked outside the window like he would in any other circumstances of defense against home invasion: “And is there a tunnel or something in this room?”

“You don’t need to do that, they can’t see us through the windows.” Garret Peyton twirled his scepter and said: “This safe house is protected by sight obscuration spells and various other arrays. So no one can see what’s inside from outside without using invasive detection spells like Piercing Vision or Dragon’s Eye.”

“Can these weapons hurt them?” Aimee checked on her rifle: “I know it’s from the Division, but how powerful are they really?”

“They’re powerful enough to penetrate MOST passive defensive artifacts.” Garret Peyton answered: “I wouldn’t wanna take a hit from it.”

“And I’ll ask again, is there a tunnel we can use to escape without having to engage them? ” Thomas asked: “Or better yet, a portal or something.”

“These safe houses are relatively old and they don’t have any of those.” Garret Peyton shook his head: “We’ll have to wait for rescue, at least they don’t know for sure we’re in here yet. Let me call Ms. Wong and some others for backup.”

Just this moment, a light green energy arrow descended from the sky and went into the safe house they were in without even triggering the protective array. The light green energy arrow stopped and floated in midair at shoulder height once it reached the inside. Inside the energy arrow was a plastic bag, inside which were a couple of wooden cards with relief sculptures of animals and insects on them.

“Timing couldn’t be worse, Rash.” Caroline huffed and squeezed the bridge of her nose: “You think they saw it?”

The people who just deboarded the disc shaped spaceship had their eyes fixated on this particular safe house and they started rushing towards it in an enclosing formation.

“Holy fuck. What should we do?” Thomas clenched the handle to his enchanted rifle, and he just checked his other weapons and tactical gear again: “Do we fight them? If there’s no way to escape, then we’re practically sitting ducks here!”

“Don’t worry, these safe houses are fairly robust and have several layers of protective arrays that could withstand some pretty strong attacks.” Garret Peyton lifted a wooden panel on the ground, and exposed a piece of dark green stone tablet underneath. Then he placed his palm on it, and the tablet lit up: “Okay, I activated the strongest lockdown protocol that’s in place, all the protective arrays should be ready to activate. This should buy us some more time.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Meanwhile, Caroline was on her phone, trying to call Josephine Wong.

“I know you are in there.” right this moment, a man with a strange pattern tattooed on his face, wearing a broken grey cloak and a suit of dark red leather armor underneath came to the front door of the safe house, and said to all five individuals inside the safe house in a voice amplified by magic: “Come out, and we don’t have to make this hard.”

“Hi, Agent Carolina?” Caroline’s call finally made it through, but this time it was still Agent Carolina: “This is Caroline Baker, I am the student of Mr. Jianmen Yu, the owner of Xianshi Inn...”

“Yeah, yeah, I know who you are.” Agent Carolina said: “I informed Ms. Wong, but she was still in no position to help you. I arranged for evacuation, but based on your location, it will take somewhere around an hour for our evacuation party to reach you.”

“That’s too long, can’t the team just teleport here?”

“Safehouses have teleportation barriers covering the area they’re in, it’s not easy to create simple personal portals.” Agent Carolina said: “If you’re in a safe house, activate all protective arrays and hang tight. I will reach out to you as soon as I have any updates.”

“Alright, it seems like you chose silence.” the man with a strange pattern tattooed on his face revealed his bare arms full of tattoos, while other individuals that came along followed his lead and surrounded the safe house: “Then I guess we could only do things the hard way.”

The man’s tattoos on both his hands lit up in some kind of pale unsettling light, the air around his arms and hands shook as if it was in some kind of frantic panic. When he jabbed both of his fists forward, a pale shadow of the head of a huge serpent with extra long fangs, and one that looked like the head of a deep sea fish with long and curved sword-like teeth, disproportionately large eyes and bony facial structure came out from his left and right fists. The safe house shook when the two shadows crashed into it, as if it was hit by a high scale earthquake, but what was more damaging and disturbing for those inside, was the resounding echo that these two shadows created inside the safe house.

It was two deafening high pitched screams exploding at the same time, which also seemed to carry some kind of energy flow disrupting property. All five individuals inside the safe house felt as if hundreds of sharp razors were cutting them from the inside, and their powers were about to run wild and pierce through their flesh and internal organs. This caused Thomas and Aimee to drop to the ground almost instantly, even though they covered their ears with their hands. Garret Peyton immediately knelt down in the center of the room while holding his scepter with both his hands and created a golden energy bubble to block off this kind of soundwave attack.

“What the fuck is this!?” Jason felt like he could taste blood, dirt and metal, and he had to cast an “Internal Fortification” spell on himself so that he could withstand the screeching sound. And after sensing that this was helping, he also cast the spell on Thomas and Aimee, which helped them recover a bit and stay conscious.

Caroline’s whole body was engulfed in bright flames and was enclosed by a bubble of wind - one she instinctively created to shield her from the terrible and terrorizing sound. Her skins also showed many small cuts and burns, seemingly from her own powers.

“Array resonance spell. The only way to fight it in this kind of old safe house is to deactivate the protective arrays.” Garret Peyton coughed and he bled from his nostrils: “How the hell did they find someone who can do that...”

“How do we fight it?” Caroline asked: “This is no ordinary sound!”

“We need something to prevent the energy resonance between the spell and the protective array.” Garret Peyton continued to hold his energy bubble, with no attention paid to his bleeding nose: “I am not good at this, you have something?”

“Resonance - let me try!” Caroline grabbed the light green energy arrow that was still floating right in front of them and started flipping through the wooden cards.