Chapter 131: Attack
Immediately, alarms blared loudly throughout the building. Guards rushed back and forth to deal with the situation, but the danger to Edward had not yet revealed itself.
From the depths of the lower floors, a large number of powerful and fearsome individuals rose in unison, ready to face whatever was attacking them.
Edward could hear the sound of boots pounding the floor, echoing from the depths of the building’s caverns.
He smiled slightly and looked through the fortified door. There were two staircases, one leading up and the other down.
’One to the fourth floor up and the other to the first floor down.’ Edward knew his target was on the lower floors, but he didn’t choose the stairs leading down because he would run into the guards of the Red Moon Cave. Instead, he went up to the fourth floor.
As he climbed the stairs, he began to hear the clang of swords clashing and the agonized screams of the dead as they tried to fight his men.
’It’s started... We have an hour at most. Count Hazzard’s troops should be arriving in about an hour, if nothing has gone wrong.’
Upon reaching the fourth floor from one of the corners, he saw people running down the main staircase. Some were soldiers, others were ordinary civilians. Everyone was running to find out what had happened or to escape the fire and explosions.
Others were simply protecting those who were fleeing.
Edward hid near the emergency staircase and saw that many people were heading this way. So, he waited patiently for them to arrive.
As they ran through the hallways, the sound of footsteps slowly reached Edward’s ears. The moment he sensed them close by, Edward hurled an explosive magic tool toward the stairs and leaped to the other side of the hallway at that very moment.
BOOOM!
A deafening, terrifying explosion echoed instantly, and the emergency staircase was blown to pieces.
Edward found himself face to face with those trying to flee down that staircase. Some were frightened, but others attacked him, having been trained for this very day.
Two beasts flew around him; they were small birds specializing in wind attacks, though their power was quite low.
Edward took a step back to dodge the first attack and then ducked for the second. He leaped forward, avoiding the two birds, and his hands grabbed the necks of the two summoners, slamming them into the ground and shattering them in a single motion.
Both beastmasters lay pinned to the floor, blood trickling down their necks, but no one stayed behind to mourn them. Edward leaped again, and his hands quickly found their next targets.
This bold move, combined with the earlier explosion, caught the attention of the men on the other side of the fourth floor. They leaped to confront the intruder, but just then, a pile of corpses came into view on the main staircase, and two men slipped in among them.
"Kill these bastards!" roared one of the two men, who leaped forward and stabbed one of them in the neck.
Edward also followed the attack closely and approached them, managing to decapitate several simultaneously with a clean swing of his sword.
Within five minutes, the entire fourth floor had been cleared. But the sound of footsteps could still be heard coming from the stairs leading to the fifth floor.
The two men approached Edward. "Young Master," they greeted him.
They were men from Aurora.
Edward stared intently at the stairs leading to the fifth floor for a few seconds before returning their greeting. "You’ve done well. I heard that the men on the fifth floor are all members of the Cave... From the sound of their footsteps, I can tell they’re incredibly powerful. So be careful."
"We understand, young lord."
"I’ll go down to the ground floor. Wait for my signal to blow up the second floor." With that, Edward looked at the stairs one last time before starting to run toward one of the rooms on the fourth floor.
They had scouted this place very thoroughly. Things like secret rooms and hidden passageways were clear in Edward’s mind, as they had already been investigating it for several days.
Thanks to that, he didn’t get lost and made it to a secret room whose door was practically invisible. Still, after knocking a few times, it opened from the inside.
Two men were waiting there.
"Good job." Edward patted them on the shoulders. "Go help your comrades. By the way, if students from the 101 arrive, fight alongside them. They’re allies."
Both men nodded and ran out of the room, allowing Edward to leap down a half-built staircase and descend slowly.
After a few jumps, Edward hit the ground, and a blinding light flooded his eyes. His body sensed a threat in front of him. Despite being blinded by the light, he took a step back and raised his left hand.
A spear swung toward him and struck at his head, but it was firmly gripped in Edward’s hand. He pulled the spear toward him, and little by little his vision cleared. A tall, gaunt figure, with bones protruding through its rotting skin, was revealed.
He swung his right hand, sword in hand, and struck the head of the undead creature attempting to attack him with force, killing it instantly. Even so, he didn’t stop. He used the spear gripped in his hand to turn around and hurl it with all his might toward a dimly lit corner of the room, where it landed.
The spear flew at great speed and, by a matter of centimeters, failed to destroy the head of a fire mage, who managed to dodge it by leaping to the side.
"Blinding fire magic, huh." Edward smiled, appearing beside the mage. "It would be a good strategy if I weren’t your opponent."
"You bastard...!" The wizard roared and sent his beast—a fire butterfly—swooping toward Edward... yet the sword struck his neck first, killing him instantly.
Edward ran to the center of the room and simultaneously struck a magical pattern on the wall. This pattern shattered after four strikes.
Immediately afterward, a powerful alarm, like the sound of bells, echoed throughout the entire 0th floor. The men of the Red Moon Cave had been fully alerted.
One of the secret entrances was being breached!
But that was only the beginning...
Soon a second, similar alarm rang out...
Another entrance had been discovered and was being breached!
That was the moment the Red Moon Cave realized they were facing a premeditated attack...
And soon, five alarms sounded. Not a single one failed. All the secret entrances were breached. The security protocol collapsed at that very moment.
For the first time since its founding, the Red Moon Cave Headquarters was left completely unprotected by the magical patterns of Varhat. Those magical patterns, which had prevented the energy within the earth from spreading, collapsed.
A deadly energy began rising toward the Commercial City from beneath a real estate company’s building, alerting all the soldiers, businessmen, and beast masters.
It was the cursed energy of a Cursed Land!
Shock coursed through the bodies of all the inhabitants of the Commercial City, and chaos descended.
Edward and his allies—the ones responsible for this—emerged from the secret rooms.
Edward ran through the hallways, facing a variety of powerful men and managing to get past most of them. Still, there were a few who gave him a hard time.
"You bastard! How dare you attack our holy seat?! You will die for your sins!" roared one of them. He was bald and dressed in martial artist’s garb, his torso bare.
His body was gigantic, standing over two meters tall, and the muscles in his arms and legs were thicker than Edward’s entire body.
Naturally, his body stood out among the crowd of men in front of him. But in contrast to his figure, his summoned beast was not a big guy.
It was a small sparrow. But not just any sparrow.
’Steel-Feathered Sparrow.’ Edward realized this man was going to be a tough nut to crack.
But he smiled. "Let’s see what you’re made of, big guy. All I can tell you is that your stronghold will soon be a pile of rubble, so you’d better give it your all in this fight."
The giant felt the veins bulge in his body and roared. "Bastard, I’ll kill you in the name of our gods!" he roared.
His enormous body, against all odds, moved at a speed even Edward hadn’t expected. His fists were heavy, and with the strength of several elephants, he swung at Edward.
The powerful attack shook the air, but it didn’t reach Edward. Instead, it struck a wall behind him, shattering it in an instant.
Edward’s eyes widened in shock. ’How strong!’
More than that... he was incredibly fast.
According to the laws of physics, was it even possible for him to be that fast, despite being so huge?
Edward had to focus on dodging continuously. If he were caught by one of those punches, he would surely die.