Chapter 71: Mission Failed
The transit tunnel became a crucible of absolute devastation.
Eurenia was no longer a martial artist executing a calculated task; she was a feral gale of pure, unadulterated malice.
She threw herself at the Ogre General, her twin shadow-silk daggers blurring into a continuous, screaming wheel of crimson kinetic force.
Clang! Clang! CRACK!
Her blades struck the massive slab of his iron greatsword with enough velocity to send blinding sparks cascading against the obsidian walls.
She moved with frantic, broken speed, leaping off the ceiling, driving her heels into his armored shoulders, and slashing wildly at any exposed flesh.
A jagged, shallow line opened across the Ogre General’s cheek, blackish blood welling up and freezing instantly in the cold air.
The monster barely blinked.
He simply tilted his massive head, a deep, mocking chuckle vibrating in his massive chest.
"Is that all the weight your father’s memory carries?" the General taunted, his voice a guttural roar as he casually swung the flat of his iron blade.
"Weak. Pathetic. Just like the old buck under my boot."
The massive weapon caught Eurenia squarely in the ribs.
The impact sounded like a cracking timber.
The kinetic shielding on her Mandraxx suit flared violently before shattering, and she was launched sideways, crashing through a thick stone pillar.
But she didn’t stop.
She didn’t even feel the pain.
The moment her back hit the rubble, she snarled, a bloody foam rising to her lips, and lunged right back into the fray.
She had gone completely blind to her surroundings.
The importance of the mission, the tactical maps, the life signs of the rescued slaves—everything was incinerated by the white-hot inferno in her brain.
As the battle raged deeper into the lower transit, the devastating shockwaves of their clash tore the environment apart.
Every time Eurenia missed a strike, her compressed kinetic mana detonated against the structural pillars, causing massive boulders of iron-ore and permafrost to rain down upon the very exit paths she had opened.
The fleeing beastman slaves were caught right in the crossfire.
"Run! The ceiling is—" a Wolf-kin elder shrieked, but his voice was violently cut short as a stray shockwave from the Ogre General’s greatsword pulverized the entire stone archway above them.
Eurenia didn’t look.
She didn’t care.
When an Ogre vanguard tried to use a group of cornered Fox-kin children as a shield, Eurenia unleashed a wide-range kinetic blast meant to pierce the guard’s mana core.
The blast tore through the guard—but the absolute pressure of the wave imploded the fragile bodies of the children behind him instantly.
The dark tunnels echoed with the horrific screams of the collapsing infrastructure and the dying slaves, but to Eurenia, the only sound that existed was the mocking laughter of the giant before her.
"Look at them break!" the Ogre General laughed, intentionally parrying her wild slashes toward the crowded corners of the hall.
"You’re killing them faster than my butcher squads ever could! Praise your God of Beasts for this magnificent slaughter!"
"DIE! DIE! DIE!" Eurenia shrieked, her voice completely broken, her dantian straining to the absolute bursting point as she tried to force a Peak-master output from her Middle-enlightened stage mana cores.
The reckless strain tore her own body apart from the inside.
Blood began to seep from her eyes, her nose, and the seams of her grey uniform.
The Ogre General caught her mid-air, his massive, boulder-like fist crashing directly into her face.
The force of the blow sent her spinning violently across the floor, her daggers clattering into the dark.
He stepped forward, his heavy iron boot coming down with crushing weight onto her chest, pinning her into a deep crater of shattered stone.
Eurenia lay in a rapidly widening pool of her own dark blood.
Her limbs twitching weakly, her ribs completely caved in, her beautiful grey uniform torn to shreds.
Her amber eyes, once bright and full of fanatical resolve, were glazed and staring blankly at the collapsing ceiling.
The madness was finally receding, leaving behind nothing but the cold, agonizing weight of absolute failure.
Around her, the transit tunnels was dead silent.
There were no more slaves running for the exit.
Every single beastman she had been sent to rescue lay crushed beneath the rubble or torn apart by the residual mana of her rampage.
The extraction pool was zero.
The Ogre General raised his massive iron greatsword high above his head, the jagged edge catching the dim, smoky light of the dying mana crystals.
"A total erasure," he sneered, looking down at her broken form. "Time to join your sire in the dirt."
"Remember my name kid, Ryokan!"
"That’s the name of the Ogre who devoured your father!"
He swung down his blade.
The blade began its downward descent.
Snap.
The entire local space-time fabric of the cavern violently froze.
The falling dust motes suspended themselves in mid-air, and the crackling sounds of the dying fires instantly went dead silent.
A soft, elegant ripple of crimson data particles dissolved into the heavy, sulfurous air directly between the falling blade and Eurenia’s face.
Out of the shifting crimson static stepped Roy.
He was in his crimson furred Wolf-form as Jarden Rome.
His long, crimson hair cascading perfectly past his waist.
Untouched by the soot, and his dual-colored, golden-crimson eyes flaring with a chilling, absolute authority that made the Ogre General’s Master-tier aura instantly shrivel to nothing.
With an almost casual flick of his fingers, Roy caught the descending edge of the ten-ton iron greatsword.
CRACK.
The massive slab of iron shattered into a thousand jagged fragments, the kinetic backlash violently throwing the Ogre General backward until his armored spine smashed into the far wall of the cavern.
Roy didn’t even look at the monster.
He kept his hands smoothly in the pockets of his tailored black coat as he looked down at the broken, bleeding form of Eurenia.
His expression was entirely unreadable—neither angry nor disappointed, but carrying the heavy, detached serenity of an author looking at a heavily flawed draft.
He leaned down, his long golden hair brushing against the blood-stained stone, and effortlessly lifted her shattered body into his arms.
"She failed," Roy murmured softly, his low voice carrying a strange, resonant hum that stabilized her failing heartbeat.
"Let’s go."
A secondary ripple of red data particles enveloped them both, and before the Ogre General could even scramble to his feet or release a warning cry.
Roy and Eurenia vanished from the cavern without a sound.
Behind them, the ruined ritual site sat in absolute, suffocating darkness.
A tomb of cold stone.
Buried iron.
And the completely erased bodies of the slaves who never made it out.