As Balthazar spoke, all the other necromancers and their summoned skeletons stopped fighting.
This was a much-needed break for the entire Pierce family; they were incredibly tired and out of breath from continuously fighting, blocking, and dodging attacks.
The man who had spoken was Balthazar, the current temporary leader of the thirty necromancers. He was the strongest among them due to controlling the beast zombie, and he was also one of the most powerful Apprentice Ranks who had assaulted Batley City on this day. He was clad in a patchwork of leather and bone, had black hair, and wore facial piercings made out of animal teeth.
Everyone from the Pierce family frowned upon hearing Balthazar's words, while Dustin and Marabeth remained indifferent.
Marabeth might look twenty-five to thirty years old; however, she was actually over sixty years of age. She had seen plenty of men lusting after her, so this was nothing new. Furthermore, she was well aware that this was a trap.
The moment she signed that contract, she would lose all her freedom to live, and that was the reality of it. If Balthazar one day ordered his zombie pet to eat her, she would either resist and die due to the contract's backlash, or she would die by being eaten by the monster. Thus, it was absolutely impossible for her to sign such a thing.
One young man, who was Marabeth's nephew and a Rank 1 Warrior, had been quivering ever since he saw the ferocity of the necromancers. For the first time, he was experiencing a true life-and-death battle and was terrified beyond words. He asked while stammering, "T-this... Sir Great Balthazar, i-if they sign, w-what will happen to u-us...?"
He was currently deeply regretting joining the battle and realized he should have hidden in the bunker instead. He had previously thought he was very strong and capable, but only after seeing a true Mana Wielder's battle did he realize he was absolutely nothing.
He was desperate to live and was willing to sacrifice anything or anyone to do so.
Hearing his plea, Marabeth, Dustin, and the other members who were spread out in a defensive circle all frowned.
Balthazar roared with laughter and then studied the boy amusingly, "I will let you all leave! How is that? These women in exchange for everyone's lives. Decide!"
The boy's eyes brightened. He quickly looked at Marabeth and pleaded, "Auntie, please. You will live, we will live, and everyone will be happy. How about it?"
Marabeth snorted and didn't even bother replying. Only a fool would believe the nonsense spouted by necromancers.
A necromancer with sunken eyes and a pallid complexion spoke up teasingly at this moment, "You guys should hurry. As soon as the fight in the sky ends, our Master Ranks will kill everyone who isn't our pet. You brats can leave Batley City before it's too late. Time is running out!"
Marabeth and the others subconsciously glanced toward the western sky with deep melancholy in their eyes. They knew that once the City Lord died, there would no longer be any hope left. This city, their home, and their generations of accumulated wealth would just evaporate into thin air. And without a doubt, Lord Gideon would definitely lose, as he was all alone with three Master Ranks as his opponents.
This was the Pierce family's first time facing such a generational tragedy, and they didn't know how to cope with it. It felt like losing everything they had ever known and lived by since childhood; it was practically the same as death to them.
Marabeth scoffed and ignored the necromancers.
"Let's end this battle as soon as possible and leave the city first; then we will think about the future."
The rest of the experienced Pierce family members agreed. Although those words sounded painfully laughable and unrealistic, at this moment they needed such a goal to focus on instead of worrying, even if that goal was simply unattainable.
Hearing their response, Balthazar just laughed, "Fine! If that is what you all wish. I can still enjoy your warm bodies before they turn cold, and all my brothers here will take their turns too. Hahaha! Everyone, no need to hold back; let's end this quickly, then we can party!"
"Ohh!" With that excited holler, the necromancers once again began their assault. This time they fought with a little more ferocity, but not too much either, as they were still cautious of one another; after all, they didn't really belong to a single group and were far from united.
One by one, the Pierce family members fell. From seventeen members, their numbers dropped to fifteen, then down to thirteen.
Marabeth's heart was bleeding. Although most of those who died were just people they had hired, it still pained her immensely. Their families were still safe in the hidden location, but even that wouldn't remain secure for long.
Marabeth was exhausted too and was constantly worrying about Brunhild. She could only hope her daughter was still alive and had already escaped from Batley City.
Marabeth and the others on the battlefield were completely separated and fighting their own isolated battles. They hadn't managed to kill even a single necromancer so far.
Most of the Mana Wielders of the Pierce family sorely lacked experience. After living in such a safe place for so long with hardly any conflict occurring, they had all lost the sharp edge of their own strength.
In fact, the necromancers were still going easy on them with only a few attacking at a time, and this was already the Pierce family's pathetic condition. If all the necromancers attacked at once, then none of the Pierce family members would survive for more than a minute.
Marabeth was very disappointed by her own lack of strength and capability. She barely survived multiple exchanges only thanks to Dustin; however, even he didn't have unlimited energy to keep protecting her.
"Haa." Marabeth hacked at another skeleton, yet the creature didn't crumble and blocked her strike with its barely intact shield.
She jumped back, gasping heavily for breath.
Suddenly, she saw out of the corner of her eye that a Rank 3 necromancer warrior was charging straight toward her with a nasty grin plastered across his face.
Marabeth's face paled. She simply didn't have the energy left to fight off a Rank 3 opponent.
She quickly braced to defend herself, hoping Dustin would come to her rescue; however, no one came, and she was punched heavily right in her chest.
Her long sword slipped out of her hand as she stumbled many steps backward. After finally stopping herself, she spat out a mouthful of blood while clutching her chest. Her rib cage was broken.
The man made a disgraceful grabbing motion in the air and laughed, "Soft indeed, but you need to die before I can freely experience it before the others do. So, die!"
With that, he once again shot toward Marabeth.
Marabeth's face turned completely ashen. She was defenseless without her sword and severely lacked the capability to fight a Rank 3 in close-quarters combat.
"Madam! Uh..."
A short cry followed by a painful grunt echoed from somewhere nearby.
It was Dustin's voice.
Marabeth's heart ached. She could only hope Dustin hadn't just died due to the fatal distraction she had caused him.
She saw the charging man was almost right in front of her, and her body froze in absolute despair, helplessly waiting for the inevitable blow.
Just as the man came within a single meter with his hands stretched out to grab her throat, suddenly, out of nowhere, a figure appeared like a ghost. The exact moment this person materialized, a dagger was already planted deep into the side of the Rank 3 necromancer warrior's neck.
The person had arrived from Marabeth's left side and from the man's right blindspot. Neither of them had noticed how or when this individual had appeared—it was just that incredibly swift. But it was already too late for the necromancer.
"Uhh." The necromancer could only let out a barely audible groan before his neck snapped from the sheer force of the stab. His neck had been penetrated deeply from the right side, and over half of the dagger's blade already protruded from the other end.
Suddenly, a small fire ignited inside the dead man's throat, roasting his neck from the inside out, though he was already deceased before the flames even caught.
Marabeth's eyes couldn't help but widen completely.
The person who appeared was physically very close to her, so she quickly noticed it was a woman wrapped in a dark cloak, hooded, with her nose and below hidden beneath a face mask.
Almost nothing of the woman was visible, except her tall figure and well-rounded hourglass body, which was clearly noticeable despite being completely covered. She held two gorgeous, slightly curved long daggers in her hands; one radiated an orange-red glow, while the other was pure white. The one she had stabbed the Rank 3 necromancer warrior with was the red one.
What truly shocked Marabeth were the woman's eyes. As the cloaked woman appeared right next to her, her eyes were fully visible. It was the most attractive eye shape she had ever seen, with bright amber irises. However, currently, those blazing eyes held an indifferent look, glancing back at her and reflecting her own shocked face within them.
Marabeth's memory sparked, and she quickly realized it was that girl! The one who had been free-lodging in her best guesthouse since yesterday along with two other Rank 1s. It was a disgrace, but she had let it be, as Brunhild had personally wanted it that way.
Marabeth had completely disregarded all three of them as mere Rank 1s and had almost forgotten about them entirely. But at this moment, as if her brain had been struck by a bell, her daughter's words resounded loudly inside her head—"They are all very powerful..." Those were the exact words with which Brunhild had introduced them.
It lasted for just a split second, and then the woman in front of her vanished like an illusion. Marabeth only managed to catch a burst of wind that was speeding toward her right.
Almost instantly, Marabeth heard another painful grunt from another man, followed by a very subtle but clear bone-breaking noise. Her head whipped toward the direction, and she was once again deeply shocked.
The amber-eyed woman, whose name she couldn't even recall, had seemingly teleported nearly fifteen meters away and had already stabbed another necromancer, killing him. It was another Rank 3, and it was a late-stage Rank 3 at that!
Seeing this, Marabeth's eyes widened further, and her mind froze.
'What is this? Have I already died? This is all a dream, right?'
But before her thoughts could even finish, the amber-eyed cloaked girl disappeared again and killed another necromancer ten meters away from the last. This one's neck froze with reddish ice, as if the blood had frozen instantly after flowing out. The ice wasn't thick, but it looked sharp, deadly, and strangely beautiful.
Marabeth stood rooted to the spot with a completely astonished expression. She tried to blink twice rapidly, and in that time, two more necromancers perished, their necks penetrated and snapped.
By the time all the necromancers finally started to notice Lyria, she had already killed five of them.
From the very beginning, Lyria's sharp eyes were specifically locked onto the necromancers' space pouches on their waists or chests. She didn't miss a single pouch; otherwise, she wouldn't have paused after each kill. She could have simply chopped everyone's head off with her Sun and Moon daggers, which were high-grade Tier 2 daggers and two of her personal masterpieces.
Both daggers were shaped with slightly curved blades. The Sun dagger possessed a reddish-orange body, while the Moon dagger was completely white. Both daggers had runes engraved, but the reason for the small fire and ice effects was due to the unique metals they were crafted with, while the enchantments applied merely boosted those natural properties.
Lyria hadn't even activated those runes, as runes were largely useless to all three of them. The only time they might need to use them was when facing creatures with very specific elemental weaknesses.
Balthazar and the other necromancers were totally spooked by the arrival of this ghost-like entity.
Although they were necromancers and dealt with souls and ghosts regularly, this particular "ghost" was soul-throbbing even for them!
Even before they could see what sort of ghost or creature it was, it had already killed ten of their comrades. It was so terrifyingly fast that even their skeleton summons hadn't realized their masters were dead and that they, too, needed to disappear from the world.
However, after seeing the ghost take multiple actions, most of them understood it was a tall woman with a bombastic, great figure. She was covered in a dark cloak and held two different colored curved daggers in her hands.
"C-C-Cloaked Demon?!" Quite a few of the Pierce family members finally noticed the cloaked figure and screamed out in horror.
The terror of the Cloaked Demon was deeply etched into every single soul of Batley City's residents ever since they heard about what had occurred the night before.
"The Cloaked Demon?" Marabeth froze. But then she recalled the reports that specified the demon was undeniably a man, not a woman. The amber-eyed girl's curvy body couldn't possibly be hidden or covered to fool others into thinking she was a male. So it was definitely not him.
Furthermore, according to the information, the Cloaked Demon's fighting style was very different. He wasn't this ridiculously fast, where even a Rank 3's vision couldn't capture a shadow like this amber-eyed girl's current speed. Even so, the original Cloaked Demon was equally scary and horrifying, as he could kill tens of Mana Wielders, regardless of their ranks, without even lifting a single finger.
Even Marabeth didn't want to see or come near the original Cloaked Demon, as doing so was the same as signing herself up for the cruelest death possible. Even Antonio Lasalle, the legend of Batley City, had perished under the Cloaked Demon, much less a few Mana Wielders of the Pierce family.
Just as Marabeth's body relaxed a tiny bit upon realizing this was not the Cloaked Demon, her body froze again. She even started trembling violently—far more violently than when she herself had faced death a few moments ago.
She didn't have any proof or any valid reason to suspect, but she suddenly had a very dangerous intuition that the actual Cloaked Demon was already far closer to her than she had ever imagined! And he was staying within her very own house!
'What did my daughter even mean by "they are all very powerful"? They are all monsters! Next time, Brunhild better explain properly what the word "powerful" even means!'