"There are strange animals inside. Like the tomb guards, they all have animal traits on their bodies. They're bizarre enough to make your skin crawl."
Guy described the living mechanisms he had seen inside the royal tomb.
They were enormous, extremely violent monsters.
They were neither bulls nor bears.
Their entire bodies were a mess of different features, and they were ferocious to an unnatural degree.
The instant they discovered him, they attacked.
Even for Guy, who ranked second in kills among them, it had taken some effort to bring one of those monsters down.
"Mm. Good work, Guy. Next is Nahashu and Cornelia. What about your side?"
Nahashu's expression was grave.
"These tomb guards aren't simple. They have the ability to deform their bodies. Among the ones I fought, there were enemies who could turn their arms into wings and their legs into talons. After transforming, they didn't just gain the ability to fly. Their attack power and speed also rose sharply."
"Besides that, there were types whose bodily fluids contained poison, and others whose limbs turned into beast claws."
Cornelia also spoke up.
"The parts they beastify have strength far beyond ordinary animals. Even after using Crusher, I almost lost to one of them."
Her expression was heavy, and there was still a lingering trace of fear in her eyes.
After all, that strength had been inhuman.
As the champion of the girls' group in hand-to-hand combat, Cornelia was excellent in both strength and technique.
Yet even with a Shingu equipped, she still could not suppress the opponent's raw power.
That alone showed how powerful the tomb guards' beastification ability was.
More importantly, their numbers were terrible news.
Based on the information they currently had, they still could not confirm the total fighting force of the tomb guard clan.
Even a conservative estimate put them at no fewer than a hundred.
With fewer than ten people on their side, if the enemy were all brave and battle-hardened warriors, then facing a tenfold difference in manpower meant their odds of victory were extremely low.
Thirty percent.
No, perhaps only twenty percent.
The urgent priority was rescue.
The tomb guards injected with truth serum had already confessed that the missing people had been captured.
Whether they considered it from the perspective of replenishing their own combat strength or something else, they had to rescue them first.
Afterward, they could withdraw to a town near the Imperial border.
"There's one more thing, old man. When are the reinforcements arriving?"
"Don't ask me. I'm anxious as hell too."
"Tch. Looks like whether they make it in time is up to fate."
Gozuki turned around and addressed the six children.
"Memorize all the intelligence. Once you've committed the map to memory, we move in immediately!"
"Yes!"
"Understood!"
"Oh, leave it to me!"
...
Three hours before the Empire's people stormed the royal tomb.
Inside the royal tomb, several figures bound tightly in iron chains slowly regained consciousness and woke up.
Although they had awakened, none of them made a move.
They kept their breathing steady, trying to hide their condition as much as possible.
Kurome kept her eyes closed and began assessing the situation.
First, her own body.
At the moment, her wrists were suspended above her.
The things restraining her were steel chains, extremely sturdy ones. Breaking free through brute strength was impossible.
Her weapon had been taken away.
Other than that, her clothes were still there, including her underwear, all intact.
She suddenly sense a few presences nearby.
'Were they Gin and Remus?'
'It seemed they were still alive too.'
She did not know whether they had woken up yet.
But even if they had, it would not matter.
They had no way to break free of these chains, and Kurome could feel that because she had not taken her medicine, she could barely muster any strength now.
Withdrawal symptoms.
In this condition, even if the enemy released her bindings, she would not have the strength to fight. Even escaping would be difficult.
"Hehehe."
A frivolous laugh sounded in front of her.
Although Kurome kept her eyes shut, she could sense someone walking up to her.
She tried her best to pretend she was still unconscious, but the other person spoke anyway.
"Do you know? Bats have poor eyesight, but they can still capture prey with precision. It was only for an instant, but your heartbeat and breathing changed. Did you really think I wouldn't notice?"
A breath blew across her face, and Kurome's eyelashes trembled despite herself.
Then the man grabbed her cheeks.
"Hey, stop pretending!"
Tch.
Kurome reluctantly opened her eyes and looked at the tomb guard standing before her.
Seeing her glare at him, the man did not get angry.
Instead, he laughed.
"Hey, hey, don't glare at me. Let me say this first—I'm not planning to do anything to you yet. I was just bored and wanted someone to chat with."
Kurome clenched her teeth and said coldly, "I have nothing to talk about with you."
"Don't be so cold." The man spread his hands. "You Imperial dogs came all the way into someone else's home. You must have been planning to do something, right?"
"Hmph."
"No comment."
"Oh, is that so?"
Even after being met with such an attitude, the man still looked unconcerned on the surface.
Then he abruptly changed the subject.
"Then instead of that, let me ask something else. You're all Imperial assassins, right? What I want to know is, are there a lot of young, cute girls like you among the Empire's assassins?"
"…"
"You're ignoring me again." The man looked a little hurt.
"Actually, I don't really feel much for girls from my own clan. They're all too fierce. I like women from the Empire. Especially cute girls like you. Is there any way I can get a girlfriend like that?"
"Tch. Scum."
Kurome thought he was planning to do something to them, and anger filled her voice.
The man, however, looked as though he had suffered a terrible injustice.
"Hey, hey, hey, I haven't done anything to you, okay? I'm very pure when it comes to love. I want a relationship where both sides are willing."
The man rambled on, but just as he said, his hands and feet remained clean. He did not cross any lines, and he did not even seem to intend to.
Kurome simply did not care. She only believed that this man was a pervert.
"What's your name?"
"…"
"Still not talking? Fine. Then let me ask this. Why would cute girls like you become assassins? Isn't it dangerous?"
When asked that, Kurome, who had been silent the entire time, suddenly changed expression.
She frowned and said as though it were perfectly natural, "We do it for justice. For the future of the Empire."
"Huh?"
The man froze.
He looked at Kurome's serious face, and his mind filled with question marks.
"You… are you serious?"
Justice?
The Empire?
Oh.
So this girl had been brainwashed by the Empire!
As expected of the empire....
To twist a person's understanding to this degree…
"I can see you have a severe drug dependency. The Empire did that to you, didn't it? Most likely through some kind of body modification. So why do you still think the Empire is just?"
"How could someone like you understand? You shameless thieves."
'What?'
'Thieves?'
Suddenly being slapped with that insult made the man emotional too!
"You people broke into someone else's home, destroyed things, and killed people. Isn't that you? Who are you calling thieves? We haven't stolen anything!"
Boom!
The moment the man finished speaking, the entire royal tomb shook.
The man understood what that tremor meant.
It was a phenomenon that only occurred when every trap inside the royal tomb had been activated.
And all traps would only activate when the royal tomb was under attack.
In other words, intruders had created a threat to the tomb.
Kurome did not need to know any of that. She could read far too much from the man's face alone.
Her eyes lit up.
Could it be that someone had come to rescue them?
Could her sister be among them?
Seeing the light in her eyes become completely different from before, the man spoke disdainfully.
"You think you'll be saved just because someone came to rescue you? Stop dreaming. Every last one of those intruders will die. We'll hunt them down one by one and wipe them out!"
After saying that, the man loosened his clothes.
His flesh twisted and deformed, and his entire upper body underwent a massive transformation.
He became like a standing bat, terrifying to look at.
With one flap of his wings, he flew toward the upper levels.
It seemed he intended to join the group resisting the invaders.
...
Less than half an hour after Gozuki led the others into the royal tomb, a streak of black light cut across the sky over Putra.
The delayed sonic boom arrived moments later and directly overturned Bill's tent.
But before he could lose his temper, he saw two figures descending from the sky.
Before touching the ground, Noah reversed his own gravity and Esdeath's, and the two of them entered a hovering state together.
Then he released Weaver's effect, and the two landed steadily on the ground.
Bill ran a few steps forward to check.
When he saw the figure in a white military uniform with ice-blue hair, delight immediately appeared on his face.
"I didn't expect the Empire to send you as reinforcement. It is truly an honor."
Bill bowed and spoke the woman's name.
"General Esdeath!"
Exhaling softly, Esdeath also recovered from her first experience of falling vertically from several hundred meters in the air.
She said, "It's nothing. I only hope this battle will let me enjoy myself properly. Well, since I already experienced something interesting today, I suppose I won't be too angry even if the enemy turns out a little weak."
Esdeath revealed a confident smile.
After greeting Esdeath, Bill looked toward his most outstanding student and asked with a cold face.
"And why are you here too?"
Seeing his cold expression, Noah deliberately said, "Of course I came to help you."
Bill curled his lip as he directly exposed Noah's nonsense.
"You came for the tomb guards' secret arts, didn't you?"
"So the tomb guards' special abilities really are secret arts?"
"It's been confirmed yes, there's no mistake about it."
Under the effect of truth serum, the captured tomb guards had personally admitted that what they used were the secret arts passed down through generations of the Putra tomb guard clan.
Bill knew that Noah had always wanted to create true Teigu, so he was not the slightest bit surprised to see him here.
'Secret arts.'
'I could finally obtain them.'
Noah's heart burned with excitement, and he was already impatient to witness the power of secret arts with his own eyes.
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