Ashley clasped her hands together and pressed them between her eyebrows.
She had left two summoning scrolls outside when entering. Now, answering her call, Sandy and a large tortoise materialized beyond the doorway.
The two phantom monster beasts took their positions and began pushing open the heavy doors.
In truth, leaving was entirely different from breaking in. Getting out now was far easier than forcing their way in had been, and there were more cost-effective ways to open the portal.
However, leaving the summoning scrolls unused would have been a waste.
Moreover, Ashley shared a telepathic link with her summoned beasts. Just as Sandy had flown into the dark hole to steal test questions during the final selection, the summoned creature might have appeared to be cooperating with the tortoise, but high in the air, its beady eyes darted about frantically, scouting the surroundings outside.
Richard whispered, "If someone's lying in ambush out there, isn't this basically announcing that we're coming out and telling them to get ready?"
Memphis retorted, "Excellent question. Now please tell us how to get out without opening this door."
Richard blinked. "Oh right, I forgot we still have to open the door."
The great gates were slowly parting.
Mars hung his pack across his chest to make it easier to deploy defensive arrays rapidly once they charged out.
In an encounter battle, a timely defensive array could provide tremendous protection to teammates, turning a chaotic clash into an entrenched position.
Memphis turned to Mars and said, "Later, you handle operating the arrays. I'll lay them down alone."
Mars asked in confusion, "Wouldn't it be more efficient if the two of us set them up together?"
"It's the same."
Mars froze for a moment, then finally understood what he meant. He nodded. "All right, understood."
From this fellow array master, Mars had consistently sensed an aura reminiscent of his former array instructors, which meant Memphis's true abilities were far, far higher than what he had previously shown.
Still, at an uncertain moment like this, only a fool would blame a teammate for holding back in the past.
Ventura and Muri stood in the front row, with Bart and Philomena diagonally behind them.
Behind them were Blanche and Alfred.
Following them were Mars, Memphis, and Richard.
"Don't look so tense, or at least keep the tension off your faces..." Midway through speaking, Karen suddenly remembered the skull mask tucked away in his pack. It was a gift the captain had asked Fanny to prepare for him during the final selection. He had completely forgotten about it, but when stowing away the array magic stones earlier, he had discovered it tucked inside an inner lining. Thoughtful Alfred had clearly preserved it as a tradition.
If he had one, the others undoubtedly had them in their packs as well.
"Put on your masks to hide your expressions. When you step outside, don't look like you're going to pick a fight. Act as natural as possible. If someone really is lying in ambush to jump us, we can give them an ambush of our own."
"Yes, Captain!"
Everyone reached into their packs, pulled out their masks, and slipped them on.
Soon, as the heavy doors swung open, a group wearing white skull masks strode out.
Memphis and Mars each lit a candle, leading the group across the plaza section. If an ambush were to happen, it would be after crossing this open area.
Karen reached out his hand toward Ashley. She extended hers, and their fingers interlaced.
Holding hands with the captain made Ashley's heart thud wildly.
Karen reminded her, "Steady your emotions."
"Yes, Captain." Ashley took a deep breath and silently began summoning the Storm Wolf—Mombas!
Although Ashley's parents had prepared a large collection of monster beast totems for their daughter just to make up the numbers, one among them possessed genuine, formidable strength: Mombas.
However, summoning this beast not only incurred a massive cost, but it also possessed a terrible temper and a certain chance of turning on its master.
That was because Ashley's father had personally performed a sterilization procedure on Mombas.
Because of this, Karen had long known that Ashley held an ace monster beast up her sleeve, yet he had never allowed her to call upon it.
Ashley felt her energy being rapidly drawn into the wolf totem on her wrist. In the past, she would have already collapsed to the ground in agony, struggling to endure the drain. Now, however, she felt remarkably at ease, because the captain's power was swiftly flowing in, bearing nearly eighty percent of the burden for her.
This reduced the toll of summoning Mombas to almost the level of calling Sandy.
Soon, a ferocious aura surged, seeming to detect Ashley as killing intent converged upon her.
It likely did not intend to murder its master the moment it emerged; rather, it was an act of petty vengeance and mockery. If the terms had not been negotiated beforehand, Ashley's parents would never have dared to ink it onto their daughter.
Yet Karen took an extreme dislike to this rebellious streak.
Before Karen could even project his own will, however, something else reacted faster than him.
*Hiss!*
Thousand Phantoms' consciousness rose and hissed a direct warning at Mombas.
Mombas's consciousness instantly shrank back. Right now, they were both disembodied wills, making it hard to gauge who held the upper hand in raw power, but going strictly by sheer soul pressure and savage malice, Thousand Phantoms feared no one.
Ashley sensed an unfamiliar presence stir within the captain. It felt like a soul entity, yet the captain hadn't formed a contract inside the world behind the door, had he?
It was only a passing curiosity. Nothing strange residing inside the captain would ever genuinely surprise her.
"Ahem..."
Muri, who had stepped out first, cleared his throat. That cough meant something was brewing.
Beneath their masks, everyone's expressions sharpened into keen excitement.
A faint smile curved Karen's lips. While driving once, Neo had shared a bit of leadership wisdom with him. Neo had said he raised this squad the way one raised hunting hounds: you couldn't just provide them food, drink, clothes, and shelter; you also had to walk them and give them opportunities to burn off their excess energy.
Right now was their chance to burn that energy.
After advancing a short distance farther, four massive moon rings abruptly manifested on the ground around them.
Over twenty figures emerged from the moon rings, their bodies cloaked in a layer of moonlit radiance resembling blessed armor.
In the next instant, the four massive moon rings hurled themselves toward Karen's squad. As they flew, the previously three-dimensional rings flattened out. From a distance, they looked like four razor-sharp blades of yellow light slicing toward the eleven figures in the center.
It was an ingenious ambush. The moon rings had first concealed their presence, then granted them protective blessings upon manifestation, and finally served as the opening salvo when hurled forward.
Against an unprepared target, those four moon rings alone would have left the ground littered with severed limbs and slaughtered remains.
The four front-liners reacted instantly, shifting positions so that each confronted one incoming moon ring.
The round shield in Muri's hand flared with black radiance. With a loud clang, he arrested the moon ring's momentum, flicked his short blade, and deflected it into the ground, triggering an explosion.
Ventura, transformed into his giant form, caught the incoming moon ring directly with both hands. Driven backward several paces by the impact, he unleashed a low growl and hurled it toward Bart.
Bart's sword jammed the moon ring rushing toward him. Bone spikes erupted from his arm and drove into it. With a violent twist of his waist, he hurled his moon ring toward Ventura's direction.
The two moon rings collided and detonated in midair.
Philomena's figure shifted to the flank of her incoming moon ring. With a gentle palm strike, she flipped its trajectory, retreated slightly, and delivered a swift kick, sending the moon ring flying back in the direction it came from.
*Slash! Slash! Slash!*
Three blessed priests of the Moon Goddess were cleaved in half at the waist. They had been charging forward, and their momentum carried their lower halves several strides past their severed torsos before collapsing.
The moment Philomena touched down, she flicked her wrist to draw a dagger, preparing to dive forward.
"Get back!"
Karen's voice wasn't loud, but everyone was sharp enough to know that excuses like "I didn't notice" or "I didn't hear you" wouldn't fly.
Philomena pulled up short, swiftly falling back to join Muri and the other two, each anchoring a cardinal direction to protect the inner ring.
"Roar!"
Mombas, the Storm Wolf, materialized in midair—a massive, ash-white wolf. As its furious howl rang out, four violent tempests surged forth in all four directions, carrying blades of concentrated wind within them.
In an instant, the priests of the Moon Goddess who had intended to launch the first wave of close-quarters combat were swept into the hurricanes, bursts of blood mist erupting one after another.
"Take control," Memphis prompted.
"Ah, right!"
Mars hadn't expected Memphis to lay down an array so quickly. The first to manifest was the Mind Bridge Formation. Mars immediately used it to link everyone in the squad together, enabling the captain to issue orders far more easily.
Yet no sooner had he linked the mental bridge than Memphis urged him again:
"Take control."
Huh? The second array was already finished?
The second was a detection array capable of sensing over a broad perimeter. It could mark and locate attackers in advance, predicting their next wave of offensive maneuvers.
Mars immediately expanded the array. At times, array structures resembled intricate knitting; one could clearly feel the precision of every stitch the moment the power flowed through it. Right now, all Mars felt was an overwhelming, peerless precision.
This prompted the usually elegant, introverted Mars to curse silently:
*Damn! Did the captain poach a department head straight out of a specialized array division?!*
As soon as the second array unfolded, Mars began interfacing with the third.
"Kendos Sixfold Defensive Array!"
Kendos was a monumental figure in the array history of the Church of Order. Many of the formations he had designed and created were compulsory coursework for generations of Order array masters.
Mars typically favored deploying the Kendos Threefold Defensive Array. A sixfold array was no longer merely defensive; when pushed to this extreme, defense transformed into a localized slaughtering ground.
Mars found operating this array somewhat overwhelming, but fortunately Memphis rose and helped him shoulder the burden.
"Can I come to you with questions in the future?" Mars asked.
Memphis gave a slight nod.
Above them, after unleashing the gale-force winds, Mombas condensed a cloud of storm mist that rapidly diffused outward. With the detection array active, Karen's squad had no fear of having their vision compromised.
"Alfred!"
Karen raised the Sword of Arius and charged out from the defensive array, lunging toward the east.
"Yes, Young Master."
Alfred followed close on Karen's heels.
Philomena noticed this and wrinkled her nose. She felt she would have made a far better vanguard alongside Karen than that suit-wearing manservant, rather than being left behind to guard the center.
Yet she knew full well that defying Karen's arrangement now would carry consequences just as severe as when she had rejected Ventura's pastries.
The power of Order surged within Karen, granting him blistering speed. After his clash beneath the watchtower with Captain Neo, Karen had gained a deeper understanding of how to fight under the state of Order.
The moment Karen appeared before a priest of the Moon Goddess, Alfred's Succubus Eye activated first, stalling the man's thoughts. By the time the priest regained clarity, the Sword of Arius had already severed his head.
It was a dull, methodical way of killing: the enemy was enveloped in battlefield mist, struck by mental interference, and then harvested by overwhelming speed and brute force. Yet Karen never found reaping an enemy's life tedious.
Thousand Phantoms darted out of its own accord. Each time Karen claimed a life, it greedily devoured the victim's soul and drank a mouthful of pure vitality, shuddering in sheer spiritual ecstasy.
Souls and blood from the outside world were infinitely fresher and more delicious than those inside the world behind the door!
After slaying seven people in rapid succession, Karen judged that this flank had been largely cleared. Next, they could circle around and hit another angle.
*Buzz!*
Right then, a spatial rift tore open beside Karen. Nirman stepped out, her wand crashing straight toward him.
Alfred snapped his fingers, sending a psychic storm howling toward Nirman, but her wand formed a barrier that deflected the mental blast.
This was an ambush within an ambush. The timing and positioning of her strike were impeccable.
Sea God's Armor coated Karen from head to toe. Taking the blunt impact of the wand head-on, his body was driven deep into the ground.
When Nirman swung her wand to bash in Karen's skull, chains of Order manifested before him, wrapping around him defensively. The wand struck the chains with terrifying concussive force, snapping Karen's chains in an instant.
Yet before the wand could descend any further, a pair of black wings unfurled from Karen's back. Pulling away to dodge the lethal blow, he executed a forceful midair twist and swept the Sword of Arius across.
*Clang!*
A phantom figure materialized in front of Nirman, neutralizing Karen's strike.
Alfred appeared behind Nirman, covering one eye with his left hand as he murmured, "You are drowsy."
Nirman's gaze glazed over, and her body shuddered.
Karen brought his sword down a second time, but some sacred relic on the woman triggered automatically, casting a protective barrier that warded off the blow.
Karen felt no particular disappointment. Combat was much like war: one side relied on national strength, while the other relied on deep pockets.
Alfred was about to speak again when a yellow gleam flared before his chest. A piercing beam of light shot from the pommel of Nirman's wand, piercing straight through Alfred's torso.
Yet the pierced Alfred warped and faded away. The real Alfred emerged from the other flank, his arms crossed before him:
"Delusion!"
Pain surfaced once more on Nirman's face.
She immediately crushed a gemstone on her wand, releasing a terrifying burst of purification power. Using it as a rearguard screen, she moved to retreat into the spatial rift.
Thousand Phantoms hissed, lunging forward and braving the scorching agony of the purification light to rip an opening for Karen.
The creature truly was ferocious—and when push came to shove, it genuinely dared to charge.
Karen did not squander the opening Thousand Phantoms had bought him, though he hesitated for a fraction of a second. He could have hurled the Sword of Arius, which likely would have pinned her dead on the spot, but he would also lose possession of the weapon for a short time.
Instead, Karen condensed an orb of lightning wrapped in the power of Order in his palm and hurled it into the closing rift.
*Boom!*
At that moment, an incantation echoed from above:
"Moonlight Radiance—Purge!"
The battlefield mist conjured by the Storm Wolf began to dissipate rapidly. That meant the ideal conditions for chaotic skirmishing were gone. Karen did not linger. Without hesitation, he pulled back, returning to the array alongside Alfred.
More than twenty corpses littered the ground, all in gruesome states; barely any remained intact.
Ahead, a man wearing a copper mask hovered in midair.
Beside him, a spatial rift parted, and Nirman tumbled out. He caught her with an extended hand. She was drenched in blood, yet her soul had suffered far more grievously than her physical body.
Thunder of Order was an art Karen had learned long ago. Originally, its usefulness had been negligible, but within the world behind the door, he had drawn inspiration from the seal of the Throne of Order to refine it.
If the power of this lightning under normal conditions was rated as a one, Karen had compressed it into a ten.
It could hardly be called a self-created technique; traditional arts were standardized clean versions intended for the broader clergy to master. Anyone with exceptional talent was entirely free to tailor and amplify them to suit their own strengths.
Seeing that Nirman had lost all combat effectiveness, Sains wasted no energy trying to heal her. He rotated his palm, drawing forth a black crescent moon that sank into Nirman's body. Soon, Nirman's flesh and soul ignited together, their essence draining into the black crescent.
With his other hand, Sains caught Nirman's falling wand and slotted the black crescent into the empty socket where the gemstone had been crushed.
Watching this, Anpang's eyelids twitched. Nirman, who had just been sacrificed, had shared the exact same rank as him.
Sains cast a calm gaze toward Karen and the others within the array, saying evenly:
"If you hand over the crystal you brought out of the tomb right now, I will spare your lives. Not only will we keep each other's secrets, but I will also grant you a generous reward. Otherwise, do not blame us for..."
Sains paused, pressed a hand to his forehead, and chuckled.
"Ah, forget it. Even I think that sounded utterly stupid."
Chapter 416