As the drones were about to completely wipe them out, Frederick went stiff. Everything was going so fast, his life flashed before him as he knew death was near unless he acted. He began to think hard, he only had seconds to react and the adrenaline accompanied by his magic kicked in.
Without hesitation, he conjured a spell in his mind and his palms began to glow. A searing heat flowed through his veins as his eyes turned into a reddish hue, glowing brighter as the second passed. He shoved the guards away who were around him and placed his hands above his head.
"Fire Pil-"
Frederick suddenly felt an ache in his stomach, something piercing through belly. His lower body slowly became numb as he loses his ability to perceive time. His eyes began to weaken as he felt his entire body shot down. He moved his eyes to the direction of Ivy, hoping to see her horrified face.
To his horror, Ivy was smiling maniacally, seemingly thrilled at the sight of his death. The Archbishop's days were over. He fell onto the floor with a hole in his stomach. His entire lower body was burned. A blaster fire hit the Archbishop with maximum energy, effectively killing him.
Several guards were also hit by blaster fire, their armor was pierced and a raging fire burned their skin in an instant, the energy from the blaster fire dispersed itself equally across whoever skin was hit by it. The guards fell onto the floor, screaming. They twisted and turned as their insides slowly melted into goo.
Alpha struck the floor with enough force to crack open a hole, causing the entire floor of the lobby to collapse for there was a dungeon underneath the castle. Placing the Barrier Emitter on the collapsing floor, it quickly jumped after it activated. A small orb encased Ivy and the remaining guards before they fell into the dungeon below as the floor collapsed.
The drones quickly jumped to the ceiling, clinging onto it via the titanium pikes. They watched as the floor crumbled below them and darkness replaced the dim lit lobby as the torches were put out or dived into the abyss.
"Threats neutralized, ransack all available information" Alpha ordered. The drones steadily made their way to the hole on the ceiling where Alpha dove. One by one they climbed up the ceiling and into the third floor of the castle before scattering to the rooms, ransacking every piece of information they could find before they retreat.
-
Ivy woke up from atop the rubble coughing and her body aching. Her ears were ringing and her limbs were numb but she was thankful to be even able to breathe. She opened her eyes inside the cloud of dust which has accumulated over her in the wake of the floor's collapse. She painfully turned her head to her left and right. The other guards were there with her, motionless and bloodied.
She then saw the weird device the demon placed before they fell. It summoned a magic shield unlike anything she had ever seen. She never knew magic like that existed, but it wasn't magic. She breathed heavily as the dust cloud finally began to clear, moving a bit she slowly regained control over her arms and legs.
She rolled over her back and tried to push against the ground in an effort to stand up to no avail, she just felt too weak to even get up. She grabbed some of her white hair to look at it. It was stained with dust and rubble. She looked at a small puddle beside her face where a thin stream of light struck her face reflecting on its surface. Her sky blue eyes and white skin looked horrendous with the dust and rubble smeared across her face, she suffered some cuts and bruises all-over but she didn't feel any significant bleeding.
"Shit!" She exclaimed, still unable to force herself to sit upright. She began to panting as she felt a sudden lost with her Inner Magic. She was panicking and the result was the magic inside her was trying to heal her wounds much to her dismay. Even if she fully healed, a low Inner Magic reserve would still prevent her from doing anything.
She then heard footsteps echoing through the walls followed by sounds of metal clanging against each other.
"Search the castle! Find the archbishop and kill whoever was responsible for this!" Someone shouted. Dozens of knights stormed the lobby, avoiding the collapsed floor and running towards the stairs and into the second floor.
"Go! Go!" he continued to shout, the man was furious and dumbfounded for he didn't expect the castle he was assigned to defend could fall so easily. He even had two Red Scripture mages under his command! Such failure would surely stain his reputation and may even cause him the death penalty.
"Hey!" Ivy shouted from the bottom of the hole, the man heard her call and quickly ran towards the edge of the hole.
The man was Frederick's little brother, Sir Johnathan, he was old and wrinkly like his brother, he wore a blue chest plate which had the crest of the Fax Church engraved on its torso. He was also a bald man.
Johnathan looked down on the hole.
"Ivy!" He called out. The smoke still covering what was underneath it.
"Yes! I'm here. Get me out of here!" Ivy replied, her voice shrieked.
"Damn it!" Johnathan jumped into the hole despite protests from his subordinate who was right beside him. He landed on the rubble, barely missing a metallic rod. He followed Ivy's voice as she continued to moan in pain. Suddenly, he comes across a body. The body was oddly familiar, wearing a priestly tunic.
"No..." Johnathan whimpered, "No!" He quickly grabbed the body and looked for its head as the realization of the unthinkable travelled through mind like an arrow piercing his heart. He removed the rubble from the body's face, it was his brother.
"No!!!" He wailed, "Brother! Brother!" He screamed over and over, begging his brother to wake up. He continued to wail uncontrollably for a minute before several guards descended onto the hole and restrained him. He thrashed about like a child at the sight of his older brother's corpse whom was barely recognizable from afar, only his tunic and mildly deformed face did he know it was him.
The guards then searched for Ivy who was already unconscious. They carried her out of the hole along with the other bodies.
-
The drones continued to ransack every room in the castle's second to the eight floor. Dashing from hall to hall and completely sealing doorways and implanting force fields to prevent anyone from coming in. They essentially made a maze of traps and impregnable doorways in their wake. Room by room, furniture were scattered, papers on the floor. Every corner of each room was scanned for anything of value and uploaded into the Machine Network Mainframe.
Groans and screams of men echoed through the ransacked and deserted halls, papers flew as the wind from the storm outside came in through the shattered windows, glass shards were littered on the floor and if walked through unprotected, would cause serious foot wounds. The traps were effective in killing the soldiers who ran straight into the corridors. They were electrified by the force fields or crushed by gravity manipulation domes from implanted discs on the ground.
The drones had ransacked most of the castle in just 10 minutes, they were then ordered to retreat.
[All infiltration teams, all infiltration teams, retreat from designated blast zones]
A smoldering fire began to spread across the castle from the Archbishop's room. Smoke filled the halls and corridors which suffocated those who were trapped inside. Johnathan quickly ordered his men to retreat. He wanted the rain to put out the fire itself and hoped that whoever or whatever caused this would be unlucky enough to fall into the blaze.
The drones made their way out of the castle from the Archbishop's ceiling and into the roof of the castle, the rain was still pouring but not as much as it did before they went into it. The five drones then jumped across the space between the castle and the wall as they climbed up using their enhanced ligaments on their legs.
An army of knights surrounded the castle walls as the drones made their way through the top, analyzing any possible routes around the knights. They had the technological and skill advantage but they couldn't risk it. It was against logic to go against vast numbers of foes at once. And so, they waited.
[Strike crafts in position, all drones point lasers on specific targets for guidance. Entire area will be leveled after three consecutive strikes with a time limit of 1 minute]