The personnel inside the cave didn't know what hit them.
I had posted a few Corvus outside to keep watch on them, and thanks to that, we were able to strike after I confirmed that their guard was down. Using their keen sight and magical senses, my Corvus crows were able to keep track of what was inside the cave, and who were where. Before they realized what had happened, Troy collapsed the interior of the cave with gravity, raining boulders and rock down on the stunned criminal mages.
"What's going on?!"
"A cave in?! Impossible! There shouldn't be any tectonic instability here…!"
"Out! Evacuate the cave!"
Kureha was concerned about her sister being caught up in the attack, but using my Corvus, I could assure her that she wasn't in the frontal area. Troy also selected his target, listening to my descriptions and directions, and avoided crushing the back. We focused on the greatest concentrations of the enemy wiping out the majority of them before they could even begin to fight back.
Then, as the survivors rushed out, still reeling from the shock of having their base collapse on top of them, Troy and Kureha struck.
Troy's attacks were brutal and merciless. His fists hammered into the faces of mages, breaking bone and obliterating skulls. Earth spikes rose about him, piercing any foe who was somehow able to whirl around to face this new intrusion. Gravity spells flickered to life, cruelly bringing opponents down to their hands and knees, unable to stand under the tremendous pressure. Without even looking at them, Troy kicked them or had earth spikes impale them from below, moving on to the next enemy without any hesitation.
In contrast, Kureha's strikes were elegant and graceful, each stroke landing with unparalleled precision and control. Her sword darted in quickly and penetrated through defenses. She weaved through the crowd of enemies almost as if she was dancing, her sword flashing up and slicing them apart in an almost artful manner. Several mages rallied and succeeded in casting ranged spells to fling at her, but she spun around daintily on her feet and cut through them, her blade pressure hurtling through the air to cleave them apart along with their futile spells.
While the two were annihilating what remained of the enemy, I dove into the cave, unseen by anyone except my teammates. Troy had called off his spells, and the cave was no longer trembling violently and collapsing on itself. There weren't any survivors left, the majority having been crushed by our surprise attack.
"Where's Kurenai?"
That worried me. I was pretty sure that my Corvus informed me that there was no sign of her in this area. Yet, there was nothing else other than ruined equipment and corpses. I studied the corpses, but was relieved to see that Kurenai was not among her.
Then where was she?
Frowning, I raised my head and glanced deeper into the cave. There was another tunnel leading off to some other section, and I proceeded with caution. Eventually I came toward a huge metallic gate, which was closed and sealed off from the corridor I had just come from.
No wonder my Corvus didn't spot it earlier. It was so deep inside the cave that it was out of their visual range. Never mind the walls and corridors blocking their sight.
"Is Kurenai here?"
Kureha and Troy had finally caught up with me, having followed the signs I left behind for them when I began my reconnaissance of the cave.
"Seems like it." Troy had knelt down to observe the earth. "Her trail leads here…or to be more accurate, the trail of her kidnappers."
"I'll break the door open," I offered, having already finished casting my spell while waiting for my comrades to arrive. Raising Sagittarius, I fired off an Alnasl and demolished the heavy-duty doors in one shot. The resulting explosion sent tremors across the interior of the cave, causing stone and dust to rain down about us.
"Hey! Be careful, bro!" Troy complained. I ignored him and proceeded inside the chamber.
"You…! Who are you!?"
Behind the ruined doors, there was a much larger group of mages coughing and flailing about inside, probably caught off guard by the sudden explosion.
"I am Death, Destroyer of Worlds," I replied, and they gaped at me, stunned. Then they caught sight of Kureha as she followed suit.
"You…! The Sword Saint!"
"The daughter of the Franklin family! What is she doing here?!"
"How did she find us?!"
"That's not important," Kureha replied coldly as she pointed her sword at them. "Where is my sister? Return her to me immediately!"
"Your sister?" one of the mages grinned wickedly. "We already told you. If you want her returned safely, then you have to take your own life."
"I won't ask twice," Kureha snapped. "Where is my sister? Return her!"
"Oh, well…" the guy shook his head. "If you insist on being so stubborn, then we have no choice."
"Unless I see my sister, you have no room to negotiate with me. I'll destroy you and find her myself." Kureha brandished her sword. "Since I already know she's here, there is no use in sparing your lives anyway."
"She's at the back," Troy informed her as he joined us. He had bent down to press his palm against the ground. "That's what the signs tell me."
"I see." Kureha swung her sword, an immense blast of blade pressure washing across the interior of the chamber and cutting apart several of the stunned mages in the room. The majority of them managed to dive away in time to avoid being slaughtered. After having cleared a path, Kureha strode inward, intent on locating her sister.
Then she dropped to her knees all of a sudden, her sword clattering beside her as she raised her hands to her mouth in horror.
"No…impossible…"
It took me a second or so before I saw what she had seen. Further inside the chamber was the corpse of her sister.
Kurenai wasn't just dead. Before her death, she had been ravaged and violated. Naked, bloodied and battered, the poor girl was staring lifelessly up at the ceiling, her eyes hollow and blank. Her bruised chest was no longer rising, her yet to fully mature breasts showing signs of rough molestation. Blood had pooled between her legs and spread to a circle around her hips and thighs. One arm rested at an unnatural angle, most likely broken when she tried to fight back.
"Whoops…you found her." the spokesman from before chuckled as he rose to his feet with an indifferent shrug.
"Bastards!" Troy roared, fury building up in his voice.
"You never intended to take her hostage…" I whispered, my eyes riveted to the horrifying sight in disbelief. We were too late…no, the signs of damage…her death didn't seem all too recent. She was dead long before we arrived. "Didn't you say you'll return her safely if Kureha killed herself? How do you intend to do that if she really carried out her part of the deal?"
"We didn't," the man responded sinisterly. "Who cares about honoring a deal with a dead person? We lied." He laughed. "She made such a cute plaything for us that we couldn't resist. Broke her earlier than we expected, which is a shame, but we haven't had much opportunity to enjoy women for quite a while now."
I was aghast. The fuckers clearly never intended to let Kurenai live from the start. They would have used her as their plaything, raping her until she died from their cruel captivity. Even if Kureha had killed herself, they were shameless enough to not honor their part of the deal, and continued to hold poor Kurenai captive until she died at their lusty hands.
From the very beginning, they had lied to Kureha.
"I'll fucking kill you!" Troy bellowed.
"Oh, you can try." Even though Troy cast his gravity spells, a boundary field flickered to life and countered his spell. "There are over a hundred of us and only three of you. What can you do against us?" he chuckled. "Though I have to thank you. I didn't think the Sword Saint will obediently kill herself, so we were planning an attack and waiting for reinforcements. Hmm, I guess they won't get here in time, but that's fine too. Now that you've so conveniently delivered yourselves to our doorsteps, we'll help ourselves and kill you right here and now!"
An enormous wave of killing intent washed over us, almost causing me to stagger.
"These guys…" Troy felt a bead of perspiration drip down his face. "They're on a completely different level from those outside…!"
"What? Oh, you mean the researchers? Of course. Those guys aren't real mages. They are researchers, setting up their gadgets here to study monsters and learn how to control them. Apparently they're trying to control a dragon." The guy shrugged. "Idiots, if you ask me, but we don't get paid to question their research."
"I see. They're a mercenary group, hired by some organization to protect them while they conduct research. Also hired to assassinate the Franklin daughters."
"Oh?" The leader of the mercenaries looked at me, impressed. "You know your stuff."
That was because my dad was a mercenary, but I didn't tell him that. Instead, I had a more important question in mind.
"Who hired you? Who wants the Franklin daughters dead? Someone from the organization?"
"Can't tell you. Rules of the contract and all that. We have to keep our client's information confidential." The mercenary leader laughed. "Not that it matters. None of you will be able to leave here alive today!"
At his order, the hundred or so mercenaries dashed forward, mana crackling around them. Troy and Kureha rose to meet them in combat, but they were quickly overwhelmed. Even though Troy cast gravity spells, their physical reinforcements and Armament Ba Qi allowed them to shrug off the tremendous pressures and allowed them to continue fighting as per normal. And despite Kureha's superlative skill with the sword, the mercenaries who engaged her were combat veterans who survived countless battles. It would be difficult for a relatively inexperienced swordswoman like her to defeat so many of them.
The rest of them pounced on me, thinking I was easy prey. Especially since I didn't charge forward like my comrades and was holding no weapons after having dismissed Sagittarius after I walked through the ruined doors.
"Lyra."
"Ha ha ha ha!"
The vanguard of the enemy mercenaries rushing at me burst out laughing when he saw my Constellation weapon.
"What do you think you're doing? A harp? Are you going to bore us to death with your horrible singing and music?"
"You got the death part correct," I replied icily. With a flick of my hands, I sent thousands of razor-sharp garrote wires flying outward, weaving through the space of the chamber. Several of the mercenaries couldn't stop themselves in time and continued hurtling forward through my wires. They staggered past, and then their bodies fell apart into numerous bloody pieces.
"!!!"
The rest managed to freeze, their eyes wide as they stared at me in horror. A few of them glanced around, trying to spot the near invisible wires, terrified of sharing the same fate as their comrades.
"It's a trap!" a vanguard mercenary shouted in warning when one of his teammates accidentally backed into a tangle of wires, only to be carved apart into several bloody pieces. "Everyone, stay still!"
"Burn, Flaming Inferno!" one of the mercenaries yelled, trying to cast a spell to incinerate my wires around him. Was he an idiot? He was only heating up my wires, which were made of high-tensile carbon fiber. Good luck trying to incinerate them before they cut him apart.
As it was, his eyes widened when he saw the countless garrote wires highlighted and become clearly visible when they became red-hot from the heat. The entire group found themselves rooted to the spot with fear when they realized they were completely surrounded by a web of wires. Even those with weapons and Divine Devices found their armaments tangled by the wires, and they were having difficulty trying to cut them loose.
"Stay still! As long as we don't move, we won't be sliced apart by the wires!" the mercenary leader warned. Smart advice, but…
It was too late.
My hand twitched and I tightened the noose, springing the trap upon them. The wires closed in and wrapped around the horrified mercenaries, cutting through their physically reinforced bodies like hot knife through butter. Even the leader, with his maxed out Armament Ba Qi, was split into a hundred bloody chunks, his head cut into pieces before crashing down onto the ground.
By the time I recalled my wires and dismissed Lyra, only Troy and Kureha were left in one piece. Well, not just them, but that wasn't important.
"Holy shit!" Troy exclaimed, staring at the scene of carnage with wide eyes. "What the fuck did you just do?!"
"I killed the enemies," I replied simply. I had been setting up a trap while the mercenary leader bragged and talked, slowly casting the spell for Lyra to fill the entire space with garrote wires without the arrogant adults noticing them. Then I glanced at Kureha, who was silently weeping as she crawled toward her ravaged sister and hugging the body to her chest.
Obviously I had also left Kurenai's body intact.
Looking away, I sighed bitterly. We were too late. No…the moment Kurenai was abducted, she was doomed. We never had a chance of rescuing her. These bastards had set to satisfy their urges with her the moment they got their filthy paws on her. Even if she survived, she would have been broken mentally beyond repair. But I guess as long as she was alive, there was still hope of recovering.
But now…there was no bringing back. There was no such thing as resurrection magic. Dead people did not conveniently come back to life.
While I cursed and punched the wall, Troy approached me, his expression grim.
"While I'm 100% with you that all these fuckers should be slaughtered like the animals they are, maybe you should have left one or two alive for questioning. You were asking about the organization that hired them, right? We'll need to get some info regarding that…"
"What makes you think I didn't?"
"…eh?"
I strolled toward a corner of the chamber, and with a flick of my hand, tossed aside a desk. Underneath it, a single young man was cowering and trembling violently, his hands over his head. He was sobbing, but when he realized that I had just knocked aside his cover, he yelped and backed away in fear.
"Please don't kill me…please don't kill me…"
"Whether you live through this or not depends entirely on you," I responded, my voice freezing the stuffy atmosphere of the chamber into ice. "Perhaps you wouldn't mind answering a few of my questions."