"What is that?" By the time Rick reached the outside, all he could see was the smoke and smell of fire. The airship dominus he used to come here had been destroyed with its pieces all over the ground, gradly most of the crew was in the underground facility and managed to survive.
"Captain, there is a huge horde of beasts coming from the the south. It was all a trap." A middle-aged man in his military uniform came running down the surface to the lowest level and reported to Sharon who could only punch the wall before taking her gun and leaving with everyone else in the underground, they had to fight back even if it was a trap.
"I should have thought this would happen, but it was not like we are unprepared. Girl, you and Rick brat should leave for now, run as far as possible. A battle between elemental kings is too much for you." Ares stepped forward when seeing the three elemental kings in the sky, even the god-part living inside Rick seemed tense by the three elemental kings and the army of beasts coming at them.
Both nodden with their heads, they may not be able to take a part in this fight, but they could fight to lower the number of casualties."Okay." "Understood."
Leaving Ares to fight the elemental kings in the north, Rick and Artemis ran to the south of the facility where the soldiers shooted a nearly infinite amount of beasts like crazy. Facing the at least thirty hundred beasts coming from the mountains at the south could make anyone give up at the mere thought of fighting so many. And it was exactly that difference in number that made humans the loser side all the time, not that they haven't advanced nothing in the past thousand years.
Bang! Boom!
A storm of bullets were shot through the air towards the mountains while countless explosions were heard, and giant fireballs clashed with the people as the snowy landscape before their eyes was dyed in blood. None of the beasts that made part of this horde were formidable, all being just ordinary first and second stage elemental beasts, but slowly they would approach and kill even the peak third stage masters fighting from afar.
"Die you damn beasts!" Swinging his huge warhammer around, Cassius smashed his hammer on the head of a golden monkey with flaming fur into the ground before a water-wave horse came from behind and he pressed feet on the ground before a huge wind blade appeared out of nowhere and piercing its belly.
"crrrrr!" A noisy shriek reached his ears as a hundred black rats opened a hole on the ground that slowly devoured his body as more and more rats woud pour from tiny holes and gather around his body. Overflow! Seeing it happen, Rick reached his highest speed in a second and appeared by his side only to see that more than half of his body had been digested and Cassius stared at him with weak eyes like he was about to die.
"I won't let any of my people die." Pang! Lightning poured out of his body into Cassius in so much intensity that all the rats were reduced to dust and he picked his unconscious body vanished from the surface, left him in the care of the medicines of the crew that could not participate in the battle and returned. At that moment he decided there was no reason for him to hold back if it meant more lives could be saved.
'Ares is fighting the three kings behind us, if we fail over here it also means his end. Wait, even if those beasts are just ordinary ones, they would never obey orders from humans, being kings or not..." When his line of thought reached this point, he already knew it was useless to waste energy on these minions. There was surely a boss hiding in the darkness and ordering the attack.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Leaping over the battlefield, Rick made eye contact with Artemis who was shooting a dozen arrows per second in a speed even he was scared of. Then he turned look at the depths of the far away within the mountains and the corner of her lips raised with understanding.
Simply vanished from the eyes of all the beasts coming at her, both moved through the beasts without being seen. Fifteen kilometers away, they saw a huge hole in the ground from where the beasts were being poured out. Rick and Artemis stared at each other before pressing a button in their obelisk devices.
[Good, now we can talk without being discovered.](Artemis)
[Yeah, so this is where most of their force is coming from. I can see a enormously dense energy close to the three elemental kings from before, should we go in?](Roderick)
With a nod, it was clear they both wanted the same thing. Using they obelisk to connect both mindwaves so they could speak directly in each other minds was something most people used in their lives, the only problem was the short-distance of reach.
As they reached closer, Rick realized that no matter how much they tried, the hole was pure black and it was impossible to see its inside. Standing closely so Artemis could use her Wind Cover art on both of them, a higher-leveled version of Cassius skill to camouflage.
Walking within the horde of beasts, they hold their breath to avoid the pungent smell of beasts as they walked into the hole in the ground. Suddenly it was like they were transported to another dimension, they air and atmosphere grew darked while roads of stone in a endless underground abyss appeared before their eyes, from where a huge fortress made of rocks and wood in a somewhat rustic and barbaric way appeared before them.