Roland was sent hurdling across the room, skidding across the floor before crashing into a wall.
"Looks like I can still pull this off." Milo said.
"That's the form I fought earlier. He actually managed to land a blow, a strong one at that. If he hadn't held back, I probably wouldn't be here." Merlow thought.
"Thank you for the assistance. My plan's almost finished." Erythro said to Milo.
"You mean to tell me the whole 'hit em' hard this wasn't it'". Milo said sarcastically.
Erythro giggled at this. "Well, that's part of it."
The room suddenly started shaking as Roland appeared was again.
He emerged from the rubble screaming and releasing an overwhelming amount of mana.
Looking at Roland's face, his left cheek was now swollen from where he had been hit, additionally his clothes with slightly damaged.
"I'll massacre all of you!" Roland screamed as hundreds of energy spheres shot out of his mana field.
As the deathballs accelerated toward everyone, they all began dodging to the best of their abilities.
"Damn, with all the noise that's being made, why hasn't anyone above ground noticed. Eva should be nearby right. No, I can't rely on back up to show up, we have to handle this ourselves." Milo decided.
Milo was having a relatively easy time dodging the blasts, but he noticed Erythro struggling quite a bit. Losing their footing and being hit by a bit of debris.
Milo leaped over, flinging Erythro over his shoulder, and carrying them on his back.
"Much appreciated." Erythro relented.
Milo didn't seem to lose any momentum seeing how surprisingly light Erythro felt.
As Milo dodging Eryrthro started shooting Roland with compressed plasma bullets using a combination of fire and wind magic.
Each bullet that hit Roland caused small spurts of blood to shoot out of his body. His body jerked with each impact until he stopped firing off his death balls.
Roland worn out and infuriated, could now only scowled at Erythro. Unforntunately for Roland, his guard had dropped and Merlow had moved in for the kill.
Before Roland could register it, both of his wings had been severed from his body along with the wind being knocked out of his body.
"No...I can't lose to some filthy commoners, I can't." Roland thought.
"It's over." Erythro stated.
The iris of Erythro's eyes began to shift and glow bright red as a mist of red, shiny particles manifested
around Roland.
Then, as if Roland was the singularity and the particles were stars, they began to close on him.
Without anymore movement, the particles disappeared inside of Roland.
Roland didn't seem to pay any mind to this, now being fully enraged and all.
You couldn't even see the pupils in his eyes if you tried.
Roland bashed Merlow in his side, knocking him to the floor, giving him his own crater.
Soon after, he charged at Milo fully intent on killing him, but right when his fist was inches away from Milo's face, his body stopped.
Roland skin, eyes, and mouth lit up with a red light as every cell in his body was hijacked and destroyed.
Roland screamed with nothing left to do. His energy violently radiated everywhere.
In the wake of Roland's body was a dark sphere of pulsating energy.
In contrast to it's dark coloration, the sphere exploded in a flash of white light, putting everyone in a daze.
Milo sat up in the destroyed room, vision blurry, ears ringing.
Once Milo's condition returned to normal, he noticed that Merlow was nowhere in sight.
He had just up and vanished. Erythro sat up and immediately turn to look at Milo.
"Guess we should reasemble now."
Shortly after saying this, Erythro melted into a pile of red sludge that quickly swam up to Milo, entering his body through his skin.
"That was a tough fight. For now, we should search this place. Who knows what else Roland's been up to."
"Alright, but let go check on the hostages first. They should have woken up by now, and there's no doubt that they're probably afraid."
Erythro agreed with Milo and they headed back down the path that led to the open hall.
As far as Milo could tell, there no one on this floor, but he could feel multiple mana signatures up above.
Milo teleported up above and was now standing in front of a group of very scared women and children.
It seemed that they were trying to exit through the two front doors, but something was wrong. If it was jammed then there's no problem.
"Let me give a crack at it."
The group of people moved to both sides of the door allowing Milo through.
Milo put his hands on both handles, and put in a slight bit of effort to open the doors.
To his surprise they didn't budge. Milo focused a bit more and took note of something strangea. There's mana infused with the doors.
Milo linked his mana with the doors and unravelled the spell. Once he had completely unravelled the mana, he gave a slight push, and doors opened with ease.
"Got it." Milo took a step back from the doorway, giving the group some room to leave.
To Milo's surprise, none of them went for the door, instead, they all turned to Milo with a newfound look of hope in their eyes.
One of the women spoke up, breaking the silence.
"W-we don't know what to do now."
"Don't know what to do?" Milo thought.
"Most of us don't have homes or families, there's nowhere for us to go."
Milo had neglected this fact. Roland likely lured in and kidnapped people with no background in order to fuel his own desires.
"I can help with that. I know of a place, it may not be the coziest, but it's definitely a lot better than the capital."
Milo focused his mana around the group and performed yet another mass teleportation.
"WHAT THE FU-"
After nearly five minutes of explaining and consoling Merideth, she finally calmed down.
"You're just like him." Merideth bitterly muttered as she rubbed her forehead.
"Just like who?" Milo asked.
"Nevermind, it doesn't matter."
Of course, it did matter because Milo had some idea of who she was talking about.