For one second, each of the golden folk's hearts skipped a beat. It felt like a huge snake the size of a mountain had appeared in front of their eyes and stared into their souls like it was deciding whether or not to kill them or not.
The two of them were so scared that they didn't move into the room until the man inside the room stepped near a magic lamp that illuminated what he truly looked like.
Standing there was a slightly below average man at 168cm (5'6ft), he was quite lean and looked like a very fit old man with spiky white hair and a very thick mustache. His muscles were also very built despite the fact that he was quite lean and also had a variety of scars that littered his body. In the entire base, he was also the only one who didn't have a cloak on and instead was topless with sweat dripping down from his body as he had just finished exercising, but he had the symbol of arrows carved onto his left pec. The arrows were a cyan color.
He didn't look too strong from a normal person's view. However, if Erik himself was here, even he would feel like prey in front of a snake.
(Authors note: He looks like Silver Fang from One Punch Man)
The man still hadn't looked in their direction as he faced away from the pair with his hands crossed.
"Don't make me repeat myself, my dear lieutenants."
The moment he said those words, the two golden lieutenants felt chills permeate through their bodies and quickly stepped into the room. The moment they entered the room, the doors behind them closed slowly.
The two of them felt the doors close and knew there was no backing out anymore. The two of them knelt and had to speak very slowly to attempt to not stutter, but even then it was useless.
"S-Sir L-Lan. Y-You called for us?"
Lan still looked the other way as the beads of sweat on his body slowly dripped onto the unique floor of the room, which was made of blocks of Dark Steel which was a very sturdy material and incredibly rare in Partha.
"I did. Do you know why I called for you?"
The two of them didn't even dare to look at Lan's back and just eyed each other seeing who would speak first. Lilith gave a look that she would not do it, so the other man relented and spoke.
"S-Sir L-Lan is it because w-we failed the m-m-mission and l-lost the d-dagger?"
Lan didn't move a nanometer, but still managed to reply
"Aye. At least you know what you did wrong."
The cloaked man suddenly got really nervous and his voice got louder as he tried to explain himself.
"Sir Lan. I can explain."
Lan didn't say anything nor move, however, the skin around his eyebrows wrinkled as he lowered them and looked a little bit angry. However, the cloaked man couldn't see that and took the silence as an affirmative to continue speaking.
"It wasn't my fault. That's right, it wasn't my fault. The intelligence for the attack was wrong and… and… we… we didn't expect that a high-ranked adventurer would be there to protect the target."
As he explained himself, the cloaked man regained some of his confidence and spoke a little bit more clearly.
"Plus the dagger wasn't even my fault! Lilith was the one who gave away the dagger, I didn't even know it was there. In fact, none of this was my fault. Even though we were both in the field it was Lilith's fault! If you are going to punish someone punish her, not m-"
Before the cloaked man could finish his last word, the man blinked and suddenly Lan was in front of him with his hand on his throat, lifting him up as he choked him to the point where he couldn't breathe let alone finish his sentence.
Lilith felt like her heart had stopped once she saw everything play out. The man who was being choked was 183cm (6'0ft) tall and pretty heavy due to his decent-sized muscles, but he was being helplessly choked by Lan with one hand.
At this point the man was desperately trying to do anything to get out of the choke and breathe air, his brain had lost oxygen to the point where he forgot about how strong Lan was and all he was trying to do was escape and breathe by instinct. The cloaked man kept hitting Lan's forearms with his fist as he attempted to force Lan to let go. However, if the man was in his right man and not being driven by instinct, he would've laughed at his actions as he had no chance of succeeding that way.
The man kept pounding his fists into Lan's forearm, but it was to no avail and the bones and muscles in his hands had already shattered and torn. However the man still kept hitting Lan to try to get Lan to let him go with the clumps of meat that were previously his hands, Lan, on the other hand, didn't react to anything the man did and he merely did not move an inch as he stared into the man's eyes like he was staring at his soul.
Lan continued to stare into the man's eyes until the man slowly lost the glint in his eyes and lost unconsciousness. The moment this happened Lan closed his hand and easily tore through the muscular neck the man had and blood sprayed everywhere onto the ground as the body dropped to the ground with the neck missing the front portion of flesh.
Afterward, Lan simply swung his hand towards the ground with enough force that all the blood and chunks of flesh on his hand splattered onto the floor. Without even looking back, he spoke to Lilith who had turned pale from seeing how easily someone who would've been considered a part of the top powers in Partha was killed.
"Lilith I want you to understand something. The reason why I will only be asking for one gold member instead of two replacements is to give face to your mother. Otherwise, you would have been joining that scum on the floor, however, even with your mother's status this will be the last time I give mercy. Do you understand?"
Lilith didn't dare talk and merely nodded her head up and downwards viciously. Even though he didn't turn back to see her response, Lan merely walked inside the room more.
"Good. Now clean up the floor and get rid of the body. The moment that's done I want you to leave and find out where the target is."
With that, Lilith took out a small metal wand and cast magic which lifted all the blood on the ground and the body off the ground. Seeing as everything was floating, she practically bolted out of the room as the door automatically opened and closed.
Lan on the other hand rubbed his temples as he now had to request for a replacement lieutenant and had to explain this towards his superior.
'Goddammit. The first time we fail the operation and reveal ourselves is because some shitty man got lazy and overconfident. Even worse the boss might really kill me once he finds out I lost the dagger…. SHIT!'