Under the moon's silver gaze, a formidable force of five hundred heavily armoured soldiers descended upon their destination. Their weapons were at the ready as they moved with precision, their faces set behind their helmets.
Unlike the previous battalion, this battalion wielded a wide variety of good equipment, from firearms to swords, their expressions hardening behind their helmets.
With urgency, the commander closed in on the suspected hideout, recognizing the significance of time following the relentless assault on the targets.
"Half of the unit surround the brothel and half charge inside-" as the commander was relaying commands, he halted midway as he heard a whistle which pierced the air.
The commander's instincts screamed warning, "Be alert! Something is incoming!" he barked, his eyes scanning the darkness inside the brothel.
And the premonition came true as a shimmering object streaked from the brothel.
The commander's gut tightened as the shimmering object hurtled towards them.
"Duck!" he yelled, and some of his men dropped to the ground just in time.
Swishh!!
The soldiers, upon receiving the command, immediately ducked, but a few men fired at the shiny object in a hope of halting it in its tracks.
Bang!! Bang!!
Bullets collided with the incoming object, but its momentum remained unhindered. It moved with lethal precision.
Swishh!!
Kneeling, the commander heard the object's sound fade and looked up, only to pale at the sight of his surroundings. He struggled to comprehend the carnage before his eyes.
On the ground lay the remains of over a hundred men, their bodies split in half and blood pooling around them. Their supposedly impenetrable armors proved to be no match and were effortlessly sliced apart.
"Ahhhhh!!!"
Moments later, more soldiers witnessed the same scene, causing chaos to break out as horror filled their faces and they started trembling and shouting incoherently.
The imperial soldiers' behavior, marked by screams and loss of composure, went unpunished by their commander.
It was because of the commander knew the terror of the gory scene before him.
Even he who has seen countless gory scenes could not hold his composure as his legs trembled just at the thought of reacting a little late to the previous attack.
'Just who are these Night Raid Assassins?' He thought with a fearful expression on his face.
A few of the soldiers began regaining their composure, but they didn't have a chance to fully recover before the massive brothel in front of them suddenly began to crumble.
As the massive structure collapsed, they instinctively retreated, backing away from the chaos in a state of alarm.
BAMMMM!!
As the brothel fully collapsed, the air thickened with dust and smoke, obscuring vision and heightening the chaos and from the dust and debris a shadowy figure in tattered black robes darted through the chaos, a burden on their back.
The commander who saw this immediately understood that their targets are not in any condition to fight anymore and thus are escaping.
"They're escaping!" he thundered. "Both of them are exhausted and one of them is injured, unable to walk! Chase them down and tell the sniper wielders to start the hunt!"
The Snipers scattered across the district upon hearing the command take their aim. They began to shoot at the dark silhouette, their bullets whizzing through the air.
Bang! Bang!
As the bullets hailed on their target, the target began to take cover, exploiting the narrow alleys to evade the hail of fire.
But they knew that the target can't hide in the alleyways forever because of the incoming pursuit.
...…
As the chase continued, Sheele slowly made her way towards the southwest sector of the Pleasure District, passing through the narrow alleys and avoiding areas where the sniper holders were located, as marked on her map.
The commotion earlier had been caused by her using her Teigu Extase, as instructed by Bane.
After causing the huge commotion, she had purposefully hidden behind the brothel debris in order to stay hidden from the imperial forces. Bane had tied a dead body to his back as a decoy and went ahead with the plan. Now it was her job to do the rest of the work.
As she reached her destination, she immediately spotted a tiny dead black snake on a heavy iron plate. She removed the snake and the heavy iron plate, and upon fully removing it, a disgusting stench came out of the manhole, making her scrunch up her nose.
So, she instantly took out a gas mask and torch from Bane's spatial storage. 'Why is he keeping all these things in his spatial storage, anyway?' She thought but didn't dwell on it, as time was slipping away from her hands every second.
After donning the mask, she used the bar on the edges of the manhole to descend into the sewer. Reaching the end, she used the torch to see in the darkness of the sewer.
The torch light descended on the sturdy iron bars that were all over the sewer, their numbers endless. 'Just how many of these are laid out across the sewer?' She thought. "This must be the main reason Bane was buying time for me, so that I can cut through the sturdy bars and make a way to escape."
Indeed, these heavy metal bars were the main reason Bane had entrusted this task to Sheele, after fully knowing the capacity of her Extase.
But he also knew that even with her Extase, Sheele would take time to clear the dense pathway, so he was willing to become the bait in order to buy some time.
Sheele, seeing this, instantly began to slice apart the iron bars, one by one, making a door shape to let her pass through. After that, she came to the next section and began the same procedure, but as she was doing her job, she heard familiar growling sounds.
Stopping for a second, she looked at her wounds and sighed, "No god, not this again!"