A second later his voice ceased; separating himself from everyone else, he enclosed himself inside a special protection shield. As his assistants and the researchers around him went on the attack at his command, their leader seemed to have understood who the person opposite them was.
"Know your place, you lab rats!"
"Orc Blood Techniques – Wild Creature Transformation"
"Blood Frog!"
Nafız, transforming into a giant frog in seconds along with the energy wrapping around her body, began to lash her tongue. The five-step-long blood-red tongue was darting among the scientists like a sword. It was wrapping around some and hurling them outside the shield, and striking the offensive mechanical devices for others.
The concept of letting dogs kill each other was completely valid here; highly entertaining minutes were passing for Nafız, who continued to attack regardless of the elemental attacks raining down on her. The scientists, suffering a massacre in the very place they felt safest, were experiencing sheer terror and began to run towards Hubertus Strughold's energy field.
"Sir, save us!"
"Leader, do something!"
The blonde man wasn't even looking at them; he was busy analyzing the movements of the enemy who had infiltrated his safe zone. He waited for Nafız to lose herself while wandering among his five-thousand-strong force, watched for her to be blinded by bloodlust, and finally, believing the time had come, made his move.
"Absolute Evasion!"
The energy barrier began to glow; Hubertus was keeping an eye on Nafız even at the last moment, and with the Blood God taking action upon seeing this change, he confirmed once again how right he was in his concerns. The orc warrior, shooting forward like an arrow, pierced through those in her way, but even this superhuman effort wouldn't be enough.
A second before she hit the energy barrier, Hubertus vanished as if he had never existed. Just as Nafız stopped and tried to concentrate to discover where he went, she was denied the opportunity by the elemental attacks appearing in front of her.
"You bastard! Where did you disappear to!"
Taking her whips in her hands and beginning to spin on her axis, Nafız shouted while creating a small tornado; whoever was around her was caught in her wind and lifted into the air. The end had come for the army consisting of scientists; a wild creature entering their midst was going to decimate the herd.
The forces that came to help on behalf of the Empire of Machines had scattered upon losing their leader, and the same was true for the Golden Leaf Guild Army whose generals were fighting. They couldn't deal with the mutant orcs on their own; their greatest advantage, elemental attacks, were completely useless against these creatures.
"Gather in one place, form a circular defensive perimeter!"
The mid-level commanders began to lead the army in place of Suzi, who was fighting Alyon; Whun was already struggling somewhere far away from them. Nearing ten thousand in number, even though they outnumbered the enemy two to one, they fell back on the defensive; it was obvious they had pinned their hopes on the generals.
Things weren't going well at all for Whun, one of those generals; he was a captive in the energy field he was trapped in, and the white net glued to his body prevented him from moving. At the same time, clouds began to form inside the small energy field; right in the middle of the day, only the spot he was standing in had gone dark.
"Earth can conduct the energy of lightning, but I wonder, how much of it will you be able to withstand?"
The ice-blue energy arc striking from the dark clouds entered Whun's head and, in less than a breath, exited through his feet and grounded into the earth. The armor he had been struggling to take off for a while was reduced to ashes, and his weapon was now completely ruined.
Before he could even process what had happened, the second lightning bolt struck him, and General Whun cried out in agony; he screamed so violently that his voice reached all the way to the main army. When the soldiers turned in that direction, they witnessed a sight that would extinguish their hopes; their general, unable to withstand the lightning bolts raining down one after another, had collapsed to his knees.
The scientists weren't in any condition to deal with his situation, but if they could see it, they would know he was subjected to the exact same method used by Hubertus's apprentice, the leader of the advance force. Michelangelo, utilizing a miniature version of the Lightning Field, had even made a slight improvement on top of it.
"You will die the same way as your advance forces, general! Your only difference is, it wasn't me who killed them but the scientists you call friends; hell, even the devices I mounted on my Robots are nothing but the scraps they left behind!"
Upon hearing this, Whun tried to stand up but failed. Learning of the betrayal meant nothing now; just as his enemy said, he would soon be joining his fallen soldiers.
"I won't go down alone!"
When he muttered a few words with a stutter, he was the only one who heard them. Then he raised his right arm and delivered two strikes, first dead center to his chest, then to his abdomen. Within seconds, his eyes began to glow a fiery red, and five breaths later, the energy field trapping him turned into a crimson sphere.
Whun wanted to take Michelangelo with him while committing suicide by blowing himself up. He had made a move completely unexpected from a mercenary, but his misfortune was his opponent today. The young man with black metal arms began to fall back the moment he realized his field was destabilizing, and successfully put enough distance between them.
The robots were creations he manufactured with the help of his Power Animal, and he had absolute control over them. Even though he had just lost some, he had managed to kill a mercenary general in combat. He slumped down on his ass and tried to steady his breathing; even if he projected a flawless image to the enemy, he was being tested by a heavy mental toll.
He was in no shape to take another step and help the others; frankly, there was no need for it anyway. Alyon, chasing after Suzi with his newly reshaped weapon, was simultaneously pursuing and massacring. Thanks to his newly acquired Lineage Power, this situation was also turning into a massive advantage for Alyon's Warriors; as their leader drew closer to them, their enemies were left defenseless.
The female General didn't have a single breath to spare; death was right on her heels, and in her moments of utter desperation, she didn't hesitate to reveal her true nature. She began hurling the soldiers she grabbed right into Alyon's path; this was the method she came up with to slow the enemy down.
Even though Alyon swung the axe in his right hand and effortlessly cleaved the incoming bodies in two, he couldn't stop his momentum from breaking; the airborne soldiers were landing in front of him one after another. On his final swing, feeling something other than bone and flesh, Alyon stopped dead in his tracks and immediately concentrated his black energy around himself.
When the soldier with the explosive strapped to his back died, it triggered an explosion so massive that not even his bones would be found. Suzi wasn't like Whun; rather than accepting death, she was dead set on creating a window to escape, and she had pulled it off.
She picked up speed the moment she stepped out of the area of effect of Alyon's Lineage Power; she was trying to flee using the special feature of her boots. And she was succeeding, the female General; it was impossible for Alyon to catch up to her again, but she made a fatal mistake in thinking her only enemy was the one-armed orc.
When the blood arrow entered through her right ear and exited by blowing out the left side of her head, her body was still running forward. When she crumpled to the ground five meters later, her eyes were wide open; Suzi had perished before she could even process that she was dead.
"Man, you've got a truckload of guys, yet you still let a sitting duck slip right through your fingers!"
When Nafız turned to her friend, she had thrown that remark just to piss him off; in her mind, she was going to push Alyon's buttons, but the Orc Chief had already gone back to pruning the surviving soldiers. He wasn't chasing after the one who ran; he was satisfying his bloodlust by slaughtering the targets right in front of him.
Noticing the sound of footsteps approaching from the opposite direction, Nafız drew her bow and pivoted that way, only to calm back down a breath later. She knew this young man; the person dragging over the remains of Whun was none other than Michelangelo.
"Oh boy, oh boy! Who would have ever thought that a tiny slip of a boy with all his limbs chopped off would grow up to drag around the carcass of a Mercenary General!"