They met up with the one hundred and forty eight elite soldiers waiting near the gates. The troops wore dark leather armor and carried their custom rifles slung over their shoulders.

Celeste and her brother, Caelum, stood with the soldiers. Adrian needed his personal potion brewer and his genius fourth circle runesmith on this operation.

Just in case.

Cassius stood by the main gates as he looked at the group.

"Keep the territory running." Adrian told the merchant. "Burke and Damian will handle the internal security and construction. So, you handle the money."

"Safe travels, Lord Adrian." Cassius bowed deeply.

Deep inside a massive cave network at the base of a mountain.

There were multiple caves and each one of them had multiple tunnels connecting to them. One of the caves was extremely massive.

Dozens of men moved across the floor. They wore simple, skin-tight black clothes that covered everything except their eyes. There was no heavy armor like the knights usually wore. It was nothing but pure, functional stealth gear fit for medieval assassins.

They were currently fighting each other to the death. Daggers and weird looking weapons clashed in the dark cave while blood splashed and fell to the ground. Weirdly enough though, nobody stopped to complain or ask for a medic. They just kept training.

Way in the back of the room, was a wooden chair and sitting on it, was Lorcan Graves.

Black fabric from a dark cloak draped over him completely. And with his chin resting casually against his knuckles, he silently watched his own men bleed.

Then his head suddenly snapped to the left.

He locked eyes on one of the pitch black tunnel entrance.

"Looks like we got some visitors," he muttered.

The entire cave went dead silent.

Nobody asked a single question. The guys just put their hands into their pockets, swallowed a few healing pills, and turned to face the dark tunnel.

"Do not worry about it," Lorcan told them calmly. "The others will handle them. Just watch how your seniors work, and learn."

He then snapped his fingers.

Thick, unnatural white mist flew out from his palms. It flew across the rocky floor and flooded every single connected tunnel, burying the entire cave system in a heavy fog.

Two minutes passed by in absolute silence, and then the intruders finally showed up.

A massive squad marched straight out of the fog. Dark leather armor covered their bodies, and they moved with terrifying synchronization, immediately raising these weird wooden sticks to their shoulders.

Lorcan had no intention of letting these intruders talk.

"Kill them," he ordered.

Hidden assassins flooded out from the side tunnels and they rushed the intruders from every possible angle, totally ready to cut these guys into pieces for their leader.

But the enemy did not panic at all.

And that was exactly when the absolute slaughter began.

Lorcan watched from his chair. He fully expected the intruders to draw swords or shoot arrows, but they just stood there holding those weird sticks.

But then, his men started dropping dead.

And this? It was completely terrifying.

There was no loud booming sound ,there was no cloud of smoke, and he couldn’t even see the thing that was hitting his men and killing them. That was how fast it was. It was on a completely different level compared to arrows.

From Lorcan’s perspective, the intruders just pressed a tiny metal thing on their wooden sticks. Barely a fraction of a second passed, and then one of his highly trained killers suddenly had a massive hole punched straight through their chest.

Blood pooled across the floor, bodies fell, and the guys who survived the initial wave collapsed with shattered kneecaps or had holes in their thighs and calves.

A sudden spike of pure intimidation hit Lorcan. Even though he ran a highly feared underworld syndicate, he had absolutely zero clue what these intruders were holding. Or why they even showed up in the first place.

Plus, asking them for a truce was impossible now since he was the one who threw the first punch. The ambush started without a single warning, meaning diplomacy was completely off the table.

’I have to kill their leader,’ Lorcan thought. ’No. I just need to stick to my specialty...’

So he pushed himself out of his chair and took a single step forward.

Right across the room, one of the intruders turned to look at him. The guy aimed his wooden stick straight at Lorcan and pulled a tiny metal trigger.

Pure survival instinct kicked in as panic filled Lorcan’s brain.

He violently pushed his mana outward, throwing up a magical shield right in front of his face. It wasn’t a sphere that encased his entire body, but a plate of mana that was thicker than a normal mana shield.

It had the same durability as a normal mana shield but it was faster to deploy, with the drawback being limited protective area.

But to Lorcan who had fought multiple battles that almost killed him, putting up a shield right where he was about to get hit was like an instinct at this point.

A tiny metal object smashed into the barrier and was stopped, but the resulting damage was downright extreme.

The transparent shield flickered violently and almost shattered on the spot. Because if that raw physical kinetic force had been just a tiny bit stronger? It would have punched straight through the mana shield and blown a hole right through his chest.

But luck was on his side and the shield barely manages to withstand the hit.

Lorcan frantically pumped more mana into it to repair the damage. Then he glared back at the group.

Fear and anger started to consume him but he was a veteran killer. He knew exactly how to bury his own emotions and feelings in the middle of a fight.

And he did exactly that.

"You want to play rough?" Lorcan smiled, almost eerily. If Adrian saw this expression, he would have called this man an edge lord immediately.

"Let me show you the true power of illusions."