***
Each of the five squad leaders led their squadrons through the dark tunnels, diving deeper into the Behemoth's domain with each step.
They battled fiercely to stop Templar from setting up their Thumpers, which were later found out to simply be neural network disruptors, set up on old-world frequencies.
This ant that it would only affect the AI manager and its systems, not anything else, it wouldn't even affect Lyra since, unlike it, her systems were based on the new world, not the old.
She just had an access key to the old world.
But that didn't diminish the consequences of their failure.
In any case, if fate had co to pass, what would the platoon, or rather, Lyra being there even do?
Well, actually... she could do sothing that Amon couldn't.
Sothing that only she, an AI, could do.
Make a deal with the ruin's manager.
And that might just save Amon the effort of dealing with a Behemoth.
So their mission was made clear, updated, and the blanks were filled.
Now they knew how the terror would awaken, and it was simpler than theorized.
Yet knowing that didn't help much.
While it did increase the thods of getting through this disaster to two, none of them were very likely.
In fact, one of them seed almost inevitable.
Templar were sending their entire force in, using teleporters that had been secretly placed all over the ruin, likely since long ago.
They were just never-ending.
Even with the hundred soldiers the Elite cohort had already killed and the additional fifty they had eliminated since then, the platoon had faced no fewer than three hundred soldiers in total.
Of course, most of them weren't Celestials but plain old hunters, yet that still was an impressive number, especially when compared to Emir's asly platoon of fifty n, won, and half-cyborgs.
While he did make for the low quantity with quality, it was not enough to cruise by with no casualties.
The deaths... they were many.
For every twenty they killed, one of theirs was either severely injured or dead.
It was a race against ti.
Just who would lose their 'resources' first, Emir or the Praying Lady...
There seed to be no answer to this question.
Truly, this fate wasn't rciful.
Even Jake, a squadron leader, couldn't escape it.
The poor Ranger lost the very thing his Specialization needed.
His eyes.
They were burned alongside his face, his skin lting off.
Minutes before then, he was leading his squadron with the precision expected of a Ranger, just off an encounter with a few soldiers, his once sharp eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of movent.
Then, he spotted a group of soldiers in the distance, already halfway through setting up their Thumper.
Without even needing his command, Jack's squad split up into small cohorts and attacked. Most used long-range weapons to pick them off before they could react, but one cohort went close to flank them.
Jack took the lead himself, eventually taking down the last of them with a few well-placed shots.
After making sure that no one was around, he began to dismantle the device, sothing that
he had gotten used to in the past however long.
But then... the unexpected happened, like always.
It exploded, his face and upper body taking most of the impact.
Thankfully, none of the others were close enough to get swept up, but that alone showed that it was a targeted attack.
They wanted to kill or at least hurt him, and they succeeded.
He was now blind, at least on one side.
The Zenith Warden in the squadron was of no help to the other.
One might bla her, but it wasn't her fault, Jake's innate healing capacity was limited.
As an Ascendant second sub-rank, a Knight, his body could not heal from injuries that
disabled the entirety of an organ.
Only Paladins could do that.
So for now... he would remain with a blind left.
Not even the best Zenith Warden within the family could save him.
And speaking off, Sarah was luckier than her buddy.
While she had faced an even tougher battle, she ca out unscathed, no thanks to her innately high healing factor, a natural result of her Specialization.
Her squadron was ambushed by a larger group of Templar soldiers while they were disabling one of their Thumpers.
Sarah's squadron made sure to protect her, and she led them to montary victory, an assault rifle in her right hand and a bloodied club in the other.
She learned how to be sothing more than just a healer, given only select circumstances of
course.
The girl knew how to pick her fights.
Those injured were swiftly healed by her, while those on their deathbed survived a while
longer, so even indefinitely.
Without her, many of them would've been left behind, their bodies awaiting the nearest monster for a grave inside its stomach.
She was invaluable to the squadron; there was no doubt about that.
The biggest evidence of that was her squadron itself.
It had the least amount of deaths, though she more than made up for it with the injured.
So while she was impressive, her level remained similar to her fellow leaders.
Opposite her strategy was Hiro the Blade Dancer.
He, like Jamal, went wild.
His squadron had killed the most and had the most deaths to match.
They went through their route much faster than the other four.
At tis he killed most of the enemies by himself, not caring for injury and abusing his Flash
Step as much as he could.
Lyra had taught him the Path Optimization thod, and he had been ecstatic since then, begging for a chance to go all out with it.
The chance had certainly arrived, and he abused it, almost treating it like a ga with how enthusiastic he was.
Even when the soldiers had set traps throughout the area, catching several of Hiro's n off guard, he went ahead by himself, his blades whirling like a deadly dance, slicing through the traps and the soldiers alike.
He used both a curved blade and his usual short swords, switching between them to match what suited the battle most.
His squad didn't mind his uncaring nature; they were like him, people who enjoyed battle.
It was why Emir was entertained by their company the most.
They, like him, reveled in the chaos, loving the feeling of dismantling opposition.
Evan, the Knight, wasn't so similar.
He was extra cautious, embodying Emir's normal personality outside of battle, and his squadron had perhaps the hardest fight.
They almost matched Sarah's squadron's low number of deaths, even with the bad luck they
were getting.
However, in comparison, their injured were much less-no more than two.
This indicated that when any of them got injured, it was usually fatal, ending their lives.
But that wasn't the only reason for their low number of casualties.
Evan was leading them.
He was the second strongest of the lot under Kiera, perhaps first if it was CQC.
It wouldn't be a lie to say that he was close to being number one-very close.
Almost all of those they faced were well-prepared, making them put much more effort into matching the pace of the other squadrons.
Even then, their usual pace was relatively slower, caution playing a large factor.
Their strategy was to put safety first at all tis, surround the enemy, trap them, and puml
them to death, swords raised high.
Evan was always the first of them, and he was a force to be reckoned with, almost taking on
entire cohorts by himself.
He battled against every single enemy leader, his duel strength unmatched by his peers.
Every fight was a brutal one, but they always erged victorious, smashing those Thumpers
to pieces.
Leo, the Technomancer, was sneakier than the others, craftier.
He had to be.
Unfortunately, he couldn't bring along the chs they had back in the garage.
The reason was simple and quite obvious: they couldn't be seen using them.
All chs belonged to the UEF Army and were illegal to be owned by anyone other than them.
Bringing those killing machines here would only put a large target on their backs, giving the UEF free reign to weaken the family as they liked.
His squadron played off his skills and copied what was done to Jake, killing Templar soldiers
with their own devices before they knew what hit them.
Those n couldn't even report what was happening.
Every ti they closed in on death, an EMP blast would occur, disabling their comms and
stopping them from reporting what happened.
This resulted in a cycle that always started with their explosive deaths.
The squadron was on the weaker side, even with Leo carrying them, they couldn't avoid
deaths, and there was no blaming them.
A majority of them were techies like him, or newly awakened hunters, brimming with talent
but not much experience.
That showed quite a bit.
When they first encountered a group of soldiers, they almost allowed them to set up the
Thumper and reach full functionality.
In Leo's own words, the only thing they had left to do was match the exact frequency to
connect to the ruin, as every location needed a different frequency, a counterasure put in place by the AI manager.
Desperate, he managed to hack in and pause that process at the last mont.
He then corrupted the device's systems, disrupting its function and causing it to malfunction.
The only reason no explosion resounded was because he didn't know that such a thing could happen and at such a scale.
Since then, and soti after, the deeper they descended into the ruin, the more explosions rang out.
Those were eventually heard by the other squadrons as the tunnels began to converge.
It wasn't long till the five squadrons found themselves heading toward the sa direction-
the myocardium of the tro's Heart ruin.
The air there grew even heavier with Aether, and slowly, every sound had faded, obscured almost as if in deep water.
Kiera and Lyra were the first to arrive, reaching a large, empty circular chamber.
The walls were tall there, and the roof was high up, similarly empty of anything as if this
place was designed to induce boredom.
But when they stepped foot in the chamber, a man appeared, his back facing them.
He wore a long dark blue coat made of soft fabric, with gold lines running through it. Underneath, they could see a lighter blue shirt, paired with black pants and tall boots. His familiar features were easily recognizable.
They almost couldn't believe their eyes.
That curly black hair, and gentle visage.
There was no mistaking it.
...It was Amon.
He stood before a fully functioning neural network disruptor, which had around fifteen n,
or at least the limbs of what appeared to be fifteen n, strewn about, painting the device as
well as the white chamber in red.
And before Lyra could react or do anything to stop it-just anything-a pulse was emitted,
sending a shockwave through the whole ruin.
"NO!"
She felt it.
There was no escaping this.
It had happened.
The AI manager, the one they had fought so hard to keep dormant, was now enraged.
And in the next mont...
A hologram materialized before them.
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