Lira sat at her desk, reviewing the weekly reports. The numbers were good. The Evolution Chambers were performing beyond projections, and the mana extraction was going without a hitch.
But while Lira was reading the reports, the floor suddenly started to tremble. It lasted only a second, but that was enough to alarm the woman.
The floor shook again. Harder this ti. The inkwell on her desk rattled.
She stood, her hand gripping the staff that ca out of her inventory. The tremors this ti didn’t feel natural. They had a rhythm to them, like distant impacts.
Then, the heavy oak doors slamd open. A ssenger stumbled into her office. He didn’t salute, as he could barely stand upright.
"WHAT?!"
"Breach!" the man said. "Sector four and seven. And... and the southern wall. Sector two."
Lira frowned. "Simultaneous?"
"Yes, Executor."
Lira straightened. "Survivors?"
"We... we assu so," the ssenger stamred. "The lookouts saw movent in the woods before the walls shook. It has to be a raid."
Lira nodded, reasoning that desperation made people stupid. She wasn’t worried, however, because her periter guards were Level 260 and were trained enough to make sure that whatever ragtag group was hitting them would break against the walls quickly.
"Send runners to Squads Alpha through Gamma," Lira said. "Tell the Captains to repel them. And tell them to take captives if they have potential. The Evolution Chambers need fresh mana."
"Yes, Executor." The ssenger turned to leave.
"Wait," Lira said. "Activate the containnt protocols. Tell the Wardens to lock down the Evolution Chambers and the holding pens. I don’t want any stray spell damaging the assets."
The ssenger ran out. Lira grabbed her staff and walked out of the command room and headed for the stairs. She expected a slaughter. She expected to walk out onto the battlents and see starving scavengers being picked apart by her Elite Guards.
She reached the ground floor and pushed through the main doors into the courtyard.
At that mont, Lira understood it wasn’t the ragged, desperate screaming of desperate survivors that she was hearing.
Sprinting from the northern gate, another ssenger barreled toward her; his eyes were wide with terror. He barely checked his speed in ti, skidding to a halt only inches before slamming into Lira.
"Sector Four is gone!" he said. "T-they just walked through the wall!"
Lira grabbed him by the collar. "Sector Four is filled with level 260 and 280 Zealots. What do you an they walked through it?!"
"The skeletons!" he said. "They have shields made of... I don’t know! Nothing hurts them!"
Lira shoved him aside and broke into a sprint toward the main gate. Her personal guard, four Level 270 Church Paladins, followed her.
Smoke was billowing over the courtyard in thick columns; the distant screams of her n and won were rising above the clash of tal and the horrible crunch of bones being snapped.
The attackers weren’t survivors. They weren’t even human.
A hundred ters away, a phalanx of Dread-Shields was marching forward. Lira’s Zealots were firing volley after volley of different kinds of elental spells.
The bolts struck the shields and fizzled.
Cold sweat pricked her hair, and she forced a breath through clenched teeth, crushing the rising panic before it could paralyze her.
The defenses were already being decimated; her elite guards were being taken out one by one, cut off by sothing far stronger than a simple raid party.
If the periter was gone, the harvesting tanks would be exposed, and she wouldn’t let months of work be destroyed. She gripped the hilt of her blade, the leather biting into her palm, and shoved the tactical map aside.
Lira watched as a Zealot charged a skeletal attacker. The skeleton didn’t even flinch. It bashed the guard with the edge of its shield, and the guard, a man with over six thousand health points, fell on the ground as his chest collapsed.
"What the fuck...?"
"Hold the line!" a captain shouted.
Then the sky darkened.
Lira looked up. Above the smoke, winged nightmares were descending. It was the Vorathid Sky-Hunters, but she didn’t know that.
"Shit!"
The woman looked around, and her eyes locked onto the sheer variety of the horde. Most of them were these damn bugs, cutting throats before vanishing.
But there were so other kinds of monsters too, to the point that the area turned into a zoo of apocalypse-tier monsters. Despite that, they moved with a single, unified consciousness.
She knew this style. She had been warned about this so ti ago.
The intelligence had ntioned a Summoner who was often creating trouble for them. A man who had taken a city and even defeated the Archdeacon. The man himself told her.
She focused on a Shadow Sovereign that had just decapitated two of her elites with a swipe of its hand.
—[Shadow Sovereign—Level 304]—
Lira felt a cold knot form in her stomach. The summons were over Level 300. That ant the caster was near that level too.
The Church had severely underestimated him. This wasn’t a skirmish; it was an extermination. The scale of the army, the terrifying buffs that made skeletons tank hits ant for dragons—this was power she had only seen from Silas or the Progenitor himself.
Her forces were being slaughtered.
Lira’s fingers locked around the staff, squeezing until the wood bit into her palm and her knuckles ached from the pressure. Holding this position was suicide, but if they left, their research would be lost.
Which was more important: sacrificing everyone or preserving the research and specins? There was no doubt the church valued the research more than the researcher.
She grabbed the nearest officer to rally his squad.
"Pull back!" Lira said.
The man blinked in confusion. "Executor? We are holding the—"
"You are dying!" she said. "Make all units fall back to the inner walls! We need ti to bring the specins out!"
She turned to her personal guard. "Get to the holding pens. We are evacuating the specins and the livestock."
"The prisoners, ma’am?"
The man looked at her with a shocked expression. He had never seen her so scared.
"Move!" she said. "Get the prisoners to the extraction point. Now!"
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