While Rei and his party advanced through the Underground Facility, Set was rampaging freely at the entrance.
"Damn it! Take down that Gryphon! Hit its wings and bring it down to the ground! If we do that, we still have a chance!"
The one shouting was the highest-ranking Jaya member present. Sensing that enemies had directly invaded the facility, he had come to lead the reinforcements.
But even with his orders, few could respond accordingly. These men had come to flank Rei's party, who had stormed inside. Since they were operating indoors, they had judged direct attacks more effective than projectiles—and safer against friendly fire—so only a handful had brought bows. Moreover, those who did have bows were no marksmen, and Set evaded their arrows with ease.
The others hurled stones scavenged from the ground, but naturally, none found their mark. If anything, the opposite happened—
"Gurururururu!"
Set let out a piercing cry in the sky, and ten Ice Arrows materialized around it.
"The Gryphon's using a skill?! Dodge, everyone, dodge!"
The man who noticed shouted, but in the thick of their desperate assault, there was no way they could scatter in time. The next moment, ten Ice Arrows rained down on the men.
"Gyaaah!"
"Guoh!"
"Ow!"
Not every arrow found flesh, but several men suffered hits. Among them, some took an Ice Arrow straight through the eye and died on the spot.
Even as the battle raged, a few men spotted an opportunity—Set was airborne, after all. If they could just slip inside the facility entrance, they reasoned, Set could neither attack nor pursue them. Its chief advantages were flight and long-range skills that kept it safely beyond their reach. Inside the underground corridors, those would mean nothing.
Well, if they made it to the ground level, perhaps it could give chase—but that would mean abandoning the sky, its greatest advantage. And against an A-Rank monster grounded and stripped of its edge, they might actually stand a chance.
At the point where it was using skills, any adventurer would have recognized it as a Rare Species, equivalent to S-Rank. But these men were not adventurers. That was precisely why they failed to grasp the full extent of what they were facing.
Those who tried to rush the entrance had their entire bodies engulfed in flames unleashed from above. Their one stroke of fortune—if it could be called that—was that Set's Fire Breath lacked the devastating intensity of Rei's flames. They were not carbonized instantly. Instead, they were burned alive, screaming.
One woman, shielded by a comrade's body, escaped the flames and scrambled for the building's entrance. But in the next instant, Set swooped down on beating wings, seized her in its foreleg talons, and carried her skyward.
Set could hoist the carcass of a massive bear without strain. A single woman was negligible weight.
"Eh... huh?"
A momentary rush of weightlessness left the woman disoriented. Then she felt the talons clamped around her torso, the wind whipping her cheeks—and she realized exactly where she was.
"Ky... kyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Even as she screamed, she instinctively reached for the short sword at her hip. She lacked the combat pedigree of the elite guards who had defended this place before, but she had survived enough fights to have that reflex.
But before her hand could clear the sheath, weightlessness returned. This time, it felt fundamentally different—because Set had not grabbed her. It had released her, from a height of more than ten meters.
Plummeting straight toward the ground, the woman flailed in a panic, desperately trying to right herself. Under normal circumstances, she might have managed it. But reeling from the shock of being snatched into the sky, her mind was in no state to direct her body properly. And she was not on solid ground—she was in the air, where leverage was impossible.
"No—nooooooooooo—!"
She failed to stabilize. Worse, her thrashing altered her trajectory, sending her careening toward—
"Whoa! Hey, don't come this way—don't—!"
A man who had rushed in alongside her tried desperately to dodge. But the woman kept flailing, and by pure misfortune, she veered directly into his escape path. They collided with a sickening crash, both screaming.
The fall was only about ten meters, but the woman's weight—compounded by her Leather Armor—turned her into a blunt instrument that dealt the man devastating damage. Both collapsed in a heap, howling.
By some grim lottery, neither was dead. But their injuries were catastrophic enough that calling them near-fatal would have been generous. Returning to the fight was out of the question.
And yet, the worst was still ahead. Unable to move, pinned by agony, they lay there while the battle continued to rage around them—comrades sprinting past, weapons clattering, and Set's Ice Arrows and Wind Arrows raining down in every direction. The two never stood a chance. They died where they lay, caught in the crossfire.
"Damn it all! I don't care what it is—throw anything you've got! Bring that Gryphon down!"
The commanding man roared, frustration sharpening his voice. But the archers were nearly out of arrows, and there were only so many loose stones scattered about.
This was Mejougo, Jaya's stronghold—step away even a short distance, and resupplying would be trivial. But no one could leave. Because Set made a priority of attacking anyone who tried to enter the facility or flee the area.
The men fighting understood, half-instinctively, that they were trapped in a killing field. They could not run. And even if they could—they belonged to Jaya. A criminal syndicate did not forgive desertion. Surviving here only to face Jaya's retribution afterward would be a fate as brutal as dying in this square.
"Gururururu!"
Set cried out—a sound that seemed designed to reverberate through every corner of Mejougo. And the instant it reached their ears, everyone present froze.
King's Intimidation.
That roar could crush the will of any creature weaker than Set, rooting them in place. Not everyone was always fully paralyzed—but this time, every last one of them stopped dead.
"Eh... ah..."
The commanding man tried to speak. But his body would not obey. His jaw would not move. He could only watch, helpless, as Set opened its beak wide in the sky and unleashed Fire Breath.
"You can't go that way! Evacuate to a safe place, now!"
"Sura, where the hell is safe?! If we shove them into a building, it could collapse on them!"
A Resistance member shouted at Sura, who was barking orders. From a distance, they could all see it—buildings near where Set rampaged were already crumbling. Sheltering indoors seemed like suicide.
But Sura shouted back without hesitation.
"It's fine! The rampage is concentrated near the center of the district! If we're evacuating, move them toward the edges, not the center! Everyone, guide them that way!"
The Resistance under Sura's command had caught one break: Jaya's Slave Collars could forcibly rewrite a wearer's will, but they could not be used to order the prostitutes to resist or attack the Resistance. Perhaps Jaya could have issued such commands but simply didn't bother, dismissing the remnants of the Resistance as beneath their notice. Either way, it was a lifeline for Sura and her people.
That said, the evacuation was still barely crawling forward.
It was daytime—a little past noon—but for the prostitutes who worked through the night and slept at dawn, this was the dead of night. By a normal person's body clock, it was closer to midnight. Almost everyone in the brothels was dead asleep. Only a handful were awake.
Rousing the residents of brothels in the center of the district and shuffling them to safety was a monumental task. The Resistance simply did not have the numbers.
And then there was the other problem.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, throwing your weight around?! We'll kill you!"
Guards dispatched by Jaya—stationed at the brothels to handle unruly customers—moved to block the evacuation. From their perspective, a thunderous roar had erupted out of nowhere, and then strangers had barged into the brothels, shaking prostitutes awake and ordering them to flee. Could anyone blame the guards for being suspicious?
The timing was too perfect. The guards sensed a trap.
And they were not entirely wrong—the Resistance had reacted this swiftly precisely because Sura had known about the assault in advance. The guards' wariness was a natural response.
Their one fatal miscalculation, however, was this:
"Shut up. If you stay here, you'll all be caught in that chaos and die. Follow our instructions and evacuate."
With those words, Sharia drove her fist into the lead guard's solar plexus. The man who had been shouting at Sura crumpled without another sound, his consciousness snuffed out like a candle.
The other guards stared, frozen, speechless at the sheer speed of the takedown. They all knew their own strength—and they all knew that the man Sharia had just dropped was every bit their equal. Which meant they had no chance against her.
Then a few of them noticed the Slave Collar around Sura's neck. Strictly speaking, it was a replica—a convincing fake—but expecting the guards to tell the difference was unreasonable. And around Sharia's neck sat the same collar. Also a fake.
Sharia, as a Wolf Beastman, had been dead set against wearing one. But operating in Mejougo during daylight without a collar would have attracted exactly the kind of attention they couldn't afford. Sura had talked her into it, and she had reluctantly agreed.
In the end, those collars were their passport. Thanks to them, Sura, Sharia, and the others were able to move people out of the buildings and toward the district's edges without drawing suspicion.
They pressed on—hitting every brothel and tavern near the combat zone, rousing the sleeping residents, and herding them toward safety in buildings on Mejougo's outskirts.
By all rights, such a mobilization should have caused a stir. But even with a battle of this scale erupting, it was still daytime in Mejougo. More people were asleep than awake, and the evacuation hadn't yet triggered widespread panic.
"This way! Please come this way! The center of the district is dangerous!"
Among the roused prostitutes, some stepped forward to help. Their wills had been bent by the Slave Collars, their desires rewritten so they believed this life was their calling—but their underlying personalities had not been erased. Some helped guide the evacuees as naturally as if they had chosen to do so of their own free will.
(Fortunately, just as I worried, it doesn't look like Mejougo itself is going to be wiped off the map... but please, wrap this up as fast as you can.)
Sura looked up at the Gryphon Set circling the sky, and prayed.