Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

"Although I do not have my Heirloom with me, this weapon that was bestowed to me by my master is enough for the likes of you. [Twelve Stride- First Stride]" Bea muttered to herself, her figure suddenly became ghostlike as she appeared in front of Alvin leaving counyless after images behind.

"W-What kind of skill is this dammit. [Mana Armour], [Super Enhanced Agility], [Blade Edge Mastery- Vector Slash]" Alvin wasted no time retaliating as soon as he saw the maid activate some skills he had never seen or heard before.

[Mana armour] increased his defence, [Super Enhanced Agility] increased his speed and along with his advanced mastery in the short sword, he erupted forth with an attack that he believed even the mysterious woman could not ignore.

"Second Stride"

The attack connected with the maid and passed through her easily.

"Afterimage!!" Alvin was shocked; he thought he had the right one but it turned out to be an afterimage.

"Nope, you had the right one" the afterimage that was behind the one he attacked, moved her lips.

CHII… at that instant, blood sprayed out from his chest and to his horror, he witnessed his [mana armour] getting slashed through as easily as if it was butter in front of a hot knife.

"Dammit" Alvin attacked the afterimage but the person had already relocated somewhere else. He used this chance to open some distance from the maid and down a potion.

"What? Why is not closing? Kuh" Alvin was confused as to why his wounds weren't healing even after he consumed a potion when something stabbed him in the back.

"Always keep your eyes on the enemy— something that our master always said" Bea spoke appearing behind Alvin.

"Rupture" she muttered something and the dagger stabbed to his back glowed red and the wound festered to become some kind of cancer that spread all around his body.

"Puff…" Alvin threw out a mouthful of blood and fell down on the ground while clenching his body in pain. The battle was over before it even started. Bea casually grabbed the hair of the assassin and lifted his face which was twisted in pain.

The gentle expression that she always carried herself with, crumbled apart replaced by a lewd sadistic one.

"W-wha… di.. dyou?" Alvin asked amidst his tears and snot, numerous cancer protruded out of his body.

"Hehe… to answer your question, it was the ability of this dagger, the [A] tier Blood Bane. The blade of this dagger has the ability that can negate all kinds of lower or medium tier healing".

"Not only that, it's another ability [Rupture] that you are infected with rapidly increases the infection rate of the wound until the target is paralysed with pain. AHH~ this dagger was something that was gifted to me by my master. You should be happy that you get to die by it".

After what happened the last time when a member of Cerberus, calling himself number 007 escaped from the clutches of the Valkyries due to them being equipped with poor items, Simon made sure that this time they had the best of the best equipment for the mission.

On that end, he spared no expenses and burnt down hundreds of [B] tier weapons like oil in the armoury to upgrade a couple of [A] tier weapons for the Valkyries. The dagger in Bea's hand, Blood Bane was one of them.

In a way, it was kind of similar to the [A] tier weapon of Donte Goodman, the Proliferate.

"This is bad, Mister Alvin is no match for that maid" Brutus and the other geniuses were watching everything from the distance.

"The other veteran adventurers cannot move because of the strings, it's up to us to back them up" Tiana spoke.

"But we are supposed to keep watch on the golems, we don't know when they will move" Kenan reasoned.

"Watch out, something is flying over here" Hallie interrupted, casting a wall of ice that blocked whatever that was hurling towards them. The thing crashed on the wall and only then they were able to tell that it was a person.

"It's Gallio… what are you doing here? Weren't you assisting mister Kain?" Marcus asked Hallie to dispel her ice wall and the group moved to support the genius of the assassin guild.

"Cough… cough…" Gallio coughed a few times before explaining things. According to him, during their fight, the maid all of a sudden changed the way she was using her strings.

From her initial way of binding her enemies with her invisible strings, she changed into attacking. Those thin invisible strings on top of being extremely sturdy, were also sharp enough to slash through all kinds of defences and armours.

To top it off, the strings that she was using now were many times more tensile and couldn't be cut apart as easily as before. The matter became worse with Kain getting severely injured without being able to even approach the maid.

Finally, after seeing no hope, he hurled Gallio back towards where the others were right before getting caught in those strings.

"What?! T-That cannot be uncle Kain is one of the strongest warriors of our guild. With his strength stats he should easily be able to snap out of the bindings of those strings" Marcus who knew Kain's strength the best, was in disbelief.

He wanted to deny it, but after seeing Gallio's condition and the situation the veteran adventurers were in, he had to accept the ugly truth.

"We need to go and assist them" he might have been shaken, but he was no gutless coward. His instincts were telling him to assist them.

The others also knew that the only way they could survive this calamity was by assisting the veterans. Thus everybody nodded their heads, they were just about to move when Gallio grabbed hold of Marcus.

"You can't go" he spoke in a faint voice.

"Wha… what are you saying? We can't win without those two. We need to go and assist them" Marcus pointed out. Nevertheless, Gallio didn't release him and shook his head.

"Wrong… they are not an opponent we can take on at our levels. Use your brains, if we go out there right now, we will simply just end up becoming dead weights. Do you wish to bring this team to ruin once again Marcus?" at the end of his sentence, Gallio even started yelling.

The shock and despair in his eyes were apparent, even the veteran warriors were helpless against the maid, What could they who had just newly risen to level 400 be able to do?

"So?"…

"Huh? Marcus you still…"…

"Don't misunderstand; it is true that it was partly my fault for leading everyone to that mysterious ruin. However, the situation right now is different. The situation is not completely hopeless. There are quite a few veteran warriors with levels above 500 among us, as long as we get them out of their binds, they will be able to work together and deal with the maids".

Marcus shook off Gallio's hands and turned around, one could already see that he was transforming into his [Partial Beast Transformation] state. He and the others were just about to go and assist the others, when suddenly the Andromedas, that have been silently hovering over their heads all this while, started making some noise.

Some strange robotic sounds came out of them as their frames started shifting and a big muzzle, resembling a cannon came out of their chests.

Zzzz… as soon as the cannon formed, the Andromedas started firing. [Ballistic Guns], the original and the newly developed weapon of the mk9. The reason why the Andromedas weren't attacking, was because they were in the standby mode as they prepared to launch the ballistic guns.

These andromedas came right out of the factory, hence it took some time.

BOOMM… BOOMM… the power and range of the guns were on a whole different level than any of the weapons the Andromedas currently possessed. Their firepower wouldn't even lose to some intermediate tier magic.

The geniuses of the various guilds dodged the attacks or erected shields and defences. Nevertheless, attacks comparable to intermediate tier magic weren't that easy to defend against. Many of them got injured in the process.

"Dammit, these golems just had to start moving now. Everyone get ready, we will deal with the golems first before going on to assist the others".

Marcus roared, his present form was that of a bipedal crimson tiger with golden stripes. His body stood at 2.5 meters tall and he wielded the two-handed broad swords with just one hand. Be it his strength or aura, everything increased drastically at his moment.

"[Howling Beast Roar]"… he issued out a loud roar that interfered with the incoming beams of attacks, making them miss their mark or alter their course directly.

Hmph… Marcus snorted, blood red aura poured out of his body as he made a huge jump. He was so fast that he was already on top of an Andromeda before the war machine could even perceive him.

"I have already fought with you guys for long enough to know all of your weaknesses, you dumb golems" A storm of claw attacks rained down on that Andromeda, destroying its circuits and turning it into a dismantled piece of scrap in a few seconds.

Marcus didn't stop his attacks there, after destroying the first andromeda, he turned his attention towards the others. There were around fifty andromedas that had come out from that portal.

Compared to the thousand of golems he had faced back inside that door, this number meant nothing.

"Great Gale Claw" every attack from Marcus was accompanied by the ripping sound of the wind and the low roar of a tiger. After transforming into the [Partial Beast] state all his stats and skills received a huge boost and his attacks were in no way inferior to that of a level 480.