Dungeon of Pride, Laplace

'Hehe, guild master Cassius… if you saw me like this, you would definitely be disappointed right? No, you would definitely beat me up. Everybody is fighting for a way out, yet I'm giving up already.

'No wonder she has only been looking at Marcus from the beginning. Did she too think that I was pathetic too? Ahh, I'm hopeless, I messed up again.'

Gallio thought internally as his eyes stole a peek at the girl who was shining in gold in his vision. Looking at her, he realised that there is no point in giving up. He choose to fight along with them and maybe then he thought she would spare him a glance too.

Thus, the tertiary team rose in defiance to their fate, with Gallio and the plan that he came up with in the heart of all of it.

"Marcus"…

"Leave it to me" Marcus who was called out, ran out of the barrier. He transformed back into his partial beast state and started running wild.

"Tyler, Park, Levin…"…

"Yeah"…

Gallio called out the name of all the warriors as they gathered in one spot.

"Kenan, Jason, Connor"…

"[Wall of Flames]" he called out the name of mages with expertise in the fire.

A wall of flame as high as twenty meters, rose up in the air all around them, barring vision for those other than allies.

"Marin, Franco…" Assassins, warriors, mages… one by one, Gallio called out all the names of the geniuses who used their skills and magic in turn.

"Hm? What are those guys doing? Don't they know that anything that they do at this point is meaningless?" Bea wondered aloud.

"Ahhhh!!" Alvin next to her struggled, his eyes glowed with a resolute light.

"I won't let you go after them" he roared defiantly.

"What are you getting so riled up about, all of you will die eventually. Anyways, I do not have the slightest intention of going after them. Master has set the Adnromedas as their opponent, he wants to see how well the Admormedas can fare against the adventurers with the amount of information it has currently".

"With sir Wisp controlling them, I hardly think I need to take any action. Anyways, you should be more concerned about yourself. The reason why I haven't killed you is because you still have a big part to play in the upcoming events".

Bea toyed around with the assassin, stabbing him with her dagger from time to time as she enjoyed his screams.

Inside the wall of fire, the Andromedas that were surrounded by fire all around, were barred of their vision of the targets. They who had no information about any such skills were unable to promptly respond to what came next.

"Hurry, I don't think that I can take them any longer" Marcus roared, no matter how strong he was in his partial beast transformation state he was nevertheless, unable to go against so many Andromedas.

To attract all their attention he had to use his full strength and reveal all of his skills and superimpose them on top of each other. Once the duration of those many augmenting skills ended, he would be vulnerable to enemy attacks.

Be that may, his greatest concern was these golems ability to take new information into account. For some reason, he felt like these golems were growing stronger and smarter after every new skill and technique that he displayed.

The skill that worked before didn't work against them the second time. They either dodged or could see it coming. Marcus wanted to deny this possibility; however, the more he fought against them the more certain he became.

These golems were learning, adapting themselves and changing their attack patterns to the best possible way to defeat him.

[Activating… Electrocution Net]... Marcus heard the golem behind the one he was facing currently, mutter something in its robotic voice. The arm of that golem started transforming and to his surprise, it shot out something that looked like a fishing net.

His instinct flaring alarms, Marcus tried to dodge it; however, the Andromedas were far smarter than he giving them credit for. The golem he was facing grabbed onto him at that instant and stopped him from moving away. Thus capturing him inside the net.

If it was just any simple net, Marcus would have broken free immediately. However, the net was made of the same material as their equipment and frames and was extremely sturdy.

Iridium was a metal that was only a little weaker than Mythril, one of the toughest metals known to the people of this world. Given this fact, it was no wonder that Marcus was surprised that he couldn't get out of the net.

Though the real surprise was about to come next. The net that the Andromedas had thrown, didn't just restrain him, but also electrocuted him.

ZAPP…

"Aaaarghhh" Marcus screamed as he felt a high voltage of electricity curse through his body from the net. The electrical energy was so high that even his partial beast transformation was unable to handle it for long, he started to revert back to his original human form.

Marcus was twitching and squirming paralysed inside the net, on the other hand, the andromeda that was captured alongside him was perfectly fine. It showed no signs of being affected at all.

[Capture successful… retrieving target] the Andromedas proceeded to apprehend Marcus who couldn't move when the wall of flames started flickering. Skills and magic passed through the wall and bombarded the Andromedas pushing them back and destroying a few.

[Error… unable to detect the target] the Andromedas due to being encircled inside the wall of fire and unable to see where the attacks are coming from, were unable to respond quickly.

After that first batch of attacks, more and more attacks started coming from all sides of the wall. Huge rocks and debris fell down from the sky, making the andromedas unable to maintain their flight.

One by one they had to land on the ground which further opened them to the attacks of the warriors that came attacking them using their skills and disappeared inside the wall soon after.

[Drill Bash], [Strong Blow], [Bull's Charge], [Wide Slash], [Mountain Cut] all kinds of skills were used.

In some other case, the andromedas would easily be able to avoid the attacks or create defensive measures to render that skill useless. However, due to them being unable to lock in their targets and see where the attacks are coming from, the andromedas even with their information sharing ability were unable to respond.

They tried to react by charging out of the wall only to be pushed back inside.

Light magic mastery- [Barricade of Light] was cast around the wall of fire. The magic made things from outside pass through it but stopped anything from coming outside.

That is to say, the Andromedas were completely blocked off from the outside and could only move around within the wall of fire.  The reason why they couldn't perceive the magic coming at them from different directions was because of the—Earth magic mastery- Geo Manipulation.

The mages proficient in Earth Magic Mastery, ferried the others around the wall of fire using which they continuously cast their magic and skills while sitting on top of rocks.

The assassins using the ample cover of rocks and fire displayed their skills to support the warriors and combinedly, they tackled the andromedas.

"Are you alright?" Gallio asked Marcus who looked quite worse for the wear. They had somehow managed to rescue Marcus from that electrified net before the [Barricade of Light] was cast or else just like the Andromedas, he too would have been stuck inside.

"Yeah" Marcus nodded his head, still feeling numb all over his body.

"I must say, your plan was quite good. When did you manage to gain information about all of our skills and magic? And how did you know a way to counter the golems?" Marcus asked looking at the Andromedas getting destroyed inside the wall of fire.

To pull something like that, one needed extensive knowledge about each of the skills and magic they all possessed, awareness about their surroundings, craftiness, versatility and not to mention the genius to put all of these together into a plan.

"Haha, it's just some information I have collected by observing all of you. I'm an assassin after all, a part of my job is intelligence gathering. I have been keeping an eye on all the geniuses of the top and the big guilds since a long time ago. I know all your quirks, the skills you have and your capability. As for the Golems, did you forget these special eyes of mine?".

Gallio pointed at his eyes. A special mutated physique that only a handful people in this world possess.

"Mystic Eyes… huh. That's quite something. However, even with the aid of that special physique, to pull something like that one needed to be a genius" Marcus praised, he downed a couple of potions to heal his injuries.

"Hearing that from a guy who took the third spot, doesn't make me happy at all. Anyways, it's not over yet, don't let your guard down. The main part of our plan has only just begun" Gallio reminded.

"Haha… yeah".

The wall of fire stayed up for quite a while, blocking the vision from the outside completely. Nobody could tell what was going on inside it. The veteran adventurers who were struggling to free themselves from the strings, could only pray in their hearts that those young geniuses from their guilds were fine.

The distant galloping sounds, the screams of despair and the noise of bones being crushed resounded from the backlines. The adventurers grit their teeth and endured, they wanted to help but were unable to free themselves from these goddamn strings.

The more they struggled to get out of these strings, the more constricted it got.