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 time. The inkwell on her desk rattled.

She stood, her hand gripping the staff that came out of her inventory. The tremors this time didn't feel natural. They had a rhythm to them, like distant impacts.

Then, the heavy oak doors slammed open. A messenger 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 assume so," the messenger stammered. "The lookouts saw movement 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 perimeter 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 messenger turned to leave.

"Wait," Lira said. "Activate the containment 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 messenger 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 battlements 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 moment, Lira understood it wasn't the ragged, desperate screaming of desperate survivors that she was hearing.

Sprinting from the northern gate, another messenger barreled toward her; his eyes were wide with terror. He barely checked his speed in time, 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 mean 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 men and women were rising above the clash of metal and the horrible crunch of bones being snapped.

The attackers weren't survivors. They weren't even human.

A hundred meters away, a phalanx of Dread-Shields was marching forward. Lira's Zealots were firing volley after volley of different kinds of elemental spells.

The bolts struck the shields and fizzled.

<Reflection?>

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 something far stronger than a simple raid party.

If the perimeter 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 some 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 some time ago.

The intelligence had mentioned 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 meant the caster was near that level too.

<Reidar Miller.>

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 meant 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 specimens? 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 time to bring the specimens out!"

She turned to her personal guard. "Get to the holding pens. We are evacuating the specimens 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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