The beer bottle slipped from his fingers, shattering into pieces on the ground.
The smoking guard’s grin froze on his face.
He looked down at his companion’s corpse, then snapped his gaze back up to Cecilia.
In that split second, his brain made the instant shift from harassing a pretty woman to realizing he was dead meat.
His hand instinctively fumbled toward his waist to draw his weapon.
But Cecilia had already moved.
The combat knife flipped in her palm; blade turned upward, she slashed from bottom to top, an arc of cold light slicing clean across the guard’s neck.
The guard’s head tilted sideways, then slid off his neck in a spray of blood and flesh.
The thud of the head striking the ground was dull, sounding like a bowling ball hitting pavement.
As it fell, those eyes remained wide open, reflecting Cecilia’s military boots.
He saw his own body.
That headless body was still standing where it was, right hand still resting on the holster.
Cecilia flicked the blood off her combat knife.
She didn’t even glance back at the two corpses.
To a Battle Sister, these two mob guards were no different than a pair of cockroaches.
Deafening heavy metal music continued to blast from inside the bar, rattling the glass doors till they vibrated slightly.
The people inside hadn’t heard a single thing.
Cecilia raised a hand toward the fleet, giving a sharp, concise hand signal.
The engines of the rear two vehicles roared to life; pulling out from the line, they accelerated down the street.
That was the unit designated to handle Razor.
The two vehicles soon vanished at the end of the block, their taillights shrinking into two tiny red dots in the dark.
From the remaining four vehicles, everyone disembarked.
Griffin emerged from the second SUV, stood at the front of the vehicle, and issued orders using tactical hand signals.
Ten Astra Militarum veterans dispersed rapidly according to Griffin’s hand signals, taking up their designated positions.
Griffin led the remainder directly up to the bar entrance, stacking up against the walls on either side of the doorway.
They weren’t in a hurry to breach.
They were waiting for Cecilia’s signal.
Meanwhile, Cecilia had led her two Battle Sisters around to the rear of the bar.
The Mad Dog’s Den was a three-story building; the first floor operated as the bar, while the second and third floors served as Mad Dog McCoy’s private quarters.
A straightforward frontal assault wasn’t impossible, but it would waste time and risk letting the target escape via the back door or roof.
Thus, the plan was simple.
Griffin would breach the first floor through the front, take control of the main hall, and neutralize all core members.
Cecilia would head straight up to the second floor from the back, raiding McCoy’s domain to capture or eliminate Mad Dog himself.
Two simultaneous prongs, denying the enemy any time to react.
Cecilia looked up at the lit window on the second floor, stepped back two paces, took a running start, and leapt.
Her explosive force far exceeded that of ordinary humans.
A Battle Sister’s body had undergone rigorous training and devotional enhancement.
Even without power armor, her physical specs far surpassed Marvel’s top elite special forces operators by several orders of magnitude.
She caught the edge of the second-story windowsill with one hand and pulled herself up.
Scaling over, she crouched on the narrow sill.
The window wasn’t locked.
She pried it open a crack, and sounds drifted out from inside.
Someone was snoring.
Some were drinking and playing cards.
Another person was talking in low, urgent tones—unintelligible, but sounding like a phone call.
Cecilia checked outside.
Her two Battle Sisters were in position: one covering the back door, the other perched atop the third-floor roof to seal off the rooftop exit.
Cecilia took a deep breath, threw the window open, and rolled inside.
Ross watched the whole sequence unfold on the surveillance feed.
Sitting in his office, drinking tea while watching a live stream of his troops doing the work and earning him experience points…
This feeling was truly fantastic.
As Cecilia’s command “Move!” rang across the comms channel…
The operatives at the bar’s main door and outer flanks moved at the exact same instant.
Griffin offered no unnecessary chatter.
His right hand had already unholstered his Glock as his body pressed tight against the wall to the right of the bar’s main doors.
Two Astra Militarum veterans stood opposite him against the left wall, sidearms drawn.
Griffin nodded to them.
The veteran on the left raised his leg and lashed a heavy kick straight into the latch mechanism.
The force of that kick was well beyond normal human limits.
The lock gave a screeching metallic groan as the door swung inward violently, slamming against the interior wall.
Simultaneously, another veteran on the right kicked open the second door.
Both double doors flew wide open, letting out a rush of stale air and deafening heavy metal music.
Before anyone inside could react, the second veteran yanked out a flashbang.
Without bothering to look inside, he reached through the doorway and released his grip.
The stun grenade hit the floor, bounced twice, and rolled into the center of the hall.
Immediately after, a second and third flashbang tumbled inside as well.
All three flashbangs detonated almost simultaneously.
*BOOM—!*
A blinding flash of white light erupted through the hall, penetrating every corner.
Thunderous force and sheer brilliance hit at once before the occupants could figure out what was happening.
Men tumbled off chairs; others clutched their heads and cowered under tables.
Some reflexively yanked their guns out, blindly yanking triggers toward the entrance.
The instant the flashbangs detonated, Griffin and his squad moved.
Griffin breached first, sweeping his barrel in a smooth arc across the open room from left to right.
*Bang, bang, bang, bang—*
The muted, rapid cracks of the Glock echoed in tight rhythm.
One shot, one down.
The guy on the left who had just been reaching for his gun took a round right between his eyebrows.
The guy on the right crawling out from under a table took a bullet behind his ear, instantly going limp.
As for the guy dead ahead crouching behind the bar with his hands over his head, Griffin didn’t shoot him directly—instead, he blasted through the plastic menu board obscuring him, followed immediately by a second shot straight into his face through the flying plastic shrapnel.
The other Astra Militarum veterans opened fire at the same time.
Each covered their designated kill sector, firing vectors perfectly non-overlapping.
Their crossing lines of fire wove a web of death that swept inward from the doorway.
In under ten seconds, over a dozen men lay pooled in blood.
One fell backward onto a couch, eyes wide open, his face frozen in drunken bewilderment.
Another slumped over a table, face buried among beer bottles and ashtrays, blood streaming from the temple hole along the wood grain, soaking scattered playing cards.
Another leaned against a wall, sliding down inch by inch, leaving a long red smear across the paint.
A burly man with a full beard lunged off a sofa.
His right hand reached for the Smith & Wesson revolver at his belt.
His movement was surprisingly fast.
But he was facing Cadian veterans.
The revolver was barely raised, barrel yet to point at anyone, when a bullet punched straight through the wrist of his trigger hand.
The Smith & Wesson plummeted to the floor along with his severed hand, blood spurting like a geyser from the stump.
The heavy man stared down at his bare, ruined wrist, mouth opening—before his scream could erupt, a second bullet slammed into his forehead.
Griffin stepped over shattered glass and pooled blood, advancing steadily toward the rear of the hall.
Behind him, nine Astra Militarum veterans fanned out, each locking down their designated zones.
No one looked back, no one hesitated, no one fell behind.
The remaining Hellhounds broke down completely.
It wasn’t a breakdown of combat resolve—most of them had possessed zero combat resolve to begin with.
It was a collapse of pure survival instinct.
Only a single thought remained in their minds: run.
Some sprinted toward the back door, bursting into the rear alley, only to be cut down by a single burst from the Cadian veteran holding the alley exit.
Others tried wriggling through air ducts, getting stuck halfway, pinned in place and squealing like pigs.
The gunfire on the first floor transitioned from dense bursts to sparse pops, then to isolated shots, before falling completely silent.
Only the music kept pounding.
Griffin stood at the center of the hall, gun barrel sweeping the perimeter slowly to ensure no targets were moving.
Splatters of blood flecked his tactical vest, none of it his own.
Griffin keyed his earpiece, his voice raspy yet calm.
“First floor clear.
Eighty-four targets, all neutralized.
Zero casualties.”
Cecilia’s voice sounded over the comms channel.
“Clearing the second floor now.
Mad Dog is in the bedroom.
Alive.”
The scar at the corner of Griffin’s mouth twitched, hard to say if it was a smile.
“Keep him breathing.
His Lordship wants him alive.”
“Don’t worry.
Broken leg—he isn’t running anywhere.
I’m looking right at his punchable face.”
A dull thud echoed through the channel—sounds like a heavy kick—followed by Mad Dog’s slurred cursing, which cut off halfway into a shriek.