Another bullet struck the black barrier before the voice outside had completely faded, leaving a spreading crack across the dark surface before the damaged section repaired itself.
Victor remained in front of Karl, Leon and Mira without moving, his hands still held together while the barrier surrounding them continued absorbing attacks from somewhere beyond the trees.
"Stay here."
He separated one hand from the seal and a narrow section of the barrier slowly became transparent, allowing them to finally see what had been waiting outside.
Karl’s expression immediately changed.
More than twenty people had spread across the surrounding wilderness, with several positioned between the trees while others stood openly near the road leading back toward the city.
Some wore ordinary combat equipment without any visible insignia, but Karl recognised what they were almost immediately.
Mercenaries.
The others were considerably easier to identify.
Several members of the Vale family stood among them, including the man whose legs Victor had crippled only days earlier.
He was already standing again without any visible difficulty, his injuries apparently completely healed by the Vale family’s advanced healers, though the hatred in his expression remained the moment he noticed Karl.
Yet Karl’s attention quickly moved elsewhere.
Near the centre of the group stood another familiar face.
The guard from the city entrance.
The same man who had seen Victor’s vehicle leave the city and waved them through without asking a single unnecessary question.
Victor noticed him at almost the same moment.
His eyes remained on the guard for several seconds before something inside his expression changed, and Karl immediately understood what he had realised.
Their route had been leaked.
A man standing at the front of the group suddenly laughed.
He looked considerably older than most of the Vale members around him, with grey running through his hair and a narrow sword hanging beside his waist.
"Now, now, Victor."
His smile widened when he saw Victor’s expression through the barrier.
"What a precious look you have on that face of yours. Tch, I really should have brought a camera."
Victor ignored him and continued staring toward the guard.
The older man noticed and his laughter became louder.
"So you finally understand."
He opened both arms slightly.
"Did you really believe the entire city military was loyal to the Reed family?"
The guard lowered his gaze but made no attempt to move away from the group.
The older Vale man continued.
"Arthur Reed might have been the former City Commander, but everyone knows what condition that old man is in now. The Reed family has been living on an old reputation for far too long."
His eyes moved toward Karl.
"Their era is finished."
A faint smile appeared across his face.
"Now it is our turn to rule this city."
Leon glanced toward Karl but Karl remained focused upon the people outside.
The older man’s smile disappeared when his attention settled fully upon him.
"And then this F-rank trash you call a young master publicly humiliates our family by divorcing our young lady."
Karl’s expression did not change.
The man raised one hand and pointed toward the injured Vale member sitting behind him.
"And you."
His finger moved toward Victor.
"You dare cripple my nephew in front of our own family."
The seated man looked toward Victor with open hatred.
The older Vale member sighed before shaking his head.
"Such a shame."
He looked toward Karl again.
"I will definitely visit your funeral afterward. I would love to see the expression on that old dog’s face when they put his precious grandson into the ground."
Something black flashed through the air and the man stopped speaking.
For a moment, nobody around him understood what had happened.
Then blood appeared beside his face as the upper half of his left ear slowly separated before falling onto his shoulder and sliding toward the ground.
His eyes widened as he raised one trembling hand and touched the blood covering the side of his head before staring toward Victor.
"You..."
The amusement had completely disappeared from his face.
"When did you..."
His gaze shifted back toward Victor and genuine disbelief appeared inside his eyes.
"You already broke through?"
Several people around him reacted immediately.
The older man took half a step backwards.
"No way. Aren’t you only thirty-eight this year? How could you have already stepped into that realm—"
Victor scoffed "You and the entire Vale family are nothing but dogs."
Victor’s long sword slowly left its sheath.
"I might have allowed some of you to leave alive."
His eyes became completely cold.
"But your biggest mistake was disrespecting the Old Master in front of me."
The older Vale man’s expression twisted.
"Kill him!"
Several mercenaries moved simultaneously.
"Don’t let that bastard leave!"
His hand pointed toward Karl, Leon and Mira.
"And kill those pieces of shit too!"
Victor stepped forward and the black barrier surrounding Karl’s group remained in place as his body passed straight through its surface.
The first mercenary reached him almost immediately.
Victor’s sword moved once.
Karl barely saw the strike as a thin black line appeared across the man’s armour before blood erupted from beneath it and his body collapsed forward.
Three more attackers reached Victor from different directions.
His long sword twisted through his hand with almost no wasted movement, sliding beneath one weapon before cutting upward through another attacker’s chest.
The third tried approaching from Victor’s blind side.
A dark flash erupted from Victor’s free hand.
The mercenary was thrown backwards hard enough to break through a nearby tree.
Gunfire followed almost immediately.
Several bullets crossed the battlefield from different directions, but Victor’s free hand changed seals before any of them could reach him.
Black streaks appeared through the air and two bullets were knocked aside.
Another struck a thin layer of darkness that formed beside Victor’s head before dropping harmlessly onto the ground.
Leon stared through the barrier.
"Uncle Victor is a damn monster."
Mira did not answer, her eyes were moving between the attackers surrounding Victor, clearly trying to follow a battle taking place far beyond anything the three of them could currently participate in.
Karl activated Perception and Information flashed above several nearby enemies.
Level 427.
Level 463.
Another mercenary rushing Victor from the right had already reached Level 491.
Karl looked toward the Vale members farther behind them and found several whose Levels had crossed five hundred.
His expression became more serious, they prepared properly.
This was not a group assembled simply because the Vale family wanted revenge.
They had gathered enough high-level professionals to guarantee Victor could not escort Karl back to the city alive.
Another mercenary tried breaking away from the battle and rushed toward the barrier protecting the three of them.
He never reached it as Victor’s sword suddenly changed direction.
The blade moved like a black viper between two attackers before piercing straight through the man’s throat.
Victor pulled it free and continued fighting without even looking toward the barrier.
A second attacker attempted the same thing.
Darkness erupted beneath his feet and slammed him into the ground.
Leon swallowed.
"Remind me never to actually piss him off."
Karl did not respond.
Victor looked overwhelming, but there were too many enemies.
His sword constantly moved between attacks while his other hand maintained the defensive techniques protecting both himself and the three behind him.
The black dome around Karl, Leon and Mira had already absorbed several stray attacks, while bullets continued arriving from positions hidden much farther inside the forest.
Multiple snipers.
Karl’s eyes moved between the directions of each shot.
Some were positioned far enough away that even Perception could not properly identify them from where he stood.
Victor clearly knew where they were.
Dark flashes repeatedly left his free hand and disappeared between the trees, forcing the snipers to relocate whenever they attempted another shot.
The older Vale man watched from behind the other fighters with an increasingly ugly expression.
"Surround him!"
More people entered the fight.
Victor stepped through two attacks before his sword pierced one man’s chest and immediately reversed toward another.
The black blade stopped barely an inch from the second man’s neck when a bullet suddenly crossed the battlefield.
Victor twisted but it was already too late, the round tore through his shoulder.
Blood sprayed across the ground. Leon immediately moved toward the barrier.
"Uncle Victor!"
Victor’s sword did not stop, but its rhythm had broken.
He drove the blade through the mercenary in front of him before taking several steps backwards, his jaw tightening as blood continued flowing from the wound.
Another bullet was still buried inside his shoulder.
Victor lowered his sword for barely a moment and the muscles around the injury visibly tightened.
The flattened bullet slowly pushed backwards through the wound before dropping onto the ground with a metallic sound.
Leon stared at him.
"What the hell..."
Karl’s expression remained tense.
Victor had definitely crossed into a realm far beyond what Karl had originally estimated, otherwise fighting this many Level 400 and 500 professionals simultaneously would have been impossible.
But that did not mean the fight was easy. The single bullet had already changed the flow.
Several attackers noticed it immediately and rushed forward before Victor could completely recover his stance.
The old man saw the same thing and bis confidence returned.
"He’s losing his rhythm!"
He pointed toward Victor.
"Swarm him now!"
Nearly everyone still capable of fighting moved at once.
Victor looked toward the approaching group before glancing briefly at the blood covering his shoulder.
Then he sighed.
"It’s you who chose this."
The attackers continued forward but then something dark moved beneath Victor’s skin.
Black fluid began seeping from Victor’s arms and shoulders, but instead of falling normally, the liquid twisted through the air before spreading across his body.
More emerged with every second.
It covered his clothes, flowed along the long sword inside his hand and crawled across the ground beneath his feet like something alive.
The older Vale man’s expression suddenly changed.
"Wait."
Victor raised his head and the darkness exploded outward.
A massive translucent black dome expanded through the wilderness in every direction, swallowing the mercenaries, the Vale family members and the surrounding forest within seconds.
It did not stop at the visible attackers.
Far beyond them, several distant figures hidden between the trees suddenly appeared inside the expanding darkness.
The snipers, every single one of them had been dragged inside Victor’s domain.