The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 721  Trapped

The Guardian grabbed him and the world went blue for an instant, then Karl found himself standing inside the lab, and the Haint Claw on the Guardian.

Rumbling outside the blast door and a sense of loss told him that the area had collapsed, crushing the Bodyguards, which he immediately summoned to his side.

"Monarch? Thank the Dragon Gods, you're alright. Have the security teams rescued us from the intruders? Wait, how did you get in without opening the door?" Fizzspark demanded.

Karl patted the Guardian on the head, and felt the pulse of energy from the Haint Claw. It wasn't awareness, more like a preset safety mechanism. The Haint Claw could inhabit the Guardian, and in that body, it could use its ethereal form to move between targets, the way that it had in combat against Overlord Ahmad's Golems.

"Secret skill. Is everyone in here alright?" Karl asked.

The Gnome smiled. "Yes. As soon as the alarm was sounded, we activated the full lockdown barriers, preventing portal openings and reinforcing the lab. I can still feel the shaking, what did you do out there?"

Karl sighed. "I got into a fight with a foreign Overlord. We might have caused the tunnels to collapse."

Fizzspark gave Karl a confused look.

"Tunnels? There are no tunnels, at least not in the conventional sense. The whole area is one huge underground building, and the part by the university is constructed for fifty floors before it reaches ground level. If it collapsed..."

If more than just the last section collapsed, then the entire research wing of the University lab complex collapsed in on itself.

[Rae, what is happening at your end? I broke the University.] Karl asked, while motioning for the Gnome to wait a moment.

[Nobody is in the Palace yet. But we can see the fight in the city. Four portals and a lot of combat. No, five portals now. I think that three of them are our team. It's hard to tell from here, the buildings are in the way. But I promised that Guard Captain jerk that I would wait and help him defend the Palace.] Rae complained.

The barriers over the lab shook, and Karl instinctively traced the attack to the surface. Someone was trying to blast their way in.

"It looks like the enemy isn't contained yet. Only the ones that were in the hallway outside the main entrance." Karl reminded the others.

"Right. Everyone, Breach Protocol priority one! Destroy everything." Fizzspark shouted, followed by Forgemaster Granite.

There were pained wails from somewhere in the back, and Karl recognized them as coming from Duke Ambrose.

"No, you idiots. If we destroy it all, they will kill everyone. You have to stop, don't you understand. I've already..." The human researcher stopped, but everyone was staring at him.

"You've already what?" Forgemaster Granite asked in a deadly tone.

"It's just, they're going to get in, and if we can't give them what they want..." Ambrose stammered.

"Lie." The Guardian standing beside Karl muttered.

Granite was thinking the same thing, and in a split second, he had his smithy hammer in his hand, and Duke Ambrose's brains were on the wall.

"Well, that's one traitor down. Anyone else? It will hurt less if I find out now." The Dwarf insisted.

"Dwarves really hate traitors." Fizzspark whispered.

Karl saw a couple of others panic and try to run before the other researchers turned on them. But even with that issue solved, it didn't stop the pounding on the barriers, and their energy storage wouldn't last forever.

"I'm going to the energy storage crystals. It will buy us some time for them to solve the issues overhead." He explained as he jumped over the railing and down to the main floor.

Between him and Remi, they should be able to greatly slow the process of entry, and buy the researchers enough time to destroy everything that they had already produced. The smiths were already slagging down the weapons that they had in stock, with pain etched on their faces at the loss of hundreds or thousands of hours of work.

The archery specialists soon joined them, dumping armloads of wooden weapons in unused forges, letting everything burn to ash.

For fifteen minutes, Karl poured energy into the process of reinforcing the barriers while they worked. Then, the sound of destruction fell silent, and the Forgemaster came out of the back rooms smelling of smoke. He must have gone to destroy the paper records made by the traitorous Research and Development chief.

"It's done. Everything is destroyed, and I used [Forge Fire] to destroy his room, as well as the hidden enchanted storage spots he had placed in it. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

There is nothing left for them to find. You can let down the defence now, and we will face whatever comes our way.

The Blue Dragons have provided us with an emergency measure. Worse than death, as they put it. A memory erasing potion. Their last resort if captured."

For a Blue Dragon Cleric, that was a fate worse than death. But if someone was going to try to torture them for information, it would be incredibly effective. Karl nodded. "I am only putting in mana at the rate I can regenerate it. I am at full capacity for what might come next. Let them wait a little longer."

For a few minutes, the pounding at the barrier paused, and the mana storage began to recover. That didn't last long, and the attacks soon resumed, but with a much lower intensity.

Whatever group of mages had been attacking the barrier before had left, or lost members, and now they weren't doing enough damage to defeat Karl's efforts to sustain the defences.

The pounding continued as Karl checked in on the others. [Any fun yet, Rae?]

Rae's mental voice was amused. [We're playing hide and seek. There are invisible mages all over the Palace. They sent Niall here to help me play.]

[Are you winning?] Karl asked.

[I don't know yet, we took different wings. Thor has a whole herd of maids and a Guard team in the suite to help him and the others. But they haven't been attacked yet.]