Chapter 175: Attack, The Lost Team

Chapter 175: The Attack, A Stray Squad

The ritual having concluded, Ophelia offered a solemn vow to old Anderson, promising that once the Dark Moon Island and the Order of the Holy Church finalized their talks, emissaries would be dispatched to negotiate a partnership with the Allen family.

Old Anderson wept with joy, a performance Cullen suspected was not an outpouring of true sentiment, but rather a desperate attempt to suppress genuine laughter.

For Cullen had already conveyed the general gist of the situation to the old man through Alfred, laying out the necessary arrangements, and so old Anderson was well aware of the true face behind this "timeless romance."

He placed absolute faith in his ancestor, after all, that very ancestor had recently ridden past him on the back of a dog.

Under such circumstances, even a seasoned performer like old Anderson found his jaws tightening under the strain, yet his talent for smoothing over a scene was immense; in Ophelia’s eyes, the old patriarch seemed genuinely overjoyed that his lineage had secured such patronage.

She could perceive that the members of this household were generally weak in strength, to the point where even those of the first and second tiers had been paraded out to make up the numbers—an unthinkable state of affairs back on Dark Moon Island.

According to the itinerary, Ophelia was now due to return to York City.

Old Anderson and his family gathered to see them off, and as he watched the carriage roll through the estate gates, the old man let out a sigh; the family's fortunes, by the visible grace of Master Cullen’s arrival, were beginning to take a turn for the better.

He did not foolishly believe this was merely the protection of ancestral ties, for without Master Cullen, the Allen Estate might have ceased to exist long ago, let alone survived to see this day.

Everything would turn out well; indeed, everything was already mending.

Old Anderson suddenly felt a strange itch in his palms and unconsciously stroked the cane in his hand;

His gaze swept around, only to discover that his second son had somehow already vanished into the distance to oversee the conclusion of the ceremony.

The old gentleman ground his teeth:

The wretched creature, even with broken legs in a wheelchair he can still run that fast!

…

"What was the purpose of that structure near the estate entrance we saw earlier?" Ophelia inquired.

"I asked the servants," Cullen replied, "it was a performance hall Miss Poer had her family build during her time at home. She liked to sit there alone, savouring her own particular solitude."

Cullen deliberately blurred the timeline of the hall's construction and its true purpose.

Ophelia sighed with emotion: "Just like the ancestor building a palace on the island exclusively for Miss Poer; while he lived, he too would often stay in that palace alone. Perhaps, in those moments, they could feel the yearning traveling from one to the other."

Cullen nodded: Quite so, please continue with your imagination.

Two hours later, Cullen produced a large satchel filled with neatly wrapped portions of food: roasted meat, roasted chicken, smoked meats, sausages, and various salads.

Without asking Ophelia if she wished to partake, he began opening the parcels one by one, arranging them before her.

Fannie took the hint and immediately began preparing the drinks, which were always kept ready in the carriage.

"The road back is still long, Milady. Let us have a little something to eat; I find myself hungry again."

Cullen spoke in an assertive tone, then proffered a roasted chicken directly to Ophelia.

"Very well."

They began to partake of the meal.

The belief system of the Dark Moon Island families seemed oriented toward physical enhancement, meaning their appetites naturally increased; Cullen suspected this lady was bound to grow hungry easily.

And so it proved; though Ophelia ate with exquisite refinement and at no great speed, she never once stopped.

To prevent her from feeling awkward dining alone, Cullen and Fannie kept her constant company.

Cullen had deliberately prepared an abundance, and apart from the vegetable salad, it consisted entirely of meat dishes, yet every morsel was consumed.

A truly formidable appetite...

Cullen felt an increasing sense of guilt, thinking that his pushing out of the dining cart this morning had been a truly grievous sin.

Xinla produced a clean handkerchief and offered it to Ophelia, who folded it in half, dabbed at her lips, and then, instead of returning it to Xinla, naturally handed it over to Cullen.

Cullen made no pretense of hesitation, reaching out to accept it, using the other half to wipe his mouth and hands.

The maid said nothing this time, feeling somewhat grateful in her heart for the attentive care Cullen had shown her mistress throughout the afternoon.

"We shall arrive at the hotel in less than three hours," Cullen said with a smile.

"Mr. Cullen is very familiar with this stretch of road?" Having eaten her fill, Miss Ophelia caught the nuance.

"I happen to possess a rather good memory."

Just then, a black owl flew before the carriage; Pegg, who was driving, rolled down the window, and the bird swept inside, alighting upon her shoulder.

Presently, the owl dissolved, turning into a wisp of dark smoke.

Pegg spoke: "A distress signal has been received from another Whip of Order squad, located at a sanatorium ten kilometres to our northeast."

Cullen asked: "We are on an active mission, are there no other squads nearby?"

Pegg replied: "The one that sent the distress signal is the rescue squad itself."

Fannie spoke up: "Await the captain's orders."

Before long, Pegg said:

"The captain orders us to ignore the distress signal, focus on our own mission, and return to York City."

Ophelia spoke: "I feel there is no need to accommodate me so heavily; you may go to the rescue of your comrades."

Fannie smiled faintly: "Even without a mission, we would likely be too lazy to rescue them."

"Ah, so that is how it is, I see." Ophelia smiled, appearing to understand.

Yet they had not driven much further when Pegg suddenly brought the carriage to a halt.

"An anomaly ahead, the captain signals alert!"

With that, Pegg threw her hands wide and began to incant; a black lattice network, identical to the one from the previous day, enveloped the luxury carriage.

Fannie drew a black leather case from beneath her seat, snapped it open, and began assembly; in short order, a crimson rifle stood complete, the entire sequence flowing like water with an unnatural grace.

With a sharp click, a round was chambered; Fannie leaned her torso against the carriage door, her gaze fixed outside.

Her rifle was, at a glance, a high-grade piece of craftsmanship.

Cullen hesitated a moment, then drew the elementary spell-revolver he carried upon his person.

Then, mimicking Fannie’s posture, he leaned against the door on his side, peering out into the darkness.

Time ticked away, minute by minute.

The outside world remained dead silent, yet the command to stand down never arrived.

"It appears the situation is somewhat grave."

Ophelia spread her hands, and the warrior woman sitting beside her, Panmier, unslung the greatsword from her back and placed it into her mistress's palms, while the warrior herself drew two daggers from her sleeves, gripping them tight.

The maid, Xinla, produced a grey pistol, its surface shimmering with the aura of arcane arts.

Indeed, Cullen noted that even the maid’s pistol looked far more advanced than his own little revolver.

Ophelia rested the greatsword across her knees and closed her eyes.

At last, a disturbance echoed from the perimeter, though it carried neither the sound of combat nor the resonance of spells.

In Cullen's direction, two rings of light appeared on the slope below the road—manifestations of some spell, no doubt—and within those rings were the silhouettes of figures leaning heavily on one another for support.

An owl flew toward them once more; Pegg opened the lattice to let it approach, whereupon it stared blankly at Cullen through the carriage window.

Pegg rolled down the glass, and the owl veered toward her shoulder before dissolving once again.

"It is a distress signal," Paige murmured.

Immediately, her features hardened into a mask of grim authority. "Captain’s orders: stay alert, prepare for combat!"

A faint shadow of doubt crossed Cullen's mind; those figures silhouetted on the slope, descending toward them, were unmistakably other Whiplash of Order squads. By all conventions of brotherhood, at such a juncture, one should have moved forward to assist them after a failed mission, yet the Captain had issued precisely the opposite command.

Even so, Cullen harbored no resentment toward the decision. On the contrary, he found himself quite admiring Neo’s cold pragmatism; whatever the circumstances, placing one’s own survival above all else was an eternal truth.

A sharp *crack* echoed through the gloom.

It was the dry snap of a leather whip—Neo, hidden somewhere in the encompassing darkness, brandishing his weapon. It was an explicit warning, a declaration that the oncoming party was forbidden from drawing any closer.

If events later proved this was merely a retreating friendly squad, Neo’s hostile gesture would undoubtedly draw formal complaints, but it was glaringly obvious that Neo did not care in the slightest.

"The Captain warns us: they have appeared on the other side as well," Paige said.

Cullen felt a prickle of curiosity; she evidently possessed some private channel of communication with the Captain—not a radio, but likely some sacred artifact of transmission.

"I see them,"

Vanny spoke, her voice flat.

Cullen instinctively glanced toward Vanny’s side of the vehicle. Their car now sat stranded in the dead center of the highway, flanked closely by the rising slopes of the hills. Yet Cullen could discern no light from the opposite ridge. He noticed, however, that Vanny’s eyes had dissolved into a pale, ghostly gray; she had clearly invoked an unnatural vision that transcended human limits.

So, Whiplash squads were descending simultaneously from the slopes on both sides?

Now, even Cullen could be certain that this scene was drenched in anomaly; it felt like a meticulously laid snare, a cage waiting precisely for them to drive into its heart.

Paige instantly threw the engine back into gear, her shout cutting through the cabin:

"Captain’s orders: break through to the rear!"

Since the rear was the path from which they had traveled, and the road ahead remained a black void of the unknown, the retreat naturally lay backward.

Paige yanked the steering wheel hard to the left and slammed her foot upon the accelerator, sending the vehicle into a violent, skidding turn.

Ophelia sat poised and motionless in the center; beside her, the female warrior remained pressed against the glass, just as Vanny did opposite them, neither flinching.

Only Cullen was forced to thrust out a hand to seize the grab handle, and even then, the sheer momentum nearly lifted his body from the seat. Across from him, the maid, Xinla, was thrown completely off balance, tumbling directly into the footwell before Cullen, dropping to her knees.

A jolt of alarm struck Cullen; he genuinely feared that the pistol gripped in her hand might discharge in the chaos.

The turn completed, Paige unleashed the vehicle's full speed.

Yet they had not traveled far before she stomped savagely upon the brakes.

A heavy, grinding roar reverberated.

Suddenly, a massive wall of solid earth reared up directly in front of the vehicle. Had her reflex on the pedal been delayed by even a heartbeat, the car would have plowed straight into it.

"Open the doors, get out!"

Vanny flung a sharp command at Cullen before instantly throwing open her own door.

Cullen kicked his door open in tandem and vaulted out into the night, grabbing the maid, Xinla, with a desperate tug as he went. Xinla was dragged unceremoniously from the cabin, spilling onto the asphalt, while Ophelia’s figure materialized outside the wreckage a moment later.

Barely had their boots touched the ground when a jagged, towering spike of earth erupted violently from beneath the car, piercing through the chassis and hoisting the entire vehicle into the air like a skewered beast.

Paige pressed her palms flat against the soil and began to intone an incantation. In a flash, a succession of muffled explosions rumbled beneath the earth, followed by dark, thick blood welling up from the fractures in the ground.

A gunshot shattered the air.

The sharp metallic clack of a lever.

Another shot.

The lever cycled again.

A third report.

Vanny was firing, reloading, and firing again with mechanical, rhythmic speed.

Through the black shroud of night, blooms of crimson fire erupted in sequence. Cullen knew well that such fiery displays only occurred when enchanted tactical ammunition found its mark.

"Captain’s orders: keep breaking through!" Paige bellowed over the din.

At that moment, Cullen glanced back toward their previous position. A series of fierce explosions was tearing through the dark, accompanied by violent, roiling waves of raw spell-force. It was clear that the Captain and his immediate circle were already heavily engaged, pinning down the enemy’s main force.

By comparison, the resistance they faced here was likely only a skeleton crew, hastily detached to block their escape.

"We withdraw first!"

With Vanny leading the vanguard and Paige guarding the rear, Cullen and Ophelia’s retinue were sandwiched securely in the middle, sprinting hard up the rising slope flanking the highway.

They ran for perhaps a dozen minutes without a single pause, encountering no further ambushes along the way.

Upon reaching a deep hollow in the hillside, Vanny signaled for everyone to take cover behind the ridge. She then scaled a nearby tree with fluid agility, vanishing into the foliage to establish a high vantage point for observation.

In a retreat, fleeing blindly until one collapsed was the height of folly; it would only leave them utterly exhausted, stripped of the strength to fight back should they stumble into another trap.

Moreover, Vanny was unwilling to drift too far from the Captain. She maintained an unspoken faith that Neo and the others could dismantle the situation—provided they were given enough time.

Cullen lay prone against the earth, his gaze scanning the darkness ahead with sharp vigilance, his fingers tightly wrapped around his revolver.

He was acutely aware that the weapon in his hand possessed little efficacy in a clash of this scale, yet he desperately needed the tactile reassurance of holding something solid.

Ophelia sat nearby, her long sword thrust deep into the soil. She spoke, her voice laced with a cool detachment:

"Why do I get the impression that this assassination attempt isn't actually meant for me?"

Earlier, it was blindingly obvious: two enigmatic squads of the Whiplash of Order had converged upon them. In all likelihood, one was the original team assigned to the mission, and the other was the reinforcement squad.

Yet something catastrophic had clearly corrupted both units.

If the sole objective were to end her life, there would be no need for such an elaborate, grand theatrical display. This had long ceased to look like a targeted assassination; it had escalated into an open, frontal declaration of war against the Church of Order.

By her own estimation, she was simply not worth such an exorbitant price. Even those factions harboring ancient, blood-soaked feuds with Dark Moon Island would not bleed this much wealth and manpower just to slay her or disrupt the summit.

The situation on the Captain's side remained shrouded in uncertainty. Paige seemed to have lost her connection with him entirely; whether it was due to the swelling distance or some deliberate interference remained unknown.

Furthermore, Cullen noticed another discrepancy: Xinla, the maid who had scrambled out of the car alongside them, had fallen behind at some point. She was nowhere to be found in the hollow.

She was, after all, merely a domestic servant tasked with daily chores. In a crucible like this, Vanny and the others would never spare a thought for her existence; their eyes were fixed solely on Ophelia’s survival. Even Ophelia and her female warrior had no luxury to squander on her whereabouts.

It was not a matter of cruelty, but rather the cold logic that non-combatants in such moments were nothing but a liability. Besides, if the girl had simply curled into a ball in some forgotten ditch, she might actually stand a better chance of survival.

A twinge of regret brushed through Cullen’s mind—not out of worry for Xinla, but because he realized, with a touch of grim irony, that she really should have handed her pistol over to him before she vanished.

A sharp crack rang out from the branches above as Vanny fired toward the north—the very direction Cullen had been watching.

Cullen instinctively pushed off the ground, rising to his feet with sudden urgency. He sensed that Vanny’s shot was not intended to kill, but to sound an alarm.

Sure enough, a dense cloud of black mist roiled into view directly ahead of him, riding on a wave of foul, putrid stench. Cullen realized in an instant that flight was no longer an option.

"Order—Guardian Wall!"

"Order—Guardian Wall!"

"Order—Guardian Wall!"

"Order—Guardian Wall!"

"Order—"

By all rights, a low-level spell like the Guardian Wall was a paltry defense in a crisis of this magnitude, an insignificant scrap of resistance. But what if those scraps were stacked, tier upon tier, into a mountain?

A thunderous roar shattered the night.

Boom!

Boom!

A succession of violent crashes resounded, but as they were blunted layer by layer, the lumbering figure was finally brought to a dead halt.

Peige leaped forward from Karen’s side, a skein of thin silken threads materializing within her grasp. As she plunged directly into that rolling mass of black mist, the threads suddenly splayed wide before snapping violently taut with ferocious speed!

Thud!

Like a bursting squall of viscid juices, it seemed some colossal brute had been instantly ground to splinters by her hands alone.

A foul, reeking liquid splashed directly before Karen. Though stayed by the final shimmering barrier of protection, a wave of nauseating, putrid stench still assailed his nostrils, leaving him entirely ignorant of what manner of monstrosity had truly just charged through the dark toward him.

In that very instant, billowing clouds of black mist surged from two other directions, driving straight toward their position.

The martial maiden Panmure vaulted forward, throwing herself into one of the shadowy torrents, and a heartbeat later, a wretched, bloodcurdling shriek echoed from deep within the haze.

High above in the canopy, Fanni chose this exact moment to plunge downward, the tip of her rifle now affixed with a gleaming bayonet. Upon the instant of her descent, the cold steel impaled the entity hidden within the darkness, followed immediately by a sharp crack! She had surely loaded a specialized round, causing blood and black mist to erupt violently outward in tandem.

Karen instinctively backed toward Ophelia; with his companions holding the outer perimeter, his sole duty was unequivocally to safeguard their primary charge.

Right then, Karen suddenly perceived the earth beneath his boots turning soft and yielding, as though the soil had dissolved into shifting sand in a heartbeat.

"From below!"

Karen roared, preparing to summon both the Sea God's Armor and the Dark Moon Blade while simultaneously reaching out to seize Ophelia’s arm, intending to wrench her safely behind his back. At a desperate juncture like this, there was no room to harbor secrets or hold back his strength; if life itself was forfeit, what meaning did anything else possess?

Yet Karen found himself entirely unable to budge Ophelia in the slightest; instead, she caught his wrist with a swift counter-grip and effortlessly flung him away.

"..." Karen could only stare.

Ophelia reached down and gripped the hilt of the greatsword already embedded deep within the earth. At once, a blinding crimson radiance burst from the blade, bathing her form in its glow until her entire body seemed to ripple with that very same sanguine luster.

Then, with a violent heave, she ripped the blade from the ground, dragging up a massive centipede whose upper torso had already been completely mangled. Beams of bloody light shot from the length of the greatsword, reducing the remaining segments of the centipede's carcass to shredded ribbons in midair.

With