Chapter 171: The Price Of Pride

​"Hah. Hah. Hah."

​Yakima knelt heavily on one knee, her chest heaving as she balanced her trembling body with her chipped, heavily enchanted sword. Her legendary double pupils had forcefully retracted to their usual white, her spirit core completely exhausted from maintaining such a high-tier visual skill for sixty straight minutes. Behind her, the vanguard was in ruins. Hitachi, Rose, Austin, Aurelia, and the remaining five Dragon Tooth members were all breathing heavily, their stamina bars flashing a dangerous, depleted red. They were all exhausted and battered.

​They had been fighting flawlessly for an hour, but the terrifying reality of the battle was setting in: the enemy just kept scaling higher. They started with fodder, and now, they were fighting against twisted monstrosities ranging from Lv250 to Lv399!

​’This is bad! How did the devil cult have so many powerful fighters!! And they’re mutated humans... Even if it’s through experiments, potions or pills, this is crazy... I thought the devil cult was just a small insufficient ant, but now?!’ Yakima thought, her veteran confidence shattering. She slowly looked up at the towering, 5-meter tall spiders enclosing them, each grotesque creature bearing the agonized, mutated head of a human seamlessly grafted onto the armored body of an arachnid.

​’Are we really going to die here?’ She thought, the sheer mathematical impossibility of their survival weighing on her.

​The rest of the group stared at the towering creatures before them, their faces paled with sheer terror. Even the usually stoic Hitachi felt the icy grip of death closing in. No matter how anyone looked at their stats, they were outnumbered a hundred to one, completely eclipsed in both raw strength and numbers.

​"Wait!!"

​They all froze as a single, terrifying realization appeared in their collective minds. In synchronized unison, they all turned their heavy heads toward the imperial carriage. Mirabella was still seated perfectly still on the roof, her eyes serenely closed. The only people whose HP and energy were still at their absolute peak were her and the Princess inside.

​"Mirabella!! Why haven’t you made a move since!!" Yakima yelled, her voice cracking with desperation and anger as she forced herself back to her feet, her back facing Mirabella.

​"Oh?"

​Mirabella slowly opened her eyes, their ocean-blue depths completely devoid of empathy, staring down at Yakima.

​"You didn’t ask for my help."

​The whole surviving ten were utterly dumbfounded. Even Delphine, who was clutching her sheathed sword inside the carriage, was left speechless by the sheer, sociopathic logic. With Mirabella’s words, the terrifying truth settled over the battlefield: she wasn’t planning on helping until they explicitly formally requested her aid. And if they didn’t, she was perfectly content to just sit there and watch their HP drop to zero.

​The cooling dead bodies of the guild members scattered around them proved it. To Mirabella, they weren’t even comrades; they were just uncontracted nobodies.

​"You!!!" Yakima turned around fully to face Mirabella, her face contorted with grief and burning rage.

​"I believe you have the strength to end this!! You should have attacked first! Help us now!"

​"Oh?"

​Mirabella tilted her head to the side, her expression remaining chillingly blank, as a pure, suffocating wave of high-level killing intent spread out from her, immediately suppressing the ambient energy in the gorge.

​"Are you commanding a Colonel, Guild leader Yakima?" She asked coldly.

​’This.’

​Yakima was struck speechless, the crushing weight of Galaxy Fall’s hierarchy slamming into her. Mirabella was absolutely right. She, as a normal civilian Guild Leader, possessed absolutely no authority to order an active Imperial Colonel. Yes, Yakima was one of the recognized Pillars under the Dragon Empire and boasted a very powerful, rare bloodline ability. But compared to the direct Military force—a faction sworn directly to the Imperial family—she and her entire guild were legally nothing. Not to mention, Mirabella was a Colonel, a terrifying rank just one step below a God General.

​On the overlooking hill, the Tenth Lord raised his metallic hand and slowly pulled back the dark hood covering his face. He revealed a flawless, synthetic human skin, a twisted smirk forming on his face.

​"Hahahaha!! I didn’t expect a Colonel to be here!! Each of the three empires have the military force, and a Colonel has the same political and military power as a duke! She can also command 5,000 soldiers!! This is so Exhilarating!!" He yelled, his voice filled with glee. He raised an armored arm and pointed a lethal finger directly at Mirabella’s seated form.

​"Fifty of you!! Go and take her down!! Even if she is a Lv325! Don’t underestimate her, becoming a Colonel at such a young age showed she is even more of a monster than that Hayatobi!! I don’t believe she can survive all of you!! Go!!"

​"Yes!!"

​The core members of the Devil Cult’s elite guard, the absolute weakest among them boasting a terrifying Lv400 status, all nodded their heads in silent obedience and vanished from the ridge using high-tier movement skills.

​BOOM!!

​Yakima and everyone on the ground froze as the atmospheric pressure violently increased, making it hard to breathe. They all turned their heads to the sky in sheer horror as fifty distinct streaks of malicious light flew all the way down, crashing like meteors and landing heavily in front of the mutated spider-humans.

​’Such strength! The weakest here is Lv400!!’ Rose thought in absolute horror, her staff trembling in her hands as she took a step back in primal fear. She was just Lv50; the level suppression radiating from the fifty elites was way out of her league, threatening to crush her soul just by standing near them.

​"Seems I will have to act."

​Mirabella slowly stood up on the carriage roof. She stepped off the edge, defying gravity as she jumped down, landing lightly on the cracked ground without making a sound. The pristine silver military badge of a Colonel glowed fiercely on her right chest, a stark contrast to the blood-soaked battlefield.

​"Can you--" Yakima started, her pride finally breaking as she sought to coordinate a desperate defense.

​"--You don’t need to say or do anything, just step back." Mirabella said, her voice cutting through the tension like ice, smoothly walking past the exhausted Guild Leader directly towards the terrifying army of elites before her.

​’What is this???’ The Tenth Lord was suddenly shocked, his Lv500 optical sensors whirring aggressively as he processed visual data that no one else on the battlefield could comprehend. He was staring intensely at the massive, invisible Clones walking in perfect synchronization around her.

​’Are those? What are those? Her clones?’ He was genuinely confused. With his immense strength as a Lv500 entity, his advanced sensors could bypass her cloaking and see the ethereal forms of the Ten Guardians shadowing her every step. But down below, everyone else was just staring blankly at Mirabella walking alone.

​"This girl is truly strange, I will use these fools to test her out." He muttered to himself, his metallic joints locking as he crossed his arms over his chest, his glowing eyes entirely focused on the impossible scene unfolding below.