Chapter 119 - Royal Guards

*(mood song: "Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll")

With the walls captured and skirmishes on the streets, the special forces were being pushed back by the fire tribe's city guard, but that didn't last long, as the entire army started flooding into the city through the open doors, letting out their accumulated rage and fear against their mortal enemies, pillaging and barbarity soon occurring, a common problem of any big army when you draft and recruit people for war, their emotion get the better of them once the fear and tension of battle is over, with every street conquered, some of the drafted men would start entering the houses of civilians to have their way instead of pushing the assault.

The streets illuminated by small barnacles, and other animals anchored to the volcanic rock walls of the buildings, their mouths and plumes catching and absorbing bacteria, plankton and minerals in the volcanic waters to generate a faint orange glow, that combined by the glow of the lava and much bigger fire mushrooms the size of cars anchored on the ceiling of the cave and tinging the cave in a red glow, intensified now by the clouds of blood that slowly rose from all around the city.

Outside the city, the former slaves, and also Maktar and his family, consisting of his wife and two kids, a boy and a girl, observed as the former city was invaded from all sides, him being the only one frowning while the others cheered, his wife nearby noticed this and asked him "honey, what's wrong?"

Maktar sighed as he looked at the cavern ceiling "it's just... I helped to build this place to what it is today, so watching it crumble... leaves a bad feeling inside me...."

wife: "then why did you-"

Maktar: "I couldn't unsee it..., the realm beyond armor and weapons, turning your own body onto a weapon on itself... It's new and exciting, the moment I saw it... I just couldn't unsee it, I need to know... I need to know" he saw the worry on his wife's face as he hugged her closer "don't worry dear, I'm a highly valued artisan, no matter where they take us I will work as hard as needed so you can all live comfortably"

His wife hugging him closer as she pressed her face to his chest "I love you..."

Maktar: "I love you too dear"

The former slaves nearby looking at them with disgust, all except for one, the burly woman, Khrooms elder sister looked at the ravaged city and murmured to herself "I hope you are safe little brother" her gaze concentrated on the city as if she was trying to look through the ascending clouds of blood.

Meanwhile, the six elders and Rose's puppets arrived near the royal palace, a barricade of fully armoured crab men and women forming a shield wall while pointing loaded crossbows at them, they quickly docked for cover behind furniture and tables that they flipped to use as cover, as bolt whistled past them.

Rose's puppets quickly returned fire as down the street the shadow claw army veterans started arriving too, and took cover, the shots and harpoons nitpicking at every hole in the shield wall, the alchemist also launching their corrosive and toxic potions, and as the concoctions broke against the shield wall they seeped through the cracks, making more fire tribe warriors fall as other filled the holes on the shield wall, shadow claw warrior also died left and right as accurate bolts pierced them.

The impasse continued untill...

Erik: [ Rose, use the sodium ammunition ]

Rose: [understood! ( -_･) ︻t=---' * (/❛o❛)/ ]

Explossive harpoons started getting stuck ito any crack of the shield wall with almost absurd accuracy, *BOOM!* soon exploding and creating multiple holes in the shield wall that were soon filled of harpoons by the shadow claw army, not letting them close the any open gaps.

The fire tribe army started retrating backwards slowly as they left corpses behind, narrowing the breaches and reforming the shield wall continuously, they were the royal guard and would die fighting to the last man and woman as that is what they had been trained to do since they were young, sadly for them though... they were outnumbered and outgunned.

Erik observed them all packed up and equipped something he had brought back from the base, a shoulder mounted plasma cannon, it wasn't accurate and could only shoot for some time or it would drain his exosuit nanobatteries but... it should highly effective against conventional armor, he was really curious to see what would it do to their bioalloy armors.

The cannon clicked in place as it started draining a large ammount of energy and converting it into plasma, he overcharged the shot as the gun's chamber glowed in an intense cyan blue color, and then... *ZHWOOOSH!* the shot left behind a trail of bubbles and impacted on to the shield wall, but to his surprise only 3 shielders fell with grave wounds all the shields and armors around becoming red hot as their wilders endured the scalding pain and moved to close the gap, but it would be in vain through that gap lots sodium harpoons and bullets from Rose's puppets and the other elders sank deep into their formation *BOOM!!!* the multiple explosions accompanied by a big plume of blood raising in the water, at least 60 royal guards had died in that volley, the enormous breach forcing them to assume a V formation as they kept reatreating while now focusing fire on Erik.

Erik hid behind a small house as he could hear the whistles of arrows continually ricocheting all around him, seeing their true queen in danger the shadow claw warriors were enraged, becoming much more reckless as they advanced forward faster and faster, taking cover behind everything they could find, some even picking up furniture and rock slabs and moving forward with them as improvised cover, but even then, the royal guard kept firing at Erik, as they had all grown together they were enraged that sixty of their brother's and sisters had been killed just like that, but... it was a mistake... once the claw soldiers got sufficiently close from all sides, the royal guard was left surrounded on all sides in front of the palace, and then...

"FOR THE QUEEN!!!!" the entire shadow claw army shouted at the same time, charging out of cover as their battlecry resonated all around.

Soon, and before the royal guard could barely recover, the army was upon them, stabbing their spears and pincers in a gruesome melee.

Hundreds died right and left as Erik's group also advanced to the certer of the melee.

Erik then shouted "WARRIORS OF THE SHADOW CLAW TRIBE! CHARGE WITH ME!" charging at the spearpoint and breaking through the enemy lines and into the palace as the last royal guards fought to the death outside.

Inside he found 4 heavily armed warriors, three males and one woman, all of them with their swords drawn and directing hostile looks at Erik, then the female advanced as she cut the leather straps on her armor, letting if fall to the floor, and then pointing her sword at Erik, the other 3 following her steps.

" you are their queen right? then duel us in an honorable sword fight"

Erik gave them a serious look as he said "what would I even earn with that? are you trying to gain time for the coward of your leader?"

That triggered the crab woman "you!... you would earn honor in front of your men!"

Erik chuckled "sure... then we will fight with our pincers, 'cause I don't have a sword as you can see, so drop your sword too~"

The four looked at each other and nodded, dropping their weapons to the floor, and with that their last chance of survival, as 30 rifles pointed at their unguarded bodies and Erik pointing his finger like a gun at them "you!-"

Erik: "bang!~"

*BANG!* thirty shots completely shredded the four elite guards to clouds of gore on the water, leaving the warriors behind slackjawed.

Erik: "never concede your advantage to the enemy just cause they ask you too, only a fool would do so, let's go" the elite soldiers nodding as they all then crossed the gore cloud, and arrived at a pair of big bone carved doors, pushing them open as they entered the throne room, a red glow from fire mushrooms giving the room an eerie look as in a throne at the end of the room waited an average looking crabman full of scars and with 2 saber swords in his hands, wearing an intricately decorated set of light armor with golden and silver patterns, his shell darker than the others, an almost black blue color that looked purple under the red lights around.

It looked at them coldly and said "I heard you use your weapons... seems like you have no honor after all".

Erik chuckled "feeling cocky now are we? then why did you just sent them to their deaths instead of going yourself?"

Leader: "...it is their honour to die for the greater good"

Erik chuckled coldly as he pointed his gun at the leader "I see, you are quite the hypocrite aren't you?" and pulled the trigger, *BANG!* the super heated steel bullet spinning and crashing through the water as it approached the king, all happening in an instant as *Fwhossing!* the bullet was sliced in two on an instant.

Leader: "sorry but... such a predictable weapon won't work on me" pointing then at his swords "neither will they affect my weapons, they are relics made by my people"

Erik focussed on the swords and frowned, seeing carvings of tentacles on them "those... are not made by your people, those are weapons you savage ancestors stole from the octo race"

The Leader was stunned "hoh~ you do know a lot, but you talk about our ancestors as savages?"

Erik chuckled coldly then "well, no more than you are anyway, let's end this"