*Booom*

Almost as soon as Hal spoke, a rune was tossed against the carriage and it exploded upon contact.

​​

More runes were tossed to the surrounding areas of the carriage and they exploded on contact as well causing a massive eruption of dust that would obscure vision.

Quite frankly, the Golden carriage being a Semi-saint rank artifact was more than able to take the damage and even push forward but as this was what they had been after, Hal and the ladies felt they might as well get down and face their attackers...

"*Cough* *Cough* Who Dares?!!!" Hal yelled,

... In the most theatrically false manner possible.

He was not the only one 'coughing' from the eruption of dust that had occurred thanks to the blast. The ladies were doing the same.

This was being done for two reasons, the first was that experts of their level could never possibly be affected or even disturbed by the dust. Breathing it in would not affect their sinuses or cause such exaggerated coughing effects, however, they had no real interest in letting the bandits hiding out of sight get an inkling of what their cultivation could be.

The second reason was more centered around the 'who dares?' Which showed that even when 'weak' enough to be affected by dust particles, he still felt he was of enough importance to be attacked.

Of course, this begged the question of how someone this important could have even made it to Dell's gate city, which was the direction they were coming from, in the first place.

However, this was a question the bandits had decided to ask once they were done taking all they could from this traveling bunch.

And so it was that the moment the dust settled, there they were... Standing and glaring at Hal's party, very clearly quite an assorted bunch.

There were males and females which could be only be known on account of their body shape as their faces were covered with masks and the only opening was the one surrounding their eyes.

For whatever reason that was, Hal had no idea. Although it was quite possible that they indeed preferred to keep their identifies secret but he felt that was quite unlikely especially since the bandit band had gained a level of superiority that would make it quite useless even if their faces were known by Dell's city folk.

No, he guessed they were doing it for a sense of camaraderie. After all, their clothes were not uniform. Only their masks were. It had a red streak running diagonally on it.

The ones that were clearly males eyed the ladies with Hal and taken together with him, they concluded that these people could not have been from Dell's gate city but since they came from there, it could only mean they arrived through the Teleportation circle.

An occurrence that remained quite rare.

"Who...?" One of them, a female, began to ask but another interrupted.

"There's no need for that. If they are here, they should be ready to give up all they have." He said.

The female eyed Hal and the Devil was quick to shed his outraged look and wink at her.

It caught her by surprise but Hal had already moved on to look this time at the man who had interrupted her,

"Are you sure who we are is not important? For all you know we could be emissaries from the Duke" he said.

Hal could tell the man was frowning behind his mask,

"The Doxon Duchy does not have a Duke. It has a Duchess and she can't possibly be bothered with a little city like Dell's gate" he told Hal who chuckled,

"Who says we are from Doxon? We came from the Silva Duchy and we have a message for the Duchess" He said but another man in the bandit group burst into laughter,

"Yeah right, because an emissary will decide not to arrive directly in the Duchy capital and instead choose a back-watered city such as this." He said with sarcasm and went on to mock Hal on how stupid he was for him thinking everyone was a pretty-faced Idiot like him.

So wrapped up in his mockery was he that he failed to notice the death stares he received from Rita and the rest of the ladies.

Then an aggressive man spoke out of the group,

"Enough talk. Surrender your spatial rings and spatial pouches!" He said and if his loud voice was not enough, the tone of those words showed he meant business.

Hal did not argue but took off his spatial ring and tossed it to him.

Another walked over to the carriage and began to rub his hand on it,

"We'll take this as well. Looks like a fine piece of... Arrggghhhh" the admiring bandit was unable to complete his sentence before he yelled out in pain because Karmen had summoned her cosmic armament and cut off the very hand that was being used to admire the carriage.

The others were instantly taken aback as they backpedaled. The cause of their shock and instant fear did not stem from the fact that one of them just lost a hand but because from the summoning of her cosmic armament to the actual cutting off, there was no part of that movement they caught.

It had all happened so incredibly fast.

Much faster than they could possibly have hoped to follow which was to be expected since the strongest of all those present was at the peak of the Cosmic Armament Realm.

Impressive cultivation base but nowhere near enough.

"No touching" she said with a very annoyed frown.

"Scatter!" Yelled the aggressive-sounding man and there was an instant combined release of exploding Runes which was to create a cover for them to escape.

After all, they were surrounded by a grassland terrain, and should they try hard enough, they should actually be able to escape this obviously dangerous bunch.

That was not to say they would all escape but the death of some should prove a worthy sacrifice for the escape of...

*Bang!!!*

Before any of their survival-driven thoughts could be completed, they all ran smack dab into a Dome of Royal blue Astral energy.

As soon as they hit the ground, they were up again and trying to break through.

Once it became clear that it would be impossible to break through this barrier of Rank four Astral energy, a couple of them stopped while others refused to give up.

One of those who was still hitting against the Dome was suddenly hit by a purple flaming arrow that combusted her from the inside and passed all of her essence to purple-eyed succubus, Rita.

Hal, Lillian, and Olivia summoned their Cosmic Armaments as well and their eyes along with Karmen's were now Blood red and giving off incredibly fiendish vibes.

Almost as though it had been choreographed, the bandits took off their masks as though it would hinder their movements but whether or not that was the case, the results remained the same.

"I need only three of them alive" Hal said before dashing forward to strike any one of the bunch at random and kill them in a single blow.

Karmen began by killing the one whose hand she had cut off with her broadsword cosmic armament before dashing over to the others along with Lillian and Olivia.

Needless to say, it was a Massacre...