In under a minute, the stealth infiltration turned into a battlefield filled with explosions, arrows, and magical spells flying in Cassandra's direction. Well, that was quite a distraction to be entirely honest. The moment Del took a peek at the vantage point where Cassandra was hiding, he saw multiple explosions.

"Damn, I meant, I know that's the highest spot, but still, for her to take that kind of risk, that's quite unpredictable," Cole commented.

"Let's make sure that her sacrifice won't be wasted then," Del said as he stood up from his hiding ground and aimed his M240 at the running SSU personnel. He pulled the trigger of his M240 and a stream of bullets flew in the enemy's general direction.

"CONTACT! MULTIPLE DIRECTIONS!" One of the SSU personnel shouted.

Contact? So they were quite modernized, eh? Del used to think that SSU personnel was not radically different from regular soldiers who were practically cannon fodder for the mages. However, now he knew why they were different.

"Cole, Wolfie, take care of the enemy on the right, I will take care of the enemy on the left," Del observed his tablet, "And Wolfie, help Cole, alright?"

Wolfie replied with a bark.

Del ran while gunning down the opposition with his machine gun. Bullet kept pouring out every time Del observed that he came close to a dot on his tablet. If he noticed a dot, he fired his machine gun in the general direction of the SSU personnel.

It wasn't hard to pinpoint where Del's gunfire was coming from since his gun was not suppressed like Cole's MP5SD. However, it was not really a sound that anyone sane enough would approach. He then noticed that one of the SSU personnel was on top of a tree.

"DON'T YOU EVEN THINK YOU CAN PULL THE SAME TRICK TWICE!" Del fired his machine gun in the direction of that SSU personnel. He fell off the tree.

He then hear a whisper, "How can he notice us?"

He replied with another stream of bullet from his machine gun. "Well, I won't fall into the same trap twice," Del commented afterward.

Looking at the other side, Del noticed that several people with black robes running straight in Cole's direction. He fired his machine gun to shoot them all down. All of them fell to the ground. Del dashed through the forest to get to the execution ground quicker.

As he ran, he looked at his tablet again. A group of SSU was in his way. He pulled a brick of C4 from his pocket and threw it in the direction of the SSU personnel. He ducked and he pressed the detonator.

The explosion threw the bodies of the SSU personnel. One of them landed right at Del. Del fell to the ground from the inertia of that flying body. He threw away the body, but not before accidentally looking at the face of that body. Its face was unrecognizable and all of the eyes were gone from the explosion.

"Ah, bloody hell," Del stood up and picked up his machine gun.

"Who are these guys?"

"Are we dealing with mercenaries?"

"Are you nuts? Mercenaries aren't going to mess with us."

Del heard voices coming out of the bushes, but he couldn't figure out where they were coming from. He opened the tablet and noticed that three SSU personnel were waiting right next to him. He shot his machine gun in their general direction and three dead bodies appeared in the bushes.

"Damn, this UAV is sure as hell overpowered against them," Del commented.

"DEL!" Cole shouted.

Del looked in his direction in response. He saw Cole was surrounded. The tablet told him that there was at least ten SSU personnel surrounding him. Del aimed his machine gun and shouted, "COLE, GET DOWN!"

Del pulled the trigger of his machine gun and filled the rest of the SSU personnel full of bullets. He then ran towards Cole's position to check on him. Cole was injured, not badly injured, but still injured. His hand was bleeding from a throwing knife. Luckily, it wasn't a poisoned knife.

"Hey, you ok?" Del asked.

"I'm fine, bandage would fix this easily, now, let's get out of this forest," Cole said.

"You're right."

The strategy of getting out of the forest was rather complicated. First, if they didn't kill all of the SSU personnel before getting out, they would be in big trouble since the SSU archers would easily pick them as a target once they got out of the forest. The only thing that kept them from firing their bows was the thick trees with branches that would easily snatch their arrows.

Or second, they would kill all of the SSU personnel on that forest which would risk them arriving at the execution ground too late, but at the same time, it would also mean that they would have an easier time on the battle in the execution ground.

"How many enemies left?" Cole asked, thinking that Del might know.

[Predicted Number of Hostiles: 43]

[Predicted Number of Friendlies: 5]

[Terrain Difficulty Rating: D]

[Predicted Combat Difficulty: C]

[Chance of Escaping: 60%]

"We 43 more enemies, but well, if we work together, we will get through this rather easily," Del commented.

"Alright partner, I think we should stick together," Cole said.

They stuck together to hunt down the remaining SSU personnel. Now, the hunters had become the hunted. "If you see anyone wearing a black robe, just shoot it, don't doubt yourself," Del said.

"Aye, Del," Cole said.

Cole pulled the trigger of his SMG. The bullet flew in the direction of one SSU personnel. Del observed his tablet for any sudden enemy movements. The enemies beyond their area weren't moving too frantically in comparison to the enemies inside of the forest. It might be the tactics of SSU to continuously move.

"THERE!" Del shouted and pulled the trigger of his machine gun. An SSU personnel was hiding in the bushes again.

"It will take us a very long time to kill them all, right?" Cole asked.

"Relax, we'll get through it," Del said.

===================

After spending their time clearing the whole forest, Cole and Del finally arrived at the execution ground. There were several dead bodies on that execution ground. It was not that hard to guess where the dead bodies were coming from. After all, Cassandra was sniping them from a spot that stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Well, it looks like my senior has done some good job," Cole commented on the number of dead bodies in the execution ground.

"Yeah, but look, there are still several enemies that we have to take care of," Del pointed his hand at four remaining enemies on that grassland.

"Well, we can shoot them up!" Cole aimed his SMG in their direction and fired it.

The bullet bounced off the armor of one of the SSU personnel while the rest of the bullet killed three SSU personnel at once. The person's armor was different, it was certainly not steel, but it wasn't Mithril either. So, what was it?

"What the hell?" Del shot his machine gun at him.

The 7.62 Anti-Material Incendiary High-Explosive Armor Piercing bullet penetrated the armor easily and turned the armored person into nothing but a red grotesque mess. "Well, it looks like your bullet isn't powerful enough," Del commented.

"I think… so," Cole said.

"Now, where is the victim, I can't see him or her," Del said as he looked around. There was simply no sign of someone was burned, but there was indeed the smell of human BBQ.

"Let's search for it, I think Cassandra will join us soon enough," Cole pointed his hand at the vantage point where Cassandra was. She was climbing down the huge rock formation to join them.

"Alright, Wolfie, do you think you can smell where the smell was coming from?" Del asked.

"Sure," Wolfie barked back.

Wolfie led them through the grassland. Del and Cole followed him from behind. Del expected that Wolfie would find them faster than any ordinary dog. But well, it looked like he simply put too much expectation on him. It took him so long that Cassandra had joined them but they hadn't found the victim of the execution yet.

"Hey, back then, why were you firing the gun even though we haven't gotten out of the forest?" Del asked.

"Well, it turns out that an SSU personnel was using that vantage point as well. I tried to kill him with my spell, but I was spotted by a spotter on the execution ground. Everything went awry once they began throwing the explosive spells at me," Cassandra said.

"Ah, I see, well, that kind of thing is expected, isn't it?" Del asked.

Cassandra shrugged, "Nevertheless, your armor protected me, so there was that," Cassandra said.

All of them continued trying to find the victim of the execution. Hopefully, they weren't too late because the timer really had hit zero.