Before he even made the decision to switch plans, some of their group already began breaking the cells open.

“Momma! Momma!”

“It's okay, mommy’s here now. Mommy’s here now.”

He couldn’t very well blame them. Parents reunited with their kids, husbands and wives reunited with each other, and parties reunited with one another. It was potentially dangerous to start celebrating before the actual work was done, but seeing all of the tears of joy kept him silent on that point. He didn’t have it in him to ruin the moment.

It’d been long, so long, since he did anything that could even be misconstrued as helpful. Seeing such moments of joy and release and knowing he caused it… he couldn’t quite describe the feeling. It felt so odd, so alien, and it touched him in such an intimate place. He took a deep breath to savor it, but then immediately pushed it to the side. No distractions.

There were well over a thousand slaves jammed tight into their cells and around two hundred more working various contraptions. Organizing all of them would be hell, but thankfully he had just the person.

“Ryku, come here.”

He came. By the expression on his face, he already knew exactly why Dalric had called him over.

“I need you to organize these people. It's fine that we let them out, but we need to make sure they don’t hamper us going into the battle.”

To his credit, he only lightly grimaced, “Of course.”

While Ryku went off to do that, Dalric found one of the stairs and began climbing it. As he moved up the steps, he noted the thick metal door that laid at the top of them. He wasn’t here to break it down yet, just reconnaissance. The earth between the second layer and the first was so tightly packed and reinforced that his ahjer sense didn’t pierce through at all. He hoped getting closer would help, but when he reached the top it was still the same.. He still couldn’t see through it.

Alas.

He went back down and provided Ryku some token support. He didn’t really need it in fairness, he was a surprisingly competent leader and organizer. In much less time than expected he settled everyone down, sorted them out, got them food and makeshift blankets, and broke the cells down to make more space. They made a lot of noise in the process, removing any ideas of catching the guards upstairs unaware, but the speed at which it all happened made up for it.

Dalric didn’t know whether to be singularly impressed by Ryku or impressed with the whole Paragon organization. He leaned on the side of being impressed with Ryku personally, but he was vaguely interested in what kind and how much training Paragons received. A silver badge wasn’t that high up the ladder, it’s only fifth out of the eight ranks.

Though I guess he did say the top two were only for the truly extraordinary.

Once everyone was free and everything was set, they moved back to the original plan. There were only two stairs between the second and first layer. Both were wide enough for five people to stand side by side, but the limited access points meant their opposition only had to defend a small area. Even just one more would have meaningfully thinned the amount of defence they could stack at the top of any of the stairs. Alas, it was at least better than just one.

They’d split up into groups again, but now they had around sixty combatants. A few extra decided to join them in their assault. Dalric couldn’t make them armor and he warned them that joining without protection would likely kill them, but they were content to come up in plain robes anyway.

After a quick talk, he split the groups twenty-forty. His group had the twenty, they’d all been picked out because of their supposed skill, speed and explosiveness. They would attack their side in a blitz, looking to immediately overwhelm them. The other group had the more tankier individuals, they’d attacked more cautiously and attempt to draw their sides into an extended battle. Once Dalric’s group was done with their side, they’d circle around and attack from behind. With this, he hoped to focus the heat of battle on the top fighters and minimize casualties amongst the rest.

“Ready?”

They were in position now, just behind the thick door. Dalric looked around and met nothing but determined faces. It was a good sight. He nodded while conjuring himself a helmet.

“Good.” He signalled the whistleblower, “Do it.”

The second he gave the command, he charged forward. The screeching tone of the whistle synced perfectly with the thunderous impact of Dalric’s lightly empowered fist and the metal door. It flew off its hinges, shattering crates and furniture stacked behind it. Before it could even hit the ground, they were under attack.

“Fire!”

Bullets rained in from all directions, peppering his armor. He wasn’t entirely sure how much damage they dealt, but he was still glad to have made the helmet anyway. It did mean he was officially out of usable ahjer though.

~”I invoke: Cursed Winds.”~

A gust of purple-tinged wind blew in his direction.

~”I invoke: Justice’s Blaze.”~

A beam of pure white light shot for his heart.

~”I conjure: Demon Hawks.”~

A series of decaying, black and red hawks flew towards him.

~”I invoke: Plane of Pain.”~

Red blobs of jelly broke through the ground around him.

Spells of all different types followed closely behind the bullets. They sought to burn, freeze, poison, shock, rip, trap, dissect, confuse, and even arouse Dalric. His armor tanked all it could, but some affected the whole area. Those he could do nothing about. They covered the ground with all kinds of traps, some parts had frozen spikes others had a red jelly that set off pain receptors when close.

Not giving them the time to attack him uncontested, he pulled out the uchigatana and continued his charge forward. He reached the first of dozens of makeshift barricades in a matter of moments, whipping the blade across his chest in a perfect arc.

The sixth man to die by its hand came less than a second after the first, all six were sliced cleanly through. He didn’t rest, instead hastily moving to the next group hiding behind a barricade. They suffered a similar fate, being briskly diced in half. Dalric continued without ceremony again. The third barricade had eleven behind it. Having just watched ten of their number get bisected, some tried to run while others pointlessly fired their weapons at his chest. Neither helped. The ones that didn’t move died first, the thin blade so effortlessly cut through their plain leather armor, but the few that retreated only lived a few seconds longer. With their backs turned to him, he jabbed the blade through the back of their heads with ease.

He quickly looked around, but all the barricades around him just had riflemen behind them. The ahjerists were hidden in the back. Interestingly enough, the final stairway out was just behind them.

“The helmet is weak. Aim for the helmet!”

Whoever was giving out commands was back there as well.

Dalric instinctively dodged as bullets honed in on his head, he had to continue erratically darting around as most of their fire concentrated on him. He was still getting hit of course, but his efforts reduced the damage he’d take. His helmet wasn’t made of a jarlon, it was just iron. It was also beefed up with enchantments, but most of them focused on defending against spells. They only marginally boosted its physical toughness. It wouldn’t take too many hits to puncture through.

This was all still part of the plan though, with so much attention on him the rest of the group came up the stairs mostly unchallenged. The draken woman was the first through, she didn’t quite match his speed, but when she reached a barricade she more than matched his deadliness. Heads flew the moment they got in range of her long sword.

Though it was large, heavy, and designed for two hands, she held it in one. And she looked comfortable doing so. There was no loss of control, the precision of her movements was spectacular. It matched their brutality. She seemed to favor decapitations specifically, but decisive attacks to the upper body were her general go to. She pierced through eye sockets and rib cages, split faces down the middle, sliced through shoulder blades, and sometimes just smashed straight through skulls.

~”I invoke: Acid Rain.”~

Clouds of light green manifested above the barricades. They rapidly grew darker before unloading a storm of acid.

~”I Invoke: Frozen Peaks.”~

A sudden gust of frozen winds blew by the battlefield. It did little damage to any people, but it irreparably damaged many rifles.

~”I summon: Bulls of Baracath.”~

A small herd of ten dark grey bulls with three-foot horns spawned by the door. They immediately stampeded through the closest barricade to them.

The others followed their lead, hopping into the fray with fervor. Not all could so easily kill the men in front of them, but collectively they brought about a tidal wave of death. It was slowed down somewhat when a decent portion of the ajherists switched to countering them instead of him, but they were skillful enough to protect themselves. Mostly. Shrugging off some icy spikes or an errant poison cloud was one thing, clearing a field of thorns that actively slowed and sapped ahjer was another. Their own ahjerists were causing similar problems for their side at least.

“Stop them!”

Dalric made sure to balance aggressively decimating ranks with carefully evading concentrated fire. He needed to make sure his presence was great enough to keep the bulk of the attention on him, especially the ahjerists, but he also needed to not die in doing so. He couldn’t remake his helmet and he couldn’t use ahjer to protect his head either. His life was actually on the line here.

Backing away from the thirteenth group he cleaned out, he finally took the time to analyze the surroundings. The first floor wasn’t as cramped as he expected. They’d clearly broken down some walls, but even ignoring that the junction that the door led into was quite spacious. They were currently making use of that space to stuff as many men behind makeshift barricades as they could. It wasn’t a winning strategy, but Dalric did note three people from his side had already died. Two were among the ones that joined him while decked in thin robes so he only partially felt bad about them, but the other got surrounded and had their helmet pulled off. He saw it happen, through ahjer sense, but he was simply too far to do anything. Liv—

Agh.

He refocused on keeping himself moving. The bullet that banged him in the back of the head was surely a fluke, the person that fired it wasn’t even aiming at him, but that was no excuse. Being caught unaware while on a battlefield was the most amateur of mistakes. Now he was in dangerous territory. He’d been hit in the back of the head a few too many times and the plating was getting weak back there. He had to make a move.

Time to go for it then.

He stopped backing away and started charging forward. His helmet was beginning to thin and break down, but they were running out of bullets to fire at it. A few had already run out, opting to drop the rifle for a melee weapon. That meant the threat they poised was gradually on the decline. Most still had ammo to spare, but they took their shots more carefully. The ahjerists in the back on the other hand, they still casually let off spell after spell. Those are who he had to deal with them.

The draken women and a human wielding no weapon seemed to have the same idea. He joined up with them as they blazed a path through the barricades. It turned out the human was a fairly skilled ahjerist. Along their dash towards the back of the ranks, bullets stopped reaching them. The human had surrounded them with a powerful barrier that blocked them all. Once they reached a new barricade, he opened it up a little to let their victims in and closed it again once they were done.

Dalric had never used or specialized in barriers like this, being a giant with near impenetrable skin made such a thing redundant, but he quickly realized he needed to study up on them. Thunderfield provided a potent barrier of its own, but his body wasn’t ready to really handle it. It could be a while before he could comfortably take its massive surge of power.

As they finally began to close in on the ahjerists, the ranks began falling apart. Ammo continued to run out and seeing a group of three effortlessly run through them caused many of the men to abandon their station. The exit was so close after all.

The ahjerists momentarily held firm as they launched every spell in their arsenal. There was plenty of friendly-fire, but the bulk of their spell hit their intended target. The trio weren’t even slowed by their attempts however. Even as they broke through the human’s barrier, Dalric stepped up to tank them on their behalf. He couldn’t block everything, but the few spells that managed to get by did little to disrupt the two behind him. He received a number of bends, burns, chips, and dents for his efforts, but the armor survived it all. Even as the weight of their spells deformed it in several places, it protected Dalric. So when they ran out of spells to sling, he still barrelled towards them.

Having failed in their last barrage, the ahjerists themselves turned and ran. It was a great many strides too late, but inevitably a few of them would still escape. The rest would taste cold metal. He leapt into their midst and let the blade do its work, rending life from flesh. He kept on guard in case someone tried to sneak in an attack, but none came. Nothing stopped him and the others from systematically culling the ajherists.

After a handful of minutes, the battle ended. Every single guard was either dead or had run away with their entire being. Dalric noticed that whoever was giving out commands had made their escape much sooner than the rest, but he let that be. This battle was won, but there was another raging somewhere through these halls.

He gathered the fifteen survivors and relayed his plan, “You seven with me, the rest of you go back below and rest.” Only the seven came out relatively unscathed, the others had varying degrees of injuries, “Don’t try to go up there and don’t try to follow us. I don’t want to come back to any of you missing or dead. You understand? We’ve done the hard part already, just follow the plan and we’ll all be free in a matter of hours.”

He could tell by the look in some of their eyes that they wanted to continue fighting. One kept peeking at the stairs like he wanted to make a break for it. There was no point to either, they had genuinely finished the hardest part. Assuming Ryku didn’t royally mess up on the other side, all that was left was a rout. There was no need to do anything foolish. Thankfully, his authority was stable enough that they didn’t contest the order. All eight of them obediently trudged back down the stairs.

“Alright, let’s go.”

They knew what direction the other staircase was in and they could see a path that likely led there, but if it was a similar layout to the junction this staircase led to it wouldn't lead them behind the barricades. For that, they'd need to look for another path.

It took a couple minutes of fanning out and probing multiple doors before they finally found the path they were looking for. Ryku was spot on with his statement about this being the main base. Unlike the other layers, the floors were tiled, the walls were smoothed and painted over, the light fixtures were more common, there were a host of different rooms for different functions, and judging by how long some of the halls were, it was the largest layer.

When they finally arrived at the second battlefield, Dalric halted his group. There were a lot of ways he saw it potentially going, things could have gone terribly wrong or miraculously right. This, however, was definitely not one of them.

Ryku was chuffed, internally. Outwardly, he still maintained an aura of calm, but oh was he happy on the inside. With each passing moment and each passing task and each passing conversation, Dalric opened to him. His first impression was terrible, but it only required diligence to fix that. He had wrongfully assumed Dalric was a hidden master that would appreciate such a level of respect. Dalric definitely didn't. That was fine though, honestly Ryku preferred it that way. He had no problems bowing his head to a superior, but he still found the act needlessly stuffy. A relaxed master he could chat with was definitely more his style.

Now, he had the ultimate test before him. He'd been given a large group with little variation in skill sets and the objective of holding the Baron's men at bay until Dalric could attack them from behind. Simple enough. He would do more though. He needed to make use of every opportunity given to him to prove he was worthy of being the man's student. If he could lead this group to a decisive victory before he arrived, he'd look brilliant. It would be some task to pull it off though.

He got a quick overview of everyone’s strengths and weaknesses and began planning around them.

Twelve defence, nine attack-melee, six attack-ranged, four support, and five auxiliary. Two of the support can make walls of ice and snow… let’s begin there. Use defenders to push through door, set up walls, empower them, get a foothold. Objective one, get a foothold. What next…

A few ideas rolled around, but without first making contact with the enemy they were all moot. He thought through some contingencies if he failed to get a foothold, but otherwise he’d wait until he completed objective one before committing to anything. He shared his plan and contingencies with the group, the three lieutenants of sorts he selected liked the plan and that feeling rippled through the rest. That was good, no plan lived long in the hands of the disgruntled. He went over it a couple more times with the lieutenants to hammer out the pivot points, but then they heard the all-important whistle. Planning time was over, it was action time.