“Just as the Canaries, I came here to help,” Port said as he comes closer.

“Things just got a lot more complicated,” Ken said.

“We don’t have much time. We have to end this madness.” Lance said.

“Are we seriously doing this?” Alastor asked Linda.

“Yes.” She replied.

Linda observed all of them, “Supposed to be we’re in the lower echelon of the higher echelon of this building. We encountered a lot of enemies, so don’t expect that this would be easy.”

Together they traveled at the upper echelon. It was not like any other part of the floor. The entire place was infested by some sort of parasitic machine. In the middle of the room, they saw a giant circular figure, blinking and loading back and forth then it stopped, the light forms its eyes and gazed at them.

“This is my pitstop,” Ina said. “The rest of you go, if there’s any volunteer, then good for me.”

“I will stay,” Linda said.

“Me too.” Gary and Ken replied.

The enemy produced a laser beam and attack them. Likewise, Linda conjured an ice wall to protect them. It may not be physically effective, but the pristine surface deflected the enemy’s attack.

“Scram!” Linda shouted.

The rest of the members sprinted towards the stair. The enemy didn’t miss them and was about to attack them, but Linda was one step ahead of the enemy and conjured another ice wall to protect them.

Ina used her lightning magic to enhanced her speed. She evaded the enemy’s laser attacks and leaped. She throws a lance made of lightning. The enemy didn’t flinch and graciously accept the attack. It bleeps and sounded as if it is happy.

“It seems that lightning magic does not work on it,” Gary said.

“Yeah, we can see that,” Ina replied.

Alastor, Lance, Port, and Cid made it safely to the next floor thanks to Linda. They walk through the maze and showed was vigilant to their surroundings. They encountered some of the previous puppet foot soldiers, but they exterminated them successfully.

They were in the middle of approaching an arena when Lance broke off the silence.

“So, who hired you guys?” Lance asked.

“Does it matter?” Alastor said. “And why do you care?”

“Well, it makes me wonder, why would they rely on low mob hitmen.” He replied.

“You got some pretty cojones for saying that to my face,” Alastor said.

“Because it is true.”

“Don’t speak like that when you know how corrupt the government is. You know what did the mayor do.”

“His actions do not represent us as a whole.”

“But it makes people sick. You give a crap about people relying on external forces because they have you, but have you considered to think that they lose their faith in those people who said they’re going to protect them?” Alastor asked. He continued to explain. “If the government does not comply rightly to their duty, don’t be a surprise that they would want a revolution. People don’t want that system to be carried to the next generations when they saw the worst in this one.”

“But that does not solve the problem. It’ll just bury on the ground and eventually resurface.” Lance replied.

“Why solve when you can just start all over again?” Port said. “You know where did you get wrong? You think that you’re so rightful you missed the fact of what’s the law meant to be.”

“And what would a scum like you know about the law?” Lance asked.

“Truth, liberty, and justice,” Port said. “These three words were forged for all of us and do you know how these words become demeaning throughout these years? It became privileged to those people who have wealth and power. What’s good about the law if it does not protect the people? What’s good of the government if they let their people die? Some would say they should burn, let all of this burn, but we cannot allow that, because there’s a future generation that has not yet seen the beauty of life. And the only solution all of this problem is revolution.”

Lance did not probe anymore. He got what they were saying, but he stood by his beliefs.

“You may be right, but do you think it would be unfair to those people who crawled their way up only to be red labeled as one of those corrupted? I think not.”

“Consider them as collateral damage,” Alastor said. “In every war, there will always be collateral damage.”

A creaking came to their hearing as they entered the arena. They glance through and witness the puppet soldiers crawling from the walls and landing in front of them. Cid didn’t wait for the enemy to initiate the attack and grabbed his pistol shooting the nearest enemy. It seems that he hit the right spot.

Port used one of his bracelets and conjured fireball magic. The enemy was pulverized into ashes. Alastor dashed and swung his sword slashing every enemy who stands against him. Alastor didn’t notice that the range of his sword nearly cut through Lance but he parried it before it came to reach him.

“Watch it. You’re not the only one who’s fighting here.” Lance said.

Alastor hissed and parted away from them. Careless he is, Alastor was pinned by the enemy. Lance throws lightning magic to give Alastor room to escape, but he’s still relentlessly attacking the enemy. He saw the puppet soldiers amasses from the hole they whence came.

He raised his palm and conjured a magical wall.

“Cinque parete invisibile.” Alastor muttered.

A four-dimensional transparent wall emerged and push forward – crushing the enemies and blocking the hole they came from. Alastor immediately joined them.

“That’s neat,” Port said as he cut down the enemy with his katana while holding his gun.

Gary momentarily loses his balance as he used shield magic to cover Ina as Ken and Linda led the attack. Ken shinned from there and there evading the enemy’s laser beams while Linda used Ice Shards to attack the enemy but it was deflected back to the ground. “This is rough. Not just the enemy is capable of handling multitasking, it also has high firepower.” Gary said. “You okay, Ina?”

“Yeah.” She replied. “Hey, how do you feel like throwing everything at that thing?” Ina asked Linda.

An Ice Wall emerged and deflected the laser beam. “Good idea. Let’s keep its attention to us and put it on the edge. Ken, you want to become the sacrificial lamb?”

“Nah-uh. You want me to become a lump of fried meat?” Ken asked.

“We will distract that thing so you can get behind it,” Ina explained.

“Fine,” Ken said.

“On the count of three,” Linda said. “Three… one!”

Linda uses the remains of the Ice Wall and breaks them down into shards to attack the enemy.

“You skip two and count opposite!” Ken shouted as he sprinted towards the enemy.

Ken's instincts kick up and flawlessly evaded the laser beams. The metallic eye detached itself from the wirings and came closer. Linda and the others throw everything they’ve got, Fire magic, Ice magic, and Water magic to the enemy.

Ken flaunted an unblemished performance of acrobat. The enemy’s attention couldn’t remain in two places as it was preserving its energy, therefore, it chooses to attack back Linda. She controlled her Ice Wall to move and to centralized the laser beams and tried to deflect it back to the enemy, but her plan failed and nearly cut Ken’s head if the ever-watchful sentinel didn’t power down.

Ken shinned to the ledges and with all his might he punched the enemy at its back. The wirings that once linked, severed to disconnect. The enemy tried to glance back but Linda and the others attack the killer machine. Ken was drawn back and landed another kick. With no energy left, it focused all of its power centralizing into a tipping point.

“Let’s try again this, shall we?” Linda said.

Linda conjured an Ice Wall. Her entire pool of mana boiled to the tipping point as she accepted the incoming powerful blast attack of the enemy. The lights danced as they reflected across the room and destroyed some of the machines. Ken evaded aiming to stay out of its range when got caught by an explosion.

Linda saw it and manipulate the shape of the wall to centralize it. Meanwhile, Gary took the risk and save Ken from getting caught in the attack. Gary jumped off as a laser nearly caught him. Ina quickly came to heal Ken.

Now that Linda can finally be focused, she pushed through and she successfully deflected the enemy’s attack. The enemy exploded into tiny millions of pieces with no sign of reviving.

“Are you ok?” Linda asked.

Ken regained his consciousness and glanced at them.

“I’m fine,” Ken said. “Although, I can’t promise that my body won’t hurt tomorrow.”