Both retreated for their own reasons. The nose-ring woman and the rail-thin man—both believing they should lead the cult—exchanged a glance. The thin man calmly took a step back, gesturing for the woman to handle things.
"What are you people doing here?" The woman didn't know what the old guys were afraid of. She fearlessly stepped forward and shouted at Deathstroke, who looked like the leader.
Tsk tsk. Thea gave her a few looks. Total rebel type. Her skin was rough as sandpaper. Nose rings, eyebrow studs, lip rings—her face was a pincushion. Even more shiny pendants dangled from her body, clinking as she walked. Her clothes—whether torn in the fight or originally like that—hung in tatters. Her brown skin flickered with savage menace under the firelight.
"We're here to ask about someone. There's a person named—" Deathstroke hadn't finished when the woman cut him off.
"Coming to our place to look for someone? Haha!" She laughed like it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. The cultists backing her joined in.
"We only have dead people here!" The woman couldn't sense a trace of magic from Deathstroke. To her, he was an ant, so she mocked him without restraint.
Deathstroke had roamed the world for years. He'd seen his share of freaks. He wasn't angry—just glanced sideways at Thea. What next?
Thea was annoyed. This woman looked like a hippo, was weak as a chicken, and so obnoxiously edgy. No need for more talk—beat her up.
"Tututututu—" Continuous gunfire erupted. Five exoskeletons, ten Vulcan cannons—all opened fire simultaneously. Metal bullets, denser than rain, poured down on the enemies.
A chill shot up the woman's spine. She waved her hand. A puff of smoke appeared, and her figure flickered to the rear. The mercenaries thought she was a leader and worried Deathstroke might want her alive, so they didn't focus fire. Plus, she was genuinely fast. At the cost of one ear getting shot off, she managed to save her life.
She had spells and barely escaped disaster, but those brainwashed heretics didn't.
The result of flesh and blood against a metal storm was forty-plus people getting mowed down instantly. Severed limbs everywhere. A few tried hiding behind corpses—but they got shredded too.
"Kill these heretics! The Cold Flame burns people—leave no one alive!" The rail-thin man was terrified too. He raised his sword high, but his feet stayed planted.
"Attack!" Deathstroke gave the order simultaneously.
The roar of firearms echoed through the ancient, evil-soaked castle.
The one-sided slaughter the mercenaries expected didn't happen. The cultists had already put aside their civil war and banded together in groups.
"The Cold Flame burns people!"
"The Cold Flame protects me!"
Following their chants, dozens of so-called devout believers rapidly melted like candles. Green smoke burst from their eyes, ears, mouths, and noses, gathering into clumps mid-air.
Large and small, a group of abstract white mist monsters appeared before the mercenaries. Behind them, the ground was littered with skeletons of heretics burned down to bone.
"Some kind of half-real entity formed by burning human souls. Looks scary, but it's nothing special. Use the Quantum Cage." Thea gave the order.
Deathstroke gestured. Three mercenaries with slender firearms took aim. Two fired to either side, the third fired five meters ahead, then slammed a button.
The three points formed an equilateral triangle. Azure electrical light flared up within the area. This was one of A.R.G.U.S.'s black-tech toys—an electric field containing a weak nano-level disintegration beam. It had been developed by imitating Superman's heat vision, but its offensive performance sucked.
A.R.G.U.S. repurposed it from offense to defense. Useless against Superman, but against ordinary superpowered individuals? Lethal.
The smoke monsters could stay in subspace, but only briefly. Once they entered the material world, the nano-level disintegration rays sliced them into particles invisible even under a microscope.
The smoke monsters screamed silently. When damaged, they retreated into subspace to recover. When they re-emerged, they got damaged again. Under this endless cycle, several smaller monsters exhausted their energy and vaporized.
The remaining larger ones merged, forming a three-headed, six-legged beast that tried to charge out of the Quantum Cage.
The mercenaries held their firearms and engaged the remaining cultists wielding machetes.
The Cult of the Cold Flame's leaders didn't just stand by. The rail-thin man holding the sword—Grand Alchemist Tannarak—pulled a golden stone from his pocket and hurled it at one corner of the Quantum Cage.
Streams of powerful acid corroded the area. One of the triangular emitters vaporized instantly. Without a stable energy source, the Quantum Cage flickered twice and dissipated into the air.
"Government lapdogs! Use whatever you've got!" Tannarak shouted.
No wonder he assumed that. The equipment Deathstroke provided was all top-tier—three hundred fully armed men, black-tech gear, exoskeletons. No ordinary force could field this. Put the clues together, and the idea that they were a government agency here to capture them for dissection naturally emerged.
Though he shouted boldly, he himself still didn't move. His feet were nailed to the ground as he pulled out a pile of items, preparing his defenses.
"Want to meet him?" Thea turned and asked Papa Midnite.
Papa Midnite was sharp. Though Thea phrased it as a question, he knew there was no room for refusal. He also wanted to see how much stronger he'd become, so he nodded slightly, indicating he'd fight.
Smart man. Suggestion spells weren't very effective on magic-side individuals—Thea had learned that when they first met. If Midnite hadn't cooperated, she'd have had to use other spells to control him.
With a light tap, she canceled Papa Midnite's invisibility. The Voodoo King, his body adorned with various trinkets, stepped out from the ranks.
"Midnite!? You sewer maggot—how dare you bring people to run wild in the Cult of the Cold Flame!" The mercenaries didn't recognize him, but Papa Midnite was nearly their equal in power, so they knew him instantly.
The nose-ring woman and Tannarak cursed furiously while wondering inwardly: Had they pushed him too hard? Had he outright betrayed them and brought an army?
Papa Midnite's temper wasn't good either. Back then, it had been four against one—he couldn't win head-on, so he'd had to endure. Now things were different.
In his view, Thea alone could handle at least three of them. He himself could take one. Add Poison Ivy, whose nature was impossible to decipher, and the odds were heavily in their favor. No need to grovel.
Reaching into his robe, he pulled out a pure white human skull. "Didn't you want my Skull of the Dead? I brought it for you!"
He spat a mouthful of fresh blood onto the skull. It seemed to come alive—the jaw clacked together, spewing a stream of foul-smelling black wind toward the others.