Soon enough, the raiding team of Deacon Industries came close to reaching the center of the fourteenth floor. The clashes between the defensive countermeasures of the tree and the martial Squires grew even more intense. At this stage, there were a few that were wounded extremely lethally and succumbed to their wounds before they could be fed any healing potions.
However, most Martial Squires possessed a natural healing factor that allowed them to survive such wounds that were becoming increasingly common. However, while the loss of every Martial Squire was a regrettable loss of a powerful combat asset, the individual losses, especially of the lower-grade martial Squires were not that burdensome to Chairman Deacon.
Squire-level conflicts inevitably led to casualties among Martial Squires. This applied not just to Martial Squires, but also to any Realm of conflict.
Soon enough, the time for Rui and Kane to act drew closer. The two of them were already completely prepped and geared with everything that they could possibly need for the infiltration and extraction operation that they were about to embark on.
The plan they had ended up coming up with was simple. Moments before the last set of branches were destroyed, the two of them would sabotage the senses of the Martial Squires raiding the floor with some special items that they had acquired, courtesy of Guildmaster Bradt.
Rui had procured several smoke-screen bombs that would give them enough of a momentary distraction and obscuration of their senses.
During this short moment, the two of them would rush in, store the gigantic boulder in the dimensional storage ring and then simply leave through the closest tunnel.
It sounded simple, but it really wasn't.
('The problem is that the energy consumption of the energy ring is going to be exponentially stronger than normal due to the fact that we're carrying a mass far greater than we normally do,') Rui narrowed his eyes.
The dimension storage of the ring was far from limitless. The more mass that one wanted to store, the exponentially greater the energy required to store the mass. What that meant was that the esoteric energy cells that Rui frequently changed would burn through exponentially faster.
What that meant was that with the limited energy reserve that Rui could carry at any given point in time. They could not afford to be bogged down too much, he could not afford to store too many of them in the ring itself because they took up too much space that needed to be freed for the building of an ore boulder that they would be storing in it.
Rui had even located a site that he had already dug to bury the ore deposit for Guildmaster Bradt to find ahead of time. So that the two of them could quickly dump the ore deposit the second they reached the site.
In fact, Rui had given the ring to Kane, because he was the fastest. It was his duty to rush to the site after they had left the dungeon and ensure that he reached it before they timed up.
Although they didn't have an extremely restrictive schedule, they most certainly did not have a ton of free time either.
('Still, it's manageable,') Rui sighed.
Soon, it was time.
BAM BAM BAM!
Martial Squires furiously clashed against the final layers of branches of the tree, which now appeared to be as though it was dead. They were very close, just a few minutes away.
Rui and Kane immediately followed up and stuck behind the squad, using them as a protective shield to ensure that they didn't hit by the branch attacks that were capable of detecting them despite the Void Step technique.
Soon, it was time.
BAM!!!
A grade-ten Martial Squire of Deacon Industries launched a devastating attack that destroyed the final remaining branches that attacked them.
"Yes! We've succeeded!"
"Time to harvest the eso-!"
BANG!
Rui and Kane maneuvered over them as Rui dropped several special explosives that temporarily created a potent smokescreen that obscured the vision of even lower Realm Martial Artists. Although the smoke was extremely dense and heavy, and thus did not longer midair for very long, even the few seconds that it brought Rui and Kane were plenty sufficient.
The two of them shot over to the esoteric ore deposit while the Martial Squires of Deacon Industries and Kane immediately put the rock in contact with the ore, activating the ring instantly.
The esoteric ore deposit disappeared without an issue, instantly putting even more pressure on Rui and Kane as they were aware that they were now on a time clock before their existing cell was being consumed furiously by the ring.
The two of the dashed toward the closest exit that Rui was able to manage. Rui was the limiting speed of their two-man group since Kane could easily outspeed him, but obviously didn't because it would leave Rui exposed. Rui was aware of this, as he ran through the air at top speed with Gale Force Breathing, Outer Convergence, and Parallel Walking.
Yet just as they crossed the final Martial Squire, reaching for a tunnel, something happened.
They ran into another time limit.
"RARGH!" A grade-ten Martial Squire bellowed as he unleashed a gigantic omnidirectional wind attack.
This was outside Rui's expectations. He had not expected any of the Martial Squires to execute such a wide-scale attack when so many of their comrades were around them.
It was absolutely insane. It would severely hurt their comrades, potentially killing those who got hit in the vitals at close-range completely off-guard. That was why Rui had evaluated the probability of anyone engaging in such an act of self-harm.
But Rui had simply failed to account for the irrationality, and impulsive knee-jerk reaction of some Martial Squires in high-intensity circumstances.
The powerful wind attack not only hurt all the Martial Squires of the Deacon Industries but also the much further away duo of Rui and Kane.
And for just a moment, just before they could enter the tunnel, they broke apart.
