Free Zectas Volume IV: The Salubrious City of Centzo by John Nest, You The Reader Page B

pummeling Bilis and Tulin.

Laernea and Gandiva desperately tried to draw their attention by attacking the eyes of the golems, but their arrows would only bounce off and do almost no damage at all. A bright purple flame then appeared, shining directly above them, and fired four fireballs into the holes in the golems' backs.

Thanks to Igniz providing them with covering fire, Laernea and Gandiva hurriedly helped their stag moose up and moved them away from the heat of battle.

Sierra, who just saw their situation, roared loudly and ordered her Werewolves to protect their backs and help the Lioumereans escape.

While the Lioumereans fled, Ledur was astute enough to notice the metallic golems’ weakness. He used his Earth Manipulation to create earth spikes from the ground and attacked a golem’s torso, revealing its power core.

With the monster impaled, he then shoved both his hooves into the golem’s body. After feeling up the power core, he smashed it by joining his two hooves together. The golem slumped down, lifeless. Slowly, its body began to fade.

The winged Tikbalang then went on to fight two golems at once and continued using earth spikes to impale them.

Sierra quickly scanned the situation around her. Aside from the injured stag moose, most of the Vigilantez still had more than 70% of their life bars. She then observed odd movement near the gate and realized that Smoke and his team had just discarded their camouflage and entered the mansion. Although there were still eighty golems to deal with, Sierra knew that they could easily handle them and catch up to Smoke soon.
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    Smoke and his men got through the gate without a hitch. He observed Sierra's battle with the golems while holding the door open for his team to enter the mansion. He assessed that she got it covered even without him sending Igniz over, but he felt more at ease with sending his dark ember sprite over to her for backup. Even though she wasn't looking, he smiled at her and then joined the rest of his team.

Once inside, they were greeted by a large stairway leading to the second floor and two doorways on opposite sides of the lobby. Smoke's Cunning of the Dire Fox detected many monsters confined to the rooms of the mansion. The only room without enemies in it was in the direction of the west wing.

"Alright, I think we're still undetected, since none of the monsters are rushing towards us. Let's take the stairs and turn left," said Smoke in a hushed voice.

The four-legged Centaurs scrambled on the stairs, as their legs couldn’t properly move between the small steps. The Condortlian Warriors helped them by holding their horse halves from the sides and stabilized their balance.

Smoke led the way as he dashed towards the door. He opened it and was taken aback by what he saw. Human, Lioumerean and Centaur children were tied up in chains and forced to lie on the floor, inside black casting circles.

Their life bars were below 50% and there were numerous runes carved into their skin. He counted twenty of them in total being tormented inside the vastly expansive room.

The room had several windows, each one with metal bars on it and a lightning rod sticking outside. Smoke saw that these things were connected to several black wires that traveled to the ceiling.

Suddenly, a lightning bolt came crashing down on the mansion. The eyes of everyone in Smoke’s group followed the sparks that the black wires emitted as electricity flowed through them. They looked up only to see that the wires were attached to another casting circle directly above the children, which had been gathering the lightning's energy.

After a few seconds, the casting circle on the ceiling lit up. It sent several smaller bolts of lightning towards the casting circle below it and created a tube-like barrier. The children cried out heart-shattering screams of agony as they were encased in the lightning bolt's energy.

Instantly, the children's bodies began to