"Don't let a single bastard inside! Keep defending!" Drake howled out an order to his men as they poured even more power into the final ethereal barrier with their own ethereal energy.
However, all of them were inwardly feeling despair since they knew this barrier wouldn't obviously hold out against an army, especially if they were using ethereal attack formations.
Drake clicked his tongue in frustration and decided to escape first now that things had taken an unexpected turn.
But of course, he didn't forget the true reason he came here. He immediately called two of his strongest men to accompany him as he rushed towards Ai's room to grab her and escape, even if it meant he had to threaten her with the little king's life.
The only reason he didn't do this before was that he didn't want to kill the little king and cause the imperial family to take drastic action since the kingdom's throne would be empty, and if a Forsaken member like him was to sit on it then not even the Gale Emperor would sit still since it would be like a slap to their face.
"Yuria, I will let you handle this, okay?" Damien said as he noticed Drake leaving in a hurry.
Yuria said with a confident smile, "Of course, leave this to me. You can go catch the bad guy."
Follow on NovᴇlEnglish.nᴇt"Kale, I will be back soon. But Yuria will fight in my stead, alright?" Tristen said to Kale, who was surprised to hear that he was letting his fiance get involved in a battle like this.
Usually, women, especially ones that were royalty, would never involve themselves in a battle or anything that required them to risk their lives.
So, he was inwardly impressed by Yuria's bravery and her love towards her man, which made him feel envious, thinking that he never really had any woman who truly loved him since Farah's love was a lie all along.
But he shook away his thoughts since he didn't want to think about Farah a second longer and said, "Okay. We will take over the palace soon, don't worry."
Damien had instructed the general that was assigned to Tristen to follow Yuria's instruction since he knew Yuria was experienced enough to fight and strategize. However, he still made Tristen take a small group of his best twenty soldiers with him just in case.
He didn't want to take too many men since it would be quite noticeable.
Meanwhile, Drake broke open Ai's room only to have his eyes widened upon seeing that not a single soul was in the room.
"Where is she?!!" Drake howled as he banged the wall with his feet in anger.
"Lord...I think she might have escaped…" One of his men speculated in a low voice.
"Impossible! She is just a half-crippled girl! Wait...where is the little king?"
Suddenly, Drake got an incoming message from his messaging talisman and took it out as a frantic voice came from the other side, "Lord! The little king is not in his quarters! We have searched for him all over but we couldn't find him! What should we do? Should we search for him or stay here to defend?"
"Fuck!" Drake didn't reply and simply crumbled the talisman in his hand in frustration.
"Don't tell me they have been planning an escape all along...Wait...this invasion...could it all have been a distraction?" Drake suddenly made sense of things and realized that he got played.
"Lord...if we are escaping, we should escape now. The longer we stay here, the more difficult it would be to escape," One of his men advised.
"Does that mean all the planning and work I had done here was for nothing? Fuck! I haven't even finished the thing we were originally tasked with. What am I going to tell them when they find out I wasted all these days? I can't let them find out my true purpose for coming here…"
Drake began to rub his fingers together in nervousness and anxiety, thinking of his next moves.
Follow on Novᴇl-Onlinᴇ.cᴏm"Arghh!"
"No!!"
Drake got startled when he heard the dying cries of his men in the hall behind and was shocked to see Tristen attacking his men along with his soldiers.
"Shit!" Drake couldn't understand how Tristen and his men got in, but he had no idea that Valentina had created an opening for Damien and his men to enter though she could only come up with a small opening to not make it too obvious.
"There's their leader! Get him!" Tristen shouted as he pointed at Drake, who was standing in Ai's room.
"Lord, we should escape!" One of his protectors advised, and Drake immediately began to run towards the hall on the left while Tristen, Damien, and his men were in the adjacent hall.
"After them!" Tristen shouted as they all chased Drake and the two men running alongside him.
However, his two protectors were stronger than Drake since their cultivations were at the Middle levels of the Sky Ethereal Realm. These two protectors were from his own family because of which they were stronger than the other men he brought and had more trust in them as well.
Tristen's group of twenty soldiers were only at the Peak Levels of the Earth Ethereal Realm. However, they were well versed in using ethereal attack formations that combined their individual strength, because of which they had the capability to take on cultivators having cultivations stronger than them.
Damien wanted to use his lightning ethereal arts to easily catch up to Drake but couldn't since he couldn't expose his identity. He wanted to use Tristen and his army to isolate Drake so that he could take on Drake all alone with everything he had got since Drake's cultivation was at the Peak Level of the Earth Ethereal Realm, which was something Damien believed he could handle.
Drake continued to run towards the secret escape path he had created and was confident that once he got there, then no matter how many men Tristen brought along, they wouldn't be able to catch him.
"Going somewhere?" A woman clad in silver armor and having her long auburn hair tied up asked with a smile as she stood before Drake and his protectors, much to their surprise and even Damien, who was chasing Drake from behind.