In the research center, more than a hundred people with human shields arrived in droves. Two evacuation centers had been breached, though handled as swiftly as possible, they still lost a lot of people.

Now, more and more people had reached outside the Research Center, determined to take the research and the researchers!

The Research Center was naturally highly defended. It has several loose sentries, and had more than a hundred guards and loyal mercenaries guarding it.

Now, with the sentries rendered semi-useless, the guards had an extra hard time defending the doors and lower windows.

Several elementalists also had to continuously shoot down (with arrows or elements) the higher leveled ones who could jump a bit higher than others, some going straight to a third floor window.

Fortunately, they also had archers stationed at the roof area of the Research Center and some buildings around it. Sentries might have less use here, as they’d likely tag those with hostages as allies, while humans could at least differentiate.

However, with the increase in number of enemies, after several hours of guarding the place, some leaks were inevitable.

For example, there was a level 30 wind user burst himself up with his element, heading straight to the fourth floor! He threw a bomb assigned to him right at its window.

The windows of the research center were all reinforced tempered glass, so actually destroying them quickly did need some effort.

In fact, defense arrays were also being studied for glass, but for now it was still an undergoing study. As of now, this was just reinforced glass that could break after some show of force.

BANG!

Sacrificing a few meat shields, some Alterran some allied, the wind user once again jumped to enter this opened window.

Who’d have thought that after entering, before he could even cross one turn—

BANG!

"AHH!" he screamed as a sharp pain smacked him on the face. It felt like he was hit by a heated stone, except its impact speed was akin to that of a level 40 and above.

He was hit right at the face, where his defense equipment could not protect him.

This was Lin, holding out a gun. Or what was one.

This gun was just a prototype. The only one so far, and her hand was shivering from the recoil, even bruised. She wouldn’t be able to use her hands for a while.

And worse, the gun itself was broken after a single shot.

Sigh.

She still had a lot of work to do.

...

This side of the building was breached like this, and the other sides were not particularly safe either. After all, they were surrounded by enemies, all of which had higher levels than 99% of the people inside the Research Center.

The Grandmasters were here too, though they could only defend. At their level, if they dared attack, they could really die.

In some areas of the Research Center, the enemies threw in various smoke bombs, some poisonous and some were paralytic, mostly the latter. The quantity wasn’t small either.

Valov had obviously prepared several plans in this, spending hundreds if not thousands of gold each plan, and the number of smoke bombs that entered the broken windows was no joke. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

If it weren’t for the wind users inside who could push out the smoke and control them, it was estimated they’d have been disadvantaged for a few more hours.

People tend to forget that nearly every researcher was a Terran, and every Terran were elementalists.

There were dozens of wind elementalists alone.

Their plan was to enter the building and kidnap as many people as they could. This was not just teams directly from Valov. After all, if Valov won, the scientists would be theirs. These allied territories also had their own goals, wanting to gain as much as they could from participating!

Sad for them, even entering was still more difficult than they thought.

...

The gun was still a prototype, but other tools were already released and ready for testing.

Some of them had to do some last minute fine tuning though, which got messed up when the Ministers got bombed and everyone panicked.

Further, when the war started, there were several projectiles that were thrown into the openings.

Some hours into the war, their several prototypes were now by the outer walls, ready for testing.

Each was accompanied by a researcher (protected by an assigned guard) to record the results and what would be for improvement.

One of the debuting tools was the Celeste Mirror. This included the two versions of it and there were a few copies of each one.

Amusingly, partially for ease of transportation, the flat reflective tools were worn like a large pendant on the necks and tied to the waist on some agile members, though only those around level 20 or above.

Most of the soldiers were busy with other things, so the ones who wore these things were wind users, as their superspeed people were not even level 20 yet.

In terms of speed, wind users were the ones next to speed powers.

They appeared right at the leaks, but closer to the enemy side to avoid collateral damage from their side.

When they arrived, they started catching elemental attacks from elemental enemies.

One had to remember that Valov did not hold back. Nearly all of their elementalists, except for a few handful who had been left back home, were sent here.

So there were really a lot of elements flying, and elementalists were fighting everywhere.

Soon a larger than usual fireball was thrown from the enemy side and, Cassie, a wind user, came to catch it.

At first, the enemies who saw this wondered if she was blind or suicidal, until the shot returned right at them, and even slightly more powerful!

BANG!

"AHH!"

"WHAT IN THE ORCSHIT!"

BANG!

"GAHHH!"

On the side, safe inside the sentry, one of the toolmakers feverishly jotted down notes. "Sample #04 seems decent. What’s the durability now?" he asked, staring professionally as various projectiles flew above and in front of them.

Enemies: "???"