With countless soldiers coordinating below, hundreds of Heartland City compound’s top fighters kept launching ambush after ambush, cutting down Stage A Minotaurs one after another.

But these Minotaurs weren’t just fresh Stage A—barely Tier 24.

There were Tier 26s. Tier 27s.

After killing more than a dozen Tier 24 Minotaurs, they finally ran into a Tier 26.

Their attacks barely scratched it.

The Minotaur, on the other hand, casually swung its axe once—like it couldn’t be bothered—and seven people dropped instantly.

The faces in the group of elites changed on the spot.

Hard target.

They pivoted and started falling back.

Except the moment they did, that Minotaur locked onto them and charged straight after them.

Enhanced from all directions rushed in to intercept.

But the Minotaur ignored everyone else completely, still barreling after the cluster of top fighters.

Tier 26... wasn’t something a bunch of Enhanced who hadn’t even reached Stage B could stop.

In the blink of an eye, it caught up.

The axe came down with the weight of a mountain, cleaving toward them.

"Shields—hold!" someone shouted, voice sharp with panic.

Energy shields flared into existence, one after another.

And then—

A laser shot out from the compound, so fast it was almost invisible.

The Minotaur’s attention was still fixed on the elites. It didn’t even have time to react before the beam punched straight through its skull.

The Tier 26 Minotaur’s eyes went wide.

Then it toppled forward, hitting the ground with an unwilling, final heaviness.

Everyone nearby let out a hard breath they hadn’t realized they were holding. Heads snapped toward the compound, faces breaking into raw excitement.

The compound still had a trump card.

That meant this fight still had a chance.

But compared to the soldiers’ relief, Graham and the others standing atop the city wall didn’t look happy at all.

They’d traded Fallen Star City for a thousand Tier 22 crystal cores. Most of them had been used to cultivate this group of top-tier fighters.

What was left could support at most three shots from the laser cannon.

They’d already fired one.

Two shots remained.

And on the field, there were still at least a dozen Tier 26 and Tier 27 Minotaurs.

Two shots wasn’t even close to enough.

Their only real chance now was to have people below quickly retrieve the crystal cores from the backs of the Minotaurs’ heads—use the battlefield to feed the battlefield.

The problem was, even though Minotaurs were taking losses, their casualties were nothing compared to the humans’.

More often than not, killing a single Minotaur cost the lives of over a hundred human Enhanced.

The fighting was too intense. Nobody had time to dig out cores. So far, only a bit over a dozen Tier 24 cores had been collected.

Worse—Tier 24 was too high. No one in Heartland City compound could use them yet, and their decomposition tech hadn’t reached Tier 24 either.

For now, those cores were worthless.

Graham immediately gave the order: any Enhanced below Tier 16 who wasn’t currently fighting was to leave the city and retrieve crystal cores from the Minotaurs’ corpses.

Soon, another large wave of Enhanced poured out of the compound, rushing onto the battlefield to collect cores as fast as they could.

But before the cores were fully gathered, a dense cluster of figures suddenly appeared in the distant sky.

Each of them had a pair of wings made from pure light—light-element wings—that let them fly.

The moment those figures showed up, both the humans and the Minotaurs frowned.

They closed in quickly, hovering above the battlefield. There were only a little over four thousand of them, but every single one radiated an overwhelming presence.

Aside from a single white point of light on their foreheads, they looked almost exactly like humans.

And they were... beautiful. The men were striking, the women breathtaking. Their skin was so pale it almost glowed.

But their faces were full of arrogance, like they were looking down at something dirty.

With their arrival, the fighting below came to an unspoken stop.

The pressure they brought was simply too much.

The Void Realm beings in the air looked down at the humans and Minotaurs locked in chaos below, and surprise flickered across their expressions.

They’d been drawn here by the noise of battle.

They hadn’t expected to find a pack of savage Minotaurs... fighting a group of humans.

"So the natives of this world are humans," one man said.

"I heard humans can comprehend abilities from all elements. Didn’t expect them to be this weak—getting beaten this badly by a bunch of barbaric beasts."

"Humans disappeared a long time ago. Running into them here is already rare."

They chatted among themselves, completely ignoring both the humans and the Minotaurs beneath them.

"Let’s kill these beasts first," someone said, almost bored. "All those crystal cores will be a nice little bonus."

"Fine."

The moment the words fell, the Void Realm beings moved.

Streaks of white light shot down toward the Minotaurs like rain.

"Mo—!"

The Minotaurs weren’t the type to just take it. A layer of earthen armor surged over their bodies, and they swung their axes up toward the flying attackers with brutal force.

"Hmph. Overestimating yourselves."

The Void Realm beings snorted. Transparent shields appeared around them one after another.

The axes slammed into those shields—couldn’t even crack them.

But the white light? It pierced straight through the Minotaurs’ armor like it wasn’t there.

Minotaurs fell on the spot, dying with hatred still in their eyes.

Seeing that, the Minotaurs’ expressions changed completely.

They turned—and fled toward the distance as fast as they could.

After a single exchange, they understood the truth.

Those enemies were far stronger than them.

They couldn’t win.

So they ran.

"Humans down there—block them," a man ordered coldly from the air. "If even one of them gets away, you all die."

Down on the ground, the Enhanced looked at each other, stunned for a beat, not sure what they were supposed to do—what they could do.

"Stop them!" Graham roared from the top of the wall.

His heart had already sunk like a stone. These Void Realm creatures were obviously even more terrifying than the Minotaurs. If they didn’t do what they were told, Heartland City compound would be wiped out today. No negotiations. No mercy.

At Graham’s shout, the Enhanced scrambled to intercept the retreating Minotaurs.

The price was obscene.

The Minotaurs were desperate to escape now, charging like rabid beasts and smashing through anything in their way. Swaths of Enhanced went down, bodies piling into widening pools of blood.

Up above, the Void Realm beings didn’t even blink.

They just kept harvesting Minotaurs like they were cutting wheat. As for the humans—how many died was none of their concern.

Finally, after half an hour of brutal fighting, the remaining Minotaurs were all wiped out.

But the cost—

Out of Heartland City compound’s five-plus million high-tier Enhanced, only two million were left.

One battle, and more than three million high-tier Enhanced were gone.

For a compound, that was a lightning strike out of a clear sky. A catastrophe so big it didn’t even feel real.

People stood there, numb, drowning in grief and rage—

And then that icy voice rang out from above again.

"Dig out the crystal cores from these beasts and hand them over. Don’t even think about hiding any. We know exactly how many there are. If even one is missing... I’ll have every last one of you buried with it."

The crowd was already on the edge. That threat lit them up instantly.

One hothead snapped on the spot.

"Go to hell! Who the hell do you think you are, ordering us to dig out crystal cores for you? Do it yourselves!"

His words hadn’t even finished echoing when streaks of light dropped from the sky.

They punched straight through the rebels’ heads—clean, casual execution.

The moment those bodies hit the ground, everyone’s eyes turned bloodshot.

Rage twisted faces. Hands clenched. Teeth ground.

But the last scraps of reason they had left clamped down hard on their impulse to move.