After a couple of hellish rounds of fighting, Ketis, Lucky and the remainder of her Mirror Raider squad managed to fight their way through three successive gates.
The cost was considerable.
Lucky's Misfortune Harness barely hung on his injured frame like a threat. Precious shards of Breyer alloy and B-stone littered the battlefield amidst the cut and broken pirate corpses.
The elite Hydra Battalion truly deserved their high regard. Their excellent gear, battle tactics and training was not worse than that of the Swordmaidens!
Ketis and the Mirror Raiders only managed to defeat them while outnumbered by taking advantage of their superior armor.
Aside from Captain Wenter who traded a lot of merits and wealth to order a powerful suit of combat armor, the rank-and-file Hydra Battalion soldiers were not as ludicrous when it came to their gear.
While their kit bridged the gap between third-class and second-class equipment, they ultimately fell short of the superior durability of Breyer alloy!
After an arduous struggle where Ketis had to resist a considerable number of unusual and heavy weapons, she managed to slice the broken scimitar she wielded with her offhand across the neck of the final Hydra soldier.
The pirates fought to the last man. Ketis genuinely respected their courage and commitment to their duties. In truth, the Hydra Battalion surpassed the Swordmaidens in many aspects. It was just that Ketis possessed some unique advantages of her own, such as an expensive suit of combat armor and a living 'pet' courtesy of her second mentor!
"How are you, Lucky?"
"Meoww…"
Lucky held on for a surprising amount of time after the pirates managed to box him in. The many holes in his Misfortune Harness clearly exhibited how much he suffered. The relentless attacks against his slim body had left many scars and even deeper wounds across his exposed body.
"Meow meow meow…"
Though his Rorach's Bone-derived regeneration ability would eventually allow him to be restored to new, it would take a very long time for him to heal all of the damage. For now, it seemed doubtful that he was able to contribute any further to the fight.
"Can you go invisible?"
"Meow." Lucky shook his damaged head.
One of his glowing green eyes had dimmed.
"Can you phase through walls?"
"Meow." He shook his head again.
"Can you do anything?"
"Meow…"
"It's okay, Lucky." Ketis gently responded. "We'll take care of the rest. Just stay close and stay safe. According to the map, this is the last checkpoint in our way. The shrine that Ves wanted us to smash should be just ahead. Our fight is almost at an end."
Before she advanced any further, she took stock of their situation.
Though her condition was better than Lucky, Ketis neared the end of her endurance. Her damaged armor bore several new vulnerabilities and weak points due to Captain Wenter's attacks.
His energised scimitar also cut through a handful of minor servos and other modules, thereby impairing the mobility of the Rising Red Dragon suit to an extent. Though Ketis was still powerful enough to bull through groups of ordinary pirates, she no longer possessed the agility required to keep up with another Captain Wenter.
She dearly hoped she wouldn't encounter another weapon master at the shrine.
After she ascertained her own combat ability, she turned to her squad of Mirror Raiders, or what was left of them. Their firefight against the Hydra Battalion went less than ideal, mainly because the latter possessed the advantage in numbers.
Only five of her squad still retained some combat ability. Their armor suits were not as damaged as the others, but they had obviously suffered several telling blows.
Ketis noticed that their rifles were running low on ammunition and energy.
"We can't salvage the pirate weapons, but we should be able to pilfer their spare batteries if they're the same format."
There was an incredible variety of energy battery models in use these days, but many of them still stuck to a format in order to ensure greater compatibility. Developing batteries that conformed to a proprietary format generally didn't sell very on the market.
Fortunately, the pirates didn't use anything fancy or obscure. Ketis looked relieved as she opened up the back compartment of the combat armor of the fallen Hydra Battalion soldiers.
Ketis and her Mirror Raiders hurried to replace their heavily-depleted batteries with those that contained more charge.
Once they finished this quick resupply, the six Mirror Raiders along with a heavily damaged cat proceeded forward, shooting down any ghost pirate with a barrage of lasers as soon as they emerged.
"Don't you think these ghosts are appearing more often than before?" One of the disguised Larkinsons voiced his doubts.
"The frequency is indeed higher now that I think about it. This proves we're heading in the right direction!"
Ketis diligently followed the route on the map until she stumbled on a bare metal plaza.
She halted, and so did the other survivors.
"Meow..?" Lucky looked puzzled as he faced the empty ground.
"Is the map inaccurate?" Ketis perplexingly guessed.
This might be the case! The Larkinsons ripped the map she currently used from the data banks of the Dry Snakes. There was little reason to suspect the pirates would intentionally falsify the maps for their own use, but this was an exceptional case.
If the shrine to the Hallowed Abyss was truly at the heart of the artificial anomaly, then how could the leaders of the Dry Snakes ever expose such a critical location to most of their own men?
The center of the public marketplace was a heavily-restricted area which housed many important offices and administrative centers. If not for the indiscriminate ghost attacks and communications blackout, Ketis and her band would have encountered a lot more resistance on the way!
Still, after fighting through three successive gates and barely overcoming the elite Hydra Battalion, how could their destination be wrong?
Had Lucky almost lost his life for nothing? Had Ketis dueled and traded a lot of combat strength in vain?
"WHAT THE HELL?! AFTER ALL THIS FIGHTING, THERE'S NOTHING HERE BUT GHOSTS AND EMPTY SPACE?!"
Every Larkinson looked completely bewildered. The situation looked completely unacceptable. Was their intelligence really wrong? Why wasn't there anything in this place?!
"You are not in the wrong location." An amplified female voice sounded out.
Amidst the mindless pirate ghosts, some of which took the form of the deceased Hydra Battalion soldiers, a more corporeal form appeared.
Ketis raised her laser pistol while some of the surviving Mirror Raiders brought their own rifles to bear.