Death... and me

Dogan appeared in the same room as Folilou in a flash, having found the same thing. "They know we have that person here. We need to take him away immediately. Zufato is already outside, so you should go and help him."

Folilou nodded. "I know. I'm going now. I can only feel two Space-Time Realm cultivators, so Zufato and I are enough." Right after, Folilou spread his Divine Sense and warned all the devils in the fortress. 'All of you, come out and fight the cultivators. They only brought a few Elemental Space Realm experts and two Space-Time Ones. There is no need to kill; just defeating them is enough.'

Right after, Folilou looked at Dogan and another five devils there were inside the room. Within those devils, two were the scouts of the Juedibos Army. "You all will help Dogan protect that humanoid over there. Follow his instructions. Even if you have to die, you must not let that person fall into the hands of the cultivators."

He continued. "Dogan, they already scrambled the space laws in the surroundings, so teleporting away is out of the question. Use the secret passage and get away from here. I'll buy you enough time."

Dogan already expected that. "Leave it with me."

Folilou then disappeared from the room, quickly appearing outside. His eyes then fell on Kinglei in the distance, who had just killed two devils who were unlucky enough to be close to him when he was advancing.

Kinglei obviously noticed Folilou and showed a wicked smile. "Hehe! Finally, some fun!" Immediately, he shot in Folilou's direction, disregarding everything. 

Folilou wasn't afraid at all. He was also in the Space-Time Realm Peak Stage. Not only that but the environment here was filled with Devilish Energy and had a high concentration of Dark Element. This was inside the Devils' Territory still, after all. That was definitely a huge advantage for him. "Hmph! Courting death!"

The clash between the two started in a blink of an eye. Spatial Powers burst all around, and laws clashed against each other. At their level, no one around the battlefield could intervene except for Kanglia and Dogan. However, these two were already fighting each other as well.

The other cultivators took the chance to charge to the fortress, knowing that Kinglei and Kanglia were just buying time for them to rescue the target inside the fortress. "Let's go!"

Folilou glanced at those Elemental Space Realm cultivators charging at the fortress but just coldly smiled. He then returned his attention to Kinglei.

Sure enough, as soon as the cultivators were about to enter the fortress, tens of Devils, many of them being at the Elemental Space Realm, appeared from inside. They had been hiding all this time, so they wanted nothing more than to come out and take some action. 

In a moment, the charge of the cultivators was stopped. If anything, they were the ones being suppressed at the moment.

Kanglia saw that and gritted her teeth while using her Divine Sense to speak to everyone. 'Fuck! The intel didn't say anything about so many devils in the fortress! This is nothing like we expected.'

Kinglei, who was having several clashes against Folilou, immediately ordered. 'I don't care if you guys die. Enter the fucking fortress and find the target! If any of you retreat, I'll be the one to kill you later!' 

It wasn't exactly an impossible request. There were many devils, with quite a few in the Elemental Space Realm, but those who could rival the cultivators were almost the same number. It's just that the rest of the devils could harass from afar, making the situation quite complicated. If they ignored everything and forced their way in, they might indeed find the target.

However, Kanglia immediately cut Kinglei there. 'Are you crazy?! Didn't you feel it with your Natural Spatial Perception as well? Even now, his presence appears inside my perception. There is another Space-Time Realm Devil inside. If they enter, they will only send themselves to their deaths. Even if they manage to somehow reach the target, they will never be able to bring the target out!'

Kinglei's expression turned even colder. 'This is all your fault! You should have sent more experts for this mission!'

'We couldn't! We were being watched closely,' Kanglia explained. 'If we sent too many of us away, the devils would get suspicious. Besides, we truly didn't expect this many of them here.'

Suddenly, Kinglei noticed that other Space-Time Realm devil inside the fortress moving further and further underground. In the end, the encirclement they were doing in the fortress wasn't proving very useful. 'Fuck! They are using a hidden passage under the fortress. He is escaping!'

Kinglei then released a lot of his Divine Energy and forced Folilou back for a moment. Right after, he raised his hand, and a spear appeared on it. Finally, he thrust it downward with all his strength, creating a huge piercing wave of red energy that went in the direction of the last Space-Time Realm Devil in the fortress.

"Ha! Aren't you a little too conceited?" How could Folilou not understand what Kinglei was doing? He wanted to force Dogan out of the passage with that attack. 

*Zash!*

*Boom!*

Folilou used his own weapon, covered with all his power, striking Kinglei's attack before it could reach the fortress. Right after, he charged at Kinglei again. "With me here, you can forget about ever getting close to that fortress."

Kinglei got even madder as blood covered his eyes. "You asked for it!" He couldn't just ignore a devil at the same level as himself, especially in this environment. He had to fight back in the end.

The battle continued and got more and more disadvantageous to the cultivators. Not only that, Kanglia began to get nervous. Quite some time passed, and it wouldn't take long for reinforcements to arrive. Sure, Hrumes' army helped shift most of the forces of the Juedibos army nearby. 

Finally, Kinglei and Kanglia's natural Spatial Perception lost track of Dogan, who got too far away. From now on, it would be impossible to locate the target.

"Retreat!" Knowing that staying here would only lead their group to their graves, Kanglia gave the retreating order. The mission was a failure.

The devils obviously took the chance to try to bring as many cultivators down as they could, but Kinglei and Kanglia helped with the retreat, forcing their Space-Time battles to locations in between the fleeing cultivators and the devils.

In the end, three of the Elemental Space Realm cultivators died while none of the Devils that really mattered perished. Not to mention that they lost the target, too.

A few hours later, their group returned to their previously agreed gathering point. Everyone had terrible expressions and had many injuries. However, none of them cared about it. What they cared about the most was the fact that during the attack, a certain trio never appeared!

"Where is Kenny, Goku, and Essefy?!" Kinglei spoke in rage! "I want to know where they are right now!"

Everyone was angry, thinking that those three abandoned the mission as well. Kinglei, especially, was ready to kill everyone. If not for Kanglia there, he would have killed even his allies by now. He, too, wanted to know where the other three went as their absence definitely contributed to the failure.

"Calm down," Kanglia said. "We don't know what happened to them. Perhaps they were ambushed before they reached the fortress."

"Forget it," a cultivator called Bacia shook his head. "They know they deserted during the mission. There is no way they will ever come back here."

Everyone's mood got even worse. Yet, they knew Bacia was right. If it was them, they wouldn't return to this place either.

However...

"Hum?"

Kanglia looked in a certain direction as three figures appeared in her Divine Sense Range. Not only that, but they just so happened to be the trio they all wanted to kill right now. "It's... It's really them..."