Is this really a Game?!

"Two, or three, which one is it?" A low voice was heard on the top of a mountain.

"Three, there might even be a fourth." A voice replied.

"Four, what the hell, are we sure we can win this?!"

"Quiet, we don't want to alarm them, even if it's four, we can win, especially if we can pull off a stealth attack." A cold voice said as the previous one kept quiet.

"There's something fishy going on here, are you sure they don't know we're here?

"They might, the four down there are suspicious, they are out in the open, that's not something that they would usually do."

"Should we abandon the mission?"

"I think that's the best course of action."

"Me too."

"Me three!"

"Alright, let's go back, slowly and quietly, you got that Shadow?"

"Aye aye captain," Shadow answered in a deadpan voice as Reign and the others started making their way down the mountain with slow and calculated steps.

Suddenly

Beast, who was at the front, opened his eyes wide before looking back at the others.

"Five more Tier III demons are behind us, they're charging over here!"

"Shit, it was a trap!"

"I knew it, this was way too easy!" Shadow cursed as he and the others started running down the mountain, trying their best to escape from the enemies.

The demons that had appeared, and the four that were standing in the base below the mountain peak, started running after them, each releasing their aura.

"Damn, only 3 are low-level Tier III's, the others are all in the mid-levels!" Reign cursed before jumping in the air and aiming at the five that were coming from above.

A giant spear of lightning appeared in his hand and he quickly hurled it toward the demons before falling down and speeding away.

The demons easily blocked the spear, but it forced them to stop for a moment, which brought time for Reign and the others to distance themselves even further from the demons.

After a couple of minutes of chasing them down, the demons slowed down before stopping completely.

"They have escaped." 𝐟𝚛e𝐞𝙬𝗲𝒃𝓷𝒐𝘃e𝒍.c𝑜m

"They managed to see through the trap, I told you it was too obvious."

"What shall we do now, our lord has given us the task of dealing with the humans, we can't fail him."

"Oh calm down, don't lose your cool, there has already been a lot of us that died that way, either dying from the hands of these humans, or from the monsters and other demons they were trying to hunt down in order to grow stronger."

"I heard it was Ezekiel's squad that fought them three months ago when they just managed to reach Tier II, to think that they would reach Tier III already."

"That's exactly why Ezekiel and his squad tried so hard to level up, only to die at the hands of a powerful monster, we are already above the humans in strength, we just need to be patient and lure them in before finishing them off."

"Agreed."

"Yes."

The demons nodded at each other before slowly leaving the area.

Ezekiel was the name of the tall demon that Tank and Greenie had fought against back when they had just gone through the second evolution.

The whole squad that was present that day tried their hardest to become stronger and they even fought Reign and the others a couple of times in the past, each time leading to their defeating and making them use a life-saving treasure that they carried.

After numerous failed attempts, Ezekiel and his squad started being seen differently be the other demons, which forced them to go to other, more dangerous mountains in order to hunt monsters and demons and level up.

That spelled their doom as one day, they came across a Tier III monster and were slaughtered before being able to even use any treasures.

Reign and the others, however, continued with their craze and fought many monsters and demons, but they mostly focused on fighting against ash demons.

Their infamy spread through the mountains and there was no ash demon that didn't know of them, many times they tried setting up traps for Reign and the others in hopes of finally killing them, only to have their traps fail and they themselves die.

"Damn, what should we do, this is like the third time the demons tried to ambush us!" Shadow cursed as he and the others stood about 2 miles away from the base.

"Just wait, I'm sure that they will leave the area, after that, we can just go back." Wolf suddenly said as an evil smile appeared on his face.

"Right, they wouldn't expect that we would return so quickly, their guard will be down, plus, there are bound to be some demons that decided to leave the area and look for us."

"Exactly, we will use Beast's power in order to observe the base from above, that should allow us to easily see when the demons leave."

"Can the eagle do it, it still hasn't reached Tier III, right?"

"It can, and no, it hasn't, none of them except for Blackie have," Beast said with a sigh before closing his eyes.

Before the third evolution, each time he managed to evolve, his beasts would evolve with him, the same went for Tank previously as well.

But now, it seemed all of his beasts, except for Blackie, would need to go through the evolution by themselves in order to progress further.

Tank's four generals had to do the same thing, but luckily for him, they were immortal and would get resurrected even if they failed.

Still, it was something that put a dent into the groups fighting power.

If all of Beast's summons had evolved to Tier III alongside him, then they wouldn't have had to run away from the group of demons that tried to kill them before.

Beast unleashed his eagle that soared through the sky and started observing the base from above.

Since the eagle was quite high up, it severely limited the ability of the demons to find out about it.

Even if they were to glance up, the night sky would make it near impossible to spot the large eagle.

Beast kept his eyes closed for about half an hour before finally opening them and moving.

"Four of them have left, 1 from the base, and 3 out of the five that previously appeared."

"So only 5 remain, that's doable, what do you guys think?" Wolf asked the others who were all thinking about the next course of action.

"Did you manage to figure out how many of the low-leveled demons are left?"

"No, so we're going in blind when it comes to this."

"Hey, if we manage to sneak attack them, then we can get rid of one quickly, right?" Shadow asked the others before Wolf spoke up.

"Only if we attack the weaker ones, we're still not sure exactly how powerful the mid leveled Tier III demons are."

"That's right, if we somehow were to attack one that has a great defense, then we might not be able to even seriously injure the enemy with the sneak attack, we can't channel mana for too long if we don't want to get found out."

"With Blackie, that makes 8 Tier III combatants here, we can double team almost all of them, Reign can fight against one by himself, his speed should make sure that he can at least stall him for some time, same goes for Shadow," Laura said from the side as the others all nodded their heads.

"So, we doing this?"

"Yeah, let's go, how far away are the four demons that left?"

"About 4 kilometers, you want to wait a bit longer?"

"Nah, that much is enough, don't forget though, we need to take care of the totems in the base as well, aim at them at the same time we initiate the ambush, we can't let them activate them, otherwise we will have to run away again," Reign spoke with a serious voice as they all started making their way back to the base.

The totems that Reign was talking about were part of the array of the base.

They had managed to uncover that from Arash's documents.

Arash only briefly talked about them, but that was enough to make them curious about the array, which prompted them to kidnap a couple of ash demons and interrogate them.

Aiming at their third eye or using Reign's ability to take their soul made interrogation very easy when it came to ash demons.

Well, Reign could use his ability on pretty much any being and take their souls after their death, which made interrogation an integral part of most of their missions nowadays.

Kill some enemies, take their souls, then wait for Aethion to get answers from them.

That was the usual way of doing things now.

By destroying the totems, Reign and the others would severely damage the array and it wouldn't be able to use even 50% of its power.

Most of the bases of the ash demons used the same type of array, which was a huge mistake in their opinion.

Reign and the others got near the base and started aiming at the demons whilst keeping an eye on where the arrays were.

The ambush was about to start.