Nestled on the southern slopes of the Alps, within the Federation's largest natural preserve, lay the ancient, three-hundred-year-old village of Arolo.

With fewer than a thousand households, the town featured charming, distinct cottages arranged artfully along a winding main avenue. Compared to the cramped, smog-choked metropolises of the Federation, the living conditions in Arolo could only be described as paradise.

To the east of the village, beside a crystal-clear lake, a small knoll crowned a quaint castle built from white granite. This castle, covering several thousand square meters, was known internationally because the Federation’s renowned musician, Phoebus, and his son resided there.

Several purebred horses ambled past the castle grounds, attended by a dozen lean hounds. The relationship between the horses and the dogs appeared amicable; the hounds playfully circled the steeds, while the tall, magnificent horses affectionately snorted, occasionally nudging the dogs running past with their large heads.

The main gate of the castle suddenly swung open, and a middle-aged man wearing a black trench coat, his face marked by three long, crude scars, emerged carrying a custom-made, large-caliber, double-barreled shotgun. He grinned menacingly as he surveyed the free-spirited animals, then abruptly raised his hand and pulled the trigger, aiming at a glossy black purebred mare. With a deafening roar, a gaping, two-foot-wide hole tore open the horse’s abdomen. The massive body was hurled seven or eight meters by the blast, crushing two startled hounds beneath it.

The horse's dead weight snapped the spines of the two dogs, who immediately spat blood and let out piercing shrieks. The remaining purebreds scattered in terror, while the pack of hounds let out deep howls and lunged toward the man.

The dull report of the shotgun continued in rapid succession; jets of flame, two meters long, erupted from the muzzle. The middle-aged man rapidly fired and reloaded, dispatching every horse and hound in the blink of an eye. The horses, due to their size, remained as mangled heaps, but the dogs were utterly annihilated, their bodies shredded into indistinct masses of flesh and gore.

"Oh, oh, how delightful."

The middle-aged man bared his teeth and smiled wickedly. He walked over to a horse that was still struggling and gasping for breath, and with a single punch, pulpified its head.

"Uncle Gan Jin likes you! Heh heh, before long, I’ll send your master down here to join you!"

A towering Black man, well over two meters tall, dressed in forest-green camouflage fatigues, emerged from the castle gate. Impatiently, he rubbed his scarred, bald head. His ugly face contorted into a hideous, grimacing smile. "Gan Jin, you son of a bitch, the Boss told you not to attract the police!"

Gan Jin licked the warm horse blood from his fist and shrugged. "Hmph, I’m back. Maru, you son of a whore, so what if the police come? In a town this small, are there even ten cops?" He stomped his foot hard, sending an invisible shockwave rippling outwards. The dead horses on the ground instantly disintegrated with a wet crunch into fine crimson pulp, quickly seeping into the grass.

A beautiful blonde woman, with radiant eyes and perfect teeth, suddenly peered down from the crenellation of the castle’s main wall. She blew a suggestive kiss toward Gan Jin. "Darling, hurry up, I need you!" The woman straightened her upper body, her ample breasts thrusting forward. She deliberately swayed her loosely clad frame, causing her chest to jiggle violently from side to side.

Both Gan Jin and Maru swallowed hard. They exchanged a look, then simultaneously shook their heads. "Louise, you slut, go die!"

"Louise, wanton lust is an original sin; you must repent your sins to the Almighty Lord," a deep, commanding, yet resonant voice declared. A refined-looking middle-aged man in a black cassock stepped out from behind Louise. He adjusted his single-lens gold-rimmed spectacles and lightly traced the pure silver cross hanging on his chest. "Louise, repent!"

Louise gazed languidly at the middle-aged man, then giggled, "Boss, I am repenting to you, the Almighty!" Her naked body dropped to her knees before the man. She lifted the front of his cassock and seized his lower body, vigorously kneading him. After a moment, Louise drew out the man's erect penis and began to suckle it forcefully.

"Mmm!" The middle-aged man took a deep breath and murmured, "The Almighty Lord... will forgive your sins! Remember... do not stray into lust! ...Damn it, suck harder!"

Maru burst into loud laughter. "Boss, only you can conquer that common slut, Louise, hahaha! She is nothing but a whore!"

Gan Jin watched Louise writhe dramatically beneath the middle-aged man and spat contemptuously. "Hmph, I conquered her too! At least three hundred times!"

In the central great hall of the main keep, more than a dozen middle-aged and elderly people were bound tightly with thin cowhide ropes, resembling trussed-up Zongzi. Their bodies were covered in explosives the size of a palm, with each person carrying over a hundred pounds of the material. One elder, whose hair and beard had turned ivory-yellow, was laden with over two hundred blocks of explosives, pinning him immobile to the floor.

In the corner of the hall lay nearly a hundred male and female servants, sprawled haphazardly. All were bruised and swollen, clearly having endured a severe beating. They, too, were rigged with explosives, but evidently received less attention; each servant was burdened with only a single block.

Standing by the walls surrounding the hall were two dozen mercenaries in pristine white uniforms. They were uniformly armed with cold steel, such as long knives and broadswords. A faint, almost imperceptible killing aura enveloped them; every single one was a master-level Innate Warrior. Four mercenaries sat on the hall's sofa, around a square table piled high with messy playing cards and wads of cash, loudly engaged in gambling.

"Hahahaha!" One mercenary suddenly erupted in crazed laughter, shaking his backside with excitement. "I won! I won this hand! Come on, come on, five hundred each, no backing out!"

Snatching the cards from his companions with fervor, the winning mercenary delivered a vicious kick to the thigh of an elegant, silver-haired elder. "Oh, fantastic! Winning money continuously and getting to abuse the Federation's famous great musician for venting! This experience is truly rare! Heh heh, it’s just a shame there aren't any young, pretty women here!"

The elder who was struck, the famous musician Old Phoebus, snorted in fury. He spoke in a low voice, "You brigands, you will be punished."

A sharp slap landed squarely on Old Phoebus’s face. The winning mercenary frowned and roared, "Shut your mouth, old man, got it? You old fossil, do you really think being a musician scares us? Hey, those ten little ones, the Aridyas, are your granddaughters, right? Later, I’m going to drag her to bed... all the brothers will get a turn!"

The mercenaries let out lewd, evil laughter, and Old Phoebus’s face flushed deep crimson with rage.

The elder, pinned to the floor by the weight of the explosives and unable to move, roared hoarsely, "You bastards, in the name of the Tongulas family, I swear I will not let you go!"

The mercenaries exchanged mock expressions of astonishment. One laughed loudly, "The Douglas family? Oh, oh, we’ve heard of a major family in the Federation called Tongulas, have we?"

A flash of humiliated ferocity crossed the elder’s eyes as he grit his teeth fiercely.

On the castle battlement, the middle-aged man suddenly seized Louise's head and violently shoved his body forward. "Hah... ho..." With a low grunt, the man's eyeballs turned bloodshot. His fingers locked around Louise’s skull, the tendons in his arms bulging grotesquely. Only when Louise let out a shriek of agonizing pain did the man slightly ease his grip, snarling darkly, "Siren... you son of a bitch... even if you are a Boundary Master, you will kneel before me and repent like Louise! You ruined the life’s work of me, Polyphos!"

Polyphos kicked Louise flying and pointed both index fingers at the sky, roaring, "Siren! Repent, repent... I will not forgive you!"

A low howl echoed from the heavens. Two Level Two battleships, eight Level Three warships, and twenty heavy patrol cruisers, spewing ghostly blue plasma flames, broke through the clouds and plunged toward the ground. The fleet descended with a savage aura, rushing directly toward the castle. Just as they were about to crash into the tallest spire, they abruptly halted. The sudden stop caused the plasma engines to belch incredibly long blue flames, instantly engulfing the castle in intense heat. Polyphos's hair immediately caught fire with a whoosh.

A massive holographic screen projected from the hull of one of the Level Two battleships. A towering, hundred-meter-tall three-dimensional image of Siren screamed in fury, "Polyphos, release my family! Otherwise, I will..."

Polyphos calmly fastened his belt and sneered at the Siren image on the screen. "Boundary Master, you've struck it rich! Tsk tsk, Level Two battleships—that's something our Holy Unicorn Mercenary Corps wouldn't dare dream of! Heh heh, you come to rescue your family, and you deploy two Level Two battleships! Have you really made it big?"

Siren roared with rage. "Enough chatter, release them, or I'll... blow you up!"

The protective armor plating slid back on all thirty warships, revealing nearly a thousand high-energy cannon muzzles, large and small. Faint blue electrical energy crackled within every barrel, indicating that all the high-energy cannons were fully charged. A salvo from thirty warships could obliterate not just this small castle, but the distant town of Arolo as well.

Polyphos threw his head back and laughed wildly. He rolled up his sleeve, pointing to a silver metal band on his wrist. "Fire! Fire, then! Blow me up along with your family? Go on, fire! Oh, no, no, you wouldn't dare!"

He flipped the bird at Siren and sneered, "Don't even think about sending a sniper. The signal transmitter on my wrist is directly linked to my pulse. The moment my pulse stops, the explosives strapped to your family will detonate instantly. And don't even think about removing them! Those explosives are synchronized with your family's pulse and heartbeat—heh heh—if the explosives move more than ten centimeters away from their bodies, they’ll explode!"