With a terrifying roar, the energy enveloping the Romans instantly disintegrated and collapsed; their armor groaned and cracked under the heavy fists, finally leaving their frail bodies blasted with gaping, translucent holes by the Crystalkin. In the blink of an eye, thousands of Romans perished at the hands of these beings.

"Ha!" A cyan Crystalkin roared, hurling a punch across the void toward Polpott. A torrent of pale blue light shot forth like a meteor, slamming violently into Polpott's chest.

The energy armor around Polpott registered the attack, and a shield, a meter thick, rapidly deployed. The cyan energy stream struck Polpott, the immense force hurling him back nearly a hundred meters. Amidst the piercing shriek of the armor's shield generator, the thick energy barrier shattered and dissolved. A clearly visible, two-inch-deep fist imprint marred the breastplate of his armor. Polpott felt as if an iron pillar had been driven into his body; the organs near his chest violently convulsed, and a stream of hot, golden blood erupted from his mouth.

"Damn it!" Polpott suddenly realized: there were nearly three thousand Crystalkin here, and every single one was a high-tier unit, with more than ten of the black variety among them. He sharply recalled the terrible price the Holsom family had paid for secretly hunting a single black Crystalkin.

Cold sweat beaded on Polpott’s forehead as he shrieked with all his might, "Retreat! Retreat! Everyone fall back! You cover the rear!"

As he issued the withdrawal order, Polpott designated a mid-level commander among the Roman warriors, ordering him to take his subordinates and hold the rear.

The true nature of the Romans was laid bare at that moment. This mid-level commander cast a haughty glance at Polpott and sternly rebuked him, "Your Excellency Polpott, the life of every Roman noble is precious! According to Roman law, I have sufficient grounds to reject an order that casts me into the shadow of death!"

Under Polpott’s stunned gaze, the mid-level commander dropped his heavy claymore and, along with his subordinates, fled at an astonishing speed down the passage they had entered.

"Bastard!" Polpott roared in fury. He hastily shed his damaged energy armor, a bright blue radiance erupting from his body as he levitated several meters high, soaring into the dark passage like lightning. Relying on his superior strength, Polpott took the lead among all the fleeing Romans.

The Crystalkin swarmed after them through the passage, killing the Romans who lagged behind, one by one, at their hands.

The Crystalkin’s vengeful energy was enough to scorch the sky; their altars had been destroyed, the divine beasts in the sacred lake they were sworn to guard had been abducted against ancestral decree, and even the inviolable Ancestral Temple—accessible only to the colorless and black Crystalkin—had been breached, with the very body of the great, ancient progenitor taken!

The Crystalkin, whose brains contained no unnecessary matter, harbored a single thought: Since we cannot contend with those absurdly powerful Earthlings, we shall exterminate all the Romans!

Slaughter, slaughter, using their strongest power, slaughter using the stellar force lent to them by the great Pluto! Led by the colorless and black Crystalkin, the massacre was unstoppable.

Polpott had brought over one hundred thousand hunting party members into the subterranean tunnels and pits: more than twenty thousand Roman warriors, over sixty thousand Spirit Servants, and the remaining thousands were support staff—cooks specifically to serve Polpott, sommeliers, musicians, and bed-attendants, the necessary retinue for a great Roman noble traveling abroad! Furthermore, for his personal safety, the fellow had even brought a medium-sized mechanized unit deep underground, including three hundred heavy combat vehicles barely capable of traversing the tunnels.

But now, in their panicked flight, these assets became the greatest obstacle hindering the Romans' escape.

The energy armor offered no defense against the Crystalkin attacks; it was useless. Thus, the fleeing Roman elites discarded their armor without hesitation. The armor pieces were so massive that at many tunnel junctions, they completely blocked the passage, forcing the Romans behind them to clear the obstacles before proceeding. The Crystalkin happily pursued, utterly annihilating those stuck in the rear. The Spirit Servants fled even faster, abandoning their firearms and all equipment that might impede their speed. This equipment included numerous small daggers and caltrops tipped with potent poison, ideal for injuring enemy soles in jungle warfare. A single Spirit Warrior might carry only dozens of caltrops, but the combined clutter carried by tens of thousands of them amounted to over ten million pieces.

The servants irresponsibly littered the ground with these relatively minor implements of destruction. While those ahead were unaffected, the Romans and Spirits surging from behind frequently cried out and leaped into the air, their feet pierced by caltrops coated with potent fast-acting narcotics or toxins. A large number of Romans and Spirits howled and collapsed to the ground.

The Crystalkin relentlessly followed, wiping out every last unlucky soul.

The drivers of the three hundred heavy combat vehicles, upon hearing the news of numerous high-tier Crystalkin that were utterly beyond their capabilities, immediately shut down their engines and fled.

These drivers perfectly adhered to the technical secrecy regulations regarding combat vehicles in the Roman combat manual: before escaping, they input self-destruct codes. All chips and equipment inside the vehicles were instantly annihilated, and the engines began their self-destruct countdown. Three hundred heavy combat vehicles, each weighing over a hundred tons, were stopped haphazardly in the narrow tunnels, completely and utterly barricading the thoroughfare.

Clutching Lily, Ducat fled out, using sheer brute force to shove the vehicles askew. He navigated the several kilometers of blocked tunnel at maximum speed. However, Ducat's wild, charging impact, like that of a berserk boar, caused the three hundred vehicles to pile up haphazardly, leaving only a single, barely passable gap.

Whoosh! The retreating Roman army surged forward like a tide. They stared blankly at the passage completely blocked by the overturned vehicles, and a collective groan of despair rose from them. From more than a dozen tunnel entrances behind them, retreating Romans and Spirits continued to pour out, soon filling the entire tunnel with bodies.

Ptoo! Polpott swept over the remnants of his forces, spitting blood spectacularly. He stared in horror at the passage choked by the wrecked vehicles and listened to the faint cries of agony and the furious shouts of the Crystalkin echoing from the distance behind. Polpott’s face immediately turned ashen.

"Great God of the Black Hole!" Polpott nearly wept. Every Roman warrior and Spirit warrior here was an elite of the Holsom family!

His body violently convulsed, and three blue orbs the size of human heads suddenly burst forth from Polpott, emitting countless streaks of lightning that instantly enveloped his form. His flesh gradually merged into a dazzling electric luminescence. After two breaths, he transformed into a colossal electric beam, hundreds of meters long and as thick as a fist, which streaked out through the narrow passage barely wide enough for passage. Following the streak that was Polpott, several hundred of the most powerful Roman officers took flight, forcing their subordinates aside, and frantically trailed after him.

Tens of thousands of Roman and Spirit warriors stood frozen in the nearly hundred-kilometer-long passage, watching their superiors flee.

Three hundred dull explosions rocked the earth across several square kilometers. Nearly three minutes after Polpott escaped, the three hundred heavy combat vehicles detonated simultaneously. Three hundred high-output energy engines exploded in succession, causing a tunnel stretching over ten kilometers to instantly collapse. The nearly ten thousand Roman and Spirit warriors within the passage were buried deep underground without even a chance to cry out.

The underground tunnels of Pluto were complex and mutable. After this passage collapsed, two new tunnel entrances opened nearby. The terrified Roman army, their souls scattered, screamed and poured into them.

The Crystalkin were already in hot pursuit, harvesting the lives of the lagging Romans row by row, functioning like ruthlessly efficient reapers. Having borrowed Pluto's stellar force, the colorless and black Crystalkin were utterly impervious to the energy weapons carried by the Romans. When the last group of Romans who dared to resist watched their commander torn in half by a black Crystalkin, Roman morale utterly collapsed, and they began to fight savagely among themselves in a desperate bid for survival.

Frenzied psychic assaults burst out in all directions. The small, fragile bodies of the Spirit people were shredded into dust by the blue mental shocks. The Roman warriors, particularly the elite high-ranking ones, began wantonly slaughtering the Spirit people obstructing them, clearing them out to reveal the tunnels leading to the surface.

By massacring their own servant race, the Romans quickly pushed towards the surface.

They did not see the savage grins spreading across the faces of the Crystalkin, who herded the Romans like shepherds into the two vast, wide passages.

Once over eighty percent of the Romans had rushed into the passageways, two colorless Crystalkin exchanged glances and simultaneously slammed their fists into the ground.

The two passages slammed shut inward with tremendous force, crushing tens of thousands of Romans and Spirits into dust—the high-and-mighty Romans and their enslaved servants mixed into a single mass of blood and flesh.

Polpott burst out onto the surface first. He unleashed his entire spiritual energy outward, erecting a mental shield two meters thick. He rapidly flew toward the hunting fleet flagship in the sky, roaring hoarsely, "Engage engines! Engage engines! All energy shield emitters at full power!"

A powerful psychic wave swept the entire hunting fleet. The fleet commander received Polpott's order.

An armor plate beneath the flagship slid open, revealing a downward passage. After Polpott and the hundreds of high-ranking officers scrambled back aboard the flagship, the hunting fleet immediately began ascending toward the high atmosphere.

A gigantic fissure suddenly tore open across the surface of Pluto. A dozen Crystalkin, towering a hundred meters high, roared as they sprang from the earth. Intense, blinding light rolled off their arms, and they began executing strange, precise footwork on the ground while waving their hands bizarrely in the air.