“Who are these guys? Why the fuck are they here?” Del asked himself as he still regained his composure from the last massive wave of goblin ambush.

Ten people were standing in front of him. All of them were wearing the same black clothing with a black hood. None of their faces could be seen. All of them were uniform in their equipment. Everyone carried a sword and dagger alongside a book in their hand.

“Shit…” Cassandra murmured.

The ten people jump in different directions and they disappeared. Cassandra prepared her combat stance again by preparing her material shield.

Suddenly, one of them jumped from the bushed, charging Del with his sword. Del dodged it by getting down on the ground. He countered the attack with a burst from his machine gun.

“Who are these guys? Why are they so fast?” Del asked again while keeping his ears open for any ambush.

Cassandra threw and one of her ice spikes into the bush and a figure jumped out of it, “These are Elbanian Special Security Unit. SSU. Be careful, Del, these are not your ordinary goons.”

The way that they attacked them was abnormal. Usually, a standard bounty hunter would just charge in his direction, but these people were different. They hid in the bush of the forest while waiting for him to drop his guard down.

Del shot a barrage of bullets into the bush in hoping that one of them came out from the bush and Del could score a headshot with his machine gun. However, the moment he did that, someone threw a dagger at his legs. The dagger attached to his leg, but it was pulled out again. It was a throwing dagger with a string.

“Got you!” Cole shot the M2 browning from the top of the humvee and it hit one of the security units.

A loud scream could be heard. It seemed that one of the .50 bullets had successfully killed one of them. It made him wondered how Cole managed to do that.

“Bro, can you see the rest of them?” Del asked.

“What do you mean? I can see most of them clearly, but they keep moving!” Cole shouted back.

After taking a look at Cole, Del noticed that he was actually wearing his night vision goggles.

Well, the forest was quite dim, but it wasn’t that big of a necessity to wear night-vision goggles.

“Attack them then!” Del shouted.

“Don’t be in rush, we must preserve ammo and reloading also means that I’m vulnerable,” Cole replied as he fired another burst from his heavy machine gun.

A rustle came from the tree up above Cole. He aimed his machine gun in that direction. It didn’t take a split second before one of them attempted to stab him by jumping from the top of the tree.

He pulled the trigger of his machine gun and pumped the body of that SSU personnel full of lead. The SSU personnel fell to the ground afterward. Cole got down from the turret as he screamed in pain. He got slashed in his shoulder and he was holding his shoulder in pain now. “Shit, he got me.”

Everyone has been bleeding from the previous battle with the goblins, and now, they had to suffer more bleeding from the battle with only God knew who they were.

Cassandra also struggled to fight them. Mainly because her ice spike wasn’t fast enough to get the SSU personnel that ran erratically from one direction to another.

“Damn it, how the hell they are moving this fast?” Cassandra asked herself as he continued throwing the barrage of ice spears.

Del couldn’t care less any longer. He ran to the car and opened the backdoor of the car. He grabbed the G3 that was laying on the floor. He switched the safety so semi-auto and shouted, “Cassandra! Catch this!” He threw the G3 at her.

“What the hell is this?” Cassandra asked.

“Just use it like you use a crossbow!” Del shouted.

“Alright, alright,” Cassandra replied as she aimed down the scope of that rifle.

She pulled the trigger of the rifle and she managed to kill one of the SSU personnel. It made Del wondered how these two people from Ilbistirum managed to hold themselves against the elites SSU personnel of Elbanian.

Cassandra was somehow more effective with her G3 than her spell in this situation. It made Del thought why would Cassandra use her spells instead of her crossbow. Maybe the reload time of a crossbow, but Del had no idea.

“Cassandra, that thing only has thirty shots, make all of it counts!” Del shouted.

“Sure,” Cassandra replied.

One of the SSU personnel ambushed Del from one of the bushes, Del immediately pulled the trigger of his machine gun to kill him. 7.62 rounds shredded the head of the SSU personnel, turning it into nothing but red paste.

Del turned his attention back to Cole who was bleeding on his shoulder. There was quite a large incision on his shoulder. Blood was coming from that big incision. It didn’t spurt out like crazy, but it certainly wet his left shoulder, “Mate, are you ok?”

“Do I look like I’m okay?” Cole asked as he held his shoulder firmly.

“Damn, hold on, alright?” Del asked.

Del could treat Cole’s wound as fast as he could, but considering the situation where he was, it was simply unfeasible. Del continued providing suppressing fire from his machine gun while Cassandra provided more accurate fire with her G3.

“And, fuck this shit,” Del attached C4 to a blasting cap and he threw it in the direction where he suspected an SSU personnel was hiding.

He pressed the detonator and the C4 immediately exploded and threw two SSU personnel at once. Del cheered as those SSU personnel dropped dead. Still, Cole’s painful groan really worried him. Del grabbed the NVG from Cole’s head and he replaced his helmet with AN-PVS 7 from his head.

Del climbed to the top of the turret. Cole wasn’t lying, the SSU personnel from SSU was visible thanks to the NVG. Their black coat somehow stood out, maybe it was reflective because the generation 3 NVG that he used, but he didn’t know.

He pulled the charging handle of the Browning M2. He aimed the heavy machine gun at the direction of the SSU personnel. He pressed the trigger of the heavy machine gun and sprayed the rest of the SSU personnel full of lead.

One of the SSU personnel threw a dagger at his chest. The dagger pierced through the vest easily and it stabbed Del’s chest, but not to the point where he required a serious treatment. Del noticed the origin of the thrower and filled him full of lead.

“Del! That dagger on your chest, try not to pull it, alright?” Cassandra shouted as she jumped into one of the bushes.

From the bush, Cassandra beated down one of the SSU personnel until he became incapacitated. She then finished it off by shooting the head of that SSU personnel with the G3. Suddenly, two of them jumped on Cassandra and Cassandra dodged their attack.

One of them threw a small ball into the ground. The small ball exploded and it dissipated a lot of smoke. “I see you two! EAT THIS!” Del pressed the trigger of his heavy machine gun and those two SSU personnel groaned in pain before the heavy machine gun shredded them in half.

“How many enemies do we have?” Del asked Cassandra from the machine gun turret.

“Not many, they’re all dead,” Cassandra replied.

Del got out of the turret with knife was still attached to his chest. However, before Del crawled to the back of the car, Cassandra stopped him. “Sit the fuck down! Let me handle you two. Del, are you bleeding as bad as he did?” Cassandra pointed at Cole’s wound.

“No, I don’t think I am,” Del said as he observed the opening on his chest. It was not pouring out of his body like Cole’s incision, but it was still quite a bleeding.

“Shit, it hurts like fucker,” Cole commented.

Cassandra shushed him, he grabbed the trauma bag that Del put inside of his car. With a little bit of mix and match, Cassandra was able to identify what was common on Earth and on Ilbistirum. So far, Cassandra was able to identify painkiller from Earth with Ilbistirum painkiller. Betadine was also something on Ilbistirum, it was something that surprised Del. It seemed that their medical knowledge wasn’t that different.

The only thing that seemed to be strange for her was plastic. Cassandra was somehow very mesmerized with plastic packaging, plastic container, plastic syringe, and everything else that was generally used glass as its container.

“Alright, relax, you’ll be fine,” Cassandra stuffed bunch of sterile gauzes inside of Cole’s wound to stop the bleeding.

“You sure, it burns like fire and stings like killer bee,” Cole replied.

“Relax, if you still can talk, you’re probably fine. If you can’t talk, I will have to start worrying about you,” Cassandra said as she compressed the wound with sterile gauzes.

The idea was, Cassandra would first stop the bleeding using the combination of the sterile gauze and her healing spell. After that, Cassandra would be free to do anything that she wanted to do with the wound.

“Cassandra, what the hell are those people doing in here? I thought this was a goblin’s headquarter, not SSU,” Del asked.

“Probably because this valley turns into an execution zone, but they should be the only SSU unit in here,” Cassandra continued pressing the wound on Cole’s arm.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Del said as he observed the knife that went up and down as he breathed. It kinda made him nervous, but he trusted Cassandra for whatever judgement that she had in mind.