The Raid part.2

They ate quickly, with Akirai barely eating more than a ration bar, Akirai had always had a small appetite so she wasn´t very suprised by this, although she used the extra time to look around and at the other people surrounding her, one of them spoke up then- it was the boy with the rat on his shoulder.

"Alright everybody, bring your Beasts out, we need to know what you have to work together better!" As he said this she noted that the soldiers and Commander perked up at this and looked over at them, likely interested as well, the change was very subtle but still noticable.

Some of the people seemed hesitant, but as a middle aged man brought out a cat like Beast, their hesitation seemed to waver, and so the introduction began, one by one, Beasts came out one after another.

A silver clawed panther- the Beast of the middle aged man, An iron clawed hound, A four eyed hound, a yellow specked bird, a thunder rat, a venomous red mouthed python and so on, soon it ended with the others looking at her, but she looked to the Commander, she´d told him she had no Beast, and at his nearly invisible nod, she grabbed the knife from her combat boots- courtesy of her fathers- held it up and at them, and told them flatly "I ain´t got one."

They sneered at her and turned back, grouping up, leaving Akirai to deadpan because she was once again alone- welp, she knew the taboo she broke now, seemed like only the strong were respected here, huh?

She shrugged her shoulders and walked over to the soldiers, she´d stick close to them, they glanced at her but didn´t shoo her away, so she counted it as a win.

The soldiers didn´t bring out their companions but she had no trouble believing that they were all at least Bronze-rank, unlike the civillian side whose majority was made up of No-ranks followed closely by the Bronze-ranks, there were no silver ranked ones in this batch, how could there by?

If they really had a Beast with a Silver-rank, then would they join the soldiers?

With a Silver-ranked Beast, you could go in alone to hunt without a problem as long as you were carefull.

They set off soon after, the civilians beginning to hunt the Beasts they crossed, it was as if they had crossed a threshold, before they had barely seen hide or hair of the Beasts, but now it was swarming with them, snakes, frogs, wolves and other species of Beasts just kept coming, the civilians took care of them with great pleasure as Akirai watched them.

The soldiers continiued on without looking back, she understood now, why the soldiers would let civilians tag along, it was of course to let them become stronger, they always needed people capable of fighting, but they also let the civilians take care of all the pests around them to conserve energy, the soldiers barely stepped in, and only when the situation seemed to take a turn for the worse.

Although, Akirai wasn´t focused on the civilians, she was focused on their surroundings- she had a gut feeling that she should keep her eyes peeled for anything out the ordinary... or as ordinary as it gets in a Beast filled world.

It took her a while, but soon she spotted... something on the ground that just didn´t sit well with her, it was a hole at the base of one of the towering and giant trees, enough for three men to put their arms around it and still not surround it.

She tapped one of the soldiers gently and ponted over to what she had found, he looked to her with a small smile before following her finger and frowning in confusion, he looked to her, excused himself quietly and jogged forward to the captain, she didn´t hear what he said, but she saw the captain turn and halt their merry troup.

"This could be a Beast nest, be carefull and stand back, we´re taking care of it." The Captain ordered as he looked at the hole with caution.

Akirai tilted her head to the side once again, a Beasts nest? Was that special? Dangerous?

The soldier she´d alerted walked over to her as the others were readying themselfs and said "I´ll explain later, thank you for keeping a look out."

She nodded at him in thanks, and in understanding, before standing back along with the other civilians, they too seemed to be puzzled at what was going on, the only exception being the boy with the lightning rat, who looked at the whole with eyes filled with greed.

Akirai hummed lightly in understanding, it seemed like there was something valuabal in there, but also dangerous, since it got the soldiers to move.

She barely heard one of the soldiers talking into a... what was that thing called? It was something like a walkie talkie, and after a while, he gave the commander a thumbs up, he nodded in return.

The commander stood in front of the soldiers and waved his hand to summon his Beast, a small swirl of flames appeared beside him and soon a bird came into view, it´s wings crackling like embers in a dying fire- someone exclaimed in admiration "A Silver-ranked Fire eagle!"

She turned her head over to the voice, it belonged to a woman with a bird sitting on her shoulder, her beast looked like a cannary, and from she had witnessed. it was a Bronze-ranked beast with the abillity to send out soundwaves to attack it´s enemy.

The fire eagle on the other hand was, as the woman had said, was a Silver-Ranked Beast with the abillity to set itself and everything around it on fire.

Akirai still puzzled over the Ranking of the Beasts, what made No-rank Beasts into Bronze grade Beasts? What made Bronze-ranked Beasts turn into Silver-ranked Beasts?

If Akirais guess was correct, then only Beasts who had special abillities, like the Cannarys abillity to send out soundwaves were considered Bronze-ranked, but that still left the question- what made Bronze into Silver?

She shook these thoughts off, she´d make a quick google when she had time, but now it was time to focus on the Nest.

Thoughts organised, she turned back to the hole in the tree as the commander ordered his Beast to set fire to the hole, it seems like he wanted to smoke whatever was in it, out.

The soldiers got ready for the unseen threat to emerge, and Akirai retreated further into the underbrush.

Their only warning was the agitated buzzing coming from the hole before they were being swarmed by Red coloured beetles with the average size of a large housecat, Akirai blinked, what kind of Beasts were these?

She had taken a look at the Beast register of this Zone, and this thing wasn´t mentioned anywhere, although her memory wasn´t the best, but she knew she´d recognize such a Beast anywhere- were the Zones merging?

It was the only explenation she could think of, maybe the Beasts migrated- or the Zones were fusing together.

Zone merging was dangerous, very dangerous as the more territory the Beasts had- the more they bred, the stronger they got and the more Beasts appeared, it made them harder to navigate- gave the Beasts more space to hide, and made clearing them out a lot harder.

Zones only fused together when the King of the Zone was dead and the other King took claim to the new terriory to expand, but maybe she was just thinking too much and it was just a case of Beasts migrating to a Zone more suitable to breed.

She snapped out of her musing with an instinctual flinch and a throw of her knife, she looked around and saw a now dead beetle with a knife lodged in it´s neck and shook herself out of her musing, it could get her killed, and retrieved her knife, another beetle made it´s way toward her, buzzing dangerously.

She clicked her tung and swung her knife toward its neck joint, decapitating it in one slash, why fight hard, when you can fight smart?

She turned to nest and cause of the commotion after she had retrieved her knife.

The nest was in absolute and utter chaos and she cringed as she saw the uncountable number of beetles that were still streaming out from within their nest- they enveloped the soldiers and other civilians who barely had time to recover from one wave beofre the next emerged.

The beetles were weak, a slash from her, an untrained, uncultivated, uncontracted human could easely kill one with a single slash if she stuck to the weak point, but their danger didn´t lie with their individual strength, no these things attacked in droves.

The real danger wasn´t the strength of these things, but their number, you killed one of these things, and two took it´s place.

The soldiers and civilians began to tire, slowly but surely- she saw it in their faces, illuminated by the attacks of their Beasts, the sunlight being swallowed by the towering trees, and saw the sweat run down their faces.

She heard their pants in between breaths as they commanded their Beasts to attack, to kill and to protect, and saw the settling dread on the civilians faces as the Beasts just didn´t stop coming.

Akirai sighed and jumped in the fray, slashing at a beetle that had snuck up on a civillian woman in the chaos and killed it in one slash, guts splattering on her and the ground, the woman didn´t turn around, too focused on the battle in front of her to look out from behind.

This was going to be a long day.