After a very long night for Ren, both he and Lucilia got up and went back to the village, with some minor soreness for both of them as they walked.
Once they got back, they helped everyone out with cleaning up the festival as much as possible; however, they heard a loud noise, one that Ren and Sthora knew very well.
*ROAR*
Ren and Sthora, who were cleaning up mess from the party, knew exactly what that was.
"It couldn't be..." Sthora said, staring in the direction of the roaring.
Ren, Sthora, and Lucilia all ran to the gates as fast as they could just to see it.
A thirty-foot-tall monster with giant red scales It's head towering over the tree's as it walks in the direction of the village.
"The Drakzen..." Sthora said under her breath.
"Sthora...what the hell do we do?" Ren said, looking at her.
"Evacuate as fast as possible; we need to get the children out of here as fast as we can; we can't fight that thing." Sthora said.
Sthora ordered some nearby guards to help spread the word and started running into the village square as Ren looked over at Lucilia.
"I have an idea that can help us in time for the village." Ren said.
"I think we have the same idea. Get Silili and Ceti to help you, and I'll also tell Rumia and the other servants to assist in the evacuation along with the others we have here.." Lucilia said.
"Good, I know Mae and Ivy, along with some of the others, are on the ship now. I'll run there as quick as I can." Ren said before he started to run, but Lucilia grabbed his arm.
"Stay safe. I love you." Lucilia said as she kissed him.
"I love you too." Ren said as he left with the others.
As Lucilia saw Ren running, she thought to herself "You didn't say you would stay safe..."
* Ren's perspective*
Ren saw Ceti and Silili and told them to follow him as he sprinted towards the ship.
Once he got there, he avoided the path that the Drakzen was taking towards the village.
Ren saw Mae standing outside, writing something down on her tablet.
"Mae, get the knights ready for deployment!" Ren yelled.
"Is it because of that roar?" Mae asked.
"Yup, it's the Drakzen; it's heading directly towards the village. We need to fend it off for as long as possible." Ren said.
"Alright, you and some of the others take some of the knights; I'll get the pilots to take the ship into the village; that should help with the evacuation, right?" Mae said.
"Perfect, who's all here that can pilot?"
"Counting you, Ceti and Silili? There's Attia, Zilyana, Selussa, and Lixiss; everyone else was in the village." Mae said.
"Okay, let's get moving; we have a monster to fight."
Almost as if it were a challenge, another roar from the Drakzen was heard nearby.
Ren and the others didn't waste time as they headed into the ship's hanger.
Mae went up to the bridge of the ship and told Ivy of the plan, and Ivy took command as the ship's captain for the evacuation.
Ren gathered the pilots, and they all left the ship in their knights, as well as him in his personal Nemesis.
"Alright, listen up." Ren said on the comms "I know I don't really know a few of you, but we all have one goal: save the village from the Drakzen by any means necessary."
Everyone gathered their weapons and sprinted in their knights towards where the Drakzen was.
Upon spotting it, they saw the towering behemoth in front of them, and they knew they needed a plan to stop it.
"So what can we do?" Zilyana asked on the comms.
"First, we need to get it's attention and get it as far away from the village as we can, so the best I can think of is to unload into it and piss it off." Ren said.
Everyone started to unleash their rifles into the thing, causing minimum damage to it, but they were successful in getting it's attention.
*ROAR*
Maybe too successful...
Ren and the others started to move around as it stomped its way in their direction. It's tail was swinging around, and Ren knew if they were hit by it, their knights and maybe even themselves would be damaged.
"Keep firing at it until we get the all-clear signal; we can't let it reach the village!" Ren yelled out on the comms.
This worked for awhile until the Drakzen had enough of the attacks and charged at one of the knights and, without mercy, stomped on it repeatedly, killing the pilot inside.
"LIXISS!" Ceti yelled out on the comms.
"Dammit!" Ren said.
"We need to make sure it stops moving." Silili said.
Ren tried to think of a strategy, but then he remembered an old movie that used a strategy to bring down a giant.
"Zilyana, break off from combat and go to the village; tell them to give you the strongest rope or cables they have!" Ren ordered.
Zilyana listened and went to the village to find the ship.
"Okay, everyone, keep pissing it off, fire stronger weapons, and make sure you aren't in it's path; this is going to be a long day..."
*Lucilia Perspective*
Chaos was erupting in the streets of the village as villagers were trying their best to get into the ship first to evacuate; all they could hear in the background were the roars of the Drakzen and the gunfire and explosions the knights were attacking it with.
Lucilia and her mother, Ivy, were doing their best to get everyone onto the ship.
Asha, along with Sthora, were also helping get the less-comfortable people like Laelli and her supporters, who were against the idea of relying on Lucilia and the others for help.
"Why would I trust that these people would actually help us?" Laelli asked Sthora.
Laelli was a girl with similar skin color to Sthora but had long, lilac-colored hair and purple-colored eyes with two horns protruding from her head.
"Laelli, I'm not asking you to trust any of them; trust me and Queen Asha; they do just want to save us from the Drakzen, that's all; if they don't, then all of us in this village die." Sthora argued.
Laelli sighed and eventually agreed to get on the ship with her followers right behind her.
However, everyone heard the knight approaching them; Zilyana had come for the tool that Ren had asked for.
"What is that thing?" Laelli said, who got scared at the sight of the knight.
"Maybe it's something from their ship?" Sthora said also looking at the metal monster ahead of them.
Lucilia and the others agreed to keep the knights away from the village in fear it might provoke them, so this was the very first time any of the villagers had seen a knight before.
"That's a knight." Lucilia said.
"A knight?" Sthora asked.
"Yes, as you know, we are more advanced in technology than your people; our knights are our tools of war. We wanted to keep them away from the village, but right now we have to while dealing with the Drakzen." Lucilia explained.
"Tools for war?" Sthora asked, shocked.
"I'm sorry that you had to learn about these so quickly; we wanted to ease your people into learning about our technology, but yes." Lucilia said.
"If they used those on us...we wouldn't stand a chance..." Laelli said still scared of the knights.
"Well, lucky for you. We have no intention of using them on you. Now hurry everyone up, we gotta go." Lucilia said.
Lucilia then turned her head back to Zilyana, who was leaving empty-handed as nobody had anything that would work on stopping the Drakzen.
*Ren's perspective*
"Dammit Zilyana couldn't find anything..." Ren said still fighting the Drakzen.
Since Zilyana had left, Selussa's knight was damaged after being hit by the Drakzen's tail, and she couldn't continue fighting. Luckily, she would live.
"I have an idea...but let's hope it works." Ren thought to himself.
Ren loosened his grapple cables on the knight that's used to attach the knight to asteroids in space and instead fired them at the Drakzen's feet.
"Ren, what the hell are you doing?" Ceti asked.
"Trust me and do the same thing I'm doing: launch your cables at their feet and go around them in a circular motion." Ren ordered.
Ceti, Sililli, and Attia agreed and did the same while launching the cables at each other's feet, and the four began to rotate in a circle.
The Drakzen roared and fought back, but their movements became extremely limited.
It roared in anger as it could no longer reach any of the knights circling it, and quickly afterwards it fell to the ground with its face slamming into the dirt, unable to move.
"UNLOAD ALL YOUR HEAVY AMMUNITIONS INTO IT'S SKULL!" Ren yelled out.
Each of the knights unloaded all they had into the head of the Drakzen, causing it to scream out in pain, roaring as loud as it possibly could before Ren cut off his cable and jumped up with his knight, sword in hand, and cut the head of the Drakzen off where it was weakest around the neck.
"I...killed it?" Ren thought to himself.
"Holy shit Ren..." Ceti said on the comms.
"Where did you think of a strategy like that?" Attia asked on the comms.
"I saw it in a movie..."
*Village*
Lucilia, Mae, and Ivy got the entire village into the ship, and despite it being a tight fit, they took off and landed in the woods about a quarter mile away from the village, waiting for the all-clear signal from Ren and the others.
"Hey Lucilia?" Ren asked on the comms.
"Yeah, I'm here..." Lucilia said with worry in her voice, After all, he left to fight supposedly one of the most deadly monsters on this planet. Of course she was worried.
"We, uhm...killed it." Ren said on the comms, shocking all of the villagers on the bridge, especially.
Ashastha was the first to speak "What do you mean you killed it?"
"I mean, it's currently headless, bleeding out, and no moving...so dead, I hope?" Ren said.
"How..." Sthora said out loud.
"A lot of bullets and a sword, but if it's dead, then the village is safe now." Ren said.
"He...killed it?" Laelli said shocked.
All of the villagers were nearly speechless with only a few murmurs after hearing about them managing to kill a Drakzen, something none of their people have done for hundreds of years.
Laelli looked up at the screen that Lucilia put on, sharing the image the knights saw—a dead, headless Drakzen.
"We...can't fight them."
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