At first, they had awoken to their leader’s call, and soon after they were chasing a delicious scent. They felt tempted to take a bite of this delightful thing before them.
The aroma attracted them, and so they followed. However, they shouldn’t eat it, they instinctively knew that it was for the superior one.
They chased and chased, and soon enough the puny beings carrying it abandoned it midway. Despicable beings, tossing the precious thing over the slurpy surface, water? That doesn’t matter they should quickly chase after it, they mentally told each other.
After traveling a bit longer, they felt something wrong, and something sad at the same time, something that caused them to be angry. More of those despicable puny beings and the corpses of their brethren. The mini superior ones cried in anguish, and they also cried. It was still important, but this was just as important. Revenge they must have, and so they came.
…
“Damn it what’s going on, we just lost signal of a bunch of students, and many of them were extremely important,” Captain Waver angrily said.
Right when Zythos had activated the device after luring out the Inzektors the starship had lost the life signature of numerous students.
“Now, now, calm down what we need to do right now is confirm their status, isn’t that right,” said Helen.
Her words chilled Captain Wavers anger, he wasn’t sure if it was her reassuring words or her presence, but he mentally thanked her in his mind as he said, “Alright let’s bring the starship down and rescue them, according to the recordings the majority of them should be at the abandoned outpost in sector N.”
At this moment one of the technical staff bent down and pleaded, “Please sir have mercy, we can’t go down there! There are too many Inzektors down there! I don’t want to die! It was all the lieutenant’s idea!”
“You backstabbing fool!” Yelled the lieutenant as he began to unsheathe the sword on his hip. However, this was a foolish move as Helen vanished from her spot only to appear in front of him with his throat tightly gripped in her hand. She glanced at Captain Waver awaiting for his orders. If he wanted him dead, she didn’t fear military regulations to do so.
Captain Waver was satisfied at her quick maneuver after which he began to question the cowardly man. After a few minutes, he was shocked by the content, the lieutenant had slacked off the maintenance duty in sector N causing an army of Inzektors to breed. Worried about the excess funds it would cost them to remove the menace they decided to embezzle it instead and wait for students to handle it for free.
When they heard that the young master Zythos would come to aid them, they gave him all the information the officers had about that sector and little did they know that beast blew it out of portions by using a wide scale scrambler. Initially, they thought Zythos was going to use a smaller one to hide their defects, but because he had used a large one now, they were exposed and bound to face military punishment to the highest degree due to neglect of duty, threatening the lives of potential cadets, and embezzlement.
Based on the information Captain Waver had received there was no way for them to safely land as Zythos may have potentially roused the slumbering Inzektors with the potential to take down the starship. Also, the ship wasn’t retrofitted to fight numerous of Inzektors as it was merely a transportation vessel. After pondering for a moment, Captain Waver sent a distress signal to the closest military outpost in space and received an estimate of 24 hours before they can scramble over to aid them.
Although risky, he decided to deploy Helen by herself down on the planet surface after she secured the convicts. Because of the scrambler, he had to set her down several hundred kilometers away using the teleporter.
With her top speed, it should take her two days to arrive at the scene. Captain Waver can only pray that the students can last that long as he began to write a report based on the current situation.
…
As the horde of Inzektors came swarming in Luon yelled in the intercom system which was situated on the outer wall, “Turn on the automatic defense system and set it to the Inzektors below category B, all squads try to safely eliminate the Ravagers that climb up before the other Inzektors come.”
The students in the command room who received Luon’s message hesitated a bit but ultimately turned on the defense system to deal with the lower tier Inzektors.
Arisa frowned and said, “There’s no way we can handle that many Ravagers with only 5 squads. At most each can handle two, and there is ten more after that.”
Luon looked at Arisa with a smile and said, “Well then me, you and Belle need to deal with 3 Inzektors each, wouldn’t we? As for the last one…”
Luon faced Tyron and said, “I’ll entrust you with that one.”
Tyron nodded. However, Luon’s words didn’t reassure Arisa as it only made her worry even more. Battling Ravagers wasn’t a simple mathematical problem, they were level 60. Only Luon, Arisa, and Belle could just match them once they equip their NG-Arms.
Shizuka, on the other hand, was rushing the construction of vehicles that they were going to use to escape, half an hour has passed since the meeting, and at most, it may take an hour without her aid. With her helping the other engineers it would take at max half the amount of time they estimated.
With his calculations, the swarm would arrive in 5 minutes and with the automatic defense systems they only had another 5 minutes to wipe out the Ravagers before the underlings come to the wall.
Luon gazed at the army of Inzektors, this was the first time he actually had to face them. In the second simulation, he had fought wars between races like orcs, humans, and other fantasy elements. During his first one, he was merely the backline engineer who designed and developed weapons that decimated them. Now wide awake in the real world, with a sword in hand, he had to face them.
He called out his sword [Black Slayer] from his intraspatial bag and stepped on the edge of the outer wall.
He sent his gaze over the Inzektors were already swarming in, and he focused in on several spots. Luon pulled out an explosive that he had crafted, after replenishing his exhausted reserves he had only 20 of them. It took around five to deal with a single Ravager, but a single one can destroy many regular Inzektors.
There was no need to wait for the Inzektors to come into close combat range, whoever had the initiative had the starting advantage. Luon gave Tyron the explosives in which the latter lobbed in front of Luon. Utilizing his expert sword skill, Luon used his sword like a bat and quickly shot a series of explosives in the crowd of Inzektors.
As Luon continued to lob the explosives with the sword it said, ‘Ease up on the tapping, would you? I was just resting peacefully, not that I need it anyways after all you never let me out, and the only time you let me out, and you use me like a baseball bat? Where’s the protective rights committee for swords!’
Ignoring the swords complaints when Luon had exhausted about half of the explosive did he stop swinging. Luon wanted to reserve as many as he can for more valuable attacks. Fortunately, these accurate explosive attacks slowed down and killed the Inzektors in regions affecting several Ravagers.
The base defense system began to make its move, a series of unmanned automated turrets mounted the walls and rained an array of bullets upon the weak and feeble Inzektors. As more and more Inzektors furiously charged over their dead companions, the turret continued to shoot at a steady pace, to prevent overheating.
From the crowd of Inzektors came the Ravagers, the explosive had delayed about five of them causing the other fifteen to close in onto the walls and begin to climb. The people mounted on the walls weren’t just going to sit there and let them do so. They started to use range attacks slowing them down and reducing their vitality. Luon told the squad leaders beforehand to focus on pinning down one or two at a time letting a few Ravagers slip by on the walls.
Once the untouched Ravagers reached the top of the walls Luon, Belle and Arisa equipped their NG-Arms began to fight a few Ravagers.
By the time the other Ravagers had reached the top six of them had died under their hands. However, the fight was tougher than they imagined as their NG-Arms energy levels were nearly depleted. Fortunately, when the Ravagers were closing in Tyron managed to take two down before they all reached the top.
It was a miscalculation from Luon, and an excellent one indeed. He didn’t expect his friend would have a few tricks under his sleeves as he had used several specially crafted arrows made by his family that had the impact of several explosives combined, the downside to this was that it was difficult to make, costly, and consumed tons of energy. Tyron had retreated from the combat zone where the Ravagers were and continued to attack the normal Inzektors instead.
There were twelve Ravagers left, five of them were delayed and had started to climb the walls while the other seven entered close quarters combat with the allied forces on the wall. Each squad struggled to deal with one Ravager, they tried to rush the attack before the other five came up from below the wall.
While Belle and Arisa handled one Ravager, Luon was battling with the last one. Unfortunately, his NG-Arms had run out of energy as he began to spar it with his sword. The Ravager was fast without his NG-Arms he could only expertly parry it while analyzing its attack patterns.
After a few bouts, Luon managed to squeeze in an opportunity. The Ravager had no profound techniques behind it, like a beast it was the Ravager robotically attacked Luon allowing him the opportunity to predict a few of its moves. Although Luon’s body was much weaker than the Inzektor, their speed was the same once Luon had used wind magic to cause the Ravager to miss.
Luon slid pass the Ravager as if vanishing from its view and struck its belly area with his sword. The sword gutted the Ravager causing its blood to ooze out, with the high vitality of Inzektors this strike wouldn’t be able to end it, however, Luon used the sword [Black Slayer] which did extra damage to larger foes. It also had a second option which reversed its regeneration causing the Ravager to lose its strength.
Taking the opportunity where the Ravager was still adapting to the changes done to its body Luon pulled the sword out and viciously hacked at its body causing him to be drenched in its blood. After a few moments the Inzektor fell, but at this time the five Ravager who were climbing below appeared and saw the last moments of their fallen brethren who was hacked to death before them.
Enraged the five charged towards Luon who barely managed to dodge their unrefined strikes. If these Ravagers were expert fighters than Luon may have already died, fortunately for him, unlike these Ravagers who hadn’t battled anything since they were born Luon has several decades of combat experience.
While Luon was dealing with the five of them, Belle and Arisa managed to kill their Inzektor as well as three of the other squads. Carefully using range attacks not to hit Luon in the unsightly brawl they managed to pull three of them away. It was now two versus one and Luon had managed to slip into the guard of one them finishing it off the same way he did for the other. However, he experienced a miscalculation. Instead of dying feebly under the sword [Black Slayer] the Ravager willed its arms and grabbed onto Luon causing him to be unable to move. His body began to seep in blood from the claws of the Ravager who was on its last breaths.
At this moment the other Ravager sensed an opportunity and leaped into the air. Just when it was right about to strike Luon, an energy blast knocked it aside. It rolled a few times before regaining its posture as it hissed at the interloper.
Shizuka walked in front of Luon and freed him from the entanglement as she proclaimed, “The vehicles are ready, let’s begin the evacuation after we deal some more damage to the Inzektors.”
She took out a sword and charged towards the Ravager who leaped towards her in retaliation. However, since Shizuka hadn’t participated in combat yet, her equipped NG-Arms was fully charged. Within moments the Ravager fell to her blade and so did the remaining ones.
With the Ravagers dead the evacuation began to proceed without any problems. All the combat engineers, support personnel, and command room staff were first to seat themselves in the vehicles alongside the injured combatants.
Shizuka and her team developed the conventional car of this era, there was eleven black sedan shaped vehicles with no wheels. Utilizing wind magic the car was able to hover pass terrain efficiently. The engine was almost impossible to produce in this short time frame due to lack of tools, so they were powered with mana containers to manipulate wind magic.
By the time the non-combatants were secured something terrible had happened. The automatic defense system overheated, and Luon who had noticed this began to toss several explosives and magic cards as he yelled, “Quickly get to the cars! There’s no more time.”
In response, the rest of the combatants on top of the wall retreated into the cars. The Inzektors who were relieved of the suppressive fire angrily started to scale the walls.
“Start the vehicles, let’s go people!” said Arisa as Shizuka started to lead the pack outside of the outpost.
When the cars began to move Luon turned to face behind as noticed the swarm closing in on them. When they had exited the outpost on the opposite side where the Inzektors invaded from Luon saw that within the pack there were more Ravagers.
A minute after Luon left the outpost, earth-shattering roars shook the earth as a wave of dust slammed into all the cars while they were in motion. Fortunately, the cars were durable enough to resist it, so no accidents occurred. Luon glance at the outpost which had self-destructed taking out numerous of Inzektors with it and felt relieved.
However, the escape wasn’t over yet.
