The main road that connected the two major cities of the Elkitryan Empire, was rather old, asphalted and almost entirely cracked.

Only the rare guard posts had better conditions, but generally it was a dangerous place.

Beast packs could pass from one side to the other every so often. Furthermore groups of bandits would usually patrol in search for greedy merchants and convoys to assault.

Small groups of travelers didn't have that many problems though, as they could stealthily take on secondary roads.

On this very dangerous roads there was a convoy of black vehicles that abruptly stopped, the second vehicle opened its door and three individuals made their ways out of it.

The leading figure was indeed, Xeno.

'This time our opponents will be a group of bandits.

I can sense at least ten of them, they don't seem peculiarly strong, although their leader is another story.

I have to be careful, or this time I won't have the advantage of my previous ambushes.'

While Xeno was thinking this, a three meters tall lizardman was fixedly looking at the trio.

He had brown shiny scales, a long tail and was dressing a black plated armor covering its torso.

His left eye was a robotic one, dark gray in color with its pupil emanating a faint blue light.

On his right hand the lizardman was holding a little black handgun with red lines pulsating on its surface.

The other nine bandits on the other hand, were all celidres with the classic average height of 1.6 meters.

They dressed the very same black armor of their leader, obviously it was a lot less thick and they had a pair of pants too.

They were armed with plain looking rifles, these weapons were very long and thin, their color was light gray with a black trigger.

[I'll take care of the leader as quick as possible. In the mean time.

Vix the six on the left are for you to take care of, while Zaha will fight the remaining three.

If you see that you can't win try to stall the battle until I get rid of the leader. However if the situation is looking dire you should give up and take cover in one of the vehicles.]

The rapid communication with their master made Vix and Zaha realize that the battle was imminent.

The slow pace at which the trio was moving indicated to the bandits that the defenders of the convoy were open to negotiations.

In fact this wasn't that rare to happen. The convoy would sacrifice some of their goods and the bandits would let them go.

This occasion would often happen when the guarding team wasn't as powerful as the thugs, but they could still inflict heavy casualties to them.

In this very case, the appearance of Xeno and his servants were particularly menacing. Who knows what kind of strange abilities they could possess.

As such the bandits didn't start to shot at them, waiting for the right distance to start a conversation.

Xen could imagine that they would probably do some kind of demand about the convoy.

But at the same time he knew that the kind of merchant that was leading it.

This Zingud would rather die than give away any part of his freight.

'They are standing still. These bandits are clearly underestimating us due to our low number'

Xeno was slowly advancing toward them, he wanted to gain a surprise-like effect once gotten near enough.

Arrived at less than five meters from them, Xeno was ready to initiate the attack.

'They still have their guards up, I might as well make them relax before our assault.'

"Greetings, Captain Egot of the team dusty lizard, is here. As you passed inside our territory, we would like to receive a remuneration from your part. We could negotiate in a fair amount of coins or part of your goods.

Otherwise me and my group would have to retort to the use of violence."

During his speech, the lizard and the rest of the group tried to appear as intimidating as possible, emphasizing their weapons and muscles.

This little show of strength couldn't fool Xeno's sensing, on the contrary now they were concentrating mostly on their performance.

Without any further ado Xeno started to charge its legs and tendrils to the maximum, before unwrapping his tendrils and charging straight to the lizard.

Egot was still trying to impress the three defenders of the convoy, while suddenly a long black blade entered his view.

Xeno's blue glowing tail was directly aimed at the face of the big lizard, in particular at his eyes.

Instinctively he raised his big scaly arm, trying to protect his head.

'This bandit sure has some reflexes, he has managed to block my surprise attack. However his arm took directly the blunt impact of my attack.'

Indeed, a warm red liquid was starting to stain the dark color of Xeno's tail.

Still surprised vy the sudden course of action, Egot didn't notice the luminescent tendrils that wrapped around his legs.

As such he suddenly got pinned down on the terrain, only now he saw the numerous tendrils tightly coiled around his legs.

GROWL

In the next seconds he felt an incredible pain coming from his abdomen.

The tall black creature had pierced his belly and was now doing its best to ravage his insides.

This was the classic method used to hunt and kill his preys, it was actually very cruel. Xeno couldn't care less about fair fights neither he did about morals.

However this wasn't the first fight of the lizard, furthermore Egot had his own motives to fight. He had a family, and the same was applied to his teammates.

He was indeed a bandit but he always preferred a peaceful approach during his robberies.

To Xeno's surprise the metallic eyes of the lizard started to intensively flash, then suddenly it shot a ray of blue light from its pupil.

Xeno instinctively reacted, he promptly raised his arms in the shape of an 'X' in front of his face.

'That fucking hurts, this beam is made of compressed nano-energy.'

Xeno tried to reinforce his arms, channeling more energy from the environment.

Despite his efforts his arms were starting to melt under the sheer power of the beam.

As such he quickly retracted all of his tendrils to coil around his forearms.

'I need more, I need to resist! The beam must be at the limit of its duration!'

Xeno concentrated all of his will in powering up his tendrils, pouring all of his energy into them.

An intense show of lights was undergoing under the petrified gaze of the lizardman.

In fact the effect of their powerful beam had already ended, however the charred corpse that he expected to find soon after wasn't showing before his eyes.

A myriad of colors were rhythmically flashing from the serpentine like tendrils of the monster in front of him.

Although some of them clearly presented severe signs of burning.

Xeno felt an intense sensation of anger, paired with the pain provoked by his charred arms and tendrils.

His only aim was to cruelly kill the foe who dared hurt him like this.

He positioned in a quadrupedal position and dived straight into his enemy. Xeno quickly modified the tips of his tendrils, making them pointed and sharp.

He swiftly moved his tendrils and aimed at the zones that were without the protection of the hard scales.

Blood started to slowly make its way out of Egot's body in various point. He felt like being pierced at the same time with multiple arrows.

But at this time Egot finally charged enough his gun to make it shot once. Most of his nanoenergy has been expended to activate his bionic laser beam. His metallic eye could store and compress energy over time, and once triggered it could shot it in the form of a beam.

Thus he couldn't use it until the next battle, his only option resided in his hand gun,

Red sparkles started to form around the muzzle of the black gun, which red lines had started to pulsating more intensively.

A powerful concentrated red ball suddenly burst out of the gun, directly aimed at Xeno's head.

However the rapid shift of strength couldn't go unnoticed by the sharp senses of Xeno.

Promptly he parried the shot with the blade of his tail, enhancing it even more.

The power of the shot wasn't anything to scoff at, in about a second it had pierced the hard bony tail, leaving a burned hole in it. Yet this very little fraction of time it gained for Xeno, was enough to permit him to lower his head.

'Damn it! It still grazed the top of my head!'

Xeno had been surprised by the power showed by the little gun. It wasn't his for time to witness the usage of such weapons, as he participate to some demonstrations at the gymnasium.

However between just seeing it and being its direct target there was a great difference.

Having just escaped the dangerous enemy shot, Xeno understood from the frozen expression of the lizard that he must have ended his energy reserves.

As such he hurriedly attacked his eyes and neck with his tendrils, then he he pulled the lizards head toward himself, directly impaling his neck with his tail.

Egot was already heavily injured, only his high vitality was keeping him conscious. Xeno's sharp black tail was trying to pierce deeper inside his neck. But the friction from Egot's hard scales and strong neck muscles were opposing him.

The desperate attempts to defend himself from Xeno's attacks soon stopped.

As Xeno started to furiously bite and munch on Egot's face, screams of vivid terror started to echo into the battlefield. Although they started to get more muffled, until, as more time passed they stopped completely.