There was a light knock on the door, and Gonin, who was sitting cross-legged meditating, rose up and went to answer the door. When he arrived at the door, he was surprised to find two soldiers, wearing their uniforms, with guns strapped to their backs.

“Who are you?” asked one of the soldiers.

“You are the ones who knocked on the door and now you are asking me who I am? Do you not find this a bit ridiculous?” asked Gonin, avoiding the question.

“We have information that a certain couple called Mr. and Mrs. Bale, reside in this cottage. You don’t look like Mr. Bale, so I’ll ask again! Who are you?” asked the first soldier.

Before Gonin answered the question, Rose came down the stairs, yawning. She was wearing a pink nightgown, and her hair was messy. The two soldiers exchanged a meaningful glance.

“Who’s causing a ruckus so early in the morning?” she asked, yawning again.

When she saw the soldiers, she frowned. At the same time, Ryan and Hezron also came down from different rooms. Ryan became a bit nervous when he saw the soldiers but when he remembered about what had happened at his grandfather’s farm a few days ago, some anger welled up within. What he didn’t know was that this army was not from Cerberus. Hezron, however, was simply confused as to who the two people wearing matching clothes were. Since their village was far away from the capital of Tibet, they never had any interactions with the army.

“Who are you kids? And what are you doing in the cottage?” asked the second soldier.

“Who we are is of no consequence to you. The right question we should be asking is, what do you people want?” replied Rose.

“Our orders are to evacuate the inhabitants of the cottage. According to the information we have, the people who live in the cottage are called Mr. and Mrs. Bale. Would you mind clarifying where they are?” asked the first soldier.

“They are not here, as you can see. They returned to the capital four days ago. We are the ones living here currently”, replied Gonin.

“I see. It doesn’t matter who is living in the cottage. Our orders are to evacuate civilians living in the cottage. Please prepare your belongings and get ready to evacuate the premises.”

“Why? What’s going on?” she asked.

“Unfortunately we cannot tell you that. The information is classified.”

“Oh, is that so? Then we are not leaving!”

“I’m sorry, but you might have misinterpreted what we just told you”, said the second soldier, with a stern face. “We weren’t asking you to evacuate. We’re telling you that we’re evacuating you immediately!”

“You still haven’t explained why we need to leave!” interjected Ryan, who was getting anxious.

“Calm down, Ryan. They’re not Cerberus”, whispered Rose, as she came to stand next to him. Everyone started heading upstairs to pack whatever belongings he or she might have had on his or her person.

“How do you know?” he asked, in a whisper, as they were walking side by side.

“Trust me; this is not the way Cerberus does things! However, something else is going on.”

The cottage had four bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs there was a lounge, a dining hall and a kitchen. Myra hadn’t returned yet since his breakthrough earlier the day before. Therefore, there were only four people in the cottage. Hezron didn’t have anything to retrieve besides his flute.

In a few minutes, everybody was ready. Rose had changed into a white blouse with pink flowers, and a blue skirt. When she came out, the two soldiers exchanged a couple of glances. Ryan noticed the glances and frowned deeply. Hezron wasn’t paying any attention; he simply thought they were being evacuated because living in the woods was dangerous, which was partly true. Gonin had a frown embedded on his face, which when combined with his bald head, made him look particularly dangerous.

As they arrived outside, they realized that soldiers who were wearing green uniform, while holding guns surrounded the cottage. They were running back and forth, as if they were preparing for something. What no one noticed was that as they were doing whatever they were doing, there was a blurry shadow standing closer to the cottage. The shadow was in the shape of a squirrel, but it was human-sized.

The soldiers were frantically running, setting up motion sensors everywhere. There were also helicopters dropping robots around the cabin. Some of the helicopters were dropping the robots away from the cabin, much closer to the mountain range. Compared to the number of robots, there were very few human soldiers.

“What’s going on?” asked Rose, as they arrived outside.

“Who are these children?” asked a man wearing a distinct green uniform, with badges and whatnot, who was walking up to them.

“We found them at the cottage, Sir!” shouted one of the men who had woken up Rose and the others.

“Have their identities been verified?” asked the man.

“No Sir!”

“Who are you and what were you doing at the cottage?” asked the man with the green uniform.

“We are--”

“We were travelling with our parents in Mikhat but we got separated. They had told us that in the event of being separated, we should go to Sivin. However, on our way, we got lost and ended up staying the night at the cottage. But that was four days ago...” Rose explained, cutting off Ryan, who was about to say something.

“And the monk?” asked the man.

“We happened to meet him along the way. He said he could show us the way”, replied Rose.

Everyone turned to look at Gonin, who was starting to shake uncontrollably. For some reason, he had started feeling a deep urge to run away. People always say that whenever something terrible is about to happen, humans get an uncomfortable feeling in their stomachs. However, to everyone present, it appeared as if the man with the funny green uniform was intimidating him.

The blurry shadow that was standing by the cottage suddenly vanished completely, as if it was never there. As it vanished, Gonin started sweating profusely.

“Is he okay?” asked the man with the funny green uniform.

Rose turned to look at Gonin who answered in a shaky whisper, “I-I am fine. We need to leave as soon as possible! T-the Beast king...h-he is coming.”

“Forgive us, we--”

“What do you know about the beasts?” asked the man wearing the funny uniform, interrupting Rose, who was about to come up with an excuse. He was now starting to get suspicious about the information he had received earlier from Rose.

Gonin turned pale from fright. It wasn’t that the man with the funny uniform was intimidating, however, he could feel that something dangerous was about to happen. He felt that the danger was getting closer and closer. His eyes brightened, as he seemed to have thought of something. He retrieved a talisman from his spatial ring, much to the shock of the soldiers and the man with the distinct uniform. The soldiers, along with Hezron, had never seen a spatial ring before, so they were extremely shocked when they saw a yellow paper appearing out of nowhere.

“W-where did that come from?” asked Hezron, who stood still, looking at Gonin as if he was looking at a miracle worker of sorts. Gonin ignored the looks he was getting from people and performed an incantation gesture.

A bright orange-yellow color began to show on the horizon, indicating that the sun was about to come up. However, another bright, red beam of light flew from a distance away from the cottage, coming from the direction of the mountain range! The dark skies were lit up, while everything the beam got closer to was incinerated to oblivion! The destination of the red beam was the cottage, and all the trees that were in the trajectory of the beam were incinerated, or set on fire.

A light yellow shield sprung up around Gonin, covering a distance of 500 meters in a circle. When the beam arrived at the cottage, there was a loud explosion that obliterated the wooden structure.

KABOOOOOOOOM!

The shock waves resulting from the explosion reached the shield Gonin had put up. The shield stood strong for a couple of minutes before showing signs of cracks, and then blowing up! Among the soldiers who were running around earlier, some were dead, some were heavily injured and the survivors were shaken to the core. As for the robots, quite a few of them had been incinerated. There was one helicopter, which was in the middle of dropping some robots when the explosion happened. The rotors were damaged and then it spiraled down, resulting in a crash that destroyed the robots and killed the pilots!

Moments later, after the devastation caused by the attack, Ryan woke up and looked around him. His ears were still ringing, while all sound seemed muffled. There was a lot of debris everywhere. Rose was buried in a pile of debris, and only a part of her blouse was visible outside. Ryan rushed to remove the pile of debris. He discovered that she had minor injuries, and other than just being unconscious, she was okay. He rushed to look for everyone else.

He found Gonin also unconscious, with minor injuries. Hezron was conscious, but his eyes were blank. He turned to look at Ryan, and then spoke the words, “They’re coming!”

ROOOOOOAAAAARRRR! ROOOOOOAARRRRR!

Loud roars sounded from the direction of the mountain! Everyone who heard these roars would feel a deep sense of deadly crisis, an instinctive urge to run away. All the soldiers who had somehow survived the explosion were now scrambling to get their weapons in order.

AWWOOOOOOO! AWOOOOOO!

While they were still scrambling, more roaring sounds echoed from the mountain! The sun’s rays were now illuminating the horizon, and from the direction of the mountain, visible were gray objects that filled the empty space. Above the gray objects, there were also objects that were flying in the air, circling around the gray objects.

Floating above the scrambling soldiers was a small drone, which no one was paying any attention. The drone was being controlled via satellite, and the control center was far away from the battlefield. Inside the control center, there were operators sitting in front of very large computer screens. Each screen was broadcasting a different scene. In a different room, there was a meeting between the members of the advisory council, and the president. There was also a monitor showing what was happening on the battlefield.

“We need to send more robots! It seems we underestimated what these things can do!” echoed Irving.

“Indeed. What was that?” asked General Eizard, looking at the attendant standing next to the screen.

The attendant bowed before replying, “It appears to be an electromagnetic beam of sorts, made up of some energy we cannot identify.”

While the attendant was busy explaining, all the monitors in the room suddenly turned static.

“What happened to the video?” asked the president.

“Le--”

“Good morning lady and gentlemen, sorry to disturb your early morning show”, echoed a voice from the monitor, interrupting the attendant who was about to say something.

“Who are you?” asked the president.

“Oh, I’m no one. It doesn’t matter who I am, I simply need your cooperation”, replied the voice.

“You think you can just hack into our command center and then order us around?” asked general Eizard.

“It’s not like you have a choice. If you decide to be uncooperative, I’ll just take over everything, the robots on the battlefield, the Gen X robots you’re hiding, even the improved level 4 robots you’re trying to hide from everyone in this room. If you cooperate, I’ll give you some information in return”, replied the voice.

“What kind of information?” asked the president.

“Would you be interested in knowing about the secret weapon called a Rhizen canon?”