The 12 groups of six men each started moving towards the village. Ten of these groups were walking on foot while the two others were riding horses. Each of the walking groups had a mage, who could heal basic wounds and close more significant ones, one or two tanks and the rest were supposed to deal damage. On the horses there weren’t any mages, but each rider used their weapon of choice, ranging from whips, swords or bows, between others.

The plan that Raven had brewed depended on them beating about half of the fully grown Rakshnurians, one per group and then deal with the remaining all at once before they could realize what was going on and prepared either a captive situation or escaped together with the newborn Rakshnurians. They should be able to do it, as they had seen many Rakshnurians exiting and reentering the town to go capture something in the forest, probably to eat.

As a group of three Rakshnurians started to leave the town, the troop divided themselves into four groups; two would fight and kill the exiting Rakshnurians and the other two would start preparing magic bombs that would explode on command to make way for the whole troop to enter and raid the village.

For them this was just another raid on the job, they were professionals and had quite a bit of experience dealing with problems similar to this one, such as bandits taking over a city or in war, trying to take over a city of their enemy. The only interesting thing this time was the Rakshnurians, as they were kind of rare to find because of how they lived, as a moving tribe.

As the three Rakshnurians were nearing the troops, the army saw that some younger Rakshnurians were accompanying the older ones, it was a shame that they didn’t get to live their lives, but it had to be done for the greater good, at least from the humans’ perspective. Just as some of the soldiers were starting to take too many risks, trying to eye their opponents as best as possible, but maybe showing themselves a tad too much, Captain Raven shouted:

- Attack!

And hell broke loose on those unsuspecting Rakshnurians. The soldiers could control themselves well enough to make so little noise that the other ones coming from the forest were louder than them, so the whole wandering group was taken by surprise. The little ones closer to the nearby trees were the first few to fall. A single hit with a sword killed them.

Shortly after, the larger adult Rakshnurians reacted, but too late, as they had already gotten hit a few times and felt quite threatened, so they resorted to one of their instincts: Calling for help in the form of a loud scream/screech which wasn’t supposed to be understood by anyone other than the instincts of the Rakshnurians.

But that wouldn’t help them this time, as one of Raven’s lieutenants was quite a good mage and had surrounded the area with a noise-deafening spell that made all noises coming from inside about 300 times quieter after leaving the globe. The Rakshnurians had lost their ability to defend themselves, attack, communicate and not long after the ability to survive. All three adult and ten young Rakshnurians were killed, even the one that was playing dead, a showcase of evolution in play but failing against a brutal opponent.

As this group checked the remains of the Rakshnurians, checking for valuables, they decided it was time to regroup with the other half and start the raid against the village.

This group had already planted the bombs by sending small insects toward the walls and sending the whole mechanism bit by bit and they just needed to connect them with so-called mana strings to start a domino effect which would blow two massive holes on the walls and even destroy some of the buildings inside the village, which were most likely empty or that was the intel, at least. The bomb was made in a way that it didn’t target the ground, so that the entrance to the village wouldn’t become difficult after the paths had been made and also so that the horses could gather speed before entering the town.

With the final strings attached the bombs exploded, making a loud noise that everyone in the proximity heard. The different groups in the army started to rush towards the village, while the Rakshnurians first tried to organize themselves a bit, by sending some of their weaker members to make some time, as they had already experienced similar explosions on Politt, the neighboring country, not so long ago and because of this thought they knew what to expect.

But the Politt’s army is made different from the Munny Kingdom’s one. While on Politt many academies were built to teach everyone talented with magic, on the Munny Kingdom there were only a select few which could learn magic and because of that the Politt depended more on magic, albeit with less expertise but more learners and the Munny Kingdom depends more on foot soldiers, although they still have some magicians, normally with better knowledge than their equals from Politt.

Inside a big building, the towns church, a group of women, baby Rakshnurians and corpses with different levels of meaty-ness filled the room. Together with the loud noise, the walls of the building shook a bit, being followed by different reactions from the present humanoids. Most of the Rakshnurians were scared or nervous, while two nameless Rakshnurians, a small Petrió Mill and his sister Nierva were accompanying a pregnant Sonja in the last moments in such situation. The other, still living women, were together and some cried in joy, believing that they were being saved, while others scared, fearing that something worse than the Rakshnurians was coming from them.

Overall, only nine of the forty-something women in town survived and the ones that remained were all weakened by the experience they had had during the last weeks.

The plan didn’t work out for the Rakshnurians. Because they expected magic casters which deal a lot of damage in little time, but also quickly drained their energies, they thought that sending some Rakshnurians to the front would be helpful, but in this case, it was the contrary, as the troops could’ve gotten overwhelmed if the Rakshnurians had rushed over to them as a group and although they probably wouldn’t have won, they could’ve dealt significant damage to them.

Just as the Rakshnurians had taken the village over, they were losing it. They did realize that sending weak troops wasn’t working so they attacked as a group and managed to resist more, but they were starting to fall behind, getting crippled and having to back out or simply dying by the well-planned moves of the groups in the army.

While this brutal fighting was going on, Marcus evaded hostiles and went specifically to the locations that the Captain had marked. The first one, the market of the town, was empty of people and resources, it had already been ransacked. Next, he was going to go to the church of the town. Getting closer he saw the same Rakshnurian he had seen before. The only female in the tribe, the leader, talking towards some strong looking Rakshnurians.

- This isn’t working, they are barely any weaker than before! They aren’t like our last foes, so we’ll try overwhelming them with numbers! Go, go, go! Only you – she points at one of them and then another one-, you and -pointing at the second in command- you stay with me.

The monsters started heading to the two holes in the walls to fight the intruders of the village, but their realization came too late. While the Rakshnurians were realizing what was happening with the invaders these had followed with the next step of their routine, preparing traps for the group attacks that usually followed after being attacked by individuals.

While all but four Rakshnurians left the front of the church, the ones remaining entered it and prepared to escape with the children to later rebuild their tribe. The leader knew that the situation was quite hopeless, so she decided to take one last bet to make her people survive. They didn’t take Petrió’s sister, mainly because another, “better” female Rakshnurian had been born.

When she had been born, she had already her four horns coming out and was the tallest of all newborns. It had only been a few days ago, but she was promising. Also, competition between similarly aged females usually isn’t very beneficial for tribes, which is the other reason why they left Petrió’s sister behind. The four of them took as many, about 23, strong-looking baby Rakshnurians with them and started leaving the village.

Marcus observed all this and when he was pretty sure that they weren’t going to come back, he swiftly entered the church and immediately felt the foul stench inside the building that had been forming by the corpses and droppings of both the humans and Rakshnurians that were there. As soon as he endured the smell, he started looking around the room.

The usual benches of the church were either broken or not there and the building itself had started to fall down, with wood and roof tiles being scattered around the ground. If you started looking from left to right, you’d first see a tiny group of baby Rakshnurians, old enough to stand that were getting nervous from this unknown man looking at them.

Further to the right you’d start finding corpses of women, being followed by a pregnant one on the corner of the room, being accompanied by two baby Rakshnurians. Near the main stained glass, a group of women, pregnant and not pregnant laid on the ground. On the right wall another group of young Rakshnurians were playing on top of more corpses of women which had been bred to death.

Marcus started heading towards the group of living women when he heard a noise from the right. A group of Rakshnurians he hadn’t seen before, as they were behind some ruins of the church. They were going to attack him, so Marcus fought back and easily killed the young ones.

While he was fighting that group, the one from the left also joined, but the ones playing or the ones staying with the pregnant woman stayed where they were, although one of the ones with the pregnant woman had a scowl on its face, trying to appear menacing with his mouth, but it being tiny and missing teeth worked against it.

Getting closer to the glass, the women finally reacted to the sound, they were very weak and probably barely eaten in the last few weeks, just enough to be able to produce babies. Or that’s what he was told that Rakshnurians did.

Before anything he wanted to check the state of his family. Were his mother and sister still alive? Had both died, as he expected? He searched through the faces and found a face that reassembled his mother.

- M…Mother?

He asked. He had prepared himself for his whole family to have died, he had been told time and time again that it was very likely, if not sure, that both his mother and sister would be dead by the time he came back to his village.

- M…Mar…cus? You…. came…. back….

The woman that was being talked to started crying the little water she had left in her and the boy started crying as well. As he hadn’t expected this, he hadn’t prepared himself mentally for this and started crying as well. Just as he was going to start reconciling with his mother a painful shout came a few meters away. The woman in the corner had started giving birth. Marcus had never seen that and although he was very curious what happened, he felt that going back with his mother and sister…. Oh, his sister!

- Mom is Maria safe as well?!

- She…. Left us already…

The woman said after being fed bits of bread and drank from Marcus’ canteen.

Marcus was very sad by this news, but it was expectable, so he managed not to cry. He had already cried enough for the day, he felt. The shouting from the corner of the room continued, but Marcus only had his mother in mind. It was her who caught his attention and told him that he should help her, even if she’d give birth to a monster. Marcus followed the instructions and helped her as her mother told him to. With the baby out, Marcus looked at it and said:

- If you look at it like this, it kind of looks cute. Who’d expect that from this you’d get to those monsters…

The noise hadn’t only caught the attention from his mother. The other Rakshnurians in the room…well except the two children of this woman, had stopped playing and started approaching the stained glass. Marcus realized this after a screech from a still-alive woman and he rushed to defeat the Rakshnurians that had approached them.

All done, he went back to the corner and thought of killing the three little Rakshnurians, but the older one of them, put himself up front and stretched his arms. He didn’t want Marcus to kill his family, he wanted to protect it. Marcus felt identified with this little monster, he had also wanted to protect his family, but ultimately failed. Did he want to repeat the crimes that the Rakshnurians had committed, or would he make a new path for these monsters?

He went for the second choice. They hadn't done anything to him, so he let them be and went back with his mother, they had a lot of catching up to do.