Zenith wasn't so sure what a "blood moon" was but, judging by the panicked looks and shouting, did not have the idea it was a particularly good thing. Though Zenith was not entirely sure how related said frenzy was to the fact that it had just audibly detonated the battery, and only a scant few seconds later, the four engines decided to do that too.

Zenith's new wyrm-body, as it had decided to refer to it as, began to tunnel deeper, sending multiple pings through various spectrums per second. Zenith was on a hunt to fill up its forward segment with useful materials; the denser the better, as the nanofactories would be more efficient that way.

The spybots surrounding the human encampment were suddenly the center of Zenith's attention, however. Several new... strange effects seemed to be materializing from nowhere, similar to the event involving the "time" energy.

Multiple different dimensions seemed to be involved this time, though one in particular stood out as the most common by far. Zenith had an inkling of an idea why.

It happened to be one of the disturbingly many superspatial dimensions where everything aligned with a specific frequency. In this case, a specific red. Biologicals could only see red. For AI, it was arguably worse. The life that lived there was... unique, in a horrifying way.

The eclipsed, reddened moon was related, obviously. If it weren't, that Lan individual wouldn't have realized what would happen just by looking at it.

Zenith opted to take a minor, calculated risk and stay somewhat close to the surface. It wanted the lowest information loss for its many, many spybots. This would be probably its best chance to see the "system" in action.

Despite the Blood Moon event, which Morval should really have seen ahead of time and prepared for better, Morval actually felt a little less stressed than normal. Both reasons were related to his enemy sense.

The first is that he felt that less things were observing him, significantly enough that the drop in itself was a bit of a distraction.

The second was that he could actually see some of the enemies that were watching him. The fact that they were summons of a Blood Moon did little to lessen this.

"Gather!", he shouted to the hastily rousing families. "To the Fieldhall!"

The Fieldhall was one of the few larger structures. It was made to be mobile via storage in a pocket dimension of sorts, Cade would know more precisely what it was, however unlike most others it was large and complex enough that it had to be separated into pieces. The supporting structure, in the form of the sturdiest logs hardened through every woodworking technique available, were one such piece, condensing itself into a single, if overly large, plank. The specially designed curving roof was another, as well as the outer, and inner, walls, and everything else was stored in its own bag to be pulled out and set up when necessary.

At the moment, it was the only building where the light of the Blood Moon, and its creatures, could be protected from with the highest degree of security. Most of the combat-capable adults were moving to surround the Fieldhall, with the rest still hastily packing up their tents or covering those who were.

If they were lucky, they'd have enough time to pack up the other larger structures before everything really went knee deep. Or, even have enough time for Cade and her apprentice to activate the Sky Barrier.

Normally used during times of heavy rain or worse weather conditions that the smaller tents just couldn't hold up to, the Sky Barrier was an extremely small piece of machinery not stored in a pocket dimension. Cade probably knew why. What made it a concern, however, was that activating and keeping it activated would require energy. Itval had already gone to retrieve crystallized mana from within the Fieldhall. He hoped she'd get back sooner.

Even still, the cost of maintaining the barrier during a Blood Moon was high, and it didn't prevent the monsters its light coalesced into any less capable of messing their day up.

Which brought Morval right back to the problem at hand. The monsters of the Blood Moon were coalescing all around them. Thankfully, most appeared to be within a manageable size range, around the size of a hunting dog. There were a few smaller ones, those would be a great annoyance and potentially a major threat, and there appeared to only be one larger one emerging nearby.

Of course, this larger one had to be absolutely massive. Not nearly the size of that inflated dragon, but far too big to take down without injury, no matter how many of them took it on at the same time. They'd have to wait and see what form it would take.

The real risk of a Blood Moon creature was the light of the Blood Moon itself. If not properly disposed of, it would spread after the creature's death. Inhalation could be fatal.

That was why you didn't try and interrupt the coalescence of a monster unless you were highly trained and capable.

Lan had set himself up on the roof of the Fieldhall directly above Morval, the highest point. He would let Morval know if anything developed that specifically needed his help. In the meantime, Morval had his own goal in sight.

He flexed his mana, like an internal muscle, before tugging a great amount of it outward, surrounding his body like a shield. Then he sprinted forwards to a clump of the smaller creatures that looked to be nearing their own inception.

He had timed it correctly, if only just. As soon as they became conscious, Morval's shins crashed through two of them, and a spear of blue-tinted light slash out to slice two more. The mana that came into contact with the Blood Moon's wispy light sizzled before devouring the impurity with a barely noticeable pop. The other two creatures, which Morval had not yet killed, began to speed towards the others surrounding the Fieldhall, as did two other clumps of these small but deadly creatures.

The second deadliest thing about a Blood Moon creature was that wounds inflicted by them acted almost as direct injections of the Blood Moon's light. That was what made these smaller creatures potentially the deadliest, second to the ones that would simply obliterate you outright.

It would be about a minute until the larger, dog-sized creatures began to coalesce. The challenge with them would not be in skill or size, but number. There were somewhere in the range of 75 of the creatures. There were only 66 combat capable adults currently able to hold the line.

The elites like Morval, Cade, and Lan would have to pull overtime ensuring others did not get overwhelmed. But first, the small ones.

Morval rushed after the two he had left behind, with little effort catching up. One stab, two stabs with his manaspear were dodged, until he swept in front of it, leaving a lingering cloud of thin mana. The two creatures stumbled and he easily speared them both in quick succession. Morval was still on a nearly full tank of mana, but that was to be expected. The night had only just begun.

Morval charged for another group that was about to reach a lone warrior. Some of the creatures seemed to slip up at random periods, turning and biting at the ground itself. Whatever it was, Morval was grateful, as the effective splitting of their number allowed him and the other adult to clean the critters up before any injuries.

Looking up, Morval saw Lan firing small pellets of solidified mana attached to the edge of his crossbow bolts. It was an effective, if inefficient, manner to clean the groups of smaller beasts, and the lingering mana could act as a barrier for some of the dog-sized ones. With how often Lan was firing, Morval figured it was both.

The other group of rat-sized beasts seemingly tried to rush past a group of three adults at the front entrance to the Fieldhall, but evidently didn't make it through. Morval turned his attention to the soon-to-coales-

A great roar came from the direction of the fallen star, drawing almost everyone's attention. What sounded like two of the heaviest footfalls Morval would ever witness preceded the next roar, louder than the other. Morval couldn't tell if it was coming their way.

He spun to lock eyes with Lan, who shook his head. No, it wasn't approaching... yet.

Zenith had words to describe the things it had just witnessed, yes, but it did not have actual definitions. Because the same power that Zenith used for its subspace cannons had just been manipulated in such a fine manner that the humans it was wrapping around weren't even affected by it. With the thickness of that energy, they should have been unrecognizable!

It was this astonishment that led to one of the very few times Zenith would ever find itself caught off-guard; a massive creature of blood red colouration slammed the ground above Zenith with its feet, and began to chase it as though it could tell exactly where Zenith was.

Zenith took as sharp a turn as it could, and the creature followed as best as it could. It looked to be around half of Zenith's weight but still couldn't turn as well as Zenith could at decent speeds. It probably couldn't match Zenith at anywhere near full speed. But that wasn't really the issue.

The creature could clearly sense Zenith, somehow. Zenith hadn't exactly made for perfect stealth in its wyrm-body design, sure, but this thing was not triggering any of Zenith's passive sensors. Zenith had never been to the Red dimension itself, but it had seen the descriptions of this creature before.

Aside from not being able to exist in a normal dimension, thus unable to be properly studied, it was known to be one of the more hostile and common larger creatures. If Zenith was correct, the larger manifestation nearby would be of the same species.

It was comparable to an ant in general appearance, but thankfully had enough differences that it was likely not as comparable in capabilities. For one, its mandibles were much more like a pair of scissors, flat blades that could pass over and under each other if manipulated correctly. They could also be made to slam right into each other, but there didn't seem to be much point in that.

Its legs were thicker, more appropriate for a beast that wasn't the size of a human child's fingernail, and there was a noticable gap in its chitinous hide between the three components of its body; head, thorax, and abdomen being the antlike equivalents. Zenith began turning more and more, encouraging it to swerve, growing to predict its movements with more accuracy.

The creature was known to be able to spread some kind of infectious microbiological from its abdomen; the exact properties were still unknown. Zenith wouldn't be having any of that.

At certain points in its swerving turn, the blood-ant's abdomen would drag across the ground, unable to halt its moment as well as the forward sections otherwise. Zenith halted, targetted the predicted area of impact with two of its subspace cannons, fired 0.015 seconds before the abdomen scraped the ground, and waited.

Everything the subspace energy passed through disintegrated in such a way that Zenith was not anticipating. For one, it wasn't supposed to instantly vanish. As with the matter between the point of firing and point of impact, it should've just been disintegrated and reintegrated with inappropriate particles, causing a breakdown of all the more delicately placed materials, such as circuitry or cellular life. Even if the blood-ant wasn't a cellular based organism, complete nonexistence shouldn't have been the result.

Perhaps it was a quirk of the red dimension's interactions with subspace. Further experimentation would be required. Fortunately, Zenith had a personal test subject, and a lot of other unwilling data-gatherers.

Speaking of, they seemed to have paused a second time, the pained screeching of the blood-ant drawing their attention once more away from the blood-hounds, even as they howled and approached with haste. Zenith set aside several dumb AIs for observing that event; one attached to each of the major players and another to analyze those who stood out less from their peers.

Then Zenith returned its main attention to the blood-ant directly above it. The fate-forgotten creature was now the test subject of a puzzled AI.

How unfortunate.

After the resounding POP audible from the direction of the other large beast, like a large chunk of it had just been devouring by mana instantaneously, came its scream. Like a bondmate wronged, it cried loud to anything that would listen.

It would seem that the dog-sized creatures would listen, and find rage. Cade's apprentice needed that Sky Barrier working now. The dogs began to group up, but Morval knew it would be a bad idea to charge in, even for him. Both sides held, the dogs snarling as they approached, and Morval sweating as he couldn't help but keep track of the larger beast's coalescence behind all of them.

The sky above began to shine an incredible blue, the barrier expanding outwards from above the Fieldhall. No more beasts would be provided the blood-red light to form, but the ones already here, and the giant one ahead, would still be a threat. After that, what mattered most was maintaining a perimeter.

Blood beasts had a difficult time staying alive without the fuel of their Moon's light. The largest ones seemed to be able to maintain themselves indefinitely, producing their own kind of bloodlight, eventually becoming semi-natural beasts of the world. These doglike ones in front of them, though, did not have that luxury.

So they charged. In unison, 75 dogs split into 9 packs charged at different points of the 51-man strong wall that had formed around the Fieldhall. The twelve hunters and three magic-wielders on the roof unleashed a veritable manastorm on the areas in front of the blood beasts, trying to funnel all the packs into areas where the men and women on the ground could surround the packs, or take advantage of the already wounded ones who dared to cross through a mist of leftover mana.

One pack seemed to be heading right for Morval, the largest of all at 11 strong, and had Lan buffeting them with barrier after barrier. Two fell before Morval charged himself, the three combatants behind him following their own leader, before all the other disorganized groups followed.

As Morval speared the first dog down the middle and used the momentum to slash at another, killing the first but only wounding the second, two of the combatants following him broke off to the side to help an undermanned group facing the second-largest pack of nine with only two and the support of a single hunter. The pincer would catch the beasts off guard but only for a moment.

Morval knew someone would die tonight. It was an unfortunate truth, and a burden that, whether or not it was true, ultimately felt like his fault. If he'd kept their course going, they'd have broken camp outside the minor village of Silentia, and been much better prepared for this event.

Zenith had tested the blood-ant above it to death, literally. The creature collapsed, defeated, and began to dissolve into dust-like particulates.

Zenith had seen the humans destroying this dust to the best of their ability, and decided to take a cue from them by following suit. It was difficult to get all of it before it had risen above Zenith's maximum firing distance, however.

Zenith noticed a significant number of blood-hounds seemed to be wandering the wreckage of its old shell, sniffing, gnawing, and generally being harmless there. It wondered if it should let them be.

In total, Zenith had decided on these principles for interacting with these creatures;

1. They were not particle-based creatures, and thus anything that targetted particles directly would need individual testing.

2. Targetting the connections between particles was a viable option for instantly dissipating the material.

3. They were not friendly.

Several had managed to locate and destroy some of its spybots. Only the smallest specimens that had yet been seen, but still. Aggression seemed preprogrammed, as demonstrated by the one blood-hound that was currently trying to "kill" one of Zenith's leftover "scales". Most of Zenith's losses came from the seemingly haphazard distribution of subspace radiation across the entirety of the battlefield, however. It was very annoying.