As the creature lunged towards Ice he froze for a second before leaping away as one of the drones rammed into the side of the creature. He heard the metal of the drone creaking under the impact but it threw the creature off course and off balance. The drones moved to hold the creature down. and Ice stared at it seeing the violet eyes set in a star pattern on the face of it and a maw that just seemed to have too many teeth. He noticed that it had claws on its feet that were longer than his hand.

"Raven! What the fuck is that thing?!" He demanded even as he tried to scoot a little farther away from it across the sand.

"That is one of the Theriope, an artificial dimension hopping creation of war. They were created thousands of years ago. Specifically that it is a Type 5, it is of some danger to a civilian, but is considered a light threat to a system user at best. It is the enemy the System users were created to fight. My records do not indicate this as a rifting planet. However, this is an excellent opportunity to earn points and become stronger." The AI answered him seeming puzzled at first but by the end of it sounding quite happy about the whole situation.

Ice on the other hand was not pleased with this turn of events looking at the drone that had tackled the creature. Part of the body on the side was dented in, where he assumed it had hit the Theriope. He slowly crawled over to the creature and stared at it, noting the burns and holes where his drones had hit it with their weapons. It looked like a large prey cat with the dark black muscle tissue on the outside all a dark black. When he touched the things rock hard flesh, it melted away into smoke but before it did the flesh felt hard as rock.

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He jumped back in panic, afraid the smoke was poisonous or harmful but when he was still fine after about a minute, he let out a sigh of relief. He stood up and slowly dusted the blue sand off his clothing and made his way back to the ship. When he arrived, the small beetle-like drone which had started digging in the sand, for some reason scanned the damaged drone before pressing a tool into the dent and popping out the dent. He couldn't see exactly what happened but it came out with a loud popping sound that startled him.

Ice went back inside the ship leaving the drones outside. He was quite glad to have them stand guard as he had been thinking what if one of those... things got inside. They seemed to read his mind somehow as he never said anything to them.

As he sat on the crash couch on the ship; he buried his face in his hands and his shoulders shook as the stress of the situation got to him slightly. After a period of time where Ice was definitely not crying he looked up and noticed another blinking white notification icon. He swiped it into view. and It informed him he had earned 20 points and for making his first kill with a drone; he earned one Drone Advancement token. When he stared at the small white chip in his hand, a tool tip came up with information.

[Drone Advancement Token]

Allows a single tier upgrade to one drone of the users choice.