Chapter 201: extreme cold finding shelter

Thud!! Clark still hugged Diana from behind in a daze, as they were both finally pulled up and dropped at the next standing area above the initial point of the still rampaging avalanche.

All the soldiers had expressions of fear on their faces, as they looked back uneasily at the disaster caused by their Major’s desperate actions. 4 of their comrades just died before their eyes.

Diana finally reacted after landing, as she quickly wriggled herself out of her Major’s embrace. Though her facial expression was veiled by her still-activated armor, her clumsy steps showed that she felt uncomfortable.

Though hugging such a beauty from behind was supposed to be a jolly thing for a man like him, Clark could not as he stared blankly at the slightly frozen hand in his grasp.

“He still died…”

He already expected his soldiers to die on seeing them get submerged by the avalanche, but he thought that he saved one at least. Seeing the contrary situation that he came with; his brain was slow to react.

In the end, nature overpowered and nullified his efforts.

Though he succeeded in grabbing the soldier’s hands, the force of the avalanche was too strong, which ripped the soldier’s hands that were being tugged from the submerged body.

Though the strong cold already froze part of the currently ownerless arm, droplets of blood could still be seen dripping down.

“Umm…, Clark, we have to move on”. Benny suddenly interjected to draw Clark from his daze.

“What…?” Clark questioned absentmindedly.

“Clark, those soldiers are already gone, we don’t have to die with them. That’s the pledge we made when we became soldiers, we were prepared to die for the republic”.

“We need your maximum leadership now to forge ahead and survive, the weather is showing signs of deteriorating further, and the fierce winds have still not relented”.

“The cold is already nearing high-grade soldier’s safety limits; we have to find a shelter now”.

“Yes…, we need shelter”. Clark slowly muttered, as his brain finally recovered from its low-performance state because of the shock he received.

“We need shelter…, we need shelter…” His brain quickly went into overdrive, as he muttered repeatedly. He immediately started looking for a solution to their conundrum.

His A. I just reported to him that the cold wind speed was already exceeding safe speed limits, it already exceeded 35m/s and was still increasing.

The cold was also already in the extreme region. If he did not find a solution immediately, there was a very high chance of his whole squad suffering from frostbite and being frozen to death.

As the whole squad started fidgeting anxiously to find a solution, the wind suddenly grew fiercer from their right as a white nimble figure quickly closed the gap into their ranks.

“What is that? Not again!!”

Though they could not see the figure clearly because of obstruction from the wind, they could make up from its features that it was another mountain animal.

Before they could react and turn to face it properly, an enormous maw suddenly widened as one of the soldiers standing at the periphery of the group got his head separated from his body.

“A Mountain Wolf!!”

Eyes widened, as the figure of this enormous beast finally became clearer. Seeing its nimble and muscle-filled figure, dread, filled the soldiers’ hearts. From the bite force and speed, they already deduced that this wolf had 2nd rank strength.

“Awoo….!!!”

The wolf suddenly raised its head and howled to the sky, as its vocal cords spread the sound around the mountain peak. This was it celebrating its victorious kill, to show its dominance to these intruders.

Speak of the devil. This was just like adding charcoal to fire to the soldiers of Squad 06 when they were already in such a precarious situation.

As they tried to set up a formation against this wolf, they suddenly saw a figure rush out of their ranks with astonishing speed.

After already suffering 4 deaths in his squad in just a day of coming, seeing another of his soldiers die to this filthy beast completely hit Clark the wrong way, as he erupted with force.

Bam!! Bam!! His spear moved with immense speed, blowing the air away and slicing the falling snow to bits and pieces as it quickly connected to the surprised wolf’s hide.

Seeing this daring human, the wolf became angry and tried to retaliate, but Clark’s momentum-filled strikes quickly cleared its arrogant beastly brain in less than 5 seconds, showing it that it was not the boss here.

In this small time of contact, injuries already filled its white and beautiful hide, as blood died the snow under its legs in its dark red color.

Seeing this, it was finally intimidated as it tried to run immediately, but Clark was having none of its nonsense.

Just like a possessed human, he unleashed hell on the wolf without mercy, as it quickly started whimpering in fear moments later. Despite its now pitiful appearance, Clark showed no mercy as his spear ravaged its internals to the bones.

All that was left of the once howling wolf was a bunch of roughly mangled flesh, badly displaced bones, and a disfigured head. The mountain wolf was dead.

The soldiers were shocked, as they did not expect such barbarous fierceness from their Major all of a sudden. The visual impact of the sudden battle was just so striking, spooky, and intimidating at the same time.

As Clark removed his spear from the mountain wolf, his brain suddenly started clearing up. It seemed that him venting his anger on this fellow brought more pros than cons.

Despite how he just burned calories from his body, he could still feel his blood slowly getting colder from the deteriorating weather.

As his soldiers remained quiet, while some of them quivered from the cold while just watching him, his brain finally clicked to what he wanted.

“Yes, I found a way”.

“What???” The soldiers all blurted out simultaneously.

“Just shut up, pick up your bags and follow me, I know a place around here. Just pray that the internet’s information is correct, or we are all doomed”.

Seeing him already rushing up the slightly sloped ice path, the soldiers quickly shelved their doubts, picked up their equipment before going after him.

Most of them, their hearts were already feeling colder than their bodies were feeling. In just a few minutes, they just lost 5 comrades like they were in a horror movie.

The psychological impact was negatively striking to them, despite them all being well-trained soldiers.

As Clark rushed up the snow-filled sloped path, his implant worked in tandem with him as he hurriedly entered the internet to confirm his conjecture.

Hours ago, when he just knew that their mission target was in Mountain Everest, he already did a small research about here to not be completely ignorant after getting to the Great Himalayan ranges.

Through his research, he discovered some of the more notable legitimate owned shelters that were built in the region.

If he was right, one of the smaller shelters was built close to their current location, just a little to the side of the Khumbu icefalls pathway. As he ran, his implant finally confirmed it.

[Ding!! Master’s conjecture confirmed. The mountaineer’s survival shelter is located approximately 2km from Master’s current location.]

[The correct path to follow to get there the fastest, is to take …]

As his implant started blabbering on and directing him, Clark zoomed faster across the sloped path. He already wore his military Mountain glasses, so his vision was now clear despite the current raging wind.

His soldiers followed behind rapidly, as none of them dared to slack and be a slowpoke that lingered at the back again. The examples of their dead comrades were still fresh on their minds.

Even if it required running with their butt, they were ready to do it just to not be the last person in the group. They all scaled the slope rapidly with the one thought that their life depended on it.

As they ran higher, the loud deafening noise being made by the avalanche finally started subsiding, displaying that the disaster caused by their escape finally ended.

After Clark exerted more effort to jump across a block of ice poking out of the sloped pathway, he finally caught sight of the shelter from afar.

Seeing this, his eyes brightened while his energy levels blazed fiercer, enabling him to increase his speed to close the distance faster.

The extreme cold was already making him feel slightly muddle-headed and dizzy. If this was his condition as a 2nd rank high-grade soldier, he could hardly imagine what his subordinates were suffering.

It took him another 5 minutes before he finally came before the large doors of the shelter.

“Phew, I finally arrived”. He felt relieved, it was like he just escaped an apocalypse.

Instead of entering the large bunker-like shelter immediately, he stayed behind to render help to his soldiers to enable them to close the distance faster.

With a little effort and perseverance, all the remaining 44 soldiers finally arrived at the shelter’s door. All of them felt lucky, as no one experienced any sudden mishap and died on the way again.

…

Back in the mountain region, where Clark’s squad just escaped from and the avalanche was spreading its destruction, the now disorganized Black bears struggled to escape to safety.

Dozens of them were submerged in the rampaging snow and ice, while dozens of others died to the randomly flying icicles that originally stuck to the mountain rocks.

As all these happened, surprisingly, a soldier was among them as he also struggled to escape the aftermath of this disaster.

“F*ck! F*ck! F*ckkkkkkk!!”

Curse words kept on erupting from this guy’s mouth, as he used his light sword to scale the mountain wall downward.

Though his hasty descent from the disaster seemed comical when paired with his nasty words, its efficiency could not be doubted as he evaded the aftermath of the avalanche far better than the Bears.

This unfortunate guy was the Marianan Captain that was stationed at the secret base, that detected Clark’s group. And yes, he was the one who cursed to Clark’s hearing when he was escaping.

As he boasted before his subordinates, he really went after Clark’s squad to save his ego. He thought it was just some inferior group of soldiers, never did he expect to experience such a disaster on the way.

He now regretted his foolish decision, but this did not stop his hasty descent. As a Captain, he had the skill to protect himself completely, though he was currently a little pathetic.

After getting to a certain level below, his eyes quickly lit up as he caught sight of a narrow cave. He did not hesitate, as he went closer and dived inside immediately.

Getting in, he hastily brought his bag out before dropping all the equipment inside. He activated machine after machine, as dozens of shields and stabilizing devices latched into the cave walls.

As a Captain of a country with high-grade military strength, his stash of equipment was extremely luxurious.

With this, the cave finally had the right support to protect him. He huddled himself up, before bracing himself for the impact.

Boom!! Boom!! Boom!!

The avalanche rambled past his location like the wind, as the foundations of the cave started shaking fiercely. He cursed again, while secretly praying for the cave to hold.

Seeing such a secure place, the now desperate bears started advancing closer with the intent of joining him in the narrow space that he was managing.

“F*ck…!! F*ck off, f*ck off bitches, you all caused this with those blood-sucking soldiers. Let them just wait for me to catch up, we’ll see”.

As he cursed, his sword was not idle as he poked the bears that tried to wriggle their way in here back.

Though he suffered and the impact was big, he survived, that was the most important thing. After narrowly surviving, he finally started cooking up plans on how he would torture those soldiers after catching up to them.

“Should I kill them directly, roast them, or allow them to freeze? Ahh, that’s too old school, I’ll just teach them a good lesson on catching up, I hate killing”.

“These naughty kids should just wait for me. Your daddy is enraged, and is coming for you. Be prepared to get spanked”.

[Thank you for reading this chapter, I really appreciate it. Sorry, there was a mistake in this chapter, I just rectified it. If you love this book, please leave your power stones behind to support it. Purchase privilege for The Conspiracy Of The Elites and read a varying amount of chapters ahead of regular readers.]