Chapter 220: the animal kingdom in the forest

“You remember the terms that I proposed, so please don’t give me any bullshit. Tell me your country of allegiance, how you came here, and all the knowledge that you have about this region”.

Clark spoke out as he faintly tapped repeatedly on the armrest of his mechanical chair while staring directly at his counterpart.

“Major, you know that revealing information about one’s country is sensitive, please be considerate”.

“Dickson…, don’t try my patience. Even if I had ulterior motives about this temporary alliance before, seeing that this group of soldiers is led by you changed most of my thoughts”.

“I will not exploit you; I will also reveal information about my squad once I have yours. Just don’t lie, you know more than I do that an alliance would do us both some real good in this region”.

“In fact, why am I even explaining to you. Your squad is the one under our mercy here, don’t try my hand”.

“Ok, Major”. Dickson took a deep breath. Though he felt reluctant on revealing such information, he felt even more reluctant at the thought of offending Clark.

“My country is the middle-grade country, Daland. If you don’t know it, you can do a brief search online to verify”.

“Our purpose of coming here, I think you know that more than I do, so I won’t elaborate. I did not know about this forest before now, I came here with my squad through a tunnel that we discovered”.

Hearing the confirmation that he wanted, Clark secretly nodded to himself as he listened attentively.

“Ok, that’s all. What exactly do you want to know about this region? Tell me so that I can have a base to start with”. Dickson paused a bit after saying this.

Clark raised his hand, as Diana who was already prepared filled a glass of wine up before handing it over to him. He calmly sipped the wine before speaking out again.

“I and my team also passed through the same tunnel here”.

“Really?” Dickson was shocked.

“Yeah, really. That tunnel, I don’t know if you did, but we saw a lot of terrifying things and met a lot of dangerous opponents there. We passed, but we suffered a casualty there”.

“You suffered just a casualty in that hole from hell?” Dickson was once again shocked, as some buried memories started emerging back in his head.

“We suffered a lot, let me tell you everything”. His shoulders slumped; his eyes grew distant as he started going through his memories to dig out the story that his benefactors wanted.

…

About 2 months ago, when he heard that he was nominated for such an extremely dangerous but important mission, unlike what was expected, his reaction was vastly different from that of other soldiers.

He was first surprised before being overwhelmed with joy.

After he came back from the Seafarers alliance outer headquarters, his country’s army started paying more attention to him, granting him more opportunities to improve as a soldier.

He was pleasantly surprised that the army let him be included in such a dangerous mission, but this did little in diminishing his excitement.

About a week later, everything was finally scheduled for him and he arrived safely in the great Mountain Everest with his squad.

Unlike Clark’s squad of 50, his squad started with a hundred soldiers which was outrageously much for such a secret mission.

During their first week climbing the Himalayan peaks, everything was fine and easygoing. This ended though when they encountered their first attack from the beasts of this region.

The aggressive lineup of evolved red Pandas charged at them like flooding rivers. Under the leadership of the exobeasts among them, the nimble mountain beasts started wreaking havoc among them.

His leadership was fairly stable, as he quickly commanded and reorganized his soldiers. Due to the number of the Pandas, he opted to escape with his soldiers rather than to fight, but escaping was equally not an easy job.

During that desperate escape battle, they lost their first soldiers. Not 2 casualties, not 3, but 10 valuable soldiers died from his squad from their first encounter alone.

As a defensive soldier, he was able to do a lot in preventing more losses but his influence was limited due to the overwhelming number of soldiers in his squad, hence those casualties.

After the attack, his soldiers were spooked as they grew more restrained and alert about this mountain.

They continued their journey amid other small-scale beast attacks until they finally reached their first shelter. During this time, they suffered no further casualties.

2 days later, they finally left the shelter to continue their journey. They suffered another 7 casualties on the way, which was to them tolerable before they finally reached the beginning of their decline, the tunnel.

Also thinking that it was a shock-cut pathway to climbing higher up the mountain, he agreed with his soldiers to take the tunnel route. This was the worst decision of his life.

Crossing the tunnel was a nightmare to them, as they lost 16 soldiers alone to the ferocious cats that repeatedly spammed them with unrelenting attacks.

This was where they also had their first high-grade soldier casualties, as they lost 3 high-grade soldiers to the cat.

2 of them died normally, but what horrified them was that a giant egg suddenly emerged from the ground which swallowed the last of them. They were shocked, as their comrade became motionless like he was frozen in time.

After these 3 last sacrifices, they finally escaped. Coming to the other side, they found this forest which was even more dangerous than the tunnel.

They learned a lot of useful insights from their defeats, so they became more experienced in dealing with the beasts of this region. Their casualty rate reduced steadily, as their killing rate increased.

Their journey across the forest was smoother than they expected. Despite the many dangers in it, they lost only 2 comrades who died because of their incompetence, leaving 65 soldiers behind.

With all these experienced soldiers that were forged from the deaths of their comrades, they were confident of their prospects of leaving this region successfully.

They found it. Yes, another month later, they finally found the region of the forest that they could take to leave, but here they found another problem.

This isolated region seemed to be the beast kingdom of the forest. They saw countless animal species that were guarding the region, they even had an alpha that acted as their overall king.

Surprisingly, the ruler of this fantastical animal kingdom was actually…, a wild Yak. Yes, that wild cattle animal, but this one was really wild as its name depicted, it was the tyrant exobeast of the whole forest.

After a thorough plan that took them 3 days to formulate, they finally became confident of their chances at escaping this forest.

They knew that they could not kill all these animals, but they didn’t intend to do that, they just had to slip through and escape.

The plan seemed simple, but the execution wildly exceeded their expectations.

They made a mistake that exposed them during the plan’s execution, and this blunder sealed their fate forever.

There was hardly any meaningful thing they could do next, as they were mobbed by the beasts from every side. The alpha wild Yak did not even move, but their losses were still shockingly depressing.

20 soldiers died immediately from the siege, as the rest all abandoned the battle and started fleeing under the leadership of their Corporal.

The animals were relentless as they were pursued them for 3 days with only a few hours of rest in between. During this period, most of the animals retreated, only a clan of wolves were adamant about wiping them off.

During this pursuit period, they lost another 8 soldiers, leaving their original squad of 100 to be left with only 37. They already failed their mission; they were now lost like headless sheep.

Due to the exhaustion and everything, they already lost all hopes at escaping, so they got prepared to fight their last battle as a soldier. At least, they could not die without inflicting enough damage on the annoying wolves.

…

“Then, you came, and the rest is as you know it”. Dickson's voice reverberated again, now a little hoarse as he sniffed while suppressing his fluctuating emotions.

Clark and his 2 second in commands fell deathly silent, as they carefully went through all the information that was just released to them. They felt…, sympathetic and a little overwhelmed.

Clark suddenly felt a strange feeling inside him. He and his soldiers never knew nor really appreciated how fortunate they were until he heard this. He felt sorry for this old opponent of his.

“I’m sorry”. He didn’t know exactly what to say in such a situation, he just said this.

“It’s ok, it’s my fault mostly. We overestimated ourselves, and I was an incompetent leader”. Dickson felt the exhaustion of the past 3 days suddenly hit him, as he leaned back powerlessly on his mechanical chair.

Clark didn’t agree to this, but he didn’t say it out loud. When his team fought this guy’s back in the gladiator tournament, his teammates all recognized this guy’s leadership qualities though he hardly utilized them.

In his opinion, his incompetent soldiers were what led him down and caused his failure.

“Ok, my country is the middle-grade country, the Spartan republic”.

“You’re telling me your information too?” Dickson was visibly surprised.

“Why are you so surprised? I told you that my proposal of an alliance is now more sincere since I got your real identity, and I noticed that the information you just gave me was not made-up nonsense, so”.

As Clark spoke, he could not help but smirk slightly as he secretly glanced at the information just displayed by his implant again.

[Ding!! Deep human lie analysis completed. From mannerisms, gestures, facial expression, and other micro details detected on target, it has been detected that he is not lying.]

This was one of the most useful advantages of his outrageous implant. As a soldier, he knew that this method was not fallible though and could be evaded by well-trained soldiers, most especially spies.

Despite this, he still believed the data as he knew this man before now. He was not exactly the sly type.

“My squad came to the mountain roughly about a month ago. Our story is much spicier than yours, but with fewer casualties”.

Clark no longer held back, as he told him the information that he could without compromising his squad. After revealing all that he could, he finally extended his hand for a handshake.

“I guess we are now temporary allies, right Mr. Dickson?”

“Yeah, I guess so. But what exactly do you want to do, I already described how hard it is for us to leave here? And now you said that the tunnel is blocked, I think we are stuck here”.

“Not really, our allied force can make it, we just need more intelligent planning. And with me around, hehe…, I don’t want to boast”.

[Thank you for reading this chapter, I really appreciate it. Please, leave your power stones behind to support the book. Purchase privilege for The Conspiracy Of The Elites and read a varying amount of chapters ahead of regular readers.]