Chapter 252: it is time

The atmosphere in the cave was subdued and tense, night finally came which indicated that the soldiers were leaving soon.

Though they would not disobey their leader, thinking of the ape that could speak human intonation still left the soldiers feeling goosebumps all over.

Even the originally jovial Josh had a rare solemn expression on his face. He knew that if they were found out, a desperate uphill battle would be the subsequent development trajectory.

Till now, he still didn’t know why he decided to follow Clark’s team but he already experienced a lot during the past few days. To him, all of these were worth it, that was the main attraction of every zealous adventurer.

All the soldiers already woke up. When such a battle of fate was looming, none of them had the motivation to sleep deeply.

Every one of them had tense expressions on their faces. Despite the negative feelings in their heart, glancing at Clark and seeing the confident expression on his face made them all fade away like the wind.

Clark looked at them seriously. “It is time”.

That was the only word needed from him, all the soldiers already memorized the hastily drawn-out plan that he cooked up. He turned to go as they all quickly followed closely behind.

For this escape to be successful. The plan was to retrieve their weapons first, try not to get discovered, and escape in the already predetermined direction.

Getting to the entrance of the cave, Benny and another 1st rank high-grade soldier went forward to roll the huge rock blocking it away. They did this carefully without letting a single sound out.

After this, Clark took the lead again as they started moving sneakily to the location where their weapons were stored.

No stealth device was with them, so they were completely exposed under the glare of the moon up in the sky. They could only pray for luck that they should not be discovered immediately.

When Clark drafted the plan, he knew that they had zero chances of escaping silently without being found out.

If they were found out in the significantly smaller Wild Yak alpha’s animal kingdom despite their preparation time, then it was only a matter of time before they were also busted here.

The one thing that mattered was how they reacted to it after being found out. The bulk of the drafted plan was on how they would react after they were found, so speed was paramount for this escape.

Following Clark’s lead, the soldiers all crawled on their bellies across the cold snow region. It took them 10 minutes, but they finally got to the location where their weapons were kept.

No soldier moved chaotically despite seeing their equipment standing before them. They all followed Clark’s plan and moved in orderly, one at a time to re-equip themselves.

After they retrieved all their weapons, phase one of their escape finally ended. They quickly switched over to phase 2.

Clark released dozens of small drones in the air, these were his eyes to monitor the situation. At the same time that he released them, he also activated a stealth coverage device.

He activated a camouflage device, a smell distorter, and dozens of other gadgets. Most of the gadgets recommended by the king of demolition finally came to use.

After this, they started moving across the territory northwards.

According to the king of demolition, the Aragan ruin was located to the north, and that was their destination. Even in this scenario, fulfilling their mission was still paramount to them.

They crossed about a kilometer in a few minutes as they continued escaping at an extremely fast pace. Their powerful stealth measures dozed all the intuition and detection methods of the regular beasts.

From their location, they could already see the end of the animal kingdom territory but this did not make them feel happy, it only made them tenser.

And they were right to be tense, one of the drones finally sent out a not so reassuring signal.

With just a swift look at the footage and the metric reading sent back to the holographic screen hovering before him, Clark easily discovered that it was another group of Dipers again.

The animals’ ears twitched in the live footage being transmitted. Even sleep could not suppress their instinct, these animals were indeed created to frustrate sneaking humans.

Before they could sound their alarm, Clark acted. “Run!”

Every soldier activated their exotic boots and went full focus mode as they sprinted swiftly across the snowfield encompassing their vision.

The group of Dipers felt the tremors immediately as they quickly made weird loud noises, the alarm was sounded and the whole kingdom reacted immediately.

Most of the settlements that were roughly built across the Kingdom haphazardly suddenly started collapsing, their owners were too battle-attracted to care about such damage that can be easily replenished.

Roar!! Roar!!

Every single animal in the territory was aroused by the alarm. The silence of the night was broken as beasts of various species woke up, making various loud chaotic sounds.

As the only humans among the horde of beasts, the Spartan/Daland squad was discovered by the beasts immediately despite the slight cover provided by the night.

In such a setting of beasts only, they felt so out of place that even a blind animal could feel their presence.

Tu! Tu! Tu! Tu!

Before the beasts could charge at them, the soldiers attacked first. All the ranged experts released their loads at the beasts fiercely as the first wave of deaths quickly started.

This was Clark’s plan. Make the battle progression fast, he meant not only fast but extremely fast.

As the ranged experts shot unbridled, a Dickson on stealth suddenly materialized before a clustered group of animals as his enormous shield slammed down momentously.

Every animal under him was squashed into a bloody pulp under the weight and pressure of his shield. Before the beasts could react, he raised his shield again and bulldozed into their midst.

Melee soldiers suddenly started appearing behind him as they joined him, rushing through the temporary passage that he created from the blood and flesh of the beasts.

The beasts were not testing subjects though, and the ones just killed were just a small tip of the iceberg that was this animal kingdom. The rest all rushed forward like maniacs unafraid of death.

The battle began in full force, but the soldiers had no intentions of playing according to the recognized paradigm.

3 other small battlefields suddenly sprang to life in 3 other directions as the unprepared beasts suffered another slight disadvantage. Diana, Anna, and Benny were leading these separate battlefields.

The change of pace in the sudden battle that erupted was so fast that even the legendary master of pace changes, Lionel Messi would blush in shame.

The soldiers poked from the east, west, north, and south, but with only one inevitable direction in their mind. The rest were all feints to grant the main team more escape chances.

In this battle, there were bound to be casualties but the soldiers were already prepared.

The exobeast subordinates of the alpha ape finally started rising to this sudden night challenge, they arrived at the battlefield with frightening grandeur as they quickly turned around the status quo.

Casualties finally started appearing among the soldiers but the others hardly batted an eyelid, only their mission currently occupied their minds.

They would have preferred detonating the earth rending bomb explosion again, but there was no time for the technicians among them to jury-rig such energetic bombs.

The soldiers used all their gadgets without hesitation. They no longer paid attention to efficiency; they were in a race against time.

Clark and Dickson were the main attackers of the main force, they pushed forward to the north with their allocation of soldier supports. Despite the frightening rate at which exobeasts died to their weapons, they still felt tense.

Josh was not with them, he volunteered to stay back in the minor battlefields to protect their second in commands.

They could see the end of the territory. It seemed to be getting closer, but at the same time getting further away, they didn’t know which one of the illusions to believe.

Ho! Ho!! Ho!!!

The soldiers’ hearts sank. They were constantly praying against it, but it seemed that God was not on their side today. In the end, the ape decided to engage them directly.

Clark reacted at the same instant that he heard the sound. “Everybody, follow the plan. Disperse and run for your lives”.

“If you survive, wait for me, Dickson, or any of the second in commands’ arrival. We’ll surely get back to you, Good luck”.

Though feeling reluctant, every one of the soldiers still obeyed his orders and ran disorderly in different directions.

He also anticipated this scenario. This was part of his plan, not only did he intend to make the battle extremely fast and constantly changing, but he also wanted a seed of chaos to be sown.

As soon as the soldiers separated in different directions, the animals were caught off-guard again, but this time they suffered much fewer casualties as all the soldiers were now focused on running.

After a lot of analysis and after getting input from Josh, Clark finally concluded that clashing with the ape directly was suicide.

Through this deduction, he finetuned the plan which was to use the other soldiers as a distraction to enable the elite team to forge ahead to complete the mission.

Benny, Diana, Anna, and Josh reconvened with the 2 of them in a matter of seconds as all 6 soldiers brutally cleaved a passage of red through the beasts. No animal lasted against them.

During this time, the soldiers that were escaping solo were also being killed by the horde of beasts.

The alpha already joined the battlefield, its eyes scanned everywhere for opponents. Seeing the glaring red at a corner of the battlefield, its eyes narrowed and locked into its first targets.

The small battlefield being led by Clark was too glaring to be ignored.

The huge ape bolted forward in pursuit, in the process crushing its subordinates that could not clear the way on time to flesh and blood. Its movements felt like a bulldozer demolishing an old district.

“Set up the U-14 and Drilling device”. Clark quickly whispered.

Josh and Dickson quickly acted together as they struggled to bring down a heavy object which was the U-14 device from Clark’s blotted bag, they acted like the ape charging at them was air.

As soon as the object was placed on the snow, Clark struck at the red button gleaming ominously, which quickly went green the next moment.

A bright grey chaotic light suddenly shot out from the device and hit the ape who was still charging forward and was already before the soldiers. Its movements visibly slowed after being hit, it moved like a human stuck in a quagmire.

Josh activated the drilling machine next, adjusted its focus downwards as he quickly drilled a hole through the snow into the rock, forming an artificial underground passage.

The remaining 5 soldiers jumped into the hole immediately, with Clark and Dickson both dragging the heavy U-14 device along.

The 2 devices they just used were the most expensive in the list brought out by the king of demolition. Both combined cost an astonishing 1,500,000 Mountain credits, and their effects worked as advertised.

This was also part of the plan.

[Thank you for reading this chapter, I really appreciate it.]