Chapter 264: a survival beckoning

The battle started immediately. There was no prep time in-between, no elaborated preparations, just a brawl between soldiers of 2 extremely volatile enemy countries.

When Spartan and Mocan soldiers jam, what results from it is not hard to imagine.

Though Josh was not a Spartan soldier, he already stayed with them long enough to understand the gist of their enmity with Mocans. Lifting his enormous rifle, he pulled at the trigger.

Bam! Bam!

“Come at me bastards!”

With him taking the lead and Diana with 5 other soldiers following closely behind, they rushed outwards to meet their new opponents with impressive grandeur and seriousness.

Anna stayed behind, taking refuge behind a mold of rocks stacked together as she brought out her sniper rifle. The last 3 soldiers were beside her, together forming the ranged squad.

The battle started with full force and immediately climbed to a climax.

This Mocan squad contained 30 soldiers, with only 2 of them being 1st rank high-grade soldiers and the others normal soldiers.

Against the previous battered, defeated, and escaping force, they could reign as lords. But in a battle where not only Anna and Diana were present, Josh also, the outcome was decided even before the battle began.

The Mocan soldiers who were confident in their numbers advantage were given a nasty surprise.

Bulling into their ranks like an excavating bulldozer, Josh used his enormous rifle to its fullest potential as its red-hot energy beams cut through the soldiers easily like a hot knife cutting through butter.

Diana led the others into the battle from another direction, directly starting a massacre.

Despite Josh’s strength, the Mocan soldiers’ clever strategies made it possible that they were swarming and surrounding him. They already recognized him as the strongest, so they intended to deal with him first.

The sudden reinforcement of their prey was shocking, but they were still optimistic. They intended to stack so close to Josh that his rifle would be rendered useless in such a close situation.

To their shock, as soon as they did this, the man hit 2 soldiers with the rifle’s metallic flame before keeping it on his back. Bringing his hand back, a sword followed, it felt just like magic.

The real massacre finally began.

His sharp exotic sword combined with his fierce strength was too tyrannical to resist, the soldiers died at a higher frequency than they swarmed him with.

“Run!” “Retreat!”

After realizing the quagmire-like situation that they found themselves in, the leader of the Mocan soldiers decisively ordered a retreat. But unfortunately for him, their archenemies had no intentions of letting them go.

With Josh in the lead, they hunted all the ambushers till the last soldier. Not a single Mocan soldier escaped, it was a complete massacre.

After the battle, they all laid down on the snow panting like dogs.

Of the 8 survivors, 5 of them were now seriously injured as their previous injuries were aggravated in this battle.

Despite this, none of them died which was a great achievement to them. They still needed treatment though, the injured could not survive with such injuries for long without receiving medical treatment.

“Ok, we have to leave”. Diana forced herself to stand up to address the soldiers.

“Lots of our comrades already died, it is enough already. I’m not ready to let another one of our comrades die before us, so I want us to reach the next shelter in an hour”.

“I still have some mountain credits with me. If we get there, we can request medical services which are not too rare in the shelters of this region”.

“Ok, soldiers, stand up, let’s do it”. She clapped her hands, slapping some of the soldiers on the backs as they finally stood up, though shakingly.

“If the person next to you is too weak or injured to walk alone, help him/her. We are our brother’s keeper; we cannot let any of our brothers and sisters die again”.

After a few more words of encouragement from her, the soldiers stood up and started their journey to the nearest shelter.

They moved in a circle formation so that they could reinforce themselves at the fastest possible second in the case of any danger or ambush.

Their collective shadows were just like those of refugees migrating during a period of war.

As they started slowly disappearing, blending with the all-encompassing white dragon- snow, Diana slowly adjusted her position in the circle formation till she was just beside Josh.

“Thank you, Captain”. She muttered to his hearing.

Josh was shocked, turning to look at her. Seeing her relieved, expectant, and extremely grateful expression, he smiled and nodded at her.

“Thank you for everything”. She added before turning back to reinforce her previous location.

Seeing her retreating figure, Josh felt a complicated feeling in his heart. He originally wanted to capture these soldiers to prove himself to his nephew, but a lot of strange occurrences spiraled him to now.

In the end, he gave up his previous goal and decided to enjoy life as an adventurer. Was he satisfied? Yes, he was damn satisfied.

And he also learned a lot from here, from Clark, Dickson, and also that weird king of demolition.

It almost felt funny to him.

Now, what Diana said just brought his happiness through quantum leaps of expansion, his heart felt like it was soaked in hot spring water.

For the first time since he joined this squad, no, for the first time in his life, a fellow soldier addressed his military rank with an emotion that he never experienced before- Gratitude.

He felt a fuzzy feeling inside though he would never express it outward, he finally found a group that really appreciated him and what he did.

This may seem ridiculous as 3rd rank high-grade soldiers are always respected by all lower-ranked soldiers, but no. In Mariana, his backward identity is given more emphasis than his strength, especially after his boss’s wife went after him.

Did he do anything wrong? No, he was just framed by a horny woman. But that’s life, he was already used to it.

For the first time, he decided in his heart that nothing must happen to these soldiers under his watch. He would protect them, even with his life.

As the formation of soldiers moved forward under the lead of 2 of their leaders and the benevolent Captain Josh, their expressions finally started brightening a bit.

Despite the troubles of this region, they all felt optimistic now. Survival was beckoning at them; they could hear the sweet music of survival.

In this region where they were strangers, they put all their hopes on brotherhood to pull them through.

Perhaps, a few days, weeks, months, or even years from now, they would look back on this day as a memory and smile.

They hoped so.

…

Thud!

As soon as King dropped down into the laboratory floor, he rolled, stabilized himself before squatting down with his enormous exotic bomber on his shoulders, its huge muzzle pointing at the front.

He remained still for a moment, maintaining absolute silence as his ears twitched slightly to pick out any noise from the background.

Staying like this for a minute, he finally confirmed that he was the only one in this strange laboratory.

“Hmm, this place looks interesting”. He stood up to get a proper view of his surrounding at this moment, his eyes gleaming and blooming beautifully like budding flowers.

As soon as he saw the open-air vent, he knew that Clark and Dickson passed through this place before him. And he also saw the message left behind by Dickson, he was pleasantly surprised by their generous proactiveness.

The note read…

“Thank you for all your help, we finally found the Aragan ruin. There’s not much we can do for you, but I promise you that we will keep a look-out for what you are after if we see it and the circumstances permit us”.

“If everything is right, you will see slight clues here and there. Thank you again, we really appreciate it”.

“From D-Son”.

After reading this, his heart relaxed for a moment. He didn’t know why, but he felt that Clark was safe after seeing the note.

…

“Ok, I need to move and secure what I want before other troublemakers come”. He no longer admired the work done here, Clark and Dickson already scraped the lab room dry of goodies.

Going to the door, he found a note looking like the one he read a moment ago on its handle.

Picking it, he read. “Nothing interesting for you here, check all the next-door handles that you see, you’ll know our discoveries through them”.

He clicked his tongue. “This is really nice”.

Going outside the laboratory, he was also left stunned by the long corridor that presented itself before him. To him, this seemed like something drawn straight out of a horror movie.

“How messed up must the architects be to draw such a long corridor? They must have used an exceptionally long note to draw the building plan alone, what a group of hard workers!”

“They must have been on drugs”. He touched his chin. “That may be true though, master said that drugs were much less restricted during his days”.

He was not afraid of the countless mechanical soldiers that littered everywhere. As soon as he stepped in here, he immediately detected that they were spent goods with no energy to operate.

As his eyes casually rolled around, leisurely taking in this scene, he suddenly stiffened in one place, his expression becoming sharp.

He made himself as quiet as possible as his ears twitched a bit like the antennas of an ant. If someone stood near him, they could see his left ear glowing in an extremely faint blue color.

“Is that…, battle?!” His casual expression left his face immediately.

His augmented ears made him far more sensitive to sound, which has saved his life on various occasions.

From the feedback that he just got, he deduced that others were here already and a fierce battle was ongoing. The bad thing was that the battle was constantly drawing to his side of the corridor.

That meant they were heading this way.

The only good thing was that they were still a fair distance away from his position.

He went to work immediately, he found that Dickson placed the same note on every door that he met. Through this, he didn’t have to grope blindly in the dark, he accessed his target places immediately.

Seeing the bomb samples and research data that were left sprawling across, his eyes lit up in greed and desire. “I want it all”.

He started a sweeping mission immediately. Surprisingly, he brought out something that looked like a pouch from his bag.

This small pouch proved to be a terrifying gadget, accepting all the bombs and everything that was dumped inside like a black hole was inside it.

About an hour later, the battle finally came to his location.

Some soldiers entered the room that he was in, but no one saw him as his armor was on stealth. The battle continued outside, leaving his location further after just a few minutes there.

After everyone left, he finally snuck out of the room still on stealth. He followed the large gathering of battling soldiers forward.

[I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I felt some zombie movie survivor vibes when writing the first part of the chapter.]