- Somewhere in the woods on a hill, Beyond Comertora City walls -
- 1942hrs, local time -
Amid the beautiful night skies that are filled with stars and moonshine, a breeze of cold wind blows here and there around the trade city Comertora. Nevertheless, the night is full of commotion, especially because there’s a 40-meter-ish-tall tree-like creature that appeared on the west side of the mansion that’s now in rubble. Far from it, Jaeger who just regained his consciousness after being knocked out hard tries to sit, but then a sudden pain is felt in his chest and abdomen. “Argh! Ofnir, what’s my physical status?” he asked his AI assistant while he checked around for any visible wounds.
[It appears you had some internal fractures on your lower ribs and wooden shrapnel pierced around your left abdomen from the back. Luckily, none of your organs were heavily damaged and nanomachines are currently repairing the damages received. Other than that, you’re fine]
“Seal any blood vessels around the penetrated part. I’ll pull out the thing.”
[Affirmative, sir]
Jaeger then pulled out a large chunk of wood that penetrated his back after he got confirmation from Ofnir and threw the bloody wood away. The nanomachines then quickly do their job as they increase Jaeger’s recovery by a mile. The massive hole on his back is closed in under 3 minutes and now, he’s back up and ready to continue the mission. “This is Alpha 1-1, To anyone on this frequency, give me a sitrep!”
From the other side of the radio, the first one to answer is Point. Who’s practically unharmed in the whole fiasco. “this is Eagle, what the f*ck happen down there!? You didn’t respond for five minutes and what in the world is that massive black moss of a thing?!”
“That’s a good question, I don’t know either. But regardless…” he glanced towards the thing again, squinting his eyes as he tried to look for what is it doing. The tendrils of the creature could be seen from afar that it’s capturing humans here and there, including the knights. devouring them mercilessly. “It’s a threat. If we don’t stop it, it’ll cause trouble for future operations. Plus, that massive thing is still our target”
“Huh? Which target you’re referring to?’
“the damn queen ya bloody fish brain!”
“Hold on… that’s the queen?!!”
Jaeger racks the bolt of his rifle as it has some dirt on its chamber, letting out a sigh. “I’ll deal with that thing for a bit and rendevous with 60K. Try to find Coyote, I think he’s still unconscious around this forest.”
“You and what army!?”
Jaeger then blasted himself into the air, his side skirt thrusters accelerating him from 0 to 200kmph in a matter of 5 seconds. He then made Ofnir control his stability in the air as he aimed down his sights as they got closer to the creature’s tendril attack range. He fired several shots at it, trying to figure out the toughness of the defence. However, he didn’t expect it to deflect most of his bullets. “damn, this is not good at all”
He then tried to shoot a single shot to each tendril that tried to grab him out of the air and got shredded. After a while, he threw several smoke grenades out in the air and landed in the nearby forest, hiding behind a tree. As soon as he finished reloading his rifle, he used the side skirt thrusters to hover himself several centimetres above the ground and skimmed his way into the mansion hastily.
As he enters and turns on his night vision, he quickly makes his way to the area where the catacomb entrance is located which is in the library. However, it was not a walk in the park as the dark tendrils had already crept their way everywhere around the mansion. “crap! These little pieces of - !” he cursed as he shot 3 more destroying the tendrils that have a mind of its own.
[Sir, another one on your six]
“I know!” he blasted more as he kept moving to the library like a mech skimming above the ground in a battle. The moment he arrived at the entrance of the library, the door was covered with the black mucus of the tendrils, which might be the blood that came from it and also shotgun cartridges were littered on the floor. Knowing this, he then kicked down the door. Only for him to nearly get blasted by friendly fire.
“Holy s**t!! Jaeger! Sorry!!” 60k apologizes and Jaeger gives him a death stare in reply. The room was quite small for a library, with no windows whatsoever. Up above hangs quite an elegant chandelier with 5 candles that are still lit. There are only 2 isles and right across the entrance is a desk where 60K hunkered down himself. “Looks like you still got your spirits there mate.”
“Don’t give me that! I nearly f**king died! TWICE!”
“At least you didn’t nearly die to friendly fire”
“Yikes, that sarcasm hits hard. Again, I’m sorry okay!”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. So, where’s the entrance?”
60k gave a head bob towards the direction of the entrance which is located right below his foot. Jaeger walked towards the desk and peered down, It was a metal trapdoor, unlike the ones in the village back then. “Have you put the charges though?”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“I did, I was gonna detonate it along with me if I found myself being pinned by… whatever the hell those black tentacles are.”
“Luckily you didn’t have to eh?”
60K rolled his eyes, “Yeah, yeah, thanks for coming to help”
Right as Jaeger wanted to say something, the ground shook violently, nearly causing them to lose their balance. “The hell is happening!?” 60k exclaimed in panic. The calm squad leader tries his best to try to peek into the corner of the library entrance, and whatever he finds isn’t any good news at all.
“60k, we need to go now! Those things are coming again!”
“Ah, s**t… here we go again…”
The two of them activated their side skirt jets into hover mode and hastily exited the mansion, dodging and blasting every black tendril that tried to catch them with their weapons. Right as they skimmed above the lake behind the mansion. Out of nowhere, 60k was thrown away by a surprise attack by the black tendrils that whipped him. he crashed into the forest and couldn’t be seen. Jaeger could only watch in horror as he saw it happening. He then quickly talked through the radio again
“F**k! this is 1-1! 1-4 is down! He was thrown into the forest north side of the lake! I can’t confirm whether he’s alive or not, so to anyone in this frequency! Check his condition! I’ll try to hold this monster off with whatever the f**k I have!”
Through his radio, he heard Coyote suddenly panic when Jaeger mentioned it and was being calmed down by Point. Not wanting to be disturbed by their debate, Jaeger closed the connection of his radio and went back towards the mansion. He checks his remaining ammo, making sure that it’s enough for this current engagement, which is not since it is impossible for an operator with minimal ammo can kill a 40+ meter tall tree-like creature. “At least it stays put…” he thought to himself until the creature started moving slowly towards the city.
[You just jinxed it didn’t you sir?]
“I bloody hate your remarks not gonna lie. Put the thrusters to afterburner, we’re going to bait it to the other way”
[Affirmative sir]
Jaeger then flew to the skies and tried to gather its attention by zooming past in front of it. only to be swarmed by its tendrils. He weaved left, right, up and down, shooting and doing everything to stay alive while doing his objective. Nonetheless, it was quite in vain, the creature treated him as a pest and kept going towards the city. And right as he was about to shoot more, his side skirt thrusters suddenly lost his thrust and he slowly hovered down while manoeuvring from the tendrils. “Ofnir! What the heck is going on!? Why am I losing thrust?!” he exclaimed, hiding behind a tree while reloading his rifle. “S**t, it's my last mag…”
[The 3 Dimensional thrusters overheated sir. You’re flying with afterburners engaged for 5 minutes straight.]
“I can’t believe this… the odds aren’t with us right now…”
[Shall I call in HQ for air support?]
“Can they even be contacted in the first place??”
[Well…] Jaeger’s eyes suddenly were filled with strings of codes as Ofnir tried to gain connection straight towards the FOB, which also gave some slight strain to his brain. Took like a minute until Ofnir was done checking the connection. [plausible, but it’ll take a strain on my CPU and you won’t be having any of my support]
“How long does it take?”
[Approximately 10 minutes] Jaeger racks the bolt of his rifle, grinning in confidence “I’ll hold longer than that” and then he quickly dashed back into battle. Destroying more of the tendrils just to delay its movement.
Meanwhile, north of him in the forest near the lake, both Point and Coyote are carrying back 60k that’s currently unconscious. His leg was injured badly, with an open fracture on the right leg and a wooden shrapnel piercing his left arm. His head was also bleeding, though, Coyote already wrapped a bandage around it, leaving 60K’s helmet behind. On the way, Coyote kept on trying to wake 60K up but to no avail, The concussion of the hit that he received from the tendril was so tremendous that he hadn’t woken up since the impact. “damnit Danny! Wake the f**k up! What about that bet we promised!?”
“Coyote can you please shut your bloody mouth up and keep moving!? We can’t do anything right now and all we can do is just carry him back to the Condor! You do remember we’ve done our best to stop his bleeding with a tourniquet and had his nanomachines reprogrammed to focus on carrying oxygen to his brain right!?”
“I know that! I know…”
It didn’t take long for them to reach the transport craft. They can see from afar between the trees that the pilots and the priest are sitting outside around the campfire. As they came out of the tree line, the two pilots were quick to notice the situation and headed back inside the transport craft to grab surgery kits and other medical equipment and consumables while the priest could only stand there in shock to see the injuries that were on 60K.
“Lay him down on this bedding!” shouted one of the pilots as he pointed to the makeshift bedding from a stacked sleeping bag that had a transparent plastic as the cover above. The two then quickly lay 60K down there. The co-pilot then quickly took over and the Pilot became his assistant, starting the surgery.
During that time, the priest tapped Coyote’s shoulder. Looking concerned. “Is he going to be alright?”. Coyote wasn’t sure about it, he could only look at how the progress of the surgery was going and hoped for the best. Seeing this, the priest jumped in and tried to help as well. He told the two pilots that he could use some sort of healing spell and buff spells to increase awareness. Knowing this, the two pilots agreed and let him help, and thus, the surgery went well.
“How was it doc?” Coyote asked the co-pilot and got a thumbs up as a reply. Knowing his best friend could be saved, he sighed in relief. “Now we just need him to wake up, Good thing we also packed in blood packs with us. He lost too much blood, and if you didn’t make it in time… well…he’s a goner”
The co-pilot glances back at the patient whom he saved, [Another one that I saved huh?] he thinks, proudly smiling. The priest as well, sighed in relief that he wouldn’t be seeing another life die in front of him again. In a moment of silence, he remembered the thing that he should’ve been telling them before they went off. “Ah right! I was about to say something about the queen! I’ve found a note about-“
Coyote looked back in the direction where the mansion was located, “About the queen… we found out about it the hard way”
“What do you mean?” Coyote looked at Point with a look that said, [show it to him]. Point nodded grabbed his DMR again and asked the priest to follow him. It didn’t take long for them to reach Point’s first sniping position. The city's night scenery was filled with the scenery of a massive tree-like creature that was slowly moving towards the densely populated area where the population could be seen in chaos trying to evacuate the city as it slowly reached the centre of the city. They could also see a streak of blue light flying here and there trying to distract it. “Looks like Jaeger is still trying to stop it,” said Point while he was scoping into his DMR’s optic.
“Dear goddess… what has the queen done…”
But suddenly to their surprise, two massive explosions occurred followed by a growl in the skies, Jaeger’s blue afterburner trail could be seen weaving away from the creature as it shrieked in a gurgle. Amidst the moon that shone brightly in the night, that explosion… is far brighter than the calmness of the night sky…