"We need to split up." Midnight told the two girls as soon as they had gotten to safety. "You go try and meet up with our contact to the institute, ask for them to start emergency extraction."
"And if it fails?" Midnight stopped at Tessa's words. There was a chance of it happening, for whatever reason, and so they had to make a contingency plan.
"If it fails, flee to the edge of the abyss and wait for me there. Whatever you do, try not to be discovered. And here, take this." Midnight pulled out the storage artifact that had supposedly been taken away by the soldier. "All our stuff is in here. With that, you should be able to survive." Tessa stood agape, unable to respond.
"B-but what about you? What are you going to do?" Tina questioned, feeling uneasy. "You should come with us!"
Midnight shook her head. Even now, she could sense danger approaching them. "I'll be the decoy. If we move together, we'll definitely die." Midnight began to fade into the background of the forest. "Don't forget what I said. You can't die on me now."
Midnight completely vanished from her location, leaving only empty space.
Tina continued to stare in the direction Midnight had vanished to. Tessa pulled on her sleeve, snapping her out of her stupor, and they began to prepare for their trip.
Meanwhile, on Midnight's side, she had approached the pursuers. They had regrouped with the rest of their team, and now, equipped with scanners and scouts, they were virtually unapproachable.
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The key is the scanners. I'll deal with those first. With that thought, she retreated further into the recesses of the forest, then began to muster her internal energy to activate an ability. A faint blue light covered her body, and she vanished from place.
The scouts were the first to sense something amiss. "Enemy attack!" Before they took up defensive positions, a blue light flashed through their group, barely visible to the naked eye. By the time they realised, it was long gone.
"Damage check!" After a thorough check, nobody had been hurt in any way, which baffled them. "Scanners, did you not sense her approach??" The leader shook his head. "Nobody was hurt, so push forward!"
Suddenly, a loud crash happened. The soldiers looked back, only to see their supply plane falling to the ground with a massive hole in its wing. They could only watch in horror as their old only lifeline fell to the ground. After what seemed like hours, it hit the ground, causing many tremors to rock the area. It knocked almost everyone off their feet. Fortunately for the village, the erected walls had prevented it from being heavily affected, though the effects were indeed present.
After a while, the tremors subsided. The surviving soldiers rushed to the crash site to recover what they could, but in the few minutes it took them to get there, Midnight quickly grabbed everything using another storage artifact and ran towards the village. By the time the soldiers arrived, there was nothing left to salvage.
The squad leader felt a chill in his spine. One had to know, there was many safe pockets where resources were stored in case of a crash, and nothing remained. This meant they had been outdone, in just a few minutes. Not to mention, the mystery of the plane crashing itself...
"What in the world are we dealing with here…"