Chapter 1247 Nathan's Strange Incident (Part 2)
But personally, at least Jacob was happy that he was not separated. The familiar environment made him feel at ease.
Armin then summoned the command of the company. In addition to him, the Tenth Company also had 10 veterans, including a priest apprentice, who formed the command of the Tenth Company.
During the discussion, Armin would occasionally stop to check a small locator held in his right hand.
Jacob realized that the Captain wasn't just looking for a trail, he was using his tools of logic to decide that trail was the most likely route from here to their target's last known location.
After almost five minutes, the results were discussed, and the company commander motioned for them to follow him toward a trail of his choice.
As they walked into the shadow of the trees, a bird chirped somewhere in the distance.
Jacob did not understand the meaning of its cry, but the sound made him uneasy, and he could not help but tremble, briefly touched by the premonition of disaster.
Then he looked to the side and saw that Mith, who was also the son of Armageddon, had obviously felt it too. His thin face was a bit gloomy.
“The bird chirped very ominously,”
Jacob heard the other person's whisper and looked away. He was not a superstitious person, but a feeling was a feeling.
The team marched in two columns. The armors of the captains who led the team were buzzing as they walked up the hillside. The servo motors and gravity stabilizers were working hard to keep these veterans balanced on the steep hillside. The Space Marine's legplates dug up chunks of earth with every step he took.
The recruits relied entirely on their own physical strength. Jacob was encouraged by the cold, clean air and the beautiful scenery around him. His modified muscles did not feel any fatigue.
It must be said that the environment of Nathan IV is well protected, and the chapter leader does not seem to want his hometown to be overly poisoned by industry.
To distract himself from these inappropriate thoughts, Jacob began to think about their mission.
Disappearances were a common occurrence in any part of the empire, but the situation still required investigation. He wasn't sure what the enemy was going to do, but he had learned to think that there was a good reason for every enemy action.
Thinking of the powerful power of human enemies, Jacob understood that his war group really needed to be vigilant. Any strange magic or technology could cause a lot of trouble.
A spy might be able to discover a weakness in the monastery fortress's defenses and prepare for a full-scale invasion.
He knew this had happened before and could easily happen again.
No matter what, the company's greatest need is to find some survivors, if they are still alive, and provide any intel they can.
If no one survived, then they needed to find their bodies and find out what killed them.
As a result, they walked for a whole day but found nothing.
At night, Armin did not plan to return, and they did not set up a camp. They needed to rest but also pay attention to whether they missed anything in their search in the dark.
They were getting very close to the last known location of the man they were looking for, and found more signs of the missing pack: discarded food strips, areas where brush had been cut.
Night enveloped the forest, and they did not light a fire. Sentinels were placed at strategic locations around the camp. All communications were connected to direct encrypted channels. It would be extremely difficult for anyone to eavesdrop on their communications. .
Sentinels high above can quickly and quietly warn them of anything they see, and anything trying to sneak up on them will immediately notice a reversal of form.
In fact, no one slept that night. All the recruits were very nervous. They almost all stayed in place holding their weapons.
It was generally agreed that the enemy should attack at night, or at least harass them.
After all, this environment is so suitable, Jacob thought that this might be a strategy of the company commander, using this method to lure the opponent out - a night attack is better than a blind search. But the results were surprising.
Nothing happened that night, except for the depression before the heavy rain -
"It's really strange."
Jacob watched the sun rise over the mountains. It was the end of his sentry time, and he was not tired at all. The beauty of the place itself took his breath away.
At first the mountains were just a slight shadow, their outline was like a rough hole cut in the cloth at night. When it got light they began to appear, but they seemed to be flat, like Like the paintings on the stone walls.
As the light intensifies, they become more concrete, more full of depth, more detailed, until they suddenly sparkle in the sunlight, as if given a new lease of life.
Mist rose like smoke from the trees below, as if the mountains were giving life to the morning clouds, or some wizard had used magic to make the forest emit flameless smoke - and Jacob knew that wasn't the reason. , and soon this fog will evaporate like a ghost in the sun.
But he still enjoyed watching the reborn world and listening to the birds singing to welcome the sun.
But the sunshine did not last long, because the storm was coming soon, and most of the sky was already occupied by dirty clouds.
In the distance, he could hear the complaints of his comrades and the sound of eating ration bars. Everyone sat there all night, and in the second half of the night, they even began to pray for the attackers to appear.
Everyone is frustrated.
But the enemies just don't appear, either because they are very calm, or because they are not nearby at all.
No matter what, the team still has to set off.
They packed up their camp and marched down the hillside again, heading towards a strange separated place in the forest.
Not long after leaving, everyone became alert - as they followed the traces, they saw what was happening below.
Due to the dark clouds, the forest looked darker, darker and distorted, and the trees looked sick. Armin observed these with a magnifying glass and then spoke.
"It wasn't like this here, and it wasn't written in the report."
"It looks like these trees are infected with the plague."
Jacob was also observing, and these trees looked really infected. They were hunched over like sick people and looked like they were rotting and dying. Strange luminous fungi grew on their sides, and the faint light was still visible even in the watery sunlight of the day.
Jacob doesn't like this kind of thing at all, no matter how they became like this.
He looked around, the air smelled really wrong, the whole place smelled weird, and there was a faint but very disturbing smell in the air, like some kind of reptile, It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
For some reason, he could always think of himself walking in the grass and being spied on by a poisonous snake.
Armin obviously felt it too. He opened a channel to the monastery fortress and began to report to someone.
Suddenly, a burst of static sound came, and something was interfering with the communication signal.
Jacob thought for a moment that there was an odd connection between the trees' disease and signal interference, but he brushed the thought aside as nonsense.
How is this possible?
In the back of his mind, the knowledge that the engine was put in told him that there were signs that something dangerous was about to happen.
(End of this chapter)