330 Chapter 330: Movement in the Shadows

When I opened my eyes, it was already morning. Even though it was already past 6am, the sun still had yet to rise. That was perpetual winter for you. The days were short and the nights were long. The sun most likely wouldn't rise for another hour.

"Ugh…sorry for oversleeping."

The girls were awake, preparing food and cooking stuff. I caught a sniff of what smelled like stew. Evidently the girls thought it would be a good idea to boil some soup. And I agreed – I could feel my mouth watering already.

"Oh, you didn't oversleep. We just didn't want to wake you and the others. You guys were on sentry duty last night, so you need the rest."

At Lily's words, I glanced over and saw that Yue Chu and Harrison were still asleep. Like me, Harrison was slowly stiring to wakefulness, but he was careful not to accidentally nudge the slightly snoring Yue Chu awake.

Bu Fan, on the other hand, was perched at the entrance of the cave, slowly sipping some hot soup as he kept an eye outside. Even though we didn't get along, I had to admit that he was someone who did his duty. I could find no fault with his conduct.

"I hope we progress a lot today as well!" Craig said with a grin as he looked up at the gradually brightening sky, which was slowly leaving the grip of twilight.

I grunted in response, and felt too reluctant to leave the warm comfort of my sleeping bag. It was probably minus ten degrees Celsius out there, not exactly good weather for trekking…however, we couldn't hide in the cave (or in this instance, I couldn't cower in my sleeping bag) forever. We had to move on and reach Olympus City, whether I liked the weather or not.

Fortunately, as far as winters went, this was relatively mild. I had experienced horrid winters where temperatures plummeted below negative twenty degrees Celsius. Under such conditions, my fingers and toes essentially went numb and almost froze off within minutes of just being outside. Not an experienced I cared to repeat.

Negative ten was still bearable, especially with the fire still blazing hotly at the mouth of the cave. I doubted it went on for eight hours straight – most likely Bu Fan continued to stoke it with his fire magic. The guy was a quad magician, possessing fire, lightning, shadow and summoning magic. If I wasn't mistaken, his Soul Beast was a great Warrior Wolf or something to that effect. Yeah, why don't we just change his name to Mo Fan already?

Okay…I was probably trolling about the summoning magic. He was definitely not a summoner, as far as I knew.

"All right, everyone!" by now Harrison had fully roused himself and was taking center stage again. "Time to eat! Make sure you stock up on carbo and keep yourselves warm, because it's going to be another arduous hike through the mountains!"

"Yes, Captain!"

Everyone responded without hesitation, and began helping themselves to the soup that the girls were passing around. I accepted a bowl from Pearl, and took a sip.

Ah~ This was delicious.

"Tastes great!" I told the girls, who shared a smile.

"Well, we did what we could. Added some herbs and spices that we found from the forest." Sheila shrugged. She glanced at Lily and grinned. "All that effort Lily went through in scrounging through those plants this morning really helped."

"You didn't go too far out, did you?" Yue Chu asked his girlfriend, concerned. Lily shoo her head and placed her hand reassuringly on his.

"No. Just out there." She pointed toward a nearby patch of plants that had somehow grown and bloomed despite the snow. "I had Bu Fan watch over me, just in case."

"Thank you," Yue Chu told the lone wolf, and he merely shrugged.

"I was looking forward to a meal that actually tasted something, so I might as well work for it too. Besides, it was my shift."

Maybe the guy wasn't so bad after all. He was certainly no Draco Malfoy.

"All right," Harrison spoke up after a sip of his stew. He conjured a holographic map and pointed toward it, right at one of the mountains. His selection seemed random to me, and I couldn't tell any mountains apart from their comrades, so I didn't know the difference, but I just nodded all the same. There was a reason why Harrison Reed was the team captain and I was not. "Our goal should be to make it to Mount Reynas by the end of today. Hopefully we'll find another cave of place to camp out in there. But if we reach Mount Reynas, it'll mean that we're past the twenty-percent point of our journey."

That sounded great. If we kept up our current pace, we should theoretically finish our journey and reach Olympus City by the tenth day since the start of the mission. Given that we were allocated two weeks to make the trip, it meant we had quite a bit off buffer if we kept this up.

I honestly couldn't wait to get out of the cold. Yeah, strange hearing that from someone who lived in Minnesota, but just because we grew up with the cold didn't mean we had to like it. Singaporeans grew up and were used to the heat, but that didn't mean they enjoyed the sunny weather all year long either. Interesting…come to think of it, I spent significant portions of my previous life in two regions of extreme weather conditions. Well, not that extreme, but pretty far apart in terms of temperature.

We finished up our meal, scattered the firewood and stuff, and packed up our gear. Hauling our fieldpacks up onto our backs, we resumed our trek.

A few hours passed uneventfully. Partly because we proceeded with caution and avoided unnecessary battle. There were a few packs of rank E White Wolves and Grey Wolves wandering in the area, the dangerous predators lurking about as they hunted for prey. As low as their rank were, expending our mana uselessly in such cold, energy-sapping conditions would slow us down a lot and render us a lot more vulnerable to attacks from other monsters – possibly higher-ranking ones or…the Assassins who had yet to show themselves.

We had a great scout in Cody, who made great use of his stealth skills to scout ahead and perform reconnaissance missions. Combined with my flock of Corvus, who soared overhead to spot for us, we wer able to catch sight of the monsters well ahead of time and alter our plans or routes to avoid them before they ever caught a whiff of our scent. It wasn't just the Wolves. We also managed to avoid a rank D Spotted Jaguar, and even a deadly rank C Shadow Leopard that was lurking almost invisibly in the dense, dark tangle of trees ahead. I almost missed it too – if one of my Corvus hadn't accidentally alerted the alpha predator and drawn an almost lazy swipe of it, I would totally have overlooked it.

The damned thing was perfectly camouflaged in the trees.

"Wow…" Sheila mused. At the end of the day, we did manage to get to Mount Reynas, or whatever mountain Harrison said it was. I couldn't tell the difference, and I didn't know how to tell apart one mountain from the other, so I trusted him. Everyone did so, but Sheila in particular was staring at me in surprise. "I didn't know having a summoner in the team would be so useful."

She then blinked and then raised a hand to her mouth.

"Ah, sorry…I meant no offense. Of course you would be useful, Richard. I ever doubted that."

"No, it's fine." I understood her reaction. There had always been a stigma against summoners, because of how they tended to be a burden to their teammates, often requiring protection and babysitting while casting their summoning spells. As a result, they weren't very popular when it came to building teams. Not that teamwork was a major component in our curriculum until very recently. Consequently, most people didn't regard summoners very highly, despite them having the potential to utterly destroy entire teams if they were allowed to accomplish their summoning spells.

But such strategies were often all or nothing, with the entire team banking on the summoner to complete his spell. As a result, the moment the summoner was taken out before he could summon his Soul Beast, the entire team would almost inevitably lose. Of course it wouldn't be pragmatic to build an entire team around such a risky strategy.

Unfortunately, that did not help our image much at all.

"Ha ha ha! Aren't we glad they changed the tournament format, eh?" Craig threw an arm around me and guffawed. "Otherwise we would miss out on such great potential. Turns out that we've been using summoners wrong all this while! Who could have figured?"

Everyone chuckled and nodded in agreement. Even Bu Fan smiled at that.

"I'll need to purchase more resources to help Wolfy with his cultivation and increase his rank…"

…you're kidding, right? I seriously hope you're trolling. If Bu Fan had summoning magic in addition to his fire, lightning and shadow magic, I was going to kick him out of the story before we got sued for plagiarism.

"Anyway, we'll set camp here for tonight. We're lucky!" Harrison beamed as he pointed toward a cave not far from our position. "Let's flush that den out…hopefully we'll be able to find some dinner, and then we can turn in for the night."

"Yes, captain!"

Feeling buoyed, especially since we had made such tremendous progress over the first two days without any major incidents, we hurried toward the cave.

That didn't mean I was going to let my guard down, of course. Glancing back, just in case, I watched the shadows to ensure we weren't be followed. The Dark Church and their Assassin cronies were out there somewhere, and I knew they were going to strike soon.

The question was…when and where?

*

As it turned out, the Assassins didn't show up for the next two days either. Not wasting our time worrying about what they were doing, we hurried across the somewhat steep slope of one of the mountains before finally coming across the foot of a ridge.

It was finally the fifth day, and we had exceeded our expectations. If we kept up our current pace, we might reach Olympus City by the eighth or ninth day, way ahead of time. Of course, Harrison kept a level head and warned us not to get too complacent. It was entirely possible that the hard part still lay ahead, and we would run into unexpected delays during the later stages of our journey.

Everyone nodded somberly, knowing that he was most likely right.

We cautiously made our way through the treacherous terrain that made up the foot of the ridge. Here, the ice was particularly thick, and we had to navigate our way carefully or risk slipping and falling despite our supposedly preternatural reflexes and training. In fact, it was precisely our training that taught us not to underestimate these little details, and to respect the hostile environment.

As my feet crunched through the snow and pounded against the solid ice, I half watched the frosty road ahead of me and half looked through the eyes of my Corvus that were sent to scout ahead of the main group. There was nothing amiss so far, though I knew that I had to stay vigilant.

Thanks to that, I was able to save all of our lives when the first sign of danger struck.

To my shame, it wasn't me who noticed it first. Cody paused at the front, and threw his hand up to stop us in our tracks.

"Do you hear that?" he whispered. We craned our ears, and sure enough, there was a thunderous rumble in the background.

"What the hell is that?" Theodore demanded.

"!!"

Harrison scowled, trying to place his finger on where he had heard the sound before, but before his mind could turn up anything, I was already reacting by having my Corvus whirl about and reconnoiter the source of the ominous noise.

"Avalanche!" I yelled when I saw the thick sludge of snow pouring toward our direction.

"Then shouldn't you not yell?!" Yue Chu…yeah, yelled back.

"Why?" Lily asked, genuinely confused, even as she turned to run with the others.

"Huh? Didn't you know? Shouting and all that cause avalanches."

"That's a myth," I told him, annoyed. "Avalanches usually only occur when a fragile layer of ice cracks underneath all that snow, and the tremendous increase in weight leads to the whole thing just sliding over. In fact, the biggest cause of avalanches is wind. Or…if you want to trigger a manmade avalanche, you use explosives! Pressure caused by waves such as sounds, shouting or loud noise is significantly smaller than the shockwaves caused by explosives, or even wind. So contrary to popular belief, shouting and loud noises do not cause avalanches!"

Pearl gaped at me as we ran. "I'm amazed you're able to blabber all of that while running."

I was too out of breath to muster a retort by then, and could only focus on running. Fortunately, we didn't have far too long, and thanks to our physical reinforcement spells, we were able to outrun the avalanche. And before certain readers start complaining, no, I certainly did not have time to summon a Constellation spirit to ride on before the avalanche hit. The damn thing came within seconds, and I needed a significantly greater amount of time if I wanted to summon a Constellation spirit big enough for me to ride on. Besides, I couldn't just ride on the Constellation spirit by myself and abandon my friends to the avalanche.

If we all get caught in it, we were going to get caught together. And we were going to dig our way out of the snow together.

Fortunately, it didn't come to that. We managed to throw ourselves into a relatively safe valley right before the avalanche stopped. The huge pile of snow slowly settled, almost like a sea of white, and burying lots of coniferous trees that made up the forest. My group gradually slowed to a stop and turned around to watch the elemental force of nature come to a rest.

"That was close!" Yue Chu muttered, his face pale.

"We somehow made it!" Lily gasped in immense relief, clutching her chest as she struggled to breathe.

"Are you guys all right?" Pearl asked, panting. Despite the cold, she was persiring profusely, and was bent over, gasping desperately for air. She was worse off than me, who was delivering a small lecture while we were sprinting earlier.

"Yeah, we're fine," Cody assured her as he knelt down to catch his breath. He glanced to study the avalanche. "Damn, I can't believe I didn't see that coming."

"Nobody did," Harrison told him. "Don't blame yourself."

"Good thing you heard the noise and Richard saw it coming," Theodore said as he wiped his brow. "If the both of you hadn't warned us…"

"No, wait…" I straightened up when something occurred to me. "Do you remember what I said earlier, about the causes for an avalanche?"

"Hmm? Yeah. You mentioned wind and explosions." Yue Chu had been paying attention, to my surprise. "What about it?"

"There was no wind," I began.

"So?" Craig demanded, still trying to recover his breath. Unlike him, however, Bu Fan was quick to catch on.

"Use your brain," he snapped callously. "If there was no wind, then someone triggered the avalanche with an explosion. And that means…someone artificially caused the avalanche!"

"Eh?! But who?!" Sheila jolted up in fright.

None of us could answer her question. Instead, I threw myself forward and tackled Theodore, knocking him over to the ground.

At the same time, a ruby beam of superheated light flashed across the place where his head had been, streaking onward and vaporizing the snow several dozen meters ahead of us.

"Enemy contact!" Harrison shouted as he threw himself behind cover to avoid a second lance. "Everyone, take cover!"

Whatever other instructions he might have were completely drowned out by a series of explosions that lit up the entire site in a blinding light.