339 Chapter 339: Rescue Mission

As it turned out, I was disqualified after all.

"Well, sorry to say, but…the moment you needed to be rescued, and have a mercenary escort you out of the Aurora Mountains, you're disqualified."

Captain Brent, especially since he was the leader, knew more about the situation than poor Anastasia did.

"I understand that the blizzard was beyond your control, but what did you expect when you entered the Aurora Mountains? We did specify that the weather was not considered outside influences, along with the monsters. I know it's frustrating, and it's pretty much bad luck on your part, but rules are rules."

"I'm so sorry." Ana bowed her head to me. "It's all my fault. If I didn't intervene and save you, you wouldn't have been disqualified."

"Seriously?" I wasn't sure whether to be mad or amused. "Are you really apologizing to me for helping me? My life is more important than making it past the qualifiers. Sure, I might be disappointed, but I'm more relieved that I'm alive."

"Well…that's the thing, you see" Anastasia shifted uncomfortably. "I didn't even help you much at all. You could have survived on your own, and get out of the abyss by yourself. You didn't require assistance at all – if I left you to deal with your situation alone, you wouldn't have been disqualified."

Oh…well, that was fine. I appreciated Anastasia's kind intentions, and while it was frustrating to be disqualified, that was life. Things happened that were beyond my control. I was still alive after such a dangerous predicament, and honestly, that was all that mattered.

After recovering from my fall, I had summoned Cygnus, and both Anastasia and I hopped on to fly out of the chasm the blizzard had blown me into. I had half a mind to just fly out of the Den of Dragons, but I didn't know I was disqualified then, and so I followed the rules and had Cygnus put us down somewhere in a coniferous forest, using the trees for cover.

It was fortunate that I did, for a dragon burst out of the canopy, its massive form gliding over the swaying trees. If we had been flying on Cyngus for a few minutes longer, the dragon would have spotted over, flew over and attacked. After just barely escaping with my life from the blizzard, I was in no condition to fight a rank A Behemoth so soon.

The both of us stay hidden and waited for the dragon to fly past before proceeding. No sooner did we move than Brent, Redfield and several familiar members of the Silver Wolves showed up.

"Captain Brent!" Anastasia had hurried over, and snapped a salute. He nodded in acknowledgement, and then turned from her to me, frowning.

"Uh…Ana, you do realize that the moment you helped Richard, he was disqualified, right?"

"Eh? But I didn't help him at all. And besides, he was blown off by a blizzard! It couldn't be helped! Aren't we supposed to assist the students in case of unexpected situations?"

"That only covers external forces, such as the Dark Church, Assassins and terrorist acts. The weather, though abrupt, is not an external force. Did you forget the briefing?"

"EH!?"

And that was how we came to this conversation. Well, what was done was done. There was no point blaming Anastasia, especially since she meant well, and it was useless to cry over spilled milk. So I smiled and just ran with it. My teammates would be disappointed, but if they had proceeded to Olympus City without me, then they would have assumed the worst.

Knowing them, though, they would be more relieved that I somehow survived than disappointed that I was disqualified. Even without me, they could still somehow manage in the tournament.

"I'm very sorry!"

Returning to the present, I found Anastasia frantically bowing to me, despite my best attempts to stop her. Sighing in resignation, I turned to Brent.

"Um, what are you guys doing here? I'm pretty sure the tournament staff didn't send an entire force of mercenaries to rescue me just because I was blown away by a blizzard, right?"

"No, of course not." Brent chuckled good-naturedly. "Don't flatter yourself, kid. You're not some VIP that the world revolves around. Of course they wouldn't send all of us here for you alone. No, we're the rescue squad."

"We're here to rescue all the other students from the participating teams who got lost in the Den of Dragons," Redfield supplied helpfully.

"Oh?" I raised an eyebrow before nodding. That made a lot of sense. As it turned out, I wasn't the only one thrown off course and forcibly separated from my team because of the blizzard. There were dozens of students who had been reported lost, or missing, and the mercenaries were dispatched to locate and rescue them.

Apparently the blizzard had swept through several teams as they tried to traverse the ridge that was skirting the Den of Dragons, and a few of them were blown off course. Quite literally, in several cases – like me. Others were cut off, thanks to fog, and got lost somewhere, several wandered or fell off the cliff accidentally, and a quite a few ended up running into the Den when they were forced to scatter under monster attacks. Not the Horned Boariceratops, but other stronger monsters. A few even reported dragons, and the mercenaries prayed that those unfortunate students who encountered the rank A monsters hadn't been killed or eaten yet.

"Ana, since you're responsible for the students of Jing Tian Academy, you should take Richard and escort him back to Olympus City safely."

"Roger that!" Anastasia saluted, but I shook my head before raising my hand.

"If you don't mind…since I'm already disqualified, I might as well help you guys with the rescue mission."

"Really?" Brent looked at me, baffled. "You don't have to…"

"If it's dragons, and icy environments, I have quite a bit of experience." Even though that experience was mainly in non-magical Minnesota, which was thankfully free of monsters and Assassins (though robberies happened on an almost daily basis), I was sure it would come in useful. I hope. But I definitely had the dragons down in my CV.

"That's true…" Brent hesitated a little, but Redfield jumped in.

"Hey, that's a great idea! If things go south for us, we can always count on Richard to cast his strategic scale spell and nuke the whole Den into oblivion!"

"And while he's exhausted, we can defend him from whatever monsters that come and evacuate out of here," Anastasia finished.

"That is indeed a tempting idea, but please…don't nuke the Den…" The captain looked a little dour at our suggestion. "For one thing, we need to rescue all the students lost in here first, and we don't want to accidentally obliterate them alongside the dragons. For another, we don't want to draw the attention of other monsters to Olympus City and Aurora City. They'll come flooding into here when they learn that most of the dragons are dead."

"And that's assuming we get most of the dragons in the first strike," Anastasia admitted, suddenly seeing the reality. Yeah, that was right. How were we supposed to know if all the dragons happened to be clustered inside the Den when I unleashed ths spell? A good number of them could be out hunting or flying elsewhere…and the moment they returned to find their nest annihilated, they would definitely seek vengeance on the perpetuators.

I sure as hell didn't want to be around when that happened.

"Let's keep that as a last resort for now. But…okay. We'll just do this as the usual mission, and recruit Richard. It'll be a really great help if both Ana and Richard are with us, rather than going off on their separate ways."

"Sorry to break your date," Redfield teased Anastasia, and she merely smacked him silently in return.

"All right, let's move out!" Brent ordered, and the mercenaries obeyed without question.

*

Over the next few hours, we cautiously trekked through the Den, keeping close to the forest for cover. Just as I did when I was with my team from Jing Tian Academy, I summoned Corvus and sent them out in various directions to scout ahead. Combined with the intelligence from reconnaissance units, we were able to avoid monsters.

The dragons, in particular, were pretty active after the blizzard. More than once, Brent held up a hand and called for a halt, silently ordering us to take cover. As I dove into a hollow of a tree, I caught a glimpse of a gigantic shape soaring high above the canopy of the snow-stained coniferous forest, the leaves trembling violently from the sonic boom. Piles of snow crashed down, blanketing poor mercenaries who happened to take shelter under those trees. Credit to the veterans, they stoically bore the indignity without complaint, merely poking their heads out from the white stuff.

They only began to clear the snow off their bodies once the dragon was gone and safely out of sight, shivering slightly from the cold as they brushed the frost from their winter coats. Stamping their feet, they shook themselves off, and then rejoined Brent as he strode back to the head of the formation.

"Where are we going?" I asked, a little lost.

"We're searching for other students, remember?" Redfield reminded me. I suppressed a sigh.

"No, I mean…do you guys know where the other students are? Do you know where to start looking for them?"

"Ah…the captain has an idea. We're proceeding toward the site where Guang Yan Academy's team last saw their missing teammate…according to their report."

Oh…if that was the case, then I felt stupid. Of course Brent would know where we were going. He wasn't going to blindly lead us to stumble around aimlessly in such a dangerous place. I should have known. This wasn't the first time I was following him on a mission. I knew more than most people how capable he was.

"Where exactly is the site?" I asked. Turned out that Redfield had no idea, so I approached Brent, who was carefully making his way through the snowy foliage. Despite the weather and extreme temperatures, the plants were somehow still verdant and green, flashes of vibrant life defiantly peeking out from beneath the white snow.

Brent spared me no more than a quick glance, so focused on his task ahead that he almost seemed to ignore my presence. It was only when he threw a question at me that I understood that he diid notice me.

"Your crows saw anything, Richard?"

"No. Actually, that's why I'm here." I inclined my head politely. "If you don't mind specifying the location where the Guang Yan Academy student was last seen, then I'll send one of my Corvus to scout ahead, to check that place out."

"Good shout." Brent nodded and half-spun to beam a holographic map at me. He marked out the location with a blue icon. I only needed a single glance to recognize the place, and I mentally instructed one of my Corvus to break off from the flock and fly there ahead of others.

Unlike Cygnus, Corvus was small enough to escape the notice of dragons and other high-ranking monsters that dwelled in the Den. Like normal (well, normal in the sense that they constituted the majority after their various mutations or evolution after the advent of monsters from another dimension) birds, Corvus was far too tiny and insignificant for the dragons to bother with. He wouldn't fill their stomachs, for one thing.

It didn't take log for my single Corvus to reach there. Through his eyes, I spotted nothing but a few plants and a lot of snow. There was nothing else, no tracks, no sign that any human had ever been there. Perhaps a couple of low-ranking monsters scavenging here and there, picking off the remains of an unfortunate prey whose carcass was left behind by a dragon.

Shaking my head, I reported my lack of discovery to Brent, who nodded grimly.

"I was afraid that would happen," he muttered.

"So what do we do?" Redfield asked.

"We go anyway." Brent sighed. "Perhaps we can cast tracking magic on the ground and find clues pertaining the direction the student went. We should hurry…I hope he hasn't run into other monsters…or worse, a dragon."

The mercenaries hurried toward the place, all the while keeping an eye out for monsters. The low-ranking monsters instinctively detected our presence, and wisely retreated, disappearing deep into the forest before we came within sight of them. If my Corvus hadn't been keeping an eye on them, we would never even know they were there.

"All right, Lie Ren. You're up." Brent nodded toward the mercenary who specialized in tracking magic. A thirty-year-old muscular man with brown hair and tanned skin, the hunter hurried forward to cast his usual spells. I recognized them as the same type of tracking spells that Troy used to cast when he was still alive.

Damn, but I missed the guy.

The rest of the mercenaries spread out, forming a perimeter while Lie Ren worked his magic. As they did so, one of my Corvus noticed something.

"Watch out!" I yelled, almost too late. Fortunately, Lie Ren heard me in time and was able to spring away just as something struck the position he was examining a millisecond ago. I would like to say that it was my timely warning that saved him, but it was likelier that his reflexes and veteran senses were what allowed him to dodge the attack. Nonetheless, he turned to nod gratefully at me, and I felt a little pleased.

I was on my way to becoming a hero-mercenary like Dad…which was pretty much my life goal since five years ago. A hero, who could save everyone in front of him.

However, I had to survive this ordeal first. Raising my head, I watched as Lie Ren's assailant reared its head…no, their many heads back, and hiss. Sapphire scales gleamed brightly under the dim sunlight, and an icy mist clouded around their titanic bodies, each of which uncurled to over twenty meters long.

Rank C Frost Serpents. Precursors to dragons…monsters that had reached that evolutionary stage just shy of that last step. Powerful Elementals that couldn't be underestimated.

With raging icicles manifesting around them, the Frost Serpents hissed ferociously before striking at us.