But speaking 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, there were 10 veterans of the 10th Company, including a priest apprentice, who formed the command of the 10th Company.
During the discussion, Armin would occasionally stop to examine a small locator he held in his right hand.
Jacob realized that the Captain wasn't just looking for a trail, he was using the tools of his 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 shuddered, briefly touched by a 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.
"That 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 armor of the captains who led the team hummed as they walked up the hill. The servo motors and gravity stabilizers were working hard to keep these veterans balanced on the steep hill. The leg armor of the Space Marines each Take a step up and dig out a large piece of soil.
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 Nessen 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 throughout 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 of every enemy action as having a good reason.
Thinking of the powerful power of the human enemy, 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 weaknesses in the monastery fortress's defenses and prepare for a full-scale invasion.
He knew this had happened before and could easily happen again.
Regardless, 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 had no intention of returning, and they had not set up much of a camp. They needed to rest but also pay attention to whether they had missed anything in their search in the dark.
They were getting 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.
They didn't light a fire in the forest at night. 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 aloft 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 so nervous that they almost 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 to lure the opponent out in this way - 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 weird."
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 faint shadow, their outline like a rough hole cut in the cloth at night. As daylight came they began to appear, but as if they were flat, like paintings on a stone wall. Same as painting.
As the light intensifies, they become more concrete, more full of depth, more detailed, until they suddenly sparkle in the sunlight, as if reborn.
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 world being reborn and listening to the birds singing to welcome the sun.
However, 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 was 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 go.
They packed up camp and marched down the hill again in procession, toward a strangely separated part of the forest.
Not long after walking, everyone became alert - as they followed the traces, they saw what was happening below.
The forest looked darker, darker and distorted due to the dark clouds, and the trees looked sick. Armin looked at these with a magnifying glass and then spoke.
"This was not the case here originally, and it was not written in the report."
"It looks like these trees are infected with a plague."
Jacob was also observing. The trees looked really sick. They were hunched over like sick people and looked like they were rotting and dying. Strange glowing fungi were growing on their sides. The weak light was like water even in the daytime. It can still be seen in the broad daylight.
Jacob didn'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. There was also a faint but very unsettling smell in the air, like some kind of reptile, which made the back of his neck tick. The hair stood on end.
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, there was a burst of static, 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 dismissed the idea 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.
