The Eternal Winter - Book 1 - Chapter 71 - Bunker and Climb
Added 2023-02-25 04:01:47 +0000 UTCAlexander North
Seriously? Is he fucking serious?
Now I can’t go to planet hall without my damned terminal locking up!
The events of what happened aren’t that hard to guess. After all, the plan was for them to meet me at planet hall with anyone they gathered. But with that intelligent frozen one there, it’d be more surprising if they managed to get away from planet hall again. At most I can see them being stuck inside the building with the others after using a secret entrance or something.
I can’t help but reach up and tug on my own hair in frustration while groaning.
What the heck am I supposed to do now?!
Who knows how long passes in silence as I pace back and forth across the street in front of a very confused Snow and a still unconscious Alexia before I eventually just decide to go back to the base. Without Snow and the girl.
Because there shouldn’t be many frozen ones left around the city now, what with them all heading towards the planet hall. So the bunkers around the city should be safe for them.
The problem is just finding an empty bunker that doesn’t already have people in it. But even that shouldn’t be too big an issue, seeing as I can just see their heat signatures through the bunker door. Plus there’s the fact that the door will be shut if someone’s inside.
I look around for a few seconds before nodding, waving at Snow, and saying, “Let’s go,” while walking in the opposite direction of the planet hall. Once more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As it turns out, it only takes me three mostly empty but not fully empty bunkers to find an empty and open one on the fourth try. What that says for the survival rate in this city, I would rather not think about. But at the same time, it makes my job easier right now.
I enter the bunker with Snow and the girl in tow before looking around and finding a piece of paper and a pen. I then write a note with them, of which I stick on the door to the bunker.
“Alright, girl,” I tell Snow while kneeling down to pet her. “I’m gonna be gone for a while. You stay here and keep Alexia safe, alright?”
Snow lets out a short little chuff and actually nods her head up and down once in a show of agreement.
I chuckle and continue petting her for a few seconds before getting up and walking out of the bunker, shutting the door behind me.
After making sure that it’s sealed with the only way to open it being from the inside, or a key from the outside, I nod my head and begin walking away from the bunker, outside of the building, and through the streets towards the entrance that I had originally entered through.
Now it’s time to go get those parasites.
A shiver runs through my body at the thought of eating them. But at the same time, it’s power. And I need power right now.
I just hope that whoever the victor of that battle between the worm and the infected symbiont host was didn’t eat them for themselves. Because if they did, then not only am I out of hope for getting strong enough to deal with the frozen ones at planet hall, I’m probably gonna be killed by the victor who would then be boosted up on symbionts.
And that would be bad.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inside of Planet Hall
Loud screaming echoes through the halls of the massive building as waves and waves of frozen ones swarm through the entrance, filling the building all the way up to the thirteenth floor out of nearly a hundred floors. Meanwhile, the soldiers stationed at planet hall prior to the Eternal Winter’s appearance stay holding the line on the stairs to the fourteenth floor. The ones that aren’t already inside of a bunker at this point at least.
However, despite the soldier’s efforts, the ‘line’ continues to be pushed back further and further into the fourteenth floor. All the way until they are left at the staircase to the fifteenth floor of the building.
Meanwhile, on the second floor, a group of soldiers from the main base on the planet can be seen climbing up the main stairwell connecting the first through tenth floors of the building.
“Warrant Officer Inverno!” Captain Andrew shouts while tearing his blade through the body of a large cockroach. “Help me clear a path!”
She nods her head and charges ahead with him, leaving the others behind them protected from the frozen ones in front.
Amongst the others, one of them can be seen with an amputated leg, and another completely missing his hand. However, outside of those two, the others of Nathan’s squad are all alive and relatively uninjured as they help the two injured up the stairs.
The captain and princess continue cleaving their way through the frozen ones, the princess’s dormant symbiont – a safety procedure in case of a national emergency – having awakened at the united request of the Emperor and the council, leaving her as a Tier 1 Symbiont Host. However, despite her massive boost in physical ability, having only awakened her symbiont recently, she is still nowhere near as effective as the captain, who is long used to the strength that the creature grants him. So eventually, the captain ends up going too far ahead based on the assumption that she would be able to keep up with him, allowing one frozen one cockroach to slip by them and attack the others.
Right as it’s about to strike though, Cynthia barely manages to throw a dagger at it, catching it in the eye and sending it falling down the center of the stairs with her dagger still in its eyes.
She grimaces at the loss of a dagger, but nonetheless continues slaughtering her way through the other frozen ones in their path to the twentieth floor, where the lower tier governor of the planet resides.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
