Drake stood in the cockpit of the Silent Night fury jet as it streaked silently through the night sky heading for the co-ordinates he had received from Queen.
"I swear Queen, that tailor is a monster. I'm seriously considering changing my whole wardrobe after this." Drake commented as he finished reloading his rifle.
He was very satisfied with the tailors work on the new gear he was wearing.
Right now he was dressed in a black hooded armored combat suit. He had two pistols holstered on his thighs and at his back with extra magazines in his belt while two Katana swords were crossed on his back, and he had an assault rifle slung over his shoulder.
"You'll be arriving at the coordinates shortly. Once you do I'll use the jets scanners to see if I can find where the terrorist might be. See if can find anything in the ground, good luck and remember be careful." Queen's voice came through the communication link of the jet.
"I'm always careful." Drake said putting on a pair of shades and turning to the hatch where he hooked the drop line to his belt as the jet stopped right above a crash site.
He jumped out of the jet he let himself gradually lower to the ground and raised his rifle once his feet touched the ground. He unhooked the line connected to his belt and started walking around the crash site. There were seven large armored vehicles all set ablaze as if there were hit by missiles and armored soldiers could be seen strewn allover the floor and they stank of blood and smoke but nothing was breathing.
"Looks like they had themselves a party, with a big bonfire like that. The sloppy workers didn't think to clean up after the military, but I don't see anything that looks like it belong to our guest and I also can't see that it belonged to the scientist or the cargo."He said
"High tech armor and energy shields maybe. Find anything else useful?"
"Yeah, I think I found me a mage. Whoo… Unlucky bastard took two bullets to the chest and one to the head and one of the shots looks like it was close ranged probably a traitor among them. Poor dude was up against pros didn't even know what hit him. Scan!" A white light flashed across his glasses and the information about the man appeared on the lenses at his command.
"Harrison Williams age thirty five, 3 star mage. Tck tck tck…" Drake couldn't help but click his tongue at the information he was seeing. "He probably didn't get to show his stuff before he was hit." Drake said as he rummaged through the mans belongings.
"Eureka! Found his Sky link. But, the thing has been smashed. See if you can hack it."
"Way ahead of you… found it. Seems they were guarding a team of scientist lead by Dr. Jeremiah Ferguson, a researcher on Bio engineering and Abyssal beast bloodline symbiosis. Apparently the scientist and his team had made a big breakthrough in a project and they were transporting results when things went south. There were two other scientist with him but this doesn't show me anything on what they were researching about only that it was sealed in a case that was attached to the good Doctor." Queen said over the comm. "Look's like they jammed all signals in the area while they were at it, so this Sky link didn't record anything during the incident."
"Now what do we have here? Looks like I found where they were headed." Drake abruptly said as he noticed tracks heading towards the forest. "Tracks! Very sloppy work."
"They must have expected the beasts would cover up for them when they came after the smell of blood."
"Makes sense, unluckily for them this slip up just got them caught. Can you track them down?"
"Bingo, the tracks lead to a small mountain about eighteen hundred meters east of your position."
"Good let's go say 'Hi' to our friends shall we?" Drake said then broke into a sprint as he followed the tracks. It wasn't very long later that he soon found the small mountain. It was in the territory of a grade two magical beast so no one would come here under normal condition, unless they knew what was here that is.
There was a large tiger lying in front of a seven meter wide cave that led into the mountain, Drake couldn't help but frown at the sight. Magical beasts were different from regular wild beasts, they were much stronger, he didn't trust his ability to kill a Grade two beast with the gear he was currently carrying.
"Ugh, I hate cats." Drake groaned at the sight of the large feline, this would be troublesome. Tigers were extremely sensitive about others trespassing on their territories, and anyone who dared step foot in would always be met with their full force retaliation.
At least the terrorists were creative about their guard dog. He had to give it to them; with that overgrown feline standing guard all the mice would be too terrified to get close or they risked ending up as cat food.
After taking a few seconds to analyze the situation, an idea popped up in his mind so he quickly returned to the still burning crash sight. Luckily, the wild beasts still hadn't worked up the courage to approach, but this wouldn't last long.
Once Drake arrived at the site he went to the fallen mage's position, 'Sorry about the inconvenience old chap, but if you're going to be beast chow you might as well be useful,' he thought and quickly began dragging the body into the forest. He soon stopped at a tree about five hundred meters from the small mountain any further and the noise from the body being dragged might alert the tiger beast.
Drawing out a small battle knife from his boots he twirled it in his hands as he muttered to himself, "Does this count as desecrating his corpse? Nah, these guys are scientists. They take apart countless bodies alive or dead on a daily basis they basically live off this, a little karma wouldn't be bad. I mean, I'm sure he doesn't mind, aint that right Harry?."
"I'll take the silence as a go ahead." He said then jabbed the knife right into the mans stomach and dragging to let the blood flow out. Once that was done he hastily withdrew his knife and ran into the forest, he only had a few seconds before the tiger beast was attracted over by the smell of blood.
The wind soon blew the smell of fresh blood over in the direction of the small mountain and the large tiger instantly perked up and looked over at the origin of the smell that was attracting it. Drake stealthily hid in a bush, he watched as the tiger jumped off the small mountain and headed in the direction of the mage's bleeding corpse.
"Magical beasts are extremely attracted to the lure of mage blood, thanks to the magic attribute it contains. It's like heroin to a crack head, they can't resist it. Sorry about this old chap but you'll have to take one for the team. Don't do it for me, do it for science, for the future." Drake recited righteously, this was some knowledge he had picked up some time ago while he was learning about magical beasts.
A few seconds later when he was sure that the tiger was completely gone from the mountain he made his move. Quickly climbing up the small mountain he made his way into the cave, it was quite clean inside so he didn't have to worry about where to step, he still kept his stealth on however.
As he went deeper into the belly of the mountain he soon arrived at a fork in the path of the cave splitting off into three, not really letting this bother him Drake followed his nose and took the left path.
He noticed that the cave was actually lead deeper under ground so it was longer than expected. The cave was dark but he didn't dare turn on any lights.
He soon arrived at a dead end. There was a large boulder about four meters in diameter that looked like it was imbedded into the wall.
"This is probably the entrance into their stronghold. Activate infrared vision!" Drake commanded. The vision of the glasses soon switched to showing everything in different colors.
With the infrared vision active he was able to see to glowing red humanoid shaped signatures on the other side of the boulder.
"Queen!"
"All signals will be blocked once you get past the boulder, I will still be able to talk to you since I'm directly linked to your Sky link, and while you're at it I'll try hacking through their mainframe. Please for once in your life Focus. Try to stay alive until I'm done."
"I just need you to find the scientists; you leave the rest to me." Drake grinned then swung his rifle over his shoulder letting it hang at his back, reaching into a belt compartment he pulled out a small flash bomb and lowered himself to grip the lower right side of the boulder with his left hand.
Taking a deep breath he exerted some strength with his arm. "let's do this."
He rolled the boulder.