The Eternal Winter - Book 1 - Chapter 51 - Aftermath (Patreon)

                                                                                               Alexander North

I let out a groan the moment I regain consciousness, just to open my eyes and find my head stuffed in some sort of cloth as I’m being carried by someone.

“Uh…” I mutter after a second, making whoever is carrying me stop and begin lowering me to the ground. And once the cloth is removed from my face and I’m set on the ground, I realize that it was a shirt. Then I notice a few spots of near frostbite on the captain’s – who happened to be the one carrying me – neck, where his armor was previously damaged and his skin exposed.

Guess that explains the… shirt? The shirt that my face was stuffed into.

Wonder where they got that shirt?

I look down to see my armor still on, albeit in pretty shitty condition with holes all around my torso, the armor around my legs and arms practically falling apart in places, and for some reason my outer shirt that is supposed to be on over my under shirt beneath the armor not being, well, on.

Did they really take my shirt off for that?

“Sorry about that,” the captain mutters while rubbing his neck and reaching out to hand me my shirt. “Didn’t have anything else we could use to block you, and none of the others have the strength needed to carry both you and your gear while skill walking at a reasonable pace.”

Huh.

“Besides, you said before that you didn’t get cold,” Cynthia says with a shrug from next to him.

I glance at her for a second before focusing on the others and noticing some missing.

“Where did the others go?” I ask with a frown while taking my upper armor off and putting the shirt back on.

“They ran away,” Michael says while crossing his arms, not providing any more information beyond that.

I raise an eyebrow at that before shrugging.

Everyone I care about is here, so…

My eyes widen as I remember Phillip.

Is he okay? Did the other squads make it out alive?

I know the lieutenant colonel and those three captains are dead, which means they should only have a few captains left with them. And just a few Tier 1 symbiont hosts aren’t going to do much to hold off the stronger frozen ones.

Actually, they might not even be enough to hold off a lot of the weaker ones depending on the frozen one that attacks them.

A flash of my memory of our fight with the suicide bomber spiders surfaces in my memory at that thought.

I shake those thoughts out of my head as I finish putting my armor – or rather what’s left of it – back on over my shirts.

There’s no use worrying about them when I don’t even know where they are. They could be anywhere by now, and I don’t even know how long I was unconscious.

I look around to find that we’re still in the tunnel, but in an area of it not covered by webbing or eggshells. And the frost on the walls seems to be a touch lighter as well, meaning we’re probably closer to the tunnel’s entrance.

Guess they broke past the webbing wall and continued on through the tunnel while I was out.

“Did you find any other frozen ones while I was out?” I ask while climbing to my feet, just to remember the notice flashing on the corner of my vision and mutter too quietly for the others to hear, “Terminal, show my statistics update.”

/ Notice \

The following user statistics have updated:

Strength: 1.82 -> 2.01
Agility: 2.19 -> 2.40
Reflexes: 1.85 -> 2.06
Constitution: 2.1 -> 2.26
Senses: 2.06 -> 2.27
Energy: 2.14 -> 2.49

\End of Notice/

My eyes widen in shock at the massive change in numbers. Especially at the increase in my Energy Level.

“Surprisingly no, we didn’t find any more,” the captain answers my question, snapping me out of my shock and drawing my attention to the others who are beginning to continue their trek down the tunnel. So I follow after with the captain, who continues speaking, “Sorry about your weapons. All we could salvage was one knife. Your sword had shattered at some point while inside of the large rat’s corpse, and the other knife… all we could find of it was the shards in the rat’s eye and a few shards scattered around the tunnel.”

I wordlessly nod my head at that.

Nothing unexpected there. Disappointing, but not unexpected.

Either way, we’re done dealing with the spiders for now – I hope – so I shouldn’t need the blades anyways. I can just use my claws. They’ll be more helpful against regenerating frozen ones anyways.

As we walk, I begin rotating my shoulders to get a feel for them before stopping and doing a full stretch. This attracts no small amount of confusion from the others, but I ignore it as I walk up to the tunnel wall and pull my fist back to slam it into the wall, ending up with my fist buried over a foot in the wall itself.

I whistle at that nice output of strength before doing a few other exercises to size up my capabilities under the silent awe of everyone else. Even the captain, who is a symbiont host.

Then again, I should be bordering on the strength of a Tier 2 symbiont host now. Or at least getting close to it. So it makes sense that even he would be in awe.

Actually, I think we only had two Tier 2 symbiont hosts on base in the first place. I wonder if those two are still alive? And if so, why wasn’t at least one of them helping the lieutenant colonel?

Questions continue to flood my mind about this until I shake my head again and do one last backflip before saying, “Let’s go. I think I have my capabilities gauged now.”

The questions can wait until we meet them again. If we meet them again.

For now, I just need to survive and help the others here survive as well.

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