The Great Demon Forest was a living entity, and it did not welcome intruders. The journey north was a constant, grinding battle against the environment. Razor-sharp vines, thick as a man's arm, barred their path, forcing them to spend hours hacking their way through with plasma cutters. Blood-sucking insects swarmed them in humid, fog-choked valleys, their bites raising painful welts that only Haruto's nanite-infused medical salves could soothe.
But the team pushed on, their new training and equipment making the impossible merely difficult. Himari proved to be a natural scout. Her innate understanding of the forest, combined with the scanner Haruto had given her, allowed them to navigate with an efficiency that surprised even him. She would spot the tell-tale signs of a predator's territory—scratches on a tree, the scent of musk on the wind—long before the scanner registered a life sign, allowing them to alter their course and avoid unnecessary confrontations.
Kaito and Riku, now armed with plasma pistols, moved with a newfound confidence. They walked point, their movements coordinated, covering each other as they advanced. The fear that had once defined their existence in the forest was being replaced by the quiet competence of trained soldiers.
On the fifth day, they began their ascent into the northern mountain range. The dense jungle gave way to sparse, hardy pines and sheer rock faces. The air grew thin and cold. It was here that they faced their first true test.
They were traversing a narrow, windswept ridge when Himari suddenly held up a hand, her eyes fixed on the scanner. "Haruto… something big. Up ahead. It's not moving, but it's alive."
**
"We'll go around," Haruto said immediately. "No need to engage if we don't have to."
But as they rounded a massive spur of rock, they saw that going around was not an option. The ridge ended, blocked by a creature that seemed to be part of the mountain itself. It was a massive, reptilian beast, easily fifteen meters long, covered in thick, overlapping plates of stone-like scales that perfectly matched the granite cliffs. It was a Cliff-Wyvern, coiled in a deep, slumbering heap, its huge head tucked under a wing. Its slow, deep breaths sent puffs of superheated steam into the cold mountain air. A nest of shattered rock and splintered trees lay behind it, containing three eggs the size of boulders.
"A nesting mother," Kaito whispered, his face pale. "If we wake it, we're dead. There's no outrunning a wyvern in the open."
The path was less than ten meters from the sleeping beast. They had to pass it.
Haruto analyzed the situation. A direct assault was out of the question; their pistols would likely do little more than anger the heavily armored creature. They needed a distraction, a way to lure it away from the path without triggering its territorial aggression towards them. His eyes scanned the environment, his mind processing variables. The steep drop-off on one side of the ridge. The loose scree on the slope above them. The wind.
"I have a plan," he said in a low voice, gesturing for them to huddle close. "Kaito, Riku, you see that ledge up there?" He pointed to a small outcrop about fifty meters above the wyvern. "I need you to climb up there. Take this." He handed Kaito a small, metallic sphere—a seismic charge, typically used for demolition. "Do not arm it until I give the command. When you're in position, I will create a diversion. That will be your signal. The moment you see it, arm the charge and roll it down the slope on the far side of the wyvern. The goal is to trigger a rockslide away from us. It will draw the beast's attention, giving us the window we need to pass."
"And the diversion?" Himari asked, her voice tense.
Haruto pulled a small drone from his pack, no bigger than his hand. "This will get its attention."
The guards nodded, their faces grim but determined, and began the perilous climb. Haruto turned to Himari. "Stay behind me. When the slide starts, we run. No hesitation."
He launched the drone, its tiny anti-grav emitters humming softly. He piloted it out over the chasm, then brought it swooping in towards the wyvern's head. It hovered just out of reach, emitting a series of high-frequency chirps.
The wyvern's massive eye snapped open, a slit of molten gold in a sea of rock. It let out a low, guttural growl, its head rising to track the annoying, buzzing intruder. It was annoyed, but not yet fully enraged.
"Now!" Haruto sent the command via his comms.
High above, Kaito armed the charge and pushed it over the edge. It tumbled down the scree slope, its seismic pulse triggering a cascade of rock and debris. A deafening roar filled the air as tons of rock crashed down the mountainside, a hundred meters away from their position.
The wyvern, its parental instincts screaming, whipped its head towards the sound of the rockslide, letting out a furious, earth-shaking roar. It saw the threat to its nest and launched itself into the air with a powerful beat of its leathery wings, soaring towards the disturbance.
"Go!" Haruto yelled.
They sprinted, their boots pounding on the narrow stone path. They ran past the now-empty nest, the sheer scale of the eggs sending a shiver of fear down their spines. The air thrummed with the beat of the wyvern's wings as it circled the rockslide, searching for the source of the threat.
They didn't stop running until they had put a kilometer of winding mountain passes between them and the wyvern's nest. They collapsed behind a cluster of boulders, chests heaving, adrenaline singing in their veins. They had faced one of the mountain's apex predators and survived, not through brute force, but through calculated, technological misdirection.
As they caught their breath, Haruto checked his wrist-mounted scanner. The distress beacon was stronger now, its signal clearer. They were close.
"Look," Himari said, pointing towards a neighboring peak.
There, wedged into a deep crevice near the summit, was a mangled, scorched piece of metal that was unmistakably the forward cockpit section of an Imperial escape pod. A thin, pathetic wisp of smoke curled up from a makeshift camp set up beside it. They had found it.