The sun was right at the top of our heads just when we arrived at what Billy mentioned to be the first out of three points where we would have to hike our way up. Even though it was not as steep as a cliff where he had to literally climb to the top of it, it was still quite steeper than the first slope where the aliens had attacked us earlier.
Billy did not let out any sweat due to the heat of the high noon, but I did although only a little. I have to admit however, that it was thanks to the light armor that made me felt like I was wearing a thin t-shirt, a wet-proof one, for that matter. It also made me think that perhaps my given codename had something relatable with the armor that was given to me as well.
We began to hike just when the time had approximately showed 00.05 p.m. As soon as I stepped my boots on the sloping ground, I noticed immediately that our challenge in hiking it was not the angle of the slope, but rather the slippery surface of the ground. Since we had to stay close to the river shore, it was undoubtedly inevitable for us to keep proceeding on wet pebbled grounds, which had seriously slippery surfaces and would give us a hindrance in continuing our way quickly.
With that being the case, we had to hike one by one and with quite some distance between us. If I were to assume the angle of the slope, I would say that it was in the range of thirty to thirty-five degrees based on how much and fast the pebbles rolled down the slope once in a while when we hiked up. It also took us around twenty minutes before we finally reached a flat surface again. The river was also a little wider on the upper level compared to the lower level, and somehow it also seemed to be deeper.
"I hope there are no bears around here." I said to Billy as he reached for my hand and helped me went up to the flat surface.
"Nope." Billy responded as he chuckled. "Although rare to be seen, the only animals you may find around here are small monkeys, and they are shy towards humans anyway."
The reason I asked if there were bears might seemed funny, but I had asked it with a couple of reasons in my mind. The first was to make sure if there were absolutely no other secondary threats towards our presence, since we already had both of our alerts against extraterrestrial beings. It would feel like just too much to handle should we have to also be on our guards against any large sized threatening wild animals.
The second reason was to make sure if in the worst case scenario, the villagers had all been wiped out, the two of us could be certain that the possibility of fatalities caused by wild animals could be eliminated. It just occurred to me to ask about it since the village shown in both of the footages seemed to be surrounded in a mountainous forest.
"I guess you were thinking about any possible threats besides the aliens, and if animals like bears could made investigation more complicated?" Billy said to me, as we began to proceed again.
"Well… I will be lying to myself if I say I was not…" I responded to him as I sighed. "But nevertheless, I am relieved now to know that there are no such animals."
"There are not so much of wild animals in this part of the country, at least not as much as in the more eastern part." He replied as he smiled.
"Ha… my consequences for lacking experiences in forest surroundings I suppose…" I answered to him as I chuckled.
At least on our way up to the higher level, we somehow managed to lighten up our moods especially since we had almost slipped down numerous times before we arrived on the flat ground. Strangely enough, I somehow had the feeling that Billy was aware of the exhausting atmosphere. Thus, he initiated that small talk with the hopes of at least alleviating our exhaustion from the encounter from earlier. The best thing was, it worked perfectly, at least for me.
We proceeded again for several minutes, as we began to look at our new surroundings as well. The first thing that I looked in more details was the wider river. I could be sure that the river on the higher flat ground probably had almost one and a half times wider than the river on the lower ground. I also noticed that the river stream was significantly faster on the higher level, something that could indicate that an area with steep drop of water flow, such as waterfall was nearby. When I asked Billy about it, he confirmed and said that we were supposed to be able to see the waterfall shortly.
The noise of the river stream was just getting louder with every step we took, indicating that we were indeed just about to see the first waterfall in a moment. I believe it was not until ten minutes before the sight of the vertical water flow source was able to be seen.
Before I saw the waterfall with my own eyes, I had thought that the loud river stream noise was due to water falling from the height of the waterfall. Instead, it was actually shorter than I had imagined and it was also actually the width of the falling water flow that made the amount of water falling from the upper level to be abundant, and thus making the noisy waterfall stream sound. I had expected the waterfall to be at least sixty feet in height, but as I had looked upon the actual, perhaps it was fifty or a little less than that.
The next thing that we did was to find some sort of a climbing nearby that we can use to get to the higher ground since we could no longer hike as the river shore ended with a rock wall. The only other alternative was to walk through the original trail which was obviously out of the question since we could not give guarantee at all if there were no aliens around that trail. With that in mind, we began to look for any rough vertical surfaces on the rock wall.
Thankfully, the rocky wall had more or less rough and jagged edges, with some visible cracks as well and therefore we were quite confident that we could get to the higher level by climbing the wall. However, since the wall was also pretty narrow, we had to climb it one by one, and I had the honor to climb first while Billy would follow from below.
I began by first grabbing hard the jagged edges exactly about six feet from the ground. I tried to feel the edges for a moment, and after I was sure that it was not too slippery because of the water splash from the waterfall, I started to climb up slowly. In each climb, I always first tried to feel the surfaces first, and then determined if I could climb up from there or to search for other jagged edges instead.
I had almost fallen twice when I mistakenly concluded a couple of cracks to be not slippery, but fortunately for me Billy was holding my left foot with his left hand and made me able to hold my balance. I also did not look at anything below me, as I did not want to lose my focus on climbing up the wall and wasting our time. After roughly ten minutes, we managed to get to the next higher ground. The river stream there was even faster than on the previous surface.
As if we were destined to be wet all day, just as we stood up straight by the river shore on the waterfall edge, a cloudy weather then surrounded the sky and it even did not take until a minute before rain began to fall. I only reacted with a sigh and closed my eyes for a while since I could only accept the fact that we would have to be completely soaked for the rest of our journey. Billy on the other hand, seemed to consider the change of weather as an excellent turn for our favor.
"Why did you sigh?" Billy looked at me, seemed to be completely undisturbed by the sudden change of weather.
"I actually do not prefer this kind of weather in the middle of an operation…" I responded to him as I looked up a little, staring at the dark gray sky. "
"The way I see it, the aliens may just have a harder time concealing themselves too, especially with this rate of rainfall." He replied to me as he smiled in confidence through the heavy rain.
I then fell silent for a little moment, before I could completely digest his words. Apparently, he meant to tell me that if the aliens were able to be seen underwater, then there would be a high chance that rain weather would also at least able to stain their stealth camouflaging. It was also at that moment that the thought of the difference of light refraction in air and water concept might be able to explain why we were able to see through their camouflage.
To put it simply, when we saw something that was partially submerged in water, we would tend to see that the thing appeared to be bent. The cause of that phenomenon was due to a change of light wave that was passing from air through the water called light refraction.
Assuming that the aliens were using some sort of equipment that could manipulate optical visions that would work on air, the reason they were still be able to be seen underwater was because the optical visions manipulation effect was also bent due to the light refraction effect. Therefore, although rather blurry, the six of us were able to see the aliens since there was a change in the angle where the optical visions manipulation effect had gone to.
With that being the case, I could then agree with what Billy had said. I was not sure if he was also thinking any similar thoughts with me, but I decided to share it with him once we had arrived at the village and found a place to take shelter with.
"Oh well. At least it was not accompanied by thunder." I said to him, as I could finally give out a smile.
Then, we continued along the river shore accompanied by the heavy rain. The noisy and fast river stream, and the high rate of rain that seemed to will not stop at any sooner slowly reminded me that we should not lose focus on our sights as well, since any sounds that could give a hint to the aliens' whereabouts were camouflaged by the noise from the nature.
"Something on your mind?" Billy asked me, as we were walking right by the river shore.
"There is, actually." I responded to him right away. "However, I guess it will be best if I told you later after we arrived at the village."
Billy only nodded as his response. We kept on going ahead, following several of the river turns along the way and meeting a couple of river forks as well – one with a slope right after it, and another without a slope. I asked to him if we were to pick the one with the slope, to which he confirmed it and said that it was indeed the second slope that he had mentioned earlier. Thankfully, the slope was much less steep and less slippery as well, two things that greatly gave us an advantage in our current situation.
"Keep your spirits up, Travis." Billy told me as I grabbed his hand to the higher ground level. "We are less than one kilometer left to the second waterfall, and about half a kilometer after that the last slope."
"Why? Because climbing the waterfall will be more challenging compared to the previous one?" I responded to him as I smiled a little.
"I would be more concerned about the slope if I were you." He replied with a rather serious tone. "But well, we will see it later."
As it turned out, some more time later when we had reached the waterfall we did indeed have a significantly easier time in climbing it. If only the river shore did not also ended by rock walls, we could have hiked it instead although still with a rather slower pace as it was not completely stood in vertical position. Then, not until five minutes later, we arrived at the third and the last slope. I immediately understood why Billy's face turned a bit down when he mentioned about it.
It was the sight of a severe landslide that covered both of the sides of the river shore, and roughly one third of the river, with the water flow bringing tiny parts of eroded soil as it continued down the stream, yet strangely did not seem to stain the crystal clear water, at least not so much. The landslide soil, combined with the current high rate of rain would most likely make the ground to be extremely slippery. To make matters worse, the slope was also the steepest compared to the previous two, with the angle of perhaps close to forty degrees.
"Did the Commander General tell you anything about this?" I asked Billy as I turned to him right in front of the landslide slope.
"No…" Billy sighed hard. "All of this happened around six months ago. There was a news that mentioned about a massive landslide in an area not too far from a village. However, since it was not considered to be that near to the settlement, the news about it faded out quickly."
"How could you guess that it was this slope just now?" I asked him again as I lifted both of my eyebrows, curious.
"It was just a hunch…" He answered me as he shook his head. "We have passed through several slopes, including by the trucks before we arrived at the red zone. None of them showed any signs of a pretty recent landslide that had taken place. I truly have hoped for the best, but… I guess the reality showed us that it is inevitable after all…"
I looked at the overall conditions of the landslide-covered river shore, and noticed that there were several large tree branches sticking out from the ground. Even though I could not be sure of how strong the branches were, I saw them as the only solution for us to be able to get to the higher ground. I then asked Billy to give me a boost to the first branch, to which he did and fortunately I managed to reach and was able to stand on the branch. I also made sure if the branch was strong enough for the two of us, and apparently it was.
I proceeded by telling Billy to dash as near as he could to the branch so that I could grab his hand and pulled him up to the branch. He made the dash, and was able to hike up the slippery soil quickly. However, he suddenly slipped just when he was less than one feet away from the branch end. I nearly failed to grab his hand, and it was all thanks to my sudden reflex to prone and stretched my arm towards his.
"That was a close call…" I said, as I groaned and began to pull him up with my left hand holding the branch hard.
"I owe you one…" he responded to me as he nodded with a face full of relieve.
Thankfully, the branch was apparently strong enough to support more than two persons at once as it was not budged at all by the roughly four minutes struggle in helping Billy to get up to the branch. With the first branch reached, I looked up to see the next large branch that we could use as a support. I then realized that we would have to at least reach three more branches before we could arrive at the higher ground. Using the same way, we eventually managed to step on the grounds of the higher level.
"Next time…" I said as I panted, "I will request a rope… and a hook…!"
"No kidding…" Billy responded as he began to walk again with a slow pace and patted me on the back.
By then, after about six minutes of walking straight by the river shore we could see the village in the distance. The problem was, we had to cross the river first in order to head to the village. Swimming was out of the option since the current was very strong, but fortunately after we walked again for around four more minutes, we found a fallen large tree trunk which posed as a bridge across the river.
After a careful and slow crossing, we were finally able to reach the other side of the river. It was also then when I looked at my watch again and saw that the time was then 01.27 p.m. The first and second obstacle before us had passed, and I wondered on what the next ones could be…