Several hundred meters above the floor of the glacial valley, Kyle, Steve carrying the hostage, and the hostage himself plummeted rapidly through the freezing wind and snow. Not far from them, more than a dozen train cars tumbled down the mountainside in explosions.
They had experienced plenty of high-altitude parachute jumps from aircraft, but this time, they had no parachuting equipment at all.
Even with a Super Soldier's physique, their strength only fell within the peak limits attainable by humans. Their tolerance for lethal danger was merely three to five times that of ordinary people.
Falling from a cliff several hundred meters high should have been certain death.
Until the moment before jumping from the train car, Steve still could not understand what means of escape they could possibly have in such a situation.
Yet Steve jumped without hesitation, because ever since the Training Base, Kyle had continuously created miracles. Like a pioneer, Kyle always walked ahead, leading and teaching him as he moved forward.
More importantly, he trusted Kyle. That was enough.
Kyle himself was not thinking as much as Steve. After jumping from the train car, he spread his arms and faced the sky, as though waiting for something.
At that moment, high above the glacial mountain range.
Whoosh!
A pale-blue beastly silhouette tore through the atmospheric clouds at tremendous speed. Its sharp golden eagle eyes looked down, and its enormous feather-covered wings suddenly tucked in as it dove headfirst toward the ground.
Like an arrow, it broke the sound barrier in an instant, leaving rings of white vapor in the sky.
"It's here." Seeing the clouds above split open in a narrow slash, Kyle smiled.
He had summoned Blue Eagle long ago and had it scout the skies within several miles of him, effectively creating a personal air-defense zone.
After all, he was now a prime target of both the German army and Hydra. A month earlier, enemy forces had even dispatched fighter planes to the battlefield, intending to bomb Steve and him to death.
Blue Eagle possessed extremely powerful aerial maneuverability. In a one-on-one fight with a single-seat fighter, the plane would be destroyed from behind by its sharp claws before it even caught sight of Blue Eagle.
Creatures summoned by Creature Cards naturally felt close to their cardholder, obeyed them, and shared a subtle telepathic connection with them. However, keeping a Creature Card summoned for long periods required feeding it regularly.
"What's coming?" Steve asked in surprise. His eyes had remained fixed below as the valley floor rushed closer in his vision.
Before Kyle could explain, an enormous shadow covered them in the next instant, accompanied by a powerful gust of wind.
Screech—
Blue Eagle let out a piercing cry and rapidly approached with flapping wings. It first caught Kyle with its body, then tightly seized Steve and the hostage together in one claw.
"My God, what kind of bird is that?" Steve was badly startled. Turning back to look at Blue Eagle, whose outspread wings spanned a full ten meters, he gaped in shock.
Chirp, chirp. Blue Eagle glanced at Steve in its claw, then beat its blue-feathered wings downward, shredding the snow and wind beneath it and sending a localized hurricane surging into the sky.
Steve looked a little dazed and said hesitantly, "Why do I feel like it's looking down on me?"
"It's an eagle, more or less," Kyle said as he sat on Blue Eagle's neck. "It's very intelligent. It has the intelligence of a ten-year-old human child."
"I've never seen such a huge eagle." Now that he was out of danger, Steve relaxed considerably and said with a wry smile, "Besides, why do you get to sit on it while I have to be held in its claws?"
"Well..." Kyle paused as though lost in memory, then began making up a story. "I met it in a mountain forest when I was young. Back then, Blue Eagle was only the same size as an ordinary eagle. Later, it was exposed to radioactive chemicals from a factory, and its body mutated. Not only did its feathers change color, but it also grew larger and larger."
"So that's how it is." Steve nodded. Without any doubt or further questions, he simply accepted Kyle's words.
"Steve, when we get back, I hope you won't tell anyone about Blue Eagle, including Carter."
Kyle stroked the feathers atop Blue Eagle's head and got to the point. "Blue Eagle won't harm humans, and it only eats wild prey from the mountains. If certain people learn of its existence, they may try every possible way to hunt it down."
"Alright. I won't tell anyone," Steve agreed readily.
Kyle also secretly breathed a sigh of relief. A creature like Blue Eagle had appeared a little too early for this world.
After the twenty-first century, when mutations and technology emerged endlessly, mythical gods like Thor and Loki came to Earth for casual visits, and aliens and magic broadened humanity's horizons, Blue Eagle's existence would no longer seem so extraordinary.
After carrying the three of them out of the valley, Blue Eagle set them down on the ground near the snowy mountains, then flapped its wings and vanished into the high clouds.
Kyle and Steve took the target hostage to their predetermined meeting place, joined up with Fury's unit, and then returned to the base.
That evening, in the base's underground operations department.
Massive battle maps covered the walls like wallpaper. On the map of enemy Factory Base operations, the areas marked by six flagpoles had been circled and crossed out, indicating they had been eliminated.
"That's the situation. Sergeant Bucky Barnes fell into a snowy mountain valley and died during the mission. The target hostage has now been handed over to the base's specialists for interrogation."
"Hydra has now broken away from the German army. According to the intelligence we have, Hydra's leader, Red Skull, still possesses a mysterious object capable of creating Infinite Energy."
"Do we need to seize it? I still remember my grudge against Red Skull."
"Of course. Even if we do not intend to produce Infinite Energy ourselves, we cannot allow an organization as dangerous as Hydra to misuse it however it pleases."
At a brightly lit operations table, Kyle, Steve, Carter, and the Colonel Officer who commanded the base sat in chairs, discussing the situation.
"Major Kyle, Lieutenant Steve, please prepare yourselves!" The Colonel Officer looked sternly at Kyle and Steve across from him and said sincerely, "If we learn Red Skull's whereabouts from the target of this mission, we will need the two of you—a shield and a sword—to strike."
The shield represented American justice and protection, while the sword represented American strength and slaughter.
Kyle and Steve did not hold exceptionally high ranks, but their prestige and reputation in the country far surpassed those of many generals and officers.
Therefore, the base commander and Colonel Officer put on no airs and treated them as equals.
Steve nodded. "Understood. I'll prepare in advance. Once we have news, I'll leave immediately."
"The target is Red Skull. Even without you saying so, I would insist on going," Kyle said coldly.
He still had not collected on their last score!
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