1 Journey to Mount Everest

" Mihir, do you remember the days we used to go for a walk to breathe in the cool air ", Samar said. " Yeah, I remember those days when little perspiration was all that we wanted at the end of the day, as sitting in cabins all day seemed too daunting. ", Mihir replied. " Do you think it was right for us to start this tenacious adventure? My fingers feel numb as a rock. ", Samar asked. Mihir-" Keep rubbing your fingers it helps in circulating the blood. And there are no reasons to doubt it, it was our decision after a sincere look into the problems we were going to face while climbing Mount Everest, and now that we are doing it, it should be thrilling for you. "

Soon after Mihir and Samar decided that they would climb Mount Everest they went on a search for an agency that would help them with everything. The agency that helped climber from all over the world to climb the Mount Everest, the agency's name was "Climbers Dream" when they had visited Climbers Dream they met Sheetal there, she was to explain to them what lied ahead of them, Mihir and Samar debated quite a lot on if they should go to the summit and after an hour of cross-examining their plan, it was decided that they will muster all the courage and willpower and come back successful, from the Mount Everest Challenge.

Sheetal from Climbers dream explained the complete process of climbing Mount Everest, all the documents required, the physical fitness necessary, and all in all, all the money required for the equipment and sherpa to guide them throughout the journey.

Both the friends reached the Everest Base camp it was a hard enough journey till here (base camp ) already that they wanted to rest, but they had the briefing with their sherpa and also both boys wanted to know when their group would start to climb the mountain, their group was not that big, it had a handful of people and most were good climbers, unlike the two friends. The sherpa had called in a meeting to address the problems that lay ahead and also to brief the climbers on the basics of living in the camp for the next 4 to 5 weeks. Apart from Mihir and Samar, there were two couples and one lone wolf in the pack. The couples were Vaishali, Shivam and Rudy, Vicky and the lone wolf was Shekhar. The briefing started, the first thing that the sherpa said to the group was to remember there is always next time to climb Mount Everest but they had only one life as if their health deteriorates they will be left with no other option than to cancel their plans to reach the summit and head back. The sherpa also told the group about the importance of their equipment as a failure in any of the equipment will lead to failure of the mission.

Samar was rubbing his fingers as Mihir had suggested.

Mihir was on the ladder crossing the crevice while Samar was waiting for his turn to cross the crevice. The ladder laid flat on the two surfaces of the snow of the mountain.

A sudden gust of wind toppled the ladder along with Mihir. While Mihir fell into the crevice. Samar shouted," Are you alright?"." Yeah, I am alright, could you help me up?", Mihir said " Sure wait for the sherpa to arrive, then we can bring you up, I can't do it alone," said Samar. As he said that, the ice beneath Samar broke and both Mihir and Samar fell deeper down into the crevice and reached a small opening, the opening was an opening to an ancient cave. Both Mihir and Samar were shocked by what had just happened, without caring about climbing back up both the friends went into the cave silently. After entering about a hundred meters, they saw a shiny sword pendant and not just one, two such pendants both with a different kind of design on it. "Did you see the eerie pendants there?" Mihir asked."Don't you think they are glistening abnormally?",Samar replied with the question."I think we should take it", Mihir.

Mihir and Samar picked up one pendant each. As they picked up the pendant their mobiles beeped and vibrated. Samar took his phone out first to see a notification reading "New app, Incremental Game installed." Samar went ahead and clicked on the notification to enter the app. Then there was a loading screen and a text below the loading bar, read, "the first installation may take several minutes please be patient".

Samar than Looked towards Mihir, Mihir was busy meddling with the pendant and soon Mihir pressed something on the pendant, which they later realized was a button, there came a female voice from the pendant saying "Please Login to the Incremental game app first" Both the friends were visibly astonished at what had happened Mihir looked towards Samar with his mouth agape while Samar looked towards Mihi.

And then a vibration from Samar's smartphone took their attention. " Please give your biometrics and Login to proceed further, to give your biometric, first hold the pendent for fifteen seconds to give your current heart rate and then pierce your finger on the tip of the sword pendant. ", appeared in Samar's smartphone.

They both had not given enough inspection to the pendant to know that it had a pointy sword that could take your biometrics sample. Samar after reading the instruction on the phone was a little dubious about piercing his finger so he asked Mihir to check his phone. While waiting a thought crossed Samar's mind that, In the middle of the mountain with no wifi or cell service available the same application had installed into both their smartphones, and that too somehow seemed to be linked to the pendant they had just found. All of it started to seem a bit eerie to Samar. As Samar was thinking all this Mihir had loaded the application and was about to pierce his finger. " Wait don't do it just yet ", Samar said. But it was already too late Mihir had given his blood sample to the Incremental Sword. The message in Mihir's Smartphone read "< Congratulations You, Mihir have submitted your DNA sample to the Incremental Game, Welcome to the Incremental Game>" Samar was also looking into Mihir's phone and saw everything that happened. Now he also wanted to give his DNA sample. Actually, Samar was Ok with the game at first because he had played a lot of incremental games in his office while waiting, and sometimes even at work hours, but as soon as the game asked for biometric using the strange sword he knew this game was not your regular game. Then again Samar felt the buzzing of his phone when he opened the phone to look what was it this time, he saw a timer[countdown] with thirty seconds felt in it, on having seen his friend do it and not wanting to be left out he too gave his blood sample and heart rate to the mysterious pendant. Then the message that displayed on the phone was,"<Congratulations You, Samar have submitted your DNA sample to the Incremental Game, Welcome to the Incremental Game.>"

After taking the blood sample the Login was over and the two swords pendant were now glistening with a small blue light.

But now fifteen minutes had passed their sherpa had come along with the group. Now both the friends heard someone shouting at a distance so they went back to the opening of the cave. Rudy, a group member said," Mihir are you down there". Mihir yelled back "yes we are down here". The sherpa yelled, " Stay where you are, we will bring down a ladder to help you both climb up " while Mihir and Samar were waiting down in the crevice they both realized that they might not be able to continue the climb, as both of them had received substantial loss of equipment, some of the equipment had just fallen out of the bag while others were broken due to the major impact from the ground when they fell.

Still, both knew they were both lucky to even be alive. Soon the ladder was brought down to help the two boys up. Shivam and Vaishali, a couple in the group asked the two boys how they fell into the crevice and reached so deep into the crevice that the group had to attach four ladder end to end to help the boys up. Mihir said," A strong wind blew and I wasn't able to maintain my balance, this toppled my ladder and I fell into the crevice, and the hook with which I was hooked into the safety rope also broke", then Samar said " after Mihir had fallen I was waiting for the group to arrive and all of a sudden the ice beneath me broke and so I unhooked myself from the line rope as if I hadn't done that I would have been hanging in the center of the big crevice which had just been created" The group then understood what had happened and stopped asking questions about their fall but moved on to the bigger question, " Will you be able to continue your ascent to the summit?". But the sherpa cleared the air and said that they were lucky that they were breathing. And that now they will have to descend down to the base camp as some of their equipments were broken and the boys were also in bad shape. After reaching base camp they will have to return home as the season for climbing would have passed by then.