The forest at night wore a different face than it did by day.
Beneath the shade of the trees, where not even moonlight could seep through.
Theron was gliding soundlessly through the darkness.
‘The Section 3 bastards’ first Search Party...... moves along the eastern stream.’
Isaac’s voice was still vivid in his ears.
―We sweep them all from the very first day. The Search Parties go in three directions. The eastern stream, the southern ridge, and the rocky area.
Kindly enough, it was as if the prey had called out its own routes of its own accord.
The corners of Theron’s mouth rose faintly.
‘Then...... I’ll just have to eat them up in order.’
Soon after, Theron, who had been moving along, suddenly stopped in his tracks.
The stream before his eyes.
It was subtly different from the waterway in his memory.
‘......The watercourse hugs the right side.’
His past life.
The terrain of this test site was a place he had run through so many times that the soles of his feet remembered it.
Back then, the stream had definitely flowed alongside the rocky area on the left.
‘Well...... it was two or three years ago, after all.’
A single flood could change a waterway as much as it liked.
He would refer to his memories, but trust what he saw with his own eyes.
Theron revised the map in his head and seeped back into the darkness.
And before long.
TRAMP. TRAMP.
Footsteps came from beyond the darkness.
‘......Four in total?’
From the weight and interval of the footsteps alone, their number and builds took shape in his mind.
‘The bastard in the lead is heavy on his right foot...... and the last one is scared.’
His footsteps kept clinging to the person in front of him.
It was because he was instinctively afraid.
Theron climbed up a tree without a sound and looked down at the path the bastards would pass through.
The Section 3 Search Party.
Wooden swords in hand and eyes darting around.
‘For a Search Party...... they’re clumsy.’
But that was only natural.
The Trainees here had never yet learned how to ‘search.’
Theron, on the other hand, had led the Shadow Knight Order in his past life and had repeated how to search and how to hunt hundreds of times over.
Soon, the moment the Search Party passed beneath the tree.
TAP.
Theron’s figure dropped down without a sound.
THWACK—!
The edge of his hand drove into the back of the neck of the frightened one at the very rear.
He caught the collapsing body with one hand and laid it down without a sound.
WHOOSH—!
Before the next bastard could even sense something was wrong and turn around, Theron’s body had already slipped in close against his chest.
WHAP—! THWACK—!
Solar plexus. Jaw.
With exactly two strikes, the two of them buckled at the knees without even being able to scream.
“Wh-what the......!”
All that remained was the one in the lead.
The guy hurriedly raised his wooden sword.
From the tension packed into his shoulders and the angle at which he had raised it alone, the trajectory the sword would draw was plain to see.
‘A habit of chopping down with brute force from a high guard.......’
Most Trainees of this age swung their swords like this.
Theron watched the guy’s attack and moved half a step to the side.
WHOOSH—!
He had moved a mere half step, yet the guy’s wooden sword failed to even graze his shoulder and cleaved through empty air.
And then.......
THWACK—!
Theron’s elbow struck squarely upward into the guy’s jaw.
THUD.
Four.
Truly, four had fallen in the blink of an eye.
Theron searched the inner pockets of the fallen guys and retrieved their Tokens.
‘Four, for starters.’
Next, he dragged the bastards deep into the bushes, laid them down, and scattered fallen leaves over the traces he had left behind.
They weren’t dead.
They simply wouldn’t be returning.
Theron knew well what would bloom in the mind of whoever was in command when a Search Party went ‘missing.’
‘Anxiety...... makes people all the more impatient.’
***
The path toward the southern ridge.
Theron’s pace had grown faster than at first.
From the moment the first Search Party’s return was delayed, time was no longer on Theron’s side.
‘The second one...... won’t work with the same method.’
The terrain of the ridge was different from the streamside.
Trees were sparse and the view was open, so the move of pouncing from a tree wouldn’t work.
But that didn’t matter to Theron.
If the terrain changed, all he had to do was change how he hunted.
Soon, having arrived at the entrance of the ridge, Theron casually dropped something in the middle of the path.
One of the Tokens he had just retrieved from the Section 3 Trainees.
Then he laid himself down in a hollowed-out shadow beside the ridge and held his breath.
How much time had passed?
“......Huh? Hey, look at that.”
“Isn’t that a Token? Why would something like that be lying on the ground.......”
The three members of the southern Search Party stopped in their tracks.
A dropped Token.
There were two possibilities as to what it meant.
Either someone had dropped it, or it was a trap.
“Isn’t it a trap?”
“Where would anyone even hide around here? It’s wide open.”
The guys’ gazes swept the surroundings.
An open ridge with neither trees nor rocks.
There seemed to be nowhere for a person to hide.
But the guys didn’t know.
That hiding was not about concealing oneself, but about exploiting the habits of the eye.
A person’s eyes sweep across their own eye level; they never suspect the shadows at their feet.
Soon, the moment one of the guys bent down toward the Token.
WHOOSH—!
The shadow at their feet sprang upright.
THWACK—! WHAP—!
There wasn’t even a scream.
The bastard who had bent down, on the back of the neck.
The bastard who had turned around in surprise, in the solar plexus.
He saw the last remaining guy put a whistle in his mouth.
‘Can’t have that.’
WHIZZ—!
The pebble Theron threw knocked the whistle away with precision, and before the gaping mouth could even close, the edge of his hand came down on the nape of the guy’s neck.
THUD.
‘That makes seven.’
Theron even retrieved the Token he had used as bait and quietly caught his breath.
The first had been an ambush, and the second, a lure.
He cut them off while changing his methods, so that they wouldn’t even realize they had fallen to the same hunter.
That was how ‘something of unknown identity’ took root and grew in the opponent’s mind.
***
At the same time.
Section 3’s main camp.
Isaac, who had been sitting on high ground in the rocky area, suddenly opened his closed eyes.
“......”
“What’s wrong, Isaac?”
The underling beside him asked cautiously.
Isaac didn’t answer.
Instead, he slowly swept his gaze over the forest steeped in darkness.
Thirty minutes had passed since the eastern Search Party’s scheduled time of return.
That meant they had either gotten lost or run into Trainees from another Section......
That was what his head was telling him, but.
‘......No.’
A certain chilling feeling was telling him a different answer.
Getting lost was something they’d have no excuse for even if they died, and if they had run into other guys.......
There definitely would have been some kind of noise.
Yet the forest was...... too quiet.
“Any word from the southern ridge team?”
“Not yet. If everything goes as planned, they should be back soon.”
“No, they won’t be coming back.”
“......Huh?”
Isaac rose from his seat.
The silence of the forest.
He hadn’t liked that silence for a while now.
It was because it felt less like a natural silence and more like someone was deliberately erasing the sounds.
Isaac’s eyes sank coldly.
His senses were telling him.
That something...... was definitely happening.
‘Of course.’
He had no evidence for it.
It was merely a hunch.
SWISH.
Isaac straightened himself up and spoke to the Trainee beside him.
“Call back the rocky area team. And from now on, we double the guard around the main camp.”
“Huh? Then what are you going to do about the Token hunt......?”
The fellow Trainee asked Isaac.
But at his question, Isaac raised the corners of his mouth and let out a scoff.
“Hunt?”
But soon, the smile that had lingered on his face disappeared.
Then Isaac said.
“Because I think the ones being hunted right now...... are us.”
“......”
The fellow Trainee swallowed dryly and looked at Isaac. At that, Isaac turned his gaze and looked at the forest dyed in darkness.
Where might that unknown ‘one’ be by now?
“......This is interesting.”
He could have been flustered by the unexpected situation, but Isaac was confident.
A small variable had arisen, but in the end, he would be the one to win this test.
Before long.......
RUSTLE.
Isaac slowly began to walk off somewhere.
***
Meanwhile, Section 5’s defensive position in the west.
“......Perka.”
Renil, who had been watching the darkness from behind a rock, called out in a low voice.
“The bushes to the northwest. That’s the third time now.”
“I saw.”
Perka answered quietly.
The swaying bushes.
The texture of the movement was too different for it to be the wind, and it was too cautious to be a beast.
“It’s Section 1.”
Tioren, who had been silent the whole time, spat out curtly.
“I saw during the day. The shoe prints of the guys over there. Same pattern.”
“......Why does it have to be Section 1, of all of them?”
Renil scowled.
Section 1.
A place considered to be a cut above Section 5 in both the number of Trainees and average skill.
No, in truth, every Section was rated higher than them.
Perka counted the presences in the darkness as he recalled the words Theron had left before he departed.
―When those bastards come, don’t take them head-on. The position is the bait, and your weapon is the terrain.
“......Let’s do as Theron taught us.”
After all, they had been able to come this far entirely thanks to what Theron had taught them.
When Perka gestured, Renil and Tioren, along with the squad members, silently seeped into their respective positions.
The air of the darkened forest was changing little by little.
***
TAK—!
Theron was looking down at the terrain below the ridge from the spot where he had laid out the second Search Party.
The rocky area revealed by the moonlight.
The collapsed cliff at its far edge.
‘......Was it there?’
Suddenly, a memory was pulled up as if caught on a fishhook.
His past life.
Had it been several years after this test ended?
There had been an incident in which a Trainee happened to discover ‘that’ in this test site, and the whole of Hell Island had been turned upside down.
‘Exactly where it was...... my memory’s hazy.’
Back then, it had been someone else’s business to Theron.
But this time was different.
‘It’s worth checking...... before the test ends.’
Token hunting and treasure hunting.
Theron’s goal was to secure both in a single test.
Originally, there had been no need to do it now, but since the test had changed, the plan had to change as well.
It was just as Theron was gathering up the fragments of memory and about to turn around.
“......!”
A chill shot up his spine.
A gaze.
The texture of a sense groping in this direction from across the forest, from the direction of the rocky area.
The distance was great.
It was a distance at which he couldn’t possibly be seen.
Yet he could feel it on his skin.
‘......Isaac.’
A low laugh flitted across Theron’s lips.
It had been the same in his past life.
On the battlefield, that guy’s senses had always been faster than his eyes.
Back in the days when he had entrusted his back to him, nothing could have been more reassuring.
‘Who knew he’d be this much of a nuisance as an enemy.’
Once he confirmed that two Search Parties had been cut off, the guy would not send out more underlings.
He would eliminate any situation that could become a variable as much as possible, and come out himself to deal with it for certain.
That was the kind of person Isaac was.
Theron tucked the last Token away in his clothes and looked into the darkness.
It was earlier than planned, but not bad.
He was an opponent Theron would have to face at the end of this test anyway.
But it was at that moment.
TWEEEEET—! TWEEEET—! TWEEEET—!
From afar, the shrill sound of a whistle split the night sky three times.
Theron’s head turned reflexively.
The direction was west.
It was where Section 5’s defensive position was.
Three whistles.
It was the signal he had agreed upon with Perka.
―Under attack. Hard to hold out.
‘......Already?’
It was faster than he had expected.
It wasn’t Section 3.
Isaac’s forces were still in the rocky area, so it was a different Section that had struck Section 5.
Theron’s eyes narrowed.
In the west, Perka’s group was being cornered, and from behind, Isaac was on the move searching for them.
Should he go back?
Or should he press forward?
In the darkness, Theron slowly caught his breath.