Chapter 98: Bias

Eren woke up bright and early the next morning. His spirits were high. His mood was great. He immediately got up out of his hovel and walked out into their camp.

The campfire had turned to ash at this point. He looked around and found that nobody was here. He was completely and absolutely alone.

Then a few seconds later, Celeste and Sierra came in from the outside tunnel carrying a bucket of fish in their hands.

"Eren! You’re awake!"

"I hope you like fish as breakfast. We got a deal and bought the entire bucket for just 40 sunspores!" Sierra said.

They both walked towards the campfire and began feeding it more wood for kindling. Then, with a flint and steel, Sierra fired up the campfire once again, bringing the much needed warmth here in the Subterranean Burrows.

"Where are the others?" he asked them.

"They’ll be here soon," Celeste said. "We took it upon ourselves to gather a few more resources for our journey later. I would have woken you up, but you just looked so comfortable sleeping so I eventually let you lay still."

Sierra laughed. "You must have been really tired from yesterday. You must have slept for 12 hours!"

It wasn’t from exhaustion. Eren extended his sleep only because he wanted to finish up his training in the Mind Palace. If he could sleep more, he would have.

"Abe, Henry, and the others are out there buying a few more stuff," Sierra said.

"We only told them to buy some vegetables and herbs," Celeste said.

Eventually, the three of them started cooking the fish in the campfire. It was quite surprising to see that there were fishes here in the Subterranean Burrows. But then again, if beef and pork were here, then that meant there were cows and pigs somewhere around those Territories.

"Where are they?" Sierra asked. She was starting to get worried at this point. "They should be here by now."

"Yeah... Something weird is going on," Celeste said, frowning.

They both stood up, getting ready to go out back into the Pitted Cavern to see what had happened to the rest of the ground, when all of a sudden, they just came walking in from the tunnel.

"Tori! Sky! Bernadette" Sierra shouted. "What took you guys so long?!"

Eren observed the group. They seemed to be unhurt. But there was a sense of defeat and disgruntlement from all of them.

Henry spoke for the rest of them. "We... got a little bit sidetracked. We ended up going through one of the tunnels in the hopes discovering an undiscovered Territory."

"WHAT?!" Sierra shouted.

Abe scratched his head guiltily. "We just felt that.... We weren’t doing much for the group. Only Eren and Celeste were finishing those puzzles and getting those flags.

So, the least we could do is do a little bit of scouting. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I know that it’s a stupid decision to do without everyone else knowing, but we just felt so helpless."

Tori and Bernadette looked towards Sierra. "Sorry! But he’s right. We want to contribute too! It’s our test as well. We’ll all fail if we don’t do our best."

"Still!" Sierra ostracized. "Don’t you know how incredibly dangerous that is? And it’s not even—"

Paul then gave her a tight-lipped smile. "But we did end up finding an unclaimed Territory."

Sierra stopped her words completely.

"We happened upon a new Territory that has a big field of rice! It was very big!" Paul continued.

"So big that we could even see a mountain in the distance!" said Bernadette.

It was at this point that both Sierra and Celeste were completely stunned into silence.

If what they said was true, then this single Territory might win them the game completely! A Territory big enough to have mountains would probably be the same equivalent of a hundred of their own camp right now!

"Is that true?!" Celeste said. She was starting to get excited.

"Yes," Abe said. But he wasn’t as excited as her. "Unfortunately, we couldn’t go very far. We remembered what Eren said about traps, so we were careful not to go anywhere around that place."

Sky turned to Sierra. "We immediately wanted to go back here and inform you guys so that we could hopefully conquer this Territory. But..."

"That’s when they arrived," said Abe bitterly. "Dantes’ group. There were hundreds of them. They immediately spotted us while we were waiting near the entrance of the tunnel."

"We tried to tell them that we had dibs on this Territory," Bernadette pushed. "But they didn’t care. They just pushed through us and entered the Territory."

"And when we tried to step inside, one of the Proctors stopped us! They told us that we can’t enter!" Henry fumed.

There were no dibs in the Second Test. Whoever obtained the flag would eventually control the territory. There were no rules stating that only the first one who discovered the Territory could conquer it.

BUT. There were also no rules stating that other groups were not allowed inside the Territory while another group was trying to conquer it.

Dantes’ group was right to enter the Territory. But the Proctor was wrong in telling them they couldn’t enter.

This was a classic case of the Proctor influencing something here in the Second Test.

Eren’s intuition was correct. Proctors weren’t as impartial as they should be. They could have their own favorites, and therefore, they could use their authority to help them advance further and faster than everybody else.

For what reason, Eren still didn’t know yet. Perhaps it was just a personal thing. Perhaps the Proctor was simply a fan of Dantes. But it could also be possible that they struck a deal with each other.

There were many things Eren still did not know yet here on Earth.

"I wouldn’t worry so much," he assured Abe and the others. "A territory that big is way too much for us to handle for the time being. We wouldn’t be able to conquer it, much less keep it for ourselves. It will only paint a target on our backs."

Very much the same as how, now, Dantes had a target painted on his back.