Chapter 341: Playing Around

"Hello, little girl. Sorry, but you are out." Maya smiled, looking at the blond girl inside the bush.

"..." The girl, who turned out to be Clarice, came out. "Oh..."

"Quite well done, except for the fact that you need to control your energy further. You need to blend your energy with nature. The beasts are quite sensitive about it." Maya nodded.

Clarice looked down, checking her time and rank.

[Clarice Estella - 18th (1:59:21)]

She politely nodded to Maya, acknowledging her defeat. At the same time, she couldn’t help but click her tongue because not only had she failed to get into the top ten, but she also couldn’t last for two hours.

In the end, she dejectedly returned to the city. There were still 17 more people who hadn’t been found.

As Head Instructor Ryan said, the students wouldn’t be able to escape from the instructors. They might last for quite a while, but the instructors had a much better sense of their surroundings.

They were bound to slip up sooner or later.

The problem was that Head Instructor Ryan underestimated Auric.

The instructors indeed continued to find one student after another. It only took them another ten minutes to determine the top ten.

Among them, Gloria, Theressa, Selena, and Timothy still remained. They were trying their best to last for another two hours, hoping that the instructors wouldn’t find them.

However, they received yet another notification, showing that there were only nine of them left.

A few minutes later, another person was caught.

Still, among the survivors, they realized something. Auric’s group hadn’t been found.

They were wondering if the instructors were holding back, but considering Auric’s conflict with Head Instructor Ryan, it was clear that the latter didn’t plan to let Auric get away.

In other words, Dermania would use everything they had to find Auric.

The problem was that Auric was truly nowhere to be found.

Selena was caught first, then Timothy followed two minutes later.

"Where are they?" Head Instructor Ryan gritted his teeth. "Have you found them?"

"I couldn’t find them at all." Another instructor shook his head helplessly.

The people who were watching the livestream couldn’t help but get angry again, especially Dermania’s citizens.

[What the hell are you doing? Can’t you just find these four people?!]

[It’s understandable that Esfrata has six people in the top ten, considering this is the challenge they’ve set, so they must have practiced a lot. But this is ridiculous.]

[I know, right? How could they not even find those four? It seems they’re in the same group, so they must have shared a hiding spot. I refuse to believe they’re hiding in different spots.]

[Don’t worry. We still have Gloria Schaff.]

[Who the hell is still relying on that useless girl? She’s a freaking traitor. I bet she is hiding with those guys from Esfrata.]

Head Instructor Ryan was doing his best to find them, but he really had no idea where to find Auric. He had circled around the city five times, but even after spreading his energy wide, he couldn’t detect their energy at all.

"Are they cheating?"

Supervisor Jacob was sitting on top of a tree as he picked up on his body cam that had been rolling all this time.

He also opened his phone, trying to watch the livestream.

"Hey! Can you see me?" Supervisor Jacob looked at the camera. He kept glancing at the phone to see if his face was the one being streamed. It looked like the organizers knew what they were doing. They immediately changed it to him, while waiting for another person to get caught.

[We can see you!]

[It’s Jacob Heyes.]

[Hello!]

Supervisor Jacob smiled. "Well, it’s good that you can see me now. Pardon this old man for taking over, but I am too tired to continue searching for the other students. I’ll let the others handle the rest. There are only two left anyway."

[Four? There are six students who haven’t been found yet!]

[You deserve to rest. Just take it easy, man. You’ve done a great job. No need to find the students from our country.]

[Esfrata for the win.]

Supervisor Jacob chuckled. "Well, you’re misunderstanding the reason. Just like the students from other countries, our students had been training for this challenge during the training camp.

"It’s just... even with the instructors combining their forces, we haven’t been able to find them. I don’t know if we’re just too incompetent or if he’s just that good at hiding. I believe it’s the latter.

"He has quite a sad situation after all, considering the assassination and kidnapping attempts he has managed to escape. He should have developed his own unique method of hiding, so rather than doing my best here, I’d rather not find him and expose that method.

"But yes, he’s a student from my country. No way I’m going to find him."

[Aren’t you supposed to be neutral?]

[Sad Auric! Auric for the win!]

[Wait. Doesn’t that mean the other three are hiding with him? They know that secret?]

[We will see whether our instructors are incompetent or Auric is just that good!"

Supervisor Jacob shrugged. "Neutral, eh? I have caught three students from Esfrata as well. It’s not a matter of being neutral or not. You can think of it as having a bias, but that’s all. I’m not cheating so that my students can win, you know?"

[So, we are going to have a podcast with this guy?]

[Why not? The search is getting boring since they’ve found so many people.]

[Right? Better watch him than search for nothing.]

Supervisor Jacob chuckled. "Well, you can ask me a few questions. The other two students should be found within at most twenty more minutes. As for Auric, I doubt they can even find him, which is good."

Supervisor Jacob’s prediction came true. A few minutes later, Theressa was found. Gloria ended up getting caught ten minutes after that.

In other words, the competition had changed to 4 versus 124. All 124 instructors were actively searching for him, but most instructors from Esfrata were doing it half-heartedly, knowing that they had won.

On the other hand, the instructors from the other countries were doing everything they could to find the four remaining students. They would feel ashamed if they ended up failing to find them.

Unfortunately for them, no matter how hard they tried, they simply couldn’t find Auric and the others.

When they announced the results, a lot of people couldn’t believe it.

"This..." Gloria crossed her arms. She had never heard anything about this before. In other words, Auric still had a trump card he didn’t use during the hunting event.

Selena crossed her arms. "This is a problem..."

"Indeed. Esfrata has just gotten another glory like this."

"No. If he can hide that well, I won’t be able to kidnap him."

"..." The female student next to her had her eyebrows twitched. "I don’t think that’s the problem here."

"So, there are actually students who can evade the instructors?" Clarice narrowed her eyes. She thought, ’I now understand his confidence back then. If I let that situation escalate, there’s no telling what would happen to those two.’

Once the game was over, Auric immediately asked Katarina and the others to start filling in the empty space with the dirt before they left.

Of course, Lindwurm had been scouting the area on the surface as Auric waited until the instructors were gone first. It wasn’t that he didn’t want them to know his location, but he simply didn’t want them to know he was actually underground. They might start leveling the ground in the second round, after all.

Auric and the others were returning to their starting point.

Auric waved his hand with a smile. "We’re back. Thank you for your hard work."

"Oohhhh!" The students from Esfrata applauded him. It was true that they didn’t like Auric, but their opinions of him changed slightly because of the marathon.

In addition, Auric had done this to make their country proud. Of course, they also received a share of his glory.

That was why their opinions on Auric had improved a lot.

Head Instructor Ryan pointed at him. "We need to investigate you."

"I beg your pardon?" Auric frowned.

Even Supervisor Jacob turned solemn. "You can’t."

"I will. He’s suspected of hiding outside the designated area." Head Instructor Ryan harrumphed.

"He wasn’t!"

"Just because you can’t find him doesn’t mean he’s cheating." Supervisor Jacob shrugged. "Sometimes, you’ve gotta take the loss."

"In that case, prove it! Prove that he was hiding within the designated area. All the instructors here are excellent. There was no way he could hide from all of them."

"Well, I read the comments earlier. The kids today said something that I like. They said, git gud!" Supervisor Jacob imitated the way they said it, which was in contrast to his stern and menacing face. However, people couldn’t help but find it funny.

"Are you so scared that we will find any clues to your cheating?" Head Instructor Ryan glared at Supervisor Jacob.

"Why would I?" Supervisor Jacob shrugged. He wanted to continue, but Auric suddenly tugged his sleeve. Supervisor Jacob frowned and glanced back, finding Auric behind him.

"Don’t worry. It should be fine. At most, they can only determine our locations." Auric took off the device.

"You sure? Your method..."

"I didn’t cheat."

"Okay." Supervisor Jacob showed the device to him. "In that case, here you go. Investigate it openly. I won’t let you tamper with the evidence. There is a GPS over here, so we will just check the GPS."

Supervisor Jacob asked someone to come and plug in the device. Then, he showed it to everyone where Auric had been hiding all this time.

He was really hiding in the designated area.

"He has been staying still for the last few hours. No sign of moving." The instructor reported.

"See? There is no cheating here."

"He is cheating. That place should have been swept again and again. Do you think it’s normal to keep hiding there?!" Head Instructor Ryan gritted his teeth, denying the evidence. "He could have just dropped his own device and picked it up later!"

Obviously, there was a war of words between the two countries on the internet.

[Take the L, Dermania!]

[A bunch of cheaters!]

[Screw you. Just because you can’t do it, you suspect others cheat.]

[Sportsmanship shows you your class. It doesn’t seem Esfrata has any class.]

Auric smiled. Out of all the remarks he could make, he actually gave the one that allowed Auric to give a reasonable explanation to turn the situation around.

"Well, about that..." Auric scratched the back of his head. "I don’t exactly want to say it, but I guess I have no choice."

Head Instructor Ryan secretly smiled, thinking he had won.

However, Auric actually continued with such a nonchalant tone. "Actually, we were playing a game called Eclipse War. If you can, you just need to ask them about our accounts."

Auric took out his phone and logged in before showing them the screen. "This is my account and its ID. I just created it. Also, don’t look at my 10% win rate. I’ve just started playing, okay? It’s good enough to pass the time since we don’t exactly have anything else to do.

"That’s why we spent our time playing this game." Auric smiled. "That’s why we didn’t move. There was no need for us to move."

Everyone was dumbfounded. Even Supervisor Jacob couldn’t contain his shock.

[Is this guy bragging about the fact that he’s playing around while the others are doing their best just to not get caught?]

[The class is different indeed. Hahahaha, you guys from Dermania can do whatever you want, but you won’t be able to catch us.]

[Auric: Git gud. Maybe you can make me take it a bit more seriously.]

[HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!]

[I’m going to play this game just out of spite.]

Supervisor Jacob couldn’t help but laugh. If Auric had done this during the national training camp, he would be the one furious about it.

But seeing how Auric used it to attack the instructors from other countries, Supervisor Jacob couldn’t help but laugh out loud. It was so satisfying.

"Hahahahahaha!"