Chapter 297: The Masked Maniac II

When Aria devised this strategy of grouping survivors into teams of three, four, or five and providing reinforcements to any ambushed team, she had already anticipated that their unity would inevitably force the hunters to work together as well.

The Operation Hunt was what she had come up with for such a scenario. Its objective was to hunt the hunters themselves.

The biggest advantage the hunters had over the survivors was the tracking system. They could ambush a team and retreat in the opposite direction before the reinforcement teams arrived at the location.

Aria decided to use this very advantage against them. Since their phones only tracked the tokens, not the survivors themselves, she ordered the teams to hide the tokens at their locations and lure the hunters in. Once they were trapped, the survivors would overwhelm them with numbers. To avoid completely breaking the formation that allowed the survivors to search for all the forest tokens, Aria deployed only fifty survivors to hunt the hunters. To compensate for their smaller numbers, Max's combat-oriented puppets would also join the hunt.

Naturally, the deployed survivors also hid the tokens at their positions before moving out to avoid being tracked by the hunters.

"Hmm, that was quite a decent plan by Aria," the joker murmured, clearly impressed. "Even for me, it would be a bit annoying to fight fifty awakeners, not to mention the puppets designed by Max."

The joker hadn't seen the puppets, but since Max was their creator, he had no doubt they'd be a headache to deal with.

"However," the joker continued, speaking to himself as he landed on a branch with a light thud, rustling its leaves. His eyes were fixed on the hollow of the tree in front of him. He slipped his hand inside.

"I wonder what kind of faces they'll make once they realise they've been robbed," the joker snickered.

When he pulled his arm out, his hand was holding a bunch of palm-sized red tokens and finger-sized green tokens.

He slipped them into his pockets and looked towards the location of the next cluster of tokens, which had been stationary for a few minutes.

Just as he was about to leave, a mischievous idea popped into his mind. He drew his longsword from his storage ring and carved something into the tree bark above the hole while snickering.

From there, he rushed towards the next location, his body moving through the dense forest like a blur, leaving behind a trail of crimson lightning, dirt, and scattered leaves and grass.

"Hahaha, this is awesome!" the joker laughed, digging another stash of crimson and green tokens out of the ground.

He moved to the next location, then the next, collecting all the tokens the generous survivors had left for him.

Each time he retrieved the tokens, his wild laughter echoed through the forest.

---

"Hahahaha, the midterm practical is so easy!" the joker exclaimed, a clinking sound coming from his stuffed pockets each time he moved. Including the tokens he had obtained from Leo's team and the two teams that had come to reinforce them, he had accumulated a total of forty identity tokens and a hundred forest tokens.

The number was lower because most of the survivors who had been ambushed during Operation Hunt were those who had already been defeated by the hunters.

"More than half of the forest tokens are unmarked," the joker murmured, moving lazily across the sloping terrain of the forest mountains, both hands resting behind his head. "I'll just find a survivor and make them mark all the remaining tok..."

His words stopped mid-sentence as a group of masked figures emerged from the bushes to his left. They wore the same black, multi-pocketed uniforms as the joker, but each had a different expression on their face mask. Their clothes were smeared with dirt and grass stains, and their uneven gaits made it obvious that they had just emerged from a brutal brawl.

"Agh... those merciless brats," the Angry Face muttered, clutching his bruised arm. "We barely made it out of there in one piece."

"Thank goodness we managed to keep our tokens," the Sad Face beside him added, walking with a slight limp. "Otherwise, it would have been too humiliat—"

His nose collided with the back of the Angry Face, who had suddenly stopped walking.

"Agh, why are you stopping all of a sudden?" the Sad Face muttered.

He understood the reason when his eyes fell upon the clown-masked hunter to their right, who had just emerged from behind a tree.

A brief silence fell between them as both sides stared at each other.

"Oh, hello, Clown Face," the Angry Face said, breaking the awkward silence. "How is your hunt going?"

"Pretty good," the joker replied casually, tapping his stuffed pockets.

The Angry Face exchanged glances with his fellow hunters, as if silently reaching a mutual agreement.

He turned back to the joker and continued, "These juniors are too shrewd. They actually laid a trap and ambushed us. We somehow managed to escape by distracting them with their own tokens. But we barely have any mana left now."

He extended an inviting hand towards the joker and asked, "We'll recover in a couple of hours and teach them a lesson. How about joining us? We'll split the tokens equally."

Another brief silence followed. The joker slowly raised his hand to his face, his back arching slightly.

"Bwahahahahaha!"

His unrestrained laughter echoed through the woods.

Thinking he was impressed by their strategy, the eight hunters also began laughing, not wanting him to feel like the odd one out. The hunters found him very weird, though.

When the joker's laughter finally died down, he stated, "So you lots barely have any mana left, huh? Bwahahahaha!"

This time, only his laughter echoed through the forest as he repeatedly slapped his face mask. Something about his statement gave the hunters a bad premonition.

And why wouldn't it? They were practically offering the joker the chance to fill eight of his nine large pockets on a silver platter.