Chapter 298: The Masked Maniac III

When the Joker stopped laughing, his voice suddenly dropped to a chilling cold, his back still bent. "Leave your tokens here."

The eight hunters immediately flinched at the sudden change in the Joker’s tone.

"Wh-what do you mean?" the Angry Face asked, taking a step back.

"I would be an idiot to let you go when you are basically screaming at me to ravish you," the Joker declared, his back slowly straightening, the ear-to-ear smile on its face now looking threatening rather than funny.

"But we are on the same team!" the Sad Face added, confusion clear in his tone. Why would a hunter target another hunter at all? His eyes widened behind the mask as he found the answer himself.

A hunter token was worth a thousand credits. Eight thousand credits from eight hunters was basically around the same amount a student would receive after finishing the S-Ranked quest. Even if he had been in the Joker’s place, he would surely have made the same decision.

The eight hunters had only just drawn their weapons when the Joker vanished from his position, leaving behind a trail of crimson lightning.

The next moment, he appeared before the hunter with the crying-face mask. All the hunter saw was a fist coming straight for his gut.

Bam!

The hunter was hurled a few feet into the air before hitting a nearby tree.

"Damn it, take him down!" the Angry Face shouted, lacing his sword with Aura.

The mages among them began casting their spells while the knights had already coated their weapons in Aura.

However, they didn’t even get a chance to release a spell or swing a weapon.

The Joker moved through them at lightning speed, one arm extended outward, perpendicular to his body. The arm struck every hunter across the throat in a single thrust of his lightning step.

Some hit the ground with a loud thud while others were sent flying, slamming into trees or falling into bushes.

"Hehehe," the Joker snickered as he moved towards the Angry Face, who was lying in the bushes with his face and knees on the ground and his rear raised high.

The Joker barely kept his intrusive thoughts about spanking in check. He pulled out the hand-sized, thick crimson token hanging around the Angry Face’s neck.

"Y-you will regret this..." the Angry Face muttered, giving him a sharp sideways glare while holding his sore throat.

"Yu vwill leglet this!" the Joker mimicked, tilting his head from side to side. The shameless mockery only added to the Angry Face’s fury, veins bulging across his forehead. His fingers dug into the dirt in frustration, but he could do nothing.

If only he hadn’t exhausted himself fighting those monstrous puppets and fifty freshers, he would never have been defeated by this damn Joker.

The Joker pulled the crimson tokens from the necks of the other hunters as well, who were too worn out to even resist.

The crimson tokens fit perfectly inside the larger pockets of his t-shirt and trousers, as if they had been specifically designed to house them.

He also checked their pockets for any identity tokens or forest tokens but, disappointingly, found none. So they hadn’t lied when they said they had distracted the survivors by throwing out their tokens, which allowed them to escape.

"Hahahaha, I hit the jackpot today!" the Joker laughed, standing proudly at the centre of the fallen hunters, both hands resting on his waist.

Each laugh was a mockery that made the hunters’ blood boil with fury. Yet they could do nothing but endure.

Once the Joker had had his fill of mocking them, he moved out again, hands slipped into his pockets and legs taking comically big steps, back slightly bent forward.

His laughs and heavy steps faded into the forest along with his body.

---

"Lady Aria has already launched Operation Hunt on the left end," a boy muttered as he dashed through the forest with quick steps. He was Henry, leader of a survivor team. "It’s a pity that we are going to miss it."

"Tch, I also wanted to participate in the hunt and beat those seniors," the girl sprinting beside him added, her brows furrowed in annoyance. "Because that narcissistic fatty got ambushed, we are here at the farthest end from Operation Hunt."

The two other team members behind them shared the girl’s sentiment. Because Team Leo had been ambushed at the right end of the formation, Aria had ordered the teams on the right not to participate in Operation Hunt. She didn’t want them to leave their tokens behind, which would basically become free loot for the hunter on the right side.

"But we haven’t heard anything from Team Amelie and Team Dante either," Henry said, concern laced in his voice. Those two teams had been sent to reinforce Leo’s team, but strangely, they had also lost contact.

"Those idiots must have had their handsets destroyed in combat," the girl added, shrugging. Since the hunters had learned about the handsets, they had become the primary target to stop the survivors from informing the other teams.

"I hope so..." Henry agreed. He couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling.

When he turned past the last tree and reached the location where Team Leo had been ambushed, he froze, his eyes widening.

The team members behind him also came to a sudden halt, a ripple of gasps escaping their lips. The girl almost felt her heart jump out of her chest at the sight.

On the branches of the three trees before them, their peers were dangling: the boys hung upside down with ropes tied to their ankles, while the girls were tied by their waists. All of them had faces covered in tears, with Leo having the worst of it. Snot trickled from his nose, reached his forehead and dripped to the ground from his hair.

The moment the victims’ eyes fell upon the rescue team, they cried out simultaneously, "Please save us!"

Henry wondered who could be inhumane enough to tie them like this, yet considerate enough to tie them so high that not even an Orc, the only monster present in the forest, could reach them.