Chapter 76: Hide & Seek


    After leaving the main hall of the Thousand Dragons Sect, the five were led to the outskirts of the base by Elder Hua, directly facing a dense forest of some sort. Once there, she made her speech.


    “Listen up, you brats!” She dered in an unnaturally high-pitched voice. “On the mission, stealth is going to be of utmost importance. Only fight battles you must — skip past anything that you don’t have to fight! Even if you don’t have my Angelica, I can still teach you some useful tips to remain undetected, so don’t get cocky!”


    Octane gulped in fear. For some reason, despite this girl’s tiny figure and short ck hair, she held an impressive aura to her. The intensity in her ck eyes burned strong, like a fire itself. Anyone who could see her would be struck with two quick emotions: first, the urge tough; two, the immediate regret ofughing.


    Naturally, Finn and Reaper both weren’t affected, but neither of them needed to be threatened like his to follow orders, unlike Octane.


    “Before I can teach you puny kids anything, I gotta know how good you currently are,” Elder Hua said, sweeping her gaze through her five new students. “So, first, we’re going to y a little game.”


    At this, Octane’s ears perked up. “A game…?”


    “It’s simple — I’m sure you’ve yed it before,” Elder Hua replied, smirking like a little devil. “The name is hide-and-seek.”


    Finn strongly doubted it was just normal hide and seek based on the evil tone she was using, but he decided to just keep it to himself for now.


    And as it turns out, his guess would soone true.


    *****


    Because Finn was responsible for helping Iris get around, he had to first find her a suitable hiding spot, then find his own. They only had five minutes to hide before Elder Hua began her hunt, so they had to move quick in this enormous forest.


    “Finn! Take me up!” Iris pointed up at a dense thicket of trees, where all the branches and leaves served as the perfect camouge.


    “Uh… right here?” Finn asked, stepping to his left.


    “Mm, a little more to your left…”


    “Too much, go back right a bit…”


    “Okay, that’s good!”


    Iris climbed out of her wheelchair and onto Finn’s shoulders. Once she was stable there, Finn began working his way up the tree with the help of Iris’s instructions. It didn’t take long for him to reach the location Iris wanted to stay at, so he let her down and headed back down, preparing to hide on the other side, but Iris hurriedly called him back.


    “Wait, Finn!”


    “… What?”


    “I have a n.”


    *****


    The rules of the hide and seek game were this:


    Elder Hua would try and find her five new students in the shortest time possible, while her students would try andst as long as possible within this massive forest. The odds were clearly stacked against Elder Hua, but being an expert in stealth, she knew all the tactics her students would employ.


    But right before the game began, Iris had purposely taunted her, saying if they could tag her instead of her tagging them first, they would be offered a reward. The exact reward hasn’t been determined yet, since Elder Hua justughed and imed they could discuss the reward after they actually seeded, which had a zero percent chance of happening.


    Iris wanted to defy those odds — but in order to do that, she needed Finn’s help to set the perfect trap.


    Shortly after, the game began. Elder Hua opened her eyes and sniffed the air like a predator hunting prey, before ncing down at the ground and seeing two separate sets of footprints, each leading a different direction.


    “Hmph! Idiots… can’t even get the basics right.”


    Snorting in triumph as if she had already won, she began following one of them, deep into the left part of the forest. After a while, the footprints abruptly turned left and appeared to stop right at a tree. Elder Hua looked up, and there he was — Octane, holding onto the tree for dear life.


    “H-Hi?”


    Elder Hua folded her arms and frowned. “Are you gonna jump off yourself, or do you want me to kick you off?”


    “E-Eek!”


    Octane hurriedly leaped off the tree andnded on the dirt, before trying to run away with his superspeed. But s, Elder Hua didn’t even give him a chance, pping him straight across the side of his head.


    SMACK!


    “OWWWW!” Octane gasped in pain, clutching his cheek.


    “That’s what you get for trying to run,” Elder Hua snorted. “Weakling.”


    Leaving Octane behind in the forest, she retraced her steps back to where she started and began following the other trail of footprints, this time leading into the right side of the forest. In the matter of a few minutes, she found her second victim — Fanatic.


    “Damn it…” he muttered, jumping off the tree in resignation and letting Elder Hua tag him. “This really isn’t my strong suit… I’m out of energy already…”


    “Too bad. As someone without an Angelica to help you, stealth is even more important. Don’t waste this chance — I won’t be teaching any of you again after this week passes.”


    Leaving these words behind, Elder Hua headed off in pursuit of the remaining three. Not even five minutes have passed since she began searching, and two out of the five were already down.


    ‘The remaining three are smarter than the first two,’ she thought as she walked through the forest, eyes peeled and ears perked up for any sign of movement. ‘At least they know how to erase their tracks.’


    Of course, Reaper didn’t leave any tracks since he hovered in the air, but that was besides the point.


    ‘Now then… where would I hide if I was a robot… aha.’


    Elder Hua smirked like a devil as she looked down at the dirt beneath her feet. Because of the bright glowing red eye disy on Reaper’s screen of a face, if he tried hiding up in the trees like the others, he would inevitably be discovered easily. In that case, there could only be one answer:


    Below.