He used his index finger to lightly poke her puffy cheeks which startled her awake. Zavier felt a little sorry for surprising her like that so tightened his arms around her and kissed her forehead in an apologetic manner.
"How are you feeling now?"
Shiranui remembered how she had cried herself to sleep and a flush spread across her body.
"I am fine now." She said in a barely audible voice.
"Are you sure that you don't feel any pain anywhere?"
Shiranui nodded even though she still felt uncomfortable and slightly twitchy around her crotch that he had so heartlessly ravished.
"If you want, you can rest a little more. I will go take a look at the situation outside."
"Let me come with you."
Shiranui hurriedly replied in fear. She was afraid that he would abandon her now that he had had his way with her.
Although he had promised her last night, she still couldn't help but be terrified at the thought of being alone again. Therefore despite feeling the slight paint that lingered in her body, she had rejected his offer for rest in order to accompany him on his scouting mission.
Zavier could practically see the fear in her eyes, so he didn't stop her. He had seen the same expressions last night as she had asked him to never leave her. His expressions softened and he nodded in acceptance of her demand.
Finally pulling his numb arm from under Shiranui, Zavier managed to stand up and began scouring the space for their clothes that had been strewn around in their battle last night.
As he handed Shiranui her underwear, she couldn't help but redden. Zavier on the other hand found her cute reactions quite pleasant to the eyes.
He got into his clothes within a few seconds and was ready to go out while Shiranui was still struggling with her clothes.
The fact that her knees had almost buckled as soon as she had tried to stand was enough to understand how tired she was. Therefore she took her sweet time getting ready but Zavier was thoughtful enough to not urge her to hurry.
When she was done, she gave him a smile and held his arm for support as they exited the hollow trunk of the tree.
Zavier stretched his body a bit as he came out into the sun. Shiranui had reverted back to her cold and aloof self since she was now on the outside where she needed to have her wits about her. Though from time to time her eyes would still dart towards Zavier's face causing her to break into a smile every time.
Shiranui had gotten used to the discomfort and could move around as well as she could the day before. Therefore she didn't feel any discomfort following after Zavier who was carefully retracing their steps back to where he had found her yesterday in a brawl with the trio.
The reason was that he had to look for Andrew who he had tasked with hiding there. He felt slightly bad that he had left Andrew all alone in the wild with instructions to hide until he came back.
All the time that he had been enjoying himself, Zavier wondered what Andrew had been doing and whether he had managed to stay safe from the danger posed by other participants still in the competition.
They carefully backtracked and soon found the position where Zavier had first found Shiranui in a pinch. He called out to Andrew loudly in the hopes that he would be around.
Andrew didn't look like the type who would wander around despite being told to stay put. Therefore, Zavier was almost sure that Andrew was still waiting for him. Another reason was that Andrew wasn't strong enough to survive on his own which he was aware of. That was the reason that he had been hovering around Zavier and Rebecca in the beginning.
The dense bushes around the area rustled loudly in response to Zavier's loud call. Andrew appeared from behind the bushes and from his appearance and the way he was rubbing his head, it looked like he had been asleep there.
Zavier couldn't help but laugh at the sight. He had believed that Andrew wouldn't move about but he had never imagined that he would have slept at the same place where he had left him.
"Sorry for leaving you here. Something really important had come up and I couldn't get away earlier."
Despite his lacking strength, Andrew was quite observant. He had already seen how Shiranui's face had turned red as Zavier mentioned how he had gotten busy. Through that Andrew was able to guess exactly where Zavier had gotten busy at but he didn't think he had the right to question him regarding that. After all, currently Andrew was the one who was being carried by Zavier.
"It's all right. I didn't have anything better to do anyway. Not that I could even if I had, with my strength."
"Have you been waiting here for me all this time then?"
"As I said...nothing better to do. So, I figured that I would wait for you here. I was worried that you wouldn't be able to find me once you came to look for me."
Zavier nodded and felt slightly embarrassed at how he had gotten distracted and had forgotten about him.
Zavier found Andrew looking over at Shiranui with a questioning gaze. Therefore he felt the need to introduce her to him as they were going to be temporarily teammates during the competition.
"This is Shiranui from the same high school as me. She was the one I went to save yesterday."
Andrew nodded to her and managed a slight smile that reassured the blushing Shiranui somewhat.
"And this is Andrew who is currently my teammate. We have been working together all this time since the start of the competition."
Shiranui nodded to him in acknowledgement as well. She too felt slightly guilty about Zavier having to leave him behind because of her so she wasn't as cold to him as she usually would have been.
With the introductions out of the way, the air around the newly established team calmed down a bit. Zavier then began thinking their next course of action.
"From our last encounter, I am sure that the remaining participants would no longer be following the same team pattern that had been assigned at the start. Either the participants have decided to group up based on the schools that they were from or they have teamed up with other teams to survive the former. Therefore, from this moment onwards any team that we come across, we have to assume that they would be stronger than us."
Zavier looked at Andrew to see what he thought about his opinion but his blank look made him want to slap himself in the face for expecting something from him.
In fact, Andrew had decided to follow after Zavier during this competition no matter what. So he wasn't too bothered as to what Zavier was thinking. He just accepted everything that came out of Zavier's mouth as the truth and was willing to follow him anywhere.
Zavier turned to look at Shiranui when he knew that Andrew was going to be of no use to him in this matter. As expected, Shiranui was especially expressive when it came to her analysis regarding battles and this competition.
"I think that it would be exactly as you described. Before I ran into the three of them, I had already seen two or three such groups who had banded together to survive. As for the ones like the three I came across before, I think there wouldn't be many more such groups with that kind of strength."
Zavier agreed with her. The probability of different teams gathering together was higher since not everyone would have been able to successfully locate their schoolmates that easily in such a large area. Those three might have been extremely lucky or they might have had some kind of skill that allowed them to find each other easily. Otherwise such a scenario was extremely unlikely.
Still, it was possible that like them, various other individuals would be looking for their school mates at this time and some of them might have even formed up together. Therefore, Zavier decided not to waste any more time and start looking for their team.
Zavier immediately contacted all his clones one by one in order to figure out what they had been through the last night. But he found nothing that was out of the ordinary. They had been accumulating points albeit a bit slowly but at the same time the team of the clones had scoured most of the area around them.
Zavier's clones were already on the lookout for Nadia so Zavier changed his instructions slightly and told them to report any of his teammates that they came across so that they could easily band together to complete the test.
After he was done with the clones, his consciousness returned to his body and he began to move while Shiranui and Andrew followed after him while trying to keep up with his speed.
They hadn't gone very far when he finally received news about his naughty little cousin who he had been so worried about.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l