Chapter 148: Uncertainty
Listening to what Claire had just told them... Hide’s eyes widened slightly.
A two-man squad dropped into a massive survival phase against fully intact, seven-man squads from rival countries? It wouldn’t be a competition. It would be a sanctioned execution.
"That’s a death sentence," Rol muttered, shaking his head. "They use the Solo rounds to weed out the weak links, leaving the survivors to get slaughtered by the premier countries who maintained their full rosters."
"Exactly," Claire confirmed. "There are very real, very high chances of death in the Team rounds. If we want to even have a realistic hope of placing in the Top 50 as a national team, we need at least four of our members to cross that one thousand point threshold. I cannot protect you in the Solo rounds. You must all look out for your own ranking goals, secure your own points, and survive."
The weight of her words settled heavily onto the shoulders of everyone in the room. They weren’t just fighting beasts anymore. They were fighting statistics, fatigue, and three hundred and fifty human enemies who wanted nothing more than to steal their points.
"Why is killing allowed in the such a tournament is the first place?" Hide questioned. "Won’t they loose good exterminators to that?"
Claire looked at him and chuckled. "No, killing another participant is not allowed." She said.
Hide’s and everyone else’s eyes narrowed. Except Rol. He knew it all before.
"The thing is that killing is indeed not allowed... but," Claire continued. "No one said about accidents inside a gate, no one will follow us in there... you can kill another exterminator and it would be considered an accident. Killed by beasts... unless you have solid proof."
Hearing that, Hide winced a little. He was once again reminded how shallow and dreadful humans were, and exterminators even more so. Power makes them worse.
No one said a word after that for a while, until Claire broke the spell.
"I’ve sent the detailed breakdowns of the confirmed arena environments to your communicators," Claire finalized, turning off the holographic projector. The room returned to its warm, opulent lighting, though none of them felt particularly warm. "Review them. Memorize them. Get some sleep. Meeting adjourned."
Hide didn’t linger to chat. The moment Claire dismissed them, he stood up, gave a curt nod to Gideon and Sora, and walked out the door.
He navigated the plush, carpeted hallways of the luxury hotel in complete silence, the soft hum of the air purifiers the only sound accompanying him. He reached his assigned suite, pressed his access card to the scanner, and walked inside.
The room was absurdly lavish, easily larger than the entire apartment he had lived in back in Area 17. There was a massive king-sized bed, a private balcony, and a marble bathroom. But Hide barely noticed the wealth. He stripped off his shirt, tossed it onto a nearby velvet armchair and collapsed naked onto the center of the bed.
It was hot. Even though there was an air conditioner working in the room.
He stared up at the pristine, vaulted ceiling, feeling a bone-deep exhaustion creeping into his muscles. It wasn’t just physical fatigue from his encounter in the alleyway. It was a profound, suffocating mental weight.
One thousand points just to survive, Hide calculated internally, his mind churning. And three hundred and fifty of the best Exterminators in the world. His jaw tightened as he remembered the grim, suffocating aura of Commander Maddox’s office.
The old S-Rank bastard hadn’t brought him here just to participate. They had made a very specific, very dangerous deal. If Hide wanted to learn the truth about his mother—if he wanted Maddox to hand over the classified federal files detailing her murder—Hide didn’t just need to survive.
He needed to place in the Top 10 of the Solo Rankings.
Hide closed his eyes, dragging a hand down his face. To place in the Top 10 against three hundred and fifty elite prodigies, he would have to become an absolute monster. He would have to unleash Zenith, Aegis, Petra, and other summons, including anything else he could forge from the corpses of his enemies, and he would have to do it without hesitation.
But as he lay there in the quiet room, his thoughts suddenly drifted away from the tournament and the points. A cold, unsettling feeling crawled up his spine, making the hairs on his arms stand on end.
His eyes narrowed in the dark. The Joker. The image of the masked freak flashed vividly in his mind. That bastard had orchestrated chaos and vanished into thin air.
That was almost two entire months ago.
Since that night, the Joker hadn’t shown himself once. He hadn’t sent a message, hadn’t dropped a cryptic coin, hadn’t made a single move. For an entity that thrived on theatricality and manipulation, absolute silence was terrifying.
What is he planning? Hide thought, his heart thumping an uneven rhythm against his ribs. Where the hell is he? Hide hated the feeling. He could fight a Calamity Lord. He could fight an A-Rank assassin. He could physically adapt to a sword piercing his stomach. But he couldn’t adapt to a threat he couldn’t see.
Being uncertain—standing in the dark waiting for a blade to drop—was the absolute worst feeling a person could have when they were trying to achieve a goal.
As long as the Joker was out there, completely unaccounted for, Hide knew his carefully laid plans could be shattered at any moment.
He tried to force his racing thoughts to slow down. He needed rest. He needed his stamina at absolute maximum for the opening round. Slowly, the sheer exhaustion of the day’s travel, the trauma of the alleyway, and the weight of the upcoming war dragged his consciousness down into the dark.
He didn’t know when he finally slipped away.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Hide’s eyes snapped open in the pitch black room.
His heart was instantly hammering in his throat. His entire body went completely rigid, his True Sight and combat instincts flaring to absolute maximum capacity in a fraction of a second.
Someone was knocking on his door.
Hide slowly slid off the bed, his boots making no sound against the carpet. He glanced at the digital clock glowing on the nightstand.
3:14 AM.
No one from the team would be awake right now, let alone knocking on his door without calling his communicator first. Hide’s eyes narrowed into lethal slits. The faint, glowing ring of violet surrounded his blue pupils as he silently walked toward the entryway.
