Dong, dong, dong. The bells marking noon rang out from the distant village.
Time was up.
The swamp gradually solidified, turning back into hard ground.
Lu slumped on the ground, panting heavily, cold sweat pouring off him from the pain of his dislocated wrist.
Black Crow lay in the mud, looking up at the sky as his left hand twitched uncontrollably.
He felt no dejection over their defeat, only a deep helplessness at his own physiological limits.
Emi no longer had the strength even to stand. She could only lie at the edge, her eyes reddening.
"We lost." Lu lowered his head, his voice hoarse. "We exhausted every tactic.
"But we didn't even touch a single bell.
"We... failed."
Chisen slowly straightened.
His coat was covered in mud and white powder, and his right leg trembled slightly. Clearly, that last forced maneuver
had aggravated his old injury.
Leaning on his walking stick, he approached the three children sprawled on the ground.
The fifteen bells at his waist chimed crisply in the breeze.
"Who said you failed?"
Chisen's voice remained largely flat, but anyone listening closely would have noticed a little less of its usual cold hardness and a little more of something exceedingly rare-satisfaction.
Lu jerked his head up, his eyes filled with astonishment.
"In the Anbu or an ordinary Ninja Academy, failing to seize a bell means failing the mission." Chisen tapped the ground with his walking stick. "But in pathology and survival studies, the objective was never those damned bells.
"The objective was how you survived this unequal hunt."
Chisen looked at Lu.
"As the brain, after the first ambush failed, you didn't let your hormones make you impatient. Instead, you immediately adapted to the environment and devised a second plan targeting vision, hearing, and acoustic reflection.
"When