In the dark forest, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka headed toward the alarms with his flashlight.
At first, he had been too far away and thought he was hearing an echo. As he drew closer, he realized there were two alarms.
At the bottom of a slope several meters high, Komiya Yogo and Kinoshita Minori lay unconscious, covered in scrapes and bruises. There were clear signs that they had slid down the slope.
The third member of their group, Shinohara Satsuki, was nowhere to be seen, but Ayanokoji heard no other alarm.
She was in the same group, yet she was nowhere near them. Nor did it look as though she had gone for help. Komiya and Kinoshita still lay where they had fallen, without even basic disinfection or bandaging.
No... The fact that they had gotten up at five in the morning and wandered around was strange in itself. The school had accounted for the danger of traveling in the dark by scheduling movement instructions and Challenges between seven in the morning and five in the afternoon.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka sensed a scheme. At the same time, he detected someone to the west, apparently watching from a distance.
He did not point his flashlight that way. Instead, he examined the scene.
Sure enough, there were other footprints here.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka went over to the pair and checked their injuries. On the surface, they seemed to have suffered only injuries from the fall. Whether they had more serious internal injuries was impossible to tell for now.
The most pressing issue was turning off the alarms.
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka did not know the current standings, but if this group withdrew on the fourth day, it would almost certainly finish last. None of its three members had enough Private Points to save them, so expulsion would be