Go Big!

Inside the main tent of the White-Clothed Hunters' camp.

"Captain, bad news! Squad E2 has gone silent too!"

"Captain, we've lost contact with Squad E1 as well!"

"All of them?"

As his subordinates delivered one piece of bad news after another, Captain Liu's vision went dark.

They had launched this operation from five directions, with three squads assigned to each: E1, E2, E3, and so on.

In other words, they had lost contact with a fifth of their team!

"Did an unknown Pokémon suddenly appear in the camp?"

The man who had been talking with Captain Liu earlier seemed to think of something and immediately asked.

"Judging by the last sounds over their earpieces and the data from their vital-sign monitors, probably not. They're unconscious, but their lives aren't in danger."

Although they were hunters hired by the Trainer Association, they had no access to the camera feeds.

For one thing, the temporary base had been set up on the second night, with the operation officially starting the following day. They had avoided laying cables beforehand so they wouldn't give themselves away.

For another, Yang Ze saw this as a small test for the Special Forces recruits.

After all, if they couldn't even find every student—none of whom had any sense of counter-surveillance—how could they handle cunning fugitives?

"Just unconscious? Could the students have joined forces?"

The individual strength of their Special Forces members far surpassed that of high school seniors. But when they were restricted to newly raised Pokémon, it was hard to say how they would fare against a swarm of students.

"Do this: send squads A1, A2, D1, and D2 to reinforce E Zone and investigate why the squads went silent. Then have B1 and C1 head to A Zone and D Zone respectively and continue the