Blackthorn Forest swallowed the first batch of students.
It did not eat them.
It hid their voices, footsteps, and figures beneath its dense canopy.
Yang Ming stood outside the tree line with an unlit cigarette between his lips.
Before him lay the routes along which three thousand students were entering the forest in batches. The instructors escorted them, military trucks transported supplies, and Jessica followed two hundred meters behind with a makeshift medical team.
The medical team had six members in total.
Five were security personnel from Wayne Enterprises.
The last was Jessica.
She carried a medical kit taller than she was on her back and dragged a rolled-up stretcher in one hand, looking thoroughly annoyed.
"Boss, you call this medical support?" Jessica glanced at the kit. "There are bandages, hemostatic agents, a bone saw, and Sister Lie's scalpel in here. Are you planning to save people or perform reconstructive surgery on the forest?"
Yang Ming gazed into the depths of the forest.
"Save whoever we can."
"And if we can't?"
"Bring back the bodies."
Jessica frowned. "That blunt?"
"They aren't here for a picnic."
Yang Ming raised his eyes and spread his Observation Haki.
Trees, soil, wild beasts, students.
And other people.
Thirty-seven presences in total.
Their breathing was steady, their heartbeats regular. Some lay up high, some hid behind earthen slopes, and others waited in ambush beside an old logging trail.
They had neither the students' panic nor the beasts' instincts.
Their steps were steady. They had professional training.
Yang Ming finally lit his cigarette.
"Sister Lie."
Retsu Unohana stood beside him, carrying a medical kit, her pale violet eyes turned toward the forest.
"Yes."
"As long as no students die first, don't scare off the prey yet."
Retsu Unohana's smile did not change.
"Understood."
Jessica looked between