CHAPTER 30

The audience cheered as they watched the encounter between OLN103 and OWS59. They are all excited to witness what will happen, so Tedie immediately transferred the live broadcast of the two in a larger hologram for everyone to see.

"Finally, OLN103 met another player. Will she succeed in getting OWS59's inventory? Or can the rank 2 of our tests be the one to beat the unstoppable child?!" Tedie yelled excitedly, hyping the audience more and filling the whole arena with cheers.

Yet, Hirayon could only hear the ruffling of winds as he analyzed the little girl. 'She's confident. I need to know more about her abilities if I want to escape, but I didn't really want to engage in a fight.'

A little troubled, Hirayon couldn't help but frown as the smell of blood coming from the little girl grew stronger. The girl didn't look injured, but with Hirayon's sight, he could see small traces of blood in her white training clothes. He also noticed that the girl kept her hands on her back.

With that, Hirayon was sure that there must be some sort of bloodied weapon that the girl was holding, or her hands might be dripping with blood, considering that the stench was strong even from a distance.

"Can you?" The girl repeated, referring to if Hirayon could escape from her.

"I can," Hirayon answered confidently, which made her wear a creepy grin.

"As expected of the rank 2. Should we try?" she asked enthusiastically, obviously excited to fight Hirayon.

Contrary to her ideal scenario, Hirayon stared at her and slightly shook his head. "Nah," Hirayon declined.

"Huh?" Surprised, the little girl gave Hirayon a confused look.

"I don't want to. You can get the flower," Hirayon said and started walking away. He was showing his back to the girl giving her the impression that he wasn't backing out because he was scared.

Flabbergasted at the situation, the little girl used her ability and stopped Hirayon from leaving. "Huh? Wait!"

'Her ability is indeed speed. Either a basic or Lightning element,' Hirayon thought as he looked at the little girl who was now standing in front of him.

"We have to fight for the flower!" she insisted.

"We don't," Hirayon voiced. His tone was clear and firm, exhibiting his decision.

The little girl's frown deepened. Her eyes no longer doe and now closely resembled a fox's. "But that's the point of the game!"

"Nope. The point is to gather as many as flowers. Not to kill the players," Hirayon pointed out and gave the girl one last cold glance before walking past her.

The little child wavered, seeing the look in Hirayon's eyes, but she didn't want to just let things go, "That's part of it!"

"It is, but we have a choice in what we want to do. And I don't want to fight. So just look for a different child." Hirayon said, ultimately leaving the dumbfounded little girl.

With Hirayon's choice, the audience booed and complained, displaying their displeasure with Hirayon's actions. They think that Hirayon is a coward and are upset that they didn't witness a fight. Some were even deeply upset as they voted for Hirayon to rank first in the game, but watching the kid walk away made them think that he was the wrong candidate to vote on since most games would involve fights.

"Looks like we have a strange child in this batch!" Tedie pointed out, ignoring the complaints. With his years of experience as a host, only a few children like Hirayon could fight but chose not to. Although the audience was upset, Tedie still smiled as he wondered what could push the child to fight.

After leaving the girl, Hirayon continued looking for flowers. During his search, he got lucky with a few more flowers with less than 100 points. He even found some that could deduct his points. The good thing was that he memorized the list, so he didn't have to worry about his points getting deducted later on.

At some point, Hirayon decided to search from a high point and climb trees because he was having difficulty exploring the uneven terrain of the forest. Thanks to that, he was able to avoid encounters with other children and even see where the flowers were located using his enhanced sight.

"Looks like there's no more in this area," he muttered, removing his gaze from the ground and looking up at the illusion-made sky. There were birds flying, and also a hawk that landed on the very top of the tree he was searching from. Hirayon expected to see a nest there, but to his surprise, the bird landed on a large flower that closely resembled a nest. But with Hirayon's basic ability, it was clear to him that it was a brown flower with hundreds of petals entangled, making it look like a nest.

"I can't believe there's a flower at the very top. What's more, it's 400 points," Hirayon muttered in surprise as he remembered that the flower called Lanidum has a considerable amount of points. It was also a Plant Element which could explain why it could easily camouflage as a nest.

"Looks like OWS59 could still make a comeback!" Tedie announced with an expectant growl as they all watched Hirayon standing in a thick branch, looking up to the tree's tip.

"Can he really? OLN103 has already killed another child and is probably in the lead while he is sightseeing in the trees," an upset audience grumbled as he gave his precious votes to Hirayon, but the child was avoiding fights.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Of course, he can't. I bet he has the fewest flowers now," another audience near the first one commented.

"What do you think, my lord?" A dutiful secretary calmly asked the old man with a white beard. Even with the audience showing dissatisfaction toward the child, the Familia member who could lose the most kept quiet the whole time.

"I don't care how he does it, but he needs to rank first," the man stated while sharply looking at Hirayon's broadcast video.

Although he is a little annoyed that Hirayon doesn't want to make things easier for himself, he understands that there are rare kinds of oddities, like the child who don't like to use violence. Even though worrisome, he believed the child would be pushed to dirty his hands one day as the Torneo was where you either kill or get killed. He just hoped that the kid wouldn't be the latter and that he won't make him lose all of his money.

"What's Venerico's kid doing?" the old man asked while scanning the other holograms sharply.

"He was doing... really well." The secretary trailed and watched the old man's expression changed into a frown.

"How many flowers does he have?" He asked, his voice deeper and more tyrannical.

"S-sixteen," the secretary quickly but warily answered the man.

"How many did he kill?" he asked, his expression getting harder and his authoritative natural pressure getting heavier, clearly showing his displeasure.

The secretary composed himself like a professional he was, "Three."

"Was that the same with the girl?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Hmm... how troublesome," he commented, letting out his Aura Pressure Ability, not caring about his secretary and servant in the room, who was already trembling from fear. They didn't even dare to raise their bowed head as they felt like they were in the room with a savage beast, willing to pounce on them the moment they met his gaze.

"What did you find about the kid?" He asked with a callous glint in his gaze as he watched the small screen where Hirang was.

The secretary swallowed the lump in his throat and silently cleared his voice. "The child was directly brought by the trainer from the outside. He is a Darkness Oddity, and I've learned that his trainer was planning to inject him with Shadow, Illusion, and Sound abilities. That's all I have for now," he answered.

"Illusion... Go get me hundreds of Illusion Aura Stones," He ordered and returned his watch to Hirayon, who started to climb the tree.

'Looks like the next element was Illusion,' the secretary thought as he ordered his men to quickly accomplish the order.

Hirayon looked down, checking the height from time to time before slowly but surely climbing on branches that were getting thinner the higher he climbed.

While pushing himself up in another branch, the hawk noticed the child, but it didn't do anything and allowed Hirayon to climb. With its sharp animal instinct, it could tell that Hirayon wasn't dangerous or a threat, with the child's disposition being calm and peaceful.

Hirayon, who knew he was being watched, moved more carefully so as to not alarm the hawk. He stopped four branches away and discreetly observed the hawk resting on the large flower when he noticed something off. From his view below, he could only see one flower, but now that he was near, Hirayon could see three stems coiled together.

"I've only been seeing individual flowers. I didn't know I would be able to find a bunch like this," Hirayon happily whispered.

'What's more, they are worth 400 points each!'

Because the hawk was huge, Hirayon decided to wait for it to leave, as fighting it in a thin tree branch that could break at any moment would put him in a disadvantageous position, given that the hawk could also fly. There was also a chance the flower might get damaged if he tried to use his abilities on the hawk, so the best thing was to wait.

Hirayon leaned on the tree, and a few minutes later, the hawk's eyes narrowed while looking at the distance. It then spread its massive wings and flapped once in a direction, its speed and force causing the tip of the tree to sway back and forth.

"He finally left."

Not wasting any time, Hirayon immediately climbed the remaining branches and touched the huge flower closest to him. He was about to get the second flower into his inventory when he noticed the hawk returning, so he had no choice but to back off and climb down on a few branches to wait for an opportunity once more.

When the hawk landed on the remaining two flowers, Hirayon's eyes grew wide as it had something on his beak. It was slightly glowing with powder blue light as its large white petals danced in the wind.

'A blulilia! A flower that was worth 340 points! Why does he have it?!'

Hirayon's mind was in chaos because of the peculiar situation. The only conclusion he could think of why the bird had the flower is that it had a collector personality that was particular to specific types of birds, primarily small to medium-sized.

After the hawk laid down the flower, it suddenly flapped its wings again and left. This time, instead of climbing to get the flowers, Hirayon decided to wait first as he wanted to confirm whether the hawk was a collector. When it returned with another glowing flower on its beak, Hirayon was confident that the hawk was indeed fond of shiny things.

"A collector hawk, it's the first time I heard about it. Did they set it up this way?" Hirayon expressed as the whole forest was made by the system of Torneo.

With no way of verifying his thoughts, Hirayon focused on the hawk, who was now staring at the empty space where the nest-like flower was. He was nervous that the hawk would get mad after realizing that the flower was missing, but maybe because it wasn't particularly shiny like the two flowers it had just brought, it immediately lost interest. It then went to scan its surroundings again, hunting for another flower to add to its collection.

Some more minutes passed, and the list of current flower counts was shown. Unsurprisingly, Hirayon found his name on the twenty-ninth spot with nine flowers found.

'Not surprising. But, if I could get all the flowers the hawk was collecting, I could turn the game around,' he thought while looking at five colorful glowing flowers laid in two large nest-looking flowers.

Hirayon kept a positive mindset and waited until the flowers were stacked up. There were also flowers that could give deductions in the pile, but that wasn't his main concern. Hirayon needed to find out if the flowers could still use elemental abilities now that they were plucked, so he thought of a plan to deflect the flower's abilities in case they could still use them.

'It didn't look like the hawk was attacked. Maybe they were only structured to attack players.'

Patiently waiting, the hawk continued to gather flowers until Hirayon saw the list again. His name was on the fiftieth this time, while the first spot already had forty-eight flowers.

Instead of panicking because of the nearing time limit, Hirayon waited more and counted in his mind. When only about ten minutes remained, Hirayon waited for the hawk to leave again and immediately made his move.

He swiftly climbed the remaining thin branches and, for the first time, used his elemental ability in the game.

Pushing his palms forward, transparent and light bluish-violet water came out of his hands, forming an extremely thick Water Wall with currents swirling inside. With height and width double Hirayon's size, it has a calm flowing surface while the swirling currents inside ravaged beautifully like a painting done by a master of elemental arts.

"I-its... it's a Wall! A Water Wall! We have here our first titled Oddity! OWS59!"

R E H I L I Y A