"Open it. It's for you."
Tuan said to Kat after they reached the drop site. It was another ruined location with traces of ruined constructions and destroyed homes. The latter looked at him suspiciously because there was nothing in the vicinity she could feel with her mana sense that could imply that there was a drop.
Tuan pursed his lips when he found out Kat was looking at him with doubt and suspicion in her eyes. He had forgotten that he knew the location of the drop because of Alephee. There was no way for him to sense it with his mana sense either.
'Fuck it. I'll just activate the array and let her open it. That shouldn't make the drop change its element according to me, right?'
Alphee replied promptly to his question.
'It shouldn't. As long as you guys are quick enough.'
Eren decided to follow Alephee's advice and stepped ahead. This time, the array wasn't imprinted on the ground. It was woven into the very spatial fabric of the empty void.
'What should I do now?'
Eren asked Alephee while maintaining a stoic face. That's because he didn't want the organizers to know that he got to the safe drops by other means.
There were clues scattered across the subspace. Only those clues were supposed to reveal where natural drops were located. In addition, organizers could not keep track of all participants 24 x 7 as they roamed around the ruined city site and the much larger landscape of the hunting grounds. There were obviously some dead zones that couldn't be recorded due to conflict generating between various arrays.
Alephee had helped Tuan locate those inactive live-stream zones. He had passed through them specifically to make the organizers lose sight of him. This way, he would have a valid excuse for locating the clues while nobody was looking.
Now all he needed to do was act his part and pretend that he had read through the clues. Alephee told him that he just needed to feel the void space in front of him with his fingers imbued with his non-elemental mana. That way, the array would take some time to determine the ranker's element while it was activated. This time should be enough for Tuan and Kat to make a switch.
Things proceeded according to plan, and Kat successfully managed to open the array drop. The spatial fabric ruptured briefly and ejected a pair of shoes. Each shoe had a pair of small, bird-like wings attached to either side around its heel. This was a wind-element artefact meant to be used by a ranker like Katalina.
Katalina opened her eyes wide in surprise as she looked at the levitating pair of artefacts. She stretched her mana sense around it to see if they were indeed real and not an illusion or trap.
"This… this… I don't know how to thank you Tu…"
Katalina was about to touch the artefact with her hands as she thanked her raid partner and benefactor. She had said that she needed him to find a drop site for her on a whim. She couldn't believe Tuan would be able to pull it off something like that just a day into the tournament.
But before she could take possession of the artefact she felt with her mana sense that Tuan was coming at her with a cruel grin on his face. She turned around while cursing her luck and her naivety to think that there were free lunches in this world.
"Tuan… you son of a bitch…."
Kat quickly drew her rapier and tried to attack the incoming Tuan with her wind-element spells. But Tuan was way faster. He disappeared from her sight only to appear behind her back.
Clank!
The sound of metal hitting metal rang in the surroundings. Kat was a bit confused before checking her body. She thought the bastard had backstabbed her in a metaphorical and literal way.
'I… I am fine. Then…'
Katalina found herself to be unharmed. She then stretched her senses some more and turned back to see Tuan's Anduril blades clashing with something invisible in the air. The pair of artefacts were just a few meters away from that weird clash.
Slowly, the invisible blades that had engaged with Tuan's Anduril started taking shape. They were a pair of Schmitter's that were as black as the starless night sky. Soon the wielder of those blades emerged from the blur.
Lily had tried to snatch the artefacts from Katalina because she too had an affinity for the wind element. Plus, these artefacts looked like they could be a perfect match for an assassin class like hers.
"How… How were you able to detect me?"
Lily asked with vigilance in her eyes. Tuan seemed unshaken when he saw her materialize out of her spell as if he was already aware of her existence there. This realization alone was enough to make her raise her vigilance against a ranker like him.
"Um… let's say I was expecting guests when I was starting a barbecue."
Eren said as he took his weapons back to his storage room. He kept his hands behind his back and looked at the assassin in front of him with keen eyes.
'Hmm. Pretty face but small boobs.'
Tuan said to himself before shaking his head in denial.
'Heh! I shouldn't be so judgemental. Big or small, they can all be pressed with equal affection.'
Tuan thought as he stared intently at Lily. The latter couldn't be sure where he was looking due to his shifty eyes but her feminine instincts told her that he was checking her out.
"That… that doesn't even make sense. You must have known about me and my spell from the beginning. Tell me how."
Lily asked with a frown on her face. She gripped her hands around her weapons tightly before staring back at the guy with the same intensity in her gaze. It's just that the motive she had in her eyes for him was different.
"Miss Lily, have you forgotten that we are all contestants in the Titus tournament? All of our names, spells, and battle styles are public knowledge. Of course, I'd know about you. Are you that stupid?"
Tuan asked the question with an expression that said, "Can you believe this idiot?". Then he made fun of her with his last set of words. Lily opened her mouth to say something to the fire-element ranker in front of her. But she found out that there were no words that could help her make a comeback. Her subconscious mind decided to act out with violence.
"Listen here…"
'Don't be like this muscle-brain Wilder, Lily. Put the weapons down. Otherwise, you'd be disqualified."
