Good luck.
Now I had many questions.
Unfortunately, I’d been right. The more questions I asked here and now, the more information I’d be giving the one or more Spider agents in our group.
This was not the type of thing I was looking forward to.
Social engineering exercises were much closer to Sera’s — or even Patrick or Jin’s — skill set.
Which, of course, immediately made me wonder if they were the Spider agents.
Resh it.
I wasn’t going to be able to trust anyone, was I?
That was probably the point.
A classic exercise in figuring out who I could trust.
That might have been fun if I wasn’t already actively playing that kind of game every day of my ordinary life.
I pulled Kathy to the side before we left the building to ask her a couple quick questions. “My assignment refers to ‘elimination’, and you mentioned we’d be sent home if our sigils were damaged to the point that the alarm went off. What if I just took off my sigil monitor?”
“Not allowed.” She shook her head. “The sigil monitor is set up to send us an alert if you take the monitor off.”
“…And if I disabled that function, or turned the shield monitor off entirely?”
“Wow, you really like to skirt the rules. I like the cut of your jib, kid. But nah, that’s cheating. Sorry.”
I pondered that. “What about taking the sigil off entirely? I mean, we’re going to have to take it off for brief periods of time when we bathe and change and stuff anyway.”
“Sure, people will take them off for a few minutes here or there. That’s guaranteed. But you’ve gotta sleep with them on, and you can’t take them off just to avoid a way of being eliminated, sorry. If we find you doing that on purpose, you’ll be sent home. And I’d advise you to bathe with your shield on out here, even if that means just pinning it to your undergarments and keeping them on. There are actual monsters out there, and you need to stay safe. I’ll tell the others the same.”
Kathy paused. “Look, I know you’ve got to be nervous about your test scores. Everyone wants to pass. I want you to pass. Sometimes finding little tricks can make a test easier, I get that. But here? You’re working with a team. You’re not doing them right if you’re just trying to save yourself. Put that brain of yours to work on the mission.”
I nodded. She had a point.
A point that I fully intended to ignore.
My questions had never been about trying to save myself in the first place.
I just wanted to know what variables I had to work with in terms of methods of triggering and avoiding elimination.
I couldn’t ask her too many more questions or she’d get suspicious of what I was up to. “One last question. I brought my own supplies, but does this facility have a general store or something we can go to before we leave?”
“Yep. You’ll all get a chance to stop there and buy a few things before we head out if you need to.”
Excellent.
I was beginning to form the foundations of a plan. I’d brought a ton of supplies in the Jaden Box, but if I had a chance to shop, I had a few more things I wanted to pick up now that I knew what we were up against.
I headed back to the group.
I couldn’t work while I was being observed, but I could think.
And, if I was going to stay ahead of all my potential adversaries, I had quite a bit of planning to do.
As promised, we had a chance to shop for about an hour before we departed. Most people bought extra food, warm clothing, or other small supplies they’d forgotten at home.
I bought other things.
I considered trying to find the time to talk to some of my platoon members in private, but we didn’t have a good window to do it while no one from the other team was around.
From the suspicious glances I was picking up, though, I could tell at least a few people had been given similar information to my own.
Jin and Roland in particular seemed to be paying a lot of attention to everyone else…but I couldn’t tell how much of that was just my own mind playing games.
I couldn’t trust Jin about anything after what he’d done, and he’d always been mysterious.
And Roland had been missing for weeks — that clearly could have been because he’d been assigned to the Spider Division and decided to prioritize those assignments.
Of course, it could have just meant he’d dropped out of the dueling class elective. That was the only class we shared, and I didn’t keep track of him outside of class.
And even though those two seemed to be paying a lot of attention to everyone else, that didn’t mean they were Spiders…it could just as easily mean they were like me, and they’d been given an assignment to find the Spiders.
I’d be able to check them for visible tells if I confronted them, but that would let the Spiders know I was aware of their presence…and that would make me a target.
I had to weigh the advantages of talking to any individual person against the risk that they would be a danger if they were a spider.
Or, of course, I could find another way to check that couldn’t easily be traced back to me.
That would be my first move.
An hour later, we headed into the forest, now escorting a pair of wagons drawn by horses.
The wagons were filled with boxes of supplies. Given the sheer number — I counted twelve large crates per wagon — I suspected the settlement had to consist of a large number of students. Probably a hundred or more.
Since we’d presumably be joining the “settlement” once we arrived, it was in our best interests to ensure the boxes were intact, even aside from it being responsible for some of our points.
My first order of business was gathering information.
I activated my attunement and scanned the group.
Marissa, Patrick, and I currently registered as Carnelian.
Sera’s aura was colorless. She’d been Carnelian, but with her mana level as low as it was, she was registering as Quartz right now. Presumably, she’d hit Carnelian again soon, but that did mean she’d have to be careful during this assignment.
Jin’s aura was clear. I knew he was stronger than that, but he was apparently playing it safe and keeping his shroud suppressed while others were around.
On the other team, Roland and Kyra were showing up as Carnelian. The other three were either Quartz or suppressing their shrouds.
I had a hard time seeing any aura on Loria Marshal at all. Either her attunement was particularly weak, or maybe she had an item to conceal it. I did see a couple auras from magical items on her belt, but they were faint, too.
Both of the second-year students had brilliant orange auras that meant they were Sunstone-level. That put them toward the top of their class; hitting Sunstone as a student was relatively rare. I presumed we were assigned two of the stronger students because our own aggregate mana levels were higher than average.
We also happened to be two of the groups consisting of finalists from Teft’s dueling class. That probably wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe Teft had selected our two teams to match us against each other? That sounded like the type of thing he’d do.
Aside from that, I picked up on several magical auras from items the other students were carrying.
I knew the equipment for my team pretty well — no surprises there. We hadn’t coordinated with Jin, but he was carrying at least some of the things I’d enchanted for him earlier in the year.