Chapter 274 - Three Days Left!
After 6 hours of being on the move and covering more than 12 kilometers in circular pathing, the tracker had finally shown Felix a new red dot that was at the tip of the blue radar.
Felix informed the rest about the discovery, managing to enliven them again.
The constant negative search results in the hours had brought down. They realized that even with the tracker it was going to be extremely difficult to find all of the required flags in the next five days.
Today was pretty much over and they still had only one flag!
...
After a while, the team reached the destination and split up again for a search. Shortly after, Lexie managed to find the flag hidden between two moss-covered rocks.
Thankfully, the glaring flag color to the environment made it easier for her to spot it even when the withdrawing sunlight wasn't helping much.
"Alright, that should be it for today." Felix said while looking at the sun that was about to set off.
They started the search pretty late so it was only natural to end it early.
In a short while, they made it back to the camp without trouble. After all, they might have walked for more than ten kilometers but they never went outside the 5-kilometer region.
They were merely walking around the camp and making sure to placemarks in their path in case they got lost.
After noticing that the camp was the same as they left it, Felix turned on his infrared vision to limit and did quick scouting. Soon, he noticed that only wild animals were on his scoope.
"Tomorrow we will head in a different direction at first light." Felix turned off his infrared vision and sat on his usual spot, "If we don't manage to get at least 4 more flags in the next two days, we will straight away start hunting the teams with the most flags."
Doing so was actually a hundred times better than searching for ones by themselves. Since the teams with the trackers would have utmost gotten two flags or three in those three days combined.
The more days passed by, the higher the chances of finding a team with multiple flags.
However, since Felix wasn't the only one who thought like this, the team should be expecting ambushes on their way and heavy resistance from the targeted teams. Even worse, a complete avoidance!
"Are we going to hide our flags before making a move?" Adam suggested, "I think it's better if we dug them deep underground so even if someone with a tracker knew the location, he wouldn't be able of finding it."
Felix didn't even need to respond as Kenny rejected the notion firmly, "If we dug them both in one place, it will be quite obvious that they are deep in the ground. If we dug them in different locations, we wouldn't have the time to come back and start looking for them one after the other."
Lena went on and shared her own opinion about the matter, "It's too risky to put flags away from us as the tracker could get damaged in battles or the battery run out. When that happens, we can forget about getting them back."
"Sigh, your points are all valid, but how are we going to ambush other teams when the flags are going to give us away?" Adam said while smiling wryly.
Upon hearing so everyone went quiet as each was trying their best to find out a solution.
After a couple of seconds, Olivia tilted her head in confusion as she asked, "Why do we need to ambush them?" She pointed her finger at Felix, who was yawning in boredom, and said, "With Felix's strength, can't we just overpower them?"
The moment the rest heard so, their thought process was stopped on its rail. They looked at Olivia's genuine confusion and suddenly felt like they were overthinking everything.
Olivia was right! They had Felix, who clearly demonstrated that he was strong enough to deal with teams all by himself.
So why the f*ck did they need to ambush anyone?
They could literally just swagger into the teams' camps and take their flags forcefully without worrying about a single thing!
With Felix's overpower strength, any sophisticated plan wasn't necessary in the slightest!
'Took them long enough to figure it out.' Felix yawned one last time before standing up. "Prepare dinner and try to sleep early."
He then went deep into the woods to take care of his bowels. However, before doing so he gave out a signal to the supervisor so he could put the drone's focus elsewhere.
After all, they needed privacy for such matters. It seemed like a few viewers were disappointed by the sight as they were expressing their frustrations in the chat.
'F*cking perverts.' Janna cursed them in her mind while expressing her views with Micheal about the bold plan of the US team.
Or in this case, having no plan at all?
...
Three days before the competition's end...
Forty packages had been dropped all over the competition zone, making every team get a shot at obtaining the tracker.
Of course, not a single team had decided to chicken out on fighting for one even when the odds were placed against them.
The eyes of their countrymen and the expectations placed on their shoulders made it almost impossible to sleep in their tents peacefully when they had not a single flag in their possession.
This resulted in a war raging for every package and flag that was insight.
Those who succeeded in getting a tracker straightaway started hunting flags without giving a damn about rest or having a fixed camp.
Meanwhile, those who failed to get it but still remained in the competition had it the hardest.
After all, they neither managed to get emergency energy stones nor the tracker.
Being in that condition made it almost impossible for them to be competitive and get flags. Since the moment they meet a team, only elimination awaited them.
However, those kinds of hopeless teams still ventured outside of their camps, deciding to try and find the flags by mere eyesight as last resort.
After all, they had nothing else to lose. At least, they could show their country that they were trying their best.
Felix and the rest had met with a few of those teams during their journey of locating the flags.
Since they were pretty useless in the competition, Felix didn't bother to waste energy on dealing with them.
Plus, their time was already tight and they were still missing 7 flags!
That's right, they managed to locate only one flag in the past two days even when they had expanded their search perimeter to 10 kilometers!
By now, they already gave up on manually trying to find them and hoped on meeting up with other teams with trackers to rob them.
So far, they have been on the move for straight 9 hours, traveling in a straight line upnorth without stop. They had no intentions of going back to their camping spot.
...
Inside the hotel's suite, where Felix and the rest stayed in before, Sarah, Isabella, Dale, and George were currently watching the stream together.
Amelia didn't bother to hang out with the team after the gathering.
"They are really unlucky." Sarah sighed in frustration at the sight of Felix and the rest stop for a quick break.
"It's not luck which is affecting their chances of meeting with flag holders. It's the wariness of the captains with trackers." George shook his head as he clarified, "They are not stupid to remain in their place after seeing our team advancing in their direction in such confident manner while carrying three flags."
He looked at Sarah and reminded her, "Did you forget what I advised you guys to do after securing five flags?"
Sarah thought for a second before exclaiming, "You said that we must avoid other teams at all cost and just focus on protecting our flags until the competition ends!"
George nodded his head and said, "That's right. I believed that with our team's strength, securing five flags should be an optimal goal. On the other hand, other teams must have gotten orders to play it safe after getting merely two flags or even one."
Dale interjected in shock, "Doesn't that mean our team had absolutely no way of reaching them?"
He understood that when both teams had trackers active, they could spot each other from a kilometer.
This signified that Felix and the rest had no way of approaching other teams, who were satisfied with only a flag or two.
"For those teams, I doubt it. But..." George added another hologram that was showing the stream of the Brazilian team and said, "If they kept moving forward, they will soon meet up with the Brazilian team, and there was absolutely no way that Maria is going to order a retreat!" He smirked, "Her team has only three flags as well and she is as desperate as our team for more."
Looking at the Brazilian team treading south with clear frustration written in the faces, Sarah giggled while covering her mouth.
She knew that the moment their tracker picked up the three flags in Felix's possession they wouldn't hesitate to storm them off!
This exactly what she wanted to see!
...,
Five minutes later...
"Let's carry on moving." Felix took a small sip from a bottle of water and stood back up again. He placed the bottle at the side pocket of the backpack and turned on the tracker.
While the majority of the teams were forced to keep it turned on to avoid getting ambushed, Felix used it only on the move.
Thus, he was quite startled when he saw three red dots advancing rapidly in their direction. Only 700 meters was between them and it kept shrinking quickly.
Speechless, Felix showed the tracker to his teammates and said, "Three at once, who prayed during our break?"
Just as Johnson wanted to exclaim in delight, he got glared on by everyone at once.
'Tsk, I can't be jinxing this as well.' He clicked his tongue in irritation at their overreaction.
"Alright, we don't have time to waste." Felix removed his backpack and threw it on top of the tree. The rest did the same as they couldn't be fighting with backpacks holding them back. Plus, flags needed to be kept away from battles.
"Let's go! We will meet up with them midway." Felix ordered as he dashed forward with his infrared vision, showing him the approaching ten humanoid auras.
He knew that it was better to stay put and try to counter-ambush, but he didn't want the battle to be anywhere near his backpacks.
"Plan?!" Kenny asked while sprinting next to him.
"Formation B." Felix smiled faintly, "I will be the main front-liner this time!"