Leo knew that he was being surrounded by hostile forces.
He had just stolen the kills of over a dozen assassin's and many of them were not happy.
Adrenaline was still pumping through his veins as the thrill of stealing other people's kills was making him more excited than he should've been.
Whether it was a good idea, or a foolish idea, Leo did not know, however, because of the urgency of the situation, Leo still went ahead with it, knowing full well that it could backfire.
"AWOOOOOOOO"
"AUAUAOOOOOOO"
Leo howled, howled at the top of his lungs as he tried to attract all the tracking hounds to his location.
For context, the entire testing arena was as calm as calm could be.
There was no sound of anyone even breathing laboriously let alone a loud noise such as this, yet Leo howled in such a quiet place and that too on-top of his lungs.
At that moment, everyone who was surrounding him took a quick look behind their backs and towards the tracking hounds as the pupil of their eyes constricted when they saw an entire bunch running in their direction.
" Madman….fucking madman" one of them cursed as he ditched the idea of exacting revenge on Leo and instead began running for his life.
The same could be said for all other assassin's who wished to do nothing with Leo at the risk of being barked out themselves.
Once again, Leo escaped certain defeat narrowly and to the blessing of the lord's, while he left no scent trail, everyone that had surrounded him did, so when the hounds came near his location, they quickly picked up the trail of the assassin's who had scrambled and Leo miraculously survived yet again.
The judges, Lin Mu and even Leo himself could not determine if Leo was a genius or just a lucky bastard who was blessed with extreme providence as slowly but surely all the hounds dispersed in different directions, but Leo was left unharmed.
'Interesting…. How interesting' thought the Alliance Leader who had a rare smile break out on his cold face watching Leo's antics.
' What a lucky fool' thought Lin Mu who ditched her hiding spot and began to look for the dispersed rabbits as while Leo had already hunted 7, she was yet to claim a single kill.
'Yep, The Boss, that name suits me' thought Leo as he calmly changed his hiding location to a new one, blending back into the hiding game seamlessly.
52 minutes later, as the final buzzer rang declaring the end of the competition, there was no one who could surpass Leo's record of 7 kills as shockingly not only did he survive hiding from the hounds, but he also managed to secure the highest number of kills by using an out of the box approach.
***************
( Near the judge's seating, the end of round two )
Only 42 candidates remained after round two as nearly 80 had been eliminated by the hounds or for not having enough kills.
The second highest number of kills was 5 held by Lin Mu, while Leo topped the charts with 7!
He had changed back to his assassin's robes, however, by this point almost everyone remembered his mask and his body shape, as hateful glares were being poured at him from all sides.
" Once we're out of this arena…you're dead meat. I'm telling you- DEAD MEAT" one Assassin who only had 2 rabbit kills told Leo as he seemed extremely upset that he could only kill 2 and not proceed to round three, only because Leo had stolen one of his kills.
Leo ignored the man and pretended to yawn under his mask, which enraged the man even more.
" WHY YOU-" He cursed as he moved towards Leo with a dagger in hand, however, was blocked by a tall hooded assassin.
" There will be no infighting here-" the tall assassin said before disappearing almost as fast as he appeared.
Although he only said a few words, it seemed enough to deter the angry assassin, as he begrudgingly left Leo alone.
"Quite a performance you made," Lin Mu said as she patted Leo on the back.
" Nothing much" Leo replied humbly although internally he was feeling as inflated as a balloon.
" Pfft…haha" Lin Mu chuckled at his reply as the other assassins frowned heavily at their conduct which showed emotions versus the stoic attitude that assassin's were expected to maintain at all times.
" Alright, attention here-" The Alliance leader said as he sat up after collecting the sheet containing judges scores for the round.
" What's your name, young man?" He asked, looking straight towards Leo.
" My name is…. Jin Mu" Leo replied, staying true to the character he was playing.
"Jin Mu…." murmurs began to erupt amongst all the other assassin candidates as almost all of them had heard the name of the prestigious Mu clan.
Although not everyone was privy to their internal workings and how big of a disgrace Jin Mu was in the clan, just from his name alone he exuded the aura of a big shot.
Beside him, Lin Mu raised her head in pride at the awe that Mu clan commanded, however, the next words spoken by the alliance leader made her wish to hide her face in shame.
"Cute clan full of dangerous whores" the alliance leader said, as although he meant it as a compliment, both Jin and Lin Mu felt embarrassed by the tag.
" Anyways, congratulations kid, you have been scored at 7 points by the judges, and have received 4 extra points for the 4 extra rabbits you killed, bringing your evaluation to an extraordinary 11/10.
You rank ahead of your sister Lin for this round who is scored at 10 with 8 being the judges score and 2 being the bonus she receives for her two extra rabbits kills.
The next is the assassin from the Hwaja clan, Gobi Hwaja who recieves…." The night leader said as after addressing Leo and Lin Mu he went on to dictate the scores of all other candidates in descending order.
There were two things different about the second round announcement versus the first, which was that this time around the Alliance leader called out everyone's names and ranks and it was important because based on these rankings their seeding for the third and final round was to be decided.
Because there were only 42 candidates instead of 64, most received a bye for the first round of matches, however, those with a higher ranking were given a priority for this seeding.
Hence without even fighting a single round, Leo virtually secured his spot in the round of 32 and was sure to be ranked in the top 40 overall, even if he did not win a single fight in round three.
This was a dream come true for any assassin as being in top40 meant that every assassin organization would scramble for this talent and that they had a bright future ahead.
However, naturally Leo did not plan on throwing the towel just yet and had every intention of fighting whatever opponent was against him in round three as seriously as he could.
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/// A/N - Bonus Chapter for hitting the PS target, good job everyone! ///