Chapter 12: Performance Revealed
A few hours prior.
"Hey, seriously... Why are you dragging me here?" Rex grumbled and complained as he walked closer towards the 2nd Division District.
"To convince you to request a transfer for him before he finished his test, he can take ours instead right? Plus, I'm sort of curious how he does on the Procurements exam." Rita answered excitedly.
'This again... I thought she was finished with her insistence yesterday.'
"If you're curious take Gill! Hell, take Dio or the others for all I care, I'm busy!"
"Oh c'mon, you're the 2-star rank officer, your words will hold more weight when we request for his transfer to the 4th!" Rita tried to act adorable with her request.
"And I said I'm not doing that! Wait--"
Rex turned silent as he contemplated.
It was one thing if it was just some small talks like the one she had made the day before.
Even then, it was a little bit unusual since she hadn't spoken much to Claude throughout their time together on the return trip.
But she had actually dragged him here to request for his transfer... Rex started to become more and more suspicious of Rita's ulterior motive on this matter.
"Rita..." Rex's voice turned lower and heavier than usual, which caused Rita to turn stiff in response.
"Y-yes...?"
"I can understand if your insistence on this matter is because of your concerns regarding the 4th Division's lack of personnel or the coming Great Migration, but... Is it really?"
"W-wh-what are you talking about? What else could it be about, heh, like... Right?" Rita's stutters became more and more severe by the second as her words turned into incomprehensible murmurs at the end.
"You tell me... Because if this is another one of your stupid bet with Dio--"
"Eeep!"
Even before Rex had finished hitting the nail on the head, the opponent seemed to have buckled under the pressure, which gave him more than enough clues as to what's going on.
*THUNK*
"Owh!" A hard slap on the back swiftly came for Rita's head before she could properly anticipate or intercept it.
"I'm going back!!!" Rex fumed with anger as he turned his back.
"Oh come on Rex! I'll split the earnings with you if you can pull this off! ...Nn?"
*whispers* *whispers*
Rex was about to walk back to his District with Rita following behind him fully ready to showcase her persuasion skills.
However, the sound of loud murmurs and whispers surrounding the 2nd Division administration cabin halted their steps momentarily.
"...Doesn't it look like there's some sort of commotion in their admin cabin?" Rita asked curiously, followed by Rex answering with a nod of confirmation.
.
.
The air in the Procurement Division administration cabin was stifling.
The head of staff with the giant scar on his cheek, which Claude had come to call as 'Scarface' in his mind, was currently viewing the main monitor at the admin cabin's main hall with a bunch of other staffs and 2nd Division members.
For safety reasons, all the Divisions of ERA had always utilized some form of surveillance cameras and recording devices on the perimeter of their exam sites during the test period.
They were mostly used to prevent any sort of unethical conduct or fatal dangers that might implicate the Sector to occur amongst the participants of the exam.
The surveillance device would upload its visual and audio recordings at fixed intervals to the Sector's main radio tower, to then be redirected towards the computers of the Division responsible for activating the device.
.
This morning had marked the 3rd Day of Claude's Procurements exam.
Of course, counting the fact that he had left for the test in the afternoon of the 1st Day, it still hadn't been a full 48 hours since he started.
Scarface had come in to work this morning just like usual when he'd discovered the dumbfounded look on his staff who he had tasked with observing Claude in the monitoring room in the back.
He had asked the guy if there was anything wrong with the participant, but the answer that had come back to him was the same stunned silent face of the staff looking back at him.
Not knowing what to make of the situation, Scarface had decided to play the recordings on his monitor in the hall as he had deemed the monitoring room to be too small and cramped for his liking.
He had watched the start of the recording peacefully with his morning coffee on his desk, skipping some parts where Claude was just standing around thinking or preparing his equipment.
Scarface had been impressed when he'd seen him immediately setting up his camp on top of a tall tree the moment he'd reached the area before going around locating ingredients from up-high.
'Hoo...'
"This guy has a good head. He also decisively chose to start with the plants gathering first without minding the animal materials on the list."
As he was watching the recordings of Claude's 1st Day of activity, he sometimes made passing remarks or comments to the staffs or the 2nd Division Rangers working around the cabin hall.
This happened quite a few times, prompting some people to get closer and watch the recordings as well, creating a small crowd around Scarface.
Comments like, "Ah, I remember the time when...", or "I used to do this and that..." were flying all around the room, creating a nostalgic atmosphere between some of the Rangers present.
When the video reached the night of the 1st Day, Scarface once again control the screen to fast forward a few times, passing through the scenes of Claude browsing around the tablet and resting for the night.
"He seems studious too, look at how many hours he's spending on that tablet." One of the Rangers chuckled in appreciation, he certainly hadn't been that diligent back when he had attended the exam.
"He's not young, his thought process and mentality is probably closer to us than the usual 16-year-old participants." Another Ranger made an observation when he noticed that Claude looked to be in his early-to-mid 30s, which was either the same as or slightly younger than the ones present here.
"He only lacked the mirage moss now, I wonder how he's going to handle that?" One of the staff who was familiar with the exam noted.
The small crowd of people continued to watch on, growing bigger as they slowly attracted the attentions of new people who just arrived at the cabin.
Some left when they didn't see anything noteworthy, and the ones who stayed were only staying for the nostalgia that the exam bring them.
Either that or they were waiting for the reason why Scarface had put this recordings on his main monitor. Though truth be told, even he himself wasn't sure what had caused his staff to look so shocked back then.
.
And then came the morning of the 2nd Day.
If the crowd were staying just for the chat back then, this time they were doing it because of their amazement.
Creative!
They had seen the effort that Claude had put in as he collected huge amount of mosses into his gunny sacks and transfer it to the green-spotted pikas living in the rocky hills area.
"Oh, you can really do it this way?"
"That's right! I just remembered myself that those rats do have great skills in differentiating what they can put in their mouths, don't they?"
"We don't pay enough attention to weak animals we can't harvest huh...?" One of the guys in the crowd smiled wryly at the scene.
"By the way, he also got great hiding skills, you guys see how he avoided the smilodon previously?"
"I'm more impressed that he already knew about the mosses spot beforehand, I wonder if it's also the knowledge from the tablet?"
Everyone watching the video started to become more vocal with their comments the moment they saw the way Claude was harvesting the mirage moss.
There's even a comment about him avoiding the smilodon which had happened way before the current recording time.
"What do you think chief?" One of the staff was asking Scarface to share his thoughts on the matter.
"It was a subpar method at best, it wastes too much time going back and forth and also causes some level of damage to the area because he feed the rest of the common-type mosses to those pikas. The damage itself was small enough to be negligible though..."
'It's clear that his method was mostly book-learned, but he really made full use of that tablet computer... This kind of efficiency is unheard of for an examinee, he had even finished half of the list within the first 24 hours!' Scarface was actually amazed.
*sigh*
"See, grown men are so much better than those teenagers. The way he carries out his tasks is so refined, unlike those brats who only have muscles for brains!"
"..." The staff who asked the question first didn't reply,
'The chief looks like he's got some grudges against the young trainees...'
The crowds were rather astonished at the way Claude, an examinee, gather his first mirage moss. But they hadn't known that the high point of the recordings had yet to arrive for them.
It was the scene that had caused the staff in charge of monitoring to be stunned silent by.
.
With the help of fast-forward function, the recordings soon arrived at the moment Claude had just finished collecting his mirage moss quota for the test.
The video showed the scenes of him putting away the moss in his backpack without heading back to camp and directly going towards the location he'd first seen the smilodon walked off to.
Scarface and some of the staffs and Rangers behind him waited with anticipation towards the man's combat prowess that they hadn't had the chance to see yet.
At this point, Rex and Rita who had heard the commotion from outside had also blended in quite nicely amongst the crowd without anyone noticing.
After another fast forward, what followed was the direct confrontation between Claude and the smilodon after he successfully completed his preparations and managed to track it down.
"Smilodon is of different levels than a half-dead dire wolf that he had to kill previously, how does he plan on hunting this?" Rita watched with baited breath.
"Those traps maybe? I saw him set some up... If you look at its content alone, the exam target of the 2nd Division is of higher difficulty than the rest of the Divisions."
"However, the difference is that their participants may equip themselves with any and all kinds of traps and equipment they can find in their storage unit, which significantly decreases that difficulty and even make their test easier than ours." Rex explained.
Everybody watching had thought that they will soon see a fight between the wild Grade-1 smilodon and this yet to be initiated Ranger of 2nd Division.
But contrary to their expectations,
The next scene showed that not only did Claude not attempt to ambush it or fight the beast head-on. He was simply throwing small rocks at it from a far distance with playful looks on his face.
"..."
"..."
'What is that guy doing!?' Was what resounded in everyone's mind at the same time when they saw this behavior.
The smilodon was successfully provoked by such actions almost immediately.
With smokes coming out of its nose and maw, it had angrily chosen Claude as its target to kill and shred to pieces.
But the fears and earlier curiosities of the crowd were doused just as fast when they saw what happened next.
It was a scene of Claude leading the smilodon around by its nose.
With him sometimes avoiding the beast's lunge by a hair's breadth and at other times swiftly putting the distance between them during the irregular intervals of its attack, it was truly a sight to behold.
And when it seemed like Claude was about to get cornered, he somehow managed to lure the beast into the area of the tripwire that he'd set up between different trees previously, causing the smilodon to trip and lose sight of him for a moment, just to find him a couple distances away but a second later.
It was like watching a coreographed dance!
"Wow!!"
"Damn!"
"How'd he do that??"
The crowd present all cheered louder than ever before at this scene! It's truly like watching a performance after all. The precision of his moves and how close he had avoided some attacks even sent chills down the spine of a couple veterans.
"Crazy, it's like he can read its movement..." The staff beside Scarface noted.
"He had completely grabbed hold of its rhythm. But why hasn't he attacked even once?" Scarface nodded in reply and returned with his own observation.
"Perhaps he's got his hands full?"
"Rubbish, he'd had plenty of chances!"
How could Claude miss the chance when the smilodon tripped on his wires repeatedly.
'But it looks like he was... Luring it away?'
.
This circus-like performance went on for quite a while longer. Most of the audience in the hall had already noticed that Claude hadn't released even a single attack towards it, which caused them to speculate even more.
"What is he trying to do here? Is he luring it into a larger trap he'd set up?"
"No, I've been watching from the start, he had only set up those few tripwires which have all been used up by now." One Ranger in the crowd answered the first guy who had been speculating.
"There's still one more I think, if I counted correctly..." His friend to the side corrected him.
Just as the Ranger's friend said his piece, the last tripwire was triggered at the same time as the end of his sentence.
"That's the last trap!" One man shouted.
The smilodon once again stumbled on the wire extended in front of its legs and almost fell down for the umpteenth time.
However this time, unlike the previous occasions, Claude's figure didn't appear again within the smilodon's perception range.
'...?'
The crowd also waited for a while without finding him.
'He avoided the surveillance?'
It was not possible for Claude to truly hide for any length of time from the silent drones since they were programmed to follow the person carrying the tracking accessory on them.
Before long, the recordings changed their angles to reveal Claude hiding behind some distant trees and tall grass.
But the drones also happened to catch the sceneries in front of Claude, which had revealed a situation that was unexpected for everyone watching the monitor in the hall!
"!!"
Even Scarface, Rex, and Rita shared the same dumbfounded look as the monitoring staff from this morning when they saw the scene in front of their eyes.
What showed on the screen was a clear picture of war between a dozen or so dire wolves and the single smilodon who was almost twice the size of those dire wolves!
Yes, during the time that the recordings shifted their angles to find Claude, the smilodon that had been single-mindedly chasing him for almost half an hour had shifted its focus and started fighting the dire wolves in the area!
"That guy... This is..." Scarface still had a complicated look on his face, having not yet recovered from the shock.
'Territorial Dispute!'
'He actually dared to incite a territorial dispute!!'
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
SuperHippo
SuperHippo Thank you for reading!
Please leave your thoughts and comments so that I'll know whether the story's pace is too slow or too fast~
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