Chapter 100: Sensed

Once the commotion subsided, Eren and his group went on back to their exploration of the tunnels.

On the way through, Sierra and the others couldn’t help but discuss everything they’d seen.

"Lots of things are happening," Sky said. "There are Martial Manuals being passed around and given to people."

"Yeah, but let’s be realistic. Will any of them actually be able to use those?" Abe said. "Maybe out of a hundred, only ten of them will reach Lower Proficiency Mastery."

"Still... that’s a good opportunity for them. They wouldn’t be able to buy any of those Martial Manuals outside here. The fact that they obtained those for free is something..."

It was at this point that Sierra stopped their discussions and secretly pointed at Eren. She gave them a stern look.

Sky immediately turned red as she realized the misunderstanding. "I’m—I’m not saying that I would rather be in their group! I’m already extremely happy that I have all of you as my group members, and you Eren as my leader! It—It was just a silly thought."

But in truth, Eren wasn’t offended even if she meant it. There was nothing wrong with desiring powerful Martial Manuals.

He was once like them too, back in the days. He would have sacrificed anything just so that he could cultivate even a single Martial Manual, even if it was the weakest one available.

Not anymore, he thought. Now, he was living his dream.

Eventually, they found a trail of sunspores leading to a tunnel.

"Looks like this Territory is already conquered," Sierra said, picking up a few broken sunspores from the ground.

"Let’s turn back. But of course, not before taking all of these sunspores that they used!" said Paul.

The rest of the group immediately began scavenging for the broken sunspores on the ground. All in all, they gathered about a hundred sunspores in total, which they immediately gave to Eren.

"Let’s leave now so that we can try to find more unclaimed Territories."

While others already turned away, Eren kept looking forward.

Celeste immediately noticed his behavior and walked beside him.

Then, she heard it too. The sounds of footsteps. Muffled voices. It was at this point that she realized what Eren was thinking. "This place hasn’t been conquered yet. It’s being conquered."

Eren nodded. "They’re vulnerable too."

A single eyebrow raised in Celeste’s face. "You’re thinking of ambushing them."

As soon as Sierra and the others heard Celeste’s words, they were immediately apprehensive.

"What? Should we really do that?"

"Shouldn’t we just look for other Territories?"

"I think that’s really dangerous...."

Eren turned to look at them. "If we’re just going to wait until we got lucky and find another unconquered territory, then we’ll never be able to advance to the next test. We need to take any opportunity that comes our way. We need to play the game and get those flags."

Despite his words, they were all still apprehensive. Eventually, Eren had to give them the rundown of the whole situation.

"From my estimation, there’s about twelve people inside that place. We only need to worry about four of them. They’re the ones that have a movement art..."

He began telling them his thoughts. And soon, Abe, Sierra, and the others gave Eren blank looks of shock.

"How did you find that out? We haven’t even seen the inside of that tunnel!" Henry asked,

"I heard their footsteps," Eren answered. "If you listen closely, those who use Negative Reinforcement have footsteps that are more solid. While the others are normal...."

They looked at him, astonished. They could barely even distinguish the amount of people inside, much less gather that much information!

Eren decided not to tell them that he also estimated the gender and height from those footsteps.

Eventually, Celeste turned to everyone with a stern look. "Eren’s right. If we don’t do this, then we’re basically resigning our fate to luck. We need to take victory with our very own hands! Otherwise, why did we even enter the License Exam in the first place?"

Sierra eventually nodded firmly with a dedicated look on her face. "I’m in."

"Heck it, I’m in too," Henry said.

With a unanimous decision, Eren and his group decided on ambushing the Territory in front of them.

They walked with careful steps through the tunnel, till a wide chamber opened up to them.

It was an underground garden of some sorts. Green plants and vines wrapped around the walls and the ceiling, with some roses and flowers and trees scattered all around the ground.

In front of the chamber was a giant stone fountain. At the very top, where water spurted out from the spouts, there was the flag firmly planted on its surface.

Currently, there were four people scaling this giant fountain, just like Eren said they would.

The other eight people were standing around the fountain, simply looking up at their team members and giving them pieces of advice.

"Eren was right!" Paul said with hushed surprise.

"How did you do that?!" Abe said, looking at Eren in wonder.

"They haven’t reached the flag yet," Sky said. "We can still steal it from them."

It was at this point that Sierra looked around the chamber, noticing the greenery planted here. "This is a jackpot Territory," she said. "If we sell everything here, we’ll be able to get a few thousand sunspores at the very least!"

Bernadette then pointed towards a certain part of the garden. "And look! There’s Skyward Herbs here! That will sell for a lot too!"

Celeste then quickly looked at Eren. Then, she finally realized why he had been so adamant in conquering this Territory, despite someone already trying to conquer it.

He must have known that there were Skyward Herbs here!

And she wasn’t wrong.

Eren did indeed smelt the unique fragrance of Skyward Herbs and deduced that there were many of them here.

He’d crushed too many of them to not recognize them from a mile away.

So, he insisted on them ambushing this group so that he could take these Skyward Herbs for himself.