The Heiress They Lost Came Back Overpowered

The man smiled nonchalantly. "Got it. But I have to say one last thing: you five eliminated fledglings need to line up, grab the shirttails of the person in front of you, and follow me out."

Anna Nash and the others who had been eliminated could only glare at him, indignantly following him outside.

As they walked, they didn’t forget to strip off their gear and secretly slip it to the nearest teammates.

Glenn Rhodes saw them out of the corner of his eye and smirked, but he didn’t stop them.

’After all, who knows what kind of new, twisted games Lowell has in store for these brats,’ he thought. ’Might as well cut them a little slack.’

Meanwhile, Dragon’s Ascent and Snow Phoenix were still drawing fire. Stanley Sutton whispered a few words to Ryan Ford, then slipped away.

Before long, the searchlights outside went out, leaving only the lights inside the building on.

The "Dugu Qiubai" underlings inside were naturally left with nowhere to hide.

It was all Stanley Sutton. He had taken advantage of the chaos to get to a blind spot and use his superpower to destroy the metal circuits in the searchlights.

Gray Wolf Squad and the Anomalous Abilities Unit quickly climbed in through the side windows, completely surrounding them.

Reinforcements kept rushing down from upstairs, but the squads reacted quickly and took them out one by one.

Colored smoke from bursting paintballs filled the air.

"Martin Miller, eliminated!"

"Jade Gold, eliminated!"

"Quentin Zane, eliminated!"

When the battle was over, the floor was littered with "corpses."

Everyone in sight had been dealt with, giving the four squads a moment to catch their breath.

"Phew, we traded three for twenty-two. That’s not a bad trade for us."

Martin Miller, who had just been eliminated, lay on the floor, rubbing his chest where it stung from the paintball’s impact.

"Are you dense? Did you forget about the five people who got taken out outside?" Jade Gold rolled his eyes.

Quentin Zane asked timidly, "Aren’t ’dead men’ supposed to be silent?"

"Just think of us as talkative ghosts, alright? Besides, the three of us are in this corner. Who’s going to hear us?" Martin Miller retorted.

Theodore Zane would never pass up an opportunity to kick someone while they were down. Looking at the "corpses" on the floor, he began to gloat.

"No offense, but your buddies are pretty heartless, huh? Just watching you get wiped out. Only a few of them came down to help, and I bet there are plenty more hiding upstairs, right? Tsk, tsk. What is the world coming to? So much for camaraderie..."

"I’m so jealous of you guys. All those colorful splotches... I wish I could dye my hair black and white and red and yellow and purple and green and blue and gray, too."

As he spoke, Theodore Zane feigned a sigh and patted his own crew cut through his mask.

The "corpses" couldn’t stop their lips from twitching. ’They’d only just arrived yesterday! Lowell never told them they’d run into this kind of jackass while playing a game of live-action CS:GO!!!’

’If we’d known this was going to happen, we wouldn’t have bothered competing for a spot on this two-day trip to Aurelia!!’

Stanley Sutton gave him an annoyed kick. "Stop gloating. We still don’t know how many people are waiting for us upstairs."

Ryan Ford gave a few hand signals. The others understood and immediately split up.

Two team members sneaked to the stairwell and tossed a few smoke grenades up to the second floor.

The others charged up right behind them, splitting off to the second and third floors and picking off a few would-be ambushers in the stairwell along the way.

...

Meanwhile, Blake Paxton led five people around to the outside of the building and used his Space Ability to get them onto the rooftop.

This was a move he himself had proposed during their earlier strategy session.

Even though they all guessed there would be enemies upstairs, every one they could eliminate was a victory.

Their goal was to draw some fire and buy more time for their comrades below.

The point man had barely taken a step before he vigilantly raised his paintball gun, scanning the area.

Using the beams of their flashlights, the six of them scanned the entire rooftop but saw no sign of any kidnappers.

In one corner, they found three unconscious hostages.

As two team members moved forward to untie them, Blake Paxton held up a hand, stopping them.

One of them looked at Blake Paxton in confusion. "Peter?"

Blake Paxton didn’t say a word. He simply opened fire on the unconscious hostages, and puffs of colored smoke erupted on all three of their chests.

"Are you crazy?! You ’killed’ the hostages! What about the test?!" Mason Miller stared at him in disbelief.

Blake Paxton’s expression was unchanged. "What hostages?" he said calmly. "They’re fakes."

The masked "Yvonne Lowell" in the middle suddenly opened her eyes and smiled at him.

"Care to share how you figured it out?"

"The photo showed a sliver of green, which we initially guessed were the spruce trees outside. But given the height of the trees and the angle of the shot, it couldn’t possibly have been taken on the rooftop."

"What does that prove? ’Hostages’ can be moved," the fake "Zachary Jacobs" said with a shrug.

"In the photo, the three instructors’ hands were tied in front of them, but yours were behind your backs. I also just saw the hand of the person on the left twitch. If I’m not mistaken, you three are holding guns, aren’t you?"

The three exchanged a look and pulled out the guns they had hidden behind their backs. "Anything else?"

Blake Paxton rubbed his nose. "Ahem. And most importantly, while our instructor loves messing with us, she’s not an idiot. There’s no way she’d sit out on a rooftop in the freezing winter wind just for a prank."

After a pause, Blake Paxton continued, "So, you’re wearing realistic masks, right? It was Instructor Hughes who put you up to this, wasn’t it?"

The expressions on their faces were complicated. Of course, it was their "Instructor Hughes."

They’d been sleeping soundly on the second floor. Getting dragged up to the rooftop to freeze in the cold wind was bad enough, but then they were forced to wait for so long.

And waiting that long would have been one thing, but to get wiped out before they even had a chance to act...

Their expressions said it all. Blake Paxton ignored them and led his five teammates downstairs to provide backup.

...

「In the control room.」

Yvonne Lowell couldn’t help but laugh out loud. "He really does know us pretty well."

Nina Jennings rolled her neck. "Tell me about it. Only a complete moron would come up with a plan like this. Who’s going to fall for that?"

"Tsk, what’s that supposed to mean?!" Zachary Jacobs shot back, looking aggrieved. "I put a lot of thought into planning this, you know! And some people fell for it at first, didn’t they?!"

Yvonne Lowell said calmly, "It was just a for-fun round, anyway. Just to let them relax a little at the end. So what if it was a dumb plan?"

"What the hell? A for-fun round?! To relax?! I thought you said this was a secret test!" Zachary Jacobs’s expression was complicated.

’So he’d planned it all for nothing? All his hard work was just for a joke?!’

Nina Jennings scoffed. "What secret test? Yvonne was just messing with them. You didn’t actually believe her, did you?"

"Then why did we wake them up so early!? And make everything so formal and dramatic?!"