Chapter 8: (1) The Shuttle
WHEEE!
A high-pitched whistle cracked the air as the Hunter with the red energy fired a flare of energy into the air! "The Shuttle" had begun!
All at once, the thousands of swarming Hunter candidates began their mad sprints across the field.
Though Alexandre had been near the back of the line when they were being addressed at the podium, the lines had become incoherent as everyone made their way to the starting line.
Taking advantage of this, Alexandre had pushed past others until he was near the front of the pack. Some people pushed back, but Alexandre was in top physical shape, and he didn't let anyone keep him from where he wanted to be.
However, Alexandre was smart enough not to be right at the front. If there were any traps, he wanted the people in front of him to trigger them.
But despite his caution, Alexandre encountered no special dangers during the first sprint to the finish line a kilometer away. When he arrived, Alexandre looked down at the G-Shock watch he'd put on that morning, seeing that it had taken him four minutes and forty seconds to reach the end.
This was a pretty slow time as far as military standards went, but it seemed that the people in front of Alexandre were also moving more slowly than they should have in order to evade any potential dangers. They were taking the lack of food and the hours of walking very hard. Many of the candidates had fallen back very quickly and seemed to be staggering more than running.
A generous eight minutes passed before the flare screamed through the air again. By this point, almost everyone had crossed the finish line. After all, most healthy people, even under these conditions, could be expected to run a kilometer in less than six minutes!
At this point, three people had failed to cross the finish line. Indeed, they were walking slowly and breathing heavily. Looks of despair crossed their faces as they realized that they had lost their one and only chance to become Hunters.
Two of them immediately turned to the side and left the track, but one of them stared at the finish line in despair.