Chapter 28: Second Trial Reward
Maximilian placed the duffle bag on the ground and opened it, revealing several incendiary rocket warheads. He swapped out the HE (High Explosive) rocket previously loaded on the launcher for an incendiary one.
—
As for the Trial Master, Shadow Thief is unaware of Maximilian's actions. That's waiting within his small underground hideout. Since the trial hadn't ended, he assumed Maximilian had survived the first wave of the stampede.
Shadow Thief, who was born in the Wildwalker Enclave but refused to undergo the ceremony to receive the enhanced tattoos, still possessed deep knowledge of the Wildland and the ambush tactics of the Wildwalkers. He was preparing several bait traps and special plants to initiate a second wave of the beast stampede to finish Maximilian off.
He guessed that Maximilian must've hidden in some durable building or gotten out of the way in time. Otherwise, Maximilian wouldn't have survived.
The mutated beasts were ferocious and hard to control. But this time, Shadow Thief planned to unleash the full fury of the forest's mutated wildlife... including its most dangerous creatures. It was a risky move... but a calculated one.
A sudden explosion interrupted him while he prepared the bait, plants, and compounds for the next stampede.
Boom!
Shadow Thief paused. A smirk crept onto his lips.
This guy is an idiot, he thought. Using explosives to randomly blast the forest in hopes of flushing me out? Or maybe trying to clear a path through the traps and poisonous plants I set up.
Whatever the reason, there was no way Maximilian would find him—he was safely hidden underground.