Over on Adrian's side.
As Adrian and Garrett neared the mountaintop, they chose to jump off the truck.
The two hid roughly a hundred meters from the objective.
It was a summit camp. According to the map, the red flag in the center of the camp marked the mission objective.
Using their ponchos, they concealed themselves in the bushes some distance away.
Their position offered an excellent view, giving them a clear look at the entire camp.
"Adrian, you're a freaking genius."
Lying prone on the ground, Garrett spoke to Adrian beside him.
"Naturally. Stick with me, and you'll always eat well."
Adrian was clearly feeling rather pleased with himself.
Garrett was the Class One monitor, one of the strongest students in the entire academy.
And Adrian rather enjoyed the feeling of being looked up to.
"From now on, you're my boss, Adrian. No—Boss Adrian."
Garrett tried to inch closer, but Adrian cut him off.
"Don't move around. After you've been lying there for a while, the ground warms up. Any movement could give you away."
"Just what I'd expect from Boss Adrian. My admiration for you is as endless as—"
That only made Garrett admire Adrian even more.
The sort of knowledge Adrian possessed could only have come from either a battle-hardened special forces operator or someone with a special forces soldier in the family.
But Adrian was obviously neither.
That made Garrett admire him all the more.
It could only mean one thing: Adrian had figured all of this out through his own experience.
Follow a big shot like this and pick up even a trick or two, and becoming a top-tier soldier would be a sure thing.
"It's five o'clock. At five-thirty, we'll slip out quietly."
Adrian checked the time. Their assignment was to reach the objective, and they had clearly already completed it.
All they needed to do now was stay hidden and avoid being discovered by the instructors.
Twenty instructors stood in neat formation while someone addressed them at the front.
"That's Frost."
This time, Adrian would not mistake her for anyone else.
Frost was not wearing her field cap. Her ear-length hair hung loose, and she wore a short-sleeved olive-drab shirt.
She looked exactly as she had when Adrian first encountered her.
Except that back then, Frost had been wearing a camouflage tank top.
"I never expected her to be a major."
"Wait. If Frost is a special forces major, doesn't that mean my identity has been exposed too?"
His trump card was the ability to summon squads. Those burly Russians were obviously not locals. How was he supposed to explain them when the time came?
Still, if he had been allowed to come here, Frost had clearly kept his secret.
"Move out."
Frost's briefing was not loud enough for Adrian to hear from a hundred meters away.
But he heard those final words clearly.
"They're heading out to catch the recruits. Adrian, should we move?"
Garrett was nervous. He had already seen two instructors heading in their direction.
"Don't move. Thermal imaging can't see anything except heat-emitting objects."
Adrian gave the reminder in a low voice and pressed his head to the ground.
Garrett followed suit.
The footsteps drew closer, then gradually faded away.
"Whew."
"I still need to work on keeping calm."
Though it was only an assessment, Adrian was still tense.
Back at Ammunition Depot No. 4, he had slaughtered his way through the enemy.
But they had all been NPCs. Adrian had treated it like a game.
This was different. These were real people.
It also reminded Adrian of his previous life.
After graduating college, he had become a reporter for a military newspaper.
Back then, Adrian had desperately wanted to become a soldier, but physical limitations had prevented him from doing so.
Later, because of that same passion, he chose to become a military newspaper reporter.
And it was during his time as a reporter that he had learned all this knowledge.
At that moment, Frost was the only person left in the camp.
She checked her watch, then returned to the barracks.
Time passed quickly, edging toward five-thirty.
Instructors began returning one after another, followed by several captured recruits.
There were more than a dozen of them in total, and practically every one of them was injured.
The largest of them in particular had his hands tied behind his back. One eye was swollen shut, and blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
Ethan had intended to rely on his hand-to-hand combat skills to subdue the instructor, but he had never imagined that the scrawny-looking instructor before him would be so formidable in close combat.
Ethan had not lasted even one exchange before being beaten black and blue and pinned to the ground.
His girlfriend, Claire, had tried to step in and help, but a single look from the instructor froze her in place.
Claire had not resisted, so she had not been hit. Ethan, however, had not gotten off nearly so easily.
With his hands tied behind his back, he was brought to the camp.
There had been twenty-four participants in the assessment. Sixteen recruits had already been caught, which meant eight had yet to arrive.
Frost emerged from the tent.
She sighed as she looked at the sixteen people subdued on the ground before her.
"Completing a mission isn't just about forcing your way through. You need to use your heads."
Frost paced back and forth before the group.
All the instructors had withdrawn. Their role was not to stop the recruits from reaching the objective, but to delay them.
The real purpose of this assessment was to evaluate the recruits' adaptability and physical fitness.
After two and a half hours of pursuit over mountain trails, they had to cover the final kilometer within thirty minutes to qualify.
But Adrian and Garrett clearly did not fall into that category.
Using their ponchos, they remained hidden in the woods a hundred meters away, watching everything unfold.
At 5:40, two figures emerged from the distant woods.
Both had multiple scrapes, and their clothes had been torn full of holes.
"Looks like your search skills still need work."
Frost looked at the two bedraggled recruits and gave them a wicked smile.
The special forces operators behind her could not help shuddering.
Judging by the time, the pair must have found somewhere to hide and only headed for the objective after the instructors had withdrawn.
Four more people arrived at the objective in succession.
The time reached 5:50.
"Commander, two recruits are still unaccounted for."
After counting heads, a special forces operator approached Frost to report.
"I know."
Frost had noticed as well. The ones who had not appeared were Adrian and the recruit beside him.
She knew exactly what Adrian was capable of—a man who had dared take on hundreds of NPCs and armored vehicles with a single squad.
If Adrian had been given a rifle, her twenty-person team would probably have been wiped out in the woods.
Time continued to pass.
"Adrian, aren't we going out?"
Garrett checked his watch and reminded him.
"Yeah, it's about time. Let's go."
Adrian also felt the timing was right. If they kept hiding, they would exceed the time limit.
Rustle.
Everyone heard the sound of leaves shifting.
But when they looked toward the sound, they saw only two glowing heat signatures.
"It's those two recruits."
Everyone realized that Adrian and Garrett had arrived.
Yet through their thermal imagers, all they could see were two glowing points rather than human silhouettes.
"Could it be...?"
More than twenty instructors simultaneously switched off their thermal imagers and flipped them up onto their helmets.
Under the camp lights, they saw Adrian and Garrett walking toward them in camouflage ponchos.
Aside from a few leaves caught on them, the two looked no different than they had when they set out.
There was not even any mud on their boots.
"Recruit Adrian Mercer, reporting."
Adrian walked up to Frost and saluted.
Garrett followed behind Adrian and saluted as well.
"What? When did you get here?" one of the recruits asked.
Mud covered the recruit from head to toe, soaked into his clothes and plastered against his skin.
He had clearly hidden in a mud pit to avoid capture.
"We got here just a little after the instructors did."
Adrian answered.
"Impossible. We drove up here. How could you possibly have caught up?"
One of the instructors stepped forward.
Frost was equally confused. No matter how capable Adrian was, he could not outrun a vehicle.
"Reporting. We hitched a ride in the back of the instructors' last cargo truck."
The instructor who had asked the question froze.
"I object! A connected recruit like you should be disqualified."
The protest came from the mud-covered recruit.
To avoid being caught by the instructors, he and his companion had endured the cold of the mountains, where the temperature was only a few degrees above freezing, and hidden in a mud pool.
And now Adrian was saying that he had gotten a ride up. Obviously, the instructors had given him special treatment.
"Recruit, don't talk nonsense."
The instructor hurriedly stepped forward to explain.
At that moment, Adrian spoke up.
"We climbed into the bed of the last truck in the instructors' convoy and rode up there."
Adrian briefly explained what he and Garrett had done.
"Impossible. The instructors were equipped with thermal imagers. If you had waited by the roadside, the thermals would have spotted you."
The mud-covered recruit challenged him.
After seeing the thermal imagers mounted on the instructors' heads, he and his companion had thought of hiding in the mud to evade pursuit.
This time, no one looked at Adrian. Instead, they all turned their attention to the mud-covered recruit.
"If you're weak, train harder. Did you even inspect the gear you were issued?"
"What does that have to do with avoiding thermal imaging?"
The mud-covered recruit still looked utterly confused.
Before Adrian could explain, the instructor who had stepped forward spoke first.
"Among the gear we issued to the recruits was a poncho. It was meant to make it easier for you to operate in the rain and prevent hypothermia in extreme conditions."
"But some veteran troops also use this type of poncho to counter thermal reconnaissance."
Even within special forces, only veteran NCOs from the older intakes knew that trick.
Among the instructors involved in this operation, only the lead instructor and Frost knew about it.
"So that's how it is."
"That explains why those two were wearing ponchos even though it wasn't raining."
Murmurs rose among the recruits.
"We arrived at the camp at 4:30 in the morning. Then I found a spot with an open field of view and hid there."
Adrian's next explanation sent a chill down the instructors' backs.
"Is this guy really a recruit?"
All twenty instructors were special forces operators, but they had only joined after passing selection the previous year.
The only ones who could truly be called veterans were the NCO from earlier and Frost.
"If this recruit had been given a rifle, he could have easily killed every one of us from the position where he was lying in wait."
The thought rose in all their minds.
At once, the way they looked at Adrian became completely different from the way they looked at the other recruits.
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