"No hands?"
Rowayne said, calmly walking toward Jason.
"And don't bother screaming, no one's coming. They have..."
He looked toward the camp, which was deathly silent, and added in a low voice,
"Their own share of issues to deal with."
"Who are you?" Jason asked, while shifting back, trying to distance himself from the approaching figure.
"Don't remember me? That's sad. I have been watching you though, quite the awesome speech you pulled to get those idiots to join you. For a second, even I was tempted, but… you shot me."
His voice dropped near the last part, then he said in a very flat tone,
"That wasn't very nice of you."
Jason, on the other hand, was very confused by Rowayne, and who wouldn't be if some guy you have never seen before suddenly appears and bullshits about you shooting him.
"I didn't shoot you. I don't even know you."
"But you did, thrice at that," Rowayne interjected.
"Didn't your parents teach you not to shoot helpless, innocent birds?"
"What do—"
Stab. Spurt.
Rowayne stabbed Jason through the heart. Jason couldn't even resist, exhausted after fighting and weakened by blood loss, his mind already going blurry.
"Well, bye."
Rowayne stood for a moment, then looked to the side of the camp.
"Enough should be dead now. Should I join?"
He shrugged, then said, "Why not, but first."
He went and picked up the bow that was lying on the ground, then walked over to the corpse of the other boy.
Spurt. Spurt. Spurt. Spurt.
One by one, he took out the intact arrows.
There were four in total; the others had snapped when the boy crashed to the ground
After that, Rowayne started moving towards the direction of the camp.
The camp was quiet, far quieter than one would expect from a camp where two different groups of students were currently trying to kill each other. There were no clashes of swords, no sound of blades cutting flesh. No sounds at all, really except the breeze rustling the trees and bushes, and the crackling of the bonfire.
Probably an effect of a gift from the ambushers' side, Rowayne reasoned.
And sure enough, as soon as he got within a certain radius of the camp, all sounds came rushing in.
But before fighting the remaining students,
let's rewind time back a bit, shall we?
Precisely to the day before
It was a very ordinary day, wait, a very ordinary exam day. Or, well, as ordinary as an exam day could be. And Rowayne, like everyone else, heard the vice-principal's ya- I mean speech about rules, and he had a silly thought.
'Dude never said anything about being on the ground while selecting a weapon', thought Rowayne, and he really thought about it.
And as any reasonable person would, he arrived at a reasonable conclusion of 'fuck it, let's try it.'
But trying it alone would be stupid, and not very fun.
After pondering for a bit, Rowayne realised he needed a genuine pig, so he used [form shift], 3rd form, and turned into a bird, flying up and trying to search for genuine pigs.
That's how he found Jason, who at that time was convincing two people. He thought the guy was being smart; even if gift usage was permitted, most people could not use gifts actively for more than a minute, and not everyone had a passive effect attached to their gifts.
So for the majority of the population, gifts were a last-minute trump card, given the condition that they got the chance to use it before dying.
At first, Rowayne had no intention of targeting them, mainly because targeting a group was stupid.
Secondly, he had no beef with the guy, ah well, this reason was more of an excuse to back up the first one. He really did not want to fight a group first thing in the morning
But fate had other plans, as Jason spotted Rowayne, found the bird suspicious, and shot at it. Rowayne dodged, of course.
But that little action was enough to get Jason on Rowayne's shit list, and there is a saying that goes along the lines of this: "Humans discover new things about themselves every day."
Today, Rowayne discovered that he was petty, petty enough to waste an entire day stalking Jason and then lure another group of six people back to his camp.
It wasn't all fun and games, as he had to constantly dodge arrows. Good thing bullets were limited, and nobody was idiotic enough to waste them on bird shooting.
After letting the group of six know of Jason's group's position, Rowayne waited. For a few hours until the group of six struck.
Two split off to take care of the watchmen, while the other four went in to sneakily kill the sleeping ones, at least as many of them as they could before the rest woke up.
And sure enough…
While Rowayne was perched atop a tree watching over the camp,
Six figures made their move.
One of the six activated their gift, indicated by the surroundings going silent, while three others sneaked into the tents with weapons.
Meanwhile, two approached Jason and Rio. While the first group was somewhat successful in their attempt, the second group faced difficulty when Jason prematurely noticed them.
So they had to improvise. In the dead of the night, with no way to communicate with one another, that turned out to be a fatal mistake in their decision-making, and they paid for it by losing their lives.
Meanwhile, a person had woken up probably to pee, or something. He was in one of the tents farther from the ambushers but had a view of the watchmen.
So Rowayne decided to act before the person noticed the watchmen situation and interfered with the 2v2.
Rowayne flew up, and at a height he felt was sufficient, he used [Form Shift] to first form and called out for a spear.
And his thoughts were proven correct, as a spear did materialize. Rowayne grabbed the spear and threw it down at the person, impaling him.
Then he used [Form Shift] to 3rd form to stabilize himself midair, then landed safely near Rio, who was helping Jason.
Rio didn't mind the flapping noises—and that got him killed.
And back to the present.
Rowayne got a view of the ongoing conflict