Keith, indeed, had a lot of solid ideas about where they should start looking for these tickets. He had a whole map that showed the location of these likely tickets.

But the thing was, should he trust this map? Or should he look around manually for those tickets? Both options had their pros and cons.

In the end, Keith decided just to check out the map for the time being. The worst that could happen was for him was his time being wasted. But it would still be better than looking around blindly.

"Hmm. I found this piece of paper that looks like a potential map of this place. Let us look for the tickets according to this map."

"Huh, what did you say? Let me see the map for a second."

Keith helped the map in front of himself but he was not able to have that map for long. Sara ended up swiping it out of his hand and looking.

Her young face had a complicated expression on it. She looked at the map, then at Keith, and then back at the map.

"Looks legit. But I do not know why my heart skipped a beat as soon as I touched this map. Maybe we should not follow it and look around on our own?"

Sara suggested as she handed the map back to Keith. But this time, Amelia was the one who took the map. She looked at the map with concentration before finally snapping the small piece of paper closed.

"One of the tickets is not far off from here. Let us go and pick it up before anyone else comes across it."

Amelia sounded determined. It was a good thing to see her determined since she was Keith's ticket to victory.

"Let us go then. If you feel afraid, then you do not have to come with us, Sara."

Keith assured the youngest but Sara suddenly looked determined. Her eyes blazed with curiosity and a need to win.

"No, I will come with you. I cannot possibly miss any opportunity to gain an advantage."

Sara insured Keith of her reasons. But Keith just wanted to get rid of her in this round. 

'Then again, Sara will make for an easy opponent in the next round. If there is one person I want to face in the finals, it is Sara.'

It was sheer luck and people skill (mostly good luck) that had allowed Sara to get this far in the competition. Her reliance on Amelia was obvious if anyone bothered to look.

Soon the trio reached the place marked on the map. It took them less than 10 minutes to travel all the distance but the ticket was nowhere to be seen. 

It was hidden but Keith opened his map to check the location once more.

"Someone will need to climb the tree and check the upper parts as well. The ticket should be nearby."

Keith assured the two people he was with and Amelia immediately climbed the tree to look there. 

Meanwhile, Sara and Keith continued to look in the forest below. But the ticket was nowhere to be seen.

That state lasted until Keith spotted the hidden box inside one of the trees. He was suddenly sure that the ticket he had been looking for was inside the box.

He reached out to touch the box, but someone else managed to swipe it before he could make it to the box.

The cloaked figure in front of Keith looked familiar. He tried to remember where he had seen this figure before but he did not get to concentrate for long enough.

The figure in front of him dashed off toward the lake side of the forest.

"Hey, wait. I said to wait. You cannot just steal our ticket and make off with it like that."

Keith yelled and his yelling attracted Amelia's attention. The female protagonist looked down sharply, finally noticing the box in that cloaked stranger's hand. 

From the way, Keith yelled to the way this stranger was making off with the box in their hand, Amelia put two on two together and decided to ambush the running female.

The cloaked figure clutched her box together when she was boxed in. Amelia had blocked her way forward and Keith was blocking her way back.

The cloaked figure tried to go sideways but Sara also arrived on the scene and blocked the final way.

"You should give up, miss. We do not want to hurt you. We just want the box in your hand."

The female-cloaked figure clutched the box even tighter in her hand once she heard Sara's words. She was not willing to give up.

Keith took a step toward the cloaked figure when she made a sudden move.

She threw her cloak at Keith, momentarily blinding him to what was happening. And then she used this opportunity to run past him.

Since no one knew, this was going to happen, this sudden action caught them off guard. That was the excuse Keith would like to make regarding why he failed to dodge that simple attack.

"Noah, are you alright? You were not hurt by that attack, right?"

Amelia asked and she stopped adjacent to Keith. Instead of chasing after their target, Amelia seemed more concerned about Keith getting hurt.

"I am alright. What about the box? And that stranger? Did we lose sight of them?"

Keith asked with a heavy heart. It seemed like he had lost a great opportunity this time. He was disappointed in himself but also glad that he had Amelia to care for him.

"H-How could we allow such a thing to happen? What are we going to do now? The stranger ripped us off. We did all the hard work of finding that ticket and now it has gone from our hand."

Sara seemed to be having a small mental breakdown from the stress of her situation. Two hours had already passed.

With four more hours left, who knew how many tickets were still available to take in this forest?

"Calm down Sara. We still have chances left to capture tickets. You see when I looked at the map, I noticed something. Some tickets are in very hard-to-reach places and competitors would likely check them as a last resort, right?"

Amelia pointed toward three spots on the map that looked like hard terrain to navigate.

Once was the lake; one was a cave and another was a cliff. These were places one did not typically venture into. 

Especially during such a competition. People wanted to try finding easier methods first.

"Ugh, you cannot mean that we need to check these places as well? I do not think I have what it takes to make it out of here alive."

Sara complained as soon as she noticed what Amelia was suggesting. She was a delicate child who did not have a lot of defenses.

And usually, such hard-to-navigate places in a test had some kind of test or guardian attacked with the deal.

"I think it is worth trying. But you do not have to come with us, Sara. We will try to bring your ticket back here if it is possible."

Amelia assured Sara and Keith was sure that Sara would protest this arrangement. She was not someone who trusted other people and she liked to do things her way.

So, when she just looked at Amelia with her passive eyes and did nothing else, Keith was surprised. Sara was behaving unlike he had expected her to.

"Alright, if, you are sure. I do not think I will be useful in any of the upcoming scenarios so I will leave this to you two. But make sure you bring my ticket back to me."

Sara asked for assurance and Amelia decided to place her hand in Amelia's own to assure her.

"We will be back soon. You just need to place your trust in us for the time being."

Amelia assured before she and Keith took off. They both decided to check different terrains first.

Amelia took the cliff since her wind nature would help her climb the walls and look around. Meanwhile, Keith decided to take the Cave as his spot.

Somehow, it seemed like the most grounded and approachable of the three terrains he had possibly seen. He also had the map and vaguely knew where he needed to go.

As soon as Keith reached the cave, he decided to take his flash light out and look around. There seemed to be nothing inside the cave at first.

But then Keith's light fell on a familiar-looking figure. Her white hair and red eyes flashed in front of Keith's face before he had a pair of hands covering his eyes.

"Hey, are you not the ticket thief? What are you doing here? Give me back my ticket."

Keith demanded as he tried to step back and open his eyes. But it was too difficult to do with the grip the woman had on his eyes. She was not allowing Keith to see even an inch.

"Do not you dare. I will kill you if you decide to do anything foolish."

The woman warned after tightening her grip a little.