Onwards

After finally calming down, I checked my phone, my personal point total was 19, and the point total for our team was now 24, meaning my teammates had collected two more points while I was dealing with Seven. And also meaning my estimation of him having 15 points was exactly correct. I sighed and rolled a d8, using my cheat method from earlier to stop it on 8, then turned to the unconcious Seven, a smug smirk rising to my face again at the sight of him so disheveled.

"You're welcome for the chaos you desired."

I then left, going 8 spaces south, only for a beep to play on my phone.

"You have encountered an ally, please take as much time as you wish to cooperatively search this whole space, and end it whenever you wish." The digitized voice said. Oh? So this was the benefit for moving together with allies, more importantly, one was on this space, I could meet an ally, a possibility I considered unlikely before.

"Um...hello?"

A cute, feminine voice came from behind me, and I turned to see a girl around my age, that boob window couldn't be practical for running around a forest, what if a bug crawled on her chest? Actually..that was a stupid idea... a young boy can't mind something like that, unless they're gay I guess but I then realized...in all my time so far...I had yet to see a single bug in this forest.

"Hello." I greeted her in a casual voice.

"You're my ally?" She asked a bit shyly, either she was naturally shy, or just acted like that to be cute.

"Yep, call me Eight."

"Um...I'm Fuwa...nice to meet you..."

She didn't give her last name, but I didn't even give her my real first or last name, so I couldn't complain.

"Nice to meet you Fuwa..."

My thoughts went back to the bug question, there really were no bugs around, examining the trees, even they didn't match any species I knew...just makes this world even weirder. And yes, I know a lot about trees...I'm weird okay, I had to study extra as a kid since I would ace even AP classes and classes in the grades I skipped to, so I ended up looking up random facts, memorizing them at a glance, and doing random logic puzzles online, I think it was when I was around the age of 11 that they just gave up on educating me any further, and I graduated early.

"Um...you've been lost in thought there for a while...staring at a tree..."

"Sorry, it's nothing, could you tell me about the rules of this game?"

"Huh? Didn't Kami tell you?"

"That's the name of the "god", I assume? No, she just said she'd given the speech too many times, I figured out the basics on my own but, mainly, I'd like to know the game's time limit, and if there were any details on the number of treasures each space had."

"...Yeah...sounds like her."

"You say that like you know her well, are you from a previous game? Kami offhandedly mentioned it was monthly."

"Yep, I was one of her winning pieces in the last game."

Huh...so multiple pieces from different teams can win a game, interesting.

"How are players eliminated then?"

Fuwa sighed, and adopted a more serious expression, now far less nervous, was it really a facade she put up to win people over? If she did win the last game, the chances she's naive are very low.

"I'll answer your questions one by one, Kami called this the "treasure hunting gameboard." Each game consists of multiple gameboards, the number varies, and there are a different number of losers and winners each month and game, so I can't predict much about the final number of winners, but Kami did say...everyone in the team that placed last this game, would be eliminated."

"...And what does it mean to be eliminated."

"You'll be returned to your home." The quick way she answered and strained tone of her voice made it easy to tell it was a lie, but why lie?

"Anyway, the time limit for this game is 48 hours, and according to my internal clock. About ten minutes have passed so far, we have a long time, so the board should be pretty large, time won't pass in the real world while we play."

"Can I trust your internal clock?"

"It's never failed me before." That was a confident answer, combined with her experience, I was a bit relieved this girl was on my team, if she was telling the truth, properly telling when the time limit would end could be advantageous.

"Now then...about the treasure amount on each space-"

Our phones beeped.

"An enemy has entered your square, you outnumber them, so you may choose only one person to battle them."