Predicament

While Kusana was catching his breath, Satotz explained the location they ended up in. It was called the Swindling Swamp, a place where, instead of normal thieves and murderers lurking inside of the swamp, it was the plants and animals.

Kusana finally caught his breath when he heard a man shout, "He's an impostor!! He's not the examiner! I'm the real examiner!" An average-looking guy came around from the tunnel entrance.

The man was injured in multiple places and was carrying a bloodied and skinny monkey with a face that looked a bit similar to Satotz. It had yellow hair in the same hairstyle Satotz had, plus a curly mustache like his.

The man pointed an accusatory finger at Satotz, further making the crowd confused. Satotz held a mildly irritated expression on his face. "I'll show you! He's one of the wetland creatures—The Man-Faced Ape!".

The accusation shocked the group of examinees, but not Kusana. He could tell that the man was taking a stretch. He could have said that Satotz stole his license, or any other story more believable than that.

If Satotz was really out to kill them, it would have been much easier to kill the group of adventures in the cave, where they couldn't easily escape, rather than bring them to an open area where they had a higher chance of running away.

Kusana waved his doubts away again, tuning out their argument. He began to space out when, suddenly, he had to dodge three cards flying in his direction. The first card barely nicked his cheek, making a few small droplets of blood run down his face.

Looking in the direction the cards came from, Kusana noticed a jester-themed man with a murderous feel to him. It felt like he was barely able to contain himself from killing the entire crowd.

Kusana looked in the direction the cards went, and saw that the man had caught the cards directly in the face and collapsed to the ground, dead. In the other direction, Satotz had caught the cards with an unamused expression on his face.

The man's face slowly warped more narrow-like, making him look more like the man-faced ape he spoke about. The "dead" ape he brought with him slowly glanced to the left, before leaping into the air.

The clown-themed man threw another couple of cards and hit the monkey midair, effectively killing the monkey. "Now we know. He's the real thing." Despite the fact that he was speaking normally, the clown-themed man had a predatory tone in his voice.

"Examiners are hunters who do this without pay, at the request of the judging committee. A simple hunter, which we ourselves aspire to become, would have no trouble dodging my attack." He explained.

"I shall take that as a compliment, but, the next attack on me, for any reason, will be grounds for immediate disqualification. Understood?" Satotz demanded. The clown man gave a semi-sarcastic bit of assurance.

"As you see, losing isn't pretty." The group was confused, but quickly noticed a flock of birds nearing them. The birds flew overhead and Kusana could see their sharp beaks and claws. The flock quickly picked up the monkey and the man, tearing them apart on their flight away.

Kusana grimaced at the bloody sight, wincing a little bit ever time they tore out an important organ. He quickly pushed it into the back of his mind. People still murmured as he pushed past them, hoping to get closer to Satotz.

------

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound of many feet hitting the dirt was all Kusana could hear as he was at the front of the pack once again. He felt mud seep into his only pair of shoes and frowned. It was hard to run when you would almost slip after every step.

A shiver went up Kusana's spine like a centipede, making him extremely self conscious. He zeroed in on the slight killing intent coming from behind him. It came from the clown guy from before. His name, Kusana learned, was Hisoka. The sight of him faded into the fog.

"Wait, fog?!" Kusana blurted out. A fog was closing in on the group from every direction, making it hard for those in the back to keep up with Satotz. The fog made it hard for him to see even ten meters in front of him, fog he had never seen before.

Right in front of him, Kusana saw Satotz hop over something big. Kusana decided to follow his footsteps and hopped over a particularly grassy area in the mud. When Kusana turned around, his eyes almost bulged out of his head because he saw the guy behind him get snatched up by some kind of giant trapdoor spider.

Kusana heard a mixture of noises; heavy thumps from giant creatures, the screams of men and women getting eaten alive. It was much more ominous when you could barely see anything in front of you.

When Kusana watched for the next movement Satotz would make, along with a select few, he noticed Satotz suddenly vanished from their sight. The group stopped for a moment, but it seems someone stepped on a trap as the entire terrain shifted.

The group was eaten up by a giant frog in one bite, a few lucky ones being killed immediately by the giant mouth of the creature. The unlucky ones had to slide down its gullet and try to not drop into the stomach.

Kusana quickly brought out Shroud and Pillar and stuck Shroud into the soft and fleshy wall. It took a little bit to stop his momentum, but it cut a small slit into the throat of the beast. It thrashed around wildly from the pain, further sending some unlucky people further down.

Kusana hung from the entrance to the stomach, watching as a couple of people struggled in the stomach acids of the giant turtle. The liquid was much thicker than water, so many were unable to swim back up and drowned.

Two girls fell from the gullet and caught onto the end of Kusana's meteor hammer. The two were already bickering while Kusana hammered in Shroud so they wouldn't fall.

"What the fuck, Koyuki! If you listened to me, we would have still been running after Satotz!" The girl higher up on the chain had blue and white hair reaching her neck, the white portion being slicked back. She wore red sunglasses and a thick striped jacket, being striped red, grey and white. She also had on red baggy pants and had nearly pink skin.

"Sorry Sana…" Koyuki, the girl lower on the chain, had long and curly blonde hair, also wearing a long sleeved white crop top. She wore similar baggy pants, but black. She seemed much more shy than Sana at first glance. A shadow casted over Kusana's eyes.