First Elimination

With the hole cut, Minos delicately grabbed the small piece of wood that fell out before tucking his eye close to the hole.

Activating his Omniscient Eyes, he immediately got a good look of the place, not having to look much before noticing a small group gathered around a table, discussing.

Looking around a bit longer, Minos quickly identified their leader, calling his men over before explaining his plan.

"Are you sure this will work? Won't you need our help?" Nissor asked.

"No worries, when it comes to fighting, I'm quite competent." Minos smiled.

"Then I won't say anymore. Since you trust so much in our abilities, we will trust in yours."

Saying that, Nissor led the others to the safehouses front door while Minos deftly climbed up the wall and landed on the roof.

With quick hands, he soon picked the roof's door, quietly opening it and walking inside, his mind internally counting the seconds.

Arriving at the bottom door, Minos held his breath, patiently waiting for his opportunity to arrive.

Fortunately, the wait didn't last long, and soon enough the sound of shouting and clashing became clear.

"Men, stop them!" The young man from before shouted, shocked yet not surprised at the intruders.

He already knew that someone had likely tracked them, so he was prepared for such a thing, but who knew it would happen so fast?

Luckily for him, the person after him clearly underestimated his own forces, only sending four against ten.

With no cultivation to help them, the ten managed to quickly 'overpower' the four, but of course, this was just a show.

Despite their lack of cultivation, they were all still Aperture Opening Cultivators, and even after suppressing their strength to the fullest, they still had a slight edge over the Inner Heaven Cultivators who were attacking them.

Of course, even with their advantage they would still inevitably lose this battle due to the number difference, but they could still easily escape before then.

But that was against the point, after all they wanted to give the illusion that they were close to defeat in order to lower the guard of their attackers.

After confirming that the fighting was far enough, Minos once again gently opened the door to the safehouse's living room, but this time he was unlucky, and the young man immediately noticed him.

"Who are you? Everyone, intruder!" He immediately shouted, seemingly having no desire to fight his own battles.

The others immediately heard his loud shouting, but Nissor and the others had subtly entrapped them, and it took them a couple seconds to break free.

The time may be short, but to Minos it was more than enough, almost instantly arriving next to the young man.

"Since you want to fight, let's fight!" He shouted, realizing Minos wasn't going to just let him go.

As a young man from an imperial family, he had his fair share of combat training, so he immediately took stance just before Minos arrived.

But how could a greenhouse flower like him compare to Minos, a man who had spent his entire life fighting?

With a heavy punch, the young man nearly fell over, only barely regaining his balance at the last second.

Unfortunately for him, Minos was far from over, using the newly created gap to send in a kick aiming directly for his jaw.

Fortunately for the young man, his training finally paid off, and he immediately lowered both his arms instinctively to block the kick.

However, while Minos's foot came to a stop, his shoe didn't, rapidly flying towards him and uppercutting him from below.

The force wasn't much, but it managed to distract him for a split second, and before he even realized what had happened, Minos's foot swung back down, though not too ready for another attack.

Instead, using his freely exposed toes, Minos snatched the flag that was tightly wound around his waist and kicked it up into his hands.

Seeing all this, the young man's soldiers immediately froze in place, realizing that the game was unfortunately over for them.

"Huh, why did you guys stop?" The young man asked, still not realizing what happened.

"Sigh… Look ahead." one of his men explained.

Turning back forward, he saw the flag held comfortably in Minos's hands, his pupils immediately expanding as he looked down at his now empty waist.

"NOOO-"

…

"Mission success." Minos said, his men all smiling behind him as they all re-entered the safehouse.

"Great!" Jiro and the others exclaimed, relieved that everything went according to their plan.

"Games just started and we've already got an elimination!" Masi said happily.

"Iso, has anyone else managed to remove your mark?" Minos asked, not ready to celebrate so early.

"No Sir."

"Good, then it seems for the time being we've got less to worry about. Anywho, let's leave the excitement for later, we've still got work to do." Minos said.

Nodding, everyone quickly gathered back around the table as they continued where they had left off.

"So what now? Should we reveal a few of the stronger teams' locations and have the others deal with them?" Ko suggested.

"If we do that, it'll only be a matter of time before the smarter competitors realize they're being tracked, which would give away our current advantage." Nissor replied.

"Exactly, we have to play this smart, make it not look so obvious…" Yosh added.

"Since you're all aware of that, any suggestions?" Minos asked, scanning the room slowly.

Unfortunately, everyone just looked at him in silence, none of them confident in their own plans.

"Since no one's confident, I'll speak first. Right now, the more aggressive we are, the more we're actually benefiting those hidden in the shadows."

"This isn't a test of most eliminations, rather one of who can survive till the end, so even if we were to eliminate 99% of our opponents, if we lost in the final round it would all be for naught."

"Right now we should continue to expand our marks, while at the same time eliminating those capable of seeing through our plans."

"It's only once we have eyes on everyone can we confidently begin step two, until then, we don't exist..."

…

The next few days passed in a flash, Minos's team continuing to expand their eyes and ears all across the kingdom.

At the same time, Iso and Jiro were both hard at work, discreetly marking more and more targets, and by the time the second week had passed, they had marked 90% of the opposing teams.

Only a few teams were still completely hidden, but Minos wasn't too worried since he already knew these teams were led by civilian Nine-Tailed, who were much less capable than their royal counterparts.

That was except for one, the illusive Sixteenth Princess, who till this day was still hidden somewhere in the vast kingdom.

Standing in front of a large wooden board, Minos looked at the six faces pinned up, all leaders of team's he had yet to discover.

At the very center of the board was the face of a beautiful young woman, a gentle smile strung on her face, filled with confidence.

Minos had never formally met this Sixteenth Princess, but he had scanned her with his Omniscient Eyes back when everyone had gathered at the Forbidden Palace.

Luckily for him, she was one of the few competitors who was still in the Inner Heaven Realm, albeit one step away from Aperture Opening, but still.

Because of that, he was capable of scanning her memories, which he promptly used to build a portfolio of her.

From her personality, to her habits, to her likes and hates, to everything in between, he understood her better than she understood herself.

And it was exactly this understanding that led him to acknowledge her as one of his fiercest competitors, because he knew just how clever she was.

Based on his understanding, it was likely she was trying to paint herself as an incompetent leader who could only hide in cowardice.

Such an image would cause her competitors to underestimate and ignore her, which is exactly what she wanted at this stage.

But Minos also knew that wasn't enough, and given her personality, since she wanted people to think she was weak, she'd give them no reason to doubt her, but how?

"Boss, we've tagged another person!" Iso suddenly shouted as Minos was thinking.

'So that's how…' Minos thought with a laugh, turning back to Iso.