The Ranch

Treasure Trial (1)

Tih's days go on as usual with a few "mishaps" here and there, helpfully taken care of by the people around him.

Almost two months pass by like this, making Tih residency on the island total up to almost five months.

Currently, their generation is preparing themselves for the upcoming trial that should happen within the next couple of day.

As they've only occupied the island for a short time, headquarters still has all of them do their trials at around the same time.

The end of the month is coming without them having their five trials(Tih's fourth). The trial starts in the form of a beep. Lucien, Sherlock, Kai, and Tih look at their watches respectively.

Lucien taps on the incoming notification," A group trial."

Kai reads the rules," Form a group of eight to ten people by the end of the hour. You will be given the first clue once the ID's are inputted into an electronic board. You will have until midnight to finish the treasure hunt."

"A group of eight to ten, who should we pick." Sherlock ponders," We won't have a lot of options if everyone in our generation got this trial."

"Victor." Sherlock suggests.

"They're the top performing team, they'll be scouted by everyone. What are the chances.-" Kai starts.

Sherlock cuts him off," They would immediately fill up our numbers, giving us more time, and we already became acquainted with them in the maze, not to mention their relationship with Tih. Asking them would be the best course of action."

At the end of his persuading sentence, Tih's watch beeps once more. Tih taps the watch with a finger and the blue holograph appears for everyone to read.

"Looks like we don't need to go to them." Sherlock chuckles.

"...They came to us." Kai looks at the request to partner up with befuddlement.

They reply to Victor's request for partnering up with agreement and pick a place to meet before heading over.

"We can test our compatibility with this trial. That's one of the things you were worried about right?" Sherlock glances at Kai with a smile.

"...We'll see." Kai's voice sounds unmoved.

The two groups meet up at the central market, around the middle of the entire island.

"Nice cooperating with you." Sherlock shakes hands with Victor.

"Same here." Victor nods with a noble air.

The groups take their time formally introducing each other.

"I'm the leader, Victor. This is-"

"The name's Theodore, just call me Theo." The large boy gives a puppy-like smile.

"Pierre. I look forward to our cooperation." Pierre shows a businessman's smile.

"Abel, nice to meet you..." He glances you his side, preparing to continue, but stops.

"Basile." The albino nods as he takes a bite of a candy bar.

Kai starts," I'm Kai. Both Sher and I make the decisions in our team."

"Full name is Sherlock, but I'm fine with whatever." Sherlock adjusts his hat. "Next to me is Lucien."

"And I'm sure you're already familiar with Tih." Kai finishes off their introduction.

They input their ID's and the trial accepts the newly formed team. A countdown appears along with the first clue.

The clue reads as follows,

[Don't bits off hore then you pan chew and go an a rild goose chase. If you lose...well, we'ld cross thas bridge when we get to at. Don't understand? Too bad, nox my circus, not me monkey]

"Is it just me, or are some of these words misspelled?" Pierre points out first.

"Not only that, but what's "nox my circus, not me monkey" supposed to mean?" Theo questions aloud.

Kai speaks up here," Nie mój cyrk, nie moje malpy. It's a Polish phrase that means "not my problem".

"There seems to be a total of four metaphors in total including the Polish one, each includes misspellings." Sherlock concludes.

"Bits should be bite, hore should be... so s, h, e, p, a, r, d, s, a, x, and e?" Abel mumbles under his breath.

"Shepard's axe? What's that?" Theodore looks to Victor.

Victor shakes his head elegantly.

Kai easily pieces together the puzzle," Shepard's axe, otherwise known as a ciupaga, is a Polish weapon.

Sherlock follows in time," During the maze, we realized that everything on the island is automatically translated to a language we can understand, but people like Kai, who's linguistics exceed the norm, sees words in its original form. Polish and a weapon, we're probably looking for a shop in the central market that sells a Shepard's axe."

"Then it should be easy to find, considering our advantage." Basile side eyes Kai.

"And luckily we chose to start here." Theodore looks at his surroundings.

The team combs through the weapons section of the marketplace, using Kai as their verified metal detector. What would normally take a few hours took them under twenty minutes, puzzle and all. This is mainly due to the cheat code that is Kai. Even if one understands that they're looking for a Polish shop, only those that understand Polish would be able to differentiate the stores. It also helped that Kai recognized the Polish idiom.

After combing two shops, they finally find the weapon Kai helped describe in detail in the third shop. The find the next clue etched onto the axe, completely covering it with symbol. One side it the head reads [☞︎☼︎⚐︎💣︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ 👍︎☜︎☠︎❄︎☜︎☼︎ ⚐︎☞︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ 👎︎✋︎💧︎❄︎☼︎✋︎👍︎❄︎💧︎📪︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ ✌︎☼︎☜︎✌︎ ❄︎⚐︎ ☟︎☜︎✌︎👎︎ ✋︎☠︎ ✋︎💧︎ 💧︎⚐︎🕆︎❄︎☟︎📫︎🕈︎☜︎💧︎❄︎]. On the flip side [- .... . / .-.. . - - . .-. / -... . ..-. --- .-. . / - .... . / -. ..- -- -... . .-. ... / .. ... / .- / ...- --- .-- . .-.. /].

And finally, on the wooden handle [01001111 01101110 01100101 00101101 01101000 01110101 01101110 01100100 01110010 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110011 01100101 01110110 01100101 01101110 01110100 01111001 00101101 01110100 01101000 01110010 01100101 01100101] has been scrawled on.

They quickly get to work assigning jobs. Lucien detaches the two parts of the axe, taking the wooden piece, and walking away. Kai speaks up for him," Lucien can handle the computer code. I'll take the Wingdings."

"I'll help." Basile walks to his side.

"Then let's do the Morse." Victor looks to Sherlock. Sherlock nods.

Abel stands to the side and Theo plays with Tih's hair as the other quickly decide the messages.

Lucien finishes first, " The answer is [173]."

Kai says his and Basile's," Ours was something along the lines of [from the center of the districts, the area to head in is south-west]."

Victor says the last one," It read [the letter before the numbers is a vowel]."

"Southwest of the center of the districts, that's housing district B." Theodore speaks first, feeling left out.

"...it could also be referring to a shopping district, but that's most likely overthinking it. They wouldn't put two destinations in the same place." Sherlock retracts his statement.

"Then assuming it's district B, plate ?173, we're left with five options. A, E, I, O, or U."

"And 'y'." Basile looks at Victor with a quirked lip.

"...six options." Victor looks at him with a cold stare.

Getting back on track, Sherlock proposes," Then shall we split up?"

The moment they knew the next clue was at the housing districts, they started moving. They decided partners before they arrived and immediately separated once they reached district B.