The Ultimate Hunt

3.

I opened my eyes with a gasp, my mind racing like I had just woken from a nightmare. The disorientation hit me hard as I sat up, blinking against the dim light. Where am I now? The last thing I remembered was boarding the bus after the photoshoot, headed for the arena. Then... nothing. 

My head felt heavy, like I'd been hit with a brick, and there was a dull ache settling behind my eyes. Drugged. They must've pumped something into the air. Of course, they wouldn't let us know the location of the arena. Makes sense. My limbs felt heavy, and the aftereffects were similar to being wasted, like I had one too many drinks and was just now crawling out of the haze. At least I didn't feel like throwing up yet.

I looked around the room, quite similar to my dorm back in the Ghetto. A small bed, a desk with a chair, and a wardrobe. That was all. Not even a window in this shithole. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, feeling a little shaky.

I walked over to the door and, to my surprise, it was unlocked. I was allowed to leave. 

It was probably time for everyone to gather, the game was about to start. But I wasn't ready to face that yet. Not without knowing more.

I let the door fall shut and turned back into the room, my eyes scanning the space for anything that might be useful. I moved toward the desk, hoping to find something. 

Even before I entered High School, I was doing a lot of research about The Hunt on my own. I spent years pouring over past games, watching them in chronological order, obsessively analyzing how they changed over time. Some games, I watched multiple times, just to make sure I hadn't missed a single detail. I'd seen how the organizers experimented with different arenas, different strategies, and how each set of participants reacted to the evolving brutality of the game. The systems, the mechanisms, the traps; they all had a pattern if you paid close enough attention.

For example, ever since The Hunt became a global sensation, the organizers shifted their focus. It wasn't just about survival anymore. It was about entertainment. The viewers demanded excitement, drama, and personalities they could root for or despise. The game had morphed into a spectacle, designed to satisfy the bloodthirsty masses.

I noticed that after the 8th Killing Game, the organizers began to prioritize one thing above all else: popularity. The more the audience loved or hated a contestant, the more likely they were to survive. This wasn't a theory—it was a pattern I'd seen play out across nearly every game since then. The crowd had power, and their voices could influence the outcome.

Polls flooded the network during each game, sometimes within minutes of it starting. People created fan pages, wrote endless threads, and hyped up contestants they believed would win. And those contestants? The ones who garnered the most attention, for better or worse? They often got better supplies, more favorable conditions, or strategic advantages. It wasn't official, but it was clear: the more popular you were, the more the game tilted in your favor.

That's why theatrics mattered. Whether you were a hero or a villain, if you captured the audience's imagination, the odds shifted. It was like playing a game of survival with an extra, invisible currency, favor.

This is why being a passive, invisible participant rarely worked. I had seen countless contestants fade into the background, thinking they could just avoid confrontation and outlast the rest. But once the viewers lost interest in you, you were done. The organizers didn't want to bore the audience, and the silent ones? They got pushed into dangerous situations. Sometimes they'd be forced into the spotlight, other times, they'd just be eliminated, forgotten.

You weren't supposed to play only the game. You also had to play the crowd.

For years, I'd perfected the art of being invisible. Blending into the background, staying out of trouble, that was my survival strategy. It worked in school, in the Ghetto, and in life. Confrontation was a risk I never wanted to take, and attention was something I avoided like the plague. But here? In The Hunt? That strategy was nothing more than a slow death sentence.