As soon as the tablet was powered on, Mako was presented with a main interface that featured multiple options to select from. Additionally, the same blinking red light located in the corner of the screen caught Mako’s attention. This light was caused by a small button that displayed a bell symbol, indicating that this was a notifications tab.

Mako’s first action was to access the notification tab on the tablet in order to remove the blinking red light that was causing him some distress due to his OCD tendencies. Additionally, he also wanted to check the total number of notifications that had accumulated over the past five days.

Upon clicking the bell icon, Mako was immediately bombarded with hundreds of notifications, each accompanied by a small beep. The sheer volume of notifications that appeared on the screen was overwhelming, but Mako knew they had to sift through them if they hoped to acquire precise information about the island’s happenings.

…

…

…

Fortunately, the majority of the notifications were about instances where cadets had been defeated by beasts or other cadets and subsequently eliminated from the test. This reduced the number of notifications by a lot and now there was only a handful that they needed to go through.

Some were random event notifications that mentioned several sections and the event that was going to take place there for a limited time.

According to the notifications, a medical items airdrop occurred in the northeast, southeast, northwest, and southwest corners of the map on the second day of the test. Mako was getting even more ticked off when he learned this because if he had found an information tablet, he could have made his way over to the southwest medical airdrop and saved Bill who was poisoned.

Furthermore, on the fourth day, a new and improved set of loot crates was made available throughout the entire map. These brand-new loot crates were said to have a green exterior rather than the regular grey one and that they contained slightly better loot too, but were rarer to find as compared to the regular loot crates.

Lastly, it was also reported that five high-tier weapons had been dropped on the island on day three. Four were dropped in the four corners of the map while one was dropped in the middle of the map.

There were a few more events that had occurred but they were more like challenges than events as some were fetching quests while others were hunting quests to hunt a specific beast that was found in a specific area. These minor quests gave rewards in terms of points, but Mako and his friends were busy ever since they landed on the island, so they really didn’t have time to complete these jobs.

A few of the notifications were also about alerting the cadets about different danger zones that kept appearing and disappearing from the map. One of the notifications was about the exact same cave where Mako, Bill, and Leon were staying and encountered an advanced-level beast. ．

In addition to the aforementioned notifications, there were also several warnings of potential danger. One such warning revealed that a massive tidal wave had approached the island from the northeast on day two, prompting the tablet to advise individuals in that area to steer clear of the beach.

Furthermore, a forest fire had broken out on the north side of the island as a result of a dispute between multiple fire ability users. Only one of them was able to make it out of the fight safely while the others were eliminated. The fire had continued to spread and destroyed a significant area and was eventually put out by one of the patrolling officers with the water ability.

Lastly, There was also a recent weather warning for the cadets who were on the west side of the island, stating that a thunderstorm was going to roll in and that it is going to continue for at least two days. The cadets were advised to stockpile food and water and stay in their shelters because the rain was going to continue to get worse.

The last message was still active and this was a warning for Mako and his group as they were on the west side of the island and had no shelter. The tablet said that the rain was going to kick off halfway through day five. and checking the time on the clock it said:

DAY 5

06:21 HOURS

Mako thought it was a weird way to represent the time because it was evening time and they could have just simply said “6:21 PM”. Looking back at all the messages where the time was mentioned it was always counting in hours and it went up to “23:59” before resetting back to “00:00”.

Mako was initially perplexed by the fact that the 24-hour clock displayed an evening time of “06:21”, which seemed incorrect. However, he soon realized that they had arrived on the island around midday, which meant that the first half of the day had been spent at the military base rather than participating in the test. Therefore, the clock had only started ticking once the test had officially begun, causing it to label noon as “00:00” instead of “12:00”.

Upon understanding the clock’s display, Mako and his group realized that they had approximately six hours remaining to either locate Sven, Finn, and Andrew or secure a safe haven before the weather conditions become any more severe.

Knowing that Mako quickly scrolled through the rest of the notifications and found nothing else of great interest. He returned back to the main interface and the same options presented themselves in front of him.

Map

Event Log

Day & Time

Weather

Participants

Setup Duel

Mako first clicked on the map and a 3D layout of the entire map was displayed on the screen. He zoomed in on their own location which was being shown as a green arrow. Since the tablet had a GPS, they were able to see exactly where they were unlike the paper map which just displayed the island.

They saw that they had traveled quite a bit from the cave and were close to the halfway point up the stream. If they were to continue at the same pace as they were now, they could make it there with some time to spare. This brought hope to Iris as she was the most freaked out after seeing that weather warning.

Next, Mako checked out the Participants tab which displayed a few important pieces of information. Firstly it displayed the total number of participants that had landed on the island. They were around 4000 total cadets who had landed on the island out of which as of day five only 1200 remain.

The tablet didn’t disclose any information about the cadets who were still on the island, but it marked a red dot on the map for every cadet that was eliminated and from where. If you clicked on any one red dot, it will also bring up the information of that cadet and when they were removed from the island. It was super detailed and could give a lot of information, but Mako really didn’t have the time to look through all of them so he moved on.

The event log was just a watered-down version of the notifications tab but with a few perks of its own. The event log only dealt with the fights that had occurred on the island and nothing happened. It recorded every cadet vs cadet fight and every cadet vs beast fight and displayed that information with the outcome of the battle.

The weather tab just displayed a synoptic weather chart of the whole island and didn’t provide any new information. Mako had already checked the “Date & Time” tab so the only one left was the “Setup Duel” tab.

This tab couldn’t be accessed as it required a pin code to access and this was where a cadet could set up a duel with another cadet using the pin code which could be found in the loot crates. Mako and Bill were the only ones who had a pin code which they found on the first day, but Mako didn’t want to tell the others just yet so he closed the tab after everyone said that they hadn’t found a pin code yet.

After they had gone over everything that the tablet had to offer, Mako asked Leon to put the tablet back in its charging case while he packed up everything and got ready to move again.

Erin had recovered most of her stamina and was sure that she could take them the rest of the way without any more pit stops. Even if she was to get tired, Iris had recovered enough energy that she could take over Erin’s place once she was exhausted.

Leon quickly raised another pillar to reach the charging case and placed the tablet back inside. Mako picked up Bill and placed him on his back and Erin formed the bubble again to protect them against the rain.

Now that they knew they were already halfway, they began moving with much more fervor and with the hope that they could find Andrew’s camp soon and seek shelter before the rain got too much to handle.