Mako saw Erin fall from the roof and reacted quickly as he dashed to grab her before she hit the ground. He made it just in time and held her unconscious body in his arms.

After making sure that she was okay, Mako carried her over to the shelter. Bill, Iris, and Leon were all inside the shelter and they had sealed the front door shut by raising an earth fall from the floor, covering the whole door frame.

Mako went up to the door with Iris in his hand and was about to do a secret knock which they had discussed and agreed upon earlier as the signal for the coast is clear; however, before Mako’s hand could even reach the door, the sound of ground cracking could be heard followed by Iris rushing out of the door to check on her best friend.

**************

Mako had instructed them to cover all the windows that they had built in the shelter with no gaps because he didn’t know what kind of beast would be attacking them in the second and he wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t be spotted by the beasts who may have a keen sense of smell like the Sabertooth Spiders or good hearing like the Terra Beetles.

The reason for this was not that the group wouldn’t be able to fight on their own, leaving Mako to worry about protecting them because each one of them was now capable enough to deal with a couple of high-level beasts by themselves.

The real reason for this was because then the group would have to fight all the beasts together and it would defeat the purpose of Mako fighting the horde of beasts alone as everyone would expend their energy in order to protect themselves putting them back on square one.

Bill had done exactly what Mako had instructed him and covered all the gaps and windows of the shelter, practically sealing them inside. Bill had left one small hole at the top corner of the shelter from where air could ventilate inside and out. With Bill’s wind ability, he could easily ventilate the room with just one hole so it wasn’t uncomfortable in any way.

However, during the fight, curiosity had gotten the better of all three of them and Bill carefully opened a small hole through one of the walls of the shelter to peek out and see what was the condition of the battle.

Luckily, the Flame Dogleos only had their intelligence going for them and so they didn’t notice multiple holes being poked out of the walls of the shelter and observing the whole thing.

Obviously, since they were peeping through holes, they didn’t get too much of a view but they could clearly see almost all of the Dogleos frozen in place and one by one turning blue and getting covered in ice.

They knew this was Erin’s doing, but no matter how hard they tried they couldn’t locate her since she was standing on top of them. Soon, they gave up and focused on the fight between Mako and the active Dogleos.

They watched as Mako battled them from afar for less than a minute before some of the beasts started to turn blue and get covered in ice. This in turn diverted the active Dogleos’ attention towards the shelter.

Bill, Iris, and Leon were stunned by their sudden change of target as they began charging their fireballs toward them when it was actually for Erin on top of the roof. They quickly closed all the peepholes, afraid that maybe the beast had spotted them and they all huddled together to brace for the explosion that was headed their way but it never came.

They were quite confused as last they checked, the beasts were charging their fireballs aimed at the shelter, and yet there was no explosion or destruction. They carefully reopened only one peephole this time and saw that Mako was now fighting the beast up close and many more of the paralyzed beasts had turned blue and covered in snow.

They watched Mako’s great fighting skill as he managed to dodge every single one of the Dogleo’s attacks while killing them in one shot by stabbing them with his combat knife all the while more Dogleo turned blue and covered in ice.

It had only been almost a single minute since the battle had begun and yet so much had already gone down. The paralyzed Dogleos could finally move but their numbers had already decreased greatly, and with the numbers that they still had, it wasn’t enough to overpower Mako’s wide range of evasive skills and hurt him. .

The rate at which the Dogleos were turning blue and getting covered in ice was reducing as it took longer and longer for Erin to kill each Dogleo as she was at her limit. This caused the fight to continue for a while where Mako was basically using a wide range of his skills in succession to dodge and avoid all of the Flame Dogleos that were attacking him while slowly chipping away at them by occasionally finding an opening and stabbing a Dogleo.

Toward the end of the fight, all three of them witnessed as the last Dogleo finally turned blue and got covered in ice, and right after they saw Mako running towards the shelter which was quite confusing at first but then out of nowhere Erin dropped from above and landed in his arms unconscious.

The three of them finally realized why they couldn’t locate Erin because none of them had thought of looking on top of their own shelter. By the looks of it, Erin was knocked out completely and Iris went into full panic mode as she saw her best friend in such a condition.

As Mako made his way over to the door of the shelter, Iris demanded Bill to quickly remove the earth barrier and let her go out to which Bill complied.

***********

Moments later, Iris was busy healing Erin who was laying in the middle of the room. Erin hadn’t sustained any physical energy so what Iris was basically doing was using her healing aura to basically allow her to recover her energy at a faster rate so that she could regain consciousness faster.

This wasn’t a skill that Iris did not know how to do because she had never learned it but ever since she had recovered from the sword wound, she felt more closely attached to the healing aura inside her body, and somehow instinctively, she knew how to help Erin reenergize her body.

While Iris was doing that, Leon helped Mako harvest all the crystals from the dead bodies of the Flame Dogleos. After they had died and their skin had turned blue, their fur had lost the ability to burn anything upon contact, and Mako and Leon could safely extract all the crystals.

The crystals turned out to be 51 in total and Mako brought them inside the shelter so that he could give the crystals that belonged to Erin since she had also killed a lot of the Dogleos and deserved them; however, since she was still unconscious Mako decided to wait.

After Leon had properly disposed of all the bodies of the dead beast by drenching a whole lot of water on top of them which made them completely disintegrate, he also made his way inside the shelter and join in on the discussion that the group was having regarding who would be next to deal with the 3rd wave.

After a bit of back and forth, it was finally agreed that Iris and Bill would be the ones to take on the third wave of beasts. Mako gave them all the useful information that he had learned during his battle to prepare them for the tough battle ahead.

Mako was pretty lucky that the beasts that he had to face had a massive weakness and could be killed in one shot but not every High-level beast had such an insane weakness and the Flame Dogleos weren’t weak by any standard it was just that they were up against the ideal counter which was a mixture of Erin’s water and ice abilities and Mako’s paralysis.

Even though Mako had a pretty easy battle in terms of exploiting the weakness of the beasts, he was still pretty exhausted because he had to use High Jump, Dash, Sprint, and the Phantom move skill set in quick succession in order to evade all the attacks which made his body become quite fatigued.

Mako had never paid big attention to his Samina attribute as he thought it wasn’t as important as Strength or Agility, but now Mako was given another harsh reminder that every attribute had its own place in his body, and neglecting even one of them could cost him dearly.

Mako had received EXP for every Dogleo that he had killed but surprisingly the system hadn’t issued him a quest for some reason which was quite odd as the system would always give him a quest in intense situations such as this one and yet there was still nothing.

This led Mako to think of two potential possibilities of why the system hadn’t issued him a quest.

It could most likely just be that the system didn’t see the pact of 42 Flame Dogleos as enough of a challenge to issue a quest, or maybe it was because it was preparing to issue a greater quest to Mako one with greater stakes and a tougher fight.