After checking all the notifications, Mako collapsed back into his pillow and quickly fell asleep. He was very tired and had almost no energy since he woke up, and his body needed some good old fashion rest while it absorbed mana from the surrounding and replenished Mako’s energy reserves.

Mako still wanted to mess around with the system more and organize everything. His time on the island was very intense and action packed leaving almost no time for a person to get some time alone and recuperate within themself.

There were still many things within the system that Mako didn’t utilize quite enough such as the shop feature.

The shop feature was a huge inclusion to his system and made it quite easy for Mako to access and purchase items; however, Mako had rarely used the shop feature at all.

The reason for this was that the shop always seemed to offer low-level items that either Mako had better versions of or had no need for. Other than that, the system shop often times also displayed different consumables, but Mako already had the bulk of all of them already stored in his inventory so there wasn’t any real incentive to waste his precious coins on the system and he just hoped that he would get good items one day, but the day never arrived.

The main shop would only refresh after 14 days and in the short time that Mako had unlocked the shop, it had only refreshed a few times and each time it left him disappointed as most items would get repeated and the tier of the items generally stuck at this poor quality.

Despite Mako gaining two levels while on the island and becoming very strong, the shop was still the same as before, which made Mako wonder if he was missing something regarding the shop and that was the reason he wasn’t getting any good items that he wanted to buy.

This was the thought on Mako’s mind right as he was about to fall asleep. He had to make sure he had everything was organized and ready to use at his disposal. He couldn’t be making stupid careless mistakes anymore because the difficulty of the challenges he was facing was rapidly increasing and he had to make sure he was the best version of himself when facing these challenges head-on.

There were a few quests that were still pending, his skills had grown greatly, and he had new abilities, and better equipment as well.

Mako told to himself that he would look into the system and figure out his best, most optimized setup to make sure he would never lose against anyone knowing that he could have been even stronger.

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

“Is that the last of them!?” Erin shouted as she hold onto the string of the Hydro Bow with her last arrow.

“Yeah…*pant* *pant* That was the last one,” Bill replied while breathing heavily, trying to catch his breath.

Bill was covered in sweat and had his hands on his knees as he gasped for air. Erin stood beside him with the Hydro Bow in her arms. She gently released the pressure from the string and removed the last arrow.

“Hey, are you alright?!” Erin asked softly as she turned towards Bill with worry.

“Yeah… yeah…*pant* I’m fine. I just didn’t think I had to use so many sand mines, it sapped all of my energy.” Bill said with a smile.

At that moment, a streak moved toward them and stopped right in front of them.

“Did you get them all?” Erin asked.

“Yup! There were a total of them, but I think I got them all. I counted them and it came out to be 237 crystals.” Leon said as he raised his backpack towards Erin to show her all of the crystals he had collected.

“Great job, with this we should have definitely made a good impression on them. Let’s get some sleep and rest up, we are finally going to be extracted from the island tomorrow.” Erin said as she helped Bill walk back toward the shelter.

Leon followed quickly behind with the backpack full of crystals. Behind the trio lay a wasteland of wasted terrain, chunks of ice and earth, and dozens of dead beast bodies.

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

One hour earlier

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Erin asked as Leon proposed his master plan after gobbling down the last gourmet MRE.

“Yes! This will be perfect. What better way to spend our last night on this island than to gain mass amounts of crystals and bump our scores simultaneously.” Leon said in excitement.

Leon had spent the last few minutes convincing Erin and Bill that they should hunt more beasts during their final night to make sure they had more than enough crystals and points to impress the military and make sure that they secure the special class seats, not knowing they had already aced the test.

“I dunno… Bill what do you think?” Erin asked Bill.

“I am okay with it as long as everyone else is… besides I think it would be better if we redeemed ourselves after losing both Mako and Iris in the final wave,” Bill replied.

With Erin also reluctantly agreeing, the trio stepped out of the shelter to hunt down beasts.

Leon volunteered to use his speed to run around the mountain and gain the attention of as many beasts as possible, so that they could fight them all in one place, in one go.

With that said he bolted into the forest in search of beasts and he didn’t have to search for long as he found several in only a few minutes. ｏｖ𝚕．ｃｏ𝚖

Ever since the group had survived the final wave, more and more beasts were appearing around the mountain every night, but they were mostly low and medium-tier beasts with the occasional high-tier one.

Tonight was no different as Leon ran into groups of several low and medium-tier beasts that instantly became hostile toward him and started chasing after him.

However, was easily able to maneuver around them and run at a slower pace so that they continued to chase him.

Leon made a complete loop half down the mountain and made every single beast that he could find chase after him.

The beasts usually didn’t like collaborating together and would often kill other kinds, but right now they were mesmerized by the human running in front of them as they only saw food.

Leon’s made-up horde of beasts consisted of mostly low and medium-tier beasts with only a dozen or so high-tier beasts.

Even though there were far more beasts than any of the actual hordes they had faced so far, the strength of the beasts was much weaker, so it wouldn’t even be much of a challenge for all three of them.

Bill dodged all the elemental projectiles being launched by the beasts behind him after finishing his loop, he started running back toward the shelter.

It had only been half an hour since Leon had dashed off and Bill and Erin were chatting with each other as Erin retold the entire story to Bill about when she punched Leon when he was acting like a baby.

Bill was seriously cracking up as Erin made the whole story even funny by adding small sound effects and motions, making it easier for Bill to visualize the entire scene.

At that time, they heard the sound of many footsteps coming from the forest followed closely by a giant dust cloud moving towards them.

In front of the dust cloud, Leon’s small figure appeared waving at them with a smile as he shouted, “THEY’RE HERE!”

Bill and Erin quickly took their positions. For the fight, Bill had switched over to the azure reptile chest armor just so he could at least have a taste of the new armor before handing it over.

Erin had the exact same train of thought as she held the Hydro Bow in her hands with 5 regular arrows that were included with the bow.

After Leon had reached a good enough distance from the shelter, he quickly sped up back to his top speed leaving the beasts in the dust as he joined up with his friends.

Bill conjured an earth hammer, and proceed to swing it at the ground as hard as he could, which created a loud sound and create several cracks in the ground that extended outwards in an arc shape.

The cracks spread far and wide and where ever the cracks were, suddenly, earth spikes started to erupt from them. This was one of Bill’s new skills that he had developed by combining two of his existing earth skills.

The wide rand of earth spikes and the shockwave from the hammer strike knocked back many of the beasts, dealing major damage, and also killing a few.

“That’s so cool!” Erin complimented him with a smile on her face that had a competitive look. “It’s my turn next!”