233 Battle for points

The battle for points was fierce as students continued to run around the area scanning every item in sight.

"Damn this has been scanned already!" A student complained.

"Yes, there's another one here that's two now!" Another yelled out.

Some of the weaker groups decided to stay together as a group as they went around.

Although this stopped other teams from snatching points from them, their progress was relatively slower than those who roamed alone. The stronger groups decided it would be best to split up, this way they were able to cover a wider range, while the other groups decided to do a mixture of something in between.

Even though the group thought that Del was being harsh in his punishment, it wasn't truly the case. He had planned to do something similar beforehand but wasn't quite sure how to do it until the incident gave him an excuse.

Quinn's group had an extra person, so they were at an advantage compared to others. But since there was only one scanner, it was hard to say how much extra influence an extra member could give.

But after seeing Vorden and Quinn's face once more, his emotions got the better of him as a teacher, and he decided to give them quite a setback.

Out of the strategies implemented by different groups... In order to catch up to the others, Quinn's group decided to do a mixture of the two.

They decided that they would travel around in pairs.

Quinn and Peter, Layla and Vorden, and lastly Fex and Cia. In the beginning there was some disagreement with the pairings, but eventually they agreed on this setup, at the end of the day it would be better for Peter to be with Quinn, and Vorden refused to team up with Cia, so that left him with Layla and Fex with Cia to make the relative strength of each group about the same.

It was important for them to have one strong member with a support type member. Although Layla and Cia could have gone together, if they were to confront a beast, or a similar situation happened with Peter there wasn't much that they could do.

The group had already split up, and while everyone was off looking for some new items to discover, Quinn noticed something peculiar. There were ten groups yet, nearly every group had a single member that acted as a type of mule.

A person designated to carry their belongings.

After a closer inspection, he also noticed that these mules were people who had the lowest levels in their group. But nevertheless, they would still wander off and look around as instructed by their team.

'Wouldn't this be the perfect chance?' Quinn thought. Right now, they weren't in school, and many of the students had separated from each other. If he was to take a sample of their blood and mind control them afterwards to forget what had happened, no one would ever know what he had done.

It was basically the perfect crime in such a perfect situation!

"Pio, over here!" Cia shouted. Peter then dashed off into the direction that Cia had yelled but Quinn didn't follow. Instead, he set his eyes on a target.

A lone female student had been designated to carry her team's luggage. She seemed to be disheartened by the whole thing, and was searching through the trees and vines in a crestfallen manner. It was obvious that she didn't feel that she was doing anything substantial or that she was even a part of the team.

As she bent down to look at a certain plant behind the tree, when she lifted her head again, Quinn was standing in front of her. He didn't say much because he needed to act as quickly as possible.

Although they were covered by the trees and vines there was always the off chance that someone could see him.

Quinn grabbed her hand as fast as he could and made a small scratch on her palm, her blood was now on the tip of his gauntlet. After placing it on his tongue the system message appeared.

[Blood type A+ Consumed]

[Strength 20]

It was a little bit of a disappointment but Quinn was hoping to obtain as much O type blood as possible, so he could increase his charm stat. Right now, his selection was limited.

He had to choose low-level students with lacklustre abilities who most likely had a weak mind too. But if his charm skills eventually increased, the pool of people to choose from would also increase directly proportional to his charm skills.

[Influence Skill Activated]

The girl's eyes started to glow slightly red showing that his skill was active. Quinn informed the girl to forget about the event that just occurred. Nothing strange has happened. To her it would just feel as if she had forgotten what she was about to do.

Before ending the spell, Quinn placed some of his saliva over the small cut allowing it to heal instantly, before heading back towards the centre as he continued his exploration.

While the others were busy calling out to Peter and looking for new things, Quinn was looking around to see if he could spot any other strays, that weren't with their group, and which was also in a well-hidden area as if they were hiding their shame and embarrassment to the others due to being designated as a luggage-carrying mule.

Eventually, Quinn managed to find two more students and he used the same tactic as before, getting him another 2 stat points.

Quinn managed to get another blood type O, increasing his charm points to 14, while also obtaining another blood type A increasing his strength.

*****

Fay and Leo were standing together at the starting point where all the groups had split off. They stood there silently. Leo didn't talk much, and Fay didn't really know how to speak with him.

Suddenly, a beeping sound was heard from the watches of the two, indicating that one of the teams had asked for help.

"I'll get to it!" Fay said as she stormed off at lightning speed in the direction of one of the paths. Fay was meant to be the first one to respond since her ability was super speed, but she felt even more obliged to act due to the awkward situation between her and Leo.

Leo continued to stand there, taking in the fresh smell around him but it was quickly disturbed as another beep reverberated from his own watch.

"Another one?" Leo said. "Is this planet more dangerous than we thought? I hope there aren't any more calls." Leo said as he started to run towards a different direction from where Fay had gone.

He had hoped that perhaps the teachers were only being trigger happy, sending out a signal prematurely. It was always better for them to be on the cautious side when it came to these things.

But the fact that two signals were sent out at the same time gave Leo some concern.

*****

The group had managed to obtain 25 points in total. They also discovered and scanned a peculiar type of rock mineral in the mix. Still, they were vastly behind the others and their weighted points at the end of everything would be -25.

What they were doing at this moment wasn't working and they needed a change of plan. The quickest way for them to earn points would be to find beasts. But right now, there didn't seem to be any beasts in the area as not a single group of students had encountered one just yet.

But once they moved away from this area at Del's command, which was when Quinn and his group would change their focus. The weaker groups wouldn't dare to risk it by going up against such things.

*Ding Ding Ding*

Just then, a few meters away from Quinn, one of the scanners had made three dings. A sound that he had hadn't heard just yet. Del didn't even bother explaining to the students the meaning of the dings, but they soon found out what the sounds meant.

The scanner pointed at what looked like a boulder that was stuck into the ground. The top part could be seen, and it had several areas of green moss growing over it.

But after the student had finished scanning the unique object. He took a few steps backwards and panic was evident on his face.

"A beast!" He shouted. "I found a beast!"

****

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