---Next Morning---
Max and other had woken up and had breakfast. Seeing that everyone had finished their breakfast, Max took out the things that he took from Bartan's spatial bag.
"Wah! He had so much wealth." Leticia cried out in surprise after seeing the things in front of her.
There were four hundred mana stones, seven beast cores, a few dozen mana recovering pills, two transparent pills that were useful for water element users and some other pills.
"Four hundred mana stones, seven beast cores…" Haory took a deep breath. She really needed a lot of mana stones to keep up with the rest of them in terms of cultivation. With this, she wouldn't have to worry about resources to cultivate for some time.
Max looked at her and smiled. "Shall we divide--"
"Wait. I also have some." Just as he was about to divide them, Leticia suddenly interrupted him and look out two spatial bags "I found these two spatial bags from the guys we killed yesterday. I put everything those five had in these. Here, let's divide them too, hehe." She said rubbed hands excitedly.
Max took the bags and emptied their content in front of everyone. There were a total of 270 mana stones, four beast cores, a short dagger that was a magic artefact and a few pills.
Seeing this, everyone' eyes twinkled. Max calmly said "We'll divide the mana stones equally and these beast cores will be given to the academy to exchange for more mana stone. As for these pills, you guys can take them according to your need."
Everyone agreed to the arrangement and took their mana stones and the pills. Haory took the short dagger as her short sword had broken when fighting Bilaz. Max stored his share of mana stones and the beast cores in inventory.
"How many beast cores do we have now?" Haory asked.
Max counted and said "Twenty-five."
"Okay." She nodded calmly. However, her eyes were flashing with excitement while Leticia almost started jumping in joy.
Twenty-five two-star beast cores could be exchanged for two thousand and five hundred mana stones. How can they not be excited, after all, they would get 1/5th of the share which might be able to push their strength up by one small level.
After that they started travelling towards the gathering point. They occasionally encountered some beasts which were easily taken care of by them.
They would travel in day and cultivate in night.
…
Swoosh! Swoosh!
In another mountain, a group of five ran desperately.
There were three girls and two boys in the group. One girl was badly injured and was being carried by a golden colored beauty, who was also injured. Her hands and abdomen had claw marks and were bleeding continuously. The rest of the group members also had varying degree of injuries.
"Huff… Huff… Flavia, leave her and run or you would also die." A boy who was running in front, turned around and shouted while breathing heavily.
"Yes… yes, leave her Flavia. Her injury isn't something that can be healed with normal healing pills." Another group member said.
'Do I have really have to abandon her?' Flavia gritted her teeth. She didn't want to leave her teammate behind to die.
Whoosh!
Growl~
"Damn it. It's catching up." Hearing the growl of the beast behind, everyone's faces went pale. They didn't bother with Flavia any longer and sped off.
"Flavia… It's okay. Leave me behind. If that beast catch up to us, you will also die." The girl on her back said with a smile, even though it was forced but even so her courage was commendable.
"No." Flavia said in hoarse voice and pushed her speed to the limit.
She knew, she should leave her behind. As it was better for one to die instead of two. However, her heart wasn't willing to abandon her comrade and if one can't be true to their heart, then there was no hope for them to breakthrough past the mortal boundary.
Seeing that the beast was going to catch up anytime soon, she decisively took out the talisman given by her mentor before he dropped them here.
Swoosh!
However, before she could crush it, the chasing them, caught up to them, causing their expressions to freeze.
The wolf swiped its claws towards them.
It was a high stage, wolf type beast. They accidently stepped into its territory when it was fighting a high stage two-star beast and they foolishly tried to kill them. But since it was a agility type beast, it injured them while fighting the other beast. So, they escaped but they hadn't expected that this beast would be so vengeful and chase them while ignoring the other beast.
The girl on the back of Flavia gritted her teeth and gathered all of her strength before kicking Flavia on her back.
Bang!
Flavia was thrown away while the girl was hit with the wolf's claw and her body was shredded into pieces.
Flavia was dumbfounded. Seeing the wolf munching on her corps, Flavia's blood seemed to freeze. However, she forcefully calmed herself down and fled. She wasn't going to let her sacrifice go to waste.
…
As people struggled to survive, Max and others had comparatively easy time. They didn't encounter any agility type beast, flying beast or a peak stage two-star beast.
There were some high stage beast, but they were killed easily since Belen's vines had become more powerful and others also had improved so they could keep the beasts busy while Max or Hoary or Rima used their ultimate spell to finish them off.
Therefore, there journey wasn't too dangerous and gradually six days passed and they had almost reached the gathering point.
---Last day of outing, Afternoon time---
Swoosh!
As they were travelling, suddenly a figure appeared in front of them and said in excitement "Gathering point is only a mile ahead of us." The figure was Leticia who had gone ahead to scout the area.
"Finally!" Haory and Rima couldn't help but exclaim. They would finally be able to leave this dangerous area and train without having to worry constantly.
Max and Belen also smiled before continuing forwards. In a few moments, they arrived in an open stony area where they were to gather.
"Mm?"
There were already a few groups present when they arrived. They looked at Max's group with surprise and their expression became respectful as they looked at them.
Max and others found it odd but quickly understood. There wasn't any complete group present right now, every group had lost at least one member while some lost three or even four.
After talking to some of the groups who had trained under elder Jack, they found out that most people had died due to the surprise attacks of the beasts.
Hearing this, Haory and others, especially Rima and Leticia looked at Max with grateful expressions and thanked their luck that they were with him or their outcome wouldn't have differed much from other groups.
"Ahhhhh…"
Just as they were going to find a spot to settle until someone arrives to bring them back to the academy, a pained scream sounded out. Everyone immediately became alert and got ready to fight.
However, when they looked towards the source of the scream, their expressions changed dramatically.
Max's face also went pale as he cursed "Fuck."
