"One of you two go ahead and destroy it."
Even though he heard Emery's confirmation again, Chumo still seemed to be a little hesitant to do the deed. Fortunately or not, there was no way the musclehead of the group - Thrax - would be willing to let such an opportunity go.
Tightly gripping the huge glaive in his hand, Thrax swiftly brought the Tier 5 weapon to the air and swung it with all his might, unleashing all the irritation he had accumulated to the rune-covered boulder.
BOOM!
Crackkkk!!
Even though it was covered with runes, the boulder couldn't even last more than a second against Thrax's glaive and shattered into pieces. Immediately after the boulder was destroyed, a notification came to Emery's mind from the device for the test.
[Squad 21 - has cleared a Nest - 5000 points awarded to all squad members]
An additional notification that said they had received five thousand points for successfully clearing an Abyss nest both came to Thrax and Chumo.
Seeing the reactions of the two of them, Annara quickly guessed what happened and commented in a sour tone, "You are very generous, aren't you?"
Hearing the red-haired girl's words, it took a second for Klea to understand what she meant and had just happened.
Emery's choice of asking Chumo or Thrax to destroy the boulder meant that the squad the two were part of - Squad 21 - was the one who completed the objective. Hence by now, all thirty members of Squad 21 must also have received the same message as the two.
What Emery didn't expect was the fact that he also got the notification. It seemed his position as one of the commanders was much more advantageous than he previously thought.
This idea came to Emery's mind and he just had to give it a try to see if it was like what he thought, and apparently, he was right. The reason why he gave the points to Julian's squad, and not his own, was obviously because this way the points received would be awarded to 30 people instead of 3.
A moment later, a message came from the device. Emery turned his attention and saw it was from Julian.
[It's you, isn't it?. You are brilliant Emery, this will definitely improve our plan]
After seeing Julian's message, Emery didn't reply right away and instead checked his own points.
[Personal points ranking]
[Rank 343 - 18210 points]
[Squad points ranking]
[Rank 22 - 58111 points]
His group of three could get around 50,000 points for killing all the Abyss creatures they encountered, added with the other three, their slaughter of the Abyss creatures in this nest netted them as much as 80,000 points.
Considering that there were still Abyss creatures in the four tunnels they didn't go through, he calculated that completely killing all the Abyss creatures in an Abyss nest would give about 100,000 points.
In the meantime, the objective reward for successfully destroying an Abyss nest was 5,000 points for every member in the squad. This meant that a normal squad of 30 people would give an extra total of 150,000 points.
This comparison clearly showed that completing the objective of clearing an Abyss nest was much more rewarding than clearing up killing the Abyss creatures.
While Emery was engrossed in his thoughts, Annara who was sulking opened her mouth. "Are you all happy now? Next, it will be our turn to destroy the boulder"
While the others had already turned around and wanted to leave, Emery on the other hand just stood there with his eyes closed.
Annara who saw this couldn't help but feel annoyed. She said in a sour tone, "What are you doing now? Let's go!"
"Give me a minute."
Realizing that Emery was no longer paying heed to her after saying those words, Annara could only grumble and wait for a minute to pass. The others didn't say anything either. They, especially Klea, wanted to see what Emery wanted to do.
When the requested 1 minute had passed, Emery suddenly raised his arm, made a circular motion with it, and his special spell was cast.
[Spatial Gate]
In front of the six people, a dazzling swirling portal appeared indicating that the spell was successful.
An exclamation was heard from Klea. "Woah! You can even create a portal from deep down here! This is Amazing!"
In fact, it wasn't as easy as Klea thought and Emery himself initially thought. He didn't expect to expend so much concentration in his Spirit Reading in order to use the ability from 20 miles below the surface. Fortunately, the fact that he knew very well the situation above and below was really helpful.
Without further ado, the group walked into the spatial gate. Immediately, they arrived right outside the entrance of the Abyss nest they had just cleared.
A sigh of awe escaped Klea's mouth and she commented, "This is amazing, really. We don't have to walk past those stinky corpses of bugs." Turning her head to her lover, she said, "Emery, can we just use your space magic to directly arrive at the main chamber next time?"
Emery shook his head in response. As now that he already arrived on the surface again, he could not sense the main chamber no matter how hard he tried. It was as if it didn't exist in the first place.
Klea looked disappointed seeing his negative response. Seeing that, Emery chuckled.
"I'm still not sure right now, but I might have a way."
Since they still had 7 hours before the appointed meeting time, Emery asked Chumo to find another Abyss nest. It was only after half an hour of flying around that the latter finally found another and the group quickly headed over.
This time, however, the group didn't immediately enter the nest. Emery had told the group to wait as he wanted to try a different method he had thought of.
"How do you want it to be, commander?" Annara asked with a smirk on her face.
Emery ignored the teasing tone in her words and calmly said, "I would like all of you to enter with a different group, but this time I will not be joining."
With the abilities they had, Emery decided to permeate the privilege Atlas and Annara in two different groups, and with that, he told Annara to go with Chumo this time.
"Well, at least I got the cute one," was Annara's response. She spoke those words in a clear teasing tone, and the recipient - Chumo quickly grew tense. Unfortunately for the Asian boy, the red-haired girl noticed his reaction.
"You are Chumo, right..? I have seen you at the Darkness Institute quite a few times." Annara got closer to Chumo and saw him getting tense. " You don't have to be so nervous, you know.."
Thrax said, "Don't mind him. He's always like that in front of beautiful girls."
"Really? …You think I am beautiful?" It was clear to see that the red-haired girl was teasing Chumo.
It seemed that Chumo's embarrassment reached its peak with that, as he suddenly answered loudly.
"I… I... I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND ALREADY BACK HOME!"
"....."
There was a moment of silence, before a burst of laughter occurred.
"HAHAHAH!!"
***
With Chumo paired with Annara, Thrax ended up getting paired with the powerful Atlas, and Emery could faintly see that the gladiator seemed to force himself to not feel inferior. As for Klea, Emery just said, "You can choose whichever group you want to join."
The Egyptian queen, however, went closer to Emery before saying, "It's not safe to be alone on such a dangerous planet. I will stay here with you!"
Even though he knew what she was thinking, Emery didn't want to argue and just proceeded with his plan.