It was the morning of the third day of the practical exam and we were currently eating breakfast around the campfire.
"Have you guys seen the huge mountain at the far right on the island?" I asked the others, knowing perfectly what I was doing.
"Yeah, should we climb it?" Mina looked at me and said.
The third and final key is on top of this mountain, I knew it, but I kept it for the end as it was the hardest one to get.
"Someone should stay here though as we don't wanna lose this thing" Kyle gave his opinion and pointed at the plate on which we had inserted the keys.
"I'll do it" Sarah raised her hand, "I can use my water magic to give signals so that you know you're close"
Perfect, this is exactly how it went in the novel, which means we're on the right path.
"Okay then, let's go" I stood up and said.
And so we headed towards the mountain, it was pretty far away from the ruins' door so it took us a lot of time to arrive.
But once we did, we noticed that there was a flight of stairs leading to the top, how convenient.
"Let's go" Daemon rushed forward and started climbing the stairs.
"Wait!" I stopped him, "we don't know what's at the top, we should be careful."
"What are you talking about? We've been fighting monsters non-stop for the past two days, I think we can handle whatever is up there."
"You never know, it could be dangerous" I tried to convince him.
"I agree with Kaine" Mina added, "we shouldn't rush into things."
"Shut the fuck up you're not the boss" he insulted us but still waited for the rest of us to catch up, which surprised me, normally the protagonist would just recklessly rush and cause chaos, yet he was listening...
And so we climbed the stairs, it was a long way up and it was getting harder and harder to breathe, but eventually we reached the top.
The view was amazing, you could see the entire island from here, and the ocean surrounding it, it was a majestic sight.
"Look!" Kyle pointed at something in the distance.
There was a small pedestal with a stone circle on it, it was the last one.
And behind it... were not two statues, but only one.
It was giant boar with horns on it's forehead and the second strongest monster in the island.
"This is gonna be fun" Daemon laughed as he approached the pedestal and took the key.
But as soon as he did that, the boar woke up, revealing it's redish color as if it was enraged and charged towards us, it was fast, but we were faster.
"Die!" Mina shot an arrow at it's eye, but it bounced off, "tsk, it's hard" she clicked her tongue.
"Watch out!" Kyle shouted while rushing towards the beast, and slashing her using his two daggers.
"I'll take care of it" Daemon said and jumped in front of the boar.
The protagonist swung his sword and cut the beast in two.
"Hahaha, this was easy" he laughed before putting away his weapon.
But this wasn't the second strongest for no reason...
Suddenly, the two parts of the monster's body that were separated attracted each other like magnets and the monster started regenerating itself, and within seconds it was back to normal.
The boar charged again, and this time, Kyle who was close but hadn't noticed that the monster was alive wasn't fast enough to dodge, and then...
One of the horns pierced his body.
"Gahh..." he groaned in pain as blood started flowing out of his mouth, before eventually dying.
[Kyle Samun, Eliminated.]
"Kyle!" Mina shouted.
"Shit! It's not dead?!" Daemon exclaimed.
I was in legitimate panick at this point, Kyle wasn't supposed to die, this isn't normal.
And nothing we did could cause the monster any harm, he would always regenerate, which meant I needed to...
"I SAW SOMETHING INSIDE OF THE MONSTER, CUT IT AGAIN!" I shouted at Daemon, who was also exhausted.
In the original novel, Daemon and Kyle teamed up to kill the monster from the inside as you needed to cut it's heart to kill it.
But now that Kyle was dead, I needed to take on this mission.
"Fine!" he replied and charged forward.
"GRAAAHHH!!!"
The boar roared and tried to attack the protagonist, but he dodged it and cut it in half again.
"NOW!"
And so I jumped infront of the monster's body and started looking for the heart, I didn't have much time left as the boar was already regenerating.
And it was then that I saw the bulgating red spot inside of the monster's body, and so using my "Trial and Error" skill, I smashed the heart and exploded it with a single hit.
Suddenly, the red boar stopped regenerating and dropped to the ground, dead.
[Congratulation, you got the third key, you can now open the ruins' door]
"Hah... hah..." the three of us couldn't comprehend what had just happened, but atleast we got the final key, this was the most important thing.
"Let's go back" I told the others, and we headed down the mountain.
On the way back, we encountered multiple monsters, but they were all weak so we easily killed them.
And when we arrived at the ruins' door, Sarah was still there, waiting for us, she was doing huge pillars of water using the lake's water which is how we found her without much difficulty.
"You're back!" she smiled, "how did it go?"
"We got the last key" Mina answered.
"Great, let's open the door then" but the blue hair suddenly looked at us with a confused expression, "where's Kyle?"
"Dead, the monster killed him" I replied emotionless before taking out the final key and inserting it inside of the last empty hole, thus lighting up the gibrish text on it, and making the plate now fully glowing.
Then, the lake started shaking and the water parted, revealing a staircase leading underground.
"Let's go" I said, and we descended into the ruins.
This was it, the final part of the exam.
I just hope I won't screw up and that nothing unexpected happens again.
[Anger meter: 87/100]