[Skill: Trial and Error, activated]
I got ready to dive into battle by activating the only useful skill I had in this situation.
I don't know if it will be enough as I think hitting rocks with your fists is gonna hurt, but I have to atleast try.
And so I jumped into the action and started punching one of the statues.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Daemon shouted at me as he was busy blocking one of the statues' attack.
"Helping you, duh."
"Tsk, I didn't ask for your help."
"Too bad, I'm helping anyway."
And so I continued attacking the statue, but strangely I couldn't feel anything break in my hand.
It's actually quite the opposite: as I kept smashing the stone orc's leg, cracks started appearing on the surface of his body.
At first it was small, but then it grew bigger and bigger until the entire leg broke and fell to the ground.
But this was all I needed to kill it, after all, having only one leg meant you couldn't keep your balance, and adding the fact that it was made entirely from stone...
The statue fell backward and broke in a thousand pieces upon it's contact with the ground.
"It was strong, but it also had this fatale flaw" I looked at the others and said.
Upon realizing that, they all started aiming at one of the legs and quickly killed it in the same manner as the first.
[Congratulation, you got the second key, one more to go.]
"Let's go!" Mina celebrated while jumping up and down, also making her massive assets bounce in the process.
Then Kyle finally came up to us after coming back to his senses, he had the second key in hand and was bleeding a bit from his head.
"One more to go..." I whispered, but high enough for the others to hear.
"Do we even know where we need to use these keys?" Sarah asked, "what if we never find the place?"
Pretty good reflections, but don't worry, you have both me AND the main protagonist in the same group, so you'll be fine.
"Don't worry, we will find it" I reassured her.
"Are you sure?"
"Yep."
And thus we headed deeper into the forest, leaving the corpses of the statues behind.
"How are you so confident?" Daemon suddenly asked me.
"Huh?"
"I mean, you seem to know everything about this island, and you've been leading us since the beginning, how do you know so much?"
I never expected the main character to actually his brain, but I already had something agaisn't this.
"I just act confident as to not make the group afraid, I have absolutely no idea what i'm doing" I shrugged while lying, but it was enough for them to believe me.
"I see..."
And so we continued walking, searching for the last key, but also watching out for any monsters that might appear.
After a few hours of traveling, we arrived at a clearing in the middle of the forest, and right in the center of it was a big lake.
"HERE IT IS" I shouted inside of my head, I had finally found it after all.
This lake before us was the ruins' door, i'm not joking.
"Huh? What's this infront of the lake?" Sarah suddenly observed while squinting her eyes.
And there it was: a vertical stone plate was positioned exactly infront of the big lake, and just as you guessed it, it had three holes the same size and shape of the "keys" we had around it, which meant...
"Give me one of the keys" I asked Kyle, who was holding them.
He did as I said and gave me one of the stone circles with gibrish on them, I then approach the plate and put it into one of the holes.
And the moment the key was fully inside of the hole, the weird text written on it lightened up with a blue color and the circle started rotating.
"This is where we are supposed to use the keys I think" I told the others, but they had probably figured it out.
Kyle then took the second one and repeated what I did, now two holes were filled and it looked like the plate was glowing.
"We need the last one though... what do we do?" Mina asked while standing next to me, the fact that she was the same height as me bothered me but what I can say, i'm average.
"Let's rest for today, tomorrow we'll look for the third key and come back here so that we can finish this shitty test!"
It was already almost night-time and I was frankly tired, I am not like these machines who are never exhausted, I actually need to rest.
We all sat around the fire and talked about random stuff, but I wasn't really paying attention, I was too busy thinking about what was happening and what would happen.
The characters in the original novel only found the first and second key on their third day, and the ruins door was discovered on the fourth while the final day was used for the third key and escaping.
Which means we now had a massive advantage and could probably finish tomorrow or in two days.
Was it because I was here to guide them?
I guess I'll find out soon enough.
And so the night went on, and eventually they all fell asleep, except for me, I stayed awake because it was my turn to be on guard for the next two hours.
Once my time was over, I needed to wake up the next person in line: Kyle.
Nothing had happened between us since the moment I killed him during the powerscaling test and now, it's almost like he forgot.
"Oh, thanks for waking me up" he scratched his eyes and got up to take guard duty.
But before going back to sleep, I felt the urge to ask him.
"Hey Kyle, are you not angry?"
"About what?" he replied.
"Y'know... the powerscaling test" I confessed.
"Hmm~" he gestured as if he was thinking deeply, "it was the rules to steal others' points, also I was the one who attacked you first, so there is no need to be angry."
A very mature response, I should of expected this from him after all.
Knowing that everything was ok, I layed back down on the ground and closed my eyes while smiling, waiting for the time to pass so that we can continue our expedition the next day.
But I hadn't realized yet...
That tomorrow would be the last day we spent on that island, but also the most disastrous one.