Boss Ma was still trying to figure out why Ethan was wearing such a dark expression.
He thought Ethan might be angry because he and his team tried to help clean up the battlefield. Their intentions were good, but maybe they accidentally caused trouble instead.
Earlier, Ethan's summoned beasts had fought fiercely and recklessly. Many of them were pushed to their limits, and Ethan had to withdraw them when they were close to collapsing. After that, he stood alone with about two hundred remaining beasts and blocked most of the wild monsters himself. In a very short time, he wiped out thousands of monsters almost single-handedly.
For any ordinary team, killing a thousand monsters would be an amazing achievement.
But Ethan? He casually killed several times that amount.
Boss Ma compared his own performance—he and his entire team together had killed just over a thousand monsters. The difference was painful to think about.
Boss Ma suddenly felt his liver ache in frustration, yet he had no choice but to accept the situation. He was the team leader, after all, so he forced a smile and nodded.
"Okay, okay… next time, we definitely won't cause trouble."
After saying this, he tried to quietly slip away with his team, but then a voice echoed from the stage—the deputy of the Transfer Temple was instructing the staff to start counting everyone's results.
Boss Ma immediately grew curious. He had seen Ethan repeatedly opening treasure chests earlier. He wanted to know how many points Ethan could possibly get. So, he quickly dragged his team members into the crowd and squeezed forward to watch.
There were five levels of treasure chests, each matching the level of the wild monsters in the secret realm:
1. White chest – from basic rock element monsters = 1 point
2. Green chest – from stronger monsters = 10 points
3. Blue chest
4. Purple chest
5. Gold chest – the rarest
Most students only managed to gather a few dozen points. Even the top two SS-rank students from No. 1 Middle School had barely over a thousand points. Most of these points came from green chests.
A score of around one thousand was barely enough to enter a decent university. It wasn't even close to what top universities required.
The two SS-rank students were very unhappy.
"There's clearly something wrong with this secret realm!"
"Yeah! If it wasn't corrupted by the Scarlet Secret Realm, our achievements would be much higher!"
"Since the secret realm closed early, why should our scores be cut short? It's unfair!"
The deputy replied in a calm, bureaucratic tone, "Your complaints will be reported. For now, just wait for the results."
He then ordered the counting to continue, ignoring their grumbling completely.
The two SS-rankers stepped aside reluctantly—only to be pushed aside by Fairwind.
"Move! Stop blocking everyone. Let the staff do their work!"
Seeing Fairwind, they didn't dare argue. They just walked off gloomily.
Fairwind then stepped forward and emptied all the treasure chests he had collected.
Clatter—!!
The entire table was instantly filled. Hundreds of white and green chests scattered everywhere, but the biggest surprise was seeing more than a dozen blue chests and even one purple chest.
The two SS-rankers stared, their eyes burning red with jealousy.
Where did Fairwind get those? Blue and purple chests were extremely rare.
Of course, what they didn't know was that Fairwind had been shamelessly following behind the crystal wall worker ants, stealing kills whenever he could. When he managed to pick up a purple chest from the area, he nearly jumped with joy.
After counting everything, Fairwind's total reached:
7,532 points
This was even higher than last year's provincial champion.
The statistics staff smiled warmly. "Excellent result! Congratulations."
Fairwind felt extremely proud.
After him, the rest of the students had disappointingly low scores. Many were much weaker than students from previous years. The Scarlet Secret Realm had clearly messed up everyone's efficiency.
Even so, one student from No. 2 Middle School surprisingly scored over 4,000 points.
Then, Lily Winters stepped up.
Clatter—!!
Her pile of treasure chests was even larger than Fairwind's. The staff members' jaws dropped as they saw numerous blue and purple chests buried among the mountain of boxes.
After counting, her final score reached:
Just over 10,000 points
This was equivalent to last year's national champion, and that was without counting the extra day of time that the Scarlet Secret Realm had stolen from the exam.
The staff had no idea that Lily had obtained most of her rare chests by rushing to kill the crystal wall giant ants before anyone else.
In comparison, the remaining students' scores looked embarrassing. Dozens of points were common, hundreds were rare, and only a handful reached anything impressive.
After everyone was done, the statistician shouted:
"Is there anyone who hasn't counted yet?"
Fairwind immediately replied loudly:
"Wait! Ethan hasn't counted yet!"
Everyone instantly turned to look at Ethan.
Fairwind and Lily Winters exchanged curious glances—they both knew Ethan's summoned giant ants had destroyed an insane number of monsters. They remembered the massive hill of treasure chests Ethan had produced earlier.
Even the deputy of the Transfer Temple became intrigued. Why did Old Wang (the supervisor) trust Ethan so much?
Boss Ma, who had been half asleep by now, suddenly perked up. Finally—Ethan's turn!
The statistician looked annoyed. He remembered that earlier, he had given all his magic power to Old Wang and was left weak and lying on the ground, so he didn't pay attention to Ethan at all.
"If you haven't counted yet, hurry up," he snapped. "Don't slow everyone down."
Boss Ma almost fainted.
This man was scolding Ethan—the powerhouse who single-handedly massacred thousands of monsters!?
They almost wanted to build a monument for Ethan right there.
And then Ethan said something that made everyone freeze.
He raised his right hand awkwardly.
"Uh… can you wait a moment? I'm still opening treasure chests."
"!!!?"
Everyone nearly fell to the floor.
The secret realm had been closed for so long already.
The entire counting process was almost finished.
HOW was Ethan still opening treasure chests!?
How many did he even have!?
Ethan sighed helplessly. Unfortunately, treasure chests couldn't be opened in batches. He had to manually open each one. Maybe this was the kind of trouble only someone with too many treasure chests would experience.
He had already obtained dozens of skill books, but none of them matched his profession—another annoyance.
The statistician twitched visibly, thinking Ethan must simply have forgotten or been nervous.
"Fine. Just take out whatever you've opened already."
"Okay," Ethan nodded.
He had been so busy opening chests nonstop that he hadn't even noticed how everyone else was counting them. Then he asked innocently:
"Do you… um… need to recycle the empty treasure boxes?"
"???"
The statistician's eyes almost popped out.
"Recycle? Why would we want empty boxes!? Take your trash with you!"
He assumed Ethan only had a few boxes left and was just wasting time.
What he didn't know was that Ethan had been storing thousands of treasure chests in his Beast Master Space. And inside that space, his rebellious little beast, the Anti-Bone Boy, loved snacking on the empty treasure boxes like potato chips.
When Ethan noticed how the beast happily crunched even the purple chests—whose texture looked extremely valuable—he decided he had better keep them.
After hearing the statistician's response, Ethan finally began taking out the opened chests.
Clatter—clatter—clatter—clatter—clatter—!!
And the sound did not stop.
And did not stop.
And STILL did not stop…
(To be continued)
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