Ren and the rest continued their drive through the desert after the battle.
On their way, they did encounter a few other villain teams, but they managed to handle them together through teamwork.
With Rex driving and relying on his incredible senses, they managed to avoid whatever obstacles the teams tried to put in their path.
With Peter, he functioned as their shield. He took all the attacks meant to destroy their car and took down whatever enemy got close enough, or whenever he invaded whatever vehicle they manifested through a power.
Ren sometimes functioned as support like he did in their first battle, but mainly he just took down the most enemies. After all, this is an open space with a lot of rocks, bushes, and shadows around—he could summon shades from any direction he wanted. He even defended them from large-scale attacks, even though that was mainly done by dodging, using his shades on the car. But sometimes he tried to deflect attacks using his whips, like with some of the energy slashes that came towards them while Peter was fighting on the energy board.
Sophia was mainly running support with her handgun. Whenever they needed to distract someone, shoot them or their teammate, or something around them, she would do it. If they needed to take down enemies quickly, she would shoot the top of a hill to send a boulder falling down on them. She was helping as much as she could, and she was doing a pretty incredible job.
And by the way, she wasn't last in the elimination count
No, the last place was Rex.
Even though he was driving the car, he did manage to take down an entire enemy team by crashing into them. It was pretty awesome—at least that's what he told Rex. In reality, it was unbelievably awesome.
Other than fighting, they had a lot of time between battles.
Time he spent talking to the three of them and getting to know them more.
Apparently, Rex and Peter had known each other the longest, since they met on their first day on the island a year ago. Sophia was a recent addition to their little team—at least that's what he picked up from the little chatter around him.
But he didn't focus much on how they got together or how they formed their little trio.
He wanted to know more about about them.
So he talked and listened to what they had to say.
And he started noticing something.
"You know, I really don't want to see Sandy in this group. That prank didn't really go as planned," Rex said to Peter.
"Oh, Sandy? She's right there," Peter said, pointing somewhere.
Rex immediately freaked out and started pointing his handgun in that direction but there was nothing there except sand.
Rex looked at him, dumbfounded.
"What the hell? Why the hell did you lie to me out of nowhere for no reason?"
"What are you talking about? Sandy is all around us," Peter said. "Get it? Sandy. Sand."
But even after explaining it, that didn't get a laugh out of Rex. Rex just looked at him with a cold emotionless look.
And even Ren And Sophia, who heard and saw the whole thing, didn't react either.
It was just a really lame and terrible joke.
And that wasn't the only one he made.
Apparently, Peter really loved making terrible jokes.
And Ren knows that Peter knew they were terrible and still made them anyway.
Ren also finally learned what happened to Sophia's boyfriend.
When Ren asked if she had any plans anything she wanted to do after the exam she answered casually.
"I honestly don't know if by the time the exam is over there'll be enough time in the day to do anything. But if there is time, I would like to check on my boyfriend and see what he did today."
"Oh, you have a boyfriend?" Ren asked casually.
"Yeah. His name is Steve. He's really great. I honestly want to see him right now," Sophia said, blushing while talking about Steve.
"Looks like things are going great with him," Ren commented.
"Yeah, I know. And for a moment, I thought things were gonna end after… that incident. But he still stayed with me," Sophia said, looking away and not making eye contact.
Ren knew she was about to accidentally mention the nightclub incident, so he didn't bring it up. But he was genuinely happy that her relationship didn't get affected by what her brother did.
And finally, he learned something important about Rex.
His attitude the one Ren found kinda annoying wasn't exclusive to him.
Rex acted that way toward everyone. Toward Peter and Sophia too. Making sarcastic comments, being mean, not showing his real emotions.
It was official.
Rex was really a tsundere.
Obviously, Ren didn't say that conclusion out loud or that would've ended in violence.
So He would probably reveal that fact after the exam, Ren thought with a smile.
He honestly was really having fun hanging out with the three of them like this.
To the point that, for the first time in this exam, he didn't mind that the tests took hours to complete. In fact, he was kind of happy about it.
They continued their drive and battled a few more enemies, traveling through rough terrain. Everything so far was normal.
Until they noticed the environment slowly starting to change.
Some grass began appearing on the ground. The desert started becoming greener.
And in the distance, Rex spotted something.
"Hey guys, there are trees in the distance."
That made everyone pay attention to the front, and they all saw trees starting to pop up.
They were heading toward a forest.
"Wait, is this some sort of milestone in the test?" Sophia asked.
Peter checked his phone again and smiled at the result.
"Oh hell yeah, it is. Once we enter that woods area, we would officially cross 25% of the training area. I know this because the map is split between four biomes."
"Wait a damn minute," Ren interrupted. "Twenty-five percent? We've been driving fast and it took us a long time to reach here just for us to be a quarter of the way done? How big is this place?"
"Yeah, I know, right? This training area is so big I'm 100% confident that we're not even on Star Island right now," Rex said in a confident tone.
Peter just looked puzzled for a second before leaning back in his seat.
"We're not even on the island, huh? They do have other training facilities outside of it… but it's crazy to think that we got teleported all the way… to wherever the hell we are."
Before the conversation could continue—
SMASH.
Something hit the front of the car so hard it started flipping around, rolling midair, hitting the ground, bouncing again roughly through the sand.
Ren, Sophia, Rex, and Peter were thankfully still in their seats and not flying all over the place or outside of the car thanks to the fact that they were wearing seatbelts.
Eventually, the car slammed down on its back.