With that, all the groups immediately dashed away to look for their items. As he had already highlighted team work, they knew this was key. They each instantly made snap decisions as groups and raced towards their first items. Finally, there was one group left, however they still had not even reached a decision on the first item to go to.

“Oi, we should go to this one first, it’ll be quicker.”

“No no, there’s a shortcut to this one.”

“Guys, uh, let’s get a move on…”

The Djinn was using his magic to observe all the teams, noting their strengths and weaknesses down on paper as he did so. Notably he saw the trio of misfits and felt a pang of guilt that their teamwork was doomed from the start.

Individually, they had remarkable abilities and great talent. However, if they could not show proper leadership skills then he could not approve of them gaining the approval to participate in the conquest, let alone choose any of them as a leader. He marked them off, tutting slightly to himself, as he left them to their bickering.

As the last groups came back from the hunt, they showed varying degrees of success. No team really shone from the rest, but most of the groups did a decent job.

However, one team did remarkably poorly with less than half of the listed items found. They collapsed, out of breath, in a heap as the time ticked to the last second. They were dead last in both the race and in their score.

“Damn it,” cursed the Succubus, slamming her fist into the ground. “If only I wasn’t weighed down by these louts, I would have obliterated the competition without a sweat.”

“Fool,” scoffed the Dullahan, “if you hadn’t held us back with your bickering we would have all finished this without an issue. Or did you forget the purpose of this was to show teamwork?”

As they butted heads again, the ghoul was silent. In truth, the ghoul was never in it for the glory of it all. He had never liked the battles themselves, since he was so brittle.

Even the position of commander didn’t have much of an appeal to him. Rather than that, he was much more interested in meeting new creatures, enjoying the sun and perhaps even making some friends.

He had never really been one for confrontation either, but at the prospect of losing both the chance for a trip to the overworld and the opportunity to make some comrades in arms, he was determined to overcome this challenge no matter what.