Getting to blast that energy felt really cool. We were still a pretty low level party, but it seemed super effective. Each of our beams killed one blue merfolk. That brought up our kill count to 7. With their bloodlust sated a bit and all of us now decently wounded, they were finally willing to go back to the ship. We made the trek together. The 5 of them were in a pretty jovial mood. Haroon had reserved his cheer for Larl and Alyas. He pointed out their amazing achievements. Corey and Dolan wrapped their shoulders around each other and praised themselves for their actions during the fight. I was the odd man out here. Killing things for no reason did not make me happy. If it was up to me, I would have tried to get to know them. I did get to level up from the battle though. It was a very long walk back to the ship. Once we got back, we had to write a log about everything that happened. We would also give a brief on it later. The brief would be over a video call with the other squads. I gave in my samples of the water and soil by the river bank. The scientists on the ship would test it out.
I was really interested in the findings. If the water was actually drinkable and the soil would support human crops, we could bring more Solari here for a settlement. If we got a settlement down on this planet, we would be heroes in our group. I did not notice any creatures on the land that would cause any problems. Maybe it was too soon to say that. We still had time to explore and figure things out. If the others wanted to go to war with the merfolk, that was on them. I would be the one being that was the most productive. Going out on my own towards the plains allowed me to sample a ton of xenoflora. I noticed that there were indeed some creatures living on the plains. I took pictures of them while keeping my distance and reported the sightings as soon as they happened via radio. Recruiting Corey and Dolan to help me every once in a while was easy. Haroon despised them and would purposely put them in harm's way. I also had the same blackmail, but I was extremely tolerant and chill about it. Too tolerant in their minds, but they did not actually want to be killed by Haroon.
Having one come help me at a time also gave me time to actually talk and bond with them during explorations. The other could pursue the war on the merfolk. Apparently super tough, they were kicking the guys' asses. Having a stronger relationship would help me in the long run. I would be able to trust them to have my back. I could only hope that they would put some trust in me in return. One of the reasons that I needed their help was that they team of researchers on the ship wanted to analyze more than flora. Seeing from my photos that there were creatures here, they wanted to capture some. They wanted both dead and alive creatures. I was very cautious about it from the start. That was how I was able to get all of this data by myself on the plains. I did not even know half of the things I took pictures of were actually hostile until we got closer. Either Corey or Dolan would provoke it by going right up to it and hitting it. Sometimes, the creature would not even wait to get hit. Some had acid spit. Others tried to gore us or flew. We would then tag team them all into submission.
