CH369 Thera’s Perspective

Notifications all but ignored, she grabbed Ben and pulled him close as she raised the stone she’d flown off on back into the air at the same time the next wave began, with one difference readily apparent.

Burrowing through the earth was half of what she’d expected to have to deal with, and when it was clear it wasn’t due to more flying through the air the answer became readily apparent. They were separated from the others by a fairly vast distance, and as a result, the monsters targeting them all had been split as well, making it far easier for her to deal with them, even if it meant their friends might be in trouble.

With a thought she pushed her mana, crushing each one of them that was burrowed beneath the sand as she made her way back to the others at top speeds, seeing them fight from a distance with even more of the creatures flying through the air as she fired off rocks where she could, watching their numbers dwindle until there was nothing but bodies around them.

“So we have bad news,” She started, not wanting to give them a chance to say anything since she felt like she’d technically abandoned them all at the end of the last fight. “If these cut you it looks like it will have a petrifying effect.”

“Oh joy,” Amy said sarcastically, visions of stone flashing through her thoughts. “I take it since neither of you are statues that you can handle it?”

“Looks like it, but that was my first success so I really don’t want to have to get more practice in this sort of environment if I can help it.”

“Even better. Yuzu, what are the odds you can help Thera if it comes to that?”

“No clue,” The soul mage said with a shrug. “Never had the chance to try. Not many people go around petrifying things. At the very least I should be able to keep it from spreading.”

Amy pinched the bridge of her nose, already worrying about a future where they had to balance the threat of petrification with how much closer each fight was getting. “Only thirty-nine more rounds. Okay, I’ll keep watch on the sky while you and Jake worry about whatever’s coming from the ground, at least for the time being. If more and more end up airborne we may need to re-evaluate later.”

Thera nodded as their battle continued on, an hour passing as they got down to the thirtieth round with each of them starting to feel the strain. Each beast was slowly getting bigger, faster, stronger, while they were only getting more and more tired. Yuzu did what she could to help, giving them each minor buffs to ease their burdens, but the mental strain wasn’t so easy to deal with.

It was by the time there were only twenty rounds remaining that Jake collapsed to the ground, looking both exhausted and defeated as he complained.

“I hate this so much! Who thought a floor like this was a good idea? I want to file a complaint!”

“I’ll pass it on for you if we get out,” Ben told him, the only one among them who was in decent shape due to having nothing to do on that floor. “Also, time to stand up cause the next round begins in thirty seconds. From the way things are going, I’m also pretty sure rounds are going to start blending together if you guys can’t speed up.”

“Don’t need the criticism Ben,” Amy told him as she stood on guard, prepared for anything to come from the sky.

“It’s not a criticism, just an observation. And could you guys do me a favour and keep one alive this time? There’s something I want to check.”

Before any could ask why, the round started.

As with any of the prior ones, Thera crushed as many as she could beneath the sand first, leaving Jake to deal with the rest as she turned her attention to the skies where Amy was focusing her attacks, jumping up and slicing at anything that came too close with her sword while Thera fired off bullets of compressed sand, tearing through the wings of one creature for Ben to do with as he pleased while getting rid of the others till the round was done.

“Alright, so what did you need that for?” Amy finally asked once they had the leeway as Ben kept switching between staring at it and the sky.

“Trying to understand the finer rules we’re playing under a bit better,” He told them. “This feels like it would be hard even with a full team of awakened earth magic users, so I just want to see… Ah, looks like I’m right!”

Before any could ask what he was talking about though they needed to begin another round of fighting, their rest gaps growing smaller and smaller with each one. It was obvious Ben was right that eventually rounds would bleed into each other, but it was a future none of them wanted to deal with.

Here’s hoping whatever he’s thinking is at least a little useful. She thought to herself. They still had over two hours to go and she couldn’t help but feel tired. Even with all of her mana, she wasn’t used to having to fight for so long without any real rest.

Just think of it as practice for what’s to come. We can do this.

As much as she didn’t want to, she’d resolved herself for another two hours of fighting with all she had, right up until the round ended and Ben offered a different alternative.

“Okay, looks like the round counter keeps going down even if creatures from previous rounds are still alive,” He said happily, seeing some implication that the rest didn’t.

“And?” Thera asked, waiting to get any sort of explanation for whatever that implied.

“And, combining that with the fact that we were given a timer before we were given the wave countdown, I think we can assume it’s more important that we survive till the end than it is we kill everything. Like, I obviously can’t be certain and you should probably go on as long as you all can, but we might be able to just clear this floor by raising the platform in the sky and waiting it out. You’d all still need to deal with the fliers, but abandoning everything on the ground would get rid of more than half of our potential targets, right?”

“I vote we try it immediately,” Jake was quick to say once Ben was done. “This sucks, let’s fly away from our problems.”

“We don’t know if he’s right,” Amy told them sternly. “We can keep it as a maybe, but I think we should keep going for as long as we can.”

“I agree with Amy,” Thera said. As much as she wanted to take Ben’s suggestion, she didn’t want to give in to it until they had to, just in case he was wrong.

Still, the idea stuck in her head as the waves continued, one from the next as they all went through it until there were only ten left and they reached the point that there was no longer a gap between when one wave started and the next ended, only the constant battle.

The ground was riddled with corpses by that point, piles of them all around that were tossed aside with abandon as each beast tore their way through, trying to get to the five of them at their center, while Thera focused on her attack, blinking away the sweat dripping into her eyes as she heard a scream go up behind her as one finally made its way through.

In a flash she turned, earth moving with her as it lashed out at the beast that had its claws in Jake, knocking it away as the man started seizing up before her eyes. Even if she was handling most of the oncoming threats, he was doing an important job of dealing with what she couldn’t handle. If he was going to be out of commission until she could treat him then that changed things.

Guess there’s no other choice.

“Going up!” She yelled out for them all before lifting the stone platform high into the air, leaving them free of the growing threat on the ground with only that in the sky to deal with.

Juggling the spells to raise the platform, deal with the ever-worsening sandstorm, and fighting on top of that was proving to be a mental strain, but one she had to bear as she helped Amy deal with everything flying towards them before rushing over to Jake, Yuzu pressing her hands against the wound on him stomach.

“How’s he look?”

“I kept it from spreading by pulling the life magic from the attack, but I don’t know what to do about what’s already turned to stone.”

“Okay, just give me a moment.”

She saw the pained expression on his face, his breathing strained from his chest not being able to take in all the air it wanted to as she held her hand over his wounds and focused. With her level-ups she’d just gained and the previous success at reversing the effects under her belt it shouldn’t have been too hard, but it was still a complicated way of using a spell to be trying while also needing to be sure she didn’t drop the lot of them, straining her focus all of the more until things snapped into place and she felt it work.

As stone returned to flesh, she left treating the gashes from the creature’s claws to Yuzu, devoting herself instead to keeping the platform held up and sand out as she turned to the others.

“So, sorry about deciding that on my own.”

“As someone happy not to be overrun by monsters, I don’t mind,” Jake told her as Amy nodded in agreement.

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“With one of our fighters down there was no real choice. Now to just see if Ben was right I guess.”

“Well, we’ll see if we survive the next hour,” Ben said, sitting down in the center of the platform with nothing else he could do. “I believe in you guys.”

Jake shot him a jealous look while everyone else focused on the air around them as the ninth remaining round began.

Immediately, it couldn’t be denied how much easier it was. They were able to kill the fliers that appeared in no time at all, giving them more breathing room than they’d had in the last couple hours as they waited for the next round to come, and then one after that, and so on from there. Each time there were a few more enemies to defeat, but with so many trapped beneath their feet it was incomparable to what they’d dealt with before as the time slipped by, until before any of them realized the countdown reached zero, the sandstorm coming to an abrupt stop with it.

Ben, his head hanging over the ledge to look at the growing horde beneath them called out as it happened, sharing the good news he could see.

“All enemies have disappeared and been traded for a way out!”