CH482 Thera’s Perspective

Slowly, Thera felt herself coming back to consciousness, even if she had to fight past the groggy feeling picking at her every step of the way.

Ugh, feel like I shouldn’t be asleep right now. What am I supposed to be doing? It’s probably not important, I can rest a little longer, right?

…

The trial!

All at once she shot up, as awake as she could be to find herself back in the tower’s rest space, her mother still asleep beside her while Funa, Ben, and Karly sat a little bit away, the latter two eating snacks.

“Oh hey, glad to have you back with us,” Ben called out, the first to notice she was up as she hesitantly walked over to them, not entirely convinced that whatever she was seeing wasn’t just a hallucination brought on by a floor effect.

“What happened?”

“Ah, we managed to get a bad pull,” He explained. “Probably the worst floor we could have gotten. That floor fills you with paranoia about a minute after you enter it to cause a range of mental effects from thinking your teammates were out to get you to thinking they’re imposters, while at the same time, it gives you monsters to fight your way through. Honestly, it is way too unbalanced considering the rest of the options, I have to wonder if all towers have an unusually difficult section on the rotation or if this one was just a bit of bad design. Either way, given how powerful you and Karly are we kind of had to act quick to make sure things wouldn’t go bad so there wasn’t much time to explain. Sorry.”

What he’d just told her had been just enough to remind her of what she’d read in the list of floor explanations she’d been given the day before, along with how it could be solved. Put the challengers to sleep and from there carry them through it. At the time she’d read it, she’d assumed that she was going to be the one to do it, likely having Ben merge his mind into her own to try and fight off some of the effects, but it made a lot more sense with her aunt there given that a dark spell would have no effect on her to begin with.

“Alright, well is there anything you can do about the last bits of sleep, aunty?” She asked. “I feel like I could fall back at any moment.”

“That’s not me,” The great spirit chuckled. “Any aspect of the spell I placed is gone. It would appear you can blame your bloodline for still being tired.”

“We are now three for three when it comes to your family and not being great at waking up,” Ben laughed. “I would have thought your mom would do better than you or Sonya since she kind of has an important job but looks like she’s the worst of all.”

“She’s probably been too busy to sleep much recently,” Thera said, feeling her cheeks burn.

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I have no idea how to get better at waking up in the morning.

“Well, no harm waiting for her to wake up before we move on to the next one. Come on, you’ve been out for a while so have a snack.”

“If it’s been a while then shouldn’t you have a nap or something then?” She asked Ben. “It wouldn’t be good if you were tired along the way.”

“Ha, I did have one for about an hour, you guys are just better at it than me,” He teased. “So don’t worry, with one more floor till we secure the blessing, I’m in top shape.”