Chapter 183: Competent Team

Joshua saw him approach and met him halfway. “Where did you go?” The boy asked curiously.

“What did you think I ditched the group?” Julius teased.

“No, of course not. I ju-” he stopped what he was going to say when he saw who Julius had brought along. “Huh. Hello, Tia.”

Tia gave Joshua an anxious wave in return. “Hey.”

“Have you reconsidered my offer? I thought you were planning to go solo?” Joshua asked.

“I was. But Julius was very convincing,” Tia stated.

Joshua gave an assessing look to Julius. “It seems he is. I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”

Tia gave him a small shake of her head. “We don’t really. We only recently had a run-in. I was actually really surprised to get an offer.”

“Well at least we have a controller now,” Nessa said with a happy grin.

Polux nodded sagely. “I agree, this is a good addition. Having her along will help us immensely.”

Tia blushed lightly. “I don’t know how much help I will be. I am not very used to working with large groups, so I apologize in advance if I hold you guys back.”

“Don’t worry, you will get the hang of it really quickly. You are already very skilled, so it’s all a matter of practicing,” Joshua assured her.

The five of them briefly reintroduced themselves to Tia and waited for Professor Rowe to give them further directions.

***

The class was escorted to the rift entrance. Along the way, Professor Rowe explained the general ground rules. They weren’t that complicated. The first and most important one was to stay within sight of their supervisor.

The second was not to take any unnecessary risks. Any infractions would be noted by their proctor and the offending parties would be punished as seen fit. This rift delve was supposed to be an introduction to rift delving and it wasn’t supposed to be a thorough exploration of the rift. That would come later down the line.

The way the class was split up depended on the sizes of the groups. There was usually one large group with a smattering of smaller groups of two or four that a supervisor had to oversee.

This would mean that groups would have to take turns fighting against a group of monsters. For this particular rift that meant fighting against packs of goblins. Which was to be expected, they were one of the most common rift monsters for a reason.

Their group entered the rift without much fanfare. There was another group of four that accompanied them with the supervisor in the lead. The rift itself was quite normal. Normal in the sense that the environment looked like one you would find just outside of Heston. Relatively close croppings of trees filled the area with the occasional large open fields.

As Julius and his team entered the woods he immediately started to pulse [Spatial Perception] instinctually. Even with the suppression bracelet on, his skill was still very effective. The restriction it placed on him didn’t seem to affect his perception skill as much as his mana-based skills.

Their proctor, who Julius was seventy percent sure whose name was Mitchell got their attention. “Okay, this is the deal. Whoever finds the first grouping of monsters gets the honor of going first. There will be no fighting among the two of your teams. Any fighting will be punished personally by myself and Professor Rowe.”

Julius and his team were seriously taking in the proctor’s words. However, it didn’t seem the other group was doing the same. The other team consisted entirely of girls and they were too busy talking amongst each other loudly to listen to Mitchell’s words.

Julius heard a couple of the girls bragging about their other experiences delving to their friends. Curiously enough, Mitchell didn’t seem to reprimand them. Instead, he gave the group of girls a disappointing look and ignored them.

The eleven of them kept on walking around. That was until Polux suddenly said, “Up ahead. Approximately six goblins.”

Of course, Julius had already noticed them a little bit ago, but he was surprised that Polux had noticed them as well. The goblins were still a good distance away after all. Polux wasn’t merely boasting when he told them he had a good aura sense.

Mitchell didn’t seem to be surprised either. Either he had a similar perception skill or he had another way to sense the opponents. Or that was what Julius was assuming. He didn’t believe that the school would allow a group of students to head into a rift without a way to control the amount of monsters encountered.

Julius reminded himself to pay attention to Mitchell when he had a chance to see how the young man was able to sense the enemies.

“Okay, Joshua, your team has the go-ahead. Deal with them as you see fit,” Mitchell directed them.

“What? Why do they get to fight them first?” One of the girls whined.

Mitchell gave the girl a cold stare. “I already explained the reason not too long ago. Pay attention next time when I give directions. Lack of attention is what kills many people in a rift.”

Stolen novel; please report.

The girl pressed her lips together firmly in anger as Mitchell scolded her, but held her tongue.

Julius’s team ignored the commotion and Joshua was already giving out instructions. “James I want you to cause as much mayhem as you can. You don’t need to kill any of them, but creating havoc is good enough to allow Julius and Polux to get close,” he then turned to Nessa. “Nessa I want you to give buffs to the two of them, don’t use too much mana though. Let’s be careful how we use our resources. Tia, I want you to hold down as many goblins as you can without interfering with Julius’s and Polux’s attack.”