Chapter 191: Flushed Away

Julius watched as the group of students followed Professor Rowe into the rift.

Today in Applied Combat, they would be entering a new kind of rift. This rift was a bit different from the other they had been delving into for the past week. This specific rift was a labyrinth type.

That one single detail automatically made the rift much more dangerous than the last rift they had been delving into.

Labyrinth-type rifts were pretty rare. Out of a hundred rifts, you would only see a handful of labyrinth types among them. With that being said, they weren’t unheard of and if you planned to delve many rifts in the future, you were bound to encounter at least one.

The goal of delving into this labyrinth rift was to get the students some experience before they were caught unprepared later in their lives.

He had come prepared at least. On top of the several assignments that the professor assigned, he had read up on several books in the library during the past several weeks. In his findings, he realized that the most dangerous elements of these types of rifts were several main things.

One was the unpredictable nature of these rifts. Some labyrinths were monster-focused rifts, whereas some other ones were puzzle or trap-centric ones. This made properly investigating a rift that much more important.

The second dangerous element was the close quarters of the rift. There were times when a team would be stuck in a labyrinth with very narrow walls and sharp corners. This made mages and other fighters who relied on open space to be severely limited by these conditions.

The third was that many perception-based skills were restricted by the walls of the labyrinth. Even his own skill might not be safe from the rift’s effects. He would still be able to use it, but estimating how much it would before he could test it out for himself was hard to say.

The fourth and final dangerous element was the randomness of where you might enter and how the rift might have changed since the last delve. Most rifts had certain predetermined sections where people enter. Labyrinths didn’t have that. You could spawn anywhere, with no rhyme or reason to it.

The only way out was to either find an exit or destroy the core of the rift. Destroying the core could sometimes be next to impossible so finding an exit was almost always the solution.

That extra level of danger was also the reason why the class would not be entering as a whole group. Professor Rowe was going to personally escort each group through the rift. That way there was no risk of a group getting stuck inside of it. Each class a total of two groups would be able to enter.

The rest of them would be going through some exercises with the assistants or could choose to practice with their teams. Unfortunately, their group wasn’t one of the lucky ones, so that meant they had to watch as the other students disappeared with Professor Rowe.

“Aw, man. That’s not fair,” Nessa said disappointedly.

“It’s just the luck of the draw,” Joshua tried to cheer her up.

“I know that, but I guess I kind of felt that we have done a good job as a team so far, which might have given us an extra privilege. You know what I mean?” Nessa said with a frown.

“I feel the same way,” Tia added. “I really thought that we might have been chosen instead.”

“Don’t worry guys, we have tomorrow’s slot. We shouldn’t be complaining that much,” James calmly said.

Polux slapped Tia on her back, surprising the young girl. “Yeah, look on the bright side. We have more time to figure out how we are going to deal with the rift. Maybe the other teams will give us some helpful information.”

“I doubt it,” Nessa said, sounding unsure. “If the professors allowed that, the later teams would have a much larger advantage. They will most likely prohibit the other teams and individuals from sharing too much.”

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Polux said with a conceding nod and a thoughtful look.

Instead of thinking about it too much, Julius and the others decided to practice their new maneuver that the others were trying out last week before the weekend. The others had spent a few hours over the weekend refining it and believed it could actually work.

Now the next step was implementing Julius and Polux into it.

***

The next day could not arrive soon enough. Julius was pretty excited and his early classes before Applied Combat went by even slower than normal. The entire time during Intro to Mana was spent fidgeting as he anxiously awaited to experience a labyrinth rift.

It wasn’t just the labyrinth either. This morning Grace had told him that she wanted to talk to him later tonight after they were done with all of their classes. He was a little nervous that she had noticed what he had done yesterday.

If she had, he was just hoping that she wasn’t too upset and was trying to figure out some sort of excuse he could tell her.

However, he put that out of his mind for later. A labyrinth type rift was interesting to him. It wasn’t a rift he was familiar with yet, and even though it was a Tier 2 rift, the change was very welcome. He was tempted to use [Sage of Savagery] to temper his emotions but he kind of enjoyed the rippling waves that flowed through his stomach. It made it much more exciting.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He wasn’t alone either. When he arrived and saw the others he noticed that they all were slightly nervous and excited as well. He kind of wished they had the first delve of the day, instead of the second one because the wait would be excruciating.

However, their little group of six used this time to prepare themselves and by the time their time came around, they were locked in. There weren’t any signs of nervousness on their faces like there had been earlier.

Julius looked over to see who would be joining them. There was a team of three guys who Julius had seen often hanging out. He assumed they were all good friends, and they were pretty good from what little Julius had seen from them. Two of them were close combat fighters while the last one was a fire mage like James. However, unlike James’s more disruptive build, this guy was a pure offense build.

All Julius had seen from him was large swaths of flame and fireballs. He wondered how that would work in a rift of this type and if his friends would need to step up and help him.

The last person who accompanied them was a surprise. It was the princess herself.