Chapter 194: Worried Friends

Now that he knew that she was actually Grace, a fact that was still taking time to fully grasp inside of his small brain. He felt much more comfortable showing her some of his true strength.

Even though she had hidden a pretty big secret from him, he didn’t blame her. In fact, he was impressed at how well she did it. He could probably take some notes from her.

He also trusted her, as weird as that sounded, he still trusted her. After all, she was still Grace and someone he had been learning to trust as they knew each other longer. He felt pretty confident that the girl he met at the library every day was the real Reinera, not the pretty performance she put on in front of the rest of their classmates.

Now that his head had cooled and his frustration abated, he felt kind of guilty. He had been about to leave her at the drop of a hat. While he didn’t know it was Grace, just the fact that he now knew it was and he had been about to leave her, left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He quickly decided that to make it up to her he would help her return in one piece. No matter, how matter how much strength he needed to reveal, he would get her back to Goldencrest safe and sound.

After he quickly dispatched the last of the undead monsters, he took a look around. The more he observed their surroundings, the more he believed that the teleportation circle didn’t just send them deeper into the rift and that what Grace had said was correct. They had been somehow transported to another rift entirely.

It was possible that the rift had evolved into a Tier 3 one, but that wasn’t something that just happened all of a sudden. There are cases when a rift evolves into a higher tier rift, but that takes time to do so.

The stone walls were also made of a slightly different composition than the ones lining the cavern walls of the school rift.

His gut feeling was that the teleportation circle sent them to a different rift. His question though was how was it possible to accurately transport them to another rift. A labyrinth type at that.

It was very confusing.

He understood that there have been cases in the past where labyrinth rifts had some sort of teleportation trap, and the people who got stuck in it found themselves in various places. Places that were even outside of the rift.

He was assuming that was the case here, but what were the odds that they would also find themselves in another labyrinth?

He shook his head. It honestly didn’t matter at this point. What mattered was finding a way out of here.

“Are you just going to ignore me?” Grace, sorry Reinera asked.

He gave a glance. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m trying to find a way out of here. I believe that is the more important thing at the moment.”

“But you didn’t answer my question,” she pouted.

“Seems, familiar doesn’t it?” He recalled with a chuckle.

She couldn’t help but give a reluctant grin in return. “That it does.”

“Still, what kind of technique did you use against those undead wolves?” She asked again.

“You know that I use kinetic energy right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I just used it to take away all of their kinetic energy,” he explained plainly.

In return, all he got was a doubtful stare. “If you could really do that, then you would know how unbelievable that sounds. If it’s anything like telekinesis, you would need to completely overwhelm their willpower with your own.”

He just shrugged his shoulders. “I did say that their wills were very weak for Tier 3, didn’t I?”

“That is not a reasonable explanation!” She exclaimed. “Don’t think I didn’t see how much mana just that sword took to make, there is no way a normal Tier 2 should be able to create such a mana dense construct.”

She pointed at the suppression bracelet that was on his wrist. “Amelia told me what that was. I knew you were hiding your talents, but not this much. Why are you hiding so much of your actual strength?”

He shook his head at her. “The attention would be… annoying,” he tried to explain to her. However, this didn’t seem to appease her curiosity.

“You have five of the most influential students as your best friends, you already have a lot of attention,” she pointed out.

Julius gave her another shrug. “It’s a different type of attention. Being someone who is considered one of the strongest is different from being friends with people who are one of the strongest.”

She just sighed in exasperation. “Well, you don’t seem too worried about this,” she pointed out.

He shook his head. “The fighting isn’t what I am worried about. It’s the potential fallout that I am troubled by.”

“What do you mean?” She asked with a frown.

“What do you think is going to happen once we escape? Do you think that nobody is going to notice that I was gone alongside the princess? I can get away with hanging out with the others because they are older and the other upperclassmen think of me as the group’s charity case. However, to my fellow first-years, I am an average student not worthy of much attention. Do you think that’s going to remain the same?”

Julius watched as Reinera chewed on her lip. “Maybe? I am a princess after all, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the others think you were just an unfortunate student dragged along. It’s possible that you are just going to be known as the guy who was almost killed alongside me. If that happens I would be surprised if anyone remembers your actual name.”

Huh, that’s kind of mean, but honestly, that might not be too bad, he admitted inwardly. His mood improved slightly.

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He was about to say more but he sensed another group of monsters up ahead and signaled it to Reinera.

It probably would have been more exciting to say that the monsters proved to be a challenge, but he would be lying. Ever since he had combined his kinetic energy with his Inexorable Resolve to create the ability to freeze his opponents, there wasn’t much difficulty in his fights.

The only ones who seemed to be able to resist were those who had Concepts of their own.

He wondered if he would ever get a skill offered to him for such a technique. He knew that from now on he would find learning skills more challenging, but he felt like it was pretty close to getting to that point.

Another pack of undead wolves was quickly taken care of without much thought and he quickly removed the cores by surrounding them with [Barrier of Severance], then controlling the barrier to bring them to him. Reinera gave him another wide-eyed look but he continued to ignore it.

He wished he could have enjoyed the labyrinth a bit more, but honestly, he didn’t think this would have been the time to do so. If he was alone perhaps he would have taken more risks and had some fun, but with Reinera with him, that wouldn’t be a good idea.

His perception ability was luckily able to detect several traps that he was glad to avoid. He had no intention of falling into a bunch of sharp spikes or being zapped by some mysterious magic circle.

That wasn’t entirely true. He was kind of intrigued by the magic circle. He wondered what it would do if activated. He couldn’t tell by looking it at.

If he had Kyle with him, he bet the other guy would have been able to tell Julius. Next time he was in a labyrinth or was planning to, he would make sure to bring Kyle along. He was sure the other guy would love seeing new and exciting magic circles. Julius wouldn’t be surprised if Kyle purposefully activated them just to see what they did, kind of like Julius was thinking about doing.