Chapter 377: Evergreen Trolls

Lily POV

She took a deep, calming breath once she saw the notification that she had cleared the conditions of the third floor. The wraith had disappeared once she had taken care of it, but still, this rift was very odd.

The first floor had been simple enough. Goblins were a common monster amongst rifts, and defeating them was expected. They weren’t some special variation or powerful species either. They were simple, weak goblins that weren’t that hard to deal with.

Despite her lack of offensive skills to handle large crowds, her psychic skills and telekinesis were more than enough to defeat them. It required her to sneak around a bit as she quietly killed each monster, but it was an easy task in the end. It wasn’t like they had powerful senses in the first place.

The second floor was a bit more intriguing, at least. The Ironblood Boar was an impressive monster for Tier 3. Its natural defenses were something she suspected would make it difficult for many of the participants. It was likely not a problem for anyone in their friend group, but this was likely the floor that stopped most people from moving forward.

However, it was to her good luck that she was ideally suited to fighting enemies like the boar. While she didn’t have explosive skills like Julius’s fire magic or Derek’s lightning magic, she was very comfortable when fighting a singular strong opponent. You could say that it was her specialty.

The Ironblood Boar didn’t stand a chance. She blended the monster’s mind so badly that it couldn’t even get up from where it was lazing around to attack her. She made sure not to cause too much pain in the process, but by the time she was done with the monster, it was in a comatose state.

It only required another concentrated effort to kill it completely.

What came next was the most surprising. If she thought the second floor was the floor that would prevent people from progressing, then the third floor would be much more challenging.

The fog itself was a scary thing to deal with. She doubted that many people had the requisite skills to handle such a sinister environment. Just the ability to hinder mana control was a difficult thing to overcome. Not to mention how much the fog affected one’s perception.

If not for her protecting herself with a makeshift barrier of aura, she doubted she would have been able to see or hear anything outside several feet in front of her. Even when she was protected, she had to rely on her psychic abilities to keep an eye out for things.

Some people choose not to acquire a perception skill. Instead, they decided to acquire another skill that helped them in other aspects of fighting. She disagreed with that, but to be fair, in a team setting, you really only needed one or two people with a perception skill.

With a heavy restriction on how many skills people could choose, sometimes there were skills you had to decide to give up on.

However, this rift was obviously testing the participants on how well balanced their skillsets were. The first floor tested their ability to handle a large number of weaker opponents, and the second floor tested how well they would fare against a singular strong monster.

This past floor tested their perception skills and made sure they had a way to hit a monster without using mana. She had heard of such creatures from her father.

Mana-based attacks were almost always useless when fighting these kinds of monsters. A person was required to use some other means to hit a monster like a wraith. Aura was usually the most common ability to deal with it.

Or sometimes, like in her case, she was able to use her psychic ability to rip apart the wraith’s mind. She had sensed it with her psychic abilities before it could ambush her in the fog, something she was glad for because she almost didn’t have enough time even with that.

The thing came out of nowhere and she almost panicked, but luckily her training had paid off. It let her maintain her composure enough to protect herself. Once again, she was jealous of Julius’s focus skill.

While she had a focus skill of her own, it was more specialized in helping her control the load of her psychic abilities. Julius’s skill helped him control his emotional responses with a much firmer hand. It gave him the unparalleled ability to remain calm even in the most chaotic situations.

Thankfully for her, the wraith’s mind defenses were weaker than even the Ironblood Boar from earlier, allowing her to deal with it very easily. Despite it being a much more dangerous floor than the previous one, she arguably had a far easier time.

However, she worried about how the others would deal with it. She had confidence that Derek and Julius would be able to handle it. They both had offensive-leaning auras in the first place, but she was more worried about Aubrey and Edgar.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Actually, on second thought, with Aubrey’s current strength, she would be able to deal with the wraith with just her clones. Her friend had become quite skilled in aura in the past year and should be fine. She would likely just need to blow one or two clones up in the wraith’s face to defeat it.

Edgar was still a worry, though. Although her big friend had worked on his own aura skills since Julius showed him how to exploit this weakness, he was still quite new to it. It was never his strong suit, but she hoped that just the sheer power of his aura would be able to protect him.

When she arrived on the fourth floor, she was somewhat relieved to see a bright and welcoming forest in front of her again. The previous floor had been a bit eerie and if she was being honest, she was already getting tired.

She suspected this was what prevented a lot of people from getting that far. As far as she knew, there weren’t any safe places to rest in between floors other than the ten minutes. It was also what she believed would be the thing that prevented her from going that far.