Chapter 397: Keeping His Friends Safe

The others had sensed that something was wrong based on Julius’s reaction. They all stared in the same direction he was looking.

“What is it?” Lily asked in a worried tone.

“A horde of monsters coming our way,” he quickly explained, but he didn’t bother to turn around toward them. He maintained his focus on the rapidly approaching group. It would appear they hadn’t been able to hide from his perception; they were simply too far away for him to sense them. That was the good news.

The bad news was that the number of beasts wasn’t what he was worried about. It was the strength of these beasts. There were a large number of Tier 3s and a good number of Tier 4s amongst them.

Much like the seventh floor, these were a medley of monsters. There was no specific species to focus on. He was beginning to understand what Doren was talking about when he mentioned someone was controlling these beasts.

“A horde of monsters?” Aubrey asked in disbelief, but Julius noticed she and the others were already preparing their skills. However, he could tell that they were still quite tired from their delve. All of their mana and aura responded with a sluggishness that wasn’t normal.

He didn’t like that. Not at all.

“Can you protect them?” He asked behind him in a quiet whisper.

“What was that?” Edgar asked him, confused by his question.

Julius looked behind him and noticed that Doren was nowhere to be seen. The man had vanished into thin air. Not even his perception skill was able to pick up where the man had run off to.

“Nothing,” Julius said in a dark tone. It was fine; if Doren wasn’t willing to help, he would just have to protect his friends alone. The main issue was that he didn’t just sense Tier 4s among this horde. At least two Tier 5s were leading this pack of monsters. They were more toward the back, but he was able to sense the familiar, powerful surges of aura in the background. Like a lot of monsters, these Tier 5s didn’t seem to care about shrouding their auras. Proudly displaying them as forms of intimidation.

As a matter of fact, he could tell that he wasn’t the only one in his group who sensed this. Lily had a pale look on her face as she stared into the distance with dread.

“We’re going to be fine,” he said, walking close to her and giving her the confident grin he could.

“But we don’t have—”

He cut her off. “I know, let me handle most of the fighting. You guys try to recover as much mana as you can in the meantime. Let the other people around take the aggression, only fight when it is unavoidable,” he directed them.

As much as he wanted to know where Doren had run off to, he couldn’t focus on that right now. He had more important things. He wasn’t going to rely on the man suddenly reappearing to help them out either. Doren had already shown that he didn’t care that much about the lives of the people here. Julius wasn’t going to take that risk. He wouldn’t be surprised if the researcher had disappeared just because he was curious how Julius would react.

In his short time with Doren, Julius was already pretty confident that the blonde man prioritized his own curiosity more than anything else. It was only because he was curious about Julius that he entertained him to the degree he did.

“Should we head over to the guild staff?” Edgar asked suddenly.

Julius paused. That was a good question. At the moment, they were a little sectioned away from the bulk of the crowd. If they chose to head over to where most of the staff were located, they might be more protected by the more powerful individuals among the expedition.

It might be the smart thing to do since such strong beasts were attacking them.

He looked over to where the staff were and noticed that they weren’t the only group to start seeing that something was wrong. Other groups and guild staff were starting to congregate as they tried not to panic.

However, word quickly spread, and that was when the mayhem started. Most of the people on this expedition were Tier 3s, and what made it even worse was that they were in a similar position to his group of friends. That meant they were tired and low on mana. Some of them were extremely injured as well.

He didn’t know who was behind this attack, and if Doren hadn’t said anything, he might have believed it was some random monster swarm since it was so close to the monster flood season. Whoever this group was, they chose the worst time. Or in the enemy’s case, the best time.

Julius already had some suspicions about who was behind this. However, he didn’t want to jump the gun. He had no evidence to support this belief or anything that would point the blame in their direction.

He looked at where the staff was and back toward the group of monsters. From what he had seen from most fights, he had learned that the Tier 4s and Tier 5s often sought out each other. That would mean if they got too close, they might get caught in the crossfire.

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“Let’s keep some distance for now. I don’t want to accidentally get blindsided by one of the Tier 5s’ attacks,” Derek spoke up, making the decision for them.

They nodded at his logic and prepared themselves, because seconds later, they found themselves face to face with a bunch of violent monsters.