Ryn
patreon
Chapter 183
🕑 Added 2024-10-21 19:00:08 +0000 UTCJoshua 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.”
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.”
Hm, Joshua is actually a pretty good leader. He’s organized and well-spoken.
“What are you going to do?” Nessa asked curiously.
“I am going to watch for now. I want to see how everyone works together and then I can decide where I can fill in the gaps,” Joshua said to her.
Nessa nodded at him, not finding anything wrong with that reasoning. The six of them quietly headed right toward the pack of goblins with Polux leading them. It wasn’t long before the goblins were within view. The little green monsters were strolling through the forest.
Unfortunately, they also had the other group of girls following along with them and one of the girls made a sound of disgust upon the sight of goblins. “Ew, do we really need to fight goblins? They are so gross.”
Julius rolled his eyes when he noticed that the goblins heard the girl. The goblins all simultaneously turned toward the direction of the noise and let out snarls, hefting their weapons in front of their chests.
Does that girl not know that goblins had good hearing?
He saw that his entire team gave the girl in question a dark look but that didn’t last for long. Knowing that their location had been compromised, as well as the element of surprise they all leaped into motion. Polux was the first one to start running toward the goblins with Julius fast on his heels.
He then felt a coating of mana latch onto him and Polux. It was Nessa’s buff. This particular buff seemed to give Julius a hardened coating of mana around his body. It was clearly some sort of defensive buff.
Julius was pumping as much kinetic energy through his body as he could to enhance his speed, however, he was kind of surprised to see that Polux was easily outpacing him. The beastkin boy was fast and Julius didn’t think this was close to his maximum speed. Instead, of focusing on it too much, Julius just pushed himself harder to keep up.
He then noticed two large bolts of fire mana screeching over his head. The resulting attack exploded the dirt and the goblins, scattering their formation. It didn’t kill any goblins but it sent all of them stumbling.
It was perfect timing. While they were getting back to their feet Polux was already on top of them. The beastkin boy launched a heavy punch and hit the goblin squarely in the chest. Julius was able to sense several layers of intricate aura manipulation over the boy’s fist as it pummeled into the goblin. The goblin didn’t stand a chance. It was blasted back with a sickening crack of bones.
Julius wasn’t that far behind either. Just as the other goblins were getting back to their feet, he was also there to deal with them. Instead of punching the goblin like Polux had done, Julius jumped off his two feet. He used every bit of momentum he gathered while running and slammed his feet into the goblin’s sternum. It didn’t have the power of Polux’s attack but it got the job done. The goblin’s ribs were broken and was sent rolling away, removed from combat.
Just as he noticed two other goblins reaching out to attack him when he was distracted, he felt a surge of mana through the ground. Suddenly, a flurry of vines tangled around the legs of the goblins, having them trip over themselves.
A ball of fire quickly burnt one of them and the other was wrapped up and choked to death by Tia’s vines.
Julius looked over to Polux’s side, where he had dealt with the other two goblins in quick order. Julius noticed that neither Tia nor James had helped Polux out. They probably thought the beastkin boy could handle it himself.
I mean they were right, but I feel kind of sad that they didn’t have the same confidence in me, Julius pouted internally.
***
The team quickly gathered the cores of the goblins. Tier 2 cores didn’t have the most value, but the school still used them to keep the school running and functioning.
Joshua seemed pretty pleased with how things went. The only thing they had to reconsider was how far away Tia was able to use her crowd control abilities. Her reach wasn’t infinite and she would need to get closer for her to be effective. However, that was an easy fix. They would have gotten closer before if the other girl hadn’t made so much noise.
Speaking of the all-girl group. They didn’t fare that well. Unlike their team's good performance, theirs was a mess. They found a group of five goblins but compared to Julius’s team, the girls were sloppy.
Their skills weren’t actually that bad. Two of them were long-range mages, one was a close-combat fighter, and the last one was a healer/support mage. It wasn’t that bad of a composition if not for one thing.
They had no teamwork whatsoever. The two mages didn’t wait for their close combat fighter to get closer before bombarding the goblins. Their accuracy left a lot to be desired. The first bombardment wasn’t that bad, but as soon as the goblins started to move, they couldn’t hit anything.
It was like they weren't used to fighting monsters who could move around so dynamically. For the previous weeks, they had been fighting a single monster within an enclosed space and weren't used to fighting in such an open space against several monsters.
The only saving grace was how powerful their attacks were. The amount of mana they were able to output was quite impressive for Tier 2. It was just unfortunate that most of that mana was wasted since the attacks rarely hit.
In fact, they almost took out their friend on multiple occasions. They hadn’t paid attention to what their close combatant was doing and their attacks scraped the other girl when she was engaging with the goblin. It was fortunate that the girl had a pretty good defensive ability.
Their support mage wasn’t doing much of anything either. She was just nervously staring at the fight with wide doe eyes.
Eventually, the sheer amount of mana and power overwhelmed the goblins. However, to Julius’s bafflement, the girls celebrated their win with excited cheers and jumped around giggling. It seemed all of them were oblivious to how sloppy their fight went.
Julius took a look at his teammates, seeing if they were feeling the same way he was.
He was thankful that he wasn’t alone in his concern. Every one of his teammates had frowns on their faces as they looked at the group of girls. Then simultaneously all of them gave each other a knowing look.
Although they didn’t say a word, Julius was able to interpret their expressions. All of them were secretly thankful that their team wasn’t like that. He gave the girl group one last look.
I didn’t know how I felt about this team thing, but I think I lucked out with my teammates. While it was too soon to really tell, so far all of his teammates seemed to have a good head on their shoulders.
Comments
D H
Not anymore, they dead.
Torauth
Yeah loving this - it's giving me Jason from "He Who Fights with Monsters" vibes, in that fighting up tiers is meant to be incredibly difficult, but he's already at a point where at T2 he can stomp low-mid T3s. Am wondering where he's currently at? Is he able to hold his own against a low T4? Would that be unheard of in terms of precedent, and if so, how much of a massive spotlight would it put on him?
Sean
I mean, they're kids. They've had their affinities and skills for like 2 or 3 years at this point. Being a control mage doesn't erase her being a teenager with bad social skills.
Ryan
Tia is a special case. It's kind of why she has an obsession with Edgar. It will probably come up in future chapters, but it was just an idea when I was thinking of her skillset.
Zack
Battlefield control is not a bad skill for a solo fighter to develop. As a solo fighter with no allies to worry about, they can sacrifice control (keeping it off allies) for power/range/efficiency/etc. So Tia seems to be a bit like the rest of this group and more rounded than specialized. She is just more capable of crowd control than the others.
BrdV
The previous chapter(s) also talked about how he even had some good use of his [quick step] skill with the bracelet on…
Noah
How is the best control specialist in the class bad at working in a team? Isn’t that like their entire skill set? Control specialists aren’t exactly solo fighters, are they?
Nate Slattery
Yeah I agree and I think that it will be the thing to really kick off the plot because I think the duke is trying to launch a coup which is why he moved against Julius’s house and was using those guys to do his dirty work
Torauth
Agreed, looking forward to it, but suspect it won't be this run. I'm imagining next run Julius goes with same group and other group with them has Grace in it and there's an assassination attempt then.
Dylan Sutton
He still hasn't given up on keeping a low profile. The only reason he's in this competent group is because leader guy has intuition that julius is useful. ( as far as we know so far)
Orthneil Kelley Jr.
I agree! I just can't wait to see Reinera, Amelia, and his classmates' faces when it is finally revealed.
Kyfe
Yeah, but the reason now is just as valid. He's improving his Skills more than with just numbers. He's solidifying his foundation in a way he couldn't with just numbers going up. By the time he's Tier 3, he'll practically be ready to advance to Tier 4, ability-wise, lol.
Sean
I agree it's doing what you're saying it's doing I just think we're at a point where it's kind of like beating a dead horse. His peers are lucky to have one rare skill while he has 3 epic and all rares. He's comfortably sparring at the top end of tier 3, he can see through most forms of stealth (I'm guessing the princess has some sort of polyjuice potion going on), his healing uses the best concept known for it on the planet, and he uses a soul suppression collar to hold back like 95% of his power... I don't think anyone will be surprised to know his 13(? I don't remember his age) year old peers aren't great at dungeons. I will say though that this basically counts as filler to me since this is almost exactly like when Naruto took his chunin exams and could use sage mode.
Thomas Corbin
goblins had good hearing => goblins have good hearing
Thomas Corbin
Their accuracy was left to be desired => Their accuracy left a lot to be desired
Read Isekai
It was also mentioned in this chapter
RedLeaf
Thanks for the chapter! Getting that "the other shoe is about to drop feeling" after seeing the disparity in the two groups. I'm with the other's in thinking that something is going to force Julius to drop the act and show a skill/ability/power level that's higher than he's been displaying "in public".
Nimps
He is using his suppression bracelet. Did you not see it mentioned in the previous chapter?
Sambor P
Julius got nerffed?Why he didn't use his moment ability to get to them in an instant? He already had enough kinetic power to explode enemies with his fists that are higher tier or stronger than some goblin. Even before his soul got healed he seamed stronger.
Zack
I get your point, but I think for this story, it's a good thing to see here as we've only seen dungeons from Julius'perspective so far. And his perspective is far from regular. This dungeon run, especially with the crap team, sets up reasonable expectations for where everyone else is at, including that his team is very good, even on the regular scale of his class' fighters.
Orthneil Kelley Jr.
Thanks for the chapter! I'm so eager for them to find out his actual combat prowess and ability. He is too good to be looked down upon, especially he is no longer doing it for the original reasons.
Ryan
Good point, stationary isn't the best word for it. The monsters they fought before weren't stationary, but they weren't in such a dynamic environment. They were pretty much placed in large cages for the students to fight in.
Sean
I may be a little biased since I've been reading Lone Wanderer the last few days but I have seen enough of the kids fumbling the T2 dungeons and would like to go to Julius' Spatial Perception concept lessons. The power ups are a dopamine rush ^_^
PatronTurtle
Isn't this the combat class that's been fighting critters for a long while? Why would the girls be used to stationary targets?
Nate Slattery
Thanks for the chapter can’t wait for something to go wrong that forces Julius to turn off the suppression in a rift
Raymond Mouton
Thanks for the chapter.
Quentin Cozzi
Thanks for the chapter!
Zach
Thanks for the chapter! Looking forward to more seeing how the team works and how others in T2 do things!
