Slowly, Thera felt herself coming back to consciousness, even if she had to fight past the groggy feeling picking at her every step of the way.
Ugh, feel like I shouldn’t be asleep right now. What am I supposed to be doing? It’s probably not important, I can rest a little longer, right?
…
The trial!
All at once she shot up, as awake as she could be to find herself back in the tower's rest space, her mother still asleep beside her while Funa, Ben, and Karly sat a little bit away, the latter two eating snacks.
“Oh hey, glad to have you back with us,” Ben called out, the first to notice she was up as she hesitantly walked over to them, not entirely convinced that whatever she was seeing wasn’t just a hallucination brought on by a floor effect.
“What happened?”
“Ah, we managed to get a bad pull,” He explained. “Probably the worst floor we could have gotten. That floor fills you with paranoia about a minute after you enter it to cause a range of mental effects from thinking your teammates were out to get you to thinking they’re imposters, while at the same time, it gives you monsters to fight your way through. Honestly, it is way too unbalanced considering the rest of the options, I have to wonder if all towers have an unusually difficult section on the rotation or if this one was just a bit of bad design. Either way, given how powerful you and Karly are we kind of had to act quick to make sure things wouldn’t go bad so there wasn’t much time to explain. Sorry.”
What he’d just told her had been just enough to remind her of what she’d read in the list of floor explanations she’d been given the day before, along with how it could be solved. Put the challengers to sleep and from there carry them through it. At the time she’d read it, she’d assumed that she was going to be the one to do it, likely having Ben merge his mind into her own to try and fight off some of the effects, but it made a lot more sense with her aunt there given that a dark spell would have no effect on her to begin with.
“Alright, well is there anything you can do about the last bits of sleep, aunty?” She asked. “I feel like I could fall back at any moment.”
“That’s not me,” The great spirit chuckled. “Any aspect of the spell I placed is gone. It would appear you can blame your bloodline for still being tired.”
“We are now three for three when it comes to your family and not being great at waking up,” Ben laughed. “I would have thought your mom would do better than you or Sonya since she kind of has an important job but looks like she's the worst of all.”
“She’s probably been too busy to sleep much recently,” Thera said, feeling her cheeks burn.
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I have no idea how to get better at waking up in the morning.
“Well, no harm waiting for her to wake up before we move on to the next one. Come on, you’ve been out for a while so have a snack.”
“If it’s been a while then shouldn’t you have a nap or something then?” She asked Ben. “It wouldn’t be good if you were tired along the way.”
“Ha, I did have one for about an hour, you guys are just better at it than me,” He teased. “So don’t worry, with one more floor till we secure the blessing, I’m in top shape.”
----------------------------------------
The third floor. Entering it came with the worries of whatever they’d be forced to deal with but Ben recognized it immediately, leaving him positively giddy with how things had been working out so far.
“This is the sixth option. Another hallucination one that’s combined with combat. You’ll be forced to fight till all of the real ones are dead. Funa, you good to handle this?”
“Hmm, I can, but this really is a decent practice stage, don’t you think? Why don’t we let the girls try it a bit and if it doesn’t go well I’ll manage the rest.”
“Man, I wanted to join this because having you here was supposed to make things easy,” Karly complained. “This isn’t much of a break.”
“We’ve got to use any teachable moments we can get, don’t we? It will be fine. You take the right side, Thera, you manage the left.”
“Fine.”
“Can do aunty.”
As far as trials went, this one was more than possible for her to manage. Ben’s brief explanation was enough to remind her of the finer details of what it was, giving her the knowledge that there were only going to be about a hundred real enemies among the horde coming their way. Arguably low compared to some of what they’d dealt with in prior towers but given the applications of the magic it was aimed at perhaps it made sense. The only magic a person should need for challenging it was dark which wasn’t great for outright killing. Any group who came in without another option would need to weaken the real ones enough that they’d have no issue getting their hands dirty, even if they did manage to thin the numbers by having them fight each other.
Of course, they weren’t any other group. She alone had a number of magics she could put to use for that exact situation, it was just a matter of which one. As the horde bore down on her she tried to do what she’d heard Funa suggest to Karly before, use her innate mana sense to tell the difference, but to no luck. Even at level nine, she just didn’t have much talent in that regard, making her choose a barrage over any attempt at precision.
Holding out her staff, she brought forth the magic that had been the main focus of her training since selecting her last job as hundreds of constructs of mana appeared in the air before moving at one to devastate her targets. There was no need for her to know what was real and what wasn’t when she could just dominate an area with her power, rendering anything unfortunate enough to be in it into nothing more than scraps of meat and bone.
It was an anticlimactic end to one of the world’s great challenges but with her work done she turned to watch Karly do her best, the other girl suddenly feeling a tremendous level of pressure to at least try and pick up her pace now that everyone was waiting for her to finish up with half the beasts still bearing down on them.
“Any chance you can help me out a little so we can just move on already?” She asked her teacher while she frantically fired off spells, with no sympathy coming her way.
“Just try your best, we have no rush and nowhere to be till you finish up.”
“Great.”
The sounds of her sarcasm were thick, even amongst her spells and the screams that only existed in everyone's minds.