The battle against the Raptors was done. And they won with minimal loss while the raptors had fled to lick their wound and fight another day. She had lost three arrows that day. One had snapped and broken as her victim had fallen dead on the wrong side. The two others... the arrowheads had snapped because of the damned mage armor.

Other than that, they had made it with no injuries thanks to the puddle death trap.

Yet, Sophia would not forget this battle any time soon and how close they had come to die pointlessly because of her stupidity. And the fact they had completely underestimated the raptors' intelligence nor anticipated the eventuality of encountering any opponent that could cast spells.

And yet, Michel's warning kept ringing in her mind. The dinosaurs were the LEAST of their problem on this floor.

It appeared that she had grossly misinterpreted the profound meaning of that warning.

And so she started looking at her surroundings for threats.

Their entrance into the third floor had been at the top of a hill, surrounded by forest, but still gave them a good vantage point and a surprisingly clear view of the valley.

They were surrounded by mountains on all sides, the white peaks looking threatening and impassable as if to warn them not to try their luck there. But the valley below... Jurassic Park didn't do any justice to the giant, majestic dinosaurs she could see from up there. The sheer amount of colors from their feathers and scales made them look like fearsome wingless parrots, with teeth and claws, which did not look vestigial at all.

Even from that sheer distance, she did not feel safe from the terrible lizards.

But there was more. Near the center of the Valley was a river, a lake in the middle east, and a lonely hill right in the middle west.

And on top of that hill... a giant, high as a skyscraper and entirely made of stone, was walking around. And within the lake, followed by terrible waves she could see from that far, was another giant, of comparable size, albeit entirely made of water this time.

The Realm of Giants, Michel had said. Sophia finally understood why. While the wyvern had been undisputedly the king of the jungle, those two were on an entirely new level and would have swatted the wyvern like it was a fly.

And they, poor humans did not even stand a chance. They were speckles of dust in the wind. That was how insignificant she was once compared to such a monster.

She was about to despair when a flash of inspiration filled her with even more dread, and so she felt compelled to check the map to verify her presumption. Yep. A significant part of the map had been updated with everything she could see before her eyes. And the next Chain Chest was on an island in the middle of that lake, probably guarded by that giant water Elemental.

Following her logic, she scrutinized the lonely hill the Earth Elemental had been guarding, and indeed: there was a tiny cave there, which she presumed was the door to the fourth floor.

It was perfectly logical. A somewhat round-shaped valley with plenty of hills such as theirs all around the edge. And with two single points of interest in the middle of the Valley, heavily guarded by the worst monsters they had ever seen.

In comparison, the dinosaurs were only fillers, meant to give them a feel for this floor concept.

They were all Giants. They might all have magic.

And yet, they were somewhat supposed not only to persevere but prevail?

But how could they? How could one fight against a walking earthquake or tsunami? Defeating one or the other seemed impossible. Then what other options did they have? Negotiating? Impossible. What would such Giants even possibly want from them? Distraction? Suicidal. They were about as distracting to those monsters as fleas to a dog.

Sophia considered her manipulating her presence to sneak past them but even that... it only worked on her and both Giants could easily kill her without even realizing she was even there.

Anyway, with or without a plan, simply getting them would be a hellish ordeal with all the dinosaurs waiting for them.s

And so she was back to square one:

What could they possibly do, except despair, roll over, and die?

★☆★

In the end, Paolo had once again been the voice of reason:

Even if they stood no chance even if the monsters seemed to have all the advantages against them, they had to push through. Not for the hope of getting to the next floor that would be undoubtedly twice as hellish as this one, not for the sake of their own survival which seemed more and more impossible by the day, but because the fate of humankind hanged in the balance.

The first wave had only been 24. And yet, one of them still managed to survive the tutorial. The third wave, with the exact same number of 'representatives' had been six to survive. Then the last wave, 7% had made it, through all the 12 floors. So no matter how impossible the deeds seem to be, the figures were saying as such: 'Get your shit together, it's not that hard!'

And so, though she could not see a solution to those literal monstrous problems, she proceeded as she always had done. By dividing the impossible task into smaller ones that seemed somewhat possible.

One: sneak past the raptors and down the hill.

Two: sneak past the other dinosaurs and get to the lake shore.

Three: assemble a raft to get to the island.

Four: singing for dear life while paddling her way to the island alone.

Five: Beat the challenge alone and secure the chest, without opening it.

Six: Made her way back, same as step four.

Seven: Regroup with the team and let Prince open the chest, as planned.

Eight: Make their way to the earth giant.

Nine: Distract it without dying with my amazing performance while the others are trying to sneak past him, again, without dying.

Ten: After all previous steps are complete, sing to the Weave to get past the earth giant in stealth mode.

Eleven: If she was still alive at this stage, congrats! Mission accomplished!

Yep. Her plans consisted of eleven conditional steps which she was individually more likely to fail than succeed. And even if she decided to say "Screw the chest" and "Screw my team" her plans still consisted of three pretty unreasonable steps.

Arguably, of her two companions, only Paolo had to live for her mission to be accomplished. If she died but he got through, she just had to do it all over again, alone. If only Prince died, then they would reunite on the next floor, as they did this time around. And if she died for good but Paolo got through, well, at least she would have done her best for humanity's continued survival.

As for the other way around. Sure she could betray Paolo and still reunite with Prince on the next floor. That was the reason she picked Rogue after all. To improve her own odds at the expense of everyone else, right? But now, that everyone else had a face, a name, and also happened to be her friend.

And she really did not want to do it. Unless she had no choice because some random Dino robbed that choice from her. Or unless her plan was a total failure and she ended up in her last life. It was easy to be generous and altruistic when one had lives to spare. But after dying twice and being on her last leg? She did not have that much trust in her own humanity.

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Needless to say, she was currently in a dark place, mentally speaking and no amount of reasoning actually helped.

★☆★

It was bound to happen so of course it did. Before they were done climbing down the hills, the raptors had also been done licking their wounds and had come after them for round two. Another valuable lesson of the tutorial: always finish your opponent while they are weak or they might come back to bite you. Literally.

With the advantage of surprise and high ground in the raptor favors and their mage armor already cast, as well as the total absence of water for a repeat performance, they were in a much dire position this time around.

With all those factors adding up, Sophia's conclusion was definitive:

"Paolo?" She called him, as they had instinctively fallen in a back-to-back formation without thinking.

"Yes?" He replied, his voice already betraying his anxiety but believed in her to have a plan.

Except this time, she hadn't.

"We are not going to win this fight." She declared, feeling sorry.

"Oh," Paolo replied. "What do we do then?"

"I'm going to sing to give you a head up. Then I'm going to retreat in the opposite direction. You are going to go down the hill, mark as many trees as you can on your way down, then climb one and pray I make it to find you there, got it?"

"Run away. Mark the trees. Climb the last one. Got it." He confirmed.

"Good. On the count of three. One, two, ..." And so she started singing to the Weave, demanding all the Raptors' attention while she started running.

She did not turn back to make sure they all followed as their cries responded to her questions.

She did not have to last long. Only long enough to give Paolo a chance. Then she could hopefully tune down her presence and disappear. The good thing was: such as wolves, Raptors were pack hunters. They enjoyed the chase and would let her run. If only to better lead her into a trap and kill her without risking any further injuries.

Of course, they started to lunge at her with their teeth. But just to give her a good fright and direct her in the direction they wanted. And so she had started counting. At three meters per second, if she kept going for twenty seconds, she would have given Paolo a headstart of 120 meters. Given the raptors' speed, they could still reach him in half that time. But that was also how long she thought she could last.

Then she saw it. The trap. She had been at eighteen seconds but could not wait any longer. If she fell into their trap, diminutive presence or not, she was certain she would die. And so she altered her Chant to reduce her presence. And at first, the raptors kept giving her chase. Then, their run became erratic as if they had lost her, although she was right there, and then, they just stopped on their track as if second-guessing what they had been doing.

And finally, she heard the presumed leader's cries and the raptors running all at once in the opposite direction. In Paolo's direction. If she had been right in her rough estimate of his capabilities and he had run for his life as he should, he was now 15 seconds ahead of the raptor. It was not a lot. But they didn't need a lot. All he had to do was realize the danger was coming, find a suitable tree to support his weight, and climb.

As for her, she kept singing while slowly making her way around and down the hill while putting as much distance as she could from the raptor — better safe than sorry — before following her own advice, climbing a tree, and catching her breath.

It did not take long for her to hear rustling in the branch, assuming the worst, only to realize it was only Prince, who had found her from atop the tree after flying away.

"Oh. That's you. " She said relieved, sheathing back her shortsword. "I'm glad you made it."

"Why? Well. Thank you. I'm glad you made it too." The winged cat replied grumpily.

"We had no way to win that fight. I made the call. We ran. What did you expect me to do?" She argued back.

The tressym dismissed her with a swing of his tail. "You're right. You make the call. Now what?"

"Can you fly back up and check on Paolo discreetly, please?" She asked, stressing the word 'discreetly'.

"Of course, I can," Prince said smugly before taking flight.

And so she was left alone, again, for an agonizing half an hour, waiting for the Tressym to get back with the news.

"Good news!" He announced without preamble. "Your useless boyfriend is alive. Bad news is: the raptors found him too and he is stuck in his tree for the foreseeable future."

It could have been worse. But it was quite the bad news indeed.

★☆★

And so Paolo, Sophia, and the Raptors had settled for the night at their impromptu respective camping spots. In the grand scheme of things, the raptors should give up before Paolo would run out of food and water. But they also had a limited amount of time and far too many things to do.

So Sophia started thinking. For the next part of their plans, both Prince and Paolo were not strictly needed.

She could make her way to the lake without getting attacked thanks to her stealth-singing. She could devise a way to get to that island without getting drowned by the giant water Elemental. She could then proceed, dealing with the challenge's trap as she always did. And then, she could make her way back with the chest, granted she would have to give up a significant amount of her backpack content.

Content that Paolo could put to good use such as books, food, and extra bottled water. Giving up that much, he could last four days without needing water. And the food and books would keep his mind occupied while she was gone. Plus, he would have Prince to take him company, under the strict instructions of trying to distract the raptors away from Paolo without endangering his own life.

What could possibly go wrong, right?

All the bigger, nastier dinosaurs were not even hanging around this part.

And so after making sure Prince understood his instructions clearly and reluctantly sending a message to Paolo through the system, she went on her merry way to hopefully not die trying to get some reward she could totally live without. But a promise was a promise and the appeal of the final reward for accomplishing the impossible quest was just too good to pass up.

And indeed while making her way to the lake, under the protection of the Weave itself, she was left astonished at the sheer amount of human corpses she passed by. She had stopped counting after fifty. And it had been solely from the direction she came in to the lack. If it had been the same everywhere else....

'Just how many people had died here?'

This information cannot be disclosed.

However, information about the past two floors is now available.

"Really?" She asked, surprised that the system even bothered to respond at all.

There is no one left alive on the past two floors. Hence the statistics for those two floors are now complete.

Only 34 people have died on the first floor and 149 people have died on the second floor. To be noted that those statistics only account for final death. Overall, this amounts to only 2% of this wave cohort.

Accounting for the increased difficulty of each floor, the expected final death toll is currently estimated to be 62%, therefore a survival rate of 38%. That would be 1.44 times better than your species' current best performance.

"Thanks" She replied, sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

You're welcome.

Anyway... if the death kept following the same pattern then indeed, a minimum of 500 people dying for good on this floor sounded very likely. Which meant about 1500 bodies in total in the valley currently?

What a grim thing to get used to. But it kind of lined up with her observations at least.

★☆★

When she finally reached the lake, she finally realized the flaw in that part of her plan.

Even if she had been able to build a raft that could resist the elemental waves, it was swimming around in a circle, creating a current in its wake. Getting the raft halfway through would not be difficult: the current would do all the work. However, resisting the current the reach the island and doing it fast enough not to be drowned by the Elemental ramming into her without knowing... it was a challenge on its own.

Especially since she could see the corpses of all who tried and failed before her, still carried around by the current.

The only way she could see that working was timing it right so she would get into the current, and get in position right on time to somehow 'surf' the giant wave at the front of the Elemental as it passed by her. If she failed and the wave pulled her under, she would be trapped in the current and would be drowned like everyone else.

The thing was: even if she had been an Olympic swimmer instead, and even if dash had also applied to swimming, which wasn't the case, she was certain she would fail and the only way to pull it off was some sort of propulsion, mechanical or magical, that would get her into position at the exact time she needed to.

And the only way she had to possibly do that was well... shape water... which seemed like a really bad idea to use specifically in an Elemental own domain. So the next question was: how much faith exactly could she put into her sing-to-the-Weave diminutive presence? She already knew that attacks would cancel it. But what about a perfectly inoffensive use of a cantrip to redirect the flow of water behind her?

And shape water was even conveniently a purely somatic cantrip so she could cast it without breaking her song. It was, in theory, the perfect combination. If, and that was a big if, the Weave did not betray her at the most inopportune moment, in which case, she was toasted.

In the end, it was a do or don't situation.

She would not know unless she tried. She really did not want to die like this over something that stupid. But she felt like she had to try anyway. It was why she went all the way here. And well... getting that damned chest was supposed to be difficult. Deadly difficult.

The first two chests have not been that hard-to-get and the reward had indeed been amazing for their corresponding floors. So maybe it was worth the risk anyway?

High risk, high reward? No pain no gain? It had been the tutorial philosophy all along, right?