[STT] Chapter 53: Oh It's On! (Patreon)

"What exactly is a Tide?"

"No idea."

Ethan rubbed his chin thoughtfully when Ben asked, having come to discuss what was going on.

"Maybe it's a weather event? Or a wave of mana?"

Alice crossed her arms.

"Or maybe it's just trying to scare us."

They spent the next few minutes casually tossing out theories while absolutely nothing happened. But the peaceful downtime didn't last very long.

Bursting through the distant tree line, a horde of low-level beasts suddenly rushed straight toward the clearing. And right on cue, a new system notification appeared.

[Rift Sub-Objective: Protect the monolith.]

Staring at the prompt, Ben quickly realized how bad this actually was.

Everyone in the clearing fell completely silent as they looked at the same notification with grim expressions. Protecting the monolith implied the monsters would break it. Ben wondered what was going on.

A booming laugh suddenly sounded. Turning his head, Ben watched the giant scarred guy from earlier suddenly spring into action.

"Now this is exciting!"

Grabbing the petite girl and tucking her firmly against his side in a tight grip, he blasted into the air like a human missile, the ground cracking behind him as he leapt away.

Blinking in surprise, Ben watched the giant streak down toward the approaching monster horde.

Crashing into the distant trees like a meteor, the guy instantly vanished from sight as a series of incredibly loud explosions sounded, followed by loud laughter.

He was obviously fighting the entire front line all by himself.

Looking away from the distant fireworks, Ben slowly turned to Alice and then to Ethan. Staring blankly at the incoming horde, Ethan sighed.

"I feel like this rift has a time limit."

"What do you mean this rift has a time limit?"

"Rifts normally do not have any kind of sub-objectives at all. But this one actually does. And that means this specific sub-objective is going to keep increasing in difficulty wave after wave until we either clear the rift and leave, the monsters become too strong and wipe us out, or we just complete the monolith climb before that happens, or just abandon it and make it for the main objective, which would undoubtedly count negatively toward the final judgement."

Processing the information, Ben looked at the stairway.

"So is this the main objective now?"

"Well it looks like it, if we want all the points we can get. The main objective is going to have to wait."

"I see."

"The rift is probably going to force us to end it in a few days before it gets too dangerous."

Ben was a bit stumped hearing that. He'd just started exploring, and now the rift was forcing him to make a move?

"What are you guys going to do after?"

"The expedition moves, that's what. We'll walk our journey to the sea."

"What about me?"

Alice was the one who replied this time. "We will see what we can do about that. Maybe I can convince my aunt to give you a ride."

"Your aunt?"

"Yeah, she should be able to get you to any place you want in the region."

"I see."

"Just hope she's in a good enough mood."

"That's very reassuring."

"It's the best I can do for a stray."

"Ouch."

Ben said in a deadpan voice as he held his chest with an expressionless face.

Looking over where the wave had crossed out of the trees into the clearing, Ben noticed that there were quite a lot of beasts out there, and he realized the flanks were already collapsing.

And while the giant guy was busy turning the center into a crater, the sides of the horde were completely flooding into the clearing. The frontline was basically a total mess.

Squinting at the distant explosions, Ben watched the giant casually toss a massive beast into the air while he seemed to be laughing and having the time of his day.

"Who exactly is that guy?"

"That's Cassian. And the girl with him is Sera. They're siblings."

"Are they insane?"

"They're just very strong."

Frowning slightly, Ben couldn't see how a tiny girl like that could possibly be a frontline brawler. And to be honest he couldn't see her anywhere either, but then again, magic was a very real thing here, so he really wasn't one to judge.

Maybe she was more of a magical support for her brother.

Regardless, his actual problem right now wasn't killing monsters at all. It was getting more points.

The monolith defense objective was literally handing him rift monsters on a silver plate, it would be quite rude to deny them.

And he absolutely needed every single one of them.

He had to become a point-harvesting machine. His destiny demanded nothing less than absolute victory over the contribution leaderboards.

He would rain down holy terror and secure his rightful hoard of system points to become a wealthy man.

I need those points.

"I'm gonna shoot them."

He told Alice.

"How profound."

Reaching into his storage, he quickly pulled out the sleek magical staff he'd recently acquired.

"Is that Clarissa's staff?"

"I obtained it ethically."

Side-eyeing him so hard it probably hurt, Alice just crossed her arms and judged him silently.

Ben ignored her entirely, and immediately put his flawless plan into action.

He got out of the monolith's barrier and felt his skill return, and he also got a notification.

Curse of the monolith lifted. Flight-enabling skills restriction lifted.

Triggering [Fire Burst], he launched himself high into the air and stabilized his hover right above.

He was just going to be artillery.

Aiming the stolen staff down at the swarming flanks, he channeled a massive amount of mana into [Mana Cannon] straight through the staff.

A ball of mana shot out and obliterated a distant beast.

And the massive recoil flung him backward through the air.

Frowning at the sudden shift in momentum, he quickly adjusted his posture, igniting a continuous burst of fire right behind his back to counter the recoil.

He firmly braced his weight against the propulsion and pushed directly into the staff to counter the kickback, and began shooting more, but he quickly realized he couldn't actually see well enough to snipe specific targets.

So he just started firing completely blindly into the densest parts of the crowd.

Pumping shot after shot into the horde, he targeted the general head and body mass one by one. Watching the monsters fall, he just kept shooting as he smiled.

The system points were rolling in beautifully, filling his head with the sweet dopamine of numbers going up.

But then a streak of light zipped into the air right next to him.

Squinting at the newcomer, Ben paused his bombardment for a second to look at the guy floating on some kind of glowing wind platform.

"Hey. You're hovering right in the middle of my zone."

...Huh?

"And I'm pretty sure that's a stolen staff you're waving around. You definitely don't have the money for that, so just hand it over and I'll return it to the owner for you."

The kid gave him a small smile.

Ben just turned his attention back to the horde and fired another [Mana Cannon] into a group of beasts. He really didn't have time to entertain some kid when there were points to be farmed!

"Are you actually just ignoring me? Fine. If you want to be stubborn about it, let's see who clears the area first."

Tilting his head slightly, Ben just shrugged and kept shooting.

So the noble kid just sighed like he was dealing with someone unreasonable and pulled out a bow. It appeared out of nowhere, so Ben assumed he pulled it from a holding bag. Pulling the string back, he quickly unleashed a barrage of arrows made of air that homed in on the exact same targets Ben was aiming at.

And the arrows pierced the monsters a fraction of a second before Ben's [Mana Cannon] could.

They were fast.

Watching the beasts fall without getting a single system notification, Ben paused.

"Looks like I'm doing you a favor anyway." The noble said.

Ben fired another shot at a different cluster of rift monsters. But another arrow instantly zipped past him and snatched the kill right out from under his nose.

He was getting progressively more annoyed with every passing second. He didn't care about the condescension or the sudden one-sided rivalry at all.

But he was fundamentally opposed to people stealing his points!

And this kid was literally burning through Ben's potential points with every single arrow he fired.

"That's five for me. Are you even trying?" The kid paused as his arrow pierced through another beast. "Make that six. You're really quite slow, aren't you?"

Oh, it's on.

Ben didn't care about this guy, but no one was going to take his points from him!

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