Path to Transcendence

Chapter 396: Exiting Into an Ambush

Upon exiting the rift, Julius looked around and spotted the hundreds of other participants all leaving the rift simultaneously. It was very hectic. Everyone was on edge and had various conditions.

The guild was already prepared with medical equipment and healers for those who might have gotten injured. Surprisingly, there were not as many as Julius had thought there would be.

It would appear that a lot of the people chose to end their attempt before they got too seriously injured. Of course, there were still people who received a number of injuries.

He even spotted several who were hurt quite badly. One boy had a gaping hole in his chest, and Julius had no idea how the boy was still alive. Actually, on second thought, he didn’t know if the boy was alive. His face was pale, and he was utterly unconscious.

Another girl had lost both of her legs and was screaming out in pain as the healers rushed to help her before she bled out from blood loss.

He was starting to understand why the guild had brought along so many people on this trip.

The healers focused on those who were at the most risk of death, and potions and other equipment aided the others who had severe but not life-threatening injuries as they waited for the healers to go over to them.

Julius didn’t keep his attention on this for too long, though. He reached out with [Absolute Spatial Perception] and covered the surrounding area with his senses. However, he wasn’t able to pick up anything on the first go-around. Whoever was waiting out wasn’t that close, or if they were, they somehow were able to evade his detection, which was a more troubling thought.

He narrowed down his perception and pointed it at specific areas, extending the range by double. However, he still couldnʼt detect anything.

“Are you sure that someone is going to attack?” He muttered softly, knowing that Doren would be able to hear him.

“Yes. They have a Tier 5 hiding their presence from far away with a decent stealth skill, but they seem to be waiting for something,” Doren said, suddenly appearing next to Julius without care about hiding.

“You don’t want to hide?” Julius asked, a bit surprised at Doren’s appearance. “Also, shouldn’t we do something?”

Doren chuckled. “They can’t see me. I am completely invisible to their senses. And no, I kind of want to see what this group has planned.”

“Yeah, but if we notify them now, they have a better chance of surviving the ambush,” Julius said, already heading over to the Tier 5 who was in charge of the expedition.

However, before he could make it too far, he felt a sudden surge of power completely immobilize him. It was quite gentle, but he could do nothing as Doren froze him.

“What are you doing?” Julius asked in a confused tone.

“I am not supposed to interfere with these kinds of matters,” Doren said with an apologetic shrug.

“You wouldn’t be, I am the one interfering,” Julius pointed out.

“Yes, but I also am the one who told you about the other group. I really should not have, but it slipped out by accident,” Doren admitted with a wince.

“Seriously? There are people’s lives at stake here,” Julius said with a glare at the powerful man.

“I understand, but if someone else finds out I interfered, then they will have every right to retaliate. And trust me, you don’t want that. The small number of lives I could save by telling them would be a fraction of the carnage they could unleash,” Doren said with a soft shake of his head.

“Why would anybody that powerful care about this ambush? Do you know who is about to attack?” Julius asked suspiciously.

“No, but I can sense a powerful marker placed on one of these attackers, which means that someone close or around my level has some involvement in this whole thing,” Doren said simply.

“So you’re not going to do anything?” Julius asked in disbelief.

Doren shook his head, not seeming to care about the situation all that much. “I try to remain as neutral as possible. I am curious to see how they are going to go about it, though. They seem to have prepared a very rare type of magic. I wonder how well they can actually control it,” the man stated with an excited glimmer in his eyes.

Julius stared at Doren with a complicated look. He couldn’t understand how this man’s mind worked. It wouldn’t take that much energy or risk to tell everyone that an attack was coming. But Doren didn’t seem to care.

Julius, on the other hand, did care, which was why he was already preparing to break free of Doren’s control. He started to charge his soul in the same way he did when he escaped the Tier 5ʼs domain, and was ready to explode his soul when he suddenly felt Doren’s control over him wash away. He also lost complete control of his soul explosion technique as Doren did something.

Before he could do anything else, Doren was right next to him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Stop doing stuff like that. First off, it wouldn’t work, and secondly, it is just a stupid way to go about disrupting someone’s will. I’ll show you a better way to do it, but in the meantime, just calm down.”

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Julius had to stop himself from looking too eager when he heard that Doren was willing to show him a special technique. He couldn’t distract himself from what was important.

“I have friends here who might be in danger, and I am not going to take the risk of them getting hurt,” he said, some of his emotions slipping through. He had already located his friends upon coming out of the rift. It was one of the first things he did after checking where this unknown group was.

They weren’t that far away and could sense that Lily had already sensed where he was. She was leading the others through the huge crowd toward his location.

This seemed to make Doren pause, and for the first time, Julius saw some hesitation.

Doren sighed. “Look, it’s not just the unknown group. There seems to be multiple plans going on. You might not know this, but the Tier 5 of the Adventurer’s Guild already seems to know that an attack is coming,” Doren suddenly told him.

“What?” Julius asked, his anger bleeding away.

“I have sensed the Tier 5’s perception scan the exact area where the opposing party is. It is pretty obvious that this event is a part of a much larger plan, and I don’t see a reason to interfere when I have no idea what is going on. Impatience might hurt everyone involved.”

“You’re saying that Tier 5 knows a group is going to attack?” Julius repeated.

“He at least knows that they are there. I find it hard to believe that he is scanning that area so often without a reason to do so. He’s not the only person, either. I can sense that there are other members of this expedition who are aware that something is going to happen.”

“And they are just waiting?” Julius asked.

“So it would seem.”

This confused Julius even more. He couldn’t understand what was going on. Why was someone attacking an expedition this big, and why was the guild prepared? There were too many unknowns to feel comfortable.

He was about to speak to Doren once more when the others arrived in front of him.

“There you are!” Aubrey shouted and gave him a firm hug. “Why didn’t you come and find us?” She asked with a frown. She knew enough about Julius’s perception skill that she knew he would be able to find them in this huge crowd with no issues.

“Sorry, I got distracted,” he said to her.

“Distracted? Distracted by what?” Lily asked him, also giving him a light hug.

“A lazy guy,” Julius said with a look toward Doren. The others didn’t seem to notice the man, even though he was standing right beside them.

He felt Doren reach out and give him a warning squeeze with his aura, as if letting Julius know that he should be more careful of what he said. Julius didn’t pay Doren heed.

Julius had already gotten somewhat used to the uniqueness of powerful people. In his experience, most of the people Tier 5 and above didn’t like it when people groveled at their feet.

With that being said, most of the powerful figures he had met didn’t seem to be of the bad kind. That likely colored his expectations. Regardless, he had the same feeling when he had been interacting with Doren. The man wouldn’t smite him for a bit of teasing. At least he hoped the man wouldn’t.

Since Doren knew that Julius had a potent healing skill, he might decide that Julius could take it.

All of his friends looked at him, confused. “Lazy guy?” He heard them mutter.

“Maybe he smashed his head one too many times in the rift,” Aubrey suggested. It was obviously a joke, but he didn’t find it particularly amusing to see that the others were taking her suggestion seriously. It was like they actually believed that could have been the issue.

“Hey, don’t listen to her,” he said to them.

“Can you blame us?” Edgar asked.

“Yeah, you’ve done it enough times,” Aubrey argued.

“You guys are mean,” he said with a pout.

They laughed at him. “So did you end up clearing the rift?” Lily eventually asked, she already placed her isolation barrier, so he wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing. There were too many conversations going around anyway, it would be difficult for someone to narrow in on their own discussion.

He decided to get a little payback and shook his head despondently. “The ninth floor was very difficult,” he said truthfully.

He saw that they all seemed somewhat surprised to hear this. “Really? I thought if anyone would beat it, it would be you,” Aubrey said with a frown. However, he noticed that Lily squinted her eyes and looked at him suspiciously.

“Did any of you beat the ninth floor?” He asked them curiously, trying to shift their attention.

They all shook their heads.

“I got close, but the same as you, the ninth floor was way too hard. In what world does a Tier 3 rift force you to fight a Tier 4 opponent?” Derek said, sounding genuinely baffled at the conditions.

“Huh, I thought we weren’t able to talk about the contents of the rift,” Aubrey noted with surprise.

Julius was also surprised that Derek was able to discuss that he had fought a Tier 4 on the ninth floor. He would have thought that the rift would have prevented anyone from talking about it. Julius did his best not to look at Doren with questioning eyes. However, the man seemed to understand his confusion.

“You guys are already part of the pact, which means itʼs not going to be as restrictive. But if you were going to tell other people, it would still prevent you from discussing it. I also made sure that people wouldn’t be able to overhear it accidentally. If someone were overlistening, they wouldn’t be able to make out the words,” Doren said proudly.

Julius ignored the man for now. He could ask about it later.

Lily didn’t seem as surprised. “It’s likely because we all just attempted it and know the contents. We also won’t be allowed to enter again, so we wouldn’t be able to make use of the information.”

They all seemed to take her word on it and nodded their heads.

“What about everyone else?” Derek asked.

“I only got to the fifth floor. I wasn’t able to make it up those stupid stairs,” Lily said, sounding very upset with herself.

“I got to the eighth, but I was already worn out by then. There were just not enough opportunities to recover my stamina or mana,” Edgar said with frustration.

“Same here. I basically left the eighth floor immediately. I had no mana and was running on empty. There was no way I was going to beat those demons,” she said with a shrug, not seeming too upset with her attempt.

Julius was just about to congratulate them on a job well done when his perception skill picked up something off in the distance. He looked up and stared in that direction.

“Hm, I guess they must have received a signal,” Doren said in a curious tone.

Julius had a weird feeling that the man had zero intention of interfering. In fact, he believed Doren wanted to see how he would react to a situation like this.