After summoning his staff, it was straight for the skies for Roe.

He made it to the top, only to see a sight he wasn’t used to.

It was unlike anything he had seen before.

The monsters were not a whole lot.

He hadn’t seen a lot of rifts—he was still pretty new to it all, after all—but he knew this sight was definitely not normal.

These monsters...

The rift was already gone.

I mean... I guess it’s pretty high-ranked after all.

He did his count, only to notice there were only five.

One would obviously be the boss.

He opened the attack with a mana beam.

It did nothing.

He fired at the other monsters.

The result was the same.

Nothing.

The monsters were unaffected.

They had bird heads.

The rest of their bodies were pretty normal.

Their anatomy resembled that of regular humans.

They obviously weren’t normal, though, as they had a tint of blue.

Their skin was blue and also covered in feathers in certain places.

The birds began to fly.

They were no longer standing on the solid clouds.

They truly took to the sky.

Roe maintained a neutral expression.

He’d attacked and realized that was useless.

Now he wanted to observe them and hopefully come to a different conclusion.

The birds crashed into each other and began devouring one another.

Beaks dug into eyes and other delicate places.

Only one of the five remained.

This one was probably the boss.

"That thing is huge now," Roe noted.

"That whole eating-the-others thing just now...

"I’m guessing that was probably its spell, or an effect of it."

The bird was now gigantic, still maintaining its humanoid lower body.

It opened its mouth and fired a condensed energy blast.

Just as the beam reached Roe, he activated a beam of his own.

He was too slow, and so naturally he got sent flying backward.

He took the hit.

It was pretty brutal.

He got back up immediately.

Another beam followed, but it didn’t connect with Roe.

He had already gotten up, so the beam missed.

It did, however, connect with the barrier.

A crack appeared, and Roe took notice.

"I can’t let you run wild, huh?"

Roe flexed his hands and stretched.

"I can’t do it like back then if I don’t get up close," he said.

He sighed and thought deeply.

He was trying to replicate a feeling.

He was trying to replicate that fire he felt when he challenged Lot.

He wanted that mindset right now.

He fired a pulse right after switching to the Energy-Type Talent.

The boss dodged the attack quite easily.

This obviously came as a surprise to Roe.

"That thing’s big, but it’s awfully mobile all the same," he noted.

Roe smiled.

He had just gotten an idea.

He ran toward the boss, doing his best to dodge the beams it sent his way.

When he closed the gap, he activated another spell.

"No. 790," he chanted.

The field was now in effect.

The bird and Roe were trapped inside.

Roe then tensed his face and walked out of the field.

Now it was just the boss trapped within.

He smiled.

"It worked.

"I’m finally getting a hang of this whole field in-and-out thing."

Staff in hand, he began charging up an all-powerful mana beam.

He was going to supercharge it, hoping to take the boss out in one fell swoop.

The boss, on the other hand, was making its own attempts, firing compressed energy beams at the field.

This changed nothing.

Its attacks had no effect on the erected field.

The monster didn’t know any better.

It continued firing.

One beam after another.

Finally, Roe was ready.

He walked toward the field.

He wasn’t going in.

He never had any intention of doing so in the first place.

He only extended his hand and his staff.

His actual body remained safely outside the field.

He released the attack.

Immediately, the entire field lit up.

Roe had to close his eyes from the sheer brightness of the attack.

Smoke emerged.

It had nowhere to go.

Roe retrieved his hand from the field.

Believing he had won, he still couldn’t be completely sure.

He would have to confirm somehow.

The smoke wasn’t making things easy, so he would have to deactivate his field once it dissipated.

He deactivated the field.

The smoke began to clear.

Just then, a beam flew out of the mist.

It was a stray attack.

It didn’t land.

Not because the boss missed.

It was because Roe was prepared.

Just before deactivating the field, he had set a beam to release should mana approach him.

"Fundamentals.

"Solomon wasn’t joking," he said.

"I like this basic command stuff.

"Remote activation of a mana beam."

The reason the boss’s attack didn’t land was because Roe’s staff released a beam that intercepted the monster’s own.

There was a brief beam clash, but both attacks eventually dissipated.

Roe knew he couldn’t prepare for every surprise attack.

He probably wouldn’t have reacted in time otherwise.

He sighed.

"I’m guessing you won’t go down easy."

The smoke finally vanished.

What he saw wasn’t a singular boss.

Two monsters stood before him.

"What’s this?

"You split up?"

Roe thought.

He did a quick mana read.

That’s when he noticed something.

"You split up, so why do you both have the same mana signature?

"There’s two of you.

"Why isn’t the reading halved?"

-

Despite being below, Lot was following the match . He obviously couldn’t see but he could tell what was going on by reading the mana.

He could tell Roe had things covered. Just while he was reading though he noticed a massive chunk of mana approach .

This was the master of the circle of Vlad and he knew the reading all too well.

He came up with a lie and told Ruben he had something to take care of.

He didn’t really, he just didn’t want to see or talk to his dad.

Vlad made it out the building. He looked up.

"Interesting kid"