Congratulations, you have fulfilled three out of four conditions required to use the %e^*@d D#ff!culty entrance token!

That's it, just one single sentence.

It almost makes me want to scream. All this time, I thought I would just get an upgrade change token that would take me to a higher difficulty, always luring me to use it. Yet, I was bamboozled.

Goddammit.

The only change is that both of my tokens are gone, replaced by this:

[%e^*@d D#ff!culty entrance token - 3/4 conditions met]

So what are the conditions? Use of the upgrade token is one of them. The second and third could be either me reaching 300 points in the mana stat, me killing a monster 50 levels higher, or me creating an especially strong attack. Heck, even seeing Lisandra's [Singularity] could be one of them.

I do not know, it could also be all the things combined to fulfil one of the requirements. Maybe there's something else I didn't think of. But it doesn't matter that much as there is still one condition, and the system didn't give a hint. There is nothing at all.

At this point, I'm not surprised at all.

As usual, I show the middle finger to the status window before closing it and lean backwards to stare at the ceiling of our hideout.

What is higher difficulty like, and why did I decide to go this way instead of just upgrading my attribute? It's quite simple - higher difficulty means higher danger, and higher rewards. In the long run, it should make me much stronger than just upgrading my Mana attribute or skill.

But it's still quite funny, knowing that higher difficulty than Hell exists. Normal people would use the difficulty change token to go to lower difficulty, yet out of all the surviving members of group 4, no one did that. Quite opposite, Tess and I both used our precious token to get to a more dangerous place. How can I call Lily stupid after all of this? That would be way too hypocritical.

I pause my thinking, and instead, I decide to check the quests, and finally, there's a new side quest joining the one existing.

The old one:

Side quest:Kill 800 enemies

Rewards:Common gear of your choiceFood and water rations

And the new one:

Side quest:Get all of your skills over level 20

Rewards:A passive skill

It's similar to the first one that rewarded me with a passive skill. It's just that this one, instead of requiring three skills to reach level 20, requires all of my skills to reach it. From learning about the levels of skills of other people, it sounds like something difficult to do. What if you have a skill you are not that good at and it is stuck at a really low level? In that case, this quest would be super difficult.

But not for me.

Focus (Dual Focus Consolidation) - Lvl 32Mana Manipulation (Advanced Mana Manipulation) - Lvl 32Perception - Lvl 26Oscillation - Lvl 23Redistribution (Symbiotic Transference) - Lvl 25Armament - Lvl 31Mana Surge - Lvl 20Disruption - Lvl 19Mana Infusion - Lvl 16

I need one level in [Disruption], and four levels in [Mana Infusion], and I'm ready to go.

The morning comes, and with it, the day we decided to move. That means a lot of screaming and crying. Cipher is there with the Icy guy and Goldie, taking away the trap used to hunt the sparrows. Natives are staying behind as they would slow us down, yet it would be stupid not to take a trap with us. Plus, the bigger group means more danger.

They are fake in the same way Lissandra and Ruby were. A copy of people from a world dying under the Decay.

Isabella sobs while Sophie holds her, and a few more people awkwardly look around. There is guilt on their faces, and Kim and Aaron are already outside, too young to deal with it. I can understand that, yet I decide to stay and watch. I won't be hiding behind Cipher doing it just so I can pretend I didn't have anything to do with it.

Tess is also outside, but not because of guilt. The young woman is already scouting ahead, and I'm sure if she were here, she would do the same as I do, unlike Lily, who looks at all of this with sad eyes.

Finally, Cipher grabs the trap from them while they even knock off a few natives that continue to look towards Biscuit, begging. The doggo is uncharacteristically quiet.

"Nat," Lily says, and as I turn to her, I notice her firm gaze.

"Yes?" I ask simply.

"I want them to keep the trap," she says, her eyes serious and so unusually firm. There isn't even a speck of hesitation.

"We need it," I say.

"Yes."

"They are all fake."

"Yes."

"We will suffer because of it."

"Yes."

"Did you think it over?"

"Yes," she answers simply.

Our eyes meet, and for a few seconds, I just look at her. There is no wavering, just clear and firm decisiveness, "Okay." I answer her.

"Uh?" For the first time, she is surprised and blinks, confused.

"Cipher, natives are keeping the trap," I say to the man who turns to me. Mana flashes in his eyes, and he examines my body, and my stance, and looks at my face. He then nods, and when his companions start complaining, he just shushes them and throws the trap towards the natives, who just catch it. The man then gives them the last disgusted look before leaving outside.

"Nat, why..." Lily asks quietly while walking by my side.

"I owe you," I answer simply. Why is it so hard to understand? When I decide that I owe something to someone, I do not say it easily.

Risking my life? Enduring hunger? I should be able to do at least that much. It's pathetic to owe to someone only when it's comfortable to do so.

A mana arrow hovering over my shoulder shoots ahead, tearing through the monster and hitting the ground. Three more projectiles appear, and I continue to infuse them with mana, using the skill as much as I can in an attempt to level it.

I also create a sword and infuse it with mana. The sword is dark blue with wisps of light blue mana going through it, and the blade gets covered in [Disruption] as I try to do anything to level up the skill. I have already kept practicing with Tess and Lily, disrupting their mana and trying to improve the skill, yet it's still refusing to pass through the bottleneck of level 20.

So I change the tactic; mana arrows disappear together with my sword, and a thin barrier of mana appears right on my skin, barely noticeable and almost invisible. Then I start infusing the barrier with [Disruption], copying what a few monsters did.

It doesn't work that well and the barrier disappears, so instead, I just try to infuse my skin with disruptive mana, focusing on trying to make it flow through it and radiate it to the close area around the skin.

When another Alghoul appears, I just strengthen my body with Symbiotic Transference and get into the melee, each hit of my fist weakening the monster's flames without letting them hurt me.

When the flames strengthen, so does the disruptive mana leaking from my skin, and I continue to [Focus].

The monster's hand leaves a bruise on my side, but I ignore it and grab its neck. More bruises and more blocked attacks, and my mana continues to fight against the green flames, stopping the monster from regenerating and not allowing them to corrode my mana, unable to wound my strengthened body.

When the monster finally dies, the skill's level is still 19 and I send the monster's corpse crashing through the side of the house.

This might take a while.

Then I feel a pulse of mana from Tess. Ahead of us, two monsters, strong, fight. I translate it as such and jump back on the roof, which is noticeably better than the ones before. Even the houses are bigger and taller buildings start appearing.

I join Tess, and together we fight the monsters. Me in melee, practicing my skills, and with each hit I deal, I try to infuse the monsters with my mana. When I get to hold the monster for long enough and use [Focus] and surge, I move a massive amount of mana, pushing against the monster's resistance, and my mana literally tears the monster apart from the inside.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work on every monster, but even something like this is interesting enough. Right now, it's too slow and simple, but with oscillating mana, it would be quicker and much more mana effective. But still, it might be more useful in the future.

After getting to the last monster, I reach towards it with [Redistribution], and the blazing rat stops its movement, unable to move at all. I then reach out and start absorbing the heat of its flames and from the surrounding area, noticing that it is getting noticeably colder as all the heat gets sucked to me.

Then Tess finishes the monster with her lightning javelin that immediately comes flying back to her, and I release all the heat in front of me in a strong blast of dark yellow flames.

I reposition a bit, moving closer to the blonde while looking in the distance at a massive wall that towers over the city. Tess says we are still miles away from it, yet even now, it seems massive.

The wall is beautifully white, almost without any blemish, and Tess says she can even see some mana around it or going through it.

In this massive city that is so full of empty houses, monsters lurking around, and a permanently gray and cloudy sky, the massive and beautiful white wall seems amiss.