Chapter 203: Escalation

The first thing Lysandra noticed behind the door was a small cavern surrounded by glowing crystals and mushrooms sprouting from the gaps in the rocks.

Then she saw Melissa violently kicking at a crystal core sticking out from the wall. That was when the blonde-haired girl paused to look at her.

"Oh, look who’s here. The pick-me’s girlfriend," Melissa said in amusement.

Lysandra didn’t move from the spot and simply stared at Melissa for a long moment with an unreadable expression before she shifted her attention to the crystals and mushrooms across the room. She didn’t need to inspect them to tell from their mana signatures that the crystals could be absorbed to restore mana, while the mushrooms were eaten to restore stamina, which could be converted to vitality when the individual’s health deteriorated.

From the scene she walked in on, she could tell there was a catch, and that was that in order to make use of the crystals, they’d have to be picked from the rocks. There were no pickaxes lying around, which was why Melissa was trying to take one out with her foot instead.

From the girl’s distress, it was obvious to Lysandra that her teleportation ability had taken a toll on her mana pool, and she was probably low on mana.

Another thing she noticed was the mushrooms. There were quite a few dark patches that looked dead. What they all had in common was that they had been uprooted or attempts had been made to uproot them.

Those were probably Melissa’s handiwork as well.

Lysandra moved towards a patch and studied it carefully, using her natural mana perception to read the vegetation.

"Are you angry and ignoring me now?" Melissa spoke up behind her. "You and I both know I’m not wrong. The only reason your boyfriend decided to jump into the second floor was because he discovered we were planning to enter it first. And guess who told him?"

"..."

"He’s so obsessed with attention that he uses every little opportunity he gets to show off and prove to everyone he’s a smartass. It was satisfying watching him fight for his life back there. Sigh, it’s a shame he made it out alive—after cheating."

Lysandra’s eyes widened slightly. She figured it out now.

If the mushrooms were uprooted improperly, they died instantly, rendering them useless. Melissa had figured this much out after seeing how many dead patches there were, but there was a catch she believed Melissa had also seen but failed to execute.

The mana flow inside each mushroom behaved like a singular cell, and once that flow was cut off, it died immediately. The key was to uproot the mushrooms from their roots without damaging a single stem.

Without proper tools, it was tricky because the roots were fragile and ran deep into the soil. So it didn’t matter if you figured it out or not; it was still difficult to even harvest a single mushroom.

That didn’t apply to Lysandra, though. She could read the mana signatures and flow and tell just where each root stem was. Carefully implementing that knowledge, she could harvest as many as she wanted, which she began doing skillfully before Melissa’s stunned gaze.

Not only had she been ignored, but now Lysandra was doing what she had spent the whole time trying to do on her first try.

Melissa hurriedly stepped forward and tried to grab Lysandra.

"H-Hey, I was here first. You should give me some of that—"

Slash—

Melissa had barely seen Lysandra move or even unsheathe her blade when she teleported away in fright the moment Lysandra’s sword arrived before her neck and sliced through her afterimage.

She had teleported to the other end of the cavern as fast as she could, but she felt a searing pain on her neck and subconsciously reached for it, then raised her hand to her vision to see her fingers covered in blood.

It was only a light cut, but if she had been a second too slow, her head would’ve been rolling across the ground.

"The only reason I haven’t killed you already is because that might get me in trouble and ruin my chances with Kaelen on the ninth floor. I’m willing to tolerate your bullshit for that. But the next time you dare lay those filthy hands on me again, I’ll rip your limbs out and feed your body to the goblins," Lysandra said with a cold gaze and turned towards the door to leave.

She had collected enough mushrooms and didn’t need the crystals, as she had a vast mana pool that was barely touched.

"What the hell?!" Melissa angrily yelled behind her, making her pause in her steps. "Who do you think you are, you stupid bitch?

"Do you know who I am? Do you think I’m scared of you? You might be slightly better than me now because all my abilities are locked, but you’re nothing compared to me at my peak strength. I can single-handedly destroy your boyfriend’s planet and make him watch my dogs feed on his beloved mother’s bones. You’d better watch your attitude, because I’m only eight floors away from doing just that for the fun of it during my vacation," Melissa said with an unrecognizable expression that made her resemble a devil straight out of the pits of hell.

A deadly silence fell over the cavern the next moment, with Lysandra frozen on the spot, her back still turned to Melissa.

For a long moment, the two girls remained rooted to the spot, waiting for something to happen. For someone to make a move. For Melissa to react violently.

"It’s a shame," Lysandra replied calmly as her shoulders relaxed. She opened the door without another word and disappeared into the hallway, leaving Melissa standing there in anger and disbelief.

The more Lysandra underreacted, the angrier Melissa got because it made her look like a fool in front of the audience instead of making Lysandra, whom she was trying to make a fool of, look foolish.

***

In a lobby somewhere inside the Tower of Babel, in the common room of a cabin, several candidates were seated together around a table with their eyes fixed on the exclusive system panel before them.

"Oh, this crazy bitch. She just threatened to destroy your planet after the tenth floor. I don’t think she’s joking. She’s an infamous bounty hunter and is from a branch of the Riggs family, who are known for being racist," one of the men said as he turned to look at a blonde woman who had different shades of eye color: crimson and purple. "I’m going to miss you, Yelena."

The girl sitting beside the man suddenly slapped the back of his head. "What nonsense are you spouting? Are you forgetting Kaelen Cross is now married to Emir? Do you think she’ll allow some lowlife to destroy her husband’s planet?"

"That may be true. But..." The handsome man seated at the head of the table pitched in, drawing the attention of the party. "Emir lost the majority of her strongest warriors ten thousand years ago. The Riggs family might back Melissa up, and other families might either join in or stay back and watch to see how Emir would react upon learning the current state of her military. So there’s no doubt Melissa would launch an attack, and the only thing keeping humanity safe is the barrier between Akkad and New Earth," he said and shifted his attention to Yelena. "A war breaking out might be inevitable, but you can always lay low on a neutral planet after the tenth floor and see how things go."

Yelena was silent for a moment as she stared at her system panel with an unreadable expression before she lifted her head. "Eric, if someone made such comments about your mother, how would you feel?"

The handsome man was taken aback by the question.

"The same question goes for all of you. How would you feel if someone made such comments about your mother or someone you truly cared about?"

"I wouldn’t be very happy about it. I have a junior sister who’s cheering me on from my world. If someone ever said such a thing about her, I wouldn’t care who they were. I’d definitely kill them right there and then," Eric said with a serious expression, and the other candidates nodded in concurrence.

"Well, there’s your answer," Yelena said flatly. "Melissa would have to wait for the next eight floors to start a war against Earth. The Kaelen I know only needs until she steps back inside her lobby."

"Are you saying...?" one of them asked in surprise.

"The question isn’t whether she’ll start a war after the tenth floor. It’s whether she’ll survive that long to leave the tower in one piece."