The moment mushrooms exploded and filled the area with poison, everyone was instantly affected, including Almond.
Almond could feel his nerves getting affected first, paralyzing him, but before it could affect him fully, he took out a Supreme-quality healing potion and chugged it, recovering himself.
Like him, a few others also managed to do that.
Lily, Maya, Marcus, Natalia, Kira, Noah, Jemma, and Talia were the only ones who managed to recover.
‘Give potions to others! Fast!’ Lily immediately said to others.
‘No, we have to remove the poison from this area! Almond!’
‘I got it!’ Almond’s world was slowed down, and he was already working on the solution. His pupils had contracted to the extreme while his Espada Ad Grimveil was expanded to fully, forcefully.
‘Damn it!’
The skill wasn’t working properly because after using Unveiled Catastrophe, he wasn’t supposed to use it.
But here he was, trying to forcefully and purely using his own understanding to maintain it because he wanted to create small slits all over the area for just enough time to extract all the poison gas!
Sylvia’s roots were injected into everyone by now as she was also trying her best to eject poison from everyone.
Almond’s eyes were bloodshot as they still flickered with silver, trying to use Espada Ad Grimveil’s techniques even though the domain couldn’t be established properly.
‘Slice the space, damn it!’
His class source wasn’t helping him, and he didn’t have space elemental mastery to be able to do that without Espada Ad Grimveil.
Lily and others who recovered quickly distributed potions to people nearest to them, but there was a big problem.
The total number of supreme quality recovery potions they had was thirty-nine since everyone who participated in the previous heroic challenge got three each.
Out of 39 Supreme quality recovery potions, 23 were already used up during the time when the mushroom’s mouths spewed out poison fog.
16 remained in the storage pouch of people who had participated in the previous heroic floor boss.
Almond, Lily, Maya, Marcus, Natalia, Kira, Noah, Jemma, and Talia used the potions, while Amir, Eliara, Kayla, and Xavier couldn’t use theirs.
Kayla was in her griffon form, flying. When the poison took effect on her with a nearby mushroom exploding, she fell hard on the ground, reverted to her human form, and couldn’t move anymore.
The same thing happened with Amir, who was flying around on his wind. Xavier was in the process of releasing a laser beam, so when his nerves froze, he injured himself.
Eliara was right beside a mushroom, so when it exploded, she suffered more and was paralyzed swiftly, losing consciousness.
As such, Lily and others quickly took out potions from the storage pouches of Amir, Eliara, Kayla, and Xavier, recovering them.
But now, only three potions remained, and they were hurriedly given to Julian, Adrian, and Mira, who were nearby.
Everyone who drank the Supreme quality potion was fine and seemed to have resistance against poison. Lily discovered it firsthand, so she immediately told Sylvia to focus on only those affected—Jian, Ron, Finn, Anya, and Brynjal.
“Amir, keep the poison gas away from them!”
“On it!”
“We are immune to the poison, but only temporarily!”
“The portal to the next floor has opened! You all leave,” Lily said to others. “Amir and Jemma, you two stay to support.”
Suddenly, everyone heard a loud, broken roar and turned in the sound’s direction as they saw Almond’s aura unstable and his bloodshot eyes tearing blood.
He was trying to feel, sense, and tear away the space based on his familiarity with Espada Ad Grimveil, trying to grasp the power he had been using with the class’s source.
‘I CAN DO IT!’
‘GRASP IT. FOCUS, AND FUCKING DO IT!’
His brain buzzed as he singularly focused on enacting the phenomenon of controlling space as he usually did within his domain of Espada Ad Grimveil.
Almond’s Perception and Focus were also lowered, but he didn’t give up.
In the next moment, his eyes burst as blood gushed out due to straining his Riftveil Eyes, trying to see through the space layer and cutting it.
But it wasn’t over!
Almond still forced himself to drown in the feeling of controlling the space.
His Riftveil Eyes were still activated, sensing everything via his Force Field.
‘Rip it open!’
‘I can cut everything!’
‘There is nothing my blade cannot overcome!’
‘CUT IT!’
Almond’s arm blurred as he swung his sword.
And in that swing, a burst of clarity assaulted his mind.
‘I have to protect others!’
A wave of aura passed through as the Mana he just covered by chugging the Arcane Mana recovery potion vanished, reducing by 90%.
As the power from his blade swept outward, the space cracked open above in the meadow, revealing terrifying eye-shaped pitch-black rends.
At the same time, every single person, including his Spirit Wraith, was covered in a hazy black-silver bubble that Almond created.
The powerful suction force from the black rends above sucked in all the poison, plants, and debris while everyone within the bubble stayed on the ground.
In just a couple of seconds, all traces of poison, along with remnants of exploded giant mushrooms, were devoured by the black rends.
[You are very close to making the connection with elements of space.]
Ignoring the notification, Almond stood up and walked towards Lily and others who had lined up Emma, Jian, Ron, Finn, Anya, and Brynjal in a row with Sylvia tending to them, trying to extract poison from them, but their vitality was still reducing steadily as she could only slow it down a bit.
Emma was better off as her specialized class and primary class were both poison and flora-related.
“Master…” Sylvia spoke out in concern, seeing Almond’s bloodied face that resulted from his destroyed eyes.
“Keep tending to them,” Almond said to Sylvia while he observed Emma, Jian, Ron, Finn, Anya, and Brynjal with his Riftveil Eyes’ power via Focus Field.
‘I have to save them,’ Almond’s hand gripped his sword, but he couldn’t observe the poison with his Riftveil Eyes, not to mention cutting off everything harmful while keeping them alive.
“Almond,” Lily got up and quickly took out a healing potion before putting it at his lips. It was a powerful potion that they had gotten from one of the previous heroic challenge’s party chests, but it wasn’t supreme quality, so it had no effect on the poison of this power.
Still, it could regenerate Almond’s eyes.
“What do we do… T-This poison is too powerful,” Eliara said, her face scaredly pale as she looked at them.
“There’s still 3 minutes until the exit portal appears…”
“They won’t survive until then. Damn, that bastard boss!” Marcus smashed his shield on the ground.
Everyone was fearing for their fellow adventurers’ lives.
The parents of these kids were not expecting them to discover something like Heroic Challenge and dance with death, but here they were, and the news of their death was going to be devastating.
Some of them already thought there wasn’t any chance of saving them, but only four people had yet to give up.
Lily, Natalia, Julian, and Almond himself who was fully focused on the six individuals.