Chapter 67.2

67 Part 2

Haruki hadn’t used his Weakness Exploit yet.

His attacks were purely made out of his own physical strength and his skill with the short sword.

Also, his breathing hadn’t been upset during the battle.

He still had lots of energy left.

It seemed that there shouldn’t be any problems going any further without levelling up.

After three hours of search, they came across a particularly big Chacha.

It seemed to be the boss of this floor.

Haruki got ready and signaled to Karen.

— Vroom!

Karen’s fully powered lightning attack critically hit the Chacha.

The direct hit caused the boss to collapse onto the ground, with every muscle in its body trembling.

After twitching for a couple of seconds, the boss slowly got back on its feet.

Seeing that, Haruki opened his mouth while staying vigilant.

“You can take care of this one on your own, Karen.”

“Eh, ah… Sure!”

Having seen the boss get stunned by Karen’s attack, he decided that she should be okay handling the boss on her own.

He thought that she would probably be able to win safely by repeatedly hitting the boss with her lightning magic.

If the boss somehow managed to withstand her attacks, then Haruki could intervene.

Haruki’s level was good enough for now, so he decided to focus on raising Karen’s level first.

The stronger those lightning attacks become, the safer they would be when hunting monsters of a higher level.

Those stuns sure did come in handy when needed.

There was no loss in helping Karen level up.

More than thirty lightning strikes were shot on the boss.

However, Karen ran out of power before being able to finish off the boss.

The tired Karen fell on her knees.

But the boss wasn’t dead yet.

Her ability to fire off thirty lightning strikes in quick succession wasn’t enough to defeat this boss.

This lack of power could prove to be fatal in the middle tiers of the dungeon.

Perhaps it was possible for that kind of magic to do the trick, though…

After dealing the finishing blow to the boss, Haruki took out his Skill Board.

Karaboshi Haruki (27)　Gender: Male

Skill Points: 7 → 9

Class: Hidden Sword King

Divine Protection: Overthrowing God <Medjed>

－Vitality

Stamina 3

Natural Recovery 2

－Strength

Strength 4

－Agility

Quickness 4

Dexterity 4

－Technology

Equipment Mastery

One-handed Swords 4

Throwing 2

Light Armor 3

Kicking 1 → 2

Covert 3

－Intuition

Detection 2 → 3

Weakness Exploit 1

－Special

Growth Acceleration　MAX

Taming 1 → 2

Divine Protection　MAX

He had gained quite a lot of skill points.

Just looking at that 9 on his board made Haruki get excited.

Where should he spend those points?

He fiddled with his skills in a simulation.

However, when it came to confirming the changes, he found himself unable to proceed.

The distribution of skill points was greatly related to the chances of survival in dangerous battles.

For someone with as little actual battle experience as Haruki, it was difficult to determine which skills he would need to improve in order to increase those chances when fighting monsters of a level similar to his own.

He wondered if the skills he had selected were okay, and in the end, decided not to do any changes. He couldn’t just keep randomly allocating points forever.

And if he kept on increasing his skills naturally, then his desire to use the board to manually allocate points would gradually decline.

(But should I just not do it? I have this power after all…)

After checking his own stats for a while, he swiped the screen.

Rhea (0)　Gender: Female

Skill Points: 0 → 3

Class: Dual Wielding Leaf Demon

Divine Protection: Guardian Deity of Underground Treasures <Ptah>

－Vitality

Stamina 1 → 2

Natural Recovery 0

－Strength

Strength 3

－Agility

Quickness 1

Dexterity 2

－Technology

Equipment Mastery

Throwing 3

Double Leaf Throwing 1 → 2

－Intuition

Detection 1

－Special

Treasure Chest 2 → 3

Divine Protection　MAX

Rhea was growing pretty well.

Her Treasure Chest skill was still increasing, probably she was always shooting.

Haruki wondered how big her Treasure Chest actually was, but he had no way to make sure.

Kurosaki Karen (18)　Gender: Female

Skill Points: 4 → 7

Class: Hammer-wielding Spirit Master

Divine Protection: Human One <?????> → Peaceful One <?????>

－Vitality

Stamina 1 → 2

Natural Recovery 1

－Strength

Strength 1

－Magic Power

Magic Power 3

Magic Compatibility 2 → 3

Magic Manipulation 3

Change <Thunder> 1 → 2

－Agility

Quickness 0 → 1

Dexterity 2

－Technology

Equipment Mastery

Blunt Weapons 1

Light Armor 1

－Intuition

Detection 1

－Special

Luck 1

Divine Protection 1 → 2

Karen’s growth was also coming up nicely.

Her skills had increased considerably due to her consecutive use of lightning attacks.

Also…

“Huh? Her Divine Protection score has increased too…”

Karen’s Divine Protection had gone up by one.

Ever since Karen’s Divine Protection first appeared, nothing seemed to have changed in her.

According to her, all she had been doing was leveling up in the garage dungeon.

Had she grown so strong thanks to having Akane follow her around? Still, it was unlikely that her Divine Protection had also grown because of that.

If it were for that, Kagemitsu’s Divine Protection would have been MAXed out a long time ago,

“Hey, Karen. Your Divine Protection went up.”

“Huh? Really!?”

“Yeah.”

Haruki nodded, and turned the Skill Board over so that Karen could see for herself.

“Do you have any idea what could have caused it to go up?”

“Umm… No, I can’t think of anything in particular…”

Though he asked her, Karen didn’t seem to recall anything related to that.

She tilted her head to the side as if trying to remember.

The conditions that caused a Divine Protection to rise were still unknown.

Haruki could have been able to find out by letting it rise naturally. However, he had already MAXed it out manually.

He had wondered about the conditions before, but the Divine Protection Skill was relatively cheap to MAX out.

Perhaps it would have been better to let it rise naturally.

Still… Peaceful One?

Haruki thought about what kind of god would be related to that as he looked at the Board.

Certainly, Karen possessed a kind of inner peace that was not common in this day and age.

It was so human of her.

It was something that had been rapidly disappearing from Haruki, but that Karen still preserved.

That’s probably why this god gave his Divine Protection to Karen.

Yet the god’s name was still unknown.

Haruki was curious about this god’s name.

He wanted to manually increase Karen’s skills in order to find out.

And if only Karen would let him allocate her points to raise her Magic Power level to 4…

Her skills would become even more impressive.

“Hey, Karen… Would you let me allocate some points for you?”

“No, sorry. I still want to do this my way.”

“I see.”

Her willpower remained untouched.

Allowing him to allocate her skills points now would put that willpower at risk.

He really wanted to allocate Karen’s skill points, but it wasn’t as if they were having much trouble with the monsters on this floor.

It was probably better to watch over her, only stepping into battle if and when things get out of hand.

Haruki decided to honor Karen’s commitment to her endeavor.

The 14th floor looked a bit different than the ones they had traversed so far.

“A wetland?”

The vegetation looked the same as the one on the previous floor, but the ground was rather flooded with water.

It looked as if it had rained recently, though some spots seemed safe enough to walk on.

Looking closely, it seemed that there were some traps in a large puddle of water.

Was it a deep pond, or was it more like a swamp?

Of course, Haruki wasn’t willing to intentionally trigger the trap to see what it would do.

“There are quite a few traps here, so be careful.”

“Okay.”

After warning Karen, Haruki carefully moved forward.

The fact that there was water all over the place hinted at the possibility of water monsters showing up.

Something like fish or even frogs.

As they kept moving forward thinking about that, something came out of the water.

“What are you…?”