Chapter 82.1

82 Part 1

Let’s be an Adventurer! ~Defeating Dungeons with a Skill Board~ 82

Let’s Have Someone Help Us Weather This Storm!

“… No way!?”

He could feel the presence of monsters all over the plains.

However, he couldn’t confirm it by sight.

It wasn’t very surprising.

After all, those presences felt as if they were underground.

One after another, several hands start popping out of the ground.

The hands looked like Werewolf hands.

But their color was different.

Werewolves had brownish, almost seemingly golden furs.

But the hands that appeared from the ground were dark-purple.

— That’s it!

Those things that had coiled around his legs were these Werewolf hands!

Haruki had finally connected the dots.

He hadn’t realized until that moment since he hadn’t imagined that a monster would be lurking underground.

He hadn’t even considered the possibility, so he hadn’t been wary of it.

That’s what had held him in place back then.

However, he would not fall for the same trick again.

Haruki engraved the word “caution” onto his brain.

Dark-purple Werewolves started to pop out of the ground.

Haruki could count around fifty of them.

Perhaps these were the Werewolves that the deer had attacked so far.

The Werewolves that received the deer’s dark-purple spit were swallowed underground and had been in an asleep state.

And now, they had been woken up by the deer’s roar.

The pupils on the Werewolves’ eyes were hollow.

They almost looked like zombies.

It was safe to assume that the deer had the ability to control monsters hit by his dark-purple spit.

Speaking of which, Esta did get hit by it…

The moment Haruki realized that, a chill went down his spine.

Esta was squirming restlessly on his belly.

When Haruki looked into his eyes, he happily shook his feelers around.

It didn’t seem as if he was being controlled by the deer.

His carapace was still as red as a bright flame.

Perhaps Esta wasn’t affected by the deer’s spit thanks to his Quarantine skill.

It was a skill that prevented epidemics and abnormal status effects.

It probably allowed Esta to avoid being affected by the deer’s attack.

Moreover, Esta had a Divine Protection.

It was just Haruki’s intuition, but he felt that adding a point to Quarantine was the right thing to do.

“–Okay!”

Haruki began his assault onto the incoming Werewolves.

Slash, cleave, stab, kick.

Guard, dodge, counter.

The Werewolves were easily cut down by Haruki’s attacks and fell one after the other.

— This is no good.

Haruki felt disappointed by these Werewolves.

These weren’t Werewolves to him.

Werewolves were beautiful creatures.

These empty-eyed things he was defeating felt like nothing but mere powerful dolls.

Haruki felt nothing as he kept on slaughtering these Werewolves.

As he did that, he gradually got closer to Karen’s position.

“Karen, let’s withdraw for now!”

These Werewolves were clearly weaker than their usual counterparts.

But their sheer quantity overwhelmed their poor quality.

No matter how easy they are to defeat, if they managed to get Haruki and Karen surrounded, it would be game over.

So they would withdraw for now to prevent that from happening.

A Monster Parade that looked like it could turn into a Stampede would be definitely too much for Haruki and the others to handle by themselves.

Haruki desperately tried to open a way to escape.

However…

“Damn!”

The deer had cut him off along the way.

It spit his dark-purple mass at him.

Haruki dodged it by a hair’s breadth.

Rhea destroyed the Werewolves approaching from behind.

She took down all of the Werewolves that Haruki had left when he decided to withdraw.

And still, they were being overpowered.

The deer’s interference wasn’t allowing Haruki to move about freely.

Beyond the deer, Karen was shooting Werewolves down with her lightning bolts.

They were certainly powerful, but they wouldn’t be enough to destroy them all.

In the blink of an eye, Karen seemed to be overwhelmed.

Haruki and Karen were forced even further apart.

“Damn it, outta my way!”

Haruki tried to muscle his way through.

However, the deer blocked the path with his body.

He dodged a ramming attack by the deer.

As he landed a few feet behind, a hand emerged from the ground and grabbed him by the leg.

“–Ack!”

He was being so overwhelmed that he couldn’t focus on his Detection skill.

Haruki kicked the hand with his other foot.

その隙を、鹿は逃してはくれなかった。

The deer did not waste that opportunity.

It spat his dark-purple mass at Haruki.

If he were to get hit by this, he could end up like those Werewolves.

However…

“–!!”

His body was fully stretched.

His posture was off.

— I can’t dodge it!

The deer had a weird distortion on his mouth.

— What a nasty smile you have, you bastard!

Haruki couldn’t do anything but wait until the last moment while staring at the deer.

But at that moment, he felt an impact on his belly.

Something red jumped from below and slapped the incoming attack into the ground.

“Esta!”

Sensing Haruki’s crisis, Esta had leapt to repel the spit with his body.

And just like before, he seemed as cheerful as ever after doing so.

Esta was definitely unaffected by that dark-purple spit.

“Great job!”

Esta wagged his tail cheerfully as Haruki patted him on the head.

The deer spat another dark-purple mass.

But Esta reacted quickly.

He deflected the attack in mid-air, then returned to Haruki’s waist.

“Ah, ahaha…”

Haruki found himself laughing after seeing Esta’s actions.

— You son of a gun… You’re like an automated defense system!

Haruki kept giggling naively.

He could see a fine line of light leading into the future.

Perhaps, if he followed that narrow path…

It could lead him to the best possible outcome.

That’s what Haruki was thinking.

But the road was too thin and steep.

And Karen was being overwhelmed.

Karen’s lightning bolts were vital to their counterattack.

To withdraw from the battlefield was the same as admitting defeat.

But Haruki was at a loss.

— What to do…

“Rhea, do your attacks reach that far?”

“*shakes*”

Haruki asked Rhea a question while still dealing with Werewolves.

But he wasn’t happy with the answer.

The distance between Haruki and Karen was about 30 meters, which wasn’t outside of Rhea’s Throwing ability’s reach.

However, not only the deer, but a large number of Werewolves were in the way.

With those obstacles, Rhea could not provide cover fire for Karen.

The bitter memories of losing Shigama and the others reappeared in Haruki’s mind.