Chapter 69 - Combat preparations completed

「New gear! New gear! Uoooooooooooooooo!!」 (Yumir)

「Yumir, you are being noisy! You are bothering the other people so stay quiet!」 (Hind)

Having equipped her new sword and armor, Yumir was moving restlessly around the stable.

Each time she moved a metallic sound resounded, there was nothing noisier than this.

The camels that were close were moving their mouths while looking really annoyed.

It might be because of knight’s base defense, Yumir’s movements were light even while wearing the armor.

If it’s like this, it doesn’t seem like her agility will fall down much compared to how it was before.

Having completed our equipment more or less, we started moving to the habitat of the monsters Riizu found that gave a high amount of experience while riding on the camels.

Of course, doing it as a party is more efficient so we asked Selene-san to come.

Thinking about the remaining time left on the event, we are aiming to have everyone reach level 40 by the end of the day.

We asked the guard in the stable of the royal capital for the camels we left in their care and each one of us got on top of our camels.

Once we left town, we just headed towards the horizon from the scenery of the desert we had already grown accustomed to.

While looking at Yumir, who was in a good mood because of the new gear, I approached Selene-san’s camel.

「Be that as it may, why are the cases where the female armor don’t have a helmet so many? The one Yumir is using is the same right?」 (Hind)

「I also thought about making a helmet at the start. But since Yumir-san has long hair, I thought she would be cooler if she fought with her silver hair fluttering around.」 (Selene)

True enough, if it was a plate armor helmet you wouldn’t be able to see her face, and usually you’d have to fit the hair into the helmet.

I agreed that it would be a waste.

「Ah, so it was because of that reason. In that case, I understand. Looks are important.」 (Hind)

「You understand…?」 (Riizu)

Riizu expressed her doubts, but this wasn’t a real life battle but a game.

Looks are more important than practicality, personal tastes take a big part in it.

Even the me right now, had just made that kind of grimoire.

There is also the fact that if you equip a helmet your field of view will get worse.

Though since the head is a vital part of the body, it’s a trivial demerit compared to when you are not wearing one.

In that case, protect your head with your fighting spirit!! I guess it’d be fine to leave it like that?

Once I showed that I understood what she meant, Selene-san continued talking as if she had remembered something.

「Aren’t they using a similar reason for doing it in other games?

If the heroine was covered in full armor from beginning to end and you couldn’t see her face at all-」 (Selene)

「Most people would be disappointed, right? Certainly, if it was a cute character, they’d be happier if they could see her face.」 (Hind)

With that kind of flow, the cases where the females didn’t have a helmet on have been many since the old days, if you told me that I’d comprehend it.

Though I don’t really know the truth behind it myself.

「On the other hand, there are also cases where they go for a mysterious atmosphere and they don’t show their faces until the mid-game or endgame.」 (Selene)

「And they would do things like become a comrade in the middle, or a pattern where the truth is that they are actually a friend of the main party members? Though that doesn’t apply only to female characters.」 (Hind)

「Aren’t you both straying away from the original topic more and more…?」 (Riizu)

Just as Riizu had said, this only applies to games that have a story.

We have already derailed from the topic of female armour in online games.

Though if we said we were thinking about the origins of it, we weren’t that far from the topic.

At that moment, Yumir, who had advanced as the vanguard, went back to us and said this to me.

「I am your father.」 (Yumir)

「That’s not true!!」 (Hind)

「Wait a moment. When he said that line in the scene, his face wasn’t exposed right? Right?」 (Selene)

「I don’t get what’s going on anymore…hah…」 (Riizu)

At that point, we completely shifted to a conversation that didn’t have anything to do with games.

And I even went along with Yumir and shouted in reaction…so embarrassing.

While continuing with our idle chat, we headed like that towards the east with Yabilga Desert as our objective.

Maija was in the middle of the road, but we didn’t go through it this time and kept going forward.

We kept proceeding for a while and entered Yabilga Desert, Yumir looked restless and looked around.

「Are we not there yet? I want to test out the new gear already!」 (Yumir)

Yumir’s defensive gear was a 『First rate Desert Alloy Armor +7』, when it was completed and it wasn’t a +10, Selene-san was quite frustrated.

Even then, thinking about the degree of difficulty of blacksmithing, it had incredible performance.

Yumir was really happy with the result, and thanked Selene-san repeatedly.

In terms of numbers, compared to the previous leather armor, its defense values were more than double.

The armor was specially made by using plenty of the minor metals 『Cobalt』 and 『Chromium』 that we had gathered, in order to make the alloy we had to heat up the furnace to pretty high temperatures.

Other than that, Selene-san mixed in something else other than iron, but sadly she kept that a secret.

That being the case, I left the ratios and the rest of the materials up to her, so I didn’t know what to call that alloy.

By the way, leaving Riizu aside, our 「Weapons」 were already finished by using the same alloy.

In terms of name, they were all unified in a simple 『Desert Alloy』 series.

Naturally, since they all used the unique alloy Selene-san made so they were all arranged gear.

「Please, have patience. The place is further to the north.」 (Riizu)

「Riizu, you sure searched through quite the extensive range. Was it dangerous?」 (Hind)

「It was fine. Though I turned back right after I saw the monsters inside the pyramid we can now see over there being level 50.」 (Riizu)

As Riizu pointed out, before us stood a pyramid.

So there really were pyramids…I couldn’t see it because of the sandstorm.

Yumir and me, who haven’t noticed its existence until a moment ago, looked up to it and stood there dumbfounded for a while.

Selene-san was the only one that noticed before Riizu pointed it out, so she replied like this instantly.

「You sure did well to go in alone…if it was me, I would have been impossible because I’d be scared.」 (Selene)

「I only checked the monsters’ levels after all. Though I did defeat whatever I thought I could defeat.」 (Riizu)

My sister is quite cold-hearted and bold.

However, if the monsters are level 50, if we don’t wait for the next level cap update, exploring the pyramid will be hard.

Nonchalantly, Riizu said 「We’ll nearly be there after passing by the pyramid」 and we kept proceeding once she pointed further north.

It was a strange place.

Above the particles of sand, there were many camels walking around carefreely in the wild.

The scenery felt out of place and I didn’t know what to say, so I strained my eyes to take a better look.

Without minding that, Yumir carefreely got closer to those camels.

「Wait. Stop right there.」 (Riizu)

「Fuoh!?」 (Yumir)

After receiving a splendid foot sweep, Yumir beautifully fell down.

Right now, we had all got off our camels, our camels were standing by a bit behind us.

Ignoring Yumir who raised a protest, Riizu took out a stone from her inventory and threw it at the camels.

「W-What are you doing, Riizu-chan?」 (Selene)

「Yeah yeah! Isn’t that just animal abuse!?」 (Yumir)

「Be quiet and look. You’ll know soon enough.」 (Riizu)

Like that, once the second and third stone landed close to the camels…suddenly, the sand below them started rattling and moved-

A gigantic fish with its mouth opened appeared.

It gulped down the stones Riizu threw along with sand, and it went under the sand again.

What we thought were camels were tied to the fish’s forehead area, and along with its movements, they were shaking.

Our jaws dropped when we saw that happen.

「It’s a monster called Mimicry Angler. It looks similar to a football fish, the lantern part mimics other living beings and it lures its food with it.」 (Riizu)

Now that she mentions it, the movements of the camels that were moving around were somehow odd…

*End of the chapter*