Volume 7 - CH 2.01

Chapter 32: Bounty

『Roxanne』

『Current Character Levels & Equipment』:

『Jobs』:

Beast Warrior Lv.29

『Equipment』:

Rapier

Hardened Leather Helmet

Hardened Leather Jacket

Hardened Leather Gloves

「Here it comes!」

Roxanne’s voice resounds in my ears.

Orange magic circle appears under a Grass Bee in the second row of enemies, indicating that it was about to launch one of its Skills, and since it is too far from any of us to reach it in time, even Sherry won’t be able to cancel the activation of that Skill with the 「Chant Interruption」 that has been recently added to her Steel Spear.

The Grass Bee finished the activation of its Skill and launched its poisonous needles towards us from a distance, but Roxanne stood in their way and blocked all of them with her Steel Shield, preventing them from hurting and poisoning any of us.

Almost at the same time, a Hat Bat and a Bitch Butterfly launched their attacks on Roxanne from two different sides.

Roxanne gets on her left foot and maneuvers her upper half of her body to dodge a body slam of the Bitch Butterfly, simultaneously swaying her head to dodge the surging sweep from a Hat Bat. So there is also such an elaborate way to dodge the attacks of more than one enemy at once, huh? For me, doing something like that would be impossible, no matter how hard I would’ve tried or trained to emulate even the simplest of Roxanne’s movements.

What I can do, however, is launching a 「Breeze Ball」 towards the enemies from behind Roxanne’s back. That’s the fifth one that I launched throughout the duration of this battle. The bodies of the monsters that got hit by it stumble under the violent gusts of wind. When the Bitch Butterfly regains its balance, it launches another attack on Roxanne, and she parries it with her shield and twists her body to dodge the Hat Bat and its continued onrush of direct attacks.

While dodging, she hits it with her rapier while I cast a sixth Spell. In the meantime, an orange magic circle appears under the Bitch Butterfly which Sherry was currently confronting. Sherry pokes it with her Steel Spear in response, interrupting the chanting process.

Miria receives the attack of a Grass Bee with her own Steel Shield and slashes it with her Scimitar. Roxanne side steps another attack of the Bitch Butterfly, and after she successfully evaded another one of the Hat Bat’s attacks with ease, I invoked a 「Breeze Storm」, the seventh Spell used by me in this one battle.

Two Bitch Butterflies, two Grass Bees and a Hat Bat drop down onto the ground where they all turn into puffs of green smoke and disappear.

「Ugh, I knew that the sixteenth floor was going to be a tough one, but I never expected that it’s going to be that tough.」

Although I have obtained the Duke’s permission to stay in the Labyrinth’s other than the ones on the territory of Hartz Duchy for the time being, it doesn’t change the fact that the battles on the sixteenth floor of Quratar’s Labyrinth are definitely getting more difficult than the battles on the previous floors.

Roxanne is able to, as always, dodge pretty much every attack that is coming her way perfectly without breaking as much as a sweat, but for the other three of us who cannot hope to be as good at dodging as she is, the difficulty spike was rather harsh, but I guess this cannot be helped since we have already cleared the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth floors and left them behind. Right now, this is where we’re going to be hunting, so we have to get used to and adapt to the monsters that are prowling the halls of this floor and their strength if we want to survive and reap as much of the rewards that this floor might be having in store for us.

One thing that I do have to admit, is that if it weren’t for Roxanne holding the frontline by dodging the attacks of every monster that was coming to get her, then Sherry, Miria and I would’ve been wiped out long ago for sure.

「Not at all, master. I feel like this is not that difficult just yet.」

Uhm, Roxanne, excuse me? That was not all that difficult for you? Well, I do understand where she’s coming from with this, but still, to be claiming that the sixteenth floor is not all that difficult after witnessing how the rest of the Party struggled against the mobs here, Roxanne is truly something else, and she’s as terrifying as ever to boot!

If there is one saving grace in our current situation, it would have to be the fact that the majority of the monsters that appear here on the sixteenth floor are the ones that are weak to Wind Magic, so at the very least I don’t have to switch between different types of magic all that much if I want to be consistently hitting their weaknesses. But once again, that is thanks to Roxanne and her amazing sense of smell enabling us to search only for the types of monsters that are weak to Wind Magic so that we wouldn’t have to worry about the ones who are weak to anything else besides Wind Magic.

「I’m not getting myself exposed to successive attacks all that much, which means that I can hold pretty well on my own for quite a long while. Compared to the usual standards of the Labyrinths, the battles that we are going through right now are not quite as heated as they could be getting. If I had to describe how they feel to me right now, then I guess I would have to say warm at best.」

If even Sherry says so, then I guess that has to be true after all, and it just proves how powerful of a person Sherry actually is. Like I thought, people of this world are just not the ones who would go and act cautiously if it meant doing anything for longer than it has to be done, but at the same time, when Roxanne is aggroing all of the monsters that we’re fighting from the front and center, it really means that Miria and Sherry can take things just a little bit easier on the sides of the formation.

「We’re going to be fine, master. Because we have Big Sister here with us.」

See, even Miria is aware of how important to our well-being and the ease of fighting Roxanne really is.

「Yes, it’s all thanks to Roxanne indeed.」

「Not at all. It’s because master takes all the monsters out with his magic.」

Roxanne still tried to redirect most of the praise towards me, which was incredibly sweet of her, but she shouldn’t be underestimating her own role in making that battles easier for the rest of the Party.

「Alright then, because I’ll be using my sword next, I want you to go and find us a group that’ll have fewer enemies in it, okay?」

After hunting on 16th floor, my Explorer job has leveled up to Lv.39, and because I have one more Bonus Point to spend, I can finally use it to get rid of the 「Chant Shortening」 Bonus Skill that I needed to have equipped for the time being and replace it with its superior version, 「Chant Omission」. I can also select a Fourth Job Bonus Skill, which will finally allow me to come back to some of my previous settings. Oh 「Chant Omission」, oh 「Fourth Job」, how I missed you. It feels truly great to be having the both of you back with me. You being back with me means that I will no longer have to shout the names of the Spells every time I’ll be using them, finally stopping Roxanne, Sherry and Miria to look at me like I am a hopeless middle schooler afflicted with incurable Chuunibyo.

For the next few battles, I was fighting the monsters with Durandal in order to get back all of the MP that I’ve spent on casting Spells thanks to Durandal’s 「MP Recovery」 Skill. Along the way, we encountered a group made out of four Bitch Butterflies and a Grass Bees.

That combination of monsters is the most difficult on the entire sixteenth floor of Quratar’s Labyrinth to fight against…. Nope.

Nope. The most difficult combination would be that of monsters which are weak against Wind Magic and carnivorous plants which are weak against Fire Magic, but we’re managing to stay on top of them because no matter who we’re fighting against, Roxanne is always capable of dodging their attacks with ease.