Volume 7 - CH 3.10

「It is alright. It will work out somehow.」

「Will I use medicine to become a Knight then?」

「Can you even become a Knight by using medicine? Cause that’s the first time that I’m hearing about it.」

「There is a medicine called Dope Medicine. It’s believed that if you use that medicine in small quantities, it is going to make you a little stronger with each ingestion. If taken in large quantities, it is even possible to acquire a superior Job thanks to it. However, it is said that the person who uses this method is going to be weaker in comparison to the person who acquired the Job through years of hard work and gaining experience.」

Is there such a convenient item? If it is possible to change Jobs thanks to that medicine, then I guess that must be some kind of Level Up item. And regarding that drawback that Sherry mentioned, the one that the person who gets a new Job thanks to the Dope Medicine, I guess that is something to be expected. After all, since it is something that only increases your level, than it should be obvious that it’ll only increase that and nothing else, leaving your stats exactly how they were.

In that case, it would be better for us to not use such a method. With the alternatives available to us via my Bonus Skills, there’s no need for us to be taking such a shortcut.

「I see. It certainly sounds helpful, but we’re not going to be using that medicine.」

「We are not going to use it after all?」

「If she is willing to help, Miria might be suitable for using it.」

Roxanne also said that she would be willing to become the Knight if it would prove helpful to me.

「Well, using it might be the option of last resort for us, but for the time being, there is something else that I would like to try. Could we start with you, Roxanne?」

I already have the Job of a Knight unlocked, and I myself should be plenty enough as a Knight. Then again, it would also be good if at least one other member of my Party would become a Knight so that they could use the 「Appointment」 Skill to make me a Village Chief. When that happens, I will go to the Duke and inform him that I’ve become a Village Chief.

Honestly, I don’t think that Roxanne is in a dire need to have the 「Defense」 Skill, but it would be better to have it than to not have it as an emergency measure during the Floor Boss fights, especially since there are definitely going to be monsters whose attacks she won’t be able to dodge at some point, and when such enemies are going to make their appearance, she’s going to need all the defense that she’ll be able to get in order to not get herself killed in just one shot.

She told that to us herself before: that she’s only so good at dodging because she had to get good at it to avoid being killed by the monsters with whom she was fighting ever since she was a little kid. If she didn’t develop that insane ability to dodge of hers, then she would’ve probably been dead since long ago, so I’m glad that it didn’t come to pass.

Right now she should be able to withstand a few direct blows to her body, but still, having something like 「Defense」 to increase her chances of survival as much as possible cannot be a bad thing.

「Of course.」

「If only one person changes their Job, we won’t need to change the floor where we are currently hunting because of it. And since it is not possible and also not needed for multiple Party Members to acquire the Knight Job because they would just overlap with one another, I think that it’s going to be a good idea for only Roxanne to acquire that Job for the time being.」

I used Party Job Settings and changed Miria’s Job from Village Chief Lv.1 back to Diver Lv.30, and then I proceeded with changing Roxanne’s Job from Beast Warrior to Warrior Lv.1. Now, following after the advice that Sherry gave us, we will try coming to the thirteenth floor.

There shouldn’t be anything that we should be worried about there, because we have the 「Increase STR (Intermediate)」 and 「Increase HP (Intermediate)」 effects from my Hero Job, and these two should stack together with the effects granted to us by Miria’s Diver Job, so even without us retreating to the lower floors, she should be fine and not get herself killed in just one blow if any of the monsters managed to hit her.

….Oh, who am I kidding here? Forget about getting killed in one blow, the monster’s attacks can’t even graze her. Even though her Job has been changed to an inferior one, Roxanne still showed no signs of getting hit at all, and she’s only a Warrior Lv.1. In other words, what tat means is that Roxanne’s insane ability to dodge the enemy attacks is not because of the stats she got from her Beast Warrior Job, but from her own innate abilities.

If someone lost something because of the change of her Job, then it was undoubtedly me, because when I lost the bonus granted to me from the 「Increase AGI (Small)」 Skill of Roxanne’s Beast Warrior Job, I noticed that it once again took more hits than usual to defeat the enemies that we were fighting against, even while equipping Durandal, as a result of which the battles were taking a little bit longer, leaving me that much more open to getting hit, but that might just be my imagination.

「Miria!」

「Yes, desu!」

During battle, Roxanne issues the orders to the frontline, and as soon as she heard her name being called out, Miria returned to her side in a hurry.

She seems concerned about Miria’s tendency to act alone, and that is a concern that I share with her as well, because based on my personal observations, Miria does have that dangerous tendency to go too far away from the rest of the group during battles. Whether she does that on purpose or not is unclear to me, but something needs to be done about it before it ends up getting either Miria herself or us hurt or worse.

Are the people of the Catkin tribe not good at fighting as part of group? Is that how similar to real cats they are? She didn’t show such behavior at first, but nowadays she occasionally starts heading to the front alone, almost as if she didn’t care about what’s going to happen to the Party Members that she’s going to be leaving behind.

This can be viewed as a bad thing, because in the Labyrinths there is no place for being selfish while not only your own life, but also the lives of your comrades are on the line here, but on the other hand this shows how much Miria has grown accustomed to fighting in such a short time.

Level-wise, hers is hardly different from Sherry’s. And with Roxanne being in the front, it is more than guaranteed that if we happen upon the Grass Bees, then their long-ranged attacks are going to be focused entirely on Roxanne.

If they try to use their Skills, we could always cancel them with the 「Chant Interruption」 Skill from Sherry’s spear, but in order to utilize it, we have to keep proper formation, and by proper formation, I mean the one where we will be sure that no one is going to break it when we’re going to expect it the least.

But even so, hearing just one word from Warrior Lv.1 Roxanne, was enough to cause Miria to obey her unconditionally. She even replied to her in a polite manner as well, even though I have already told her that while we are in the Labyrinths there is no need for her to be speaking while adding desu at the end of her every sentence.

In the end, Roxanne was not exposed to any attacks from the enemies all the way until the evening, when we finally decided to stop hunting and call it a day for today. After going back to Quratar, we then went on a walk around the town to collect the ingredients for dinner.

While shopping, I was called out to by the old lady from the hardware store, the one who’s the landlady for the house that we’re renting.

「Ah, good thing that I happened upon you here. I was about to go to your house.」

「To our house? Did something happen?」