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Chapter 260 - Troublesome Signs (Thank you for your support, Joshua, Desmond Willey-peck, Lia, Bersun Nox!)
🕑 Added 2024-12-23 13:30:09 +0000 UTCThe creatures were on the ground since Glacien killed them. It didn’t look like she had a hard time facing them, even though she should be on the level of the monsters here. The fact that she was an ice monster and the ice imps could only use that kind of magic helped her.
The monsters had bite marks on them, but they didn’t look like they had been chewed. Glacien knew that I would rather not have a pet that eats things like this.
“Hm, this is a problem. The mana levels here are higher than I expected.”
Roswald touched the wall covered in ice and then showed a troubled look. I more or less could tell that because I could see another group of frost imps in the distance, so it was clear that they were spawning faster than the previous floors.
“What are their parts that can be useful?”
“As far as I know, alchemists from other lands asked for their blood. I don’t know what to do with it. We don’t sell it since we believe that taking their lives is already enough.”
I didn’t want to do anything with a kind of blood either, even if it was a powerful alchemy ingredient. Still, I wondered how the people of this place saw that. They were mixes of a bunch of races, so it shouldn’t be because of some very puritan idea.
“By the way, what is your relationship with blood? You don’t smell like it and you don’t look thirsty either.”
“What makes you think that I would answer this question?”
“You are pretty bad at chatting, Regulus.”
“Now you use my name?”
“We can call each other by our real names now. It is the proof of our friendship.”
“I don’t have any friends as sketchy as you.”
I could tell that this guy was used to controlling the flow of things and making others do his bidding after acting friendly for a while, but such cheap tricks would never work on me.
Regardless, we began to move and soon we caught up with Glacien. She was still on the 21st floor thanks to the high encounter rate with the frost imps. She had a bunch of claw marks on her body, but I healed her with Beast Bond. It was better to level up that skill too, but I didn’t want to force Glacien to get hurt to use it. Considering my increased health regeneration, it would be hard for her to suffer too much damage anytime soon.
“What you can’t do?”
“Make you shut up, apparently.”
“I mean, when it comes to fighting.”
“Never mind that. You can take the frontline now. Take the monsters on the left side and I will deal with the ones on the right side.”
“All right.”
I finished adding a simple amulet for Alissandra to keep her warmth against the cold, but soon I would have to make one for myself as well. That, or I should increase my Spirit. Still, it seemed like a waste of time since that parameter didn’t have a multiplier and it was my weakness. Perhaps I should take my scorching bow instead in order to keep things warmer.
I took it and slung it on my back. That was enough to make things warmer. In any case, we resumed the exploration and then Roswald finally had the chance to fight seriously. The Frost Imps were one meter tall, but they could fly fast, so disposing of them could be a bit trick, but Roswald could easily slit their throats enough with a single strike to stop them completely. As for me, a single Power Shot was enough to impale them.
Power Shot Lv 18: Fire an arrow with extra power, dealing higher damage equal to your strength and dexterity. It has a chance to knock back the target if your damage is higher than twenty percent of the target’s health. Cost: 18 Stamina
Rapid Fire Lv 15: Launch a quick series of three arrows at the target, dealing damage equal to your dexterity in a rapid succession of shots. Cost: 22.8 Stamina
These skills had made a lot of progress, and since they couldn’t grant me new ones, perhaps I should focus on a crippling shot instead.
It felt refreshing doing that kind of fighting… using Arcane Arrow was fine, but there was something that made me feel good about being as basic as I could be with my fighting style. I couldn’t explain why.
Maybe it was because of my nature and archery skills were the things that I had been using the most for a long time. That made me think… what would happen if I made an amulet using the parts of a monster about their strongest skill?
‘It isn’t like I know all of their skills, but… the frozen imps bones were also small, it wouldn’t work… I also don’t want to use bones more than I have to.’
It was an interesting question, but one that wouldn’t change things that much. There were other things that I could and wanted to do to get stronger. Something like this was too conditional.
While we were advancing, I noticed that Roswald was taking some deep breaths after he cut down some of the monsters. After doing that hundreds of times, even if his strength was above these beasts, it wasn’t surprising that he would feel tired.
‘He seems skilled enough to use one of my old bows… so perhaps I can add the stamina drain effect to them and he can alternate between fighting styles.’
That would benefit me too, so there was no reason to not do that. The only weird thing about this was the fact that he was getting tired only by using simple attacks. He didn’t show any active skill being used so far. Was he being mindful of me and trying to hide his true strength, or was he just pacing himself?
“Is it getting hard for you? Come to think of it, you have been moving left and right for a while.”
“Something like this is no worries for me. I was just sighing because it is boring to just fight the same way all the time and not chat between battles. Thanks for worrying about me, though. I guess I can think that you consider me a friend after this much, huh?”
“You had to make it weird, huh? You can use this bow for now. You can drain some stamina from the enemies. We can’t stop anytime soon, so this will help.”
“We actually can, but your unreasonable pace and goals are the ones causing trouble here.”
Roswald checked the bow for a moment and confirmed its effects. It could create arrows too and while it couldn’t drain mana, it was just a weapon to make him less tired, after all. It wasn’t a problem that it would drain his mana now and then.
Roswald soon proved that he could use the bow just fine, and he didn’t mind using several arrows in a row. In fact, he got a bit annoyed for a while trying to compete with me, but he eventually stopped and then looked around with a serious expression.
“The mana is fluctuating… did something happen at the end of the labyrinth, or…”
Roswald looked at me for a moment, but soon shook his head. It seemed that he knew that wherever I went, trouble followed, so he considered that some unexpected events here could be happening because of my arrival. Still, a dungeon break, huh? I guess my luck was that terrible.
“We might have to leave the labyrinth a bit sooner than expected. There are signs of the dungeon breaking already.”
“Can’t say that I can see them.”
“The signs will be only physically obvious a couple of hours before it happens. For now, the mana will only send weak shockwaves to show its instability. Our luck is terrible…”
I wondered if he was talking about us here or the people of the land as a whole. In any case, this was a new experience for me, but it wasn’t one that I could fully enjoy because I had to keep Alissandra safe. Wait, was that actually something that could be enjoyed?
“What will happen once a dungeon breaks while we are inside?”
“All the monsters that the labyrinth can spawn in a single day will feel the urge to leave the labyrinth. They will also realize that they can do that, even though they couldn’t do it before. The areas that we had been to will be fine, at least for today, but for a while, they will keep expelling monsters every day until the mana levels return to normal.”
I did some research about the subject, but it wasn’t that detailed. To avoid that kind of thing, we could keep heading further to weaken the dungeon break, but given that the labyrinth had one hundred floors, it wouldn’t change much. I had an idea of what I should do to deal with this, though.
“For how long will this last?”
“Well, we have been neglecting this labyrinth for six months, so it will happen five or six times. The monsters outside will only be able to move as fast as the bursts of mana coming from the labyrinth will allow them, but each day, the bursts would reach further lands.”
“Even if we keep the monsters here, will the break affect the temperature outside?”
“Hm? No? The bursts of mana each day is what will affect the environment. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
Getting a class on the fiftieth floor would be better thanks to the multipliers, but facing the monsters in a situation like this wouldn’t be half bad to get a shit ton of experience. To pull that off in this kind of situation, I just had to use the labyrinth itself against the monsters…
I kept thinking about my plans and improving them for a couple of hours, but as soon as we reached the middle of the third section, the whole labyrinth began to shake and I was able to tell that it was happening.
“I would imagine that we have less than three hours now… let’s retreat. I will have to call for those morons to help.”
“Nah, it is fine. I got this.”
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ThoMiCroN
parties->parts*
