Volume 4 - CH 5.04

「Compared to yesterday, are the battles today harder for you?」

「Yes, they are definitely harder than the ones yesterday when I was an Explorer.」

Well, yeah, there is no reason for the battles today to be easier than the ones you were engaging in yesterday, because yesterday you were not Explorer Lv.10 as you think you were, but rather Villager Lv.3 who increased her level to Villager Lv.5.

「Do you think you will be able to take on the Floor Boss like that?」

「Yes, I will do my best.」

As much as I want to say something along the lines of 「That is the spirit, Sherry!」 or 「You are so brave, Sherry!」but when faced with Rapid Rabbit, 「the best」 of a character who has their Job only on Lv.2 might not be good enough. Maybe this is too dangerous to allow Sherry to fight the Floor Boss of the seventh floor while being a Master Smith? Maybe I should switch her Job back to Explorer just for the course of the Boss battle? If this was a test or an exam, then I could have allowed Sherry to try tackling the challenge that was to come at us exactly as she was right now, but this is not a test, and what we are doing now is not a drill. This is the Labyrinth, the real deal. If she goes to challenge the Rapid Rabbit unprepared or too weak to pull her own weight, then the only thing that is going to await her is going to be certain death. Especially since Rapid Rabbit is deceptively fast, and that speed of his makes it possible for him to attack its targets numerous times in a row without them being able to react to its assault fast enough.

「Okay then, here is how we are going to proceed: we will go challenge the Floor Boss now, but just to be on the safe side I am going to set Sherry’s Job back to Explorer Lv.10 so as to eliminate the risk of you fighting under too big of a handicap, all right?」

「Turn my Job back to Explorer? You can do something like that, master?!」

「Of course.」

I opened the Party Job Settings, scrolled down to the list of Sherry’s Jobs and switched Master Smith Lv.2 for Explorer Lv.10. Up until now I have kept her Job as a Villager so that she would not gain too much EXP as an Explorer, because judging by the amount of battles we went through and the EXP we obtained, she would have definitely achieved Lv.11 or Lv.12 as an Explorer, and until I was not sure what the conditions for obtaining Master Smith Job were such a development was something that I absolutely could not allow to happen. But now that Sherry got access to Master Smith, that is a concern that I no longer have to worry about. Another issue I had to take into account was her being aware of how much levels as an Explorer he had, which she could have checked by looking at the size of her own Item Box. If at any point in time she caught wind of the fact that she was unable to operate her own Item Box despite being believing that she has been an Explorer all this time, I would have to deal with a whole lot of complicated explanations and a possible loss of trust in my as her master and the leader of our Party, but since I do not have to worry about her getting too many levels in Explorer’s Job anymore, I guess it means that I can allow her to level it up normally as she would any other Job now.

After coming back to the waiting room in front of the Boss Room, I switched my weapon from Wand to Durandal and walked right into the Boss Room after Roxanne and Sherry finished their own preparations as well.

As soon as we walked through the door, Rapid Rabbit showed itself after emerging from the gathered clouds of green smoke that filled the room. I have no idea how Sherry is going to react to it, but since Roxanne and I have fought against this guy before, we know that as long as you keep up with its speed and not let it go on the offensive, then the victory is going to be easily achievable, and in my case, the key to breezing through this encounter is the Skill of my Hero’s Job, 「Overwhelming」. Sherry was saying that we should not rely on magic and Skills too much to defeat this guy, but at the current moment I have no other, reliable way of defeating this guy. Well, maybe it could be done if I tried using nothing but AoE magic against it so that it would have nowhere left to run even with its supreme movement speed, but since I have not tried that method before I do not know if it is going to be successful or not.

Either way, now that the battle has begun, Rapid Rabbit started by darting towards Sherry at top speed, and in response, she simply picked up her spear and waited until it came closer to her. . .. . . . .  . and the she thrusted the blade of the spear forward in an attempt to pierce it through, but the Rapid Rabbit dodged her attack by jumping to the side at the last possible second. When Sherry tried making a thrust towards it for the second time it dodged it again by bouncing diagonally once, and after it finished evading Sherry’s spear it turned around and charged towards her again, taking advantage of her stumbling forward after the thrusting attack she just made. I knew it. Since this battle is a big difficulty spike in comparison to the ordinary Slow Rabbits of this floor, replacing her Master Smith Lv.2 with Explorer Lv.10 was the correct thing to do after all.

When the red monster noticed that its attempts at attacking Sherry did not result in her immediate death, it decided to change its strategy, and instead of targeting Sherry, it went towards me this time, so I made sure to greet it with a barrage of slashes with 「Overwhelming」, which ended up blowing it away, but not killing it with a single blow as I had hope. Looks like I will still need to grow a stronger in order to defeat this guy with just one strike. I just hope that it will not take too much time, or that the enemies we will be fighting in the future will not so tanky that even my Durandal will not be able to swiftly deal with all of them.

The next time the Rapid Rabbit closed in on us to attack, it chose Roxanne as its primary target, but as usual, she was able to avoid all of its attempts at biting into her throat by swiftly dodging out of the harm’s way. For me, it was amazing how she was able to pull something like that off and be faster than Rapid Rabbit with just her own agility alone, while I needed Slow the Rapid Rabbit with 「Overwhelming」 if I even wanted to think about dodging its attacks.

Roxanne blocked another of its attempts at attacking her with her shield, and then slashed it with her Scimitar, sending it flying backwards just like I did before, and Sherry was right there to follow that attack up with a thrust of her spear, causing the rabbit to fly even farther back diagonally before it could even touch the ground.

「I did it!」

「Yeah, you sure did, Sherry. That was amazing!」

「I was not sure if that attack was going to pay off, but now that it did I am really glad that I decided to try it out.」

Certainly, no matter how powerful you might be, under normal circumstances no one is going to be able to change the direction they are heading towards after being sent flying, so Sherry’s decision to attack the Rapid Rabbit while it was still in the air was a pretty smart one. If we keep attacking it while it is in the air where it is at its most vulnerable, we should be able to take it down effortlessly. That is the strength of the attacks made with the long weapon like the spear, and combined with Sherry’s quick thinking it is going to bring our Party the victory.

When it finally recovered from the shock of being sent flying, the Rapid Rabbit started running again, coming towards me once more. Oh yeah, that is right, come at me, monster. And once you do. . . . .