Volume 6 - CH 1.06

Escape Goat appears as well on tenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth, which means that it is probably the monster native to its ninth floor. Escape Goat Lv.10 starts running away after three magic attacks, so it is exactly the same pattern as before. Boring.

「Roxanne, I will chase it, and you finish it off when it has nowhere else left to run!」

I said no such thing, because there was absolutely no need for me to resort to having Roxanne help me. Right now, I took it out with just three attacks of my magic.

Nothing seems out of place on the tenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth. We can take on the monsters that are dwelling here without any trouble.

I am itching to test how capable our new equipment is but it is not a good idea to receive an NT Ant’s attack for that reason alone. We might not have problems killing the enemies here on the tenth floor, but their increasing attack power is bound to become a problem at one point or another, so the wise thing to do here is to not get too full of ourselves just because we have updated equipment on us. When we will reach eleventh floor, we will be bound to take some attacks from the enemies that are going to be there anyway, so it is best for us to prepare ourselves for it mentally.

「We seem to be doing fine on tenth floor, so how about we move on to the eleventh one already?」

「Okay.」

「Understood.」

And so, we proceed to the eleventh floor. When we thought there, I noticed that the situation with the monsters on the eleventh floor oh Haruba’s Labyrinth is more or less the same as with the eleventh floors of Vale and Quratar’s Labyrinths, meaning that the battles with them were taking longer than with the monsters on the previous floors, and because battles will be long, Sherry is bound to receive an attack from the enemy sooner or later, so I have to keep an eye on her to be able to properly rush to her aid when needed.

However, even though I was thinking like that, I was actually the first one to receive an attack in Haruba’s Labyrinth, which was admittedly kinda lame and made me feel somewhat stupid about myself, because it happened in a rather stupid way that could have been easily avoided if only I was more careful.

While I was recovering my MP through Durandal’s 「MP Absorption」Skill, I could not avoid the incoming attack from a charging Mino and I got slammed with the full weight of its body as a result. It was my first time ever tasting the full brunt of such an attack, and not only did it hurt like hell, but it also must have made me look like a complete idiot in the eyes of Roxanne and Sherry.

In comparison to Minos, it is definitely quicker to take out NT Ants and Escape Goats. Aside for Durandal, which can kill the monsters around these floors in two or three hits, the NT Ants are weak against Water Magic, which means that I can kill them with three shots of my 「Water Ball」, and the escape Goats start to run when they are hit with three magic attacks, so whenever that happens, it is my cue to attack them with Durandal to takeout the remaining half of their HP in one fell swoop. With Mino’s however, the situation is a little different, because they do not have any kind of gimmicks or Skills to them (and even if they do, I have yet to see them.)

Even though Minos are not the main monster of the eleventh floor, that does not mean that there will be no groups of monsters that consist of four of them. They might not be all that frequent, but they are definitely here.

If there are three or less Minos in a group, Roxanne can handle two while Sherry can

take on the last one, and even if I would be forced to fight one of them one-on-one, I think that I would be able to hold my ground relatively easily without allowing myself to be attacked. Provided, of course, that I would be extremely careful at all times without getting too greedy with my attacks.

Yeah, I have to remember to be careful. Greed is bad, and greedy people die more easily than those who are careful.

While I was thinking so, I readied Durandal. However, this time we are fighting against   NT Ants, and one of them moved in to attack me instantly when the battle started. It tries to attack me with its huge mandibles. Oh no, not this time you damn insect! I will never allow you to attack and poison me ever again! In your goddamn dreams!

After I took them out with Durandal, I saw that Sherry has finally come under attack by a group of four monsters: two NT Ants and two Minos.

When I was moving on to next NT Ant after taking out first NT Ant with 「Rush」, Sherry receives a head-butt from Mino. The direction I was charging into and the direction Sherry was escaping to happened to be same, so she could not avoid it.

「My bad. I blocked your way.」

After I took the monsters out, I apologized to Sherry.

「Not at all. I should have known you were moving in that direction. It was careless of me.」

In other words, I did block her way, but she just wanted to be nice about it so that I would not feel bad.

I receive the item and then cast 「Heal」on Sherry in order to treat her wounds.

「How was the monster’s attack after equipping the Chainmail? Any difference here in comparison to our earlier test?」

「The Damage that I received was definitely light. Thank you master, I should be fine for now.」

This time, only two 「Heals」 were enough to bring her back to full health, so yeah, the damage that she has sustained from those attacks has definitely decreased in comparison to when she was wearing her old Leather Jacket.

「Will we be able to clear eleventh floor of Quratar’s Labyrinth now?」

「Well, we will not  know unless we try, right?」

Although we have upgraded our equipment, that question still remains, and just like I told Sherry, we will not know the definite answer to it unless we try going there again to see if we have improved.

That said, we can still make predictions based on how we perform on the eleventh floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth. Even if there are strong and weak points of monsters, there is not much difference in their overall strength at any given level. Because the battles were long, we spent all morning exploring the eleventh floor of Haruba’s labyrinth. We took a little break in the afternoon and then resumed the exploration, but this time with a different target in mind.

「We should go to the  thirteenth floor of Tare’s Labyrinth next.The monster there is Rub Shrub that drops the item that Sherry needs to make the next equipment on the Master Smith training list, right?」

「Yes, that is right, master.」

Our aim right now is going to be the thirteenth floor of Tare’s Labyrinth. This is going to be two levels higher in comparison to where we were exploring and killing monsters now, but we should be well prepared for it, because I do not think that two floors are going to be making that much of a difference in the strength of the monsters that are dwelling there.

First, we enter the first floor of Tare’s Labyrinth.

As a precaution, not only did I bring Durandal with me from the get-go, but I also added a Sixth Job to my Bonus Skills to be able to use both Alchemist’s 「Plating」 and Warrior’s 「Rush」. If push comes to shove, I will use 「Rush」in combination with Durandal’s offensive power to make sure that we are going to get out of every possible tight spot unscratched. Having applied 「Plating」to Sherry, we should be as ready as we can possibly be now, and we can finally proceed to explore Tare’s Labyrinth’s first floor.

「So, what kind of monster this Rub Shrub is?」

「I have never fought against it myself but I heard it uses long-range attacks. It shoots its branches from a distance, and its weakness is supposed to be Fire Magic.」

A monster specializing in long ranged attacks? Judging by that alone, monsters from the twelfth floor onwards are definitely going to be different than the ones that we have encountered on the lower floors thus far.
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