Chapter 716: Along the Path, In Pursuit, and As If Fleeing
The demerit of an effectively quadrupled recast time—what I found out from actually fighting is that it's fatal, but not a fatal wound... I guess that's the feeling.
It's true that the fact I can effectively only use skills once needs to be resolved ASAP, but be that as it may, it doesn't mean I can't use the skills themselves. Plus, I have these stats that I've dumped stat points into—points earned from leveling up and from encountering or defeating Unique, Raid, and Exordinary monsters.
I suppose it's good news that even without skills, I can brute-force it with my physicals enough to toy with something like a thoroughbred triceratops.
"Hmm..."
"Need repairs?"
"Ah, yeah, there's no harm in doing it if it's free."
But I wonder what it is, it's not just that. There's some strange sense of incongruity. Not talking about physicals, it's more like I'm oddly distracted... Lack of sleep?
"Hmm...?"
"Repairs are done~, I know it's not a crafted weapon, but the more I look at it, the more this design makes me want to surpass it... Just how do you make a blade that deals chip damage just by touching it?"
"Hm, ah, thanks."
Areadbhair's durability is back, so let's move forward.
Basically, a certain level of charting for conquering this sea of trees has already been completed among the players. If I were alone and had switched to dedicated skills, I'd be able to leap through at Critical Speed, but this time it's a party run, so following the template is the safe bet.
Although, even that safe bet makes you want to ask if "fleeing with all your might the moment you encounter a three-headed Tyrannosaurus, regardless of its color, nature, or strength" really counts as a strategy.
"Well, it seems like there aren't any Draclus Dinocerberus nearby~, since if that red guy was close by, this sea of trees wouldn't be so peaceful, you know."
"Word is that the black ones have been increasing lately, making it even more of an RNG game."
"The black ones... Ah, the Exordinary ones, right?"
Mingling into the conversation between Imron and Cashew Nut-shi, I pictured the figure of that brother who unleashed a slightly too-passionate shout.
From what I've heard, it's quite a powerful entity that acquires resistance to attacks, but because I know "Crimson Scar," who becomes agonizingly tougher the closer it gets to dying, I just don't feel a sense of crisis from an Exordinary-kun who merely gets tougher on a part-by-part basis... Brother, that's absolutely the type of boss character where the last 10% of their HP is so tough that their effective total HP is basically doubled, isn't it?
It has this danger where it looks like it might even withstand total defense penetration like Pencil's Holy Spear if you mess up. It's not about VIT; it's the type where you can't even shave off a single pixel due to its HP density. An existence bordering on a shitty boss that makes you sick of it even if they try to gloss over it with a hyped-up narrative climax.
"Let's just hurry up and get out of the sea of trees; there aren't any dangerous ones like that in the swamp, at least, right?"
"It is not safe, but... it is not as dangerous as that."
I'd imagine so. Right now, this sea of trees is ruled by three-headed Tyrannosauruses at the top of the environment: the standard individuals that exist in decent numbers, the Exordinary individuals that respawn over time even if defeated, and that brother prowling around.
If there's a concern, it's that weird, one-eyed cyclops I saw only once during the battle against the Devouring Great Crimson Clad... It's probably a raid monster, but its single strike blew away 99.9% of the brother's life in one hit, even if he was still just "covered in scars" back then. As long as raid monsters are active in earnest, there's a high probability that the cyclops is also in the sea of trees. The fact that the Great Crimson Clad had it recorded means it's highly likely it was in the sea of trees, after all.
"Well, I want to avoid unnecessary combat, so let's keep moving while hurrying."
...
............
Anyway, this sea of trees is vast, so no matter how hard you sprint through it, you're bound to run into one of the three-headed Tyrannosauruses eventually, making it a bothersome area, but even so, there is still some downtime.
In this game, terrifyingly enough, it's not like you encounter something after walking a set number of steps; the monsters act individually, so there are times when encountering one triggers the surrounding monsters to swarm you, and there are times when you practically encounter absolutely nothing at all. And right now, it was the latter.
"So, tell me."
"Tell you what?"
"The rewards from Orchestra. It wasn't just the Tome of Truth, right?"
"............"
I averted my half-lidded eyes at Imron's words. Even though I was prepared to be asked about it, it was a fact that it was the kind of memory I didn't really want to recall right now.
"Oh come on, don't pout like that. Look, to put it mildly, I'm a blacksmith who's a cut above the rest among players, right? I've been asked by Library for my opinion regarding the weapons rewarded from the Apocrypha route."
So that's why she's curious about the Canon rewards. I knew the rewards were different between Apocrypha and Canon, but... hmm.
"This."
"What's this, a plague doctor mask? The gold color is pretty bad taste, though."
You can only say that now. When you equip this...
Bwooosh!!
"Uwa, gross!!"
"Isn't that cruel?"
That wasn't Imron just now, but Cashew Nut-shi. Imron is deeply fascinated by unknown head equipment, so the moment the golden plague doctor mask was equipped to the face, upon seeing the flaming eyes snap open amidst the fire erupting from the mask, she had other priorities than shouting out "gross."
"As expected of this game, beyond the high degree of freedom with crafted equipment, there's just way too much non-crafted equipment where I don't even know what principles you'd use to reproduce them..."
"Eh, this is one step away from a lotus photoshop collage[*1]~. Could it be that each of these individual eyes provides vision?"
"Oh, you're sharp, Cashew Nut-shi. I did various verifications on this, and as long as one of the 'eyes' somewhere isn't blocked, your vision won't be blocked even if your main body's eyes are crushed."
I thought to myself that this mask would make you invincible in watermelon splitting, but if your vision gets crushed by a flash of light like a flashbang, the other flaming eyes get affected too, so it's not like it makes your vision invincible or anything.
"Well, it's a bit hard to use right now, so I'm not equipping it..."
My Eye of True World Observation and Astral World Guideline also evolved into new skills upon reaching Level 150, but their recast times have become longer along with the increase in their effect durations. That means, with the current perceived 4x recast time, I can't effectively utilize the "Migratory Bird" skill, which exerts its effects based on the number of times visual-type skills are activated, so for now it's just gathering dust in Inventoria.
While we were chatting about such things, the trees forming the sea of trees transitioned from thick and tall to low and thin, and before we knew it, the ground had changed from the softness of leaf mold into a waterlogged, slimy mud floor.
"My nostalgic swamp, my beloved swamp..."
While letting Ladder-shi's solemn mutters reach my ears, I inhaled the muddy, damp air that was recreated to an abnormal degree for a VR game.
"It's my first time coming to this area."
"Mine too..."
A swamp stretching out as far as the eye can see, reflecting the stars in the night sky. The scene, which was even wider and more water-laden than the swampy wastelands of the Old Continent, was a fantastical sight you wouldn't easily encounter in reality......
Sploosh.
Completely destroying that lingering atmosphere, a gigantic crab emerged from the mud.
Don't you dare ruin the emotional mood, you damn crustacean! Even if I'm eating the penalties from the reversed position, I'll turn the likes of you into a crab hot pot!!!
Author's Afterword
・Ladder
A "Black" Dragonewt. Although there was friction with the Lizardmen, compared to the "Red" Dragonewts, Noirlind's hands-off approach meant their treatment was surprisingly good. Mentally, he's basically a slightly exhausted corporate salaryman.
The "Red" Dragonewts suffered under Nipple Jets—I mean, Sunraku's two-years-older brother (not actually his brother)—who was such a trash dragon that he made a bullying mother-in-law look like a beautiful girl by comparison. Because Ladder has acquaintances among them, he has been anxiously wanting to go check on them ever since the Dragon Calamity War.
This is the Unique Scenario provided by the "Black" Dragonewts, "Worrying for a Friend"... In short, it's the game system pressing the player by basically saying, "Hurry up and go to the volcano already."
Furthermore, nobody knows that during this scenario, the encounter rate with the three-headed Tyrannosauruses drops significantly.
Translator's Notes
- [1] Lotus photoshop collage: Refers to "Hasu-kora" (蓮コラ), a classic Japanese internet meme where lotus seed pods are photoshopped onto human skin, heavily triggering trypophobia (fear of clustered patterns/holes).
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