Chapter 386

Itai no wa Iya nanode Bōgyo-Ryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu 386

Defense Specialization and the Cube

Although it had been a terribly bright light, what happened had been nothing more than an usual teleport, and the two of them were thrown into a place so dark that they couldn’t see anything at all in there.

“Phew, I’m glad it was just a teleport. It certainly felt like it was going to be something else...”

“Yeah. Maybe that’s the usual animation for that ruined town?”

“It made my eyes hurt, though.”

“...It’s so dark that I can’t see anything, but it looks like there’s no water here.”

“Ah, you’re right!”

As she moved her limbs, she didn’t feel the usual resistance of water. And when she tried jumping, she felt the ground below her feet.

“Let’s take off our diving suits then.”

“Yeah, mine does restrict my field of vision a little. Let’s do that.”

After taking off their diving suits, they tried checking the surroundings once again with their headlights.

“It’s a floor. It seems to be made of the same stones as before.”

“Are we inside some kind of building? I can’t see the sky.”

Though there was air there, they couldn’t see any stars when looking up. Since the floor was artificial, it was more likely that they were inside a building than in a cave.

“Why don’t we walk until we hit a wall? If we do that, we might know how big this place is!”

“That’s a good idea. Let’s do that. Things seem to be pretty quiet for now, so we should try to learn our surroundings before something comes out.”

Both of them turned around and started walking in a straight line. Since this kind of teleport would usually take them to a place where they would need to walk forward to face a boss monster, they were planning to go in the opposite direction in order to get as much information as possible before an eventual battle.

They found themselves before a wall shortly after they had started walking. It was a sturdy wall, made with black stones, and lacked any doors or any way to get to their other side.

“Looks like we’ve been moved to the edge of a room. So if we turn around and walk towards the center...”

“There might be something there?”

“Yeah, it feels like a boss might be up ahead.”

“Right! We have to be careful...”

It hadn’t attacked them as soon as they appeared in that room, but it was still entirely possible that something was waiting for them to approach. This place, which seemed to be quite large, had a similar shape to the boss rooms they had rushed into many times.

Maple and Sally wanted to be as ready as possible to face whatever that boss could throw at them.

They walked along the walls to check how big the room was. Eventually, the two of them reached an adjacent wall as their footsteps echoed in the silent darkness, as if it was a completely empty room.

“Seems to be quite big.”

“Umm, if the room is big, then...”

“Then the boss could be quite large as well.”

Basically, the size of the room usually depended on the size of the boss. If the room were to be too small for a bigger boss, it would hinder its movements, so naturally a big room would mean that the boss itself would be big as well.

Furthermore, since they were no longer underwater, the boss could be literally anything, so it would be quite difficult for Maple and Sally to predict the boss’ patterns this time around.

Because of that, their upcoming battle would be more like a performance done without any prior rehearsal.

“I think it’s time to turn around!”

“Let’s be ready for whatever comes at us!”

“Yeah!”

The two walked to the opposite wall, and after seeing that there was nothing on that side either, they went back halfway along the wall and faced to the front.

“Shall we?”

“Yeah! I’m good to go!”

Both of them moved forward while being extremely vigilant. Then, the room started to gradually become brighter as if it had reacted to their advance, and the whole picture became clear.

As expected, they had been walking at the edge of a room with walls that were tens of meters long.

After crossing halfway to the center, they could see a large amount of things that looked like materials close to the walls, such as crystals, rocks, and plants that they had never seen in the 8th Layer before.

“Is this some kind of storehouse?”

“It would be a very messy one, but still... That thing over there seems to be the most conspicuous of it all, don’t you think?”

“Yeah!”

At the point where Maple pointed, there was a huge black cube. Each of its sides were about 2 square meters.

It was floating in the air due to an unknown force, and felt oddly different from the other materials that were scattered about the area.

“It seems a bit similar to that thing we saw underwater earlier, right?”

“If it’s a monster of the same type as that, our means of attack will be rather limited. It does look a lot like that other cube monster.”

That other cube had been underwater, and it used the water around it to attack, but this room was not submerged. As they took another step towards the black cube, wondering what kinds of attacks it would use, there was a reaction from it. An intricate blue line appeared on its surface, and its body split in half just like that sphere that had brought Maple and Sally to this room.

“Here it comes!”

“Yeah!”

As they readied themselves, wondering what kind of magic it would use, several stone pillars made of the same material as the cube suddenly appeared from the space generated between the cube’s two halves.

The pillars started to rotate slowly, making a crackling noise and storing energy before releasing it as a large amount of light bullets all at once.

“Are those g-gatling guns!?”

“‘Cover’!”

Maple stood in front of Sally with her shield behind her back, and blocked the light bullets with her body. She took no damage from it, but the visual effect of the bullets colliding against her body was so intense that it didn’t let her see anything past her own nose. It had a much higher rate of fire than any of Maple’s weapons, so taking them head on without any means to block damage would have normally turned its target into Swiss cheese.

“It’s a bit different from what we’ve expected, Sally!”

“And here I was thinking it was going to be something more mystical...!”

It was unclear whether those light bullets would ever run out since they were different from those fired from an ordinary firearm.

“...I need to look at his shooting pattern a little longer!”

“Sure! I’m not taking any damage, so take as much time as you need!”

After a few minutes of staring at the cube’s light bullets with earnest eyes, Sally nodded slightly as if telling it was alright now.

“Alright, I can dodge them. I’ll draw its fire so you can shoot back at it when you get the chance.”

“Leave it to me!”

If Sally said she could dodge them, Maple had no reason to doubt her. She knew more than anyone else how good Sally’s evasion was.

“‘Quick Change’ ... Okay, here I go!”

“Go for it!”

Sally jumped out from behind Maple and approached the cube. Neither of them had attacked yet, so the cube switched targets and started firing at Sally, who had come closer to it.

Though the light bullets came really close to hitting Sally, they would only go through the space where Sally had been less than a second ago every time, unable to match her speed. She had just declared that she could dodge them, so there was no way she could have been wrong when calculating the difference between the light bullets’ speed and her own.

The flow of time slowed down almost to the point that it seemed to have stopped completely. In this “bullet time”, Sally’s gaze firmly grasped the bullet. Half reacting and half predicting, she swung her dagger, hitting the bullet from the side, causing sparks to fly, and deflecting it away from its intended target — her forehead.

Sally’s body was also repelled backwards thanks to the knockback caused by blocking the attack with her weapon, but she still managed to adjust her posture in the air and land safely on the ground.

With tremendous speed, the bullet quickly made its way through just past the upper left side of Sally’s body, making a loud noise as it crashed into the wall behind her.

“It worked...!”

As soon as the momentary exchange was over and the perception of the flow of time felt returned to normal, the cube’s gatling guns opened fire, and Sally started running once again.

“Technically I can repel that bullet... But I think that job is better left to Maple, after all.”

Since it would require a lot of concentration on her part, Sally wouldn’t be able to keep doing that for too long. As Sally looked at the gatling guns and then at Maple, she seemed to be safe as expected, and though her weapons had been destroyed, her HP had not decreased at all.

“Sorry, Sally~! Are you okay!?”

“Yeah. You really can brush it off quite easily, huh?”

“I’ll be sure to catch the next one!”

Maple had several means to deal with something like that sniper rifle. She could swallow the bullet with her “Evil Eater” or take it thanks to her “Heavy Body”. These were all far from being the worst tactic against it, since both of them also ensured that Maple wouldn’t take any damage in the first place.

“Shoot at it with everything you’ve got. That’s the safest way to get some damage done to it.”

“Okay~ ‘Deploy All Weapons’! ‘Seeping Chaos’!”

“‘Cyclone Cutter’!” ‘Fireball’!”

The boss’ HP took a hit, while it in turn couldn’t do anything to hurt Maple and Sally, who attacked it unilaterally from behind their multi-layered safety net. The cube had no actual countermeasures for their attacks.

Maple and Sally were very compatible with each other, so they could overrun any enemy. That was the main advantage of them having such eccentric builds.

“...It has two new weapons!”

“Watch out for those!”

One of them was floating directly above Maple and Sally, and the other one was suspended near the boss’ frame. As Maple and Sally wondered what those would do, each of the cube’s new devices fired a thick laser that crossed the room from one end to another.

“Whoa!”

“T-they’re moving! We need to either duck or jump in order to avoid these!”

“B-but that’s easier said than done for me!”

Jumping to dodge the moving lasers was something that Sally would be able to do, but Maple was a different story.

Maple’s jumping abilities were nothing to write home about.”

“Then...”

“...I see!”

Sally’s suggestion was to try to use her Great Shield to block the gatling guns’ bullets as the laser approached her.

That single move could decide the fate of their long battle.

After accepting Sally’s suggestion, Maple allowed her weapons to explode as the laser approached her, using the shockwave from their explosion to launch herself upwards. However, she wasn’t going up vertically, but diagonally forward.

The cube’s knockback rifle was still charging, and though the gatling guns had destroyed her weapons, there was nothing they could do to stop Maple’s approach.

“‘Invitation to the Ocean Floor’!”

Just as she was about to land, Maple turned one of her arms into a tentacle, stretching it out and wrapping it around the cube. Even if its thin shield could mitigate some of it, there were quite a lot of damage effects bursting from the gaps between the parts where the tentacle completely covered the cube as it squeezed it like a sponge.

“That seems to have worked! Just a little more... ‘Deploy Barrels’!”

Maple turned her free hand into a huge barrel before letting loose a powerful laser from it at point-blank range. and the laser is emitted at zero distance as it is. The damage effect mixed up with the laser’s red light, and the boss’ HP started to decrease at an amazing speed. However, its mysterious gauge also began to increase at the same amazing speed, and the generated impact forced Maple to let go of the cube and sent her flying.

“Wha-!? No! I was so close! Uwaaah!?”

Just as she fell on the ground, Maple was targeted by both the gatling guns and the rifle. She rolled towards Sally’s position while being engulfed by the burning moving laser.

“...You’re okay, right?”

“Yeah!”

“Look at you, replying so cheerfully after all that!”

Maple thought about going for another attack, thinking that she would be able to finish it off after a few more shots, but before the two of them could do anything, a large portion of the boss’ gauge was consumed, and started emitting an unprecedented light.

When the light subsided, the gatling guns in the center of the cube had disappeared, and had been replaced by a huge pipe that was about ten times bigger than them. Though it would have appeared to be nothing more than a stone pillar to the untrained eye, Maple and Sally quickly realized that it was a cannon with a tremendous power.

As soon as it was created, the cube started charging it up, and deployed several shields of light to protect it.

“What do we do, Sally!?”

“Well, I’d love to defeat it before it gets a chance to shoot that thing! But...”

Its power and range were unknown, but there was no doubt that this was the cube’s last trump card.

It would be better to deliver the final blow to the boss without letting it shoot, but there was no telling how much more resilient it had become.

There was a risk to both counterattacking as usual and rushing to finish it off.

“What do you think of this, Sally?”

This time around, it was Maple’s turn to suggest an idea. Upon hearing it from her, Sally nodded in approval.

“Sounds good. Then we’ll wait for it to shoot. I trust your abilities, Maple.”

“Yeah! We’ll be alright!”

Having Maple around meant that it was often better to only attack after having blocked the opponent’s own attack than to try to do something reckless and end up in a position where she can’t protect anyone.

As long as Maple was able to neutralize anything that was thrown at her without any risk thanks to her defense and her “Dedicated Affection”, they should be able to wait without any problems until the time was right for them to attack.

“I think it’s about to shoot!”

Sally, who was observing the situation, saw the light converging on the weapon became stronger and felt the signs of imminent fire.

“Just in case... ‘Pierce Guard’! ‘Unbreakable Shield’!”

Maple activated those skills in case of a direct hit, cancelled her tentacle hand, and took up her Great Shield once again. Shortly after that, a high-pitched sound was heard indicating that it was ready to fire, and then there was a roaring sound, much louder than ever, and most of the room was covered in an intense white light.

It had been only a brief moment, and after everything was over, Maple and Sally were no longer on the ground where everything had burned down, only the overflowing water remained. But that didn’t mean that they had been killed, or that the room had collapsed and flooded.

“Excellent timing!”

“Ehehe, it worked like a charm!”

Both of them were right above the boss. By targeting the cube’s laser with Maple’s “Ark”, they were able to phase through the attack without taking any damage.

When Maple said “Just in case”, she meant in case this strategy failed.

In exchange for a big final shot, the cube had discarded the gatling guns that had always been targeting either of them, and all of the other weapons it had available were unable to attack them immediately. This was a great chance for them to attack.

“Maple, let’s go!”

“Okay~!”

“”Deploy Barrels!””

Both of them turned each of their arms into a giant laser cannon, pointed directly at the cube underneath. If their opponent was to bring out the big guns, then Sally would use her “Reversal of Lies” to do the same.

“”Commence Attack!””

The lasers they fired mixed together, destroying the boss’ shield with as much force as the one fired just a moment ago, burning the cube’s body and completely stopping its movements.