CH 223

"Sure enough, intermediate-lower dungeon is tough"

"Yeah. Even the consumption of MP is so high compared to beginner dungeons. You will not even know when you're out of MP if you don't keep it in check"

Sierra muttered seemingly absentmindedly just as we had finished battling on the 3rd floor of Dinosaur's hill dungeon we're currently in.

To which Ester was of the same opinion as she talked about her impression of the battles we had gone through upto this point.

"Especially so when the agile ToruToru and Saugus, whose status tilt towards raw strength, come together, that was quite a wild ride. I don't if it's my imagination, but I feel like monsters were cooperating with each other"

By the way, Saugus is a Saurus type monster with four legs and a thick torso. It is slower on its leg but the raw strength it packs is nothing to sneeze at as it even gave Sierra some trouble.

Nevertheless, Sierra is as amazing as ever to notice some subtleties. I further clarified the part she seemed suspicious of.

"It's not just your imagination, Sierra. Monsters begin to act in coordination starting from the Intermediate dungeon."

Accurately speaking, monsters do coordinate with each other though that's just superficial action, something like instinct instead of truly comprehending the essence of coordination but what I said earlier isn't wrong, since there are also monsters that truly coordinate with each other.

It's not the first time for agile ToruToru and Saugus with super-strength to come together as they appear together quite frequently in the game too.

Agile Torutoru's behavioral pattern is to often leap at the members from long-distance. In contrast to them, Saugus are quite dull in movement however they preliminary relies on their ferocious charge attacks.

It's easier to deal with slow-moving Saugus by leaving the Torutoru for latter during the latter, however doing so will give the chance to Torutoru to jump at you for the reason that you stopped moving to remove Saugus.

That's what Sierra found it a bit hard to handle.

So I explained the countermeasures and how to restrain them to her. She seems to have some ways to deal with their formation too, so next time she's going to try them out apparently.

As for what Ester said,

"As Ester has pointed out, you all should avoid relying on skill too much because monsters in Intermediate dungeons are strong. However, not using skills are also not good. So try to find a balance between skills and normal attacks from upcoming battles"

"Understood"

"For present, you should try using <Long thrust> frequently, Ester"

"You mean by 1st order skill Long thrus?"

Ester made a perplexed looking face when I recommended her to use the skill with least might.

In fact, long thrust is actually a nice skill due to the cost-effectiveness of MP it provides. It doesn't use more than 4 MP per usage because of being a skill that belongs to 1st order tree and the skill being at Lv5, it's might is enough to use it.

The second order tree skill <Precise thrust> MP usage is 7, which makes it a bit hard to use frequently. Using <Long thrust> twice will deal more damage than using <Precise thrust> one-time, that's why I'm recommending it. Not to say it's also quite easy to mix with normal attacks.

After all, one time <Precise thrust> will not be enough to clear out all monsters of higher floors unlike before. Using it twice will naturally consume twice the MP which is quite a high amount to use on a single target.

But if it's long thrust and Ester blend in some noal attacks, twice or thrice activation of that skill would be enough to defeat the monsters, so we have to think of how to effectively minimise the MP cost from here on.

"So that's the reason, all right. I will focus my moves around it then"

"Oh, it's not like I'm saying to not use <Precise thrust>. Just use it when you think it's appropriate to do so"

As I had explained, Intermediate dungeons differ from beginner dungeon whether it's in size, monster's strength and many other things, so it's best to begin slowly.

"Say, Zephyr. This Dungeon seems awfully deep but how many layers does this dungeon have?"

As if she was just waiting for me to finish my explanation, Lana chimed in from behind with her question.

Oh, it's Lana. Is she willing to listen to my explanation? All right. I am the knowledge reserve that can answer any of her questions!

"The dungeon we're in, Dinosaur's hill dungeon, has around 30 floor and I should have explained it before but there are teleportation formations at each consecutive 10th floor which the challenger can use to exit the dungeon if they wish. What's more, there are also new additions; the deployment of field bosses at the 10th and 20th layer respectively. One can choose to fight or to not fight the field boss and pass the floor in itself but there's also that mechanism where one can't use teleportation formation unless they defeat them一一"

"H-Hold on for a minute, Zephyr. Why are you speaking so fast! How can I understand what you're saying if you're to dump all that in one breath!"

Crap. It seems I got carried away slightly seeing Lana relying on me again.

"Ahahaha. My bad, My bad"

"Geez"

Afterwards, I used some time to explain what I know unhurriedly.

"Ohh, a field boss!? I wonder if it's strong."

"They are usually strong. There are various types of field boss but some are not easy to deal with. Like, hmm...., That's right. Listen carefully everyone! Beware of the wondering type!. However you do but never ever forget this point"

I suddenly recalled something while I was clearing Lana's curiosity when I suddenly recalled that, so I explained it to everyone.

"Wandering bosses? What are they?"

"By wandering, of course I meant by they don't stay at one fixed spot and wander around and rampage around. It's quite easy to encounter this type of boss and you're bound to suffer from damage if you're unable to compose yourself soon"

These types are ones that are easy to encounter while walking. The challenger will be in a pinch right off the bat in case their HP isn't full, not to say they are going to fight the boss, so one has to always be on their tip-top state.

I found healing myself a tedious task in the past, so I was the type to prepare everything in front of the boss gate including healing because of which, I have encountered them out of nowhere and had gone through some painful times.

All that's waiting for one if they receive the attack is annihilation, so I thoroughly explain it to girls.

"Another thing, the most dangerous out of all is monsters with short stature. "Ah this is a boss" is the normal reaction if the monster in front of you is a giant, but small monsters are synonymous to small fries so there are cases where parties suffer from being unable to discern their enemies. The foremost thing for one to do is be vigilant around the monsters they have never seen before."

It was quite easy to discern in <Dungeon activity> since BGM plays on its own but this is reality. There's always a chance that what I may know might be different in reality.

Thus, we made our way till floor 10th while explaining them about dungeon. The first goal we had decided on was 10th floor.