Chapter 71: Momentary Thoughts Part 18 Part 2

「Since its movements are hindered, even if we attack it or try to debuff it, we should not attract aggro of any kind. Also, it should receive some sort of damage upon falling down each time…… the question is: what if it doesn’t?」

「If that’s the case, let’s focus on attacking it before it regains its composure so that we won’t have to experience a really rude awakening……!」

Pencilgton applies another “Broken Shell” onto his spear and continues to whail at the Gravekeeper’s armor, all the while taking out another small bottle from inside of his inventory.

「Gaah, geez……! It’s so hard to take this seriously if we don’t even know it if does anything!」

For some reason now, it looks like Pencilgton’s motivation was dwindling by the minute. We can’t have that now. After all, he was the cornerstone of this battle, providing both balancing scales, and the items that were indispensable in our fight. For that reason alone, we simply cannot have Pencilgton quit on us right now.

This is why Pencilgton wanted our assistance in this battle. We prepared ourselves for it the best way we possibly could, but without Pencilgton’s aid we won’t be able to get anywhere on our own.

「That is why we cannot do this without you……! So shut your whore mouth and……!」

「Without me……?」

「Uwah, Katsu-kun, you meanie! Uwah, uwah!!!!」

「T, the sheer audacity of this guy……!」

At first I was all like: “What the fuck is this sh*t!?” but after a while my reaction started to mellow down a bit. In short, it was just like a really fucked up memory game.

Before we even noticed it, we ended up dying three times out of the four ones we could afford.

「During this phase, it appears that the skills in a sequence are all randomly selected. Only the last one will remain the same every single time.」

「Tachikaze, Flame Dragon Pillar, High Blizzard.」

It was now occurring to us that there were some subtle indicators in Gravekeeper’s move set that hint at what he was going to cast next, like movements of the head or the placement of the feet.

The Dragon Fire Pillar was not a threat anymore, since there was a significant lag between its cast time and the moment it took effect.

As for the High Blizzard, it took a few seconds for the clouds to surround the player completely, so if you wanted to break away and dodge you had those few seconds to act.

「I cannot be all too sure about that freaking sword since I basically saw it too few times, but it seems that all of its attacks are really hard to avoid in general.」

「Grand Slash, Maelstrom, Thunder Cloud.」

Grand Slash was not a lightning fast attack, but its speed and reach was something that you needed to watch out for. However, its trajectory was but a straight line, so it was easy to evade if you knew how the slash was going to go and had enough space to move out of its way.

Maelstrom was also easy to avoid, you just had to run for your life as fast as you possibly could. However, there was a possibility that you may have ran out of stamina and ended up totally defenseless for any incoming attack.

Thunder Cloud was a real nuisance here. To completely avoid it you would have to escape the Gavekeeper’s field of vision and look for a blind spot, but judging how he was tracking your every single move, it was nearly impossible to achieve.

And even if you were able to do it, you would simply run out of stamina in the process.

「There is minimal time lag in between every attack, and we must maintain a safe distance of about three meters minimum away from him…… The duration of this status is approximately thirty seconds.」

If you manage to stop thinking too hard about it and just learn the patterns and commit them to memory, it wasn’t that scary at all. Examine, consider and respond –– those were the key words here.

At the same time as avoiding the attacks I make a mental list of possible countermeasures against that weird mode of his and examine them one by one.

Destroying the sword…… That would be difficult to achieve, especially since we don’t even know it destroying it would be allowed by the system here.

Destroy the main body…… That’s not possible as well. That would mainly make the concept of this entire battle obsolete to begin with. Not to mention that because of his constant barrage of attacks, it was quite difficult to get close enough to him to deal some damage. It should have been possible if there were more people with us, but I get the feeling that something was off here. This time, I better trust my instincts.

If so, the most suitable way for us to approach this phase would be simply to survive through it……

「…… Parry.」

The timing must be perfect for the best possible result. The slash wasn’t so fast to begin with, so it was a manageable thing to do. That, however, gave birth to another problem.

「Huh…… It didn’t work?」

Even Parrying is not all-purpose. It’s not compatible with critical hit all that much, since it was determined by the attack parameters and the angle at which the blow was made.

If I could move freely and I saw fit it would have been a different story, but since I had no other options, evasion and avoidance were my safest bet in this situation.

In other words, my best bet was not to get hit by that sword even once…… However, parrying was out of the question since the skill wasn’t strong enough to protect me, and there was always a risk of my weapon’s durability reaching zero and breaking into pieces.

「Three more…… There are three more things that I can think of in this situation.」

While doing my best to avoid the incoming attacks, I look around me. I make another improvised chart in my mind with every single bit of information we managed to gather thus far and I begin to act on that chart.

But can we really withstand two more minutes?