Chapter 193: Realease From Impatience, Running With Impatience Part 1

Here’s how our party looks for the moment: we got me, Rust, Mold, Emul, Alva, Akitsu Akane, Sickle, and Nereis. It is a pretty good composition, judging by the fact that Rei is not here with us and Straude cannot actually be of any use in battle.

Our avangarde consists of seven people, two people in the vanguard, out of which we have two heavy hitters and two squishy mages.

When it comes to the purely physical fighters of our party, we have me, Alva and Sickle who wields a magically extending stick…… a bamboo, perhaps? No matter, but it may be possible for him to be able to carry out some magic attacks with this thing.

Although our long distance attackers can handle both physical and magical attacks, their compatibility leaves much to be desired. Rust can use both types of attacks no problem thanks to her bow and arrows, but in case of Akitsu Akane we can talk about mainly magic attacks with physicals as an added bonus.

「That is why we need to do as much as possible until the moment Rust and Mold needs to log out to switch to NephHolo. This gives us the time limit to the morning of the sixth day. So if we want to beat another boss, that would mean…… Yeah, let’s go destroy the ‘Barnacle’.」

It is the boss that can nullify short range attacks, which means that our physical attacks vanguard is pretty much garbage in this fight. However, if we want things to proceed smoothly for us, it is imperative that we deal with this threat right now, so that we may deal with the remaining bosses in due time, preferably when we won’t be at too much of a disadvantage. The ‘Barnacle’ is the perfect choice here.

Either way, in this next battle both Alva and I are going to be trash, so that’s not really something we should be concerning ourselves with for now. I mean, worst case scenario I can carry Emul on my head and turn him into a mobile turret and apparently Alva can materialize Nereis and have her fight as well, so that’s that.

「And what about Saiga-0-san?」

「We need to give it our best in her stead.」

No matter how hard your level is or how powerful you think you are, there are just some things in life that you just can’t help. So if Rei is not coming, it must mean that she’s dealing with exactly that kind of situation.

But still, all this time we have not even heard a word from her, which must mean that she did not log in at all lately. I know that we have summer vacation at full swing, but it is August, so I highly doubt it that some kind of unforeseen or sudden business came up for her. Then again, it would be a whole different story if she already had plans but forgot to notify us.

「It’s really a shame that the time advances in this game for you even if you are not logged in, but I guess it is something we cannot really do anything about……」

Well, in the first place, I think the fact that you need to devote yourself so much to the Unique Scenario EX is one of the few rare flaws that this game has. I wonder if it continues to go on in that direction, will it still be popular seeing how games and gamers tend to be nowadays? Not that I would know all that much about popular games, since all my life I have been doing nothing but sh*tty games all time.

But I can tell you this: it’s not all that uncommon for games nowadays to be a product of ‘Copy/Paste’ scenario, making their worlds and plots and lore look pretty much the same. Those are some real sh*tty games. There are exceptions from that rule, however.

Ah, but I guess that managing your schedule is not that much of a problem for people, especially in the ear of social media and all that stuff. Now that VR has pretty much settled in the field of gaming its momentum can no longer be stopped, but at the same time it won’t also accelerate like it used to do it its first days. Still, there are some developers out there who would wish to do just that.

I am that kind of a player who tends to stick to one particular game until I finish it all, but I know that there are people out there who can organize their time so well that they can basically play a few different games in one day, and not having that fact impede on their social life.

Usually, players like that tend to be pretty good and devoted to their games. That is, until the alarm that they have set starts ringing, signalizing that it is high time to switch to the different game. Then they can disappear in just a moment, usually in the middle of the quest or combat. Not to mention that you tend to not see them around from around 5 or 6 am or sometime like that.

「Whoa there, looks like we are here already.」

「Sanraku-san, were you perhaps lost in your own thoughts this whole time?」

「Hm? Oh, you know, it happens to me from time to time. I was just thinking if it would be at all possible to program your own biological clock in a specific way.」

While Emul seemed to be mumbling something in retort to that, it seems that we have arrived at the tower where the ‘Barnacle’ was located. Apparently alongside the way we were attacked by swarms of sharks and frogs which grew hair all over their bodies, but the fact that I was thinking to myself all this time and hardly ever recognized them as a threat was speaking volumes about them in the first place. I mean, the players as well as NPCs of this group were no pushovers, so there was no way that enemies like that would be of any real threat to us.

「That’s…… Honestly, I am not sure if the monster designer gave it his all with this one, or if hardly ever put any work into it.」

It was humanoid in shape…… or maybe it was barely humanoid in shape at all. It’s neck was way too close to its left shoulder, and its right arm was bloated and enlarged to an absurd degree, amongst other things.

However, what is really noteworthy here is not its overall shape, but the surface of its body. Do you know how barnacles look like? You know, the ones that you can often see on the bottoms of the ships or at the breakwaters? So yeah, the whole surface of this boss’s body was overgrown with barnacles, but those ones were really huge. Way larger than you would expect.

「Ughee……」

「How the hell is this thing able to disable short range attacks when it is like that? You think those barnacles form a shield or something like that?」

「Maybe, or maybe not. Maybe the moment you try to hit it with a blade the barnacles increase in amount…… But is that really all that important right now!?」

「I’d say yes, but still……」