Ideally, there should be no more than a maximum of two Sarracenias in those groups
Roxanne can take on one of them, but because there will be one more left, there’ll always be a chance of receiving its attack.... But on the flipside, the duration of each individual battle should be shorter.
However, Sarracenia is a monster native to the fourteenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth. Because there’s a difference of two floors, there shouldn’t be too many Sarracenias in here. And even they were here in a group, then such groups should definitely be in the minority and we shouldn’t have much trouble facing off against them.
「Uhmm... Pig Hogs are resistant to Earth Magic.」
Sherry points that out. They are? Because I can’t remember if she has told that to me before of if it’s the first time that I’m hearing about this.
We encounter a group of three Clam Shells and two Pig Hogs.
It’s my job to consider various combinations of monsters that we are likely to encounter during our treks through the Labyrinths and the selection of an appropriate magic to deal with any of those combinations as fast as possible, while Roxanne’s job is to guide us to the locations where we can find those suitable opponents without any other people seeing us.
At this point, I cannot really say which one of these two jobs is a more difficult one.
As we followed Roxanne’s guidance, he happened upon a monster, and a single one at that. Talk about a stroke of luck!
So, this is what a Clam Shell looks like, huh? As you might’ve expected, it is a bivalve aquatic monster that literally looks like a clam, except a much bigger than your regular earthly one.
After she managed to avoid the Clam Shell’s jump attack, she swiftly moved I in order to pierce it with her weapon again. Due to her opponent not being the most agile one, she has plenty of room to move around it, looking for the best possible place where she could land her next strike.
In the meantime, I stayed at the back of her in a diagonal position, since seeing that Clam Shell jumping at Roxanne gave me a miniature heart attack due to how unexpected it was. If such a giant calm has the ability to jump towards its target in order to chow down on it in the next moment, then being caught at the receiving end of that is the last thing on my wishlist.
「So the Clam Shell can also bite into you, even though it doesn’t look as if it had teeth?」
Being sandwiched between the shells of a gigantic clam monster... that is truly not something that I would like to experience if I can help it, especially if it turned out that this direct attack of it might be even stronger than the water-based ranged attack.
「It would seem so.」
Roxanne answered my inquiry in a way that suggested that she thinks that even if Clam Shells can also bite into you or crush you, it is nothing that we should be worried about. Roxanne, you might not be worrying about it because you can just dodge it, but those among us who cannot dodge like you do would very much have to worry about it!
「I think I remember reading in a book in the library once that being bitten by a Clam Shell is a surefire way of getting yourself paralyzed but I didn’t believe that information was real. However, after witnessing the attack that it did just now, I think that information might be true after all.」
「Yes, that is definitely dangerous, but I don’t think that it’s something that we should be worried about all that much. After all, its movements are large and not all that fast, so all that we need to do to be safe from it is to be quick on our own legs and dodge every last one of its attempts at attacking us, and that should be enough to keep us safe.」
*Sigh* And there it is: Roxanne’s famous, common sense defying line that made Sherry and I exchange skeptical glances. Both of us know full well that Roxanne is the only person who would be capable of pulling something like that off in the heat of battle, but Roxanne herself doesn’t seem to realize how far ahead of everyone she is in those matters.
In any case, I launched many 「Sand Balls」at the Clam Shell, but after eating a fifth shot of it, it still wasn’t dead for some reason. I was thinking if maybe I should hit it with the sixth one, just for good measure?