Let me get rid of this feeling of depression by fighting with the Floor Boss.
I apply 「Status Ailment Resist Down」onto the Oyster Shell and move on to fight the Rub Shrub that appeared alongside it as I begin the bloody festival. The Boss is up next. Tonight, Durandal is especially thirsty for blood.
「Did it, desu!」
While I was thinking that, Miria managed to proc petrification once more. Consider yourself lucky, monster, but it won’t change the fact that you’re going to be killed by my Durandal all the same.
Well, Oyster Shell is a giant clam, so even if Miria managed to petrify it, it was not immediately apparent. Our only indication was that it stopped moving. And since it’s not moving, it’s a clear sign for me that I can start hacking away at it. Once I started doing that, it quickly disappeared after turning into smoke.
「Go ahead and keep it, Vesta.」
「Of course. Thank you very much, master.」
Volley was the only thing that the Boss dropped. I didn’t have a Cook Job equipped, so it didn’t leave any oysters behind.
「Do you have enough Volleys for the time being?」
「Yes, I should still have a hefty amount of them.」
「So we don’t have to go around gathering more of them?」
「No, I believe it should be more than enough to last me for a while.」
Vesta still seems to have a fair amount of Volley left. Now I know that she won’t have to be fore to endure it when she eventually runs out of it. That being said, she should still be careful about how much of them she consumes at once, even if it’s just the beginning.
「Let’s see... yes, I don’t think we’ll need to go around for it anymore.」
For some reason, Roxanne cut into our conversation.
「It would seem so.」
「This time we were lucky enough that there was no people around, but if we’re going to be repeating the Floor Boss battles many times, then we’re sure to bump into some of them eventually.」Ahh, I see.
「Hou?」
Is that the case?
I do understand that people would not want to live in a place where the Labyrinth would be created and move on, but in that case, how does the Labyrinth that remains in an uninhabitable place feed itself, and how? The answer is obvious. Such Labyrinths would inevitably resort to sending stronger monsters outside of the Labyrinth to attack humans.
The Gumi Slime that I fought against on the way to Vale must have made its way there from somewhere far away. I felt that it was annoying back then, but knowing that its not all that uncommon makes me feel a bit better about it.
「Also, the monsters from the twenty-third floor and upwards are going to start using area of effect magic, dodging which might prove to be difficult, and they probably won’t go down in just one or two hits.」
Sherry spoke some truly ominous words.
Area of effect magic, huh? Well, I am using 「Fire Storm」pretty often, so I guess monsters are going to start doing the same from now on.
And since that is something that even Roxanne might not be able to avoid, then those are terrible news indeed. Also, what did Sherry mean by saying that the floors from the twenty-third onward are considered the ones for intermediate Adventurers? That if we’re not going to be careful and keep our guards up, we’re going to get obliterated?
「Are we going to be okay?」
「If it’s master, then we shouldn’t have any problems.」
「I still have my own worries, but as I said earlier, since we can deal with the Floor Boss on the twenty-second floor just fine, then we should also be able to handle the twenty-third floor.」
「Let’s do it, desu.」
「I think we should be fine.」
If Sherry says that we should be fine, then that’s probably true. We are definitely not going to let ourselves be killed in just one hit, right? And if there is such a possibility, then I feel like there should be more warnings about it.
Not only Sherry, but the Adventurers Guild should also be calling more attention to such matters. For example, they could post something like the mortality rates between the twenty-second and twenty-third floors to call this problem out.
Sherry must have said that because she wanted me to calm down a little and not think about the Labyrinth so much.
Based on my own experiences, the damage that we received from the monsters on the twenty-second floor wasn’t even that fatal. As expected, going up by just one floor shouldn’t mean that the enemies will suddenly be able to kill us in one strike alone.