CH 25

I was able to safely land the [Shadow Stomp] on the Golden Rana.

No matter how fast the Golden Rana can move, it won’t be able to escape from me now.

“Geh! Geh!”

The Golden Rana was desperately trying to get away from me, but it could only move away no more than about two meters, which was the distance the [Shadow Stomp] allowed the shadow to stretch.

“We did it, Elma-san! We managed to catch a Golden Rana perfectly! We are already good as done with this hunt!”

Luce said in an excited tone while rushing towards me.

“….um, well, you told me what to do until we manage to catch it, but that Golden Rana…. How do you intend to finish it off?”

Indeed, the Golden Rana has two main strengths.

The first is its lightning fast movement speed…. and the second is its high defense.

In addition to its high Defense stat itself, it’s entirely immune to abnormal status effects, debuffs, and elemental attacks.

Half-baked attacks can’t even scratch a Golden Rana.

“We can only depend on critical hits.”

In Magic World, when you were able to strike the opponent’s core by perfectly predicting their movements it was counted as a critical hit, which caused a much larger amount of damage than normal.

That being said, if you managed to learn to consistently land those kinds of hits then it would be very unbalanced in terms of gameplay, so the actual critical hit rate was also tied to the player’s Luck value in the end.

Also, the timing needed to fill the conditions for a critical hit was extremely strict, which meant that depending on the Agility difference between the participants, consistently landing a critical hit became all but impossible.

I heard the developers calculated the specifics based on the limit of human reflexes.

The damage done by critical hits is 1.5 times the normal amount.

In addition to that, they also have a 50% armor piercing effect.

“I see, since it’s restrained now, you can try for a critical hit as many times as you like! Do your best, Elma-san!”

Luce cheered me on with a clenched fist.

“Nah, I wouldn’t be able to damage it even with critical hits.”

“Fueh….?”

“I said this before, right? That both driving it into a corner and piercing its defense is something Luce will have to do.”

Because the Heavy Knight has a low Attack stat.

The sword I have equipped right now is something that was lacking quite a bit even in the early levels, but by now it’s seriously short on power.

To start with, the movement speed of the Heavy Knight is slow.

Since the [Shadow Stomp] still allows the opponent a bit of freedom of movement and I can’t even raise my foot, it’s impossible for me to properly follow its movements and land a perfect hit in this situation.

Therefore I can’t fulfill the preconditions for a critical hit.

It’s not impossible to hit it as a fluke, so the probability is not zero though.

However, funny anecdotes where a Heavy Knight that managed to land a [Shadow Stomp] on a money toad kept hitting it for hours, hoping for a critical hit, but ended up with nothing instead because others mobs got in the way in the end were common in Magic World.

“Then, then, I will need to chase it around and try to land a critical hit…? But I basically never managed to land a critical hit before!?”

Ordinarily it should be impossible.

Luce is greatly behind a Golden Rana in terms of Agility.

For one, as a Clown, which is a Class that also has a low Attack, a normal critical hit wouldn’t be able to do any damage either.

“You have that Skill, right? Something that Luce had to begin with…. the [Dice Thrust].”

An attack Skill obtained by putting 【2】 points in [The Fool’s Acrobatics].

I already made sure she had it when Luce allowed me to look through her Status.

It’s a thrusting Skill that has an effect based on random dice roll from one to six.

It provides a bonus effect based on the dice roll, which in case of a six means that the Skill does 1.3 times the normal damage and the hit automatically becomes a critical hit.

To be exact, once you hit the opponent anywhere on its body it automatically becomes a critical hit.

“The [Dice Thrust]? But that’s just a useless Skill that does less overall damage than normal attacks…. B-but yes, with that it may be possible….!”

The [Dice Thrust] Skill was one of the reasons that Luce was chased out from her previous party.

She let it slip that when she finally received [Dice Thrust] after not having any active Skills or meaningful firepower to contribute for a long time, finding out that by using it she ended up with even less DPS than her normal attacks caused Klein to treat her even worse.

However the [Dice Thrust] has the potential to easily take down opponents that are heavy on Defense.

Once you are able to catch a monster that you ordinarily would be unable to win against, the [Dice Thrust] with its wide damage range is able to provide a possible way to succeed.

And above all, it makes it easy to fulfill the last condition for hunting money toads.

When you roll a six with [Dice Thrust], it increases your Attack to 1.3 times its value and guarantees a critical hit in addition to that.

Overall, it becomes a 1.95 multiplier to damage done.

In addition to that, with 15% piercing damage from the Iron Piercer and the 50% piercing effect from the critical hit can be simply added up.

That all comes out to a single hit with its damage multiplied by 1.95, with a 65% armor piercing effect.

If we count from Luce’s current Attack, then she should just be able to hit that 【2】 points of damage to bring down the Golden Rana’s HP despite its 【Defense: 200】.

“There is no such thing as a useless Class or Skill. There are many that come in handy in specific circumstances or those that take time for them to become useful.”

The same applies to humans too.

“You shouldn’t dwell too much on what certain people view you as. Klein and the girl just happened to not see a positive side of you. I’ll say it again, but I do need your help, so please lend me your strength from now on.”

Luce listened to my words with her mouth open, but finally she firmed up her expression and readied her Iron Piercer.

“Y-yes! I will do it! I will do this for sure! If I can’t respond to these expectations, then there was no meaning to becoming an adventurer!”

Luce ran up to the Golden Rana and jumped up to thrust the tip of the Iron Piercer right at its back.

“[Dice Thrust]!”

The number six floated up in the air.

With a cheerful sound, a crack ran across the Golden Rana’s golden surface.

“Ribbegh!”