CH 176

The king is standing back. I guess it decided to watch its underlings fight a bit longer.

I kind of feel like shouting abuse at it, but there’s no time for that.

I wouldn’t lose in a one-on-one fight, but its followers couldn’t be more annoying.

I’m not suffering any potentially fatal damage, but I’m getting more and more scratched. My equipment protects me against the shallower attacks, but even that’s getting more and more ragged.

There are a few close calls too, but Hikari and Rurika cover me by throwing knives.

“Sora!”

Yells Chris, as we’re completely on the back foot.

I keep defending while preparing magic. I focus a good amount of magic energy, thinking more about extending the activation time than the power itself.

“Stone Shower!”

Small rocks appear in the air and violently fall, and four guards raise their shields to build a wall.

That’s when Chris fires her Firestorm, and at the same time, Sera throws her axe, Rurika throwing knives, and Hikari knives infused with magic.

It looks like the remaining guards are managing to block the attack, but the explosion caused by Hikari’s knives knocks them back.

Mia then fires Holy Arrows as the finishing blow, and takes down a guard.

That opens up a corner.

I fire the magic I prepared using Parallel Thinking, focusing on the corner that lost a guard. It breaks through their defensive wall, and roasts the fighters that were waiting. That’s one more guard and five fighters gone.

The shields the guards hold are magic, but not perfect. They either have limited durability like weapons, or the holders need to spend magic energy to use them.

I think we managed to break through their defensive wall because we attacked at different times from multiple angles, pushing them past their limits.

When the magic attacks subside, we see guards kneeling here and there.

Sera quickly attacks the fighters, and a general rushes to give commands to the archers, and runs forward too.

The archers are moving to meet up with the others while firing arrows, probably commanded to do so by the generals

But, as if she was expecting this, Chris fires magic again, and a group of guards rushing to raise their shields is roasted.

The general sees this and stops, creating a fatal opening. Hikari was already getting close while concealing her presence, and takes it down in one slash. I didn’t even see her move, but that was a nice miscalculation on my part.

That leaves the king, a general, two archers, and two guards.

This is the result of the vanguard pushing through the arrows and taking down kobolds. Of course, the two mages offering support with their own arrow type attacks helped a lot.

At this point, the ball is rolling in our favor and it doesn’t stop.

We clean up the archers and guards in front of the king and general, and then Sera takes on the king while Hikari and Rurika take on the general. The back row supports Hikari and Rurika to take down the general first.

Once it goes down, the king is left alone. It puts on a good fight fitting its name, but our momentum isn’t letting up, and while its attention is on Sera, Rurika sneaks in from a blind spot and her attack halts its movements.

The battle is over and we want to rest, but we need to collect the magic stones first. I also want to test if I can take the shields, but it’s not possible. It’s exactly like it was reported. Not that they’d be useful anyway, because they’re in tatters.

Even Appraisal doesn’t tell me a lot about their composition. It just shows me what looks like circuits carved on the surface.

Oh, and a treasure chest dropped, and it has a return stone inside. Do they always contain a return stone the first time we take down a boss? Is it just a coincidence? This one doesn’t have anything else.

The exit is now open, but we’re taking a small break.

Everyone’s crouching and not moving, because I guess collecting the magic stones took what little energy we had left.

Hikari is looking at me like she’s expecting something. Usually I’d give her a stamina potion, but it looks like she wants something else.

I pour soup into cups and hand them to everyone.

After drinking mine in one gulp, I let out a big sigh. That ginger really hits the spot on a tired body.

This one was pretty dangerous. I guess it’s partially because we don’t have a lot of people.

We could recruit more party members, but I’m reluctant to team up with strangers.

Apparently Leila and her party are back to exploring the dungeon, but they’re teaming with other students of the academy, and they already have their plans.

Who else do I know… Fred and the others. But they said they’re training while looking to form a new party. They’re going back to basics, so they’re going to take it easy on the upper floors.

“What is the matter? You’re frowning.”

Mia says while pressing my brow. Hey, that hurts.

“I was just thinking about this battle. It was pretty dangerous, wasn’t it? Sera was injured too.”

“You too, Sora. Hold on, let me cast Heal.”

“That’s all right, it’s not serious and it’ll heal on its own.”

“No.”

She’s not backing down. It really will heal on its own, and you were struggling just now because you were running out of magic energy.

“Let’s think about what to do next after we leave. For now, we should just be happy that we all got through this.”

Mia’s right. It’s not like we’re aiming for the lower floors anyway, so we should just stop when things get dangerous.

And if we stay here too long, another party is bound to show up and be left waiting, so we should get going soon.