YM778.TV Volume 3 - Ch 3.09
How so? The enemy was defeated and its threads disappeared in the idle of an attack so there is no point overthinking it, but in the case that it did not happen and the threads would still be there, I was simply planning to dodge it once more, but this time even further back.
She was planning to jump even further back, despite the fact that the dodge she made just now was already over some pretty crazy distance? Is there no end to how amazing this girl is?
I guess youre right with that. And its not like I could do much else on my end either, since here on the fourth floor I need four shots of spells to defeat our opponents.
True, but even when we are fighting against a group of three enemies, as long as masters magic is able to kill one of them, that is already a huge load off my own shoulders, since fighting against two enemies at the same time is much more manageable than fighting with all three of them at once.
For someone like me, who still has to put an actual effort into dodging instead of doing it instinctively, fighting more than one enemy at the same time is still problematic, but as long as Roxanne says that she is fine with it, I guess I have no reasons to complain.
By the way, after getting some more levels I tried to do an experiment where I tried to equip myself with a Sixth Job and filled that slot with the Job of a Merchant (which I apparently aquired after interacting with the people who already had it, but when exactly was it, I honestly have no idea) that has an effect of slightly increasing the users INT stat and then round it up with a Herbalist Lv.10, but even after doing all that, I still needed four shots of magic to defeat the monsters dwelling on the fourth floor, so ultimately it was a useless endeavor on my end.
However, if theres one thing that I am certain of now, its that increasing my INT stat as much as possible will definitely have an effect on the overall power of the magic I am using, and that Merchant and Herbalist Jobs did just that: they made my magic stronger with their INT bonuses, its just that those bonuses were simply not big enough to have a visible effect on the number of times I had to cast a spell to defeat the monsters here on the fourth floor. It also might be that my level is still too low for the spells to be stronger, and thats one of the reasons why I decided that I will fight every battle instead of running away from them. Unfortunately, my eagerness is not enough to change the fact that the process of gaining levels while having multiple Jobs set up is still more than a little tedious, even when I am using my Bonus Skills to give myself multiplicators to the gained EXP and lower the amount of it required for a Level Up. That being said, from the purely practical standpoint, the Jobs I should be focusing on the most right now should be Hero and Mage, and while I am at it, maybe I should also fill my Magic Crystals more by using Crystal Acceleration Skill. After all, filled Magic Crystals can be sold for a lot of money, and you know how badly I will need those if I want to buy me some new slaves for my har I, I mean for the front lines of my Party!
For the time being, I will continue on with the following setting of four Jobs: Explorer, Hero, Mage and Monk. That way, I should have a pretty nice balance of magic and offensive capabilities rounded up by some healing abilities in case things ever got especially dire.
On the day when the bathtub we ordered was supposed to be completed, we have arrived at the Veil Labyrinths fourth floors Boss Room. The Floor Boss for this floor was Hachinosu Lv.4 (TL Note: To those who might be confused why the hell is the Floor Boss called Hachinosu when the regular enemies on the fourth floor are called Mino: its basically a kind of a Japanese pun. In Japanese, the word Mino means the first stomach of a cow, while Hachinosu is the second stomach. See what they did there?)It is the same kind of bull/cow as Minos were, but obviously its way bigger and much more muscular than them. Im not gonna lie, I am getting genuinely scared here. I mean, just look at how big this thing is! I barely even had the time to get used to the size of the regular Minos, but this guys humungous size is on a totally different level. It it hits me with those giant tree trunks-sized horns of his, theres no way for me to survive that! I will definitely be finished! Is this really what we are going to go against here?! Isnt that kind of an overkill, even for a monster with a Floor Boss status?!
I might have been bewildered at first, but it has only now occurred to me that since there is only one enemy here, then we will be able to employ our usual strategy of having Roxanne keep the boss busy from the front while I will go to its back to molest it with Durandal. It should be as easy as always
or at least thats what I thought, but then it tried to kick me in the head with its hind legs, scaring the living shit out of me! God damn it, if that giant hoove hit me, it would easily break at least a dozen of my bones!
Doing my best not to go right into a panic attack, I slashed at Hachinosus ass from the right, then from the left, then from up to down and down to up and then from upper right to lower left and lower left to upper right.
The entire battle was more chaotic then I would have liked, but thankfully my barrage of slashes was enough to kill the Floor Boss, granting us free access to the next floor. I guess this was just another case of a Floor Boss looking all big and scary only actually be easy to defeat once you get the hand of its attack patterns down or have a Party member occupying its attention from the front while you hack away at it from the back.
Even after such an intense boss battle, Roxanne was, as one would expect, completely unscratched and looked to be totally unfazed both by the Hachinosus size and its ability to attack those who would stand behind it. I have to keep it a secret from her that I was scared the whole time, or else she might think that I am a lame master.
When we reached the fifth floor, the first group of enemies we encountered were Minos Lv.5. I slashed one of them with Durandal, but much to my surprise, it was not defeated with a single strike. I have to say, I am impressed that it was able to one-shot pretty much every enemy throughout the first four floors, but I also think that it was about time for the difficulty bar to be raised higher, since there was no way for things to always go too smoothly for us. Having accepted that inevitable fact, I defeated a Mino that I was facing against with Durandals second slash.
The next group of enemies we have encountered after Roxanne guided us to it was made entirely form the new type of monsters, the ones native to this particular floor: Cheap Sheeps. Even though they looked all fluffy like regular sheep, their attitudes were not friendly at all. They were quite ferocious and looked like they were ready to bite your face off if only you allowed them to do so. They also have horns, but unlike those of Minos, the ones belonging to the Cheap Sheep are not straight and sharp, but thick and curved in a shape that resembled a spiral. Being hit with that will definitely hurt, but they do not look as terrifying as the horns of the Minos that were like small spears.
I shot the one before me with Fireball while Roxanne focused on the other two and slashed away at them with her Scimitar.