YM778.TV Volume 4 - Ch 1.01
Jobs:
Explorer Lv.32
Hero Lv.29
Mage Lv.31
Monk Lv.30
Equipment:
Wand
Leather Helmet
Leather Armor
Leather Gloves
Leather shoes
To give you a brief summary of the events that happened thus far, I guess it would have to go a little bit something like this: I got transported into the world of an online game that I wanted to try out as an alternative to killing myself due to how miserable my life up until this point has been, and now that I have been living in this strange, medieval fantasy world for a while, I gradually got more and more used to my new lifestyle which involved delving into the dungeons, which are called Labyrinths in here, where I hunted down monsters and explored in order to make a living for myself and the slave that I bought, Roxanne. Today, just like any other day, we went to the Labyrinth from the early morning to maximize the potential profits as much as possible and to limit the possibility of me being seen by other Adventurers and Explorers. Now, you might be thinking to yourself: but Michio, why are you being so cautious about being seen by others since this is a game world, not a real one? Well, it is because of the stats that I managed to roll for myself when I was creating the Character which I assumed I would be using in the game, and the Bonus Points associated with them turned out to be insanely high, giving me access to some pretty OP Bonus Skills like Warp, which basically allows me to teleport pretty much anywhere in the world, be it inside of the Labyrinth or outside of it as long as I have enough MP for it and even more OP Bonus Weapons like my most trusted partner and the savior of my ass: The Holy Sword Durandal, which allowed me to make the majority of the fights with monsters a breeze that ended after one sword strike. . . you see the picture I am painting here? These abilities are basically like cheats, so I am trying to keep a low profile so that nobody would get suspicious of me, which could bring me no amount of trouble that I most definitely do not want in my new life now that I managed to introduce some semblance of stability into it.
Today, Roxanne and I went to the seventh floor of the Labyrinth of Quratar, where we are currently renting a house, early in the morning. Our target for this morning visit there? To hunt down as many Slow Rabbits as possible so that we could collect their Drop Items: Rabbit Fur and sell it in one of the clothing stores of in the Imperial City, where we recently happened to complete what I would call a miscellaneous quest for the male clerk who worked the front desk there, which ended up with him taking a debt of gratitude with us. This debt, which would normally be a pretty useless thing, can actually be used to get ourselves one huge advantage: normally, the shop where that male clerk works only accepts Rabbit Furs for sale if you bring over one hundred of them, but right now, that limitation does not apply to us, so we can bring as many of them as we want, which will be pretty convenient in making the fund gathering for my next big purchase that much easier.
Now that we have cleared the seventh floor of Quratars Labyrinth and gained access to the eight floor, it means that from that point onward we will have to be facing against groups of monsters made of up to a maximum of four of them. This means that we will most lokely be dividing such groups in such a way that Roxanne will fight two monsters at the same time and I will also be doing the same, which means that things will definitely start getting rougher for me since Durandal is no longer able to one-shot the enemies we are fighting with, needing two strikes to kill them instead.
If you asked me, with her absurd dodging abilities, Roxanne should still be able to effortlessly take on three enemies at the same time, leaving me to deal with the last one in the group. Ever since I started taking her to the Labyrinth with me, we had this unspoken agreement where she would take the aggro of the bigger part of the enemys group on to herself so that I could safely engage only one monster at a time in a one on one battle, and I was fine with that because as much as I tried to copy what Roxanne was doing, that is observing the movements of the monsters carefully and evading their attacks at the last possible moment, most of them were still too unpredictable for me to be doing that reliably, thanks to which my confidence in my ability to fight more than one enemy at the same time did not increase at all. And to make things even worse, even when I am using magic, hitting the targets that are constantly on the move, jumping around from one place to another in a matter of seconds is just as hard, if not even harder than trying to hit them with normal weapons. Take the Floor Boss of the Quratar Labyrinths seventh floor, Rapid Rabbit, for example. Hitting that guy with magic is straight up impossible, and I was only able to land my blows on it when I used The Hero Jobs Skill, Overwhelming to slow the flow of time around me (or was it that I got such a speed boost out of it that everything else seemed to be moving like dorito-encrusted flies?) to such a degree where I could whack away on it while it was powerless to do literally anything else. That is exactly why I decided that instead of proceeding onto the eight floor, it would be better for us to stay at the seventh floor where we could fight against the groups of enemies that we already knew and knew how to deal with them instead of plunging ourselves into uncharted territory, at least for the time being. Here on the seventh floor, the maximum number of monsters that a single group can contain is three, and as long as there will be three enemies, then we could use our ideal strategy of Roxanne dealing with two of them, leaving me to duke it out with the last one.
Guh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .!!!!
But then I remembered that time during our last trek through Quratar Labyrinths seventh floor when we were fighting against a group of three monsters: one Slow Rabbit and two Minos. At that time, I also though that our usual strategy was going to work the same way it always did, but it turned out that I was gravely mistaken. Even though the attention of both Minos should have been focused on Roxanne, one of them ended up charging towards me, and due to how unexpected it all was I was unable to block its attack properly, injuring my finger as a result. This just goes to show: while in the Labyrinth, you absolutely need to be on high alert at all times and keep a close watch on your surroundings, because there will always be a chance that a monster that was not supposed to target you is going to target you after all.
Anyway, there you have it, the reasons for my reluctance to go beyond the relative safety of the seventh floor where we do not have to deal with too many enemies at the same time.
Right now, we were engaging a group of three Slow Rabbits in battle. Just as their name implied, they were pretty slow and mostly just hopped around on the battlefield giving you plenty of time to take care of them, but even such monsters that seemed to be pretty harmless at first glance could still be dangerous if you let your guard around them. They might not look like it, but those fangs of theirs could easily tear through a persons throat if they happened to be allowed to latch onto it.
I dodged the jump attempt form the Slow Rabbit to my right, and then smacked the Slow Rabbit in front of me with my wand before I backstepped a bit and unleashed a spell to deal with the both at once.
(Fire Storm!!!)
Even though it is undoubtedly powerful, using magic has one major downside: when casting your spells, you are leaving yourself completely defenseless, even if it is only for a few second it takes to launch the spell properly.