Hell Mode: Volume 3, page 16
To make matters worse, there were several new kinds of traps. One of them was the Teleport Trap. When someone stepped on it, everyone within the magic circle the trap generated would be sent to a random location. Of course, it was entirely possible for someone to suddenly find themselves teleported into a group of monsters; that was not the worst thing about this trap, though. The real issue lay in trying to regroup with party members who were all scattered throughout the giant maze. The No-life Gamers did not have access to a virtual map in their minds that they could rely on while making their way through the dungeon. Allen was indeed drawing a map in his grimoire as they went along, but if their group ended up scattered, they would have to find their way back to each other the same way any other adventurer had to. This was why they had been at this same dungeon for several weeks now.
“Good morning,” Allen said aloud.
“Mm, morning,” Dogora replied, sitting up from where he had been sleeping next to Allen.
The two had been sleeping side by side not because they had moved into the same bedroom at the base, but because they were camping out on the twelfth floor of the dungeon. After the party realized that they could not clear a whole floor in one day, they had started to camp out overnight in small chambers in the dungeon. This being the twelfth floor meant they were already more than halfway through. The goal was to gain at least one Rank A dungeon under their belt before summer break was over.
Naturally, Krena, Cecil, and Keel were also present. Although they referred to this place as a small room, it was actually the size of a swimming pool. As such, there was plenty of space. Allen’s Storage held plenty of firewood, foodstuffs, and everything else they needed to sleep outside. The group had no need of anything that was too large to fit through the Storage opening, such as bulky tents. Because they usually only camped out one night at a time—two at most—they could make do with just the bare minimum luggage.
“Did any monsters attack while we were asleep?”
“Only a few, Master. They were dying to be killed.”
This room was a dead end, but the monsters were constantly on the move, ready to pounce on any adventurer they found. This deep into the dungeon, monsters were mainly Rank B and possessed the intelligence to attack together in groups. Allen recalled the agent at the Real Estate Guild mentioning adventurers forming large parties of twenty, even up to fifty members—that latter number most likely taking into account rotating guard shifts during the night as well.
Although Allen’s party only had five people, five Spirits Cs always remained on lookout whenever they slept. As Summons did not need to sleep or eat, they did not need to take shifts. Allen still wanted to get his beauty sleep at night, so thanks to the Summons, the entire party could sleep without a care.
“Pretty quiet night, then.”
“Quiet as the dead, Master. None of the Wallys blew up.”
Hmm, so when our defense is perfect, we don’t get attacked. I feel like there’s a bit of ebb and flow to the frequency of monster encounters.
Maria’s words caused one of the Stone Es to swell up with pride. By now, Allen had largely finished analyzing the new Stone C Summon, as well as the Awakened Abilities of the other Stone-type Summons.
Stone E’s Awakened Ability: Explode
Causes the Summon to explode when a specified target comes within 5 m
The explosion’s shock wave expands out for 10 m
The Summon dies upon activation and its card disappears
Multiple copies can be Summoned at the same time
Can explode on Allen’s command
Cannot move while this Ability is active
Disappears automatically 24 hours after activation
Stone D’s Awakened Ability: Protect
Endurance stat is multiplied by 5
Can be disabled on Allen’s command
Effective for 1 hour
Cooldown: 1 day
Stone C’s Ability: Substitute
Can take damage on behalf of one target within a 50 m radius
Can move while this Ability is active
Stone C’s Awakened Ability: Sacrifice
Can take damage on behalf of all party members within a 50 m radius
Can move while this Awakened Ability is active
Effective for 1 hour
Cooldown: 1 day
Stone E’s Awakened Ability, Explode, contained enough destructive power to kill even Rank B monsters, making it dangerous to the party if it were to go off too close by. Therefore, Allen had left a few of them in the passageway outside the room the party had chosen to spend the night in. Their main purpose was to kill all approaching monsters, but the ensuing explosions also served as especially effective alarm clocks.
Stone D’s Awakened Ability, Protect, made it great as a decoy. Although its Attack stat was nothing to write home about, its overwhelming Endurance made it very hard to kill. It could help serve as an additional target to tank a group of monsters’ attacks.
Stone C could be tasked with protecting the party members with lower Endurance, such as Cecil and Keel, during battle. Now that they were facing Rank B monsters, the party was contending with attacks that dealt much higher damage.
Soon, everyone else had woken up and begun bustling around, packing up their belongings. Allen Summoned eight Frans—five for riding, three to scout ahead and set off any traps in their way. There was no way to perfectly circumvent all the traps, but this strategy at least proved useful against Teleport Traps.
“Two orc kings and one cyclops ahead!” Allen warned.
“Dogora, don’t let any of them through this time!” Cecil shouted, receiving a brusque “I know!” in reply.
The three Bird C scouts made first contact with the approaching monsters as Krena and Dogora charged forward, weapons tightly gripped in their hands. With how long they had spent in this Rank A dungeon, their levels had gone up quite significantly. Not even Rank B monsters scared them anymore. Their respective Attack Skills—Flying Slash and Full Might—had reached Lvl. 4, growing increasingly powerful with each level up. The two damage dealers now started spamming those skills, steadily whittling down the HP of the monsters ahead.
The orc king that Krena was fighting was the first to fall, soon followed by the other that served as Dogora’s opponent. Because Krena’s Attack was the higher of the two, Cecil directed her magic attacks at Dogora’s target, prioritizing reducing the number of enemies. They had gotten their cooperation down to a science.
“All right! Only the cyclops is left!”
Allen rallied everyone as they surrounded the monster that towered even higher than orc kings. Many Rank B monsters easily reached seven meters in height, making for very large targets. They then began raining attacks on it. Even Maria joined in the onslaught, firing off Psychokinesis over and over, gouging out sizable chunks of the cyclops’s health in the process. It was not long before it was on the verge of dying.
“ROOOAARRR!”
The giant monster’s club whistled with the speed of its swing. Dogora managed to block the attack using his ax, but was thrown off his mount in the process.
“You okay, Dogora?!” Cecil called out anxiously, seeing as he had been sent flying all the way back to where she was standing in the rear. Keel started making his way over to cast Healing Magic on him while Allen checked Dogora’s Status through his grimoire.
“Don’t worry. I’m fine.” Dogora immediately grabbed his ax and ran back to the front line. Just as he took his first step, however, a click sounded. “Huh? What’s this?” Before anyone could react, a magic circle expanded from underneath his foot. The next moment, both he and Cecil disappeared.
The two of them had been teleported. They were now somewhere out there in this expansive maze, without a healer, where Rank B monsters wandered freely.
“Dogora! Cecil!” Crap! Of all people, it had to be those two!
Leaving Krena to finish off the cyclops, Allen immediately Unsummoned all the Summons he had out remotely gathering XP and magic stones, then sent his grimoire into overdrive replacing the holder slots with Spirit Cs.
Our top priority is finding those two and delivering them recovery items.
As soon as each new Spirit C was made, she would fly out, passing through walls, holding several Fronds of Life and Seeds of Magic. Although normal recovery items could not pass through walls, the ones made from Grass-type Summons were able to.
Krena, who had already killed the cyclops, ran over with Keel. They both wore distraught expressions.
“What should we do, Allen? Should we go look too?” Keel asked.
Allen shook his head. “No, there’s no point in us all getting lost. Let’s wait for Maria to find them first.”
Thankfully, I gave them some recovery items to hold on to earlier. And they just got buffed too.
As a precaution, Allen had given every party member ten Fronds of Life and Seeds of Magic each, which fully restored HP and MP, respectively. There were no guarantees in adventuring; these were meant as insurance in case Allen left them for any reason and they had to make their way back out of a dungeon on their own. Furthermore, right before they engaged the cyclops in combat just now, he had buffed everyone four times using the Abilities and Awakened Abilities of all of his Fish-type Summons.
Fish D’s Awakened Ability: Disperse
Gives a 10% chance of Evading physical and magical attacks
Effective for 1 hour
Cooldown: 1 day
Fish C’s Ability: Shark Oil
Increases critical hit rate
Effective for 24 hours
Fish C’s Awakened Ability: Shark Skin
Gives a 10% chance of dealing a Critical Hit
Effective for 1 hour
Cooldown: 1 day
There was a certain probability that attacks could be “Evaded”—basically, nullified—in this world, with that exact number depending on a variety of factors, including the Agility and relevant skill levels of both attacker and evader. Magic was harder to Evade than physical attacks, likely working off of a different calculation.
Fish D’s Ability, Spray, gave a noticeable boost to the chance of Evading both physical and magical attacks regardless of the attacking monster’s stats. The Summon’s Awakened Ability, Disperse, brought this up to a hard ten percent chance. No matter how fast or how powerful a monster was, one in ten of its attacks—both physical and magical—would be completely nullified. Even considering that this buff lasted only an hour, this was an incredible boost.
In addition to Evasion, this world also had the concept of Critical Hits, which were attacks that dealt twice the normal damage. The rate for this also depended on both sides’ Agility and skill levels, but it was possible to further increase the chance of triggering this phenomenon by attacking an opponent’s weak spots. Allen recalled being on the receiving end of many such attacks when Dagrah was trying to kill him. Fish C’s Awakened Ability, Shark Skin, guaranteed a ten percent chance of landing these Critical Hits.
Thirty harrowing minutes passed after the Spirit Cs had flown off in all directions.
“RAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”
“Flame Lance!”
I found them! That way!
Allen finally spotted, through his Shared vision with one of the Spirit Cs, a blood-soaked Dogora standing protectively in front of Cecil at the entrance of a dead-end room. They were engaged in combat with three Rank B monsters—two king basilisks and one ogre. Judging by the situation, they had fled to this room and were now trapped.
The blood running down Dogora’s face indicated that they had used up all of their health recovery items within the past thirty minutes. While he exchanged furious blows with the seven-meter-tall ogre, blinded in one eye from the blood, Cecil desperately provided cover fire from behind.
The situation’s critical. Maria, use Poltergeist!
“Time to kill them all! Poltergeist!”
When Spirit C activated her Awakened Ability, dozens of gray, volleyball-sized orbs appeared in midair and shot straight at the monsters. This was an Area of Effect attack that cost a hundred MP and had a cooldown of one day, with each projectile packing as much destructive damage as a single Psychokinesis.
In no time at all, the three monsters were dead. Dogora and Cecil used the recovery items Maria had brought to heal themselves back up.
“Are you okay?” Allen asked through Maria.
As he tried to get his breath back, Dogora panted, “That...was a bit close...for comfort. Thanks...for coming...in time.”
The No-life Gamers normally had a pretty large safety margin when going through the dungeons, but that was possible only because they stuck together and had the help of the Summons. Things were much harder when it was just Dogora and Cecil alone.
“We’re coming to rejoin you soon. Stay here and don’t m—”
Heavy huffing interrupted Maria’s words, immediately followed by two huge boars coming into view.
Cecil gripped her wand. “In the meantime, we’ll continue fighting.”
Oh, crap! Marias, all of you, go help them!
While ordering all twenty Spirit Cs that had been scattered in various directions to change course, Allen told his companions, “Dogora and Cecil are both fine.”
“Really?!” Krena sighed with relief.
“Yep. I know where they are now, so let’s head over!”
“Okay!”
“Krena, Keel, we’re using Idaten, so hold on to your Fran tightly!”
With a higher-pitched “Kweee!” than normal, the Bird Cs mustered more strength than they ever had in their thighs, then blasted forward. Krena’s yelp of surprise overlapped with Keel’s scream.
“This is too faaast!”
Idaten was Bird C’s Awakened Ability. It enabled the Summon to run at three hundred kilometers per hour for one hour and had a cooldown of one day. The birds ran with their heads extended and parallel to the ground, not slowing down in the slightest even when going around sharp corners. Everyone grabbed on to the feathers of their mounts tightly to not get thrown off by the inertia of those turns.
Keel screamed, “We’re gonna die!”
“It’s fine. Just hang on!” Allen shouted back while guiding the Bird Cs. As before, three other Bird Cs went ahead of them to trigger all the traps. They encountered monsters along the way, but there was no time to deal with them. A few monsters reacted in time to take some swings at them, but by then the group was already out of sight, having ducked or dodged as needed.
Please let us get there in time!
Even though Allen knew where Dogora and Cecil were located, he and his companions could not phase through walls. They ended up taking a few wrong turns and had to detour, but the speed of Idaten proved more than enough to make up for any lost time.
There they are! Phew.
“RAAAAAHHHH!”
Slightly under an hour after they had set off, Allen’s group finally reached the room where Dogora and Cecil were holding out. They arrived just as the boy dealt the killing blow to another ogre. Twenty Spirit Cs floated in the air surrounding them, all holding Fronds of Life and Seeds of Magic.
“What a relief,” Allen said breathlessly while dismounting. “Are you two okay? I’m sorry I missed that one trap.”
Dogora waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, I’m the one who stepped on it.”
Allen was apologizing, but Dogora thought he was the one in the wrong. After some back-and-forth trying to take the blame, they agreed to just let bygones be bygones, and everyone celebrated their reunion.
“Still, things got pretty dicey this time. Should we recruit a Scout who can detect traps?” Allen asked, verbalizing what he had been thinking on the way over. If there had been a Scout with them, chances were high that this incident might have been avoided entirely.
“I mean, we’ve made it this far without one,” Keel replied, not sounding very enthusiastic about the idea.
That’s true. And if we invite another student, we’d have to start all over from the Rank C dungeons again.
“I think it’s more an issue of Keel and me standing too far in the back during battle,” Cecil said. “Going forward, let’s position ourselves right behind Allen.”
After the group discussed several more ways to take precautions against traps, they agreed to put the idea of adding a Scout to their party on hold.
“Well then, shall we get back to it?”
Krena huffed with gusto. “Let’s find the next floor today!”
With that, the No-life Gamers resumed going through the Rank A dungeon.
＊ ＊ ＊
It was now nearing the end of September, and summer break was coming to a close. After the incident where Cecil and Dogora had gotten separated from the party, they never got cut off from each other by a Teleport Trap again. Everyone stayed close enough together to all be within range of any that might trigger, while Allen continued sending his Summons ahead to set off as many as possible beforehand.
During their discussion that ended with the conclusion to not add a Scout to the party, the topic of what roles they would want to recruit came up. Allen fervently made a case for some form of buff support. Although both Allen and Keel had ways of casting buffs, this was by no means their specialty. Allen argued that the abilities of a support Talent could greatly bolster the strength of the entire party. That said, this group also lacked a dedicated tank, someone who could withstand enemy attacks while the others dealt damage. In the end, the No-life Gamers shared the understanding that their party still had a lot of room for growth.
