Chapter 89: The Academy Dungeon 7
I will omit the details from the thirty-first to thirty-third floor and tell you what I understand from that experience.
“If you see an enemy, don’t approach them.”
If I carelessly approached them then it would turn into a battle. On the contrary, if I don’t get close to them, most of the time they will not come to attack me.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of enemies.
“Aah, this is really tough.....”
I’m fine with one on one fight. It takes some time but I can win. However, if there are more than one then, it won’t be as hard as fighting Claris-san and the other but it will still be tough.
I still have my tension but if it keeps getting harder like this then I don’t know what will happen.
Also, it took me more time than I expected and I have to take a break. The warm sunshine is good and all but this place is a dungeon. When I check the time with my clock, it is already well past noon, dinner time is only a few hours away. I planned to have gone up to the thirty-fifth floor already at this point.
If I can capture the thirty-third floor today then I think I will take a break. It will be later than I planned but it would still be okay since I included an extra day in my schedule. If I put the extra day into calculation then I think it would be good to stop here today.
Additionally, the thing that is weighing down on my mind is not just that. There’s also the fact that I used more consumable items than expected. I bought them thinking that I have plenty of room to spare but considering the future, I don’t think that will be the case. I might spend it all before I even get to the fortieth floor at this rate.
But I can’t run away if I don’t use it so I can’t afford to use them sparingly.
Sometimes it is even hard to escape.
And since this guy starts spawning after the thirty-third floor, I think the rate I will have to use the items will keep increasing.
The monster that appears in front of me is staring my way while fluttering its wings, each of its wings has the size of my arm. It’s a glamorous monster called [Harpia.]
Monet-san, Onegaishimasu.
Harpia is the monster that I want to avoid the most on my way to the fortieth floor. One of the reasons I want to avoid them is the same as why I want to avoid the imps. If the imp is a tiny cutie then Harpia is a big cutie. Since its facial features are somewhat youthful, it has a baby-face but its fully developed body will give you the feeling of an adult.
If a harpia goes to a bar then it might be asked to show its ID. The imp and knocker? Those guys are out of the question.
Now then, there are a lot of points that I have to beware of when fighting a harpia. First of all, its clothes that its huge pair of breasts are spilling out from, the chestnut color bra.........not. There’s nothing wrong there.
The thing that I have to watch out for is its sharp claws that extend from its bird-like feet.
According to what I heard from sempai, it will point its claws at me while descending and that it will sometimes use wind magic as well.
The harpia countermeasure was....
“Running away, of course.”
But there’s a problem. The magic stones. I will have some leeway with them if I use fire or sound magic stone but since they spawn from the thirty-third floors to the fortieth floors, it is quite a distance to cover.
Should I use a magic stone if only one appears?
Even though the rate I have to use them against the horse and snake has been increasing rapidly, should I still use it on them? Well, considering the harpia strength then the conclusion is that [I won’t use it if there’s only one of them.]
This time I want to find out the magic stone effectiveness so I will use it. If you want to experiment, you better do it when it is alone. I don’t know what will happen so I take as much safety margin as possible.
I take out a low-level magic stone and use it on the harpia.
First is fire. It might be because I saw what the intermediate-level one can do, the fireball looks small and unreliable. However, it seems the harpia doesn’t like that and immediately move to avoid it.
It’s fast.
The harpia might be the most mobile monster I have encountered so far. It came to counter-attack by descending at me with its sharp claws immediately after it avoided the fireball.
It was like an arrow cutting through the wind.
It is descending at me with tremendous speed but its attack is too straight forward. I can easily avoid it but I decided to catch it instead.
I received the attack with third hand and catch it with fourth hand. *Gakin* the sound of metal hitting metal resounded and an impact runs through my body. But that was it.
Compared to the clambon, the attack is clearly weaker. But it’s still troublesome in a different meaning.
“As expected, it’s fast.”
Stepping on fourth hand, the harpia soar to the sky again. Then it widely opens its mouth and let out a loud scream.
I clicked my tongue. There’s a lot that I still haven’t experiment on yet but I should start running away soon. No, it’s too late for that.
I swat down an arrow that flying at me from the side and look at that direction. At that place, there’s a centaur.
The most troublesome part of the Harpia is that it can call for its friends. If I came here with a party to earn the magic elements then it would be a good thing but I am soloing the dungeon right now and I am almost completely useless against flying monster.
*Swoosh* An arrow struck near my feet. It must be constructed with magic since it soon disappears, leaving only a hole in the ground.
That arrow was precisely aimed at my body but if I am distracted by the centaur then the harpia will come to attack me.
It might call more of its friends too.
It’s clearly disadvantageous to fight them. Should I run?
To defeat them, I must do something about the harpia first. But since it is flying in the sky, I can only throw a stone or use other consumable items on it.
No choice but to escape huh.
It took me thirty minutes to escape from them.
“That harpia is too annoying.”
After eating my dinner, I drink a cup of freshly brewed coffee and think back about today.
Originally, I planned to capture the thirty-fifth floor today. But what happened? I am on the thirty-forth floor right now. Even though I didn’t make any progress at all, I am preparing to go to bed.
It will be bad if I keep going like this. I need to come up with a countermeasure against the harpies and fast.
The thing I know is that they are very cautious. It is difficult to snipe them down. It is easy to deal with them if there’s only one of them. And the most troublesome thing is....
“I have to do something to prevent it from calling more of its friends......”
It is an ideal monster when you want to grind for experience points in the game but it is the worst monster when I want to run away.
And not just the same species, annoyingly, it can call the centaur too. Fortunately, the centaur stop appearing after the thirty-seventh floor but that is still far away. Besides, considering that there will be other troublesome guys appearing at the later floor it would turn into a zero-sum game. If they are spawning together then it will be very hard to break through.
....I thought that it would be easy to escape from them at first but I was wrong.
Keep fighting to the minimum and keep running away. That was certainly effective until the thirtieth floor.
Since the map got bigger, it should take me two days to run through it. That was what I thought.
However, getting here earlier than this might turn out to be more difficult. I will have to run with only a few breaks in between. If I keep the break time to the bare minimum then it would save me one or two hours.... No, was one or two hours make that big a difference in the first place?
The most effective countermeasure is probably the sound magic stone. Since hitting it directly proved to be difficult, if I can hit it indirectly then I should be able to create an opening. but unfortunately.
“There’s only a few left......”
If I can change it with other magic stones then I would.
Besides the fire magic stones, I still have a lot of other attribute magic stones left. Was it better to forsake them to get more sound magic stone?
No, that’s not possible. I can’t make an optimal item loadout without doing a test run. Instead, I should be glad that I was able to make it here without doing one in the first place.
Did I use the sound magic stones too much because they are cheap?
Yup, let’s sleep for now. I will think about it more tomorrow.