Chapter 188: Days of Connect, Connecting and Being Connected Part 1
Chapter 188: Days of Connect, Connecting and Being Connected Part 1
Turned out that ochazuke was not enough for me, so I have decided to make some other simple dish to go along with that.
I added oil on the frying pan, heated it up and then added leftover rice and broth to it. Then I scavenged the contents of the refrigerator for things I could throw in to the mix, and once I have found them I threw them in on the pan with all the rest. I finished the ‘dish’ with a pinch of both salt and pepper.
「I shall name this dish…… What the hell, this is your typical fried rice in there, ain’t it?」
Or you could even call it a half-assed chicken rice, but without ketchup and all that other fancy stuff…… OK, starting from today, thou shalt be called ‘Chicken Rice’! Now, maybe I should add some egg into you for some added flavor?
「Alright, for now I have tried to defeat one of the Bosses in the city’s towers, and as for the result of that……」
I quickly finish my meal and then log in on the SNS chat group, to report that the Magic Absorbing boss has been successfully defeated.
The name of the Magic absorbing boss was Clione. And while Clione was a truly formidable enemy because of his Magic-Absorbing ability, it had a one fatal flaw that proven to be the end of it: it was laughingly weak against physical attacks. Also, for some reason all of its attacks were magic based, and they were all in shape of cones or other things that made them quite easy to dodge if you knew what was coming.
But on the other hand, something about the Clione’s setting seemed to be really fishy to me. And I do not mean the smell here. This boss seemed way too FRESH for me.
Basically, all of the monsters in here are rotten or decomposed to some degree. No matter if it’s the fish zombie, mermaids or the gigantic fish predators. Or even if they were not rotten, there was this fleshy odor coming from them.
However, I could feel none of the above mentioned things from Clione. It is really difficult to put into words properly, that sense of inconsistency…… Umm, yeah. It’s like there was some kind of mistake in the writing, perhaps?
Let’s illustrate it as follows: the boss uses a magic attack that looks like a row of throwing knives. So you’d expect the projectiles to act like knives in terms of physics, right? Well, wrong. The attack may look like knives, but in reality it works just like a freaking shotgun shells, with their spread and damage and all that. So, like, there is a real sense of being disconnected from what you see versus what you actually get.
Come to think of it now, a whole lot more enemies in here had that sense of inconsistency to them. For examples, the mermaids may look like mermaids, but you get the feeling that it was actually something else that was just forced to act like a mermaid…… So yeah.
「The bottom of the bot which contained boiling water that started to overflow, closed gates that you can only pass by but in one direction, a friendly NPCs that wants to ally with you but because of a bug you can see that they are really an enemy, so the whole plot twist of the quest goes out the window big time……」
「What on Earth are you even talking about?」
「I am trying to verbalize the concept laying behind the mechanics governing this whole underwater city, and when I put my thoughts into words my brain cells tend to work with way more efficiency.
「Oh, oooh……?」
「Sanraku-san, you sometimes act as if you were sick. I’m really worried about you, you know?」
「An illness?」
How rude. It’s not an illness. It’s called brainstorming. Have you ever heard about that before? You should really try it sometimes.
However, there is one huge problem here: with my current build I will be unable to defeat the boss that nullifies physical attacks. If I wanted to try my luck at bringing that thing down, I would need the help of Magic user such as Mold or Akitsu Akane…… and then there is the problem of two other bosses that would remain.
「Magic does damage, but physical attacks get nullified. But sometimes it can be the other way around, or it might even work interchangeably……」
However, I have no way of knowing what is it exactly, but I feel as though Clione is the key to the mystery in here.
It might be safe to assume that the remaining two bosses can be like Clione here, nullifying Magic damage, or the complete opposite, which means nullifying physical damage. That line of thinking is not wrong, as the two bosses that remain are sure to have some sort of restrictions that are there to ramp up the difficulty of their respective battles.
But, one must remember that in here, in this underwater city, everything is revered by nature. Oil is water, water is oil, North Pole would be the South Pole and vice versa…… That’s right, it is always coming in pairs.
When it comes to inversion, it is a process that cannot actually be done unless the thing it works on does not have the second side. You need to have both ‘front’ and ‘back’, or else upon inversion nothing would happen.
So, following that logic, it appears as though our initial thought of this place and its rulers was fundamentally wrong from the very beginning. We thought that what we are dealing here are one Unique Monster and four boss monster that guards the towers, while in reality……
「Two bodies that are actually being split into two…… Or so it would seem.」
Kutanid is a given here, since it is the main source of this place’s gimmick to begin with. So that would leave the remaining two monsters, right? What is their gimmick? What makes for their strengths? And what makes their weaknesses? Could it be Critical Hits? Or maybe a limited window of opportunity to dish out damage?
「Nah, that cannot be it. Rust said that no matter the type of bow and arrows, neither physical nor magic ones did any damage. But at the same time, the hits seemed to have connect. According to Mold, it seemed as though the players’ attacks seemed to be effective every time they were at the disadvantage and vice versa. And according to Akitsu Akane, his kunais seemed to have sometimes hit and sometimes they would get nullified……」
While I was processing all those information, a mermaid approached us and started singing. I reflexively hit it with a high kick that manage to dislocate its jaw, but poor Emul was still hit with the song and fell from his rightful place on my shoulders. At that time my thinking processes accelerate even further.
Amongst all of the testimonies I managed to gather, the one from Mold seems to be the most important one. While the ones from Rust and Akitsu Akane are more or less the same, Mold one is distinct and unique.
「Being able to damage the boss only when you have the advantage and being able to damage the boss only when you are at a disadvantage……」