Chapter 30: The Beginner Feels As Though He Has Reached His Limits
Chapter 30: The Beginner Feels As Though He Has Reached His Limits
「Climbing Edge!」
As a matter of fact, there was no need for activating the skills in this game with voice commands. However, by doing so you were making sure that you would use exactly that particular skill and that you would not use anything else by accident.
This is the knowledge that I gained upon investigating about ShanFro online, and I was going to use that knowledge to bring down the Mud Digger, which was currently stuck in the swamp like a sinking ship. Now I intended to climb on top of it. This trick could actually be accomplished without utilizing any skills, but I needed them because my Strength stat was so abysmally low.
Making use of my bare legs which were marked with Luukan’s curse, I pierce the Mud Digger’s body with my Vorpal Knives and climbed up as if its belly was in fact a climbing wall. Unlike the fur of the black wolf that was as hard as steel and only depleted my weapons durability, the Mud Digger’s stomach was soft, so even someone as weak as me was able to climb it with the assist of skills.
After all, it was only while trying to break the basic laws of physics you could feel as though you were playing this game to the fullest.
「Uhyah! This is actually amazing!」
「For now we are climbing, but…… I wonder what should we do next?」
「Gyaaah! Looks like my praise was too early!!!」
I can’t help it. When I think about strategizing ahead of time I get shivers running down my spine. …… But if I said that out loud, then my pride as the solo player would have been driven through the mud. Mud Digger’s body was quite large, but its head was relatively low and for someone with my Agility it was a relatively easy climb to accomplish.
「I’ll focus on balancing on top of this guy, so please take care of overwhelming it with a continuous barrage of magical attacks.」
「C, continuous!? I, I was always the type who believed in one punch (Note: The joke would be too obvious here, so I’m not going to do it. Don’t even try to beg me for it!) one kill kind of strategy……」
「Impossible is nothing! If you think you can do it, you can do it!」
「I, I…… I’M GONNA DO IT! “Additional Cast! Add Spell”!」
While Emul was concentrating his magic, I was doing my best at balancing on top of the Mud Digger’s head.
However, the boss wasn’t going to just let us stay on top of it wailing at it with magic. It began to thrash its head about the place, but the fact that it was also trying to bite me at the same time was actually working in our favor!
「Now it’s paradoxically more stable than before! Now I don’t feel like I am balancing on a rope anymore!」
Would something like that be possible in any other game? I don’t think so.
Its fangs, its nose, its lips…… There were so many places on which I could create some kind of footing for myself. It’s head was about the size of a small car, so under normal circumstances I wouldn’t stand a chance against a monster like that, but since it was the game world nothing was impossible for me.
「Let’s do this, Sanraku-san!」
「Right, let’s rip this guy a new one!」
「You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t want to comment on that…… “Magic Edge”!」
I know it was pretty much unreasonable to ask someone to continuously cast magic at a moving target while balancing on top of its head, especially since apparently it grew tired of us being there and was growing more aggressive in its attempts to shake us off. But if we were to fall off now we probably wouldn’t be able to repeat a stunt like this again.
Emul activated his spell and a magical blade twice as large as the previous one appeared, and he launched it straight into the Mud Digger’s eye…… But the boss shifted its position and the spell ended up hitting its head instead.
「SHIIGYAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!」
Still, the spell was devastating enough to force the Mud Digger into the swamp…… For a moment out there I felt a sharp prick in my mind, as if something was telling me that something was wrong here, but that feeling vanished as suddenly as it appeared.
「Yes! We did it! We really did it, Sanraku-san!」
「Yeah, I guess we did.」
Together with Emul we fall right into the swamp. The fall damage wasn’t all that great thanks to the equipment we were wearing, but the feeling of getting completely covered in mud and murky water was something I would rather not do again.
「Agyaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! My clothes! My precious clothes!!!」
「Guh…… My whole body feels like wet tissue right now……」
Not to mention that I was completely covered in mud and it was really difficult to move right now. Yet another thing only a game like that could pull off. We were completely covered in filth, but at least we managed to defeat that boss……
「Wait, wait, wait……!」
Mud Digger was nowhere to be found. No, that’s not it. There were still ripples visible on the water’s surface, so it meant it wasn’t over yet. Was the source of my uneasiness some sort of special action that the boss performed? How much HP did it have left? Was it another stage of the boss battle? The whole swamp was shaking right now. If it was an area of effect attack, then we are a dead meat……
「EMUL!!!」
「Unyuh!?」
Gathering all of the scarce information right now, my mind forces my body to move. I manage to get to Emul’s side, grab him by the ears and throw him out of the swamp, outside of the danger zone. In the next moment the whole swamp shook and trembled, and I was unable to move an inch, as if being held in place by some kind of invisible chains.
Damn, was it still hiding a special attack like that? …… Wait a minute, so instead of Agility-type it had some other attribute as well!?
「Body…… Move……!!!」
「S, Sanraku-san! Below! It’s coming from below!!!」
「Below……!?」
It was as though all the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place…… Its sinking, shaking swamp, my inability to move and its overall shape and size.
WHOOSH!!! The attack strikes me like lightning.
The boss emerges from the muddy water all at once, creating a huge wave-like attack.
For a few seconds the monster stands still on its back legs…… No way…… Could it be……!?
The monster stopped moving, and then from below……
「Ah, what is this……? Whack a mole……?」
In the next moment I was hit with a mud pillar so huge and so powerful that I was launched into the air, and I couldn’t tell the sky from the ground.
Mud Digger.
When it comes to its overall characteristics it is more of a chimera than any other monster, since it has a head of a shark, the body of a dragon with muscular limbs and fish fins. …… That is quite a combination to be had.
It has a special attack which involves submerging itself into the water, stopping its opponents from moving and then obliterating one of them at random with a huge mud pillar that shoots from below the water’s surface.
When playing solo and standing inside the swamp, this attack will affect you with a one hundred percent success rate and additionally you are going to suffer some fall damage. This can be avoided if one was to refrain from going inside of the swamp. It is also possible to lure it out of the swamp, but it is a really difficult thing to do.
Because of the movement penalty inside the swamp it is recommended to switch to some light armor for the duration of this fight.
Aside from that, if facing it alone, one will be met with almost certain death……
That kind of move is called an “Insta-Kill.”