Chapter 86: Emergency Item Craft, Paper-Thin Armor Part 1
Chapter 86: Emergency Item Craft, Paper-Thin Armor Part 1
「Hey, Break! Something is about to come out of this thing! It doesn’t look good!」
「That much I can see myself! No need to rush me! It looks kinda tough, but this should do the trick…… Just swing it at this thing a few times and see if it works properly. And if you happen to break it, I can just fix it again on the spot.」
With those words of advice, Break handed me the Dullahan sword. There was no visible change to it, but just by holding it in my hands I could already feel the difference.
「So light? And what’s with the blade? This feeling is rather good if I do say so myself……」
「Since I don’t have my furnace or anvil with me, the only thing I could do on the spot were some emergency repairs and sharpening. Because of that its durability is not all that great, but it should still pack a nice punch.」
Ah, I see. The blade had the additional effect of “extra sharpening” to it, now that I see its status. I can see that she managed to get the blade in shape in just a short amount of time she was given, but there were still specks of rust and dried blood on the sword’s blade. Still, its feel was way better than before.
「Low durability…… Limited number of swings…… Seems like one heck of a challenge quest to me.」
I’d say about eight swings or so…… Will this be enough to defeat that boss?
Just how much damage can I dish out with a single swing? And how do I calculate the damage needed to bring the spooky skeleton down? Remaining ever-vigilant, I start to analyze all the information I had on me to see if a pattern would emerge that would lead me to victory.
「Think you can do it, boy!?」
「Yes, we sure will!」
Now, looking at the Humming Rich, there were some nasty-looking black flames that were starting to accumulate inside of its staff. And it wasn’t just burning inside of it. It was leaking outside the staff, covering the ornaments on it, making the whole thing look like a giant jaw of some scary monster.
「GUGI, GAH, GIGIGIGI……」
「KUKEKEKEKEKEKE! KEKEKA! KAKA!」
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「IIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!! GYAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!」
「GEGAGAGA!!! GAGAGE! GAGAGAGAGA!!!」
「GUOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!」
「AAA, GAAAH ––––––––– GAAAAAAHHHHHH––––––!!!」
What was that? Whispers, screams, moans, shouts, groans, gurgles…… All of those sounds were currently coming from within the Humming Rich. …… Ah, I see now how it is. It’s not coming from inside of it. There were about six jaws growing out of its staff at the moment, making noises like that.
「E-even more enemies!?」
「…… No, this might actually work in our favour here.」
The black flames started to turn into clouds of smoke. Then the smoke started to solidify as it was dividing itself into six parts. What emerged from that were six copies of Humming Rich, except they didn’t have the magic staffs, were a whole lot smaller, and each of them carried a different type of weapon…… I could see this fight go into three basic directions from here.
Pattern one: they would attack interchangeably whilst teleporting all around the place. And since the main body started to shrink to adapt to them, they would probably try to mix it amongst them, making it harder for us to find the main body and damage it. It wasn’t helping that the bodies didn’t have any distinguishing features.
Pattern two: there would be no alteration, but rather attack pattern involving all of them attacking all at once. In that case we would have to focus all of our effort on the main body whilst ignoring the fake ones, which would be really hard to do in and of itself. …… However, I don’t really think that the game would really go with that pattern.
Pattern three: they would all attack independently of one another, acting like six completely separate and unique units. Somehow, I was willing to believe that this pattern would be the most likely to occur.
「I just hope that they are sharing the HP bar with the main body……!」
It would be a huge help if those things were just all part of one body that split up. Then it would be technically possible to defeat the main body simply by damaging the copies.
「Fuh…… about eight minutes have already passed, I believe?」
I had about eight attacks with that sword that I could use, so I had to make every single one of them count. Not to mention that all of my current skills have quite tricky trigger conditions. So before I can satisfy all of them, I need to gather as much information as possible.
「We’ve got a whole lot of work to do…… Break! Emul! No matter what happens, stay close to me……!」
「Right!」
「On it!」
If it was right at the beginning of the game, it would be really hard for me to maneuver around whilst carrying two bunnies on my back which weighed as much as a small child, but right now it was no problem at all. …… Although I must admit, that friggin hammer was really heavy.
Just then five bodies rushed at me, with two others staying at the back, probably to support the ones that were approaching us right now. The situation was not good….. But at the same time it wasn’t all that bad!
「Staff. Sword. Spear. Bow. Axe. Dual Swords and…… A shield?」
I checked the weapons they were carrying, but somehow it didn’t make any sense for me? Like that last one. Was that really a shield? It was too small to be a shield, in my opinion. And even if it was a buckler, there was something seriously wrong with it.
「GUGOAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!」
「Duooah!?」
Such a small shield…… Then I saw something. It was only for a moment, but I think I saw something similar to a throat right in the middle of that shield. Right after that, the inside of the throat lit bright orange and there was a gush of flames that was expelled from the shield, making it look kind of like a flamethrower. I immediately used the skill Drift Step to avoid the gush of flames, at the same time noticing two distinct things.
First thing was that it seemed to me that the monsters thought that they were the hunters here and I was the one being hunted.
Another thing is that Drift Step turned out to be a whole lot more versatile that I would have thought.
「Uhahaha! I get the feeling that my feet are surprisingly tired after that!」
The sword swung down, the spear was thrust forward, and the others started to perform maneuvers that simply wouldn’t be possible for humans to pull off…… For now I focus my attention on dodging and not letting myself get hit by any attacks.
Also, I think that this skill should be named Drift Slip instead of Step, but I really like it so far.
「M, my eyes! They are spinning around and around……!?」
「Keep a close watch on them! Tell me right away if they try to flank us!」
「Yeah, yeah…… Time to swing my hammer around for a bit……!!!」
The AI in this game was not stupid, but it wasn’t exactly brilliant either. It was following my evasive maneuvers, but the way in which it was doing that was rather straightforward. I was getting slightly impatient, but I decided to play it safe, so that I wouldn’t get caught off guard like with that flamethrower just now.
「I don’t like half-assing things like that, but if that’s the game you want to play, then have at you!」