“Uh...”
The silliness astounded Sol, but he had to admit that he was curious about what they would come up with. And he wasn’t alone. Cool was justice as much as cute was justice.
The laid-back conversation was cut short as the sphere descended nearly close enough to reach and assumed a cocoon shape as the lightning crackling across its surface increased in intensity. The magic circles on the walls had also slid down as far as they could go.
“All right, the opening ceremony is over and the boss is actually spawning now,” Sol announced. “We have 180 seconds until full manifestation. Here’s the countdown.”
He shared the countdown, which Player had automatically started, with his party members, then commanded, “Reen, Julia, Frederica, Eliza, Rosalind: Deploy your Numbers armaments and assume your usual formation.”
Everyone cheerily acknowledged the order in their own way, and a storm of mana in each person’s signature colors—azure for Reen, pink for Julia, pure white for Frederica, crimson for Eliza, and silver for Rosalind—whipped up around them. They must have voiced the keywords they had each chosen, but Sol pretended not to hear them, as usual.
Moreover, their transformation left them wearing nothing but their foundation suits in a brief window when all their usual gear was in storage but their armaments had yet to appear; however, Sol made a conscious effort to keep his eyes on the boss during that time. This was helped by the fact that at night, he was already seeing each of them in turn with appearances far more titillating than the foundation suits. Of course, what happened there hardly made the transformation less embarrassing, but it was far more crucial that Sol started giving serious thought to how he wanted to treat the other girls besides Reen.
In any case, everyone finished transforming in a matter of seconds, then positioned themselves in their default formation. Reen, the tank, stood in the center and closest to the spawning boss; Julia, the healer, fell back to stand with Sol, the commander; and Frederica, Eliza, and Rosalind, attackers with different specialties, formed a three-point perimeter around the target.
As an aside, the definition of a Numbers armament had received a fundamental revision over the past month, making Rosalind’s Type Rodem one too. The new numbers were as follows: Reen’s was Number One, Julia’s was Number Two, Eliza’s was Number Three, Frederica’s was Number Four, and lastly, Rosalind’s was Number Five. Frederica had suggested periodically updating the numbering, making it a system to rank the members of Libertadores, but the idea had been turned down. Sol liked the trope, but he didn’t want to have to apply a grading criteria to his closest companions. Luna expressed great enthusiasm for the concept, as hierarchies really spoke to her, but it was ultimately decided that the armaments would be set based on the order in which everyone had joined the group. Number Six and beyond remained undetermined, with there being plans for a reevaluation of all armaments when Abyss was fully conquered, at which point all members of Libertadores would have received their own personalized equipment.
Steve and Ishli had been rather resistant to the idea, as they truly did not think themselves capable of combat. However, they didn’t have much of a case when Eliza, Johan, Louise, and even Rosalind were giving it their all. Being an adult was surprisingly difficult at times.
Sol was quite enthusiastic about the idea of going dungeon diving with Steve and Ishli. Gawain was amenable to it, whereas Ethelweld, who had already officially passed on his crown, had submitted a petition asking to participate. Sol had already been thinking about forming a second party of just guys, so it was fortuitous timing. In fact, this party would indeed be created at a later date, composed of the group known as the “Four Dons of Libertadores”—Gawain, Steve, Ishli, and Ethelweld—and former Istekarian emperor Fritz and Creed of the devinians. This would in turn lead to Ethelweld’s adventurer companions from back in the day joining Libertadores too, but that story is from further down the line.
Returning to the present, the cocoon of light had suddenly stopped pulsing, with the lightning disappearing just as abruptly. Light gathered toward the center of the mass as cracks appeared in its surface and fragments started melting away. The floating figure within slowly spread its eighteen wings as it gradually came into full view.
“Enemy analysis has started. Sharing that too... Whoa, this one is really beefy.” As usual, Sol was doing this as a part of the prep work before fighting a floor boss, but he couldn’t help being surprised by the numbers he was seeing.
Frederica shared his sentiment. “An HP barrier strength of 28,000 is far more than double what we’ve seen before.”
The term “beefy” was adventurer slang for monsters with tough HP barriers that would take a long time to whittle down before they could be harmed directly. Of course, normal adventurers had no way to quantify a monster’s HP like Sol did, but they could get a general sense of it based on experience, and such information was usually shared through the Adventurer’s Guild. Keeping track of what skills and spells and how many of them one’s party had landed on a monster was one of the basics of being an adventurer. How many HP points a single attack dealt could vary greatly based on elemental weakness and individual differences, so one shouldn’t be overly reliant on such information, but having a rough benchmark was better than being completely in the dark. A party could then look at the resources they had on hand and make the call to avoid the encounter or, if avoidance wasn’t possible, how best to make a tactical retreat. Rather than wasting supplies on a fight they couldn’t win, they could focus on creating an opening to slip away. Such split-second decisions could easily determine life or death in a dungeon or territory.