“Anyway, how should we deal with flying needlefish?”
“...Well, what about the Explosion spell, Nao?” Haruka asked. “Would that be more effective?”
“Oh, are you thinking that the shock waves would blow them away? I guess it could work, but there are a few potential issues,” I replied. “For one thing, I haven’t mastered Explosion yet, and for another, the spell could also hurt the people climbing down, so I wouldn’t recommend it. What about a spell like Storm Cutter instead?”
“That would probably have the desired result, but I haven’t mastered it either,” said Haruka. “My Wind Magic is still only Level 5, after all.”
Explosion, Storm Cutter, and Jet Fire, the latter of which I’d used earlier, were all Level 8 spells. We prioritized practicing spells that seemed likely to be useful, but the difficulty of casting scaled directly with level, so high-level spells were much harder to master, especially for someone like Yuki whose skill levels were lower than mine. Hey, wait... Now that I think about it, Sae can cast Level 8 spells just fine, can’t she? Man, I should have asked her to show me some so I could take notes. Oh well.
“We’ll just have to rely on Touya,” said Yuki. “Touya, if we get hit with another shoal of flying needlefish, I bet you can spin around and cut ’em all out of the air, right?”
Yuki was acting cute, looking up at Touya with an index finger to her cheek, but Touya’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“What? With unstable footing and one free hand? No way!”
Haruka laughed. “Well, that stands to reason. It would be amazing if you could actually do it, however.”
“I bet you can cut arrows out of the air too. You’re so cool, big bro Touya!” said Metea.
“Huh? Did you not hear me earlier? Sorry, Metea, but there’s no way,” said Touya. He sounded almost as if he was afraid of her asking him to demonstrate on the spot. Unfortunately for her, he simply wasn’t on that level yet.
“How about you give it a go, Yuki?” Touya suggested. “You can use Isolation Field just like Nao did, right?”
“Me? I mean, yeah, but wouldn’t it be better to leave it to Nao? He’s sooo much better at magic than I am.”
“Okay, is the objective to keep them from attacking us so we don’t have to face them head-on?” I asked. “I guess I can probably manage that, although it creates another problem after we climb down.”
The Isolation Field spell could probably protect me from both flying needlefish and arrowhead eagles, but I would be in danger if I ended up alone on the ledge and had to face off against other monsters.
“So what if we have just me and Nao rappel down?” Touya suggested. “We’ve practiced. We know it’s possible. Based on what happened earlier, we should have some lead time after we start climbing before the monsters come after us. We can probably make it all the way down.”
“So you’re suggesting that we just scramble down to the ledge before the monsters get us, huh? That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “But...”
“...the two of you wouldn’t be able to return to the rest of us,” Haruka finished. “And then there’s the risk of the ropes breaking.”
Touya had been about three to four meters down the rock wall when the three arrowhead eagles attacked us, followed by about twenty flying needlefish. If the numbers of attackers increased with our descent, then we might have to face as many as a hundred flying needlefish on our way down to the ledge. True, that was the worst-case scenario, but even if the total number of needlefish was smaller, we couldn’t count on good luck, especially where our rope was concerned.
“We could return with teleportation magic, although honestly, relying that much on magic always feels dicey to me,” I said.
“Well, if magic is an option, we could just teleport our whole party down to the ledge,” Yuki pointed out.
“Oh, right,” I said. “How did I not think of that?”
When teleporting to an area within line of sight, the odds of failure were low, so there was no need for us to take the risks involved in climbing down.
But Haruka shook her head. “I considered that option myself, but I have a feeling that if we rely on teleportation to make progress, it’ll come back to bite us. Pulling off Teleport requires a great deal of Time Magic practice, so it’s not exactly cheating, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t feel right to me.”
“Oh, yeah, I totally get what you mean,” I said. “Like, in some games, if you use teleportation to sequence break, you can end up running into enemies that are way too powerful for you.”
It seemed natural enough to apply the logic of games to the situation at hand, so although Haruka’s conclusion had been a little ambiguous, I nodded. So did Touya.
“So you’re basically saying that if we can’t get deeper into the dungeon with just our own power, you think it’s a sign we’re not strong enough and we need to train longer, right?” he asked.
“Yes, exactly,” Haruka replied. “I believe that would be a sound tactic—do you all agree?”
“I certainly do,” said Natsuki. “It’s best to have some kind of benchmark that we can refer to in estimating our likelihood of safely clearing new levels.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Haruka. “That being the case, I think it would be best to try climbing down rather than relying on magic. But I do have another concern—that monsters will continue bombarding us even after we survive the first wave.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “Touya could probably endure multiple waves just fine, but...”
No new monsters had attacked Touya while he’d been climbing back down to collect the flying needlefish that were stuck in the wall. However, if that was just a coincidence—if the monsters simply took some time to respawn—then we might have to deal with more flying needlefish on our way down.
“We are in a dungeon, so it could happen,” said Yuki. “Well, for now, let’s just use Nao as bait and see what happens...”
“I’m honestly kind of conflicted about your word choice there, but I guess I don’t have any other options.”
“As long as I’m up here with everybody else, it’ll be pretty easy for us to pull you up, dude,” said Touya.
My ranking within the party in terms of weight was classified. Still, I couldn’t deny that I was lighter than Touya, and it would be way easier for him to pull me up than vice versa.
“Well, if we’re talking about weight, we do have one person who’s lighter than Nao,” said Haruka.
“Mm, indeed,” said Natsuki. “And that person happens to be capable of casting Isolation Field as well.”
Haruka and Natsuki smiled playfully and gave Yuki some pointed glances.
“Huh? D-Do I have to?”
Yuki’s eyes darted around nervously. In terms of weight and magic proficiency, Yuki and I were equally good options for this task, but I was a guy, so...
“Don’t worry,” I said gallantly. “I’ll handle it this time—”
Metea suddenly interrupted me. “I’ll do it!”
“Huh?”
All of us turned around to look at her. She didn’t seem at all discouraged by our skeptical reactions; she puffed out her chest confidently.
“I’m the lightest person in this party!”
“That’s true,” said Haruka. “However...”
Of course, none of the girls could seriously claim they were lighter than Metea. Given the delay between detecting new foes and engaging them in combat, we could probably pull Metea back up the cliffside before she was in real danger. Still, I wasn’t sure if it was worth exposing her to that kind of risk.
“Big bro Nao’s magic would make all the fishes fall down, and that’s a waste!” said Metea.
“Yeah, true, they’ll just bounce off the barrier and fall into the chasm,” I said.
If we were lucky, some of them might land on a ledge, but I couldn’t cast the spell directly behind my back, so the wind would probably carry most of them all the way down to the bottom of the cliff.
“I can handle stuff that’s hard!”
Now I’m not sure what to do. I glanced at Metea’s older sister for her opinion.
Mary had a serious expression on her face. “If you really consider us members of Meikyo Shisui, please give Metea a chance,” she said with a nod.
“Oh, this isn’t as crucial as you might think, Mary,” I said. “But...”
It was difficult for me to give her a straight no. We were their guardians, so it wasn’t really right for us to put the sisters in danger, but they’d made their own decision to become adventurers, and they’d been working for a few months now. If we truly considered them our peers, we needed to approach this issue with an eye toward pragmatism.
“Metea can’t defend herself as well as the rest of us, but she is very light, so it would be easy for us to pull her up,” I said. “The risks involved in climbing down are about the same for her as they are for any of the rest of us other than Touya, so I guess the main disadvantage is that she doesn’t have magic to counterattack.”
Metea stood on her tiptoes and waved her right hand in front of Touya’s face. “But I’m small, so I can dodge easily!”
She proceeded to kneel and curl up into a ball, looking at me as if to say, “See?” It was cute, but there was no need for her to demonstrate that she was a smaller target than Touya when the difference was so obvious at a glance.
“Hmm. Well, I think we could let Metea go ahead with Nao right above her,” said Haruka.
“Oh, yeah, I could create a safe area that she could retreat into if necessary. That’s not a bad idea at all.”
The ledge was at least twenty meters below us. It wouldn’t be easy to haul Metea all the way back up after she’d descended that far, but if I was positioned directly above her, I could simply pull her back to me. It would be easy enough to ensure her safety.