Chapter 44

“I’ll pull the boss until it’s far away! Everyone else just focus on getting rid of the minions!” Without waiting for a response, Kisanuki spun around and began running westward, into the swamp. The slime boss followed at a much faster speed than Yuuma would have expected for something its size. This was too reckless. Kisanuki knew as much about MMORPGs, if not more, as Yuuma did, so he had to know how risky it was to pull boss monsters. For instance, even if the boss wasn’t able to catch up with Kisanuki, it could still chip away at his hit points using long-range attacks, eventually killing him. If Kisanuki had some way of evading or blocking the water laser, it might be a different story, but Yuuma was pretty sure Kisanuki hadn’t accessed his demon exploit yet. It was too late to tell him to come back, though. If Kisanuki turned around now, he would just wind up running smack-dab into the boss instead. “Kisanuki… He must feel responsible for using up too many of the plants…,” Aoi whispered. She looked like she was about to cry as she watched the silhouettes of Kisanuki and the slime boss disappear into the distant fog. Maybe Kisanuki did feel guilty, but if so, the blame lay as much at Yuuma’s feet for failing to tell Kisanuki to slow his pace. “Let’s eliminate the slime minions as quickly as we can and then chase after Kisanuki,” Yuuma said, trying to keep his voice under control. The others nodded in unison. The twelve Bouncy Blobs that the boss had left behind approached from the front, bouncing and jostling as they moved. Both magical and physical attacks worked against the Bouncy Blobs, but as boss minions, they were much stronger than they looked. Yuuma and the others readied their weapons. Hokari nocked an arrow to his bow while Chinami held a dagger ready by her hip. Yuuma and Kenk assumed battle art stances, while Sawa and Nagi prepared to cast. Even Aoi raised her crosier into the air. “They’re coming!” Kenk shouted. As soon as Kenk spoke, the slimes, every single last one, bounced high into the air. Hang in there, Kisanuki! We’re on our way! Yuuma willed as he lifted his shortsword into the air, his thoughts directed toward Kisanuki’s HP bar, still visible in the upper-left-hand corner of his vision. It took Yuuma and the others about five minutes to eliminate all twelve of the Bouncy Blobs. The reason it took them so long, despite the fact that they were continuously firing off spells and techniques with no attempt to conserve MP, was that it was much harder to hit the slimes as they bounced around than Yuuma had expected. He was starting to understand why his party members’ HP had fallen so low by the time Yuuma and Aoi rejoined them. The last slime had barely finished dispersing into particles, after being struck with Hokari’s Double Shot bow art, before Yuuma’s eyes returned to Kisanuki’s HP bar. Kisanuki only had around 20 percent of his hit points left. When you considered the fact that he was still kiting a boss, that may as well have been critical condition. Yuuma pulled Squeak’s card from the holster strapped to the right side of his chest and summoned the blue-furred hare. Squeak hadn’t even landed on its feet before Yuuma issued a command. “Squeak, Find Party Member!” This order, which Yuuma had unlocked by increasing his Command skill, caused the familiar to lead its master to whichever party member was farthest away at the moment. “Squ-squee!” With a small cry, Squeak began splashing across the water’s surface. “Let’s go!” Yuuma shouted, following the familiar. In a traditional RPG, Yuuma would have just been holding a controller and wouldn’t have felt a thing, even if his character happened to plunge headfirst into a lake. But in a fulldive environment, the feeling of water seeping into his boots, even from just a ten-centimeter-deep pond, was unpleasant beyond belief. If it was only a matter of feeling unpleasant, that would be easy enough to deal with, but if they got completely soaked, there was also a chance they could get slapped with the Cold status just like Nagi had when she was trapped in the dungeon underneath the lord mayor’s manor in Calcina. Trying not to slip and fall, Yuuma ran through the water at almost the same speed as Squeak. Aoi, Hokari, and Chinami were falling behind, but as long as they didn’t get too far away, that was just unavoidable. Squeak moved northwest, sprinting hard. Yuuma squinted, trying to peer through the fog. There was a risk they might run into the slime boss first before Kisanuki. The pounding of his teammates’ footsteps behind him grew steadily fainter. Yuuma started to slow his pace. Any more and their ranks would be too spread out. An HP bar floated into view, far away, through the drifting fog. It was still too small for Yuuma to tell whether it was Kisanuki’s or the slime boss’s. “Squeak! Follow me,” Yuuma said softly, switching his familiar’s command. Squeak let out a tiny squeal and slowed down. Signaling with his hands for the others to slow down as well, Yuuma began approaching cautiously. The HP bar gradually grew larger, and a name eventually appeared. It read, Kai—it was Kai Kisanuki. With a protracted sigh of relief, Yuuma checked their surroundings. The swamp spread out in all directions with no variation. There was no sign of the slime boss, let alone its HP bar. If the boss had already been defeated, Yuuma and the others should have received experience as well. Kisanuki must have used some method to shake aggro and get away from the boss, once he was far enough away. At least, that was what Yuuma assumed as he approached, now moving at almost walking speed. Kisanuki’s smaller frame finally materialized through the fog. He must have fallen while running, because his wool tunic was hideously stained with mud. Kisanuki was breathing heavily, both hands on his knees. He lifted his head when he noticed Yuuma and the others approach. The smile that surfaced on his face looked tired but also a little proud. “Good work…,” Hokari muttered from behind Yuuma, apparently revising his opinion of Kisanuki. As Kisanuki rejoined the group, he briefly explained what had occurred. Just as Yuuma had feared, the slime boss had attempted to hit Kisanuki from behind with its water laser while on the move. Kisanuki was mostly dodging the shots on instinct at first, but eventually, one of the shots hit him in the back, knocking him into the water. After struggling back to his feet, however, he continued to run for about another five hundred meters until something unexpected happened. The slime boss suddenly disappeared, almost as if it had dissolved into the mist. “I think…because we got so far away from the boss arena, the boss must have reset to its original position,” Kisanuki concluded. He then downed the healing potion that Nagi handed him. Yuuma made eye contact with Sawa before glancing back in the direction from which they had just run. It was fairly common in games for boss monsters to disappear and then respawn in their original location, after getting too far away from their arena. If Kisanuki’s conjecture was right, then the slime boss had probably returned to the center of the swamp. But that meant there was also a chance that its HP, which they had reduced by 90 percent, had fully restored as well. After turning her eyes back toward the others, Sawa furrowed her brow and spoke. “GG, Kisanuki… We’ve got a problem, though. We don’t know whether we need to defeat this boss in order to get our hands on the white lotus flower.” “Well…according to game logic, either seems possible,” Kenk said. He placed his hands on his hips. “If there’s some door that leads to a room containing the item, which only opens after defeating the boss, or if the item drops directly from the boss, then we would probably need to defeat the boss in order to get our hands on the item. But sometimes you can acquire a quest item by sneaking or forcing your way past the boss…” Nagi tapped the water at her feet lightly with the butt end of her crosier. “This is just a swamp, though, Kenk. There don’t seem to be any locked rooms or caves anywhere around here, and Harlin specifically mentioned a white lotus flower that blossoms in the swamp north of the village. In that case, I think it’s likely that it isn’t a drop and that we collect it directly from wherever it grows.” Hokari, Chinami, and Aoi were listening intently to Kenk and Nagi’s conversation. They weren’t as used to games, so it made sense that they didn’t chime in with their own opinions. As for why Kisanuki didn’t say anything, despite evidently being such an accomplished metagamer… Well, he had just pulled a boss. Maybe after sprinting so hard he was more tired than he seemed. Either way, Kisanuki was the hero of the hour. He had just saved the entire party from getting wiped. Yuuma would have liked to have given Kisanuki a chance to rest, but they could hardly sit themselves down in the middle of a swamp. Since they couldn’t fight the boss again anyway, not until those ball-shaped plants regenerated, Yuuma decided that if they couldn’t find the white lotus flower it would be best to just cut their losses and come back another time. “In any case,” he told the group, “we should skirt the area where the boss may have respawned and investigate the north side of the swamp. If the flower is blooming anywhere, it will probably be there.” “Agreed,” Sawa said. The other members nodded as well. Opening the map, Yuuma carefully marked their route, taking care to ensure that they would not stumble into the center of the swamp, even by accident. The party set out again. Trash mobs didn’t seem to spawn inside the boss arena. The only sound filling the quiet swamp now was the splashing of their own feet. They barely saw any withered trees or other vegetation, let alone any more of the ball-shaped plants they had been so desperately searching for a moment ago. The first to detect the change was Chinami. “Hmm…,” she muttered softly, bending down slightly to look at the ground. “Does the water seem cleaner here?” “Hey… It does!” Aoi said. Yuuma peered down at the water around his feet as well. The water itself hadn’t been very cloudy to begin with, but the grayish-brown mud that had accumulated at the bottom had now been replaced by whitish gravel. Their feet no longer slipped or kicked up particles of mud as they made their way through the water. Peering closer, Yuuma noticed schools of cute little fish, resembling killifish, zipping through the water. “These fish don’t look like they’d make much of a meal, do they?” Hokari commented. The girls glared at him. “Wh-what? Bringing back food is an important part of our mission!” “That doesn’t mean you need to share every little thought that runs through your head,” Sawa insisted. Chinami and Aoi nodded in agreement. Yuuma suppressed his grimace, stepping in before the argument could develop further. “If we can manage to cure the villagers, maybe they’ll split their food with us. Let’s just focus on searching for the white lotus flower for now.” “Everyone, look over there!” Nagi shouted, a slight lilt in her voice. Yuuma quickly turned in her direction. At some point, Nagi had moved ahead of the others. She pointed the tip of her crosier forward and to the left. Peering at the water, which was shrouded in fog, Yuuma was able to make out several leaves floating there in a fanlike pattern. He held up his left hand to stop the others, who all wanted to race toward the leaves immediately. He checked that there were no monsters lying in wait before he began moving again. The farther they advanced in this direction, the more of the round floating leaves, which were about three or four centimeters in diameter, they encountered. In addition to the killifish, beautiful tiny blue and yellow fish also began to meander through the water below, while frogs about the size of their thumbs croaked with mellow voices from atop the floating leaves. Eventually, they began to spot firm, spindle-shaped buds among the leaves. Lured by a faint fragrance floating in the air, the group made their way deeper into the swamp. The scattered buds gradually grew larger and began to split open at their tips—until, at last, a cluster of floating leaves, more glorious than the rest, faded into view. Yuuma and the others came to a stop, staring at the flower stem that rose from the center of this gathering of leaves. At the tip of the stem, which was at least a meter in height, a single large flower bloomed with a magnificent profusion of unfurling ovoid petals. The petals were so white the color burned itself into their retinas. The flower seemed to sparkle with a light of its own, the only bright thing beneath the cloudy sky. The eight members of the group turned to those closest to them to share in a round of high fives.