Ten days had passed since the Lily saga. Today, I was taking Radd and the other members of Braves and Blades to a new dungeon.
“Flare Enchantment! Melter!” Nyuuk cried.
A scorching blast of flame was released, signaling the start of another fight. In seconds, the rest of the group joined in, filling the before-silent hallway with the sounds of battle.
The first to charge in was Radd. He dashed down the hallway with a roar, raising his beloved Brave Sword high.
“Crimson Crash!”
Flames erupted from Radd’s sword as he slashed through a Greater Mummy. I whistled in admiration as I watched him go.
He’s gotten a lot better.
To tell the truth, Radd’s usage of manual Arts was pretty good, even by my high standards. Ever since his training in the Treasure Hunter’s trial temple, he’d improved considerably. And not only that, but he’d mastered some of the more advanced techniques you could do with manual Arts as well.
“I’m not done yet!”
As the mummy staggered back, Radd ran past it and shouted, “Arts Plus! Flame Slash!”
Radd slashed at the mummy again from behind, and since he’d used Arts Plus to chain the two attacks together, this one was even stronger than the first. He landed a clean hit against the mummy’s unguarded back, dealing a significant amount of damage to it.
Though mummies felt no pain, their weakness was fire, so the combo of fire-aspected Arts was enough to send it crashing to the ground. But it wasn’t dead yet. Even as it fell, the mummy raised its hand up toward Radd, and the flaming bandages on its arms shot out toward him.
“Radd!” Nyuuk shouted.
“Wh-Whoa!”
Radd clumsily jumped back—a far cry from the polished movements he’d shown a second ago—and barely managed to escape the fiery bandages. But now he was the one on the back foot.
Though Radd had depleted most of the mummy’s health, it felt no pain and calmly got back to its feet and advanced forward once more. Incidentally the Greater Mummy that Radd was fighting was a level 42 monster. Under normal circumstances, Radd would have been overwhelmed, since his level was still in the early 30s. This was also why Radd’s combo attack had only damaged the Greater Mummy instead of killing it outright.
“As simpleminded as always, I see,” Prana said coldly, coming to her party member’s rescue. She hefted her bow and drew back. “Mirage!”
With those words, Prana’s form split into three. She then loosed her bow, and three arrows sped toward the mummy at lightning speed. They shot through the undead monster’s legs, pinning it to the ground.
“Th-Thanks, Prana!”
“Next time you fuck up I’ll shoot you too,” Prana snapped, then glanced over to her side. “Take care of the rest.”
“Got it!” Mana stepped forward, her nun’s robes whipping around her as she gathered her mana. She pointed her staff at the mummy that was on the verge of breaking free of its restraints. “Take this! Holy Pillar!”
A pillar of blinding pure white light appeared around the mummy, burning it to ashes. As the light faded, everyone could see that the mummy was well and truly dead. The battle was over.
“Hell yeah! We got another one!”
Nyuuk shook his head in exasperation as he watched Radd cheer. He lowered his staff and let out a long sigh. “In the end I didn’t need to do much,” he said, half relieved and half disappointed.
“You’re wrong there. The only reason the battle went so smoothly was because of your initial Fire spell. You should be more proud of what you accomplished.”
“I-If you say so.” Nyuuk blushed, surprised by the unexpected praise.
As he bashfully looked away, I used Analyze on him. If we subtracted the bonuses he was getting from his equipment, his current stats were:
【Nyuuk】
LV: 34
HP: 512
MP: 445
Strength: 104 (D+)
Vitality: 207 (C+)
Intelligence: 396 (A-)
Mind: 214 (C+)
Agility: 223 (C+)
Focus: 257 (B-)
Damn, he leveled up again. All of his stats except Strength are higher than mine now.
The new year had come and gone over the past ten days in this world, and Radd and the others had been far from idle. While I’d been inundated with Guild work, the four of them had gotten even stronger. Among them, Nyuuk had been the one to attempt new things the most.
Until now, most of his power had been borrowed from items and other sources, but he’d taken this lull as an opportunity to raise his own personal strength. He’d changed classes to Sorcerer, which was a magician class that specialized in buffing magic and spells that disrupted and displaced enemies. He’d noticed all of his magic was focused on pure offense, and had volunteered to learn some more utility spells. The rest of his party tended to rush headlong into everything, so I was glad he had the foresight and good sense to see what his teammates needed and actively work to acquire it.
“Rex is right. You’re a far cry better than a certain moron who ran ahead and nearly got himself killed,” Prana said with a small smirk, sidling up to Nyuuk.
Eyeing Prana, I used Analyze to check her stats.
【Prana】
LV: 34
HP: 430
MP: 197
Strength: 280 (B)
Vitality: 166 (C)
Intelligence: 148 (C)
Mind: 136 (C-)
Agility: 284 (B)
Focus: 440 (A-)
Much like Nyuuk, Prana had changed up her fighting style in order to get stronger. She’d class changed to Trickster, which was a unique class just like Treasure Hunter. However the Trickster class was a speedy and acrobatic close-combat class that was an upgrade to rogue classes, instead of one that used bows and fought at range. The Mirage skill she’d used earlier was the Trickster’s signature ability. It cost a lot of MP, but it created two clones that possessed the same stats as you. Furthermore, they copied your actions exactly. Initially you’d be tempted to think that made it an extremely powerful skill since it effectively tripled your damage, but unfortunately Mirage was more suited to misdirection than offense.
The clones inherited your stats, but they had only one HP, meaning they vanished the moment they were attacked. They also vanished the instant they collided with anything. That meant that even if you weren’t getting attacked, the clones would vanish as soon as their weapons came into contact with an enemy. Since they vanished instantly, the damage they would have done with their attack connecting was canceled as well.
However, none of these restrictions applied to ranged attacks where the clones didn’t directly come into contact with anything. Though Mirage had been designed with close combat in mind, if someone with a bow or throwing weapons used it they could actually dish out triple their usual damage. It does kinda suck that they can’t copy your skills though. The clones copied your movements exactly, but they couldn’t copy any magic or skills you used. Technically they could copy manual Arts activation, but that wasn’t too helpful as most Arts were melee attacks. If you used a bow skill though, the clones would just launch a regular attack instead. As a result the only people who used Mirage for offense were bow users that stacked a lot of self-buffs, stocked up on a large amount of enchanted arrows with powerful effects, and fought primarily using basic attacks.
“What?” Prana said, turning to me when she noticed I was staring at her.
“Oh, I was just impressed at how perfect your timing was back there.” I said. It was the first thing that came to mind, but the praise was genuine.
“It’s not that big a deal. Anyone can do it with a bit of practice,” Prana replied curtly, tightly clutching the elementally enchanted arrows she’d recovered from the mummy’s corpse.
I’d crafted them for her myself, and she was surprisingly fond of them. Though you’d never realize it, with the attitude she normally took with me. I didn’t think she disliked me, but somehow our conversations always ended with her making a barbed comment of some kind.
“Don’t look so sad. I’m pretty sure Prana was happy to be praised by you,” Mana said, walking up to me.
She was the closest to Prana out of everyone in the party, so I was inclined to believe her. Incidentally, though Mana seemed like the most average person in the Braves and Blades party, I knew she was actually the most amazing, as exemplified by her stats.
【Mana】
LV: 34
HP: 464
MP: 391
Strength: 108 (C-)
Vitality: 183 (C+)
Intelligence: 342 (B+)
Mind: 464 (A)
Agility: 169 (C)
Focus: 255 (B-)
Insanity.
While Nyuuk and Prana had opted to diversify their skill set, Mana had focused solely on the one thing she was good at. Her affinity for prayer was ridiculously high, and she spent so much time in the Adventurers’ Guild’s prayer room that she’d earned the nickname “Little Prayer Saint” among the city’s adventurers. Her Mind was so high it was rated A, and she was the only member of the party with any stat rated that high. Her light magic was equivalent to a tactical nuke at this point. Not only was her Mind ridiculously high, she clearly had a high affinity for light magic as well. When it came to fighting undead enemies, Mana was the main damage dealer.