Name: Akane
Title: Glamorous Kunoichi
Rank: A
Rarity: Legend Rare
Skills: Ninjutsu (Lvl. 8), Detection (Lvl. 5), Prostitute (Lvl. 5)
✦ ✦ ✦
Name: Liu Fengguang
Title: Fist Emperor
Rank: A
Rarity: Legend Rare
Skills: Comprehensive Fighting Techniques (Lvl. 8), Disciple Cultivation (Lvl. MAX), Body Weakening (Lvl. 7)
✦ ✦ ✦
Name: N’gie
Title: Warhammer Giant
Rank: A
Rarity: Legend Rare
Skills: Shield Mastery (Lvl. MAX), Hammer Mastery (Lvl. MAX), Guardian Barrier (Lvl. 9)
✦ ✦ ✦
Akane’s “Sex Technique” had changed to “Prostitute” for...reasons. I wasn’t sure why it was now the name of a profession either.
Anyway, the issue at hand was that Akane and Liu Fengguang had reached Rank A at the same time, while N’gie had reached Rank A when we cleared Hiroshima Dungeon. I had an inkling this had something to do with who had ownership of the card. I had been the one to receive Akane and Liu Fengguang, but N’gie had appeared when Akira had earned his Dungeon Buster title. This probably meant that Akane, Emily, Liu Fengguang, and Senyath were influenced by my titles, while N’gie was influenced by Akira’s.
“But neither Emily-chan nor Senyath ranked up, right?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Name: Emily
Title: Saucy Mage
Rank: B
Rarity: Legend Rare
Skills: Esoteric Technique (Lvl. 9), Summoning (Lvl. 8), Alchemy (Lvl. 1)
✦ ✦ ✦
Name: Senyath
Title: Courteous Cat-Sìth
Rank: C
Rarity: Legend Rare
Skills: Butler (Lvl. 6), Escape (Lvl. 3), Poisonous Tongue (Lvl. 5)
✦ ✦ ✦
Akira’s question was right on the mark. Although Senyath had ranked up a little, Emily was still stuck at Rank B. I assumed this was because they were always with Mari and Shingo, who were still Rank D. I intended to ask them whether they wanted to aim for Rank C after they graduated high school.
“Mari and Shingo are still kids. Clearing the dungeons is our responsibility as adults. I’d rather they don’t become Limit Breakers, if possible.”
Mari had only started helping me out to earn some money in the first place. Her situation was totally different now, as she wasn’t in dire need of cash anymore.
As things stood, killing monsters in the dungeons wasn’t enough any longer. Joker’s appearance meant that the greatest enemy of humankind was now other human beings. If things escalated, we adventurers might be forced to become murderers.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Mari-chan and Shingo are both way more responsible than you give them credit for. Shingo especially has become much more mature since Senyath joined us,” Akira said. “Teenagers sure grow up fast, huh?”
Are you trying to spite me? Is that it? I know I’m already an old man! At over forty, I most likely won’t grow as a person anymore.
I ignored Akira’s remark and focused on fighting the goblins. I might have gotten used to my current state, but I was now able to dodge their blades with the smallest of movements. I would then thrust my own sword precisely between their eyes. There was no need for superfluous movements or excess strength.
“I see these two have adapted fast,” Shifu Liu started. “Listen, Hisato. In terms of physical abilities, you and Ezoe are rather similar. However, there is a big gap in terms of mentality. Well, humans are highly emotional beings. When being surrounded by enemies on all sides, it’s only natural to feel tense and to feel fear well up inside of you. There is only one way to surpass this and avoid freezing up. Get used to such situations. All in all, with old age comes wisdom and experience.”
The youngsters all nodded along to Shifu Liu’s words. Hey! Why are you agreeing? “With old age comes wisdom?” How old do you all think I am? I’m only forty!
“Look! Goblin shuriken!”
Akira had grabbed a goblin by the head and spun it around before throwing it as a projectile. Fighting Rank C monsters was now a game rather than an actual fight. Surely, this meant we were getting closer to Rank A.
✦ ✦ ✦
[Miyakonojo Dungeon — Floor 8]
We went down to Floor 8. We’d reach the bottom in another floor or two. A monster that looked like a strange hybrid between a lizard and a chicken came plodding toward us.
“It’s a riddle basilisk! It can use petrification breath!”
“A basilisk? It doesn’t really look like an iguana to me, though...”
The monster continued advancing until it was more or less two meters away from us and opened its mouth. My blood turned cold at that moment. Both Akira and I jumped to the sides to avoid it. The basilisk closed its mouth again and turned to face me. Akane was faster, though. Her kunai had already gone through the monster’s head. I could feel my back dampening, cold sweat covering it as I took deep breaths.
“What the hell was that...?” I asked.
“The scariest thing about these kinds of breath attacks is that you can’t see them. It becomes hard to gauge how far you need to go to avoid it. I’m also not sure how long its breath stays active once it has been released.”
“I see. It’s not like in the games, huh?”
In RPGs, there were also attacks along the lines of “poison breath” or “paralysis breath,” but these attacks were much scarier in real life. It was impossible to avoid something you couldn’t see, and even if you did manage to avoid it, it was unclear how long it stayed in the air or how far it could reach.
I tried to extend my hand into the space I had been standing in earlier to give it a try.
“Kazuhiko-sama!”
“It’s all right. I’ll use a potion if I need to.”
Luckily, my hand was perfectly fine. Checking the range of the attack was worth taking such risks. If we didn’t gather more information on breath attacks and figure out paralysis, it might very well cost us our lives in the future if we stumbled upon stronger foes.
“Akira,” I started. “Actually, everyone! We’ll stay here to train for a while. We need to get to the bottom of things here. Shifu Liu, please help us.”
“Ho ho! You want a training regimen to teach you how to avoid invisible attacks, is that right? Understood. I’ll be thorough.”
Thus, we started facing riddle basilisks to get a better understanding of breath-based attacks.
When facing Rank B monsters, losing focus was out of the question. On top of that, if anyone ended up being petrified, we’d have to treat them extremely quickly as basilisks aimed at the petrified spots, hitting them with their tails to smash them. What an annoying attack.
“Damn! Several are coming at once! We need to keep our distance! If they manage to surround us and exhale all at once, we’re all dead!”
I had Akane, Hisato, and the others who were able to deal damage from afar work hard. Once we had gathered enough magic stones and cards, we headed back to the Safety Zone for a break.
“Good. Now, let’s materialize a riddle basilisk and study its breath in detail. We need to know not only the range and duration of the attack but also whether a body part that’s been petrified remains petrified forever. I’d also like to check whether being fully petrified immediately kills or not. We’ll use these cards to conduct some experiments.”
Since we were faced with an unknown attack, the first step was to gather information. I summoned a riddle basilisk and had it use petrification breath. I had goblins, among other monsters, stay put in front of them to see how it’d affect them.
“If someone takes on the attack fully, their whole body gets petrified in a second, but if they extend their arm into the attack’s range and remove it immediately afterward, only the arm is affected. The attack range is more or less two and a half meters, huh?”
I held a stopwatch in hand and roughly measured the distance several times, writing it down in a notebook. Those seeing me do these things for the first time watched me in awe while Akira, fully used to this by now, materialized monster after monster for me to experiment on.
“It’s our first time seeing an attack such as this. We also need to keep in mind that if another monster uses petrification breath, it may not work the same way. Next, let’s check if we can modulate the strength of its breath. From what I’ve been able to gather, I noticed that the range is a two-and-a-half-meter radius in a half-circle in front of the monster. If that area were to become narrower, however, it may reach further...”
“Aniki, should we call it a day?” Akira asked.
He seemed to be feeling sorry for the rest of the members as I’d kept them waiting for so long. To be honest, I kind of hoped every team would learn to conduct such experiments and contribute to Dungeon Busters’s understanding of dungeons. Dungeon Busters was still too young as an organization to carry out systematic information gathering on such a scale.
“Got it. But I’ll still be carrying out this kind of research regularly. We know next to nothing about the dungeons. This means that if anything new appears, we absolutely need to make hypotheses, experiment, and verify our results over and over again. Knowledge obtained in this way will be useful not only to us but also to the rest of the world. I’d like each team to remember this. Clearing dungeons is impossible without trying to understand them.”
I spoke with a stern expression so, in turn, everyone listened carefully, nodding with serious faces.