| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 3162 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 2058 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
Thankful that the distance between me and Ester wasn’t that big, I dashed before the Dragonian could activate its combo attack, taking place behind it I drove my Excalibur right through the Dragon’s back.
- Kaargh!
The Dragonian trashed around in pain, although with difficulty Esther uses that chance to escape its grasp and step back from the fight. But since Esther had retreated, I had to take the full damage of the combined attack of numerous Living Armors.
Slam!
But due to using my hands and feet to block any of the more lethal attacks from the living armors, they didn’t manage to cause any significant damage to me. I then pulled out my sword from the Dragonian’s back.
“Hah!”
Using the brief opening I had after pulling the sword, the Dragonian rushed in with a claw attack. Tilting my head backwards to dodge and using that momentum, I spun in a circle while leaping backwards to gain distance. Had I stayed in that position any longer I would have been forced onto the ground.
The dangers I faced didn’t stop there. Yet another Dragonian landed into the fray and using full use of it’s powerful body strength, it brushed towards me at top speed the moment I landed.
Knowing I would be in trouble if I were to let it hit me straight on, I tried to dodge again. However doing two evasion maneuvers consecutively would be hard.
But then by luck I was saved, not by my ally’s hands but rather by a living armor. I wasn’t sure whether this particular living armor just wasn’t aware of the situation or if it just had low artificial intelligence, but as it charged while intending to attack me it had gotten in the path of the Dragonian’s charge.
Slam!
With the sound of metal being slammed, the Living Armor was flung off into the distance with the Dragonian charge being slowed down as it suffered quite the shock as well.
And that was my chance for a counter attack. With its speed being slowed I had plenty of time to do a wide swing, and the Dragonian, who wasn’t able to stop completely, rammed directly into my swing, making the sword penetrate deeply into its flesh.
Skreee!
The Dragonian roared as it screamed in pain due to the Excalibur embedded into its body. In order to put it out of its misery, I held onto the hilt and swing it upwards while the sword blade was still embedded inside of its body.
Slash!
With the sensation of flesh being cut through travelling directly to my hands, fresh blood began to spray out from the newly cut wound. And since I was way too close to the Dragonian with no time to move backwards, the blood rained directly on me.
Smelling the distinct aroma of blood as well as feeling the sticky liquid land on my skin definitely didn’t feel nice. But since I had no time to stay and admire such things, I pulled my Excalibur out right away, which ended up with me getting doused in even more blood.
There was no helping it, so with blood drenched all over my body, I start to cut down the Living Armors. Soon Katalina supported me by attacking them as well, with Esther who had recovered from the injury also coming into fray to help out in the battle, and from that point on the enemy’s numbers steadily started to thin out.
And with the last Dragonian’s body becoming torn to shreds as it died, it signalled the end of the long hard battle.
“Ugh… I’m sorry for not helping much.”
Staring me drenched head to toe in blood, Esther bit her lips as she apologized. To be fair she was the reason that I had become like this as well as falling into a risky situation, so she really should apologize.
However, I didn’t want to be too harsh towards Esther.
“Well, as long as we’re both fine, that’s all that matters. Besides that, how is your wound? It seemed to me that the injury you suffered on your shoulder was quite severe.”
“Ah! Miss Ashley casted her Recovery spell on me so my injury was completely healed with no visible wound left on it. Want me to show you?”
I had barely stopped myself instinctively saying ‘yes’ to her question. If I actually did say yes to her, she would have definitely taken off her shoulder plate of her armor to directly show her bare shoulder skin.
“Well, I’m glad it’s all healed, that’s all I needed to know.”
The two healers that followed us definitely didn’t let my expectations down. To their great credit, they were able to heal and recover Esther even in that critical situation.
Since the situation was dangerous to a point if I were to have hesitated, Esther would have actually been killed. Though it was my mistake in judgement to come into this dungeon with just the three of us in the party, we were able to verify the skill of the healers and how much they were able to help so I felt like it wasn’t that bad in the end.
“But besides that, I didn’t think so many Dragonians would appear like that. Seems like the difficulty is a bit too high.”
“Yeah, I would definitely say that this dungeon is one of the most difficult dungeons out of all the raid dungeons that appeared in the game so far.”
Katalina nodded and agreed with my observation.
The fierce battle that we just went through was dangerous enough to destroy the average party designed for raid dungeons in an instant if they were to lapse their judgement even for a second.
It meant that what we just said wasn’t that exaggerated at all. Since Esther had experienced that difficulty first-hand herself, she shook her head in disbelief at how difficult the dungeon was.
Since we had yet again used a significant amount of fatigue points for the battle, we took a break at a campfire before moving together to the next gateway of the dungeon. Since the key to the gate began to appear from monsters besides the first time, there was no need for me to act like a barbarian again by brutally knocking the door down.
However, the 10 or so different areas we went through didn’t have a single easy battle in between. The one thing that we could be thankful for was that there weren’t any monsters that were more difficult than Dragonians.
But since the amount of experience was just as big as the fights were dificult, Esther could experience the joy of leveling up in the middle of a battle with mob monsters.
The fact that it was usually Katalina and me who took down most of the monsters and Esther would only take care of the leftovers seemed to make her feel sorry for hoarding the experience points and so she wasn’t smiling as much but we nevertheless congratulated her for leveling up and tried to make her feel better. Even though it was a bit of a shame that we didn’t get to gain experience points, a promise was still a promise and we had already gained a gigantic amount of experience points thanks to all the wars and battles fought over the unification of the server.
It was actually Katalina and me that benefitted the most from the now past war over unification. Not only did we gain a large amount of kill points throughout the battles, it was also because we had participated as commanders of the army right from the beginning of the war.
Boom!
With a heavy crashing sound, the body of a Mythril Golem toppled over and landed on the ground. Due to the powerful combination of enemies that went against us, each and every one of us had an obvious look of exhaustion.
The combination of a Mythril Golem as well as Dragonian was what one would call the very concept of power. The combination was so powerful and frightening that we had to open our battle immediately with a combination of Requiem together with Hellfire just to make sure that we would avoid the unfortunate outcome of having our entire party annihilated.
“Finally!”
Staring at the massive door that was covered completely in a golden colored light as opposed to all the doors previously, I yelled out in joy. It was no doubt the proof of why this area’s battle was made so difficult.
“I guess this is the final boss.”
“It took 6 long hours to get here.”
“My heart is racing. This is the first time I ever got to see a full first completion of a dungeon first hand.”
“Me too.”
Each of the party members commented their thoughts about reaching this stage. It certainly was an extremely difficult and tiring process to get all the way here. As for who gets what for the completion of the raid dungeon, for me I would receive the heart and the title, for Esther all of the experience, and finally the healers would receive items in payment for their services, but it was only Katalina that wasn’t going to gain anything from all this.
Knowing that she wasn’t going to gain anything even though she suffered so much to get here, I sneaked a whisper message to Katalina.
[Lina.][Hm? Why the sudden whisper message?]
She seemed to find it strange to hear a whisper message from me since it was always her who would send one to me first.
[Why, you don’t like it?][That’s not it, but…]
It felt like I was kind of persecuting Katalina, so I knew I needed to change the topic quickly.
[Well the thing is, you wouldn’t be gaining anything from the completion of this raid dungeon. And I feel awful about that, that’s why.][Shouldn’t we have that kind of talk after we actually finish the raid dungeon?]
She was right. There was still a gigantic monster left, so I should leave that for later.
[I guess I’ll have to ask you again after taking down the final boss.][Hmm? Were you thinking of taking a request from me or something?]
Katalina sounded pleased as if she was interested in being able to ask me for anything as a reward.
[Hm, well as long as it’s within what I can do…][Alright then, I’ll look forward to it.]
I suddenly felt like something really bad was going to happen. Even though I did put up the condition that I will only do something that is within my limits, the actual limits that I have were large in size and depth. On top of that, Katalina’s extremely tired expression immediately turned into one of smiles and excitement as soon as she said ‘I’ll look forward to it’.
As soon as we approached the final boss’s room, the huge amount of fatigue that had built up so far felt as if it was cut in half. Since there is no established ‘Safe Zone’ in front of the final boss’s entrance, there was no way for us to install a campfire kit as well.
“Let us all go in now!”
Katalina spoke with a bright voice, much more excited and eager to go than usual.
“Eh? Sister Lina, just moments ago you had an expression that looked like it said ‘Don’t touch me, I’m in a bad mood’…”
“Shut up!”
“Aw, okay.”
As soon as Esther pointed out the strange change in Katalina’s mood, Katalina immediately told her to shut up with a smile still on her lips, and Esther ended up looking teary due to her overwhelming pressure.
The two healers in the back saw this happening and giggled to themselves while covering their mouths. It seemed that the pressure of having to confront the final boss of the raid wasn’t affecting them too much, so I was relieved and brought the key to the door of the final boss’s room right into the hole.
Click.
A sound of metallic mechanism opening was heard. Soon, a blindingly bright light started to pour in from between the cracks of the massive doors as they started to slide open.
