| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 2717 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 1629 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
-Krrh Krrh
Hearing the rough sound of a monster’s breath, I instinctively slashed behind me.
Slash~
Along with a terrifying feeling crawling up on me, the sensation of my sword slashing into something ran down my hand. Even though I was just feeling the sensation virtually, it was still amazingly real and exciting.
Without even time to check what kind of monster it was, I dash towards a different target. Since Katalina was about to be surrounded by red orcs, I needed to move in, find and kill the orc mage so Katalina could focus on casting her spells.
It wasn’t too hard for me to find the rare orc mage among the red orcs that were all wearing crude, hard leather armors. Although they had the same red skin as their kin, they were wearing fabric that was completely in tatters, and holding a long staff which helps in identifying them.
Being able to identify them like this even without activating ‘Hawk’s Eyes’ felt like it was one of my passive skills of the Grand Master skill set I had.
‘Inferno’
Whoa! I yelped out in my head as I dodged the extreme heatwave emanating from Katalina’s flame magic, barely avoiding any physical damage. Although it wasn’t the best magic to use amongst AOE magic, it already does a massive amount of damage as the 6th circle magic tier, meaning that while the monsters don’t die in one hit, they would be on the floor in pain from the sheer amount of damage.
The monsters were in a panicked state, which meant that while they cannot attack Katalina right away, they would soon regain their consciousness and focus on attacking Katalina again. If that happens, the situation would turn for the worse right away. I gulped down a mana potion.
Then, as I felt my mana that was nearly empty rapidly restored, I immediately activated one of my AOE skills, ‘Moonlight’.
As one of the highly damaging AOE skills, my Moonlight isn’t as strong as the ‘Inferno’ magic skill; the amount of mana points to use the skill was similar, but it falls heavily behind the ‘Inferno’ magic in terms of efficiency. That was the type of skill ‘Moonlight’ was, but as all AOE skills that characters of Knight class learn are on P or S tier1, meaning that the average knight class players cannot use those skills since it costs too much mana to execute them. Even though the ‘Moonlight’ skill is on P tier, it costs around one thousand mana for me to execute the skill. That means that since the maximum amount of mana point I can reach is barely over two thousand, I can only use it twice before needing a recharge.
Meaning that it’s difficult for me to engage in these difficult hunting sessions where I would need to drink mana potions costing 100 euros each2 just for me to use my skill twice before needing another potion again.
It helps create a sizable gap between top-ranking players who have enough power and money to hunt in this fashion and those that cannot.
A grand spectacle of an ocean blue aura emanating from my position outwards like a wave goes over the monsters, who become immediately destroyed after they were just done writhing in pain because of being on fire.
Although Moonlight was definitely a weaker AOE skill compared to ‘Inferno’, it was still a P tier skill in terms of power. It was powerful enough to blow most of the enemies away in one execution, with only one or two of the monsters surviving the blow, a single slash of my sword soon eliminated them.
At the same time, Katalina’s body glowed brightly before slowly subsiding.
“Looks like you leveled up. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I think it’s going up fast thanks to you.”
Katalina’s expression looked as if she was happy all throughout the hunting session, even before she realized she had leveled up. Perhaps she knew that the rate of experience points she was getting was very high.
Whatever the reason, she was having fun doing this, so what else could I say.
“How much experience do you need for your level, Ellie?”
I look at the number of points I need and make an estimate in my mind.
“Looks like I have 25% remaining that I need to fill up.”
“Hmm, looks like you’ll level up tomorrow then!”
“Perhaps.”
The percentage of experience points I need for a level that I gain in a day was around 25 to 30%. Considering when I was level 700 back in my previous life and was only gaining 15 to 20% in experience points after hunting all day, it is much higher. Although I was concentrating more on the monster drops rather than experience points, the difference in amount was still staggering.
It has already been a week since I started hunting with Katalina, but I still hadn’t adapted to the amount of experience points I was getting.
“Shall we end our hunting session here for today?”
Hearing Katalina, I looked at the remaining potions I had in my inventory. Seeing as there were only a few bottles left, I knew that I won’t be able to continue like this any longer.
“Shall we?”
“Yeah, I’m completely out of potions already, anyway.”
I turned my gaze towards the monster drops. If I was the old me, I would have been going crazy picking them up, but I was too busy trying to regulate the gate. It looked like the dropped materials would go to the guards, who weren’t able to make any profit today.
Though, I can’t say that I don’t have any thoughts of taking them myself. Still, it was compensation to the guards who weren’t able to hunt, so I didn’t want to embarrass myself by being greedy.
“Ohh? You’re not picking up the drops today, huh?”
“Ugh…”
Katalina suddenly smiled slyly as she made fun of me. Since I picked up the drops once already, I couldn’t say anything back to her and just had to scream internally, trying to get rid of the feeling of embarrassment.
“It was an accident.”
“Even so. I didn’t think Ellie would be the type to pick up trashy items like those~”
“… It’s best to make as much money as you can to live a good life.”
“You’re a real scrooge, trying to make more even though you have so much already!”
I felt that the conversation was going wry for me, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Are you angry?”
As I did so, Katalina came over to me with a cute smile, acting as if she wasn’t the one who was making me angry this whole time.
“A bit.”
“Wah…! I’m sorry! Please stop being angry.”
As I tried my absolute best to stop myself from smirking after seeing her cute crying face, the best I could do was a stoic expression.
“I’m joking.”
“… A-Are you playing with my emotions? Am I just a doll to you?”
… My lady, someone may misunderstand if they heard you.
While having a playful squabble between us, we reached the teleportation circle for the field. There we met the new guards for this shift, and we informed them of the situation before telling them to go pick up the items before the monster’s spawn again.
Hearing that, their completely bored expressions quickly turned to ones of excitement as they bowed hurriedly and left to go pick up the items.
“Oh! Ellie, we have an official guild management meeting today. Do you wanna come?”
Before we stepped up to the teleportation circle, Katalina smacked her hand with her fist as if she had just remembered something.
“Hmm. Official guild management meeting, huh? Would it be okay for me to go there, even though I’m an outsider?”
“Come on. I’m the one who’s giving you the okay, and I’m the guild master after all. No one will disagree with it. I’m actually quite an effective guild master, you know!”
No, that wasn’t the problem I was worried about.
“I’m saying, why should I attend someone else’s official guild meeting!”
“Someone else’s?”
Katalina’s expression crumpled up again. It’s that expression that I saw before.
“Ellie… Ellie is saying I’m just some random person. Sob sob… Were you just playing with me this whole time? Did you just use me for the benefits?”3
… Jeeze!
“I surrender. I’ll follow whatever you say. Please, just don’t say such things.”
“Oooh? Looks like you’re learning some responsibility, I didn’t expect that, Ellie.”
“Fine, I won’t go.”
“Joking joking~”
Just as I thought, it seems like I’m being controlled by her whims.
But since Katalina is so cute, I’m going to be generous. If she wasn’t, I may have exploded on her a while ago.
Thinking about it, it showed what a petty, small-minded person I was, someone who’s easily influenced by people with great beauty.
“Ellie. Give me the party leader status.”
I was the party leader between the two of us since she didn’t enjoy going through the busywork of setting up the division.
Only the party leader can change where the teleport target location is, so I needed to transfer party leader status to Katalina, who would set it to the guild hideout.
“I transferred it to you.”
“Okay!”
After giving the party leader status to her with a few simple menu clicks, Katalina nodded as she operated the teleportation circle.
My vision came back to me as a new scene appeared before my eyes.
“Welcome to Liverpool castle, the foothold city of the Volcano guild.”
“Thanks.”
As I was greeted with Katalina’s deep curtsy that looked as if it was straight from the middle ages, I stepped into the Liverpool castle.4
