Chapter Seventeen #4
I was sure this world had countless other threats I didn’t know about as well. We needed to be able to fight above our weight class if we wanted to truly be safe from the dangers we’d encounter.
There was no telling when someone, an invader or murderer, far over our level might show up and attack.
Just like with that hyena.
On Earth, no matter how much someone trained, they were powerless if someone showed up with a gun and shot them out of nowhere. But here, it was possible to survive that first attack, and it was possible to fight back.
We needed to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
“Lupa, right!” Rosie shouted.
Lupa looked at her right just in time to see that a new flower sprouted up from the ground that she almost stepped on, saving her from getting it attached to her.
Rosie was seriously turning into a great tank.
I had to admit, I felt a little useless. Even though I knew I was the one who told them the strategy in the first place, what could I actually do that they weren’t able to do on their own?
Was my forbidden knowledge all I was good for?
I shook my head to get rid of those thoughts.
That damn piano song was getting into my head and making me emotional. It was too damn sad of a song.
If I felt useless, all I had to do was try harder.
It was as simple as that.
I’d become the best possible version of myself.
Lupa and I severed two of the four starting vines just before the boss reached 75% health, spawning in three more vines that shot up out from the ground, giving it a total of five now.
I kept on inflicting Burning and Poisoned whenever the debuffs wore off, and Rosie did her best to perfectly time Shield Bash to inflict the boss with Vulnerable. I used Strong Slash each time she did which really helped with severing the vines.
But with how many vines there were now, it was hard for Lupa and I to focus on the same one when they kept getting between us and forcing us to dodge.
Still, most of them focused on Rosie who had to chug her sixth potion for the fight already.
She had the strongest weapon out of us thanks to having Tabitha enhance her mace from Otto, plus her Shield Bash also increased aggro on her, so she had no problem keeping most of the boss’s attention on herself.
Having to drink potions in the middle of a fight wasn’t ideal, though.
Sure, it was possible to make it through the game without a healer just by chugging potions, but we had to put whatever we held in our main hand away every single time we wanted to pull a potion out.
Then we had to take our weapon back out.
So, every time we needed a potion, it took around five seconds.
Put weapon away, take potion out, drink potion, take weapon back out.
That was if we were fast and didn’t get interrupted during it.
Healers made it so that everyone could stay focused on tanking and dealing damage without that interruption.
Becoming a Vampire would help with that thanks to the very first skill I’d get, but… still.
Having some proper healing would be nice and boost our party’s power level.
Then, while Rosie was distracted by having two different vines lashing at her simultaneously, I saw Lupa was about to step on another flower.
Lupa might have been an incredible fighter, but she had basically no dungeoneering experience. She didn’t know to worry about things like traps and environmental hazards—or well, she didn’t know anything about typical RPG mechanics.
I reached out to stop her right before she could take another step back. “Careful, don’t forget to watch the—”
My legs were swept out from underneath me.
I fell onto the same plant I just protected Lupa—who looked back at me with eyes full of worry—from, which wrapped itself around my leg to stab its thorns into me, just before the same vine that knocked me down and chunked my health wrapped around my legs to lift me up and toss me into a nearby tree.
Something like that probably would have killed me in real life. At the very least, it would have broken my bones and knocked me out even if I didn’t have such a worthless body back then.
[Bleeding Thorns] [Immature Lycoris]
Two different bleeding effects were stacked on me while I already had low HP, and that low HP was rapidly getting lower.
“Sev!” Rosie shouted. “Hang on, I’ll—!”
“Focus on the boss!” I shouted, reaching down to grab the smaller plant wrapped around my leg so I could tear it off. Fortunately, that worked, but I was still suffering from the bleeding of the vine attack.
I didn’t want them to get distracted and hurt when I was fine, and it was a good thing I shouted that since Rosie looked back just in time to block the next vine attack.
“Fuck, that hurt,” I groaned out as I went to pull out a potion.
My HP was down to 30%.
One more attack and I would have been finished off.
My entire body felt like it was on fire between the status effects and being thrown into a tree.
But my legs still moved.
None of my bones were broken.
My old body was gone. I could get thrown around like it was nothing.
“This new body is too damn amazing,” I said, standing back up after chugging the potion. I was going to need to chug another as soon as it was off cooldown, but that was alright.
I got to see a pretty nice sight.
Lupa, whenever she was still enough for me to see her face, looked enraged as she prevented a single vine from getting anywhere near me.
Her expression was one I didn’t know she could make with how deadpan she was most of the time.
Fangs bared, eyes focused and full of bloodlust, tail still and ears constantly swiveling to track every movement of the boss—she looked like she was the boss if anything, and she entered her enrage phase after seeing me get hurt.
It was impossible to take my eyes off her.
Even as a vine threatened to slam into her from above, she remained still, waiting for it to get close enough to sidestep while thrusting each of her daggers into its side. And as the vine lifted back up, she went with it.
Another vine swung at her while she hung in the air by the first one, but she twisted her body around to dodge it with ease before withdrawing her daggers from the first one to perform a spinning attack as she fell, cutting each of the vines a dozen times in an instant as she fell.
She threw both of her daggers at the base of the first vine right as she landed. That was enough to sever it. The vine flew off, landing on the ground behind her, as she rolled out of the way of the second vine.
There was nothing but hatred for the enemy on her face. If I was shown two pictures of Lupa—one of how she normally looked and one of how she looked now, I would not be able to tell they were the same person.
She picked her daggers back up, slid on her knees beneath the next attack, and severed the next vine at its base.
Seeing her in action really proved that the inherited instincts I had from all of my characters was nothing compared to real battle experience.
And now that the bleeding effect wore off on me and I drank another potion to top off my health, I was able to get back in there.
I gave Lupa a pat on her shoulder once I reached her. “Good job keeping them off me.”
“Master… okay?” Lupa asked.
“I’m alright.” But even after all of that, the boss only just reached 50%, and three more vines spawned. “Its vines will get some new attack patterns now, but nothing we can’t handle. Keep your eyes open and we’ve got this.”
“Sorry. Master got hurt because of me.”
“I’m ordering you to stop thinking that. Mistakes happen. You’ll learn and grow. Only apologize if you don’t learn anything from it.”
“Mm. Got it.”
Lupa and I had our backs to each other as the vines surrounded us. Our DPS wasn’t high enough to sever more between phases, so we were up to six vines now.
We’d probably be up to seven for the final phase since we cut down two for every three it spawned.
“I won’t fail you again, Master,” Lupa said.
“You will fail me,” I said. “And I’ll fail you. Mistakes will always happen. That’s why we do our best to learn from them, and why we’ve got a party to help each other out when we mess up.”
“Mm. I’ll do my best.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” I swung my hand back to bump it into hers, and then Lupa did the same back to me.
Rosie was the one in most trouble, though.
Now there were three vines targeting her, two targeting Lupa, and one targeting me. Without proper tank skills from a tank class, she couldn’t aggro all of them onto her even with her previously mentioned advantages. But even if she could, they would take her out in an instant.
She wouldn’t be able to keep tanking through the damage with potions for much longer.
Running might have been our best option at that point. But, before giving the order to run, was there anything we could do? Was there any way to turn this around, or were we being too stubborn by trying to do kill this boss early?
Rosie ducked under one of the vines that lashed at her. The vine slammed into the tree behind her, cracking it, and it looked like that wasn’t the first time it hit that tree.
…
Running away was safer. There was nothing stopping us from running and coming back another day when it was safer and we were more prepared.
“Rosie! Back up to the tree behind you!” I shouted. “Keep five feet between you and it! Any farther and you’ll lose aggro and the boss will reset!”
But I didn’t want to run away from a dungeon boss if I believed we could win without any losses.
If I couldn’t figure out how to win after how many hundreds of times I killed this boss before, what good even was I?
“Lupa, opposite side, get to that tree and bait its attacks to it!” I ordered.
Both girls cooperated and got into position while I only had to deal with a single vine trying to attack me.
The girls looked like they caught onto my plan since they did their best to bait the attacks into the trees, not just dodge them in any direction.
Rosie’s tree broke first.