Live Dungeon!

Daryl was overcome with surprise by the sight of Hannah turning into light particles, but then he promptly looked up when Tsutomu called out to him. The latter was going through his Magic Bag, preparing a new set of equipment for Hannah.

Despite his best efforts, Daryl could not keep his thoughts coherent. Hannah had just died — He could neither come to grips with it, nor could he stop panicking because of it. His mind turned blank — almost, with the only thing remaining being what he had been told to do before the team headed down to layer seventy.

He had been told by Tsutomu to think and act on his own. That order now weighed heavily on Daryl’s mind. Until now, he would be told what to do either by Garm or Tsutomu whenever something unusual happened. Today’s battle, however, was the first time he had to step forward on his own initiative. Thinking about it now, it was quite a terrifying experience.

He felt as if his vision was narrowing down, his ears were going deaf, and not only those, he was struggling to even breathe. But he knew that he had to do something. To think and act on his own — he must not wait for Tsutomu’s orders all the time.

“It’s fast, yes, but we’ll be fine as long as we’re not grabbed. I’ll be sure to heal you. If you could pull its aggro away from me even just for a few minutes–“

“…I can do it.”

“Daryl?”

“I’ll pull it off somehow. I can do it.”

Daryl, with his shaking voice, repeated his mumblings a few more times before shooting a <> at the Mount Golem. It lacked the intimidating keenness of his usual aura, however, coming out as a simple wave of red energy, flying like a cloud through the air.

Seeing that Daryl was clearly acting strangely, Tsutomu cast him some support skills and spent a moment to ponder things over. He did have a way to get Hannah back into action even without Daryl’s help — he could revive her immediately, pull the Mount Golem’s aggro to himself, and try to hold on until she was done re-equipping her gear. Throughout the battle, Tsutomu had been casting <> on himself whenever he had the free time to do so. The extra defense from them should enable him to survive for a decent amount of time.

In theory, it would be better to have Daryl pull the aggro for a few minutes before reviving Hannah. Although he had stacked on layers upon layers of <>, Tsutomu’s AGI and VIT were quite low. A direct hit from the Mount Golem was sure to leave him on the brink of death, and being grabbed would, without a doubt, be the end of him regardless of any extra buffs.

With Daryl not acting like himself, however, entrusting him with such an important task did not seem to be an option. In fact, this was the first time Tsutomu had seen Daryl fail to control the intensity of his <>. If he were to go in and die at a bad moment, things would go from bad to worse. Salvaging the situation in the case that both of the team’s Tanks died was… not impossible, but even Tsutomu did not feel up to that challenge.

[Shit, things are getting too rocky for my liking…]

Going forward, the safe option would be to wait for Daryl to successfully pull the Mount Golem’s aggro, in turn reducing the risk of casting <>. Tsutomu himself considered this option to be quite tempting. Even if Daryl were to die at some point, no one would be at fault — because choosing the safer option would never be seen as a mistake after the fact.

In fact, if he were to work with a short-term party, Tsutomu would almost always take the safest option possible. As a Healer, taking unnecessary risks — and especially if he were to die from it — would result in all the blame being laid on him. After all, the death of those in the role of Healer — the only role with the ability to bring comrades back from death — was bound to deal the heaviest blow to the team. Risky actions ought to be avoided at all times.

But right now, there was not much time to agonize over his decisions. Tsutomu opened his eyes wide, having made up his mind. He called out to Amira and Diniel,

“You two, stay with Daryl and cover him! I’m going to revive Hannah now!”

After those two in the distance got the message, Tsutomu solidified his decision to resurrect Hannah immediately. First, he descended onto a platform of solidified lava that Diniel had made, and then prepared Hannah’s gear: armor, two pairs of brass knuckles, and a canteen of cooled water, among others.

“<>.”

Upon casting the spell, a ray of light shot up from his White Staff, and a few moments later, light particles started to gather into a mass in front of him. The mass of light glowed brighter and brighter, until it morphed into Hannah, in her usual light armor.

“Waaahhhh!! Wha–!?” Hannah raised an incoherent tantrum upon regaining her senses.

“Calm down,” Tsutomu said as he held her down by her shoulders. Seeing that Hannah was far from catching up on the situation, he proceeded to pass her her gear, piece after piece. “Here, here, and here — I’m the one being targeted right now, so hurry and get ready. If you don’t hurry and pull its aggro away from me… well, I’ll die, so I’m counting on you here.”

“WAAAHHH!!”

Hearing the scream coming from behind him, Tsutomu turned around and saw that Daryl had been grabbed by the Mount Golem. The Mount Golem proceeded to swing its arm aside, flinging Daryl straight into the arena’s wall — and then, as if it never had any interest in Daryl, it started running toward Tsutomu instead.

“Hurry up!”

Hearing Tsutomu’s no-chill voice for the first time ever, Hannah scrambled to put on her brass knuckles. Tsutomu, unnerved by the absurd speed of the approaching Mount Golem, cast <> and <> on himself. Amira flew away to get Daryl out of the wall, and Diniel was now heading here, in pursuit of the Mount Golem.

[I’d like to think that I made the right choice, but if I die from this… well, I’m sure as hell will be held responsible for our failure. Heh, maybe I’ll lose my position as one of the town’s top three Healers…] Tsutomu cracked some jokes in his head while flying away as fast as he could, sparing no energy to get away from the Mount Golem’s hands.

At this stage, the Mount Golem’s general methods of attack included grabbing with its hands, swinging its arms, and blasting heat from its eyes.

Tsutomu dodged one swing of the Mount Golem’s arm, but then it reacted quickly, turning its face to him and repeatedly shooting out heat blasts from both its eyes. They came at Tsutomu too quickly for him to dodge, making direct hits on him.

Thankfully, the Scorchstone Robe nullified the damage from those heat blasts, especially since he had turned his back on them and put the robe’s hood on. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Tsutomu was able to survive against the Mount Golem because he had this robe with him. Following that, the boss monster tried to swing its arms at Tsutomu again, and he avoided them — albeit with some difficulty.

Eventually, Tsutomu caught the sight of Diniel in a corner of his eye, almost catching up with her target. He did not have time to issue her orders, however; even with an advantage in the form of heat immunity, Tsutomu’s AGI was so low that he still had his hands full trying to dodge all of the Mount Golem’s physical attacks.

Tsutomu had practiced some evasion-based Tank strategies for himself before, so he could actually hold his own against the normal monsters of the Volcano layers. Against the final phase of the Mount Golem, however, was a different story.

At one point, the Mount Golem’s arm swing generated so much wind pressure that it blew Tsutomu, then it threw a straight punch at him, which he managed to narrowly dodge. Following that, it swung down its other arm — and this time, Tsutomu did not think he would survive it.

[Gah, I’m so dead.]

The Mount Golem, dyed in molten red, was too fast for him to dodge forever. Tsutomu moved away to try and at least prevent a direct hit, putting his faith in the layers of <> he had cast for himself — But all the while, the illusory image of Death itself was reflected in his eyes.

That moment, before the Mount Golem’s arm fully swung down, multiple ice arrows struck its elbow joint. The joint turned black and went stiff, slightly slowing down the arm’s movement.

As brief as that delay was, it was enough for Tsutomu to avoid being hit by a paper-thin margin; he then was able to get away unharmed after being blown away by the resulting wind pressure. It was by Diniel’s quick thinking that Tsutomu had been saved. Down on the ground, she had figured that <> would be too slow, so she had opted to stop for a moment, predicting where the Mount Golem’s elbow joint would be in the course of its swing and shooting at it with ice arrows.

[Holy shit, she’s GOOD!]

Tsutomu had planned to gamble on the <> defending him from the attack, so him coming out of it completely untouched was a majorly preferable result. He expressed his gratitude to Diniel as he kept himself airborne and regained control of his flight. Looking straight ahead, he could see that Hannah was now ready for action, currently starting to pull the Mount Golem’s aggro.

Daryl was too far away to see clearly, but he — and by extension, Amira — still seemed too stuck to come back and fight. Tsutomu quickly turned his attention back to the Mount Golem, which ran up to him and raised its foot, prompting him to slip under its leg to avoid it.

Following this, Diniel predicted the course of the Mount Golem’s movements again, accurately shooting its knee joint and delaying its attack by several seconds. Thanks to Diniel’s extremely advanced archery proficiency and the heat-nullifying Scorchstone Robe, Tsutomu was able to stay alive for a while longer.

“Ah.”

But that was also not meant to last forever; in the end, the Mount Golem managed to graze Tsutomu with its hands, which was enough to send him flying at the nearby wall. At the cost of all the remaining layers of his <>, he was still unharmed, but now he was stuck in the rock.

Still, despite him not being able to move, Tsutomu had a look of confidence on his face.

“All right! I got it on me!”

Following the last punch landed on it, the Mount Golem turned to Hannah instead; she had finally pulled its aggro onto her. Tsutomu heaved an exhausted sigh, pulled his arm out of the wall, and cast <> for Hannah.

Amira seemed to be back in the fight as well, though Tsutomu did not know since when she had been here; he had been too busy being chased by the Mount Golem to look for her. Daryl, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.

[Damn it, I hope he’s not dead…]

He had not seen any light particles on the wall where Daryl had crashed into. That may have resulted in a few broken bones and him being rendered immobile, perhaps, but given the current battle situation, he ought to prioritize supporting Hannah. Tsutomu focused on casting <> and <> for her, working toward building up the team’s momentum again. Due to her having died once before, Hannah was now keeping herself from getting overly excited.

“That’s not gonna work on me twice!”

The Mount Golem whipped out its big move again — jumping face-down flat on the ground, then spitting out rocks from its body like a shotgun — but this time, Hannah kept a cool head, moving away and dodging the buckshot. In this final phase, the Mount Golem was deceptively fast for something with such a gigantic body, but it was still far from measuring up to Hannah.

Diniel’s <> started coming into play again, and Amira added to the team’s damage output by joining in on the attack full-time. As the battle raged on and on, Tsutomu occasionally wondered where Daryl had gone, and focused on healing and supporting Hannah because he absolutely did not want to go through the Hannah revival experience ever again.

[Doesn’t look like it’ll be doing the wide-area blast again… Lucky us.]

The wide-area heat wave the monster had unleashed when it shifted phases had a chance of being used again during this final phase; the first use had resulted in it being rendered temporarily immobile, but that would not be the case for the second time onward. Follow-up attacks from such a devastating wide-area blast were bound to be troublesome, so the team was fortunate that it had yet to whip the move out again.

“<>.”

Diniel, sounding quite worn-out, unleashed her skill for the umpteenth time today, raining ice arrows down on the Mount Golem. This time, though, the result was different — the monster’s shining red eyes flickered, and then the light faded altogether; it ceased all movement, and starting from its head, its rocky body darkened. In the end, the Mount Golem started radiating light particles.

The sound of something bursting apart echoed through the area, and two Black Gate emerged. After making sure that he was seeing things right, Tsutomu clenched his fists and pumped them up.

“All right! Good job, everyone!”

“OOOHHH!! TEACH! We did it!!” Hannah, trembling with joy, jumped full force at Tsutomu — which ended up looking more like her head-butting his abdomen.

“Oof–!” Tsutomu groaned and pushed her head away, while also trying to stabilize his flight.

Diniel, looking quite exhausted, lowered her bow. Amira rested her greatsword on her shoulder; the look on her face was expressing mixed feelings. She proceeded to plant her sword into the ground, leaning on it while she caught her breath.

Hannah kept on celebrating, clinging to Tsutomu and refusing to let go; Tsutomu calmed her and the erratic flight-induced motion sickness down, then they descended to the ground together and walked over to Diniel, who was wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm.

“Diniel! We did it!”

“Hey, get off me.”

Hannah threw her arms around Diniel, prompting the latter to pull an irritated face and push her away. Tsutomu then approached Diniel, his guard slackened but apparently still high on adrenaline.

“Diniel! The way you stunned it — that was AWESOME! Really, you’re a lifesaver!”

“Mm-hm. You did good too, Tsutomu.”

“Damn! You’re SO COOL!”

Diniel waved her hand as if all that had been no big deal, while Tsutomu raised a hearty laugh and clasped his hands together. If it had not been for Diniel’s quick thinking, stopping her <> and switching to normal shooting to save Tsutomu at that critical moment, he probably would have been cornered and beaten to the brink of death — at best.

Afterward, Tsutomu went to check the loot and was disappointed by the size of the so-called Colorless Giant Magic Stone. He proceeded to call out to Amira,

“You also did good, Amira! Great job clearing out the smaller Golems — and not to mention how much damage you did during the last stretch!”

“Yeah… I guess,” Amira replied, seeming not so happy — or even suppressing her anger.

Surprised and curious to know why she was acting like this now, Tsutomu tilted his head before asking,

“Uh, so… what happened to Daryl? Did he break some bones or something?”

“…Meh. Who cares about that little wimp?” Amira groaned in disdain before turning the other way.

Tsutomu still did not understand why she was like this, but did not press the matter further. He took a glance in Hannah’s direction and saw that she was now celebrating in front of the God Eye, then he went to the spot in the wall where Daryl had crashed into.

“Daryl? You here?”

“Eep–!”

And sure enough, Daryl was there, shivering and curling up like a ball. Upon being called by Tsutomu, he let out a pitiful scream and curled up even more. From how fast Daryl could move, it could be inferred that he had not been injured too heavily.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…”

“…You all right, man?” Tsutomu asked, anxious about how Daryl was saying nothing but apologies over and over. But the latter backed away, shedding a stream of tears as he kept on apologizing.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry…”

“…Well, let’s just get out of here for now — we can sort this out later.”

Tsutomu felt sorry for Daryl as he kept an eye on the latter’s panic. Eventually, he figured that they ought to leave before talking things out, and so he started helping Daryl unequip his heavy armor. After putting all the pieces in his Magic Bag, he let Daryl lean on his shoulder as they flew to regroup with the others.