Volume 2 Chapter 8.2

Chapter 8.2

Translator: Einbedo

Editor: Weasalopes

At around the same time that Haruna’s group were out and about, frantically scurrying to reach the boss room, Hiroshi’s group was about to be unpleasantly surprised by what the dungeon had in store for them.

「Somethin’s not right ‘ere.」

「I wasn’t the only one.」

It was eerily quiet for a good while now, despite the dungeon making it abundantly clear that it was going to ensure no one stuck around one single spot for any longer than ten minutes, no matter the cost. Up until now their plan of action was to just smash through the nearest section of wall that lead away from the boss room. It took a while but the dungeon eventually took notice and began adapting to their tactic by gradually increasing the thickness of the walls in order to make them less penetrable and by adding other cute little gimmicks such as a mechanism that released a cloud of spores, occasionally gas, upon coming in contact with a foreign object.

Just as they had begun thinking this approach of theirs wasn’t going to fly for much longer, they were met with this unsettling uneventfulness. It has already been over twenty minutes since they settled down in their current location yet it was completely radio silent.

「Ya never know what might happen, we’d best be prepared for the wor-」

「Hiroshi picked up on a cause for immediate concern halfway through his sentence.」

「We’re hightailin’ it right outta here!」

「Eh?」

「Faster, woman!」

Artiem hesitatingly followed suit, completely bewildered by Hiroshi’s abrupt reaction. The dungeon, however, would not be letting them off the hook that easily.

「The ground i-it’s!」

「Drat!」

Before they were able to make their way out of the room the ground had transformed into a gloopy mess closely replicating the qualities of quicksand. Even though Hiroshi had a knack for getting out of sticky situations, there was very little he could do being knee deep in said gelatinous soup. The two, being completely stuck and out of options, passively watched on as the dungeon sluggishly ferried them over to its desired destination.

「H-Hiroshi I-I.」

「Hold the phone. We’ll have all the time in the world to lose our minds after all’s said and done, right now we should be in the business of preservin’ our energy.」

「R-roger that!」

Before they knew it the room around them had shifted into one of a much larger size and the goop they had grown familiar with had devolved into a noxious liquid-like substance.

「What a time to be alive!」

Hiroshi muttered sarcastically as he noticed how Artiem had begun succumbing to the poison at an alarmingly fast rate. judging by how long they’ve been afloat, it wouldn’t be too long ’till the effects of the all-purpose potion had ran their course. Luckily for them they had reached the final destination, upon which the water level began dramatically dropping, before their concern had the opportunity to manifest itself in reality. Hiroshi took action to assure Artiem’s safety without a moment’s delay by dragging her ashore, all while simultaneously shielding her against an intense current and assuaging his haphephobia. He then made sure to apply immediate treatment via the use of an all-purpose potion, among others. Once that was done and over with, he turned his gaze towards the source of the miasma.

「As expected, the final boss’s a tree, ain’t ‘e?」

The towering tree stood there, menacingly, enshrouded in a thick aura of miasma.

「Hiroshi.」

「Ya go find a nice remote spot and take a breather, I’ll take care a this.」

Hiroshi preemptively cut off Artiem’s attempt at pulling herself back up, with the help of a poleaxe, and took up position right in front of her, in case of any upcoming attacks. The fact that the potions they had on hand only went up as far as class five, combined with the remarkably potent poison carried by the noxious liquid, meant that the lingering complications resulting from the poison damage received would completely immobilize her for at least an hour. Although, unlike Elena, she’d likely make a full recovery after one or two days, so whether or not that’d fall under the definition of ‘lingering complications’ was debatable.

Although he could be seen trembling due to the ominous air around the boss, that was more of an auto triggering fight or flight response than anything else. Compared to Balador’s final attack, the state of arousal he was in at the moment was nowhere near the same level. If we were to go a step further and put it up against the sense of primeval dread instilled at the mention of chocolate, it really was no big deal.

「Welp, guess it’s time ta see which one a us kicks the bucket first.」

The corrupted Ent sprung into action just as Hiroshi had finished delivering his hearty war cry. This marked the beginning of Hiroshi’s final stand.

（Haruna things are looking really bad!）

Makoto sent out a distress call to Haruna at around the same time that Hiroshi had thrown down the gauntlet.

（Makoto? Please, don’t tell me it’s what it think it is.）

（According to Mio, Hiroshi’s signal has overlapped with the core!）

A cold sweat ran down Haruna’s back as she received confirmation that her worst fear had turned into a reality.

（Have you made any progress?）

（We’ve been stuck in a perpetual warping loop for quite a while now! We’re currently fumbling about for a way out of this godforsaken loop!）

（You two as well? That thing *really* doesn’t want us getting together, it appears.）

While it took Haruna’s team around fifteen minutes, give or take, to catch on, Mio managed to single handedly achieve the same exact result in under a minute. Their overall times, in the grand scheme of thing, balanced out almost perfectly, due to how the former beat out the latter in getting to the trap by a longshot.

（In that case, we may as well brute force our way through the walls and meet up that way.）

（You can do that?）

（I’ve got something in mind, more or less.）

Makoto retold the story of how they had made quick work of a certain trap just moments prior. This sparked them to brainstorm a more creative application of the same general idea.

（What if we were to set it off with hellfire sanctum?）

（That doesn’t sound half bad.）

（Mio deary, how far apart are we?）

（Around one hundred meters if we were to move along a straight line north-northwest.）

（Alright.）

They had packed a total of ten bottles of dwarf slaughterer for this run, one of which had already been used up. If they were to use up all those nine life lines, their state of affairs would take an immediate for the worse.

Before they could try their luck at succeeding within the given limitations they first had to puzzle together the optimal way of going about doing so. According to Mio, so long as they

aimed in the general direction of the core, there was no chance the two of them would be caught in the crossfire. Thus the trial and error and session had begun.

「How about we first try setting it against the wall and make it go boom?」

「Fair enough.」

Haruna popped open the cap, gently set the bottle against the wall and hightailed it out of there. Mere moments later Tatsuya’s hellfire sanctum went off.

「Not bad, not bad at all, although it could still use some work.」

「We could always try aerosolizing it, or possibly just going down the molotov route.」

「I’ll put up a barrier to suspend the droplets but the rest is in your hands.」

「You can count on me.」

Haruna had learned a certain type of magic in her potion brewing classes which allowed her to manipulate liquids in a multitude of ways. She transferred the beverage over to the barrier and, through sheer force of will, aerosolized it. The resulting smell was so intense that it had momentarily bled through the barrier, completely obscuring their vision for the entire duration. Once it wore off

「Hellfire sanctum!」

Tatsuya, with great vigor, localized his cast of hellfire sanctum within the confines of the barrier. The resulting explosion cleanly blasted through the walls, creating a reasonably sized passageway connecting the two parties.

「We did it.」

「We sure did.」

The two exchanged a quick, satisfied nod and began making their way over to the other side. They had to move swiftly as the walls could begin reforming at any moment.

（How’d it go?）

（The path’s been cleared. Where are you two?）

（The very moment your explosion went off the space around us distorted, displacing us further further apart from one another.）

（Is the loop still in effect?）

（We’re about to find out.）

It appeared as though the dungeon wasn’t going down without a fight, not that further hammering down that point changed their gameplan in any substantial way.

（We’ll be making our way down that hole as well.）

（Gotcha. If we did happen to get caught up in yet another loop, well, we’ll think of something.）

（Roger!）

Having decided on their plan of action they wasted no time in putting it into action. Although their decisiveness was praiseworthy, they still had a long journey ahead them.

「Wan’ a piece of me? Come get sum!」

Hiroshi pulled all the aggro away from Artiem, in a large aoe radius, meaning that not only was the final boss out for his blood but all of the adds as well.

「Take a bloody hike, will ya?」

He cleared out all the hunter trees within attack range of Artiem without forgetting to mix in some trash talk for good measure. Whether or not the adds would respawn was anybody’s guess, what was clear, however, is that the threat they posed had to be dealt with immediately.

「Don’t think I forgot ’bout you lot!」

He moved down three more adds in melee range and leapt back to Artiem’s side. He made sure to sever their roots in case to prevent the hunter trees from regrowing. Whether or not the conventional approach would do the trick in this instance was a shot in the dark at best but it was better to be safe than sorry, especially considering that he was in it for the long haul.

He greeted any incoming vines and branches, who were all to eager to grapple him, with the sharp edge of a blade and bodyblocked all the leaves they blasted his way, occasionally moving out of position to kill of a few adds as he saw fit. His opponent being stationary proved to be a double edged sword.

(‘Tis a complete deadlock, although what was I really expectin’ to ‘appen)

Their attacks weren’t all too difficult to handle as a result but, at the same time, this also meant that Hiroshi wouldn’t be able to get in any attacks of his own so long as Artiem was there. His threat generation was on point, the thing preventing him from leaving Artiem’s side was a critical case of ‘what if’ syndrome.

The corrupted ent’s attacks were no laughing matter to anyone but Hiroshi, who’d take close to no damage from any one of its attacks unarmored and even then his hp regen would likely outscale its dps. That being said, the fact that he’d take any damage whatsoever, when his defence ability unarmored was equal to that of a fully decked out knight, was plenty a cause for concern for squishy characters, namely Artiem.

That being the case, he had no other choice but to stay in place and take the beating on the chin.

「I could try bein’ more aggressive ‘ere, if not for those god forsaken adds.」

He grumbled as the adds were slowly chipping away at his sanity. Damage wise their attacks were child’s play, the resulting sensation of pain was anything but. Having been through this torment for a prolonged period of time would be enough to bring any man to their witt’s end. That being said Hiroshi had no intention of caving in to the pain, although he was most certainly going to be a bit salty about the whole thing. He had long forgone any thought of blocking every single attack coming his way, resorting to only dealing with those that posed a danger to Artiem’s well being.

The closest add was seven feet away, just barely outside the range of Cover – a quintessential ability for any tank worth their salt. In spite of that Hiroshi hadn’t really gotten around to levelling all that much as he couldn’t bear the thought of potentially leaving a party member exposed by accident during throughout the training process. That being said, he did manage to get it up to seven feet, which was a massive stride compared to the initial three feet range he had to work up from. Given the situation, this ability was his bread and butter.

(Fallin’ back on throwin’ weapons would seem to be the right call here, only problem is that pomey’s are off the table and I’ve only gots three throwin’ axes ’till I run dry. Knive’s me got plenty but they lack the oomph ta inflict any real damage, not to mention the fact that they might just get swatted outta the air before even makin’ contact. My best bet here is to just try an’ knock one of those fellars out cold with the throwin’ axes I’ve got on hand, a shame that’s about as far as my struggle’ll get me.)

He entertained the idea of just screwing everything and pulling out one of those ginormous pomeys but it remained just that – an idea. If it were to get flung back at them it’d be no laughing matter and the chances of that occurring were really high so long as the adds remained on the field.

「May as well give it a shot, got nothin’ to lose.」

After being wailed on for a solid thirty minutes, he had finally built up the resolve to put one of his ideas into action by aggressively slicing through the surrounding branches with renewed vigor. Using this bought time he swiftly reached for the throwing axes safely secured in his waist bag, put every enchant on them he had at his disposal, and began hurling them at the furthermost add one by one. The first axe sunk its teeth into one if its roots, exploding shortly thereafter and chunking a large portion of its trunk. The second one finished off the job while the third and final one had its sights set on the one right next to it.

He noticed that the axes did a lot more damage than he had initially expected, which lead him to believe that knives might just do the trick after all. He took out a handful of them, repeated the same enchanting process and flung them at the half-dead add. A wall of branches managed to absorb a few of them, before being promptly blown to smithereens, allowing the remaining knives to pass through without a hitch and eat away at what little had been left of its trunk.

「I’ve done all I could.」

A total of seven adds still remained on the field but now that all his long range damage sources had dried up, it was back to square one. Hiroshi, in hindsight, deeply regretted opting to learn minor heal in place of magic bullet – an instant cast, unaspected magic ability. The adds got a lot more aggro after losing some of their buddies, preventing Hiroshi from taking out anything that’d do even the slighest bit of damage.

「H-Hiroshi!」

「I’m fain, worry ’bout yerself instead, a’ight?」

「I-I’m so sorry.」

「What ye be apoligizin’ for? It’s not like ye could’ve done anythin’ differently so quit frettin’ ye little head over this and get some re-」

Hiroshi had mysteriously vanished into thin air before getting the chance to complete his sentence. As she was busy processing what had just happened, Artiem got shoved all the way back to the wall, where she caught a glimpse of Hiroshi, which was all fine and good except for the fact that…

「Hiroshi!!!」

He had been impaled by one of the corrupt ent’s massive roots.