A week had passed since then, and Barbara was still struggling to keep up against multiple Skeletons. Although the number she could manage at once had increased to six, these monsters were still much tougher than Goblins, so she had yet to achieve any remarkable results.
Regardless, Barbara had been keeping her attitude positive all the while, so the team’s mood and communication during combat had not been bad at all. Having considered how things have been going, Tsutomu guessed that Barbara would be able to fulfill her minimum roles as a Tank within the remaining twenty days, so at this time, he still did not feel the need to hurry.
Though she still had much to learn to fully function as a Tank, such as controlling the magnitude of her skills, for now, it was more important that she trained to avoid taking critical hits and being surrounded by monsters — to let a portion of the monsters’ attacks focus on her, reducing the damage intake of the entire party. Such was the minimum requirement of taking the role of a Tank.
Moreover, since Tsutomu also intended to teach Eunice about <<combat cry="">> and other aggro management skills, having her watch along as things went on also worked well; all Barbara needed to do was start by using <<combat cry="">> once, then use other situational aggro skills according to the Healers’ direction.</combat></combat>
As for Eunice’s progress, on the other hand, she had successfully homogenized her support skills’ durations within the first two days. For the next two after that, she had achieved the ability to adjust the quantity of mental strength she put into her healing and support skills; now she was able to input weak, standard, and strong amounts of energy for situational use. Additionally, her direction of skill shots had also improved. In the remaining three days, she had shown to be able to output higher healing power than Tsutomu when she cast <<heal>> while standing in <
“Ah-all right.”
Barbara, having occasionally been given the strict treatment from Tsutomu during battle, looked clearly relieved as she held her straw in her mouth. The Golden Tune’s policy during battles was for every individual to decide their own actions without any specific instructions, so Barbara was quite surprised by Tsutomu’s style of giving out precise commands.
It was not necessarily the cast that she was afraid of Tsutomu’s words, but each time during battle when she thought she had just messed up, Tsutomu would always give out instructions to help correct her approach. Barbara did not particularly think it to be unpleasant, but she simply could not keep herself calm and composed knowing that his sights would never overlook anything.
“I’m aware that I might have come off as quite self-important when giving out orders, so let me apologize now if you think that is the case.”
“Oh, no, I don’t find that offensive at all. It’s just… you’re kinda scary, or something,” Barbara cut off her sentence awkwardly, and proceeded to blow into her straw, bubbling up the fruit juice in her cup.
“Huh…”
Getting that sort of reply from Barbara, Tsutomu was at a loss for words. He himself was not so aware of how much he had raised his voice, but since Barbara felt it was scary, he now figured that there must have been a tone discrepancy between them. Feeling that he had misread Barbara’s personality, and in turn inappropriately acted toward her this whole time, Tsutomu had a few drops of stressful sweat run down his forehead.
“I’m… sorry about that. I’ll try not to sound scary from now on.”
“Wait, no! I do think you’re acting with our best interests in mind… And I know I’ve been spoiled in some way by the leniency of this place, so…! I think it’ll be better if you kept being strict with us!”
“Ah, if you say so… Still, I’ll try to watch my tone, at least.”
Somewhat pulled back on track by Barbara’s loudness, Tsutomu eventually nodded in agreement with her.