kscans

Chapter 62 - 62

"Rena, take care of that enemy in the back."

"Roger!"

I mow down the small fry, and Rena takes out the formidable enemies from a distance. This combination is the strongest for clearing dungeons as a pair.

Apparently, she originally chose the greatbow, with its high power per shot, with the assumption that she would be teaming up with me.

It's powerful but has a low rate of fire, making it a terrible matchup if she were to fight me. Yet she challenged me to PVP over and over. At the time, I just thought she was an easy mark for earning rank points, but thinking about it now, I feel a surge of guilt.

She chose her weapon for my sake, and kept pestering me for low-odds PVP matches just to have a connection with me. It's so sweet and endearing.

"Hayate, what's wrong? Why are you spacing out? Don't tell me you got hit with poison or something!?"

"I'm fine. Sorry for making you worry."

I pat Rena on the head, both to apologize for worrying her and for feeling guilty about the past.

"Thanks for everything, Rena."

"Wh, what's with you all of a sudden?"

She says that, but she doesn't seem to be bothered by it.

"Um... this is being forcibly streamed, so..."

"Yeah. We'll continue later."

When we leave the dungeon and are alone together, Rena always starts to get fidgety.

It's adorable. It makes me want to tease her a little.

Well, I can't restrain myself either and usually end up hugging her right away.

I imagined what we'd do after leaving the dungeon for a moment, then continued deeper inside with Rena.

"Ah, Hayate. Looks like someone's here."

"Yeah, just one person."

Up ahead, there was someone fighting a monster.

In the game FWO, it was possible for another player to attack a monster someone else was fighting and deal damage. However, this was considered bad manners, so generally, people didn't target enemies that were already engaged.

Incidentally, since you gained experience for skill points and drop items based on the damage dealt, mages who could use wide-area magic attacks sometimes cooperated with other parties to take on dozens of monsters at once.

Swordsmen often fought one-on-one, so they generally didn't try to steal someone else's kill.

That's why we were about to go around the person ahead of us and move on.

"Ah, wait, Hayate. That person looks like they're in trouble!"

Just as we were about to take another route, Rena noticed something was wrong.

The person fighting the monster was a female explorer. She had turned her back to the monster and started to run. A large humanoid monster was chasing her.

"Rena, can you get a shot?"

"Yeah!"

Rena nocked an arrow, drew her bow, and released.

Her attack successfully stopped the monster that was closing in on the woman.

I had started running at the same time the arrow was loosed, and I reached the woman's side to face the monster. Good, I made it in time.

"Are you alright?"

"Y, yes."

She doesn't seem to be injured. And she understood my Japanese.

She looked like a beautiful foreign woman, so I was a little surprised by her Japanese reply.

"Is it alright if I take this guy out?"

"I'm sorry. Please do."

The fact that we could have this exchange so smoothly might mean that this person was also an FWO player. Back in the game, there was a time when I would find players struggling with a tough enemy, defeat the monster for them, and be thanked for it.

The humanoid monster changed its target to me and lunged.

Its fists were clad in lightning. Getting hit by that would be bad.

I parry the attack with the earth-attribute kukri equipped on my right manipulator.

At the same time, I tried to slash with the Magic Sealing Sword on my left manipulator, but...

My attack was deflected by the monster's backhand.

But this was exactly what I had intended. I know this thing's attack patterns.

Most people set their joints to be loose so that damage doesn't transfer to the main body when they're counterattacked, but I had locked the manipulator's joints from the start, assuming it would be deflected.

By doing this, I can use my legs as a pivot and rotate using the enemy's strength.

"Eight-Strike Spinning Slash!"

I spun sideways twice, slicing the enemy with a flurry of blows from my four swords.

With my current equipment, I won't struggle with an enemy of this level.

By the way, the Eight-Strike Spinning Slash I used to defeat the monster is a four-sword style skill. If you can time it perfectly with an enemy's attack like I just did, it counts as a counter and its attack power increases significantly.

However, judging by the feel of it, I didn't even need to activate the skill. The woman seemed to have dealt a lot of damage already, and I hardly got any experience for my skill points. She was probably just a little bit away from defeating it herself.

I offer my hand to the woman who had collapsed on the ground and help her up.

"Did you run out of healing potions or something?"

"That's right. I came this far with a safety margin, but I unexpectedly got into a series of battles..."

She came to a Grade 4 dungeon alone, and after being rescued, she calmly answered my questions. She must have been a pretty strong player back in FWO.

"Should we escort you to the exit? The Return Feather hasn't been implemented yet."

Normally, I'd give her a healing potion and say goodbye, but this is currently the most difficult dungeon available. And the penalty for being defeated is too dangerous. It's not that I'm helping her because she's a woman, but I'd really like to see a skilled person who can come this far alone continue to be successful.

"I'm so sorry. If it's possible, please."

"It's no problem. Rena, is it okay if we go to the exit?"

"Of course it is. We're only on the third floor."

When I checked with Rena, who had arrived a little later, she immediately agreed.

After that, Rena and I escorted the woman to the dungeon exit, and then began our challenge to conquer the dungeon once more.