I hate being in pain, so I think I'll make a full defense build-Chapter 360

Itai no wa Iya nanode Bōgyo-Ryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu 360

Defense Specialization and Collecting Miniatures 2

The stone statue continued to take damage before finally falling to its knees and dying. Now that it was done, Maple was about to head to the teleportation circle, but then she realized that something was strange.

“Why doesn’t it disappear…?”

The stone statue’s HP was at 0 as it lay there. However, it showed no signs of turning into light and disappearing. Maple thought this was strange, and so she walked over to it and started tapping on it to see if it was still alive.

“I think I killed it, but… Huh? Water?”

She heard the splashing of water and looked down at her feet. Water was spread out all around her. Now that she thought about it, this had happened when she was here with Sally. It was as she was thinking this, that water suddenly started to shoot out of the ground around her.

“Wawawa!?”

Maple jumped back in surprise. Chains rattled as they came out of the water around the stone statue. An anchor was attached to the end of the chain. It wrapped itself tightly around the statue, and then it started to drag it into the water as if there was no floor below it.

This was so different to anything Maple had seen before, and she gulped as she watched. After a moment, what appeared as if trading places with the stone statue, was a human in a diving suit, and an old, rusted submarine.

Maple had fought underwater monsters a number of times before, but never anything like this.

As she saw an HP bar appear above its head, she immediately went into a battle stance.

“I hope I can get a miniature of this!”

Maple would be very happy if she could place a small exploring person in her little sea. That being said, as this enemy was so different, she had no idea what kind of abilities it would have. And so Maple braced herself as she developed her weapons, which were also quite strange in this world of sword and magic.

“‘Commence Attack’!”

As Maple unleashed her bullets, the boss dodged it by sinking into the ground. The water that had spread out also started to sink in, and Maple’s eyes widened with surprise.

“What!? …Wa!?”

Just as she started to wonder if it had run away, water suddenly burst out from under her feet. Unable to react in time, Maple was bound to the ground by numerous anchors. But since she was able to protect ‘Predator’ and Syrup with ‘Dedicated Affection,’ Maple just waited to see what would happen next. The ground under her feet flashed white for a second, and then Maple was thrown violently into the air.

“A-an explosion?”

A giant pillar of water had come out, and water splashed around the area like rain. As the boss’s attack was a big one that even destroyed the anchors, Maple was able to free herself. Normally, this attack would have torn her to shreds, but since it only carried her into the air, she was able to recover her balance quickly. Maple put away ‘Predator’ and then jumped onto Syrup. If her opponent was going to dive, then she would fly.

“Ha…that was a shock… Still, now there is some distance between us!”

Maple looked down, sure that the anchors would not be able to reach her there. It seemed like the boss rose to the surface at regular intervals, and as the water spread out right before, it was easy to tell where it would appear.

Just as Maple predicted, the anchors did not stretch out far enough to reach her in the air. And so she was able to avoid being hit by its explosions.

“Maybe I’ll just stay here and chip away at its HP. After all, I won’t be able to dodge its surprise attacks if it goes underground…”

Maple brought out her weapons again, as the last ones had been destroyed. Then she unleashed a beam where the boss surfaced. However, it was blocked by a dome of water that was suddenly created out of nowhere. And by the time the mist that rose faded away, the boss had once again escaped into the water.

“That’s not good…I don’t think this will work.”

Maple felt that it was not an effective attack. And since she was in a safe zone, she took the opportunity to consider other ways to deal damage.

“I have to attack it when it comes out…hmm…”

Judging by the fact that her beams could be blocked, there was no point in repeatedly hitting it with normal attacks. Maple wondered if she didn’t have any skills or items she could use, and then a certain idea came to her.

“Alright! I can do this!”

She moved to the edge of Syrup so she had a good view of what was below, and then she pointed her short sword towards the ground.

“‘Hydra’!”

The clump of poison she unleashed collided with the ground. And like that, a swamp of poison began to spread out. Maple waited for the end of the cool-down, and then changed her position a little before unleashing ‘Hydra’ again. Eventually, the entire colosseum was covered in poison. As she watched to see what would happen, water started to spread out from underneath the poison, and then the boss appeared. However, unlike previous times, it was now covered in poison. As the poison chipped away at its HP, the boss sank back into the ground.

“Yes! It worked!”

While it wasn’t the prettiest sight, she felt that this was the best way to deal damage without being hit by any of its attacks. It would get poisoned every time it rose to the surface, and its HP decreased little by little. It appeared to have no method of retaliating, as Maple was too high in the air. And so all it could do was repeatedly sink and resurface in the poison.

“Recently, there have been a lot of times where it didn’t work. So I’m glad that it worked this time.”

While the damage was not particularly great, Maple was used to waiting. She had no problem when it came to battles of endurance. And this time, it was just as easy as sitting there and waiting.

“I wonder if I have something good here.”

Maple decided to ignore the boss and look through her inventory for an item that would help her kill the time. There were puzzles, the kind that Kanade was always playing with, objects to look at, and a lot of food. As she always gave her materials to Izu or traded them in for money, half of the items in her inventory were for entertainment purposes.

Maple took out a few of them and then lay in a relaxing position on top of Syrup.

“I guess I should do whatever I can as well. ‘Acid Rain’!”

She made acid rain from above as a finishing touch. Now that the boss was thoroughly in hell, Maple relaxed for real this time.

Like that, she waited for the boss’s slow demise. When it finally vanished into light, quite a lot of time had passed.

As for Maple, she was lying on her back playing with an item. It was only when she heard the chime signalling the boss’s death that she realized that the fight was over and sat up.

“It’s finished! Ah, I wonder where it died?”

Maple had not been thinking about it at all. When she looked down, she saw that there was a puddle where the boss had last been. And so there was no reason to search through the whole colosseum in order to find the drop items.

Maple headed towards it on Syrup and then dropped down in order to walk through the poison and see if there was anything to find. After a while, she noticed that there was something shining within the purple swamp. She ran forward and scooped it up. It was not a miniature person or submarine. Instead, it was a strange black box that fit in the palm of her hand.

“…How do you open this?”

Maple inspected it carefully, but could not figure out how it was supposed to be opened. And there wasn’t even a key hole either.

“Well, I’ll just take it back with me then.”

As she just needed to put it in her inventory, there shouldn’t be a problem taking it back, as long as it didn’t cast any strange debuffs on her. And like that, Maple acquired the item called ‘Lost Legacy.’ She left the dungeon, both praying that she would be able to get the miniature submarine next time, and also trying to think of a way to finish the fight without taking so long.

Maple had spent her days defeating raid bosses and collecting miniature monsters. However, the long 9th event had finally reached its final day. In other words, it was the day of the last raid boss.

And so the members of Maple Tree gathered at the guild home in order to prepare and make plans.

“The bosses seemed to be getting stronger every day. So it’s quite likely that this one will be stronger than all the rest?”

“I think so too. Besides, a lot of players will gather together if it’s the last one. What kind of monster will be able to go against everyone…”

They would have to expect something that could still fight while it was surrounded, and have lots of HP and wide area attacks. That being said, Maple Tree would always use the same strategy.

“As always, Mai and Yui will attack while the rest of us do everything we can to protect them!”

Realistically speaking, there were no attackers that could deal more damage to a raid boss than these two. Maple and Chrome would focus on defending them while Kanade would use his books to nullify damage, and Izu would help by using items. After that, Kasumi and Sally could work as sub-attackers, whose roles it was to attack and destroy any obstacles so the two had a clear path to the boss.

Once they got close to the boss, they would be able to continue to unleash their normal attacks that dealt ‘special attack’ level damage until all of its HP was blown away and it died.

“We’ll do our best!”

“We’ll do our best!”

It was a role that only they could fulfil, and so Mai and Yui took it very seriously. As they had participated in raid bosses many times now, they knew that it wasn’t just the members of Maple Tree that relied on them. No ally could be more reliable than they were now.

“Alright, let’s go then!”

They didn’t want to be late, and so the eight of them got an early start as they headed to the location in order to wait for the raid boss.