ch241-ch260 · 251-ch251
Chapter 251: The Split
"Alright, Aikawa—dance, please."
"Ho-ho. Here we go~......"
I pull the magic stone from the Sand Golem we just beat and spot the next one, but it really seems like Soushi intends to do this one solo.
Golem movements are slow, so as long as he doesn't take a hit, he should be fine......
We know from the last fight that with buffs on, he can outright overwhelm them in speed—but you never know.
Even so, I can't exactly come out with a "you sure about this?" or a "you can't do it alone"......
Saying that might break what we have......
They're friends, so all I can do is trust him.
The dance buffs last two minutes.
Can he finish the Sand Golem off inside that window......
He's got his enhancement buffs plus the 【Cooking】 skill, so attack power should be there—but I'll stay ready to jump in the moment anything goes wrong......
"And POSE!"
While I was thinking, the two sets of box step finished, and with the Mia-san pose, they're ready.
Soushi walks slowly up to the Sand Golem, and the 【Mimicry】ing Sand Golem rises to its feet.
Soushi, who had been deliberately waiting for it to stand, waits for it to raise its fist, then sidesteps.
The moment the Sand Golem's fist slams into the ground—DOSH!—Soushi takes a big step in and plants his right hand against the golem's flank.
His weapon, the long-handled kitchen knife, is still in his left hand......
"【Water Pressure】."
The instant he murmurs it under his breath, something shoots out of the Sand Golem.
(Water? 'Water magic'! Ohhh, so THAT was the play!)
Soushi slides his right hand sideways—and splits the golem's body clean in two, top from bottom.
Soushi's born-with-it job is 【Water Mage】.
The job that suits him best.
And right now he's got two of his own enhancement-magic buffs plus two of Aikawa's dance buffs—four Magic Up buffs stacked in total.
That Magic stat probably surpasses the top-tier magic jobs.
"Oraaa! Did it—!"
Soushi raises the hand holding the long-handled kitchen knife skyward in a victory roar.
But......
"Soushi! Not yet—!"
"Eh?"
Aikawa shouts something close to a scream, but it doesn't quite get through to him.
The Sand Golem, so beautifully split top from bottom, had the bad luck to land with its cut faces flush against the ground......
Golems feel no pain.
And they keep living on even with all four limbs severed—monsters you can't even call living things.
Getting bisected obviously doesn't kill one.
Forget the lower half—the upper half still has its magic stone, and it moves along like nothing happened.
That Sand Golem twists its remaining upper half around and swings at Soushi.
Aikawa dashes over in a panic, but there's distance between them.
She'll...... make it.
"【Gate】."
Left eye!
I shut my right and split Soushi from the Sand Golem.
Bom!—a strange sound.
When something hits the 'Left Eye Gate', the feedback is a weird one.
It's not like a tire, but there's this feeling of being pushed back.
And the sound—like the air in between exploding.
The Sand Golem that punched it can't keep its footing, so it topples straight over.
Then—CRACK!—Aikawa's soccer kick comes flying in.
The Sand Golem rolls away, two rotations, three......
Half a golem is still pretty heavy, you know.
The momentum sheared off both its remaining arms, too, and at that rate it probably would've shattered the magic stone anyway.
"Don't get careless, idiot!"
Yeah, that.
You showed us such a beautiful 'water magic', and then......
"Ahh, that scared me. You mean it doesn't die from that!?"
"You always beat golems with no arms and no legs! Idiot! If Haru-kun hadn't been there you might have DIED! Idiot!"
Being an idiot can't be helped, I guess.
Well, I'm here, and we're doing this as a party, so forgive him, okay?
"Nice one, Soushi. That just now—was that 【Water Pressure】? How much MP did that cost?"
"Yeah. Saved my butt, partner! 【Conversion・Water】 cost 10, and 【Water Pressure】 was another 10, so 20—but the enhancement magic ate 80 too...... Though honestly, it felt like I could've pulled it off without the buffs."
Soushi and I do a fist bump.
"What are you two laughing about! This is no laughing matter!"
"No, we're just happy we know how strong Soushi is now...... I was worried his stats were too low to actually fight. But it was unfounded. With that kind of power, doesn't the effective range go up too? If you've got two meters of range, you're already stronger than me?"
An unfounded worry that was a great big unfounded worry.
That magic is scary.
I doubt a close-combat job could block it, right?
If you can't kill him before you're in range and before the magic comes out, you get pierced by that spell and lose—a melee-killer move that looks like it actually works.
If it outranges a spear, I'm out of options too.
What's more, Soushi's a magic job, but with buffs stacked he can move to a degree.
That "to a degree" is also scary.
A magic job that can keep up with a close-combat job's movements is way too strong.
"Oh? For real? Though I dunno if I've really got two meters of range. Well, let's just keep testing it."
The 【Water Pressure】 pitch, for upper-rank magic jobs, is supposedly "cut through iron as long as you're touching."
The moment distance opens up, the power just collapses.
Two meters is asking too much, huh?
"Hey, don't let it go to your head! No more fighting solo, got it? You use your magic from the back!"
Says the one who started the whole "I'll go first solo" thing.
"Also, if you skip 【Conversion・Water】 and just bring water down from up top, wouldn't that cut the MP cost?"
For the 【Water Pressure】 alone, it should be half.
"Nope, I'm already putting out a fair bit of water. You'd be carrying two-liter bottles around. Well, if I have you hand it over at the moment I use it, it might work on 【Mimicry】ing golems......"
"Why not aim straight for the magic stone? Then you'd only need a quick shh, one instant burst, right?"
A 500-milliliter bottle wouldn't get in the way, right?
"Aikawa gets loud when stones get broken. When you break the stones on golems you bring over, Haruki, she does this cluck-her-tongue thing every single time."
That's scary.
Aikawa's the daughter of a Triple-Rank adventurer, but she's weirdly strict about money.
Well, she did tell us how hard things were until her father made it as an adventurer.
Maybe running away from home brought those memories back?
"It's not that bad, right? But each one's worth over 10,000 yen, you know?"
Well, true.
By that logic, even with the broken ones subtracted, we're pulling in close to a million yen a day—it's just that none of it can be cashed in......
"I'll be careful......"
After that we tested Soushi's 'water magic' all kinds of ways, and the full-buff range where he could cut through a golem came out to about one meter.
We learned that without the 【Enchanter】 enhancement magic, he can't pierce a Sand Golem unless he's touching it.
Incidentally, when the power fell short and the water bounced off the golem, it soaked Aikawa head to toe......