ch441-ch460 · 444-ch444

Chapter 444: The Invincible Box

"What on earth is this?"

Strike while the iron's hot.

I came straight to Mia-san's shop to have the thing I need made.

"A blueprint."

I pulled an all-nighter on it.

"This is a scribble!! And what am I even looking at?"

Rude—it's a work of supreme confidence.

"It's a shield. Please build it as a shield."

"THIS box is a shield? And what's this note—'deflects rockets'? Are you a grade schooler?!"

I even wrote out exactly how much durability it needs, and THIS is the abuse I get!

What I want made is a square box built from five shields—four sides and a ceiling.

Step inside and you're invincible—that's the idea, and that's what I want.

"I'll handle the reinforcement with enhancement, so make the box out of shields with armor as thick as you can manage."

"And what's it FOR? You build it to spec, we field-test it, and it fails—on the surface that doesn't cut it, you know? In the dungeon, failure equals death. State the use. State the use."

In the dungeon, a failure ties straight into death.

It'd be nice if the enhancement took on every face of the box, not just the front shield.

And if you ask what we'd DO inside this invincible box......

"Flirt."

"I'll beat you to d*ath, you know?"

He got mad at me.

But hear me out.

By flirting inside this box, we lure the skeletons out of the fortress.

By Floor 48, the skeletons' arsenal will include rifles.

Flirt carelessly outside (inside the dungeon) and you get sniped.

If skills are mixed in, anything within a kilometer might be fair game.

"......Which is why we can't even flirt in peace, you see."

"Then do it outside! Outside (the dungeon)!"

Flirting isn't the goal—the goal is to put the skeletons bursting out of the gate into the 'Right Eye Gate.'

Then, straight down from the 'Left Eye Gate,' which we plan to leave floating in the air.

Adjust it so the box drops right in front of them, and with the distance correction the EXP should go to everyone inside.

Behold: the Flirt in the Invincible Box and Level Up Easy Strategy.

We do have to keep 【Charge・Shield】 deployed at all times, so the time limit doesn't change—but we can grind through numbers all at once.

Efficiency should be great.

Soushi could steer charms out of the box too—if he rigs the fortress's castle gate with a trap like the Quetzalcoatl fight, he'd monopolize the EXP. I think it'd be an easy level-up.

"......Something like that. And once we've confirmed the box's inside is completely safe, we can level you up too, Mia-san."

"Made to watch you two flirt inside a cramped sealed room—what KIND of torture is that. I've had plenty of levels already, I'm fine."

Even so, taking more levels couldn't hurt.

More skills means more things she can do—that's what being a smith is.

"Oh, come on. I'd like it big enough for the four of us plus Mia-san."

We're the only ones who need leveling, after all.

Showing those people our flirting would be a bit much too.

"Tch. I'm not going. So this gets deployed on Floor 48, right? Make it box-shaped and one rocket hit will probably flip it. The shape, sure, but the weight's a problem too. Slant the front face so the damage runs down into the ground. Like the box is being pressed downward."

Hmm-hmm.

So instead of a square box, you want a triangular prism lying on its side.

"Then it's not an invincible box, it's an invincible triangular prism!"

"Don't care! How do you SEE out of the front? Reinforced glass? And the reinforcement would hold up against a rocket?...... Wouldn't a peephole do?"

I did consider a camera, you know.

I'll be using the 'Eye Gates,' so I have to see the target directly.

Using 【Gate】 through glass was already confirmed—so the question is whether I can enhance glass built into the shield.

A hole, though, is out of the question.

"There are skills like 【Snipe】, and even a tiny hole, they'd thread a shot through it—so no. Also, fire MAGIC would be fine, but a flamethrower can't be nullified, so there's a chance the fire comes in through a hole."

If a flamethrower had a 【Snipe】-like skill, burning the inside from a single point wouldn't be surprising.

Like how a 【Magic Sword】 granted with 【Fireball】 apparently burns you from inside your body after the thrust.

"Same reason the back has to be sealed, then......"

There are skills like 【Lobbed Shot】, or even 【Ricochet Manipulation】, after all.

Deliberately missing high above, then bringing it back with 【Homing】 to hit the rear—that's standard 【Bow User】 tactics.

I don't know what jobs the SDF has, but we should assume they can do the same......

As for how 'Blue Ocean' broke through the Floor 48 fortress gate: by all appearances everyone held shields and guarded their heads and such—but the core of it was the combination of Kaito-san's shield skills.

Kaito-san's main job is 【Wide-Area Shielder】, and his sub is 【Immortal Shielder】.

First, he deploys the 【Wide-Area Shielder】 skill 【Circle Shield】—an invisible hemispherical shield that protects the allies around him—to block the blast of rockets that aren't direct hits.

Incidentally, 【Circle Shield】 is not learnable by a 【Charge Shielder】.

There IS a skill called 【Charge・Shield・Sphere Shield】—the Charge version of 【Sphere Shield】, which protects only the space around yourself.

Neither 【Circle Shield】 nor 【Sphere Shield】 has much durability.

At best they block a blast wave—a rocket's direct hit has to be stopped by the shield you're holding.

And how did Kaito-san block the 【Lobbed Shot】-type attacks? With the 【Immortal Shielder】 skill 【Immovable Shield】.

The name makes it sound like a knockback-nullification skill, but THAT one is called 【Immovable】.

【Immovable Shield】 is a skill that PULLS attacks into the shield.

It doesn't move, and the enemy's attacks hit the shield on their own—that's why it's "immovable"......

This 【Immovable Shield】 skill is supremely strong against ranged attacks.

An attack flying in head-on is always drawn into the shield, and even against 【Homing】, the pull of the two skills works against each other—so arrows fly off in random directions, or snap midair from forces they can't withstand.

And 【Charge Shielder】 can't learn this 【Immovable Shield】 either.

That's how 'Blue Ocean' broke through the entrance head-on, Kaito-san at the front, plastered against the fortress.

(In the current party, I'm the only shield job—so this is work that falls to me......)

And that is how I, too, having learned from 'Blue Ocean,' am developing my invincible theory: cover your surroundings with shields.

"Factoring in transport—Kasumi-san carrying it alone means weight and strength both have limits. And then the durability...... Plus it assembles on-site, right? Overlap one shield in the middle as a lining...... Weld it on location?"

True—setting it up right in front of the fortress is more than they'd forgive, I imagine.

Then transport has to be figured out too.

"Once it's close enough, I can pin it down—put the 'Left Hand Gate' over the top with a lip built in—and then it can't be moved no matter what, so that part's fine. But if it eats a rocket on the way in, there's a chance it gets sent flying."

Blast waves from the side are scary too......

The knockback-nullification-type skills are on the 【Charge・Armor】 side, you see.

I did think about just making it armor instead, but then I can't nullify magic.

I can't exactly say the SDF has no magic jobs.

If I asked the SDF for intel, would they give it to me?

Probably not.

"Speaking of which, there's something important I never asked. The cost? Labor's free, but the materials change the price."

"It should come out of expenses, so any amount is fine. As for materials—you could use 40s-floor shields, but size-wise that's impossible, right? I can't enhance a single big shield unless I can recognize it as one, so I'll leave that to you."

The weapons and armor carried by 40s-floor skeletons have inexplicable durability—but if you melt them down or reshape them, that durability disappears.

As for enhancement: with a Shield Gauntlet on each hand, the same item enhances fine twice—but more than that is probably hopeless.

"Well, lemme think it over. Give me time. ......Oh! The shield reminded me—I saw the 'Spring Shadow-maru' video, and isn't the pilot about to get identified? They'd decided it was some 'Jun' or other? But then the SHIELD nearly gave him away, so that can't be right, can it?"

"Ah, I saw that comment too. But it's a completely different person."

That would be the shield mounted on the 'Spring Shadow-maru's' chest.

You see, there wasn't a shield of the right size on hand, so as a stopgap we used THAT thing—the one we'd been using as a table in the warehouse......

The shield that shattered Kaito-san's spear became a hot topic—"what IS that shield?"—and it stood out.

It was a one-off special spec for that match only, but a still got clipped from it, and now the net whispers its theory: 'Spring Shadow's' true identity is

THAT person.

"I TOLD you not to use that shield...... Apparently that pattern is a party emblem. That shield is the one you got from a woman, right? Anyone can see 'Spring Shadow's' pilot is a man, so—is he a member of that woman's party? What will you do if it reaches Kasumi-san's ears? I'm not involved, you hear?!"

Well, a woman IS a woman.

She was already a woman by the time she discarded the shield.

"I've properly told Kasumi-san about the shield, so it's fine."

I never told her we used THAT thing on the 'Spring Shadow-maru,' though.

The shield's owner is gone, so it's actually convenient, if anything.

She's officially a missing person—let her search as hard as she likes.

The only problem is if the person herself files a complaint, right?

Huh? A complaint from the person who vanished?

What is that?! Scary......