What Replaces the Crocodile Swarm 4
Thanks to the 31st floor turning into a death swamp crawling with zombie hordes instead of crocodiles, one of my abilities I'd completely forgotten about came back to me. As a quest reward from the hologram, a portion of my mana had been converted into holy power.
When I'd tested it against packs of goblins in the caves, nothing particularly special had stood out. If mana-based reinforcement specialized in reflection damage, holy-power reinforcement seemed more geared toward damage reduction — that was about the extent of what I'd noticed. But being dropped into an environment this miserable taught me one more thing.
When I reinforced my body with holy power instead of mana, those feeble field debuffs couldn't touch me at all.
"Roland, are you okay?"
"I'm built tough. You lot just make sure you don't step in any of this by accident."
So when we returned to the 31st floor and pressed forward, I alone went splashing cheerfully through the purple poison pools, and it felt surprisingly good. Was this how a kid felt stomping through rain puddles in rubber boots on a rainy day?
Even with its mild toxicity, the stuff wasn't strong enough to corrode my default-skin armor, and the poison debuff that tried to seep through was seared away by holy power the moment it touched me. I cut a rather different figure from my companions, who stood grimly on the dry ground as if the mere idea of getting wet disgusted them.
Unlike me, who could coat and reinforce my armor with mana, if they stepped in one of these pools they'd be soaked through. Couldn't be helped.
"We've gathered everything we can for now, so let's look for the passage up while we check out the monsters."
"But with the terrain changed this much, is there even a place to pitch the tent?"
"Roland, swamp zones still have safe areas, right?"
"They do. And we'd better pray that much, at least, hasn't changed."
We walked single-file along a path maybe thirty centimeters wide, chatting among ourselves. Every breath brought a reek of rot, and the surrounding pools bubbled with rising toxic gas, but as long as no monsters showed up, it wasn't particularly dangerous.
The 31st floor was the kind of place Intermediate-grade veterans aiming for Upper-grade status would challenge. Even without the ability to project mana outside their bodies, no Intermediate-grade adventurer was going to get into real trouble just because the path was narrow.
That went for our party too. Han Se-ah, as a player, had been doing workout streams on the side from the start — she'd proven her physical sense from the very first fights against goblins and horned foxes. Grace, who'd grown up running wild through mountain valleys, and Katie, who'd been swinging a sword since childhood, were no different.
The only one who gave me a slight twinge of concern was Irene, raised entirely within the Temple — but even she, thanks to the baseline stats of a natural-born 5-star, was crossing the swamp without any trouble in non-combat situations.
"Hmm, Roland? Something's thrashing around in that pool up ahead. Being undead makes it hard to get an exact count, but there's definitely more than five of them."
Those were the first monsters we ran into. Whether it was because the 31st floor had shifted into a kind of hard mode, or simply because of undead racial traits, Grace couldn't pin down precise numbers the way she had in the caves. She pointed at a large poison pool.
This was no ankle-deep puddle — it was big enough you could probably fish in it. Calling it a reservoir or a lake would have been more accurate than "pool."
"I'll take point, so stay sharp. Hanna, can you make a platform?"
"Should be doable. I'll widen the dirt path, and the rest of us can play artillery from on top of it."
The moment she saw that broad pool, Han Se-ah raised her staff. There was no way we could fight lined up like a train on a thirty-centimeter dirt path, so the skill points she'd earned as a 30th-floor reward had once again gone into non-combat magic.
As she chanted, mana gathered at the tip of her staff and dripped down like water droplets, soaking into the ground. The narrow dirt path swelled outward, spreading wide and flat until all four of them had room to move comfortably.
"Ah, come on — this is mid-to-high-tier magic, you know? If you control it right, you can even shape it into sharp spikes and skewer enemies… or at least that's what the skill window says!"
Under normal circumstances, Earth Control was a spell that carved pits into the ground or thrust rock spikes up to deal damage and CC at the same time. The name was a bit too on-the-nose and childish — that was Heroes Chronicle's fault — but the performance itself was solid.
In the mobile game it had just been a pure damage spell, but once it became a VR game, you could use it in all kinds of creative ways like this.
Same principle as drowning goblins with the water-droplet spell Water, or searing a horned wolf's nose and eyes with the fire-starting Spark spell to disrupt a fight. Han Se-ah's physical sense was decent, but her real talent was mana control.
Kid's weirdly clumsy and kind of a freak, but her actual magic skill is legit impressive…
I'd recommended mage as a rear-line class based on party composition, and watching her genuine talent for magic unfold left me with a strange feeling. Same with the way she cheated the minimap by gathering and dispersing mana just for show — her control really was excellent.
The party lined up on the carefully packed ground. Katie naturally turned to watch the pools we'd already passed, while Grace nocked an arrow and glared at the water ahead.
Bubble-bubble — not the occasional pop here and there, but dozens of bubbles bursting as moss crocodiles slowly surfaced. Or rather, the zombie crocodiles that had once been moss crocodiles.
Even as zombies, they still protected their bodies with hard scales and thick moss like chainmail layered over padded armor. But their eyes were cloudy and dull, and foul green slime drooled from their gaping jaws — no one would call that a healthy state.
"…Think my arrows will even work on those?"
"Aim for the eyes or the open mouth and try to punch through the head. Even before they turned into zombies, a moss crocodile's body was basically immune to bladed weapons."
"So they're basically golems. Got it. …I don't have a ton of alchemical arrows left."
You couldn't just spam reagent-coated arrows on ordinary monsters that weren't special specimens like the golems from floors 21 through 30. Grace drew a deep breath, released the taut string, and the arrow cut the air as it shot past my side.
Thwack! Even without offensive skills, Grace's archery after her promotion to 4-star was something else. The arrow sank dead-center into the cloudy eye of a crocodile that had been scanning me from the swamp, as if the eye itself had sucked it in.
Grrraaagh—
"A little shallow?"
"Hmm. Skull might just be that thick."
The zombie crocodile yawned wide, green drool that looked unmistakably like poison trailing from its jaws. But slow, durable monsters that charged in with zombie-like numbness as their main weapon were exactly the kind of enemy I liked best.
They weren't dancing around with quick, flashy footwork — they just leisurely shoved their way through the pool toward me, which meant I could simply smash them flat.
Since they were undead, I packed holy power into my mace instead of mana, hoisted it high, and brought it down. A heavy, satisfying impact shuddered through my palm with a solid thud. Monsters that traded speed for toughness always made my hands ring like that.
"At this rate, regular arrows won't even pierce them."
"That bad? …Ugh, fine — should I switch to explosive arrows?"
The shockwave from crushing one crocodile's skull must have splashed back, because Grace stood beside Han Se-ah — who had already thrown up a shield — chewing her lip. As a scout-type character, she was feeling the lack of raw firepower on a field that had gotten harder.
Of course, expecting one-shot kills in the first place was unreasonable, so I had no real complaints. Even sword-wielding fighters who weren't Highest-grade — just Upper-grade — wouldn't be able to cleave a moss crocodile in a single stroke. That was simply how it worked.
"Eugh, poison splash! …Seriously, learning shield magic was the right call. I couldn't exactly ask Irene to cast a holy protection rite over something like this."
"No, chat — you only say that because you've never played a mage. This stuff is not easy. When Roland-sensei explained early mage play, didn't he say two or three attack spells and your mana's gone? Mages hit like a truck but the skill-count limit is brutal. Unless you go alchemy and chug potions until you puke, five casts a day is about the ceiling."
In the span of a few seconds Han Se-ah had gone from portable lighting to Mage Rights Activist, venting to her viewers. I half-listened while raising my mace again. Between the skeleton lizardmen and these things, this field really did have terrible matchups for archers and swordsmen.
If the grasslands and forests had been fields made for hunter Grace, the swamp was clearly designed for blunt-weapon warriors and priests. Every game had maps that favored certain classes, after all.
Gear again… maybe I should upgrade her bow to Highest-grade level instead of just the arrows.
With that thought, I smashed another zombie crocodile's skull. Their movements were so sluggish that Grace could obsessively target eye sockets, and I'd already confirmed she'd finished off the first one her arrow had hit.
Crocodiles were usually fast in the water, but turning into zombies seemed to have bought them toughness at the cost of speed — they were approaching at roughly the pace of a toddler who'd just learned to walk. Missing them would have been harder than hitting them. At that speed, Katie and Irene barely had anything to do.
"…I guess we should be grateful the mana stones float?"
"Yeah, just rinse them off with water and stick them in the inventory."
"Or shall I try purifying the mana stones with holy power?"
Aside from the mana stones bobbing on the surface of the poison pool — left behind by zombie crocodiles that had died without ever making it out of the water — the fight had been almost absurdly easy.
…Looks like I'd be the one picking up mana stones for a while.