Skill Tree 2
After wrapping up our thoroughly unremarkable tour of the guard post and delivering the desserts, the party scattered before we even sat down for dinner. Grace, trusting her newly fattened wallet, seemed headed off to shop, while Hanna looked ready to wander the city filling blank spots on the minimap — partly to soothe her disappointed viewers.
As for me, I grabbed my personal gear and ran straight back to the Tower to test the skill Hanna had chosen.
Unlike when I'd been matching the party's pace, driving off the ground and racing across the plains sent a cool wind streaming through my hair. Running just hard enough not to shatter the earth, my speed was about the same as a horse's, wasn't it? Crossing the grasslands that way, I broke through into the forest of the 11th floor — a place neither Hanna nor Grace had set foot in yet.
I crushed through obstructing branches, following the lantern fragments in a straight line. Most of the monsters that appeared in the forest were beast-types like Helmet Deer and Moss Wolves, which made practicing shield techniques difficult. What I was after, then, were the goblin and kobold settlements that started showing up from the 11th floor onward.
The goblins on the 10th floor appeared one at a time — supposedly the old and feeble ones that had been banished — but from the forest of the 11th floor, they came in packs. Armed with clubs, wooden shields, poison darts, and sling stones, they were perfect for putting shield techniques through their paces.
Given my stats, I really should have climbed past the 20th floor to fight stronger monsters — but hauling myself that far up was just too much of a hassle.
Reflect damage. Yeah, that's definitely strong.
Moss Wolves that used the thick moss clinging to their fur to vanish into the forest. Helmet Deer that charged in swinging horns harder and sharper than most wooden spears. Both came at me and died gloriously to the reflected damage.
Too lazy even to stop and pick up the mana stones, I kept running in search of goblin and kobold settlements. Leave them long enough and some lucky adventurer would scoop them up eventually.
Wandering the forest like that without any scouting skills — just a body reinforced with mana and hearing sharpened to a razor edge — I eventually caught a faint kerek-kerek by my ear. Didn't sound like kobolds. Goblins, then. Goblins used more ranged attacks anyway, so that worked out perfectly.
Kerek, keak!
Kirrrrrrk—
The goblins were growling among themselves, trading some kind of opinion. They stood about ten centimeters taller than the ones I'd seen below the 10th floor, and their skin looked a bit firmer. Still goblins, though. Behind them stretched a settlement packed with huts woven from tree branches.
"Heyyy— look over here!"
Ignoring the noisy little green men, I kicked a few huts to splinters, then banged my shield against the handle of my mace and bellowed. Green shorties poured out in a furious swarm, livid that someone had shown up alone and wrecked their homes.
Keyaaaak!
Kerek, kerrrk!
They weren't completely stupid — they surrounded me in clean coordination and readied their ranged weapons. I'd expected at least a few to just charge in, but maybe smashing the huts had spooked them. Along with their kekek-ing, sling stones and poison darts came flying from every direction.
Taking hits that couldn't even scratch my armor and fell limply to the ground, I raised my shield.
"How the hell do you use this?"
Of course the skill didn't activate on the spot. I pushed mana into the shield the way I reinforced my body, but all it did was block the chaotic barrage of stones and darts — no counterattack. That left only one option…
"Fuck… Master of Shield Techniques."
Just as Hanna chanted her magic spells, I spoke the skill name out loud. Quietly, though — even if the forest held nothing but goblins, just in case someone was listening. Saying skill names aloud always dragged up the dark history of denying reality and shouting "logout" or "status window."
But that brief flash of embarrassment must have done the trick, because my shield began to gleam with a light unlike anything before. The large rectangular shield I'd carried for ten years held a brilliant radiance for the first time.
At the same moment, a stance rose instinctively into my mind as if the system had hammered it straight into my brain. Was this what Grace felt when she looked at her inventory and naturally thought of it as magic? Without thinking, I dropped my stance against mere goblins, thrust out my shield, and locked into a perfect defensive posture.
Ke, keyaak?!
The goblins scattered in every direction in utter panic. Under the collapsed huts I could see tree fruits they'd gathered from the forest, but they fled without a shred of attachment to their food or homes.
Well, of course — the poison darts bouncing off my shield were flying straight back at their faces. Attacks that struck the back of my armor weren't reflected, but every stone and dart that hit the front of the shield returned cleanly to its owner and claimed a life.
…Wait. Does the passive apply to the counterattack judgment?
There seemed to be an unexpected synergy between the passive Indomitable Knight, which returned fixed damage, and Master of Shield Techniques, which reflected every attack for roughly ten seconds. Ten seconds might sound short, but for a superhuman running on mana, it was an endlessly long stretch of time.
Fighting goblins and Horned Wolves on the lower floors and getting stronger without any real effort made fresh joy well up all over again.
Unlike the shield techniques I'd learned with my body, my mace-swinging skill was pitiful. Frankly, if I started a friendly spar with the adventurers of the 43rd floor, a draw would be one hundred percent guaranteed. They couldn't break through me, and I couldn't land a single hit with my mace.
I basically just swung it left to right, top to bottom, like chopping firewood with an axe. The power behind it was brutally overwhelming, but any adventurer with quick footwork — especially one who reinforced their body with mana the way I did — could dodge it with their eyes closed.
But with Master of Shield Techniques, the story changed a little. Those annoying enemies who ran around without ever getting hit by my mace. Especially the flying monsters I met on commissions outside the Tower, or Death Knights who still remembered their swordsmanship from life — now I finally had a way to deal with those nuisances.
Hanna really is a lucky charm. Her game skills are solid, and looking at this passive synergy, her luck is good too.
Halving damage taken through the passive, counterattacking with a mana-reinforced shield, reducing damage further with the armor that came with my 6★ body, and then having whatever remained absorbed once more by a body reinforced with mana.
A quadruple damage-buffering cushion made possible because this was a realistic virtual-reality game — not a turn-based one where using a skill guaranteed you'd take damage. At this level, I might not just deflect a giant's blow. I might just tank it outright.
"This way. I'm hearing suspicious noises."
"Looking at how the goblins are in an uproar, something must be going on."
After a while of comfortably hunting — practically massacring — the forest monsters by thrusting out my shield and letting the reflect damage do the work…
"The tracks are big. Doesn't seem like a small species."
I'd been moving so noisily that tense voices drifted from beyond the underbrush. I hadn't hidden my presence at all — smashing through branches as I ran, wrecking huts, banging my shield, even shouting to draw the goblins' aggro.
A scout with sharp senses would naturally come looking after hearing a racket like that.
Along with the rustling came a tense woman's voice. Her stealth was pathetic compared to her tracking — I could hear her gulping and the soft whispers they traded among themselves. Apparently they thought the chaos I'd caused was some anomaly related to the Full Moon Wolf and had come to investigate.
"Hup… hmm?"
Of course, that misconception lasted only a few seconds.
"You're an adventurer?"
"Yeah."
A man burst out of the underbrush with his shield raised, fully tensed — thinking, just as Horned Wolves had come down from above, that a monster which should have been on a higher floor was wreaking havoc below.
What greeted him wasn't some 20th-floor boss monster — an Orc Hunter that had wandered down below the 9th floor — but me, fully clad head to toe in heavy armor. Realizing the source of the commotion was another adventurer, the unknown tanker's arms went slack with relief.
As his fairly large kite shield dipped slightly, the rear-line members of the party — who'd figured out this wasn't a combat situation — also cautiously approached.
A tanker using a kite shield and one-handed axe, a thief who'd dropped silently from a tree, a mage sweeping aside twigs with her staff, and behind her a woman in pure white nun's robes. One middle-aged guy and three women — an interesting combination.
"Th-that goblin settlement behind you — you destroyed that too?"
"That's right."
The three women looked flustered at my words. The male tanker took it in stride as if it were only natural, but watching the three of them murmur among themselves, their situation seemed roughly similar to mine. A seasoned mid-floor adventurer tanker leading three inexperienced companions.
The forest boss that appeared on the 20th floor — or rather, if something like the Full Moon Wolf was the real boss, then what showed up on the 20th floor should be called a named mob. They were stronger, sure, but multiple of them appeared. Anyway, the Orc Hunter on the 20th floor was closer to a silent assassin.
Ambush in the forest using Moss Wolf hides, powerful arrows launched with an orc's characteristic strength, and various traps befitting the name "hunter."
"I told you. An Orc Hunter would never leave tracks like this."
"I know, old man."
Leaving me standing there blankly, they started whispering among themselves again. The middle-aged tanker looked surly with that expressionless face of his, but once he opened his mouth he nagged like an innkeeper auntie. The thief and mage shrugged as if fed up — but one of them reacted differently.
The woman in pure white nun's robes that hadn't picked up a speck of dirt even in the forest. Not a game-style outfit but one that seemed historically accurate — a baggy habit that revealed nothing of her figure, plus a proper wimple that didn't show a single strand of hair.
Everything that needed covering was covered, but the face visible beneath the wimple was no ordinary face.
It might have been prejudice talking, but looking at her face alone, she seemed like at least a 4★.