Into the Forest, Part 1
The day after buying a composite bow made from minotaur horn from the bearded woodsman and spending the rest of the evening on a date.
"…Excuse me. Would this be Hanna's party?"
A boy in an outfit that looked suspicious by any measure came looking for us. A man — or boy — wrapped head to toe in a robe so thoroughly that even the good-natured Irene hesitated for a moment. The hood was pulled so low you couldn't make out a face at all.
If it hadn't been for the young, boyish voice drifting out from under that hood, calling the city guard on the spot would have been perfectly reasonable.
Adventurers engraved flashy patterns on their gear for the look of it and wore custom-fitted equipment that showed off their figures. A striking appearance became fame, and fame became money in the form of private commissions. So bundling yourself up like a mummy in the middle of the city was bound to raise eyebrows.
"Are you the one recommended by Lady Rebecca?"
"Yes."
Which is why the one handling the conversation was Han Sea — party leader, and the one with a modern person's sensibilities. To the residents of this fantasy world, that getup conjured wanted posters and every kind of criminal. To Han Sea, it was just, oh, some characters wrap themselves up tight, I guess, and she moved right on.
Only after sitting down in the empty seat at our table did the boy push back his hood. A handsome face emerged — fair skin, brown curly hair — and Han Sea's expression twisted into something strange. Half delighted, half flustered, as if the muscles in her face had short-circuited.
The hooded kid, thrown by that bizarre reaction, asked her a question.
"Is something the matter? Is there a problem…?"
"Ah — no. I was just surprised you look younger than I expected. I heard you'd reached the fourteenth floor alone…"
Han Sea still couldn't lie to save her life. When I cracked open the chat window at her suspicious reaction, it was in an uproar over something I never would have guessed. They weren't shocked because she was a 5-star —
The boy sitting in front of us was, in fact, a girl.
I studied the face revealed under the hood carefully. Flawless skin without a single blemish, androgynously beautiful features. Combined with that young voice, the overall impression was of a high schooler just past puberty — a pretty young boy caught somewhere between childhood and young manhood, before the voice had fully broken.
"Yes. I was recommended here after serving in Lady Rebecca's mercenary company. Personally, I have climbed as far as the fourteenth floor of the Tower. Reaching the twentieth was not by my own ability — I merely accompanied the company for supply runs."
"Our party plans to start from the eleventh floor and climb steadily while building our coordination. We'll be under Roland's guidance here."
"I was briefed on that as well. If I can receive instruction as the party's frontliner…"
No matter how closely I looked, there was no way to tell this was a girl. This wasn't mere disguise — she had to be using some refined, expensive magical tool sophisticated enough to fool even an Advanced Adventurer's senses. Though apparently it still couldn't fool a player's system window.
And just like that, the 4-star Princess of the Sword, Caden, joined our party as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Whether she was a boy or a girl in disguise, it hardly mattered for party adventuring. We already had a Candidate Saint — what was one more princess?
Thinking of it that way put me at ease. This world was a game, there was a player sitting right in front of me, and I'd suddenly become an NPC. A crossdressing girl was the least of my problems.
"All right. Starting today, we'll use the gate to the tenth floor and head straight to the eleventh. As I already explained, I won't be joining combat directly unless something unusual happens."
Once Han Sea finished talking, I took over. Four pairs of eyes snapped toward me in an instant. The three party members I'd already briefed nodded without complaint, and so did Caden, who'd come on Rebecca's introduction.
I'd worried that the "princess" title might mean a sheltered young lady with no sense of the real world, but apparently grinding it out from the bottom of a mercenary company while hiding her identity had given her enough experience to blend in just fine.
"If medium-sized monsters like Helmet Deer or Moss Wolves charge in alone, I'll hold them for a bit. I won't lock them down completely — I'll let a few slip through now and then — so don't let your guard down."
After wrapping up the briefing, I stood from the guild table, collected a few commissions I'd scouted earlier, and headed for the Tower. More precisely, not the Tower itself, but the gate the Magic Tower had constructed. Waiting for Caden had made for a late start, but factoring in the gate, our actual hunting time would be much longer.
At the front walked me — a heavily armored warrior in full gear. Behind me came Caden, a one-handed sword fighter in light armor mixing metal and leather. Then Han Sea and Irene in a mage's robe and priestess habit, and Grace checking the string on her new bow.
We walked looking every bit the part of adventurers who'd left Novice Adventurer status behind, and eyes followed us. A party of nothing but beautiful men and women, at a time of day when other adventurers were sparse — of course people stared.
"Hey, Roland. You said if a Helmet Deer or Moss Wolf attacks, you'll just hold them, right?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
As the gate came into view, Han Sea spoke up from behind. She knew about my passive skill, so of course it was on her mind.
To Grace and Irene, a warrior who'd climbed to the thirty-seventh floor simply misjudging his strength against a weak Horned Wolf would make perfect sense. To Han Sea, it was a situation where monsters should drop dead just from touching me thanks to my passive.
"You killed the first Horned Wolf bare-handed, but somehow managed to hold the next ones just fine. That's what I find weird. Are you really holding back that much?"
She couldn't exactly ask an NPC, Hey, why isn't your passive triggering?, so she was dancing around it as best she could. Even so, a faint crease of frustration showed between her brows. Fair enough — having a damage-reflection passive and still just grabbing Horned Wolves would look pretty strange.
So I answered in kind, circling around the truth just enough for her to figure it out.
"The first time, I braced myself like a wall with mana reinforcement, and it died from the rebound. So after that, I started catching them the way you'd gently scoop up a baby."
My passive was a judgment that reflected damage when I was attacked. Put another way: no attack, no reflected damage. Softly catch a Horned Wolf's charge the way you'd cradle an infant, and you could capture it alive without killing it.
"That's possible…?"
"It's just a Horned Wolf. What's the big deal?"
Even a tenth-floor monster, a Horned Wolf's charge hit about as hard as a motorcycle. The kind of charge that could casually skewer a person clean through — the kind that had gotten streamers immortalized as GIFs. If the frontliner didn't stop it, even Han Sea's shield would get punched straight through.
Catching that like a dodgeball apparently struck people as remarkable. Caden, who'd been listening, seemed just as amazed and slipped into the conversation.
"You catch Horned Wolves bare-handed, sir?"
"Don't look so shocked. That woman Rebecca does weirder stuff than that on a regular basis."
"That's… true enough."
Caden was a new recruit in the mercenary company; Rebecca was its captain; and I was Rebecca's old comrade. Linked that way, Caden had naturally started using formal address with everyone in our party. Felt a bit like meeting people the boss had personally introduced — hard to blame her.
As a 4-star, she had real talent and skill with the sword, but Caden still hadn't seen past the twentieth floor. She clearly hadn't grasped just how superhuman Advanced Adventurers beyond the thirtieth floor really were.
Even without being adventurers, the kingdom's famous knights and other superhumans who could reinforce their bodies with mana could go completely berserk without any game skills at all. They could match strength with things bigger than elephants, over five meters tall.
Wyverns that flew through the sky on ton-weight bodies, breathing fire. Ogres that crushed armored knights flat with a palm the way you'd swat a mosquito. Giant worms that buried entire small villages just by tunneling through the ground…
To stand against creatures that powerful, the humans of this world had evolved to a bizarre degree of strength. And now that Han Sea had logged in and stars had started attaching to people, they'd only gotten stronger.
"Looking at our party's composition, this is about as ideal as an adventuring party gets. Two frontliners handling offense and defense, an archer for forest scouting, a priest to protect the allies, and a mage who can support the whole group from every angle."
"Yes."
"That's right."
A fair number of people had gathered in front of the gate. Unlike the Tower entrance, where you could just walk in, this one collected a fee every time you passed through, so a bottleneck was inevitable. Paying the Magic Tower or not, we didn't have the authority to cut the line and ignore the crowd, so I continued the briefing while we waited.
"So don't focus too hard on just improving your individual skills. Work on coordinating with your allies. With a composition this ideal, there's a good chance we'll all stay together until we clear the upper floors of the Tower."
Han Sea would never throw away a 6-star like me or a 5-star like Irene, and even a 4-star like Caden had a high chance of being kept to the end once you factored in buffs. The only one who might get swapped out was Grace, at a mere 3-star.
But Grace was a scout, not a dedicated combat specialist. If I could assign her skills the way she'd assigned mine, there was a real chance Grace would stay until the end too. As a 6-star, I could handle both tanking and dealing — which meant Grace could fill every skill slot, passive included, with pure scouting abilities.
One absurd character serving as main tank and main DPS. Irene as sub-tank. Caden and Han Sea as sub-DPS. Thinking about a composition like that, packing Grace's entire kit with scouting skills looked like the right call.
Of course, that was just my personal opinion. Han Sea might see it differently.
Expand the roster of Adventurer Party 'Hanna' — 5/5
※ CLEAR
…Maybe I could steer her thinking after all.