Yelloy Barrier Fortress (4)
The man known as Absolute Defense Jin — Ho-jin — put more strength into the hand gripping his shield and studied the pack of kobolds beyond it.
There were four of them. Given his true ability, he could have taken them alone without breaking a sweat. But Ho-jin made no move to do so. Instead, he spoke to the two people behind him.
"Just do as I told you earlier and it'll be easy. Don't tense up — relax and give it a try."
"Y-yes!"
A frail-looking boy in glasses blurted the words in a tight, nervous voice. The other party member — a blue-haired woman with a username you weren't likely to forget — merely nodded.
What a peculiar person.
She had the kind of face that looked like it had never cracked a joke in its life, and yet she'd gone and named herself something like Pretty Cute. Then again, it was still tamer than the names the top-rankers used.
"Here we go."
With that, Ho-jin stepped forward. He drew a deep breath and bellowed at the kobold pack.
"Hey, you dog-faced bastards!"
Taunt (A)
Provokes enemies. Unless interrupted, taunted enemies will attack the user.
"Kreeeek!"
Thoroughly enraged by Ho-jin's taunt, the kobolds charged with fire in their eyes. Ho-jin set his stance against the coming impact and shouted at once.
"Now!"
At the signal, the two who had been waiting dashed past him on either side.
Under the taunt's effect, the kobolds didn't so much as glance at the pair closing in. The first to reach the pack was the boy in glasses.
"Hyaaah!"
With sloppy form and a raw battle cry, he swung his sword at a kobold on the outer edge. The instant the blow came at it, the taunt broke. The kobold registered the boy at once and brought its own blade up to block.
Kang! Sword met sword, and sparks leapt between them. Meanwhile Pretty Cute had already locked onto a kobold on the opposite side and was trading blows.
That left two. Unimpeded, they charged straight at Ho-jin.
"Kreeeek!"
"Hup—!"
Kakakang! Ho-jin caught a rapid string of crushing blows on his shield and flicked a glance toward his party. He called to the bespectacled boy first.
"BlueSky! If you don't hold a proper basic stance, you won't get the skill assist! I know it's hard, but you cannot let your form collapse!"
"Y-yes...!"
BlueSky — the boy whose username was Blue Sky — forced the word out and lifted his sword.
He was already spent, and not in the body.
This is nothing like Lucifen!
BlueSky had never been confident in anything that asked him to use his body. Even hunting in Lucifen Forest, he had died more than five times. An ordinary player usually died once or twice at the Sword Squirrels, or at the boss — and most people never even went to the boss, so one death was about the going rate. By that measure, BlueSky was close to having no talent at all.
Still, persistence had sanded some of the rust off, and once his level was high enough he had headed straight for Yelloy Barrier Fortress like everyone else. There, at the invitation of a man named Absolute Defense Jin, he had gone out hunting with a woman whose username — Pretty Cute — did not match her in the slightest. And now he was here, like this.
This is way too hard.
The monsters in Lucifen Forest had all worn familiar animal shapes, and they were so weak that a few swings of a sword would kill them before they even thought of blocking. Even BlueSky had not had much trouble leveling up. But the moment he first clashed with a kobold — a creature that walked on two legs and swung a sword — he had known it in his bones.
There was no way he could take one of these alone. And the look of them — who had designed something that hideous? Even now, blades locked with one, he could barely keep his eyes open.
"Grrrrngh!"
"Ugh...!"
Who the hell thought gluing a dog's head onto a human body was a good idea? BlueSky shoved the kobold back with a shout, then forced Ho-jin's instructions into his head and set his stance. At the same instant, a sword path traced itself across his vision.
The skill assist had kicked in. He swung along the glowing line — and once again, kaaang!, sparks burst in front of his eyes and that was all.
"Don't be scared! Kobolds attack in set patterns, so just do as I told you!"
Pattern, pattern...
What was it again? A diagonal slash from the upper left, then a thrust? He'd just done the upper-left one, so now it was the thrust's turn... BlueSky was still turning it over when a blade came sliding up from below his field of view, and his eyes flew wide.
He'd been so busy thinking he hadn't even seen it coming. He wrenched his sword up to block, but he couldn't stop it cleanly. The edge grazed his side, and a vibration ran through the spot — the signal that stood in for pain, telling him he'd been hit.
Damn it.
He hadn't blocked it completely, but he'd avoided a critical, so his HP barely dipped. BlueSky stepped back and took his basic stance again. He still had no idea how he was supposed to kill this dog-headed thing.
That one's going to take a while.
Watching BlueSky, Ho-jin turned aside the two kobolds' attacks as if he were swatting flies and swept the field with a glance. Frustrated that nothing was landing, they had sped up a little — but that was all. Their displayed levels matched his, yet what sat inside that character was a max-level tank. There was no world in which they punched through.
Just as Choco had guessed, Ho-jin was on an alt. He wasn't doing it to smurf, though. His main was already maxed out with nothing left to do, so he was simply using a side character to help beginners along.
In his judgment, BlueSky had not a scrap of talent for the game. He'd have an easier time if he just picked up a shield. If he had the money he could go mage — but he was never, under any circumstances, a melee damage dealer.
Pretty Cute, on the other hand...
Blue hair, blue eyes — Pretty Cute, whose looks were as distinctive as her name, was holding her own beautifully.
"Kreeeek!"
The kobold shrieked in panic and tried to backpedal, desperate for space. Pretty Cute had no intention of giving it any. She kicked off the ground and drove her sword forward in a clean, honest thrust. The kobold slashed to parry.
Kaaang! The blades crashed together. The kobold, which had swung without even setting its feet, stumbled from the recoil and went down. As it scrambled to rise, a sword came down on its skull.
Kwajik. Pretty Cute watched with an utterly expressionless face as the kobold instantly began to fade into gray light.
Has she swung a sword before?
He couldn't understand how she could cut like that without so much as a flicker of expression. BlueSky, a beginner no different from her, was over there screaming his lungs out with every swing.
Of course, this was no time to stand around admiring. Ho-jin slammed the charging kobolds back with his shield, knocked them sprawling, and called to Pretty Cute.
"Cute! Support BlueSky, then come straight over here!"
Pretty Cute gave a slight nod and ran at once to BlueSky, who was still locked in a losing fight. One-on-one had been a struggle. With a second person in the mix, it ended like a joke. A blade bloomed from the chest of the kobold that had been straining against BlueSky's sword.
"Kreeeek!"
"Eek!"
BlueSky screamed as another blade appeared an inch from his face. Pretty Cute remained expressionless as she drew her sword free.
"Are you okay?"
"Y-yes..."
"Then let's go."
She pulled her blade from the kobold as it scattered into gray light, turned on her heel, and headed for Ho-jin, who was still wrestling with the remaining two. BlueSky forced his locked legs to move and stumbled after her. Cleaning up the last of them did not take long.
When the fighting stopped, Ho-jin checked the time and muttered to himself.
"Took about five minutes."
Five minutes wasn't a bad time for a first fight. A reasonably seasoned party usually cleared a kobold pack in around three.
He gave Pretty Cute a few minor notes, walked BlueSky through a more detailed critique, and the three of them went back to hunting.
It was a little while later that something strange crept in.
He'd lost count of how many packs they'd taken. Their fight times were now hovering between three and four minutes, which said more about BlueSky and Pretty Cute's improvement than any lecture could. The long hunt had pushed both of them up two levels, putting them even with the kobolds that spawned at the entrance of Gezina's Forest.
"There's another one over there."
A pack of five. Ho-jin stepped out ahead of the group, shield up, ready to open with a taunt. At the same moment, every kobold walking toward them turned its head toward him at once.
They spotted us from this range? Before I even taunted?
The gap between Ho-jin's party and the kobolds wasn't large — twenty meters at most. Kobolds had eyes. If the party had entered their field of vision, they would have charged immediately. But they had been walking with their backs turned. There was no way they could have seen anyone.
And yet they had looked this way before a single sound was made.
This is their detection range? That's absurd.
The distance at which a monster could register a player without seeing them varied by species. Beast-types with a good nose would pick you out and attack from enormous range. Particularly dull ones wouldn't twitch even if you walked right up behind them. Kobolds were closer to the latter. They weren't so oblivious that they'd miss someone getting very close — but their range was nowhere near this wide.
Is there a field boss around or something?
"Hey, you dog-faced bastards!"
Even as the thought crossed his mind, Ho-jin taunted and charged at the same time. If there really was a field boss out here, this party was guaranteed to wipe. But Ho-jin was curious. Back when Yelloy Barrier Fortress had been a battlefield in all but name, drowned in monster waves, he had stood on the front line the way a tank was supposed to — drawing aggro, keeping his people alive. A field boss he had never seen even then? How was he supposed to not be curious?
He felt a little bad for the other two. Curiosity won anyway.
"BlueSky, Cute...?"
He started to call them the way he always did, then felt something go wrong. Unlike him, BlueSky and Pretty Cute had already dashed forward on habit, each peeling off to mark one of the incoming enemies.
And then—
"Huh?! What the—?!"
BlueSky's panicked voice cracked across the field. The kobolds that had been charging at Ho-jin spun on their heels and piled onto BlueSky, who had reached the pack first.
"Kreeeek!"
"Aaaagh!"
Five blades hit him at once. BlueSky was logged out.
They didn't take the taunt?
As long as the level gap wasn't more than five, a taunt was supposed to land even on a higher-level target. It hadn't landed. Just what were these things...? As the thought formed, the kobolds' names swam into view.
It wasn't a dramatic leap in level, but it was undeniably higher. Still, a taunt failing at a gap this small could only mean one thing: they had taunt immunity.
Just kobolds?
It didn't seem to be a field boss after all, but Ho-jin couldn't shake the wrongness of it. In the meantime Pretty Cute was quickly ringed in by the pack and logged out as well. She had seen what happened to BlueSky — but she had already closed too far to get out.
Watching the kobolds finish her and come for him, Ho-jin thought it through.
Once the death penalty wears off, I need to look into this.
He would have loved to bring his main over and sweep the area clean, but his main character was so far away that even running all day wouldn't get him here. He'd just have to sit out the six-hour death penalty, log back in, and find out what was going on.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Just like the other two, Ho-jin became a pincushion in no time. As his vision crumbled, he smiled.
It had been a while since he'd found something that looked like fun.