Chapter 144 Strongest Sage, Gives Up

 

"Ruli, next arrow!"

"Yes!"

Alma shot the arrows Ruli augmented one after another, hitting the bird monster.
However, those arrows didn't have much, if any, power.

"KISHAAA!"

And the undamaged bird monster charges toward Ruli and the others.
However, Alma didn't loosen her attacks.

She steadily let loose more arrows while being ready to evade anytime.
Ruli also continued to make arrows and augment them.

Instead of creating arrows beforehand, doing it in the heat of battle will lessen the payload on the arrow maker and maintain constant quality.
Thus, besides the pre-made arrows you put aside in Storage magic used for the first strike, you always want to bring the raw materials with you.

And the monster's attack was--

"SOI!"

Blocked by the spear in Iris's hands.
Her foothold has been magically reinforced by Ruli beforehand, so it won't collapse easily.

"GII!?"

The monster regained its posture even while looking bewildered to have been flung back by Iris who was far smaller than it.
And it's also been slightly damaged. Were Iris could handle her spear better, it might have lost one of its legs already... but well, Iris has only started to adapt to human body after all.

Alma kept shooting arrows one after another while Iris was buying time.
...They're doing pretty good.
The flight inhibition should works its magic right about now.

Right when I thought that, the magic showed its effect.
The bird monster couldn't gain altitude no matter how much it flapped its wing.
This signals for Iris's turn now.

"I'm going!"

"Yes!"

"Un!"

Once Iris declared that, Alma and Ruli retreated from the frontline and hid behind a nearby cover, peeking with only their faces showing.
They're avoiding getting rolled up while also being ready to support Iris if anything happens.
...However, that worry seems to be unwarranted.

"SOI!"

Iris thrust her spear on the monster's body along with that shout.

"GYAAAAAA!"

The stake-sized spear pierced deep into the monster as if there was no resistance.
Normally, you have to pull a pierced spear right away to prevent it from getting stuck, but.... That's meaningless before Iris's power.

Iris swung the spear along with the pierced monster with both her hands and flung it onto the wall.
Being the center of gravity, Iris also ended up hitting the wall on the opposite side. Faster than the monster's crashing speed.

"Au!　....Ei!"
<TLN: If you're reading this novel at any other site than Sousetsuka .com you might be reading an unedited, uncorrected version of the novel.>
However, Iris was mostly undamaged.

And then, Iris pierced the heart of the monster, ending the battle.
Or to be more exact, her pierce was slightly off from the heart, but since the power of Iris's spear thrust blew away all the surrounding parts, there was no particular problem.

One unfortunate point is that most of the monster materials have turned into a mess... but we can get this level of monster materials anytime we want anyway, guess it's fine.
I'll gather the usable-looking parts at least.

"You three really managed to defeat it without me."

"Rather than us three, it was mostly Iris-san..."

"Un. The two of us only brought that thing down to the ground..."

Alma points at the tragic remain of the monster.

"No, I alone, wouldn't be able to hit it, it wouldn't have worked! ...Mathias-san, could you make this spear a bit longer?"

Iris asked me.
However, unfortunately, it can't be made longer than that.

"That's the maximum possible length for now. A long spear is hard to manage if you just swing it around, it's too heavy, and you'll just end up getting swung around by it instead."

"That's true... I also got swung to the wall when I was swinging that monster earlier... It hurt a bit..."

Iris looks at a narrow passage with reproachful eyes.
She doesn't seem to be hurt anywhere in particular, but I guess she did get swung with a force that would have turned an ordinary human to pieces.
It ended with just 『Hurt a bit』 because it was Iris.

"Once you get used to spear more, you can do many things even with that length. Your current way of fighting relies too much on brute force.... Also, I think Alma and Ruli's fighting style are fine the way you are. When you're with Iris, it's best to leave the main offensive to her and create a situation that allows her to strike the enemy."

In actuality, there are ways for them to put out serious firepower too.
I should teach them about it to protect themselves when they're not with me or Iris, but an archer grows faster if you let them experiment with arrows in a variety of ways as a support at first.
A style that only relies on high-powered arrows is hard to put into application after all.

--We delved deeper in the dungeon afterward.
Unfortunately we never found the monster we were looking for.
Let alone finding one, there wasn't even any sign or traces of it.
The least bad one was the monster the three fought against... but there's no way they needed to form a subjugation party just for that weak monster.

"Hmm... Wonder if it disappeared?"

"Disappeared.... Can monsters suddenly disappear just like that?"

"It's unusual, but such cases happen sometimes. ...Guess we should turn back for today."

After descending to a certain floor, we had a discussion and decided to make our way out of the dungeon.
And we arrived at the exit safely.
Now then.... We should sell our spoils today at the guild for now.




















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