Live Dungeon!
chapter-9

The day’s dungeon expedition began on the swamplands of the 21st floor, ending as soon as they defeated the Queen Spider, the final boss of the swamp area, as they gazed at the web-filled horizon.

As they were waiting for the particles from the defeated Queen Spider to finally disappear, Amy tried clearing herself from the web that has accumulated on her body throughout the fight. Meanwhile, Garm was struggling with some web that had gotten stuck onto his large tail.

Tsutomu brought a large, colorless stone towards Amy.

“What about this one? It’s quite big, maybe 300,000?”

“Well, it looks like it’s bad quality, maybe around 150,000?”

As Amy examined the large gem, which had multiple cracks scattered throughout, she began to reflect on Tsutomu.

He was a boy who won an enormous amount of treasure, not to mention a small fortune from the black wand auction. But now, he has taken the job of a white mage. Is that really something one would consider lucky?

The white mage’s only job is to revive any teammates who have fallen on the front lines, after which they’re as good as dead. All the monsters in their vicinity will immediately turn their attention towards the white mage. Within the time in which the white mage is being targeted by all the monsters, their revived teammate will pick up all his fallen gear and put on his armor.

Even worse is that all the audience sees watching from the monitors is the white mage dying, so it’s very hard to find any sponsors. In short, white mages don’t earn fame.

In the old days, Amy was part of a major clan and was fairly popular. She pitied white mages for their situations, however, still looked down on them somewhere deep in her heart.

And although Amy still has the same feeling of pity for Tsutomu as a white mage, she was still being forced to reluctantly act as Tsutomu’s guard as per the guild’s head’s orders. Although, she was admittedly having fun crushing the competition up until the 40th floors.

Amy finally began to understand what Garm was saying about this swamp expedition.

Tsutomu as a healer. The last time she was an attacker, she didn’t take much damage, so she didn’t realize the importance of having one.

First, the cost of potions could be greatly reduced. Green potions that could heal you quickly on the front lines are quite sought after, and all the other popular options are usually out of stock.

Compared to that, the blue potion that restores mental power and stability is mostly used by black mages. As long as your mental power isn’t exhausted, you won’t die and it will be able to recover naturally. It’s not essential like the green potions, which literally keep you alive, and it’s cheaper since there isn’t much demand.

Apart from that, the green potions are so expensive that many people think it’s not necessary to drink them to heal small, minute injuries, so some force themselves to keep fighting on the frontlines in order to not waste any money. However, there are also some that believe it is best to retreat periodically in order to consume some potion.

However, with Tsutomu as a healer, injuries could be healed much more efficiently, and there won’t be any problems with having to retreat in order to drink potions. In the best cases, it can be used to buff people up before taking a monster on so that there will be smaller chance of dying.

Amy found all their battles so easy with Tsutomu as a healer that the concept of pain began to seem ridiculous to her. Amy felt that Garm also thought the same way.

During the searcher area, the two had been battling to see who could climb the ranks as quickly as possible. At the time, Amy watched Garm on one of the monitors, and he was at a lower level than her.

Even when your arm breaks or internal organs rupture, continue to fight the monster. And if you’ve really reached your limit, only then should you use your potions. That’s what Amy learned from Garm.

“Amy, are your arms okay? Has it cured yet?”

She was a little surprised by Tsutomu’s concern.

“No, no, it’s fine! It just feels a little sticky, that’s all.”

“Yes, but I’m a little worried about the pain.”

Amy lowered her eyebrows while fluttering around her tail. Garm came up from behind her and firmly placed his palm on Amy’s head.

“Amy, tanking is a little hard, isn’t it? You’ll be the first one holding back the monsters and will take the most hits out of everyone else in the party. You’re definitely getting hit a lot more than last time.”

Tsutomu continued to talk to Amy, who was brushing off Garm’s hands.

“Since tanks absorb most of the damage, they have comparatively more freedom to attack. Since you take most of the aggro from the monsters, I have the chance to use my skills perfectly. Of course, attackers are a vital role, but tanks are just as useful.”

“Um?”

Seeing Garm getting uncomfortable from his words, Tsutomu leans forward and tries to conclude.

“I think you have some incompatible traits with Garm, and I’m not saying I don’t have any either. It’s just that I want this party to have a good relationship.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

Amy whispered in a small voice, looking down and groaning.

“No, of course, attackers are also important! If you don’t have enough DPS, you can’t explore the dungeon in the first place!”

“Tsutomu’s not making sense again. Anyway, let’s go home!”

Garm looked up, proudly raising his chin as Amu began to walk towards the Black Door, feeling strange.

By the next day, Tsutomu’s party had reached the 49th floor. The beaches on the previous floors were comparatively more difficult and required some thinking to get through, so Tsutomu braced himself.

Most of the monsters lived in the ocean, making them rather troublesome to deal with. Worse still was that they were still tough on the shore even when they were not in water. However, their party had a lot of firepower in Amy’s fire magic, which incinerated their enemies, allowing them to breeze through as though they were still on the 10th floor.

As they reached the Black Door to the 50th floor, Tsutomu, making sure there were no enemies around, began to heal his teammates, and then waited for his mana to recover.

“We’ve come this far.”

“Yup.”

Amy and Garm looked at the Black Door with wonder. They had lost to the boss, the Beach Shell Club, many times.

The boss has a habit of diving underground once it takes a few hits, so you have to really predict where it was going to surface next.

A large number of potions are required to survive the boss, as well as a black mage that can provide heavy firepower. Their clan, however, didn’t have a black mage, hence their struggle.

So, they just had to do as much damage as they could before it went underground, then predict where it was going to surface. However, since the arena was the large beaches before the Black Door, it was very hard to do so.

Most of the time, when the boss has healed by 80%, you can already count the attacker and healer as dead. As a result, they had to keep chugging potions as fast as possible.

To them, the boss felt like a big wall. No matter what you did, it always recovered. However, thanks to Tsutomu’s strategies, it became slightly easier.

“Tsutomu, is there a solution?”

Tsutomu glanced at Garm lying on the floor, wiggling his ears looking depressed.

“As usual, you tank and Amy will be the attacker. I don’t think you’ll die immediately unless we get flanked. Then Amy has free reign to output damage. Ah, maybe we should aim for their joints.”

“Surely attacks and defenses aren’t a problem, but if the boss is exhausted, it will just go down somewhere. Is there any strategy to counter that?”

“Amy’s firepower alone isn’t enough to take it down, so we’ll retreat for a while. Then, in one of the nests, and I’ll set up a trap. First, though, we should decide where we want to run.”

“What kind of trap.”

Tsutomu began to look at Garm with criticizing eyes.

“The boss goes back to its nest to recover their armor and strength. You can tell where they’ll go by the color of their shells and how much it peels off. While Amy fights its first stage, I’ll set up a trap in the most likely nest.”

“…”

“I’m not sure if that information is final, though. If I choose the wrong nest, we better get ready to retreat.”

The two looked at Tsutomu in disbelief, until they recalled that their highest ranks didn’t reach 50. If you look at levels alone, a 5 person party would be enough to take on the volcanoes, but their status cards were blue.

“Well, let’s do as much as possible, I’ve already recovered.”

“…”

“Hmm, that’s right.”

Amy made some weird faces at Garm, who returned some unkind words. Tsutomu restated the plan, then entered the Black Door and took the lead.