Chapter 297

Defense Specialization and Right Below

“Oomph! We arrived!”

“Underground, huh… We must be right under the island then . Both the ground and the ceiling are damp and muddy . ”

“It really is… Woah . And there are so many branching paths…”

The place that the four of them arrived was completely covered in brown and looked like a typical underground dungeon . The starting point was a wide circle, and there were six paths that branched from there . And while all of them were wide, they were very damp, like Sally said . And some even had puddles of water .

“I bet there will be more of those mud dolls . We might have to defeat them this time!”

“Yes . If it comes to that, it would be very helpful if you could one-shot them . ”

“Leave it to us!”

“Leave it to us!”

While there were many paths, thinking about it would not give them an answer . And so they chose one random one and started to walk .

“Uhhh . It’s all sticky . ”

“It really is… I’m glad that I’m not getting dirty for real . ”

“Oh, here they are!”

As Sally said, dolls were noisily coming out of the puddles and mud . However, their movements were slow, which meant that Mai and Yui were able to hit them .

“Double Strike!”

“Double Strike!”

Before the dolls could do anything, their attacks landed, and the dolls that had been blocking their path splattered wetly as they soiled the ground .

“Oh! Awesome!”

“…No, it’s not finished yet!”

The splattered mud and water did not turn into light and disappear . Instead, they all started to form new dolls . Suddenly, there were twice as many of them, and they swarmed around the group . Mai and Yui were too stunned to move, and they ended up getting attacked .

“Maple! Are you alright!?”

As both types of dolls were attacking, something must be happening to Maple through Dedicated Affection .

“Uhh…let me see… Hmm…”

Sally looked at Maple and then Mai and Yui, who were subject to the sticky attacks, and then she sighed .

“Ah! I can’t move anymore! Also…the timer for when I can use it again won’t move . ”

“So you can’t move and the cooldown clock is frozen… It would not be strange for a party to be annihilated from this… They seem to deal decent damage and there are so many of them . ”

“Sally! Ho-how can we defeat them!?”

“Well, I guess we should test several things out…”

Maple couldn’t move anymore, that’s all . There was plenty that she could do even when she wasn’t moving . Right now, the only thing they needed was Dedicated Affection .

And so while Maple bought them time, they tried to think of a way of dealing with the dolls . And they learned that if you used fire attacks on the mud dolls and lightning attacks on the water dolls, you could deal damage and defeat them without causing them to separate . In fact, anything else would just cause them to splatter .

But because they had left the defenses to Maple and spent so much time experimenting, the dolls had multiplied to a ridiculous degree . It was so bad that not only were they completely blocking the passage, but they went all the way up to the ceiling and some couldn’t even move .

The dolls would fall down like an avalanche, and Mai and Yui had to be careful to not accidentally attack them .

“Okay, so we’re finished with that… Let’s deal with all these dolls now…”

“Yes…”

“Yes…”

“Thi-this really is crazy…”

As Maple couldn’t move, they didn’t have the option of going down a different path .

The day that Maple could move again would never come unless they killed every one of them .