Chapter 144

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!"

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 .