-Team Fight(3)-

Chiba took quite some time without the help of Kenshin and Joy to deplete the monster half of its MP, out of the total 2 million, only 1 million remained, but the girl had reached her absolute limit. Even if she took an MP potion and rest, she was just too fed up for the day to concentrate any further. Although she remained determined, determination alone can only take this far. In the end, Kenshin and Joy killed it and gave up on challenging the boss for that day, opting to return and regroup the day after.

That night, the matter with the desert’s situation escalated out of hand as the black fog nearly engulfed a whole town close to the desert. In just a few days, that fog had traversed a few thousand miles to reach the closest commercial settlement. Before, it was only the hunters who were affected, but now the situation escalated to the point where the normal population was on the verge of getting swallowed by such dreadful fog. It transformed into a situation where those in powers, especially DCB, could no longer turn a blind eye into. An emergency protocol was applied all over the world, as the situation repeated itself of what happened a few months ago during that incident of North.

Hunters were asked to come all around the world to participate in the subjugation of that mysterious black fog, but Kenshin and his team got no such notifications. They simply took a night rest and appeared on the lava dungeon the day after in high spirits. Especially Chiba who looked more determined than the previous day, she was determined to at least kill two of those Elites before passing out.

“yesterday, I was defeated by my own weakness despite the enemy wasn’t moving and attacking, but today, I will overcome this weakness and stand tall even after dealing with the second elite golem. Kenshin, Joy, don’t you guys interfere until I kill the second one even if I lose my consciousness.” Chiba announced the moment they entered the dungeon. She fisted her hands and looked so determined that Kenshin and Joy unconsciously agreed with her without uttering a word.

“Do you best, Chiba. I know you can do it.” Joy praised as he cupped his hand, in front of his mouth, shouting like a love-struck fan of some celebrity.

“Umu. You can do it, Chiba, go get them, girl.” Kenshin also nodded his head, giving his own prepping words. They both were holding two small paper fans with ‘Go wild Chiba’ written on them from god know where, as they shook it around, looking like a true fan of her. Seeing this, the poor girl blushed, feeling embarrassed at these two’s actions.

The first one to approach them was a bunch of fire snakes led by a long and fat snake, the queen of the bunch. These fire snakes had two abilities, one was their burning body, which would cause burn damage to someone when they coiled around them, the second was their lava spit. It was actually a spray of concentrated lava that would come out of these snake’s poison teeth. If those two were to be avoided skilfully, killing these snakes was a piece of cake.

Of course none of the three intended to avoid these snakes, in fact, Joy and Kenshin took the back seat in these initial stage monsters of the dungeon. Each individual snake was actually level 60 monster, while the snake queen was level 75 mini-boss. By comparison, Chiab who was only level 41 should have been weaker. But, it was as far from the truth as one can possibly be. Despite her level being weaker than these snakes, Chiba’s actual control of magic and her skills were incredible, so she was able to easily sweep through these mindless snakes.

She created an Ice Javelin and controlled it with her mind to make a steak out of these snakes. Within the first few seconds, she nearly cleared all the mobs. It was during that time the snake queen made its move. It slithered at her with astonishing speed as it opened its mouth, preparing to spit out her lava spray.

“Now!!” as if waiting for that exact moment, Chiba rolled away, at the same time started to channel her magic into creating a huge water bullet. Then she froze the tip, making it pointy. After that, she started to make the water whirl around itself below the frozen tip, kind of like a grinder or twister. Extending her index finger forwards and thumb upwards, while curling the rest, she made a gun pose. Pointing it towards the snake’s open jaws, she mouthed ‘Bam!!’ as the water bullet drilled into the unsuspecting monster’s mouth, coming out of the other side.

The snake queen roared for a few seconds before falling down, dead, leaving behind a pile of loots. She one-shot the beast with careful and opportunistic use of her skill and the monster’s weakness. She knew her skills well, and also how to control and manipulate them; after visiting this dungeon for the past few days, she had also carefully observed the strength and weaknesses of each and every monster around, devising strategic plans against them.

Chiba understood she was weak, not only that, but her fighting style also differed from Joy and Kenshin, who preferred to just plow through the monsters with brute strength. To keep up with them and not to hold them back for her, she had to think outside of the box and find ways to fight against the monsters more powerful than her.

“Wow, Chiba! Today, you, one-shot this beast. Congratulations are in order. Mmm…wait… she is dazed!” Kenshin came to congratulate her after seeing her one-shot this beast but stopped seeing her dazing off.

“After killing that thing, I would be surprised if she didn’t level up a few times.” Joy commented as he came around, inspecting the loots dropped by snake queen. Until yesterday, it was either him or Joy who would fight and kill this mini-boss, so they didn’t gain anything from it. But, Chiba was different. She was weaker than snake level wise, so by usual principle, she ought to gain many things out of this short but a very crucial fight on her part. “Damn, this goddamn snake didn’t drop anything interesting, its only those green potions and nothing else.” After checking out everything, Joy only discovered some green potions aside from 1k gold coins and a rolled-up scroll, which was actually a one use Skill Tome.

Skill Tomes was a very unique item, which was nothing but a scrunched up paper. But, it was no ordinary paper, because, in this scroll, a person can store up a skill, and stack it up to 2 times, which can later be used with just tearing up the paper. For example, if Joy has to store his [Strength Boost: Overdrive] skill on it twice. Then when he unleashes the skill, he would receive twice the benefit of his original value.

Skill Tomes were very expensive and quite rare, but due to Kenshin’s high luck stat, they were only farming these scrolls for the past 5 days. From then to now, they had already collected more than 10 of these scrolls. The market price of this Skill Tome was 8k gold coins per paper, so including today’s 2 tomes, they had collected 12 tomes, which was equivalent to 96k gold coins. It was a hefty haul in Joy’s opinion, but under Kenshin’s instance, they had refrained from selling it.

“It’s a level 70 mini-boss, did you expect some legendary item drop or something? Two Skill Tomes and 8 bottles of Flame Potion is already considered a hefty haul considering the strength of boss, quit dreaming, fool.” Kenshin snorted, mocking Joy with every chance he got. His anger had still not faded when Chiba discovered a used-up condom and a peace of women’s underwear in his car after they return from Yonezawa.

As he had lost the bet, he had to give up his car to Joy for a few days. It took three days to convince Chiba that it wasn’t him who did all that, and, Joy’s laughter behind his back didn’t help the situation either.

“What? Are you still holding a grudge? Kenshin, quite being a kid, and grow up, will you?”

“You are the last person I want to hear that phrase from, shut up you damn gorilla. You not only soiled my car, you nearly destroyed my image in front of this poor girl!”

“Guys, stop bickering. A piece of good news, I have level-upped 3 times, and possibly now reached level 45. Woohoo!!” Chiba interrupted their shouting match, as she declared her gains.