Volume 4 Chapter 14.3

Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes

「I think their trump card that interferes with the ground is done away with！」

「Of that, you are correct. However, do not think we are so incompetent as to be out of options！！」

Screaming without even bothering to hide their malice, the dark lords opened their robes, from which darkness squirmed around and spread out. Something fired out in large quantities.

「If ya wanted to fight us with numbers ya shoulda come out sooner！！」

As he smash attacked the snake-like being that jumped out at him (probably a variant of Barold’s third form), Hiroshi taunted it with Outclass. Now that the first enemy had been forced back, any further enemies that emerged would be delayed.

The few seconds gained from Hiroshi’s attack drove the lords into an even worse corner, because…

「────」

Haruna’s heart sutra gospel had clearly resounded with the sudden arrival of accompaniment and back chorus. The divine song with its power increased by the divine realm and amplified by the ancestral/hero spirit accompaniment/chorus immediately purified and extinguished any mass-produced barolds within range.

「Dang, no chill I see.」

「Yeah, but it looks like it won’t affect the boss much.」

「That’s to be expected. If it really had such an effect on the boss then all the priestess princesses woulda done something about it already.」

Focusing on the dark lords’ actions, Hiroshi and Makoto confirmed the situation. While they could easily beat Barold, there was no question this would not work against the boss. While it would affect them slightly, it would only be comparable to forcing Form 2 Barold to listen to a zundoko melody. Sure, it was slowly chipping away at them, but the divine realm would soon expire.

「They are truly a loathsome bunch……」

「But we know your weakness, you fiends.」

「Your glaring weakness is……」

「The physical weakness shared by all of Azuma Hiroshi’s friends！！」

Loudly yelling something that needn’t be said, the dark lords proceeded to launch individual attacks on all of Hiroshi’s friends that he could not cover in time. While they couldn’t change the whole area into a bottomless swamp or realm of darkness, the dark lords could still form stone spears in the ground or make kamaitachi out of thin air. These attacks were powerful enough to lethally wound your average adventurer, and they targeted the team at random.

「This ain’t nothin’, punks！！」

Taking all the attacks that hit him, Hiroshi managed to cover both Haruna and Tatsuya too. Half of the attacks were magic-based, disappearing before they hit them. However,

「Ah！」

「Gah！」

Several attacks slipped by Hiroshi’s guard, directly hitting Tatsuya and Haruna. Cover Move’s weak point was that it couldn’t block stray bullets 100%, and the robes made good use of this knowledge.

The damage was far from fatal, not even enough to lop off any limbs, but taking multiple hits would still be dangerous.

「Haruna, Tatsuya！！」

「……I’m fine……」

「But I guess our Fortress wasn’t quite enough……」

Evading every attack that came for her, Makoto checked on the two who were hit. Haruna and Tatsuya’s faces twisted in pain as they healed their wounds, insisting they were fine. Now they had to deal with Hiroshi’s weakness as a tank- saturation attacks. There hadn’t been any attacks of lethal density prior to this, but things seemed to be different this time around.

「Thanks to our armor, the damage was nothing special, but now that we know it directly pierces through, things are going to be a little difficult……」

Haruna mumbled, her breathing under control as she looked at Hiroshi barely blocking the next barrage. She was trying to ascertain where the attacks’ blind spots. Singing during all this just wouldn’t do.

「If I had even a fraction of Hiro’s defense, I bet it’d be easy peasy……」

Tatsuya chimed in as he executed a defense barrier, kneading mana for his coup de gras. Still, rather than waste time grumbling over something not there, he had to bear with his current arsenal.

「Makoto-san! Mio! Can ya help out right here? I’ll take any help ya can give！」

「I’ll do what I can, but I’m pretty spent here too y’know！？」

「Sensei, remember we have our limits！」

「I know! Just cut down one or two of ’em ‘n that’ll do！」

Four total attacks had slipped through. If the two of them had taken that amount of damage from two attacks each, decreasing the amount of stray bullets would at least help things move along. As if laughing at this hopeful optimism, the dark lords who had regained a certain amount of strength with the song being cut off launched around the same amount of attacks as earlier. It didn’t seem to be possible to bring out barolds at the same time as their saturation attacks, but this fact also wasn’t of much help.

Of course it would be difficult to do anything about this. As previously mentioned, each hit was not especially strong in and of itself. Jon’s sword with the ability Passive Barrier was more than enough to block the attacks. However, even that damage would became dangerous once it culminated, and Haruna and Tatsuya would not be the only ones receiving damage from direct hits.

「Ow！」

「Sensei! They’re going through me too！」

The attacks were even going through Makoto and Mio’s defense.

Unlike Haruna and the others, these two had not taken more damage than was perhaps a bit laughable. In game terms, somewhere around a digit of damage per shot against tens of thousands of HP, or maybe two digits of damage if we’re being generous. These were the kind of wounds that would probably vanish without a trace with natural healing around ten seconds.

However, wounds were still wounds. The damage was barely superseding natural healing, so they would likely be entering the danger zone at some point. Most importantly, getting hit at all dulled their movements by a bit. This would prevent them from defending or attacking well. As a result, everyone besides Hiroshi was getting chipped away at bit by bit.

（This freaking sucks……）

Running Minor Heal continuously, Hiroshi’s sense of danger worsened as he healed Haruna and Tatsuya’s wounds. Haruna and the others were one thing, but not being able to move to offense at all would also be bad. The worst outcome would be for the divine realm to dissolve while they were unable to act, as the robed figures’ attack power might very well skyrocket.

Tatsuya’s Defense Barrier was barely functioning either due to the number of moves the opponent was throwing out. Unlike Absorb, Defense Barrier had nothing to do with defense stats. As a result, the more numerous the stray bullets , the closer he was to going over capacity. Still, even if he had used Absorb or the related skills, Tatsuya still had to deal with cooldown time and would be unable to actually execute it continuously.

Honestly, the situation was not looking too good. Something had to be done, but Hiroshi was currently limited with his actions. And if he was going to act, he needed to somehow get back to the tunnel entrance and limit the directions from which attacks could arrive. Or he could find some solution that involved Haruna singing as long as she could while he protected her from airborne attacks.

Needless to say, the latter was no good. Although Hiroshi and Haruna knew each other well, Hiroshi had yet to overcome his gynophobia enough to be cooped up with females for long periods of time, and then Tatsuya would be left out of the loop. Still, the former was also tough. If he retreated then he would have to deal with high density attacks from behind as well as healing while he did so. But before any of that, it was pretty much guaranteed that the robed figures would increase the number of attacks as Hiroshi retreated.

Anyhow, they had to improve their situation by any means. Hiroshi desperately moved his body, reading the flow of power so as to be able to guard even one shot. He felt the feng shui to be a bit closer than expected, but that didn’t really matter for this time.

（……Hm？）

As he was monitoring not just magic but the entire flow of power in order to read his opponents’ attacks, Hiroshi recognized he was able to mobilize a type of power on his surface (probably life energy). Stretching it out thinly, widely, he could tell that every attack that came into contact with that power drastically dropped in power. And this happened regardless of physical or magical properties.

（Could it be！！）

Crushing as many attacks aimed at Tatsuya and Haruna as he could, and continuing Minor Heal all the while, Hiroshi spread out the power to cover the two of them. This did weaken the power covering Hiroshi, but he already had insane defense stats. This would change nothing.

「Huh？」

「They directly hit us but it doesn’t hurt？」

「Alright, just like I thought mate！！」

The attacks directly hitting Haruna and Tatsuya were intercepted by Hiroshi’s widened power field, decaying until the attacks bounced off their defense.

「Huh？ Huh？」

「Hiro, you do something？」

「I’ll tell ya more later! I’m gonna keep guardian’ here, so first ya gotta attack！」

Conveying what they had to do next to a perplexed Haruna and Tatsuya, Hiroshi continued to monitor their opponents’ attacks, checking how far his power could be extended.

（So the area of effect is a five meter radius, huh）

A bit too narrow for him to attack anyone. Also, it took a good deal of stamina to expand his range to the limit. Then again, these functions were probably areas he could improve with training or battle.

（Now it depends on how far my own defense has fallen, lessee……）

Hiroshi blocked a large kamaitachi headed for Haruna and crushed it along with any stone spears he saw that might hit Tatsuya with his pole axe as he continued to verify the skill. These were all actions Hiroshi had performed numerous times in the past, so stifling these attacks was basically an instinct for him. Unlike before, he just needed to cover any places where attacks would be most damaging, so no need to use much unnecessary thinking in that area. Therefore Hiroshi was prioritizing checking the skill specifications right now until things changed.

Lowering of defense via skill usage was certainly occurring. The real problem was determining the extent of the attacks currently flying at them.

While this was not an immediate issue, there would likely be a situation where, depending on the opponents’ attacks, Hiroshi would have to stop expanding the power field and focus on his own defense. In order to ascertain where this line was, he had to grasp it a bit intuitively. Unlike in the game, you couldn’t see the damage digits in front of you, so it was never quite clear how low any of your stats were. Still, it was suicidal to use skills with huge demerits without actually inspecting them.