3 bar menu

Volume 8 Chapter 1 Part 9

Ideally, there should be no more than a maximum of two Sarracenias in those groups

Roxanne can take on one of them, but because there will be one more left, there’ll always be a chance of receiving its attack…. But on the flipside, the duration of each individual battle should be shorter.

However, Sarracenia is a monster native to the fourteenth floor of Haruba’s Labyrinth. Because there’s a difference of two floors, there shouldn’t be too many Sarracenias in here. And even they were here in a group, then such groups should definitely be in the minority and we shouldn’t have much trouble facing off against them.

「Uhmm… Pig Hogs are resistant to Earth Magic.」

Sherry points that out. They are? Because I can’t remember if she has told that to me before of if it’s the first time that I’m hearing about this.

We encounter a group of three Clam Shells and two Pig Hogs.

It’s my job to consider various combinations of monsters that we are likely to encounter during our treks through the Labyrinths and the selection of an appropriate magic to deal with any of those combinations as fast as possible, while Roxanne’s job is to guide us to the locations where we can find those suitable opponents without any other people seeing us.

At this point, I cannot really say which one of these two jobs is a more difficult one.

As we followed Roxanne’s guidance, he happened upon a monster, and a single one at that. Talk about a stroke of luck!

So, this is what a Clam Shell looks like, huh? As you might’ve expected, it is a bivalve aquatic monster that literally looks like a clam, except a much bigger than your regular earthly one.

When it comes to size, it’s about one meter, so while I wouldn’t say that it’s large for your typical monster, it is definitely large in comparison to the other bivalve creatures that I am familiar with. It might be a weird thing to say… but if that monster opened up its shell and Roxanne stood inside of it naked, then I am willing to bet any amount of my money that she would look even better than the painting of the Birth of Venus.

Even though it looks like a species of a giant clam from earth, it doesn’t behave like a typical giant clam, and it’s honestly quite plain-looking. Honestly, if this is supposed to be a monster, then I was expecting it to at least have rows of sharp teeth, or a really large, long tongue that it would use to attack us from a distance, but there’s nothing like that on it.

The only difference between this monster and the regular clam is that its not lying flat on the ground, but that it’s standing upright, which normally shouldn’t be possible for a bivalve, but you know, this is the world of a game, so if there was ever a place where the impossible can become possible, then it is definitely here….. although it’s still a mystery to me how it can keep its upright posture when it doesn’t even have feet that it can stand on. That also extends to the matter of how it’s going to be moving around…. But it’s moving. It’s coming towards us while standing, at what I would probably describe as an average speed.

Sherry said that the weakness of Clam Shells is Earth Magic, so I launch a 「Sand Ball」 at it to see how big the damage done to it is going to be. It takes a direct hit, but of course something like that wouldn’t be nearly enough to kill it, so it continues to approach us. As such, we are getting into our proper fighting formation, and Roxanne stands in front of it.

Since there is only one enemy to deal with, Roxanne is going to act as a decoy while Sherry is going to go to the enemy’s side where she’ll be able to poke it in its sides with her spear, while Miria moves to the opposite side of where Sherry is to slash at it with her own weapon from there.

When it comes to me, I have positioned myself right between Miria and Roxanne. The Clam Shell tries to charge at Roxanne, but it was stopped by Roxanne right in its tracks, since instead of dodging it Roxanne decided to deflect the attack with her shield. In the next moment, once it recovered itself, the Clam Shell opened itself up and shot a large amount of water from what I would assume to be its mouth. It looks like getting hit by iy directly is going to hurt quite a bit… but Roxanne just twists her upper body a little in order to completely avoid it.

Sherry did warn me that a Clam Shell was going to have an attack like that up its sleeve, but if I was the one standing in front of it instead of Roxanne, then that attack would’ve definitely hit me due to how sudden and quick it felt. It’s a good thing that I am positioned a little bit to the side of Roxanne and not directly behind her, because then that would have definitely hit me.

The Clam Shell moved again, and once more prepared to use its water attack by opening its shells wide… or at least I thought that its going to use the water attack again, but that was not what ultimately happened.

Instead of spitting water at Roxanne, the Clam Shell jumped towards Roxanne. Yes, it jumped at her like some kinda predatory cat pouncing at its unsuspecting prey, trying to probably crush her into paste between it two thick, hard shells.

Roxanne pierces it with her Estoc, and then dodges it calmly. Even in such an unexpected situation, she was still able to make the best decisions possible that required the minimal amount of movement on her part.

After she managed to avoid the Clam Shell’s jump attack, she swiftly moved I in order to pierce it with her weapon again. Due to her opponent not being the most agile one, she has plenty of room to move around it, looking for the best possible place where she could land her next strike.

In the meantime, I stayed at the back of her in a diagonal position, since seeing that Clam Shell jumping at Roxanne gave me a miniature heart attack due to how unexpected it was. If such a giant calm has the ability to jump towards its target in order to chow down on it in the next moment, then being caught at the receiving end of that is the last thing on my wishlist.

「So the Clam Shell can also bite into you, even though it doesn’t look as if it had teeth?」

Being sandwiched between the shells of a gigantic clam monster… that is truly not something that I would like to experience if I can help it, especially if it turned out that this direct attack of it might be even stronger than the water-based ranged attack.

「It would seem so.」

Roxanne answered my inquiry in a way that suggested that she thinks that even if Clam Shells can also bite into you or crush you, it is nothing that we should be worried about. Roxanne, you might not be worrying about it because you can just dodge it, but those among us who cannot dodge like you do would very much have to worry about it!

「I think I remember reading in a book in the library once that being bitten by a Clam Shell is a surefire way of getting yourself paralyzed but I didn’t believe that information was real. However, after witnessing the attack that it did just now, I think that information might be true after all.」

「Yes, that is definitely dangerous, but I don’t think that it’s something that we should be worried about all that much. After all, its movements are large and not all that fast, so all that we need to do to be safe from it is to be quick on our own legs and dodge every last one of its attempts at attacking us, and that should be enough to keep us safe.」

*Sigh* And there it is: Roxanne’s famous, common sense defying line that made Sherry and I exchange skeptical glances. Both of us know full well that Roxanne is the only person who would be capable of pulling something like that off in the heat of battle, but Roxanne herself doesn’t seem to realize how far ahead of everyone she is in those matters.

In any case, I launched many 「Sand Balls」at the Clam Shell, but after eating a fifth shot of it, it still wasn’t dead for some reason. I was thinking if maybe I should hit it with the sixth one, just for  good measure?