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High School Hack and Slash Chapter 22 Part 1

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Pasifista

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Rare Class

――『Yomotsu Hirasaka』, a branch realm connected to the labyrinth of Perforation Realm, 『YGGDRASILL』――

――The『third』 stratum, 『uncharted』 domain――

It was said that the suitable number of party members for dungeon conquering is four or five, as suggested by the academy.

This was partly due to the limitation of six being the maximum number of simultaneous transfers at Rashōmon.

However, in cases of tackling high difficulty quests or the emergence of instance dungeons, a large party with members exceeding the suitable number would be formed.

In this case, the employment of a force composed of a large number of personnel, be it several parties cooperating with each other or perhaps club members that planned to converge from the start, both fell under the name of 『Military Warface (Raid)』.

The more parties there were, the easier the battle became, but also the less efficient it was in terms of monster encounter rates.

There was also study that stated that should a large number of people were clustered at the same coordinates in the dungeon, the probability of the appearance of the 『Natural Enemy (Aggressor)』 would increase.

Nonetheless, even if it was not a large scale 『Military Warfare (Raid)』, it was not uncommon for parties to cooperate with each together, especially among the first year students, raids were organized for the purpose of stable leveling rather than efficiency.

「Hmm, here they come.」

Seiichi, who was leaning against the wall and was taking some space just in case, noticed a distortion in the space in the center of the corridor.

The space-conjugation black dot, which was generated around the space point, instantly expanded without a sound.

Patterns like Kanji characters, Sanskrit characters, alphabets, and hieroglyphs enclosed it in layers before then dissolving.

「Oh, so that’s how you come out when you dive into the dungeon.」

Mai let out a voice of admiration as she witnessed a dungeon dive from an objective point of view, something she had no chance of seeing normally.

As the outside air and the cold air of the dungeon mixed together, a misty-like white smoke flowed onto the floor.

「Looks like we’ve succeeded in rendezvousing.」

Saki, who had her hand placed on the katana hung at her waist, muttered in relief.

In the name of Clearing as well as ensuring safety, the three members with combat classes, Seiichi, Mai and Saki, had formed the vanguard party.

While the remaining four members, Touma, Shizuka, Miharu, and Natsumi, formed the second line party.

If they set the party members who had logged out at the same location as the leader, it was only natural that they would log in to the same coordinate point even if they were in different parties.

Should there be an object at the appearance point of the transfer, what was called the gateway, it would be sent flying, so they had to be careful.

「Looks like there’s no problem.」

「Yea. Well, except for the twins, that is.」

As expected, getting exposed to the miasma of the stratum, the two turned white as a sheet, shivering and hugged each other.

「Natsu-chan, Haru-chan.」

She had already gotten accustomed to it, but as someone who similarly got her body frozen in fear at first, Saki hugged the two.

It was not action underlied by any kind of thought, but her caring thought was straightforwardly conveyed to the twin sisters.

「Now then, well. Let’s get the leveling started at once.」

「Please, wait a moment.」

Shizuka stopped Seiichi, who raised his body from the wall.

Mai stood next to Shizuka, who was watching over Touma and the others who had turned into dango.

「Are you not going to join them, Shizuka?」

「… I’m not yet, able to be considerate with the two of them, after all.」

「Ah~, as expected, it’s unacceptable for you, Shizuka?」

As far as Mai was concerned, Shizuka had higher significance than the still green twin sisters.

Rather than letting it turn into the source of trouble, she had no qualms in driving out the two.

It was because there was no need for either the supplement of the party’s fighting force or the establishment of the club to be done in a hurry, after all.

「That’s not quite the case, but it’s more of a matter of the heart.」

The sisters’ unusual abilities, after being told about it by the people in question along with Saki, Shizuka rebuked the two.

It was not that she rejected them.

She reprimanded their thoughtlessness for carelessly disclosing a secret that ought to be kept from others.

Shizuka did not think that being sincere was to tell everything locked in their closet.

Even if it was someone you had dedicated your heart to, even if it was someone you could call your inseparable best friend, if sharing your secret was only amount to burdening them, then you ought to just carry it with you for your whole life and take it to the grave, she thought.

However, it was not that she couldn’t relate to the pain of carrying a burden and the loneliness of not being understood.

She sympathized with them and could tolerate their existence.

However, they had yet to become friends, therefore she was not touched by them.

◇ ◇ ◇

「Say, it sure would be handy if there’s party experience sharing, wouldn’t it~?」

Popping up a red ball around her fingertip, Mai increased the number to two and then three, before then twirling them like that of otedama.

With her proficiency at mental image manipulation, the flame-like heat and flickering were sublimated into pure energy.

Originally, the manipulation of activity, flow, volatility, and fixation, which were governed by fire, water, wind, and earth, was what the 『Spirit User (Shaman)』 excelled at, and was not the specialty of the 『Sorcery User (Wizard)』 despite the two being similarly second-step classes of 『Arts User (Magi)』.

「It’s the type you find in a game and the like where the experience is automatically distributed evenly when you form a party, right?」

For the point of view of Mai, who was no different than a normal human except for her ability correction that specialized in magical energy manipulation, Seiichi’s movement, as he stepped forth while exercising footwork, was at a speed that was literally unperceivable to the eyes.

Once he combined it with the Seclusion skill that was used as practical training, all of his attacks turned into critical hits on the goblin, which had lost sight of him and was full of openings.

SP referred to the star force (astral) that strengthened the flesh (material).

When attacking, it was concentrated in the weapon, and when defending, it increased the armoring of the place you poised.

Even against opponents with a high SP value, if you were able to take them by surprise, it would penetrate the barrier and turn into a fatal blow (critical hit).

Even though monsters were existences that embodied the incarnations of miasma, their base was the flesh that carried out their life activity.

Especially if they were monsters of the demi-human type, their flesh structure resembled closely that of humans.

So their vitals were also almost identical.

「Gugee….」

Getting pierced as though being gouged from the underneath of its solar plexus, the goblin groveled on the floor in a faint as it expelled the air on its lungs.

「But, well. It’s more convenient when it comes to power leveling, right? Rather, this is real bad. The weapon damage rate is crazy high for sure.」

The reason why he used the knuckle guard on his trench knife was partly because the blade part was breaking.

「If we don’t raise the rank of our weapon, it will seriously be no joke.」

「Sure is tough being a vanguard–. Hmm, for Magi branching, they seem to be selling this crazy expensive rod, but I wonder if it’s any different.」

Thump, thump, dull sound echoed.

It was a sound like that of pounding mochi with a usu (JAP-mortar) and kine (JAP-mallet).

「Haa, haa…」

「Fuu, fuu…」

Miharu and Natsumi, who showed a semi-teary face at the beginning, were now brandishing and swinging down the recommended mace for beginners with lead-like sluggish arms and dead fish-like eyes.

The back of the goblin’s head, as it was lying on its face, convulsed vividly with each thump.

It seemed that delivering damage through mass was more efficient than using bladed weapons that required much effort to simply make a cut.

The EXP was given to the one who delivered the finishing blow.

However, if the damage that led to fatal injury was carved by several people, the EXP would also be divided.

「Groovy. Let’s Next.」

Touma, who had been stomping on the extinguished goblin, showed a thumbs up and stepped on the next reserved goblin.

The twin sisters’ pleas of 「we don’t want to do this anymore, please spare us」 had already gone numb, and they began to silently smack the goblins.

The speed of the process was more or less getting faster with each level up, but the spectacle was verily appalling to the extreme.

The only saving grace was the low level of the splatter, as the corpses were reduced to miasma.

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