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Chapter 214 Part 3

Translator: Charlotte

Editor: Weasalopes

By 11:40 AM, we managed to reach the neighbouring N1W3 map.
We set up Instant Portals and sat down to have lunch.
It was another beef festival.
Well, not exactly beef… It was more of a stew festival.
There were still a lot of leftovers from the stew Adele and Irina cooked for breakfast.
I had no complaints.
I soaked bread in the stew, and the savoury flavour of the stew soaked into the bread.
It wasn’t a very high-class meal.
But nonetheless, it was delicious.
I kept filling my stomach with the stuff. It was great.
 
 

Well then, my stomach having been taken care of…
I proceeded to work on excavating the Ancient Stone Pillars while waiting for some Summoners to log back in.
I didn’t make much progress though.
We moved on to a search mission when everyone got back.
What were we searching for?
Of course, our first business would be looking for the Area Portal.
 

So, what did the N1W3 map look like?
From where I was standing, it looked like plains.
Quite barren plains too…
The vegetation certainly looked different.
There were no big trees like in the other maps.
At best, there were a few shrubs here and there.
The temperature was comfortably cool.
 
What about the monsters?
The monsters were the one thing we had to be especially careful about.
 
 

「Let’s go a little bit slower.」

『The monsters’ movement patterns are still a mystery, after all.』

『It doesn’t look like anything is after us yet though!』

「In any case, let’s proceed in our search with caution.」

Volff didn’t sense any danger. He looked completely calm.
Were there really no monsters around us?
 

Well, at least that’s what I was hoping for.
After walking about a bit, there were monsters after all.
Volff suddenly barked and went into an alert stance.
I couldn’t see the monster.
 
But… I found out why Volff was panicking soon enough.
Before me I could see something emerging as if it were growing out of the ground.
It wasn’t just one of them either. Several bumps in the mud in front of me were growing taller and taller.
Hmm?
 
 
Mud Golem　Lv.4
Monster　Enemy Target　Active
Battle Position: Ground
 
 
Hey! What’s this all about?
What kind of monster had I just run into…?
 

I would have definitely been in a tough spot had I not noticed them appear.
For the time being, I was just grateful that it wasn’t a whole army of them that popped up out of the ground.
There were five of them.
It may have seemed like a lot of them, but compared to how many people I had on my side, it was nothing.
 
But did that mean the fight would be over easily?
By no means.
Like Jericho, they had the ability to liquefy, making it easy to get caught if we got careless.
I had to be very careful fighting these guys.
I started by casting strengthening spells on myself.
 
「Keep your distance!」

『Roger!』
 

The movements of the Mud Golems were dull.
But just running around them would be boring too.
Hitting them with spells wasn’t too bad…
But the damage was clearly being resisted, and it would just take too long to defeat all of them.
It was only by fighting the Mud Golems that I realised something important.
Jericho could be one nasty monster to deal with.
No, not Jericho specifically, but the Mud Golems.

Would we be able to make use of pitfalls?
It was something I wanted to try.
But it wasn’t too effective after the Mud Golems liquefied.
It was like pouring muddy water into a hole in the ground.
 
But there was one other spell I had a feeling would be quite effective.
It was a【Seal Magic】spell
Wouldn’t I be able to seal its liquefaction ability? Did that count as a Weapon Arte?
 
I just had to test it.
But the spell was resisted quite a few times when I tried using it.
It worked the first time for the first Mud Golem, but for the second Mud Golem I had to use【Seal Weapon Arte】three times.
The third Mud Golem took two uses of【Seal Weapon Arte】.
Both the fourth and fifth Mud Golems required me to use【Seal Weapon Arte】three times before the spell finally worked.
 
Why were my spells being resisted so much!?
 
No, I guess considering the monster I was up against, it wasn’t that surprising.
If I remember correctly, Jericho had the ability to resist magic too.
 
After I used【Seal Weapon Arte】on all the Mud Golems, I was finally comfortable enough to get in and fight them up close.
But as expected, they were tough!
No, it wasn’t just tough, it was hard!
 
Even when I hit the Mud Golems with my Snow Beast Mace, the damage wasn’t impressive.
The critical hits here and there were very nice.
Even with just normal attacks, the damage slowly piled up.
I just had to patiently keep at it.
If I didn’t have the advantage in terms of numbers, it would definitely be a very tough fight.
 
I managed to somehow defeat them, but they didn’t drop any items.
Yeah. I wasn’t too surprised.
It was essentially just moving mud.
I gave up wading through the mud, trying to find any item drops.
 
 

《【Club】Level Up! 》
 
 

Yep. It was a reward, more or less.
Well, I could make do with that.
The monsters were clearly more difficult, so I could expect more experience points with each fight.
Well, that was easier said than done.
Actually fighting and defeating them to get those experience points was a tough task.
It wasn’t a monster I could look down on.
Even with the overwhelming advantage in terms of numbers, I still took some damage in the fight.
I was just grateful I didn’t get any Abnormal Status Conditions from fighting it.
 

『One of your Summon Monsters, a Class Changed one, is quite similar to those, right?』

「Summon Monsters appeared in S1W3 too, you know? And Class Change Summon Monsters too.」

『Eh?』

「Now that I think about it, I saw a Chimera once.」

『Whaaat!?』

「We definitely can’t get careless here.」
 
Those Mud Golems definitely weren’t the only monsters in N1W3.
We quickly ran into the next group of monsters.
They very plainly showed themselves, so there wasn’t as much thinking to do on my part.

It was a herd.
Helix caught a group of… Some kind of monster galloping on the ground.
 

They were running in a straight line, heading to where we were.
Hmm…
It looked like some kind of beast.
 
At some point, they ran over and closed the distance to the point that I could tell what they were with my own eyes.
 
 

Sifca　Lv.4
Monster　Enemy Target　Active
Battle Position: Ground　Light Attribute
 
 

It was a herd of horses.
The same kind that appeared along with the Twelve Heavenly Generals.
Well, that was relieving. Getting to fight some easy monsters once in a while would be nice.

But it wasn’t an easy monster at all.
Fighting it in N1W3 was different from fighting in a confined space like when I was fighting the Twelve Heavenly Generals.
The Sifcas made full use of their illusion ability.
In the open plains, that made for a very troublesome, if not difficult fight!
Again, we had the advantage in terms of numbers, so hitting all of them in the hopes of hitting the real Sifca was fortunately still an option.
Even then, it was a very fast monster.
It was even fast enough to dodge some of my spells.
I tried using【Vibrate】to prevent it from creating more illusions, but the effect was very limited.
After a few seconds, the Sifca would calmly create another illusion.
 
It was just a herd of about 20 horses, but taking them all down was a lot more of a headache than I expected.
I took a surprising amount of damage fighting them too.
I was on horseback myself, so most of that damage came from them ramming into me.
Zangetsu had it much worse than I did.
These horses…
Harassment?
Were they trying out harassment tactics?
 
Harassing others was nice.
But getting harassed was a completely different story.
Well, the whole point of the tactic was to be annoying, so I couldn’t let it get to my head.

『Hey Keith, it looks like you managed to get yourself a pretty nice item there.』

「Huh.」