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Chapter 216 Part 4

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Translation: Charlotte
Editor: Weasalopes

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Once I entered S1 together with the rest of the Summoner Corps, our movements started to get more stable.
We arrived at the camp at 9:20 AM.
We were going at a good pace.

I hadn’t heard much about the place besides it being a camp, but the camp had a proper place in the Wide-area Map. The place was called Stonecutter’s Rest Area.
Legend has it the Stonecutter Shinonome built up the place from the ground all by himself.
Amazing…
And the fact that it was enough to turn the place into an Area Portal too…
It may have sounded impressive, but the admins were just piggybacking off of Shinonome’s work.

~*~

We took a detour around the camp and kept running southwards.
We could set up Instant Portals and take a short break outside the entrance to the Stalactite Cave.

~*~

What time was it?
It was 9:30 AM.
The entrance to the Stalactite Cave was in the middle of a wasteland.
Looking forward, all I could see were muddy marshes.
It would be impossible to pass through it on our horses.
Of course, passing through on foot was not any more possible either.
Apparently, the only way to head further south would be to go through the Stalactite Cave.

Well before we plunged into the cave, a break was in order.
I used 【Instant Portal】.
It was a 【Spacetime Magic】 spell so not every Summoner in our company could use it, but among the 35 Summoners we had, there were five people who could use the spell.
One in seven was actually a pretty good amount.
Speaking of which, it’s been a while since the last database update from the admins…

~*~

『Let’s take a break for a bit here. We’ll start up again in around 20 minutes!』

Konohana and Haruna were the ones mostly taking care of the group.
They were very reliable people.

While waiting for everyone, I kept going with the excavation process of the Ancient Stone Pillar.
What kind of monsters were waiting for us in the Stalactite Cave…?
Haruna did tell me that all the monsters inside except for the boss weren’t a big deal, but I was still looking forward to it.

~o~O~o~

I changed my Summon Monster team at the entrance to the cave.
I changed my team to Volff, Denier, Gengetsu, Florin, and Abyss.
At the very front was Haruna’s party, followed by my party, and then everyone else following one by one into the stalactite-filled cave.
Haruna was in the lead, so there was some structure to it, but more than 30 parties moving through a cave must have been quite a sight to behold.
It must have been that way to an outsider, but actually being in the cave was quite tough.

~*~

What about monsters?
They were certainly not very strong.
They’re really bad for your mental health.
Let’s arrange them in a better order.

~*~

Vampire Bat　Lv.3
Demon　Enemy Target　Active
Battle Position: Air

Slime　Lv.2
Demon　Enemy Target　Active
Battle Position: Ground, Walls

Water Worm　Lv.3
Demon　Enemy Target　Active
Battle Position: Ground, Underwater

Buer Slave　Lv.3
Demon　Enemy Target　Active
Battle Position: Ground, Walls　Poison

~*~

It wasn’t in order of strength.
I lined up the monster in order of ugliness.

The Vampire Bats were quite alright.
I knew how to deal with the Slimes.
I knew there were some people who thought Slimes were cute, but I personally had nothing against them.

But the Water Worms and the Buer Slaves were dangerously ugly.
Just looking at them would put my stomach in a foul state.
The Water Worms were essentially giant earthworms.
Even after defeating them, I really couldn’t look at their slime-covered corpses for long.
They would just jump out at us from nearby puddles, so anticipating where their attacks would come from was quite easy.
But we had a Union, and a lot of people on our side.
We easily crushed all the monsters in our way and kept going.

But what about the Buer Slaves?
It was quite a complicated monster, looking a little like a cross between a centipede and a spider.
It was frankly disgusting to look at.
But the Buer Slaves weren’t all shaped the same
That made it tough to notice them sometimes, and if since they had a habit of ambushing from the ceiling, we definitely had to watch out for poison.
But we were the Summoner Corps, after all.
We had no lack of scouts on our team.
Even if there was a chance of me getting some low-grade items from the monsters, I didn’t want to waste any time fighting them.
There was a feeling within me, an instinct that made me refuse the thought of fighting them.
But when I had to fight them, they weren’t a big deal to take down.

~*~

『Buer Guards are kind of like Buer Slaves, just quite a big bigger.』

「Does it have any weaknesses?」

『Hmm… It didn’t really feel that strong when I first fought it, so I’m not so sure. It was more creepy too, so I don’t want to think about it too much.』

「Huh.」

『It does have the ability to absorb Buer Slaves from the ground, the ceiling, even the walls of the boss room. We will definitely have to take it down quickly, otherwise its HP bar will recover quite rapidly.』

「What? Really?」

『And, I don’t know if this is just my imagination, but I have a feeling that by absorbing the Buer Slaves, the Buer Guard become a lot stronger too.』

「In other words, we’re going to have to take it down swiftly and cleanly before it can get too strong, yeah?」

『Yep. But if we can use area-of-effect spells to take care of the Buer Slaves before the Buer Guard can absorb them, we should be able to fight with relative peace of mind too.』

I see… Haruna really had a lot of knowledge on the Stalactite Cave.
But something felt very strange. I felt like I had heard all this information somewhere before.
I had a feeling Goudi told me something similar.

~o~O~o~

The Stalactite cave was made almost entirely of limestone making it take on a very interesting appearance.
For a cave, it was also very wide.
It wasn’t inferior at all to the cave with the Deva Kings.
There were 3 Relay Portals in the cave.
One was in the middle of the cave, close to the exit to the S2 map.
Another one was in the middle of a route that goes through to the S1E1 map.
Apparently, the S1E1 map was mostly a coastline. If we were to follow the coast, we would be able to find a road leading to the port towns.
And the last Relay Portal was in the middle of the route to the S1W1 map.

It seemed like we wouldn’t be able to reach any of the three Relay Portals without clearing the boss battle first, no matter how much we tried to avoid it.
Was a boss fight really inevitable?
From all the descriptions Haruna just gave me, I really didn’t feel like fighting it anymore.

~*~

The time was just 11 AM.
We arrived in the hall where the boss was supposed to appear.
Just to be sure, I went over the boss and anything to watch out for with Haruna once again.
But she wasn’t too well informed on the topic either.

『I think we’re all going to be able to make it through, since we’re all in Unions. At least, I really do hope we can make it… There’s really just one issue.』

「Well, what’s the problem?」

『The problem is with the number of parties in this room… I don’t think we’re going to be able to fight it properly with 26 or so parties all fighting in one room.』

「Is the room not wide enough?」

『Are you talking about the physical wideness of the room? I think we’re still going to be alright in that regard. The issue is somewhere else…』

「Oh, does the boss change if we fight it in a Union?」

『There’s going to be more of the boss, to be exact. More Buer Guards. One Buer Guard per party. They’re a type of monster that doesn’t drop any items either, so fighting more of them isn’t exactly worth it.』

Wow…
Yeah, that might just be a very tough situation, no matter how we looked at it.

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Protagonist　Keith
Race　Human　Male　Racial Lv23
Job　Grand Summoner Lv9
Bonus Points Remaining: 19

Skill Sets:
Sword Lv8　Two-handed Spear Lv8　Club Lv8　Dagger Lv7　Rope Artes Lv7
Staff Lv17　Punch Lv14　Kick Lv14　Joint Lock Lv14
Throw Lv14　Evade Lv14　Block Lv14
Summon Magic Lv23　Spacetime Magic Lv13　Seal Magic Lv6
Light Magic Lv13　Wind Magic Lv13　Earth Magic Lv13　Water Magic Lv13
Fire Magic Lv13　Dark Magic Lv13　Ice Magic Lv11　Lightning Magic Lv11
Tree Magic Lv11　Dust Magic Lv11　Lava Magic Lv11　Steam Magic Lv11
Alchemy Lv10　Pharmacy Lv8　Glassmaking Lv6　Woodworking Lv9
Synergy Lv16　Appraisal Lv16　Identify Lv16　Discern Lv5 (↑1) 　Cold Resistance Lv8
Grab Lv13　Horsemanship Lv13　Precise Manipulation Lv15　Ropework Lv7
Jump Lv7　Acrobatics Lv7　Heat Resistance Lv9　Climb Lv8　Balance Lv8
Dual Wield Lv14　Disassembly Lv12　Swim Lv6　Dive Lv5
Dash Lv5　Endurance Run Lv5
Physical Reinforcement Lv13 (↑1) 　Mental Reinforcement Lv13　Speedcasting Lv14 (↑1)
Magic Effect Amplification Lv12　Magic Range Expansion Lv12

Summon Monsters:
Rig　Yellow Pudding Lv4→Lv5 (↑ 1)
DEX　18
AGI　11 (↑1)
INT　8
STR　8
VIT　12 (↑1)
SPI　8
Skills:
Dissolve　Shapeshift　Viscosity　Surface Tension　Nullify Physical
Lightning Attribute　Fire Resistance

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