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Summoner is Going c241 part 2

So, how were the fights against those Sphinx and Spinks?
They were definitely easier.
Boring!
But that was only compared to how it was before.

With Irina now also being capable of using Pitfall, a lot of things changed.
The fights against the pair of Sphinx and Spinks became strangely easy.
But I had a feeling I played a big part in that too.

That Lion Sage’s Lance was very effective at dealing huge amounts of damage to those monsters.
It had a low probability, but each hit had a chance of inflicting the poison or paralysis abnormal status condition too.
After hitting the monsters several times with my lance, their red markers were overlaid with a smaller marker.
The status condition was usually poison.
If I tied it down using Gravity Prison and Seal Attribute on top of that, I could almost completely neutralise any of its threats.
If I used Gravity Prison well, I could hit both the Sphinx and the Spinks with the spell’s effect.
Yep, and I only had to specify multiple targets.
It was convenient, and effective.

I definitely got the opportunity to try a lot of new things, which was nice.
It was totally different from our fights from the day before.
I was probably not the only one who felt that way either.

I also thought that there would be no way we would make four rounds before noon…
But we actually managed to make it, just in time.

《【Horseback Spear】Level Up!》
《You have acquired the【Horseback Spear】Weapon Arte “Unity of Rider and Horse”.》
《【Seal Magic】Level Up!》
《You have acquired the【Seal Magic】spell【Four Sages’ Seal】!》
《You have acquired the【Seal Magic】spell【Five Elemental Seal】!》
《【Speedcasting】Level Up!》
《Summon Monster『Ninetails』Level Up!》
《Please add 1 point to a desired stat.》

The round was very successful.
I was quite satisfied with it.
Yep, those Sphinx and Spinks were very delicious for experience points.

The stat that went up with the level-up was AGI.
I put another point into INT.

Ninetails　Silver Fox Lv4→Lv5（↑1）
DEX　10
AGI　26（↑1）
INT　25（↑1）
STR　10
VIT　10
SPI　25

Skills:
Bite　Evade　Dash　Predict Danger　MP Regeneration [Small]
Light Attribute　Dark Attribute

It wasn’t just for my Summon Monsters. I got plenty of good things from our few rounds too.
But what was that Weapon Arte all about… Unity of Rider and Horse?
And the two new kinds of Seal Magic spells were also a mystery to me.

Well, I was waiting for lunch anyway, so I decided to take the time to slowly read the explanations for each spell.

I used Instant Portal.
I could leave the cooking to Adele and Irina.
So what was that new Weapon Arte all about? Unity of Rider and Horse?
Although it was temporary, it seemed like it was a skill used to increase the DEX, AGI, STR, and VIT stats in a fight.
I suppose it was kind of like the skill Practiced Spirit but for when I was on horseback?
The question was though, would it be possible to overlap this with True Practiced Spirit?
I definitely had to try that.

Anyway, about my new spells…
【Seal Magic】was quite different to a lot of my other magic skills, after all.
I suppose the spells coming in at weird times was something I could expect too.
All my other magic skills would yield new spells at Level 6, but that wasn’t the case at all with 【Seal Magic】.
And now, at Level 8, there were suddenly two new spells.
In the past, I noticed that all of the sealing spells seemed to not fall under the effects of Spell Effect Amplification or Spell Range Expansion.
I didn’t really know what was going on.

What kind of spell was this Four Sages’ Seal supposed to be?
It was apparently a spell used to seal all Weapon Artes in a radius around me. Of course, it only worked on enemies, not allies.
It was like an area-of-effect version of Seal Weapon Arte.

What about this Five Element Seal spell then?
It was apparently used on an enemy target to disable all spell casting. I suppose the “Five Element” part of the name stood for all the different attributes.
Hey, that’s awesome!
But it did look like the spell had some downsides.
Namely, it had a lower success rate than Seal Attribute.
Luckily, I could compare that success rate to some other monsters, since I was quite familiar with the success rate of the spell Seal Attribute on the Sphinx and Spinks.
When the pair of monsters were at Level 1, the spell succeeded about half of the time, and if they were at Level 3, it would succeed about once every three tries.
It wasn’t that good, actually.
But what would happen if it succeeded?
That would be very nice… It was a tough choice.

When I was having my meal, Haruna and Konohana came up to me with a suggestion.
What was on their mind…?

「Actually, we’ve been saving up one slot in our Summon Monster list.」

「We were saving it because we wanted to try summoning a Dolphin.」

「Huh.」

「Can we go and see the sea after this?」

「It doesn’t even have to be the sea, a river is okay too.」

「Yeah, there definitely should be some sources of water around here…」

But there were some problems there.
Adele, Irina, and Hyodor didn’t have many Summon Monsters that could fight around or under the water.
Continuing our hunt at the present rate would be a bit of a challenge.

I could listen to the opinions everyone else had first.

「I’m actually commissioning Mermaid armour right now!」

「Opal, right?」

「Actually, I’m keeping a spot free in my Summon Monster list too. I was planning on summoning a Mermaid next.」

Oh, really?
Everyone seemed to have situations pointing in the same direction.
Well, that was good for me.
I had never seen a dolphin before.
It wouldn’t hurt to just see them summon their Dolphins, and then get back to hunting.

「Yep, good point. Maybe once Hyodor gets his Class Change, we can try heading to the sea.」

「Can I count that as a promise?」

「The sea!!!」

「But isn’t there still going to be some time until that?」

「Don’t worry about it.」

Yep, you won’t have to worry about that, Hyodor.

I’m sure we’ll hit that around evening.
If I had to give a reason as to why, I would say…
Our hunting is going to get a bit harder after lunch.
But it wasn’t time to tell them that yet.

Not now, but soon.

I decided to change my Summon Monster lineup a bit after that.
Mainly, I decided to recall Ninetails and summon Gengetsu.
Gengetsu had a pretty useful skill that was similar to Dimension Mirror.
It was a skill that would take quite a bit out of Gengetsu’s MP bar, but it was a very good skill.
After all, I was thinking of fighting multiple pairs of Sphinx and Spinks consecutively.
I couldn’t get caught off guard.

『Umm, Keith? Are we really starting off by fighting a pair of Sphinx and Spinks?』

「Of course.」

『Isn’t the order on that one a bit upside-down?』

「Nope, I’m fully intending on doing this.」

『Umm…』

「From here on, let’s just focus on taking down the Sphinx and Spinks pairs.」

Complete silence.
I looked over at them to see worried looks on all of their faces.
Don’t look at me like that, you guys will get used to it in no time, I’m sure.

Come on, we’re entering into a brand new fun world!

Speaking of the pairs of Sphinx and Spinks.
The levels of the two monsters were always the same.
It was a similar pattern to monsters I had fought in the past, namely, the Gozu and Mezu, as well as the Deva Kings.
But I still couldn’t figure out a proper pattern to figure out which level the pair of Sphinx and Spinks would be at the next fight.
For the time being, I knew that they would be from level 1 to level 5.
Depending on their level, the time taken to fight and defeat them would vary greatly.
If the pair was at level 1, it would take us less than 5 minutes.
For a pair of level 5 monsters, it was about 10 minutes?

What was really a mystery was how their item drops worked, though.
The rate at which they left behind item drops was about 1 item for every 5 pairs defeated?
I wasn’t so sure, but the point was that the drop rate was quite low.

And on top of that, I had only managed to find two different kinds of items from them.
They were always either carrying a Lion Sage’s Sting or an Ancient Stone Pillar.
I was at the highest level in our party, which meant that I had the highest amount of inventory space. Because of that, I ended up being the one managing all of the item drops.
I didn’t really mind, my 《Item Box》 had a lot of space in it, and I had two of them too.
If at some time in the future our Union would have to be broken up, I could always distribute the items then.
That went for the items we got from the other monsters too.
I thought back on when we spent a lot of time hunting a large number of Fighting Bulls together, and the trouble I had with distributing items after that hunt… But having a low number of items would be quite difficult too.
It would make distributing the items fairly among everyone a bit more confusing.
It would be cool if the pairs of Sphinx and Spinks could drop items more frequently.