Live Dungeon!

After a short break, Tsutomu proceeded to explain to Daryl and Amira the rules of the Shell Crab aggro-grabbing competition.

“So here’s the deal: the winner is the participant who accumulates the most aggro time from the Shell Crab in thirty minutes’ time. Simply put, the competition for how long one is targeted by the Shell Crab — it’s not a quickest-to-kill contest like before. Do keep that in mind.”

“I know!” Amira responded immediately.

Tsutomu leaned back on his chair, wondering whether or not Amira would actually manage herself. Getting the impression that Amira was one to tell lies to put up a strong front, Tsutomu was primarily worried about her unreasonably complaining later.

“Oh, and it’s against the rules to interrupt or sabotage your opponent’s actions. Any questions?”

“Nah,” Amira immediately replied rather rudely.

“Um, I do have one…” Daryl subsequently said, putting up a formal tone.

Amira promptly glared with annoyance at Daryl, causing the latter to briefly hesitate. Tsutomu gave Amira a reprimanding look and asked back,

“What is it?”

“Since the total time is thirty minutes, the one who has aggro for more than fifteen minutes would be considered the victor, right?”

“Yes, that’s true. And when one of the participants goes over fifteen minutes of accumulated aggro time, the match will end immediately.”

“…All right, I understand.”

Although Tsutomu had discussed with Daryl the counter strategies against the target monsters themselves, he had not explained the competition rules at that time for the sake of fairness. As such, it was natural that he would ask, so as to fully understand the rules he had just heard for the first time.

Tsutomu then asked again whether or not the participants had any other questions, to which both of them shook their heads. The group proceeded to register their party at the now-crowded reception counter, then line up to use the Magic Circles. After a while, a Magic Circle opened up, so Tsutomu showed the pocket watch to the two participants.

“Give it your best, both of you — the time limit is thirty minutes, counting from now. Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m ready!”

Amira readied her greatsword, and Daryl his tower shield, as Tsutomu commanded the teleportation to layer fifty. The party of four on the Magic Circle promptly disappeared, and reappeared at their destination.

The first things that entered their eyes were the white beach and the dazzling, sparkling sea… then a pair of giant pincers sticking out of the sand, and the Shell Crab that crawled out of it. Amira charged straight at the monster, and Tsutomu cast her two support skills. The one to make the actual first move was Daryl, however.

“<<Combat Cry>>!”

Daryl emitted a concentrated blast of red energy like a gigantic, sharply honed spear, which pierced right through the Shell Crab’s body. Holding his tower shield tightly, he faced the Shell Crab head-on as it pounded toward him, provoked by <<Combat Cry>>.

Seeing Daryl’s strong start, Tsutomu smiled with relief and moved over to the side, from where it would be easier for him to provide support. Hannah, like a baby bird, followed right behind him.

“He’s really pulling out the big shots from the start… Do you think he’ll be alright?” Hannah asked, her voice implying some degree of worry.

“I think he’ll do just fine.” Tsutomu answered, looking quite confident.

Daryl, in contrast to his tall stature, gave off an immature impression especially from his face, and his attitude still needed some work, but it was a fact that he had successfully gone through Garm’s savage training program.

Garm was the very first person to have tried out Tsutomu’s suggested Tank role, and had received a set of documents detailing fundamental tactics and skill combos from him after their first Fire Dragon battle. Even after Tsutomu’s first party had officially disbanded, Garm still studied the role of Tank in his free time in between his work shifts as a Guild Staff Member.

And since Garm and Amy were among the very few Staff Members to have gone past the Fire Dragon, they both were often assigned to investigate the Dungeon’s Volcano layers. Garm had been using those trips as opportunities to try out Tank skills and deepen his understanding of them.

Dary, being Garm’s first apprentice and learning from his knowledge — not to mention stubbornly pushing through his utterly merciless training regimen and mentorship — definitely had the basics down while also understanding a great deal of the art of Tanking.

As things currently stood, the role of Tank was starting to spread more and more among the major Clans, with Bittman of Ealdred Crow hopping onto the bandwagon right after Garm, followed by a few more level-seventy Tanks. Many of the adopters were still not so good at the role though, with most being on the level of Barbara of Golden Tune. Because of that, Daryl could be considered one of the best Tanks around in terms of technical expertise, only a slightly below Garm and Bittman.

The Shell Crab attacked with its gigantic pincers, which Daryl blocked and knocked right back with his tower shield. Amira proceeded to land a heavy blow with her greatsword, but the monster’s reinforced shell caused the weapon to bounce right off. The Shell Crab was currently focused on Daryl, without any indication of it targeting anyone else anytime soon.

Daryl, while naturally acting deliberately to have the Shell Crab target him, was also keeping an eye on Amira’s movements. Then, as soon as he saw her about to attack, he also activated a skill himself.

“<<Taunt Swing>>!”

The skill was one that wrapped one’s weapon with a red aura, greatly increasing the aggro generated from the subsequent attack. Right as Amira landed her hit, Daryl bashed the monster with his boosted tower shield and successfully kept the monster’s attention on him. The standard way for Garm to generate aggro had been <<Combat Cry>> and <<Warrior Howl>>, at least up until the Fire Dragon fight, but the most effective skill for that when facing a single monster was the <<Taunt Swing>>.

However, since the skill required one to get close and personal with the enemy, it was risky to use against monsters with high offensive abilities. As such, against opponents like the Fire Dragon, it was generally more reliable to use <<Shield Throw>> as Garm had done.

A short while passed with Daryl having the upper hand the whole time. Now there were twenty-three minutes left. It was naturally difficult for a single person to hold ground against the inexhaustible Shell Crab’s onslaught, but Tsutomu’s support helped to alleviate Daryl’s fatigue. Daryl himself, having been told time and time again by Garm how amazing Tsutomu was, and having felt firsthand how reliable his support was, was calm and reassured.

<<Protect>> boosted his VIT and helped dull the pain he felt, while <<Haste>> boosted AGI and made his body feel lighter. Each time his arms started going numb from repeatedly blocking the monster’s pincers with his tower shield, he was promptly helped out with <<Heal>>, and whenever he felt exhausted from navigating the sand’s uneven footing, he was brought right back into the action with <<Medic>>.

Naturally, he had had no access to support and healing during his training under Garm, and inability to keep moving meant certain death — truly a training regimen from hell. Some of the activities included facing off against the Shell Crab for thirty minutes without rest, and learning to control <<Fly>> by dropping off of Carrier Birds — to both of which he had died countless times. Still, Daryl had always trusted Garm like a parent, so he had been able to make it this far.

In fact, the situation he was facing now was heaven compared to his training. Daryl had a smile plastered onto his face as he attacked and defended — bashing the Shell Crab with his tower shield, and effectively blocking the Shell Crab’s strikes to minimize damage.

“<<POWER SLASH>>!!”

Amira was not about to lose, however. Since the Shell Crab had always had its attention on Daryl from the beginning, she was free to keep attacking the monster uninterrupted, landing blows with her greatsword onto the same spot again and again.

And as more of its shell reinforcements broke off, the Shell Crab started paying more attention to Amira as well. Attacking the monster’s less-reinforced shell meant more damage dealt, which in turn meant gradually more aggro generated by Amira.

Then again, Daryl had already seen this coming. It was in fact common knowledge, in a fight against the Shell Crab, that the moment its reinforcements started breaking off was the turning point. That was the one thing Daryl had been thinking about since he had heard the competition’s rules.

Due to the Shell Crab gradually losing its defensive reinforcements, it would take more damage the longer a fight dragged on, so the Attacker would have the advantage in the long run. Considering that, Daryl had figured that it would be best if he were to hog all the advantage he could in the first half, and had things planned out based on him achieving that.

Spending extra energy into the very first <<Combat Cry>> had netted him a good chunk of time from the fight’s opening period. The monster still had its full reinforcement at the time, meaning Amira’s lower damage potential, so he had been able to get by with mostly shield bashes and minimal skill uses.

And now, the Shell Crab was starting to lose its defenses, and in turn have more of its aggro directed toward Amira. It was time for Daryl to spend his mental energy, which he had saved up from limiting his skill use before, to make sure that things went in his favor.

“<<Warrior Howl>>!”

The skill involved banging one’s shield on one’s armor, creating sound waves that stimulated creatures’ combative instincts. Upon activation, the Shell Crab instantly turned to Daryl, prompting him to follow up with another skill.

“<<Taunt Swing>>!”

Daryl used his tower shield, still vibrating from the effect of <<Warrior Howl>> and now wrapped in a red aura, to strike the Shell Crab. The combination of two skills’ effects — a bread and butter skill combo — caused a great increase in the amount of aggro generated. With that, Daryl successfully forced the enemy’s attention on Amira back onto him.

Amira’s attacks were nothing to scoff at, either. Having gotten to the increased speed from <<Haste>>, she was starting to dish out harder hits. Still, Daryl’s liberal use of skill combos was generating too much aggro for her to keep up.

Still, Daryl could not necessarily keep this up forever; he would not be able to activate skills without mental energy, and Tank-type Jobs naturally had low mental energy capacities in the first place. As such, a Tank also needed to manage their energy properly, and could not actually use all the skills they wanted.

Daryl had formulated strategies with all that in mind beforehand, and was now putting them into action. First by opening the fight with a big aggro pull, then stalling to wait for his energy to recover — those two steps had netted him about half of the required time. The rest of the time would be more difficult, with the Shell Crab’s defenses being weakened, but by then his energy had recovered by a sufficient amount.

All in all, Daryl’s plans worked out well, and the overall time went past the sixteen-minute mark with Amira failing to pull the aggro back to her again.

“All right, stop! Daryl has gone over fifteen minutes! Daryl wins!”

“GOD DAMN IT!!”

Amira, suffering a complete defeat, yelled from the bottom of her heart and violently slammed the Shell Crab with her greatsword. She herself knew that Daryl had hogged the Shell Crab’s aggro to himself for most of the time, so she let the competition end without any complaints.

After that, the whole team searched around for the Shell Crab, which had disappeared into the sand during the brief interruption. They proceeded to kill it, clearing the Dungeon’s fiftieth layer — which Amira had in fact never done before, making this a progress update for her.

Back at the Guild, Daryl proceeded to give Hannah a high-five, prompting a hostile look at both of them from Amira. Before Daryl could notice that, Tsutomu interrupted Amira,

“So… next up is the last round, against Diniel. The content and rules will be the same as the match against Hannah — is that all right?”

“……”

Amira turned around, her teeth audibly grinding out of vexation, vividly reminding Tsutomu of the face the Fire Dragon had made moments before its death. Not particularly concerned by that look, Tsutomu continued in a robotic, indifferent voice.

“It’s already past noon, so let’s go get lunch and take a short break before we continue. This time Diniel will be going first, so you should observe her performance and try to beat her time.”

“Tch…”

Noticing that she was unintentionally scaring off the surrounding Explorers, Amira calmed herself down and looked away, then plopped down on one of the Guild Dining Hall seats.

Tsutomu went over to the Appraisal Office and knocked on the door, which had a ‘lunch break’ sign hanging on it, and called out Diniel, who was in the middle of chatting with Amy… who was busy appraising some materials she had collected from the Volcano layers.

“H-hey! Do you not have anything to say to me!?”

“I was about to greet you just now! Ahem… Good afternoon, Amy. Good to see that you’re hard at work.”

“…And who do you think I’m working hard for, eh~~?”

Amy, grumpy due to getting the impression that she was being treated like an afterthought, gave Tsutomu a criticizing look, prompting the latter to bow his head.

“Well, anyway… try not to overwork yourself, all right? There’s no need to hurry — our Clan’s just been established, so there’s still a lot of setting up to do. I don’t know if we’re ready for the Volcano layers yet, either.”

“You’ve got Dini with you — it’ll be a breeze!”

“That’s right, that’s right. Come on, let Amy into the Clan already~~”

“That’s right, that’s right! Lemme in already~~!”

“Sure, just don’t blame me when Camille starts giving you another lecture…”

Seeing the two raise their fists in a comical protest, Tsutomu chuckled out of slight exasperation before trying to get Diniel out of the Appraisal Office.

“Stahp~~ I don’t wanna work~~” Diniel cracked another joke.

“Oh, by the way, Amy… we’ll be having lunch. Would you like to join us?”

“Y-you mean right now!? I’ll go, too! Just gimme a second!”

Amy promptly went into the back room behind the counter. While Tsutomu waited, he talked to Diniel about how the two others had won their matches.

“So, Diniel… you’re up last. The match will be another test of speed against the Rotten Swordsman. Well, no need to worry about that, is there?”

“Piece ‘a cake.”

[…Now she’s trying to sound like Hannah?]

Tsutomu had never been able to get a good read on Diniel’s character, especially with her behavior recently. His first impression was that she was tight-lipped and resourceful, not talking and acting unless absolutely necessary, and that her tone of speaking was rather normal and sometimes business-like.

However, ever since she had joined the Clan on Amy’s recommendation, Diniel’s speech tendencies started changing more and more. While waiting for Amy, Tsutomu said nothing and pondered to himself whether or not it would be appropriate to get rid of the sense of distance and start talking to Diniel normally. A few moments later, once Amy walked out of the office after having fixed up her hair, the group went back to the other Clan members and had lunch together.