Chapter 207: Fierce Battle on the 18th Floor: Goliath (Patreon)

A huge pack of monsters had gathered around it, their roars and stomping feet blending together until the walls themselves trembled.

On the other side of the passage stood a group of novice adventurers who wanted to reach the 18th floor but were too scared of the floor boss to move.

Natsuka squinted, and suddenly spotted a familiar face in the crowd.

"Heeey—Mikoto!"

"Long time no see!"

In the crowd across from him, Mikoto spotted him too.

She was startled at first. Clearly she hadn't expected Natsuka to already be able to get down near the 18th floor this quickly.

But after the surprise came relief and delight at running into someone she knew.

Natsuka waited until Goliath wasn't looking his way, then whisked between its legs.

He moved like a gust of wind.

In the blink of an eye, he was at Mikoto's side.

"What's going on?"

Every member of the Takemikazuchi Familia was still Lv1.

Making it down to the 17th floor was dangerous enough as it was.

Then Natsuka noticed Ouka, drenched in blood and pale as paper, and he understood immediately.

Sure enough, Mikoto's face was tight as she explained in a low voice.

"We ran into a Monster Feast."

"We had no choice. We could only run toward the 18th floor."

"And then we ran right into Goliath..."

Her voice was full of worry, and her knuckles were white around her sword hilt.

Natsuka patted her shoulder. His voice was steady.

"As long as everyone's alive, that's what matters."

"I'll heal her first."

"As for Goliath, we'll deal with it in a moment."

With that, he immediately unleashed the Heal magic [Rea Vindemia].

Emerald light, like warm spring water, wrapped around Ouka from head to toe.

The wounds on her body closed at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The brow that had been knotted in pain gradually relaxed.

Beside her, Chigusa watched it all with reddening eyes, thanking him again and again.

"Thank you!"

"Thank you so, so much!"

Natsuka waved a hand, telling her not to mention it.

Then he turned to Mikoto.

"Perfect timing."

"Come with me for a moment."

"We happen to need your help over here."

Mikoto understood at once that he wanted to drag her into the fight against Goliath.

She turned back and asked Chigusa to look after Ouka, then picked up her sword and followed him.

By now the battlefield was in utter chaos.

Yuuki, riding the Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear, circled Goliath at high speed like a bird darting back and forth.

Kanade hovered in midair on her wings, spell after spell pouring down from her hands and bursting across the monster's face.

Miko even ran up Goliath's raised arm, her longsword dragging a long streak of blood across its skin.

The cannon set up in the distance kept booming.

Music and gunfire wove together. It sounded chaotic, but there was a strangely compelling rhythm to it.

The monster minions Goliath had summoned had been thrown completely out of control by Kuroneko's Berserk, and were tearing at one another in a tangled heap.

Kuroneko herself had used reversed attributes to suppress the side effects, and had temporarily raised her level to Lv3.

With the Development Ability [Transformation], she was no longer just rear-line support.

Now she qualified to serve as main tank and healer at once, just like the Golden Witch.

Lv3 physical stats, stacked with the short-lived [Steel Body] and [Magic Resistance] from [Transformation], made her the steady wall holding the very front line.

Goliath's earsplitting Roar had been taken head-on by her, braced behind a great shield.

Dekomori wasn't idle either.

Her big hammer was already wrecked, so she just trotted along swinging a small hammer, smashing at Goliath's heels.

"Eighty!"

"Eighty!"

"Eighty!"

Anyone who didn't know better would've thought she was doing home renovations.

When Natsuka arrived, the scene got even crazier.

The little players looked like they'd been injected with chicken blood. They ignored their injuries and charged straight in.

Sora and Shiro had been talking strategy, builds and pacing. By the end, even those two gave up thinking and joined the wild slashing with their blades.

They couldn't help it.

The lure of all-around stat gains was simply too great.

But this style of fighting had obvious consequences.

One casual kick from Goliath could send someone flying over ten meters.

A follow-up stomp had no shortage of people coughing up blood.

But the moment Natsuka's magic circle unfolded and the healing light fell, those same people scrambled up from the ground yelling, as good as new, and charged in again.

"Taunt! Taunt!"

"Main tank, hold on! Keep the aggro locked!"

"Where's the crowd control?!"

"Blind it, quick!!!"

"Magic Conducting mages, watch your positioning! Don't get hit by the [Roar]!"

"Damn, Goliath's off the tank! The aggro's gone!"

"Pull the aggro back! Kuroneko!!"

The battlefield was a boiling pot of shouting.

Standing to one side, Mikoto broke out in a cold sweat.

She had figured it out by now.

This wasn't simply a request for help.

He was obviously dragging her along to farm experience.

Natsuka, meanwhile, looked completely natural about it, as if this was how things were supposed to go.

"Start your chant."

"Pin it down first."

Mikoto's control abilities were truly crucial in a brawl like this.

With Goliath's aggro flying everywhere, it would be a real mess if no one could forcibly suppress it.

Mikoto nodded and began chanting at once.

Over ten seconds later, a massive gravity magic circle crashed down.

Goliath's enormous body was instantly crushed into a stoop, and the ground beneath its feet cracked open.

"Ohhhhhh—!"

The players grew even more excited.

Spells, blades and cannon fire rained down on it as if they were free.

When Mikoto's spell ran out, Rikka took over with the Chunibyo Group and swallowed Goliath whole.

During that stretch, the squad finally got a chance to catch their breath, chugging stamina potions and mana potions.

On top of that, Kaori Miyazono restored the team's health and mana, so everyone was back in shape quickly.

When Rikka's magic ended, everyone threw themselves back in for another brutal round.

They kept repeating the cycle, back and forth.

After a full forty minutes, Goliath finally collapsed on the ground looking like it had lost all will to live.

It was truly wrung dry.

It couldn't even muster any force behind its proudest [Roar]. When it opened its mouth, it came out like a feeble burp.

In the end, that hulking giant was mauled to death by the little players surrounding it, like a beached whale.

Dekomori raised her little hammer, so excited she was nearly hopping.

"Enemy officer defeated!"

"I shall go push the tower!"

As she shouted, she raised a small knife and, with lightning-fast movements, dug the huge Magic Stone out of Goliath's body.

This time, at least, no one was wasteful enough to smash the Magic Stone in passing.

"What a shame."

"This Goliath looked a bit dim, and it still didn't drop anything."

Natsuka crouched beside the giant's corpse, sorting through it with a sigh.

Still, it wasn't all bad news.

At the very least, the Magic Stone was perfectly intact.

By his estimate, it would fetch twenty thousand valis without any trouble.

If it had shattered, the price would've been slashed brutally.

Like that Amphisbaena's Magic Stone: it was clearly bigger, but once it cracked, it could only be priced as broken stone, and three million valis would've been a decent sale.

But looking at the intact big Magic Stone in front of him, Natsuka started agonizing again.

The biggest problem with the railgun's magic energy storage device was precisely the need for high-quality Magic Stones.

Thinking about it like that...

"Now I don't want to sell it."

Natsuka's whole face crumpled.

He realized that he was no longer simply short on money.

He saw everything as something useful.

If he kept it, he'd be short on cash.

If he sold it, he'd regret it.

In the end, he could only make the painful decision.

"I'll take it back first and decide later."

With that last fight over, the little players prepared to return to the surface together.

After all, it was time to update their stats.

When they heard Natsuka's group was heading back, the Takemikazuchi Familia offered to go with them.

The reason was practical. Even if they reached Rivira, continuing upward would probably mean moving along behind some other big Familia.

Without knowing the routes and the pace, it would be easy for something unexpected to happen.

Natsuka naturally had no reason to refuse.

"We're all new Familias."

"Looking out for each other is only natural."

"Besides, hasn't Lord Takemikazuchi already agreed to join our Astraea Grand Alliance?"

"Don't mention it."

Mikoto was deeply moved, her eyes shining.

To her, this was true chivalry.

As expected of the Astraea Familia.

Upright and gentle at once.

For Mikoto, a devotee of the bushido code, when someone treated her with sincerity, she would naturally return it without hesitation.

"From now on, whenever Mr. Natsuka needs anything,"

"I will never refuse!"

She spoke with great solemnity.

Natsuka only patted her shoulder, a meaningful tone in his voice.

"Hurry up and get stronger, young lady."

"Someday, you might need power more than I do."

"Understood!"

Mikoto straightened up at once and answered.

Stardust Garden.

Inside the divine chamber.

The little players lined up one by one to begin their stat updates.

Perhaps because she had realized early on that the workload would only balloon as the Familia grew, Astraea had prepared in advance.

Whenever she had free time, she set aside a portion of divine blood.

So this time, the process didn't leave her scrambling.

After this expedition, most people had gained a total of more than five hundred points in stats.

Using Blank's fairly balanced median as the yardstick, the first echelon's average ability had advanced across the board to E rank, roughly four hundred points.

A few individuals even had a stat reach D rank, and like Kuroneko, were now eligible to level up.

For example...

Dekomori.

Her current stats were:

Strength: G278 → D507

Endurance: F310 → D577

Dexterity: G203 → G289

Agility: H131 → G271

Magic: 10 → 10

Her skills were: [Heartstrike Hammer], [Giant Mastery], [Tiger Slide Tackle].

And the newly sprouted [Tiger Slide Tackle] had an absurd effect.

· Activation condition: triggers when sliding.

· Greatly boosts Agility and Dexterity.

· Adds a Knock-Away effect upon hitting a target.

Natsuka stared at the paper for a long time, his expression extremely complicated.

"Dekomori."

"What exactly do you research in your spare time?"

"Why would you grow a skill like this?"

"Even a [Giant Slayer] would be easier for me to accept."

The moment he finished, he couldn't help himself and ruffled her head like a puppy's.

He also asked in passing whether she planned to level up.

Dekomori planted her hands on her hips, tilted her chin up and radiated confidence.

"It's way too early, desu!"

"My goal is ALL S!"

Natsuka frowned.

"That's a stretch."

"I don't object to building up stats."

"But going all S really isn't necessary."

"Look at Ryuu. Getting Strength and Endurance up to A within two months is about right."

Dekomori was a proper front-liner.

Unlike Kuroneko, a support-leaning front-liner, she depended far more on Strength and Endurance.

Raising those two a bit wouldn't hurt.

But to be honest, Natsuka was actually leaning toward having her level up sooner.

Leveling up meant she could go hunt stronger monsters.

Both stat accumulation efficiency and growth multipliers would be higher.

Two months from now, Dekomori might even be touching the Lv3 threshold.

In that case, the whole Familia could push into deeper floors, and its overall development would jump up another tier.

Of course, continuing to hold back and stockpile stats wasn't bad either.

The firmer the foundation, the higher the ceiling tends to be.

It was just a pity that Blank had come up a little short of getting a stat to D rank this time.

Natsuka had been quite looking forward to it.

A person like Blank, who stirred up so much commotion, might unlock some absurd new ability once they reached Lv2.

Then there was Kanade.

This kid was usually so quiet, yet she had silently stacked her Magic up to D rank.

She actually wanted to level up very badly.

But considering her talent and future growth potential, Natsuka ultimately decided to have her hold back a bit longer.

...

With the first echelon reviewed, next came the second echelon.

The second echelon had also advanced across the board to E rank this time, the three-hundred-point tier.

The most outrageous among them was still Miko.

She had charged ahead so fiercely that she'd left quite a few members of the first echelon behind, becoming the fourth core of the roster besides Natsuka.

Yotsuya Miko's latest stats were as follows:

Strength: E411 → C671

Endurance: H135 → G298

Dexterity: C671 → S975

Agility: F305 → B712

Magic: H132 → F307

Magic: [Death Eyes], [Dead Soul Possession]

Skill: [Fatal Strike]

The effect of [Fatal Strike] was simple, and vicious.

· Triggers when attacking.

· Adds tearing, armor-breaking and piercing effects.

Put plainly, Yotsuya was now outrageous.

Because she had a power-leveler.

Strength, Agility and Dexterity were rocketing upward.

Natsuka figured that just dodging a single Juggernaut attack might have given her a few hundred points of Dexterity and Agility outright.

On top of that, whenever she trained, every blow of hers went precisely for the Magic Stone, killing in one hit nearly every time.

And that was how a brand-new skill was forcibly born.

From now on, against heavily armored enemies, Miko's combat power would only get more outrageous.

Natsuka was openly envious.

"Power-leveling big shot. Terrifying..."

He stared at Miko's paper, utterly resigned.

"In your case... honestly, you should level up too."

"You've got an S in one stat already."

"But now I'm not sure whether I should let you level up at all."

It truly was hard for Miko to judge.

Alfia, her power-leveler, was clearly nowhere near her limit.

With her style of fighting at least three levels above her own, breaking through the Dexterity cap would be almost too easy.

In the end, after consulting Alfia, Miko chose to keep holding back her level.

"Alfia wants to use my body to step once more into the realm she once reached."

"So she wants me to build my foundation higher."

Natsuka had no objections to that.

The third echelon, the Chunibyo Group, had less dazzling results by comparison.

After all, they had died more often, and the experience lost to each death added up.

Overall, though, they had still climbed from I rank to H rank, about a hundred points or so.

Worth mentioning was Makise Kurisu, the research grunt who normally couldn't be bothered to move. This time she had, against all expectations, completed her very first stat update.

And when he looked at the result...

Makise Kurisu Lv1

Strength: 10 → 190

Endurance: 10 → 199

Dexterity: 10 → 120

Agility: 10 → 191

Magic: 10 → 10

The numbers themselves weren't the most explosive part.

What was truly absurd was what she had awakened.

Magic:

[Time Walker]

· Magic unique to this timeline. (Cannot be nested.)

· Can summon a clone from the future.

· The clone inherits 30% of the original's stats, and its duration is capped at one year per level.