I hate being in pain, so I think I'll make a full defense build

Chapter 414

Itai no wa Iya nanode Bōgyo-Ryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu 414

Defense Specialization and the Vestiges – 2

Even though Maple had found a potential way out of her sticky situation, it was something she had come up with on the spur of the moment and not a tactic she had practiced, so she still hadn’t fully gotten the hang of throwing bombs at her enemy while going through her inventory. Since all her offensive skills had been sealed away, there wasn’t much else to think about, but Maple was still feeling overwhelmed by the amount of micromanagement needed to pull this off.

Eventually, Maple found herself unable to go through her inventory in time and ended up attaching a bomb to her chest a little too late, which allowed the man to close the distance between them in an instant.

“Waah!? W-Wait... Ugh!”

The man was at a clear advantage in such a close range, and several damage VFX appeared as his quick barrage of attacks tore through Maple’s torso.

“Get away from me!”

Although late, Maple’s bomb still went off, and after gaining some distance, she placed one of her large shields in front of her to at least force her opponent to go around it if he wanted to continue attacking.

“I gotta use another bomb... and a Potion too...”

One by one, Maple continued to use items in order to try to remedy her situation. Luckily for her, the battlefield was flat, and it seemed to extend endlessly behind her, so she could continue to retreat as much as she wanted. Maple managed to keep this tactic under control by reducing the number of distractions around her.

Maple was able to keep the jet-black laser that caused delayed explosions from hitting her body thanks to her “Helping Hand”. Having to deal with both the laser and the man’s attacks at the same time, all while trying to deal some damage herself, would at times prove to be too much for Maple’s concentration, and she would get hit from time to time.

However, the one whose attacks were gradually becoming less effective was definitely her opponent.

As long as she didn’t run out of Potions, Maple would be able to restore her HP. But the man had no way to regenerate, and, albeit slowly, his own HP would only keep going down as the battle progressed.

“Again!”

As the man approached, Maple scattered a large amount of bombs. She didn’t bother thinking what type of bombs they were, and instead focused on making it difficult for the man to avoid them. Once the man entered their area of effect, Maple created a flame, causing a chain detonation. The blast also engulfed Maple, dealing damage only to her opponent but still blowing her away.

“Phew... Haah... Alright!”

This wasn’t Maple’s first long battle, but it was the first time she was this busy during a battle, and was clearly showing signs of fatigue.

But this was only natural. The man’s HP had gone down to 40%, but the battle had gone on for a little over 3 hours.

Even so, Maple managed to keep her focus and was able to deal a good amount of damage with that last explosion. But what worried her the most was the amount of sticky bombs left in her inventory. She had been using them generously in order to quickly create distance between herself and her opponent, but once she ran out of them, she would have nothing to replace them with.

She still had about one third of her original number of sticky bombs. She would definitely run out of them before the battle was over. And Maple feared that the moment she were to slow down, nothing would stop the man from tearing her to shreds with his flurry of slashes. Unless...

“I’ll have to use my ‘Evil Eater’...!”

Maple still had 7 of her daily uses of her “Evil Eater”. She estimated that if she were to successfully hit them all, that would be the end of the battle.

Maple figured that once the man’s HP went down to 30% would be a good time to switch to a more aggressive approach, and continued to use her hit-and-run tactics with her sticky bombs to deal steady damage.

Normally, 30% HP was the final threshold for boss monsters to change to their final behavioral patterns. After that mark had been passed, it was highly likely that Maple’s “Evil Eater” alone would do the rest of the job. If all the man could do against it was to endure it, his remaining HP would go down rather quickly.

The battle raged on, with the red flames of Maple’s explosions and the man’s jet-black laser both illuminating the battlefield and dealing damage to each other.

“How about this!”

Maple’s final explosion was the biggest of them all, and as the man was enveloped in its resulting flames, his HP finally reached the mark of 30%.

And as expected, that mark brought about an undesirable change in the man’s behavior.

As he jumped up a few meters off the ground, a large magic circle appeared on the ground with him in the center. Seeing this, Maple started running as far away from it as possible.

As she went on to getting ready for whatever was to come next by recovering her HP with another Potion and replacing the battered large shield on her “Helping Hand” with another one, a black mud-like substance started to ooze out of the center of the magic circle, spreading through the ground.

“Like I said... You better die quietly!”

The man pointed his sword at Maple, and at the same time, strange creatures started to appear from this black mud. They all seemed to look a bit like Maple whenever she used her “Atrocity”, but with slight differences. Some of them had wings, others were much more muscular, and others had multiple arms and legs, but what they all had in common was that they were all clad in the same dark light that had proven to be effective in damaging Maple.

“...!”

Seeing that, Maple hurriedly equipped her “Replica of the Dark Night.” She currently didn’t have the power to defend against this and win this drawn-out battle. Up to this point, Maple had managed to come around by using every trick in the book, but there’s only so much she could accomplish with mere items. So Maple had no choice but to try to bring down the curtain once and for all with the strongest weapon she currently possessed.

Luckily, she had kept her distance from the man, and it would still take a short while for those monsters to reach her.

Maple hurriedly wrapped another one of her rockets around her body and set it off.

“Which one was it?”

“It was... ‘Forbidden Book’...”

When the first of them asked the second who did it, an indescribable expression appeared on the second one’s face.

“...Who was it?”

“It was Maple.”

“...????”

The first one was totally confused by this. It simply made no sense. After all, he knew everything related to this boss called “Forbidden Book”, and about the quest that leads up to him.

“I must have heard things wrong. Say it again.”

“...It was Maple.”

“...How?”

“I haven’t read the logs yet...”

“But what about the seal on Maple’s skills?”

“She isn’t a Wizard-type, so it’s Pattern A.”

“Then all but her passive skills should be gone! Sure, she got to keep her defensive power, but how on earth was Maple, of all players, able to defeat him?”

“Let’s take a look at the battle from the beginning.”

Everyone in the room stared intently at the projected image, thinking that there must have been some sort of bug in this boss’ code that allowed Maple to take him down despite having no clear means of offense.

Immediately after the battle began, the boss attacked Maple with a powerful slash. Although she sustained no damage, Maple was thrown into a situation where she could not stand straight before being attacked once again.

“Of course she would receive no damage at all...”

“Well, duh.”

After a while, Maple’s situation changed and she started using bombs. The GM team was impressed to see how she had found a way to keep herself off the ground by a clever use of her “Helping Hand.”

“Oh, I see...”

“From here, it seems that she’s been throwing rocks at the boss for about an hour.”

“That was well thought... but how come she had so many rocks on her in the first place?”

“Who knows...?”

Even so, after a while, the boss also starts flying in the sky. The GM team knew that the boss wouldn’t let this situation continue for much longer, since he had the tools to retaliate.

The commotion in the room intensified as they continued to look at the footage.

“I suppose that, theoretically, something like this is possible.. But still... Sticky bombs...?”

“That was actually very clever of Maple... Though I’d never imagined she would come up with an idea like this.”

“Maybe someone like Sally gave her the idea. That girl is quite a piece of work.”

“Look at Maple go... Her movements are very well executed.”

“The fact that she won’t take damage from the bombs is really huge in this battle. Anyone else trying to do this would be committing suicide.”

So in the end, the GM team determined that Maple, rather than having found some kind of exploit to cheese her way through the battle, instead had a real battle that took a few hours, a large amount of resources, and a deep understanding of her own strengths.

“Her passive skill set is really something else, huh?”

“You can say that again.”

“I told you before, haven’t I? Those Skills are...”

“...”

...the root of all evil. Once again, the GM team was met with the fact that Maple’s unreal defensive power had been the main responsible for her success so far.