The Shaman’s Curse of Frailty burst and vanished uselessly.
It was pointless against someone like me, who was already self-inflicting Frailty!
And then—
"I can see you just fine!"
I swung my sword in a sweeping arc as I spun around.
There stood a Ranger, caught in the middle of raising a dagger with a look of pure astonishment as his torso was bisected.
Orc Rangers were skilled archers, but they also possessed excellent hide-type skills.
The skill—Concealment.
It was a more direct hide-type skill than the Silent Walk or Presence Reduction possessed by Goblin Shadows; it had the effect of making it difficult for others to perceive one's form.
However, its activation required moving into the target's blind spot or the target looking away. Furthermore, the effect of Concealment was canceled the moment the user shifted into an offensive action.
But precisely because of those conditions, its effect was powerful. Once you lost sight of them, it was incredibly difficult to notice them until the very moment they attacked—usually. However, my max-level Danger Sense effectively rendered the effects of Concealment completely null.
To put it simply, good old Danger Sense didn't just visualize the trajectories of enemy attacks; it also highlighted "dangerous things" in a red light, allowing me to discover traps that hadn't even been triggered yet.
In other words, hostile monsters always appeared to me as if they were enveloped in a red glow.
That remained effective even when visibility was hindered by Concealment.
While I was fighting as if dancing in circles, the Ranger-san who activated Concealment the moment he entered my blind spot had indeed disappeared from my conscious perception. However, in his place, I could see a red light shaped like an Orc slowly creeping around behind me.
And that was why Concealment didn't work against good old Danger Sense.
Honestly, it looked kind of goofy, so I had a hard time stifling my laughter.
"Well... time to wrap this up."
With even the Ranger who had taken my back defeated, the Orcs' attacks ceased for a brief moment as if they were at a loss for how to proceed.
I had wiped out the Knights and Monks. All that remained were the Rangers, Gunners, the Shamans, and the Noble.
I turned my gaze toward the Noble standing behind the other Orcs.
In that instant—
"Bugooh!!"
Whether it realized it was being targeted or was driven by rage at its subordinates' defeat, the Noble let out a cry as if issuing a command and pointed the tip of its sword at me.
Immediately after, the assault resumed.
Fire from the Rangers and Gunners commenced. However, this was easy to evade. I moved to step out of the red lines of fire as if taking a pleasant stroll, dodging them all.
Flying toward me next was the Shaman's sorcery. It was a sickly, filthy deep-green light, a different hue from Ambitious Heart’s Desire.
It was a sorcery that inflicted the poison status—Poison Curse.
Hmph, no need to even dodge.
"Bugoh!?"
The Poison Curse collided with my body, enveloped me in light, and then popped and vanished.
Sorry about that. I’d already applied that to myself, too.
I launched a Flying Blade toward the Shaman, who had let out a shocked cry that was almost a scream. Without even waiting to see the result, I sprinted after the blade.
The Flying Blade easily cut the Shaman in two, along with the staff he had raised like a shield.
I passed by the collapsing Shaman and charged at the one behind him—the Noble, who had readied its sword.
Maintaining the momentum of my charge, I swung my greatsword of aura down from an overhead position!
I put the weight of Mighty Blade into that strike. A finishing blow with a damage multiplier of 192x!
"Ooooooooooh!! This is the end!!"
The Noble didn't even have time to raise its shield above its head, taking the blow completely undefended—
"Bugoh."
However, it wore a derisive smirk.
My intense strike, empowered by Mighty Blade—stopped completely just one millimeter before making contact with the Noble's head.
It wasn't that I had pulled my punch. It was stopped by the Noble's HP Barrier.
The moment the blade of aura collided with the HP Barrier, I felt a strange sensation. It was as if all the kinetic energy had been sucked away and disappeared.
I knew exactly why.
It was likely due to an extremely rare skill possessed by Orc Nobles.
The Noble possessed three skills.
Level 5 Leadership, Level 5 Army as One, and Level 5 Blue Blood.
The effect of the Blue Blood skill was: "Randomly redirect damage received by the user to subordinates under the influence of certain skills like Leadership." Furthermore, at Level 1, it redirected 20% of the damage received; at Level 5, it was 100%—meaning it could redirect every bit of damage to subordinates.
In short, it was a skill that allowed it to super-strengthen its own HP Barrier using the HP of its subordinates. As a result, my blow failed to break through the Noble's HP Barrier.
And because of this, you couldn't take out an Orc Noble early like you would a Goblin Commander, Goblin Knight Leader, or Goblin General.
You couldn't deactivate Leadership until you'd wiped out the Orcs.
What a cheat skill. And what a villainous one. Turning the lives of your subordinates into your own extra lives was truly the work of a demon.
Precisely because it had this skill, the Noble hadn't bothered to defend against my attack.
Immediately after blocking the slash with its HP Barrier, the Orc Noble thrust its sword. But I had known about Blue Blood beforehand.
Guided by good old Danger Sense, I evaded the Noble's attack.
I put some distance between myself and the Noble. At that, the Noble barked "Bugoh!!" again and pointed the tip of its sword at me. It seemed to be ordering the subordinate Orcs to pursue. Probably.
Receiving that command, the Orcs—
"..."
"..."
"..."
They looked at each other as if bewildered.
I couldn't see even a hint of the influence of Maximum Aggro in their behavior.
Even for me, it was unexpected for the influence of Maximum Aggro to vanish—though I had expected them to come swinging regardless of skills.
"Bu, bugo?"
To the Noble looking at its subordinates in stunned silence, I gave an answer—though I didn't know if he'd understand.
"I told you, didn't I? This is the end."
"Bugo!?"
The reason the commanded Orcs didn't pursue me—no, couldn't pursue me—was simple.
Due to the damage redirected by Blue Blood, the HP of the remaining seven Orcs had been completely depleted.
In short, the HP of those subordinates wasn't enough to absorb all the damage.
...Actually, since I used Mighty Blade, I secretly thought I might be able to deplete all the Orcs' HP and cut down the Noble as well, so I was a little shocked it was stopped by the HP Barrier.
Perhaps it was possible to withstand any attack at least once, regardless of the number of subordinates or the amount of damage.
At any rate, having had their HP completely depleted, the Orcs lost their status functions and could no longer use skills. That was why they couldn't pursue. Well, they should still have been able to come at me with raw physical force, but they were too far gone.
Also, it was unexpected even for me that the influence of Maximum Aggro would disappear when the status stopped functioning.
Regardless—having one's HP completely depleted meant, in game terms, being in an incapacitated state, which was as good as being dead.
This meant that Army as One, which allowed the Noble to use the skills of subordinates under the influence of Leadership, also ceased to function because there were no valid targets.
As if to demonstrate this, the Fighting Spirit the Noble had activated stopped, and the red light enveloping its body vanished.
Now then... let’s review. The Noble only had three skills: Leadership, Army as One, and Blue Blood.
It had not a single skill to buff itself.
An Orc Noble without subordinates was nothing more than a bipedal pig with slightly higher stats.
And even those high stats became far inferior to mine—since I had Seeker active—the moment it could no longer use Fighting Spirit.
"..."
I stared at the Orc Noble with the same eyes one might use to look at a pig being sent to a slaughterhouse.
"...!?...!!?"
The Orc Noble stared at me, looking panicked.
It seemed he was quite intelligent. He reacted just like a human.
It was pathetic, really. Let me put you out of your misery.
I raised my sword.
●◯●
And so, victory!
Defeating an Orc Noble that could no longer use skills and Orcs that had lost their status functions was, in terms of effort, almost no different from exterminating goblins on Floor 1. I just took them down one by one and—
"Good work, Takeo-kun!"
Hinata-san, who had approached with Gobu-taro in tow, gave me some words of appreciation.
Then, from the drone that had also approached, comments from the viewers began to pour out.
『Whoa, whoa, whoa! That looked incredibly easy!』 『The fight ended so fast even though he didn’t use his usual bombardment.』 『I mean, what was with that evasion!?』 『Dodging everything by a hair’s breadth, he really had that "master" vibe.』 『It was nerve-wracking to watch, though lol』 『Didn't his fighting style seem different than usual?』 『He always dodges like crazy even against crowds, but maybe it’s because he usually moves around a lot to evade?』 『This time, how should I put it... he wasn’t moving around violently, was he?』 『That’s it!』 『It really felt like he was fighting with the absolute minimum amount of movement.』 『He looked like he had a lot of breathing room.』 『Anyway, the Shaman's sorcery being completely useless was hilarious lol』 『I bet the Shaman never thought his opponent would already be under status ailments by his own choice... lol』 『What was with the other Orcs looking confused when he hit the Noble at the end??』 『That was the result of the Noble pushing the damage onto his subordinates with Blue Blood, causing all their HP to be depleted lol』 『Does that mean if you hit the Noble, you can neutralize all the subordinates at once!?』 『If you have a skill that can put out insane damage, then yeah.』 『Blue Blood is actually a great deal for us then lol』 『LMAO at the Noble being treated as a gimmick for wiping out the subordinate Orcs.』 『Only possible if you have firepower like Leveling Junkie Bro, though lol』 『Who the hell can imitate that gimmick? www』
While listening to everyone's comments, I displayed my status and checked the experience points from the battle!
The experience points gained in the Floor 14 monster room were 1,276,800. For a two-person party, that was 638,400 experience points each.
From there, my experience multiplier became 16x, and I gained 10,214,400 experience points.
In the Floor 10 monster room, it was 8,068,800 with a 32x experience multiplier, so it had increased a bit since then.
Actually, it wasn’t just a bit; it had increased significantly. On Floor 10, I had to defeat 100 goblins, and even with the experience multiplier being twice as high as here, it was 8.06 million. On the other hand, here it was 10.21 million with a 16x multiplier and only 16 Orcs. In reality, even without the Goblin Genocider experience multiplier, Floor 14 was significantly more efficient.
And that was because—
"There are only 16 monsters, so there aren't many dropped items either, Hinata-san."
"Yeah, that’s true."
"This means collecting magic stones and items is much easier compared to the Floor 10 monster room, so we can increase our loop speed, Hinata-san."
".........That’s... true, I guess."
『lol』 『Hinata-chan w』 『I feel bad for her lol』 『What is this? Hinata-chan's expression just now reminds me of something...』 『She has the same expression as my colleague when they were told they had to start a death march.』 『That’s it!』 『Don't say "That's it!" lol』
Collecting the drops in the Floor 14 monster room should take about one to two minutes. Furthermore, even looping with close-quarters combat like this time, the battle time was under a minute. Since I’d use Explosive Blade when looping, the actual battle time would be under 10 seconds, so even with a lot of leeway, we should be able to loop once every three minutes or less.
That meant we could do 20 loops in an hour.
Until now, when using Explosive Blade in a monster room, Energy Protection was mandatory for Hinata-san, but now that we had Gobu-taro, we might be able to manage without it. In that case, the only spells needed per loop would be High Heal and Holy Bless.
The MP consumption would be 30. Since 5 MP was recovered after battle thanks to the effect of Healer, the actual consumption was 25.
Doing 20 loops would consume 500 MP. Since Hinata-san currently recovered over 200 MP per hour, the deficit would be 300 MP.
If we could change Holy Bless to just Bless, MP consumption wouldn't be an issue... but as expected, against Floor 14 Orcs, the stats from Bless were too low and would be dangerous. I thought we could wipe them out with Explosive Blade, but since there would be more than a twofold difference in Agility, there was a high possibility they would evade it. Furthermore, the Dexterity stat would also be significantly lower, so the time it took to unleash Explosive Blade would increase.
If that happened, attacks from the Rangers and Gunners would come before I could attack, and it might become impossible to even unleash the skill.
Hmm... as expected, Bless wouldn't work.
Just as I was thinking that, it seemed Hinata-san had realized the same thing.
"Ah, but Takeo-kun! If we increase the loop speed too much, I’ll really run out of MP! Beginner Mana Potions only recover 30, so I might not be able to keep up at all!"
『Hinata-chan w』 『What a happy-looking smile.』 『So cute!』
Hinata-san was right. But... I looked around at the dropped items scattered in the monster room.
As luck would have it, it seemed one had dropped.
I picked up the item dropped by the Orc Shaman and replied with a smile to dispel Hinata-san's anxiety.
"Don't worry, Hinata-san! From Floor 14 onwards, Intermediate Mana Potions drop, so we should be able to make up for the shortage with these!"
Yes, from Floor 14 onwards, Intermediate Heal Potions and Intermediate Mana Potions started dropping!
The recovery amount jumped from the 30 of the beginner version to 100 for both. Since the drop rate of mana potions from Shamans was 1 in 20, the calculation was that one would drop every 7 loops.
To recover the missing MP, we needed three potions, and there was a possibility they wouldn't drop in 20 loops... but in that case, we could just use the remaining MP to loop until they did drop, or take a short break between loops.
The efficiency might drop slightly, but I thought we could more or less maintain a pace of 20 loops per hour.
In terms of experience point efficiency per hour, we should be able to earn more than twice the experience points of the Floor 10 monster room.
Score!
"Ah, yeah... I see... That’s... great."
『Hinata-chan lol』 『What a sorrowful smile.』 『So cute! lol』