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The leader Tryd had cleared the palace hundreds of times in the past, so he was used to how those meetings went. He answered any questions no matter how trivial, and his responses always made sense.
A total of ten groups had joined forces there. Each had between four and six members, but around half of them had Operator’s Bracelets, so they likely were strong enough to fend for themselves. The leader Tryd was a rank A adventurer too.
The strategy itself was rather simple and easy.
To open the door hiding the crystal ball, they had to cross through two special gates and light the vessels behind them. The special gates opened in the same way as the eastern and western palaces, with fire and torches.
The issue was the number of torches, a hundred of them spread across the enormous building. First they had to light all of those torches and the first gate would open.
Once the vessel behind the door was on fire, that gate would not close again. Next they had to get rid of the fire on all the one hundred torches, and the second gate would open. There were five Guardians of the Vessel behind that gate. They had to be defeated, obtaining five items called Vessel Guardian Bones, which had to be placed on five vessels. Then the last door would finally open, and the third glyph could be obtained.
It really was a tedious gimmick unless a large group of people worked on it. An advantage in numbers was something Mira excelled at, the issue was the fire. The building was very large, meaning some torches would be located far away, and it was impossible to give instructions that were detailed enough to a Dark Knight. At most they would be able to defeat any monsters in sight, but had no way of lighting torches.
Mira had bought some fire starting equipment from the Dinowal Store, even though she had no need for it thanks to Concept Magic. Still the problem remained on whether the summons would be skillful enough to be able to use that.
There was still the option of summoning the Valkyrie Sisters. They had no skills to create flames, but they would be able to use the items Mira bought. That way they could go on one side while Mira went the other, halving the necessary time. Knowing Alfina, there was a chance she could move fast enough that her blade created flames, which meant three times the hands on deck. The Fire Spirit Salamander was also rather intelligent, so if one of the sisters went with Salamander it would make it four units. When it came to intelligent animals, there was the owl Popotwise, who was quite smart and could use magic, so that was five.
Mira could find even more candidates the longer she thought about it, though the summons had never been nearly as adaptable during the game days. But considering everyone was sentient now, they would probably be able to work in such a way. That was Mira’s first idea to get through the northern palace.
Now that she had joined this many adventurers she no longer had to worry about that.
Mira looked at her new companions, recalling the days when she would attend raid dungeons, and then listened to Tryd’s explanation.
He told them the best routes to reach every torch, where skeletons would spawn and what type, and where to be careful. Once all those details were out of the way, they started assigning groups to various zones of the palace.
Some would go to the upper floors, others to the underground ones. Then they discussed which groups would be able to deal best with skeletons that appeared in narrow corridors, or groups with members that could attack from long range to fight skeletons with magic attacks, and so on. Tryd seemed to always find the ideal way to split the work between the groups. Mira was impressed by him, considering her own memories of the building were still hazy.
「And you Mira, I think it’s best if you come with my group. We’ll fight the Vessel Guardians. Having another rank A adventurer that isn’t me there would be a great help.」
Since they needed to know the capabilities of each group to assign them an ideal location, everyone had detailed their strengths and weaknesses. Mira had said she was a summoner and a rank A adventurer, which seemed to shock everyone, but eventually it passed.
「Sure, I don’t mind. Though me alone would be more than enough too!」
Mira declared that, her eyes brimming with confidence. The Ancient Underground City limited the fourth floor to rank D adventurers, so it made sense for Mira to find it easy.
「That’s good to know. I almost want to let you handle it alone then, but the Vessel Guardians here can be a bit tricky and it’s best to not lower your guard. I’ll be there just in case, even if you don’t actually need the help.」
Tryd grinned in a joking manner hearing that response. The Vessel Guardians were like the bosses of the palaces, so they were ranked C in strength. And there were five of them in the last palace. Tryd was right, one could not lower their guard when fighting them, even if one was an experienced adventurer. But Mira was far above that, so it was nothing for her to worry about.
(Mhm… Once again I’ve been granted a chance at displaying just how wonderful summoning is!)
Tryd’s group had him as the leader, a rank A adventurer, and there were other three rank B adventurers with him. It was quite a strong group. While everyone laughed at Tryd’s playful response, Mira smiled thinking that this was a good opportunity to preach about summoning.
The moment they entered the northern palace, everyone headed to their designated areas. Mira and Tryd’s group watched them go, then went up a set of stairs next to the entrance, heading to the sealed room just below the top floor.
「Still, this is quite interesting, I wasn’t expecting to find something like this here.」
Everyone in the group was ranked B or better, so Tryd’s group easily took out any monsters in their way, leaving Mira with nothing to do. But she had her eyes set on the last boss, which she wanted to defeat all on her own, so she simply thought she would let Tryd’s group enjoy themselves while they could. The formation they agreed on was to have Mira and Tryd on the front, while the rest stood back and offered support. Though it was not Mira precisely, Pegasus who walked next to her would be the one doing everything.
With nothing left to do, Mira began fidgeting with two box-shaped tools. Tryd had given them to all the adventurers during their strategy meeting, and it would allow them to send at least some signals to each other no matter how far away they were.
「They’re indispensable when clearing a dungeon en-masse, or when we have various groups split apart like now.」
Tryd replied to Mira’s mumblings, easily operating one of the boxes Mira held with his index finger. That made the second box vibrate a bit, while one side showed dots of multiple colors, red, green, and yellow.
One of the boxes Mira held was a spare she had received during the meeting. There was a parent device, and then the children ones. They differed in that the parent device would send signals to all children devices, while the children ones could only communicate with the single parent.
「When arranged like this, it reads ‘NORTHERN PALACE’. Though well, only a subset of adventurers carry and use them often.」
「I see. I can understand how they would be useful.」
The dots of three colors could form words depending on their arrangement. It could send messages in a similar way as morse code or flag signals.
Their usage this time was far simpler though. First all the groups would light the torches in the building, which should make the first gate open. Mira and Tryd’s group would be waiting there, and they would simply go in to light the fire on the vessel.
