Chapter 70: Starting line
「The first time I encountered this monster, the lantern was hanging while taking the form of humans.」 (Riizu)
「You said humans!? That’s quite underhanded!!」 (Yumir)
「Well, Yumir fell for it when it took the form of camels though.」 (Hind)
According to what Riizu said, they were even wearing clothes properly and looked weakened as if they were asking for help.
Their movements were a bit odd like with the camels, but their appearance was perfect.
Regarding the strength of the monster, with enough time, Riizu is able to defeat it alone, so it’s not that strong.
However, how is it able to mimic the appearance of humans?
Don’t tell me, that it extracts information from them after eating them or something like that?…Just imagining it is scary so let’s leave it at that.
「It mimicked a relatively handsome guy, but I’m not the type of person that would be deceived by something like that.
「After all, no matter how much it works on its outer appearance, it can’t hide that what’s inside is ugly.」 (Riizu)
「Oh? Oh? Was that a self introduction?」 (Yumir)
「…I’m going to crush your finger you know, Yumir-san?」 (Riizu)
「Look, wasn’t that just a self introduction!? So violent!」 (Yumir)
「But Yumir-san, you are admitting that Riizu-chan’s outer appearance is good, huh…」 (Selene)
Looking ahead towards the desert, there were many camels, you wouldn’t be able to tell which ones are the real thing unless you got closer and observed them.
Since they were mimicking them on purpose, there are probably a few real ones within them.
There were a few plants with spines growing out of them, so it makes you think that the wild camels used those as a landmark to stop here.
…Even some of those plants, could it be that they are being mimicked too?
In fact, if there were some weird people here in this situation, you wouldn’t be able to properly tell what was mimicked and what wasn’t.
「Ah, just as I was thinking that, an older girl with a pointlessly high degree of exposure…」 (Hind)
That one is easy to understand.
Though it wouldn’t be weird for guys to approach her without thinking if they didn’t know anything.
Now that we know what’s underneath, there’s no way I would fall for it.
To begin with, if I thought about it calmly, she would burn herself wearing those dancer clothes.
There’s no way someone would wear those clothes under this blazing sun.
As I was watching that, my field of view turned dark suddenly.
「!! Don’t look Hind!!」 (Yumir)
「She’s right! If you were to look at that, your eyes will be corrupted!」 (Riizu)
「It hurts!! Your fingers are going into my eyes, they are going into my eyes!! I’m even swallowing sand!!」 (Hind)
It might have been because both of them jumped at me while being flustered, but my field of view was all distorted.
If this was real life, there’s no doubt that my eyes would be bright red.
「H-Hind-kun, are you alright!? -Jeez, you shouldn’t do that both of you!」 (Selene)
「S-Secchan has…gotten angry!?」 (Yumir)
「I-I’m sorry…」 (Riizu)
Since an unlikely person has gotten angry, both of them got surprised and removed their hands from my face.
Selene-san handed me some water, so I used it to wash my eyes.
With that, the blurriness disappeared and my vision gradually returned to normal.
「Thank you, Selene-san…」 (Hind)
「Hind-kun, rest over there for a while. We’ll go first and defeat that Mimicry Angler that has taken the form of a woman.」 (Selene)
「Eh, with the three of us!? Are we going to be fine leaving Hind out?」 (Yumir)
「…Yumir-san, it’s our fault that it ended like this. Besides, I want to remove what that monster is mimicking from Hind-san’s sight as soon as possible.」 (Riizu)
「O-Oh, you are right. Sorry about that, Hind. We’ll be going away for a bit.」 (Yumir)
「Ah. Be careful.」 (Hind)
After saying that, Yumir with her longsword size 『Desert Alloy Sword』, and Selene-san with her really big 『Desert Alloy Crossbow』 broke into a run.
Riizu was carrying her 『Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm』 under her arm.
Selene-san, Riizu and my defensive gear didn’t look that different compared to before, they were just an upgrade using the 『Sala cloth』.
That being the case, I don’t think our current gear will fall behind against the monsters around here.
While holding my 『Desert Alloy Staff』, I sighed at the fact that I was left alone here.
I also wanted to try out the new gear…
However, my vision is still blurry and participating in the fight like this would be dangerous.
Since it can’t be helped, guess I’ll just find a place over there to rest.
This pointlessly realistic damage to the eyes, is just inconvenient…Hmm?
However, on the other hand, thinking about it, if we aimed at people’s eyes in PVP-
「Hahahaha! What’s with those lukewarm attacks!!」 (Yumir)
When I looked towards the cheerful voice, I saw Yumir stopping the charge of the fish with an imposing stance.
Just as her words implied, she was barely taking any damage…Selene-san’s armor is amazing…
Following that, when Riizu’s 『Darkness Ball』 stopped it in its tracks, Selene-san took a low angle firing stance and scooped it out from the ground sending it flying high in the sky with 『Blast Arrow』.
Then, Yumir leaped and…heroically cut it in half with 『Heavy Slash』.
Having been cut in half, the 『Mimicry Angler』 fell over on the desert.
Like that, it vanished by turning into particles of light.
…Ah, I levelled up.
I mean, I’m still in the party after all…this emptiness of leveling up without doing anything…
It seems like Riizu’s investigation was accurate, seems like the experience we got from 『Mimicry Anglers』 was quite high.
Their fighting strength is also as Riizu said, other than the first bite when they bait you with mimicry, they didn’t seem that strong.
Its only redeeming quality was that it has high HP.
If it’s like this, we will probably be able to reach level cap easily.
I have to thank Riizu again later…it’s a good farming spot.
『Tobi-sama has successfully reached level 40!!』
Oh…unless I’m mistaken, there was a familiar name in that announcement.
It was a message about Tobi reaching level cap right?
There can’t be two players with the same name, so it can’t be another person with the same name.
It’s also something that is possible with the amount of time he has played, so the timing wasn’t really weird.
Even then, he sure is fast. So he already got there and finished his preparations for the duels, huh?
This means that his other party member is also quite the gamer, then.
The other three party members that are coming back here seem to have seen it too, they stopped for a moment on their way back and then started walking again.
Yumir, who looked merry from testing out the new gear, returned looking irritated and talked to me.
「Did you see that just now, Hind? To think that…to think that Tobi would get past us!! Damn!!」 (Yumir)
「Ah, I saw it. Guess we can lose to him then…there we go.」 (Yumir)
I stood up while brushing off the sand from my clothes, and used 『Healing』 on Yumir, who had taken a very small amount of damage.
「Are you fine already?」, after being asked that by Selene-san, I signaled that there were no problems with my hand, I got motivated and grasped my staff.
「Alright, starting from now on, let’s not think about anything and just focus on farming! Leave managing our HP and MP to me, everyone just focus on attacking!」 (Hind)
「Yes, I’ll do my best.」 (Selene)
「We can’t tolerate losing to Tobi-san after all. Let’s get to level cap right away.」 (Riizu)
「OK! I refuse to fail in the preliminaries! Let’s aim for winning the whole tournament!!」 (Yumir)
We farmed 『Mimicry Anglers』.
We kept hunting and hunting until we didn’t see anything that was mimicked in our surroundings.
As a result, we managed to get to level 40 within the day somehow.
With this, we could finally focus on the duels.
As a byproduct of this, we were also able to capture a few wild camels.
With this, we should be able to sell them in town at a suitable price and earn quite a bit of gold.
Furthermore, we managed to get 『Monkfish’s fillet』 and a big amount of 『Ankimo』 as drops from the 『Mimicry Anglers』.
No matter how you look at them, these are not materials for weapons and defensive gear but ingredients for food…once we return home, maybe I’ll make some anglerfish hotpot?
