"I wanna get to the fifth stratum, but howww?!"
Maple didn't want to fight again today, so she flopped down on a bench at the center
of town. Then she saw a party of six coming her way, with a familiar face in the middle.
"Frederica?"
"Mm, Maple? What's up?"
Since she was fighting Sally on the regular, Frederica wound up talking to Maple
surprisingly often.
So when Maple called out to her, she naturally stopped for a chat.
Maple was totally confused about why she was still stuck on this stratum but figured
Frederica might know the answer. She decided to ask.
"Augh… it was a mistake?! All that for… a mistake?!"
The truth left her in a deflated heap on the bench again.
"The six of us are headed for the dungeon leading upstairs. We'll have to play together
some other time."
"Oh… oh? Then…"
Maple slowly got back to her feet.
"Can I tag along? I can keep everyone safe… really, that's all I can do right now."
She quickly explained that she'd used up the bulk of her skills.
"Hmm? Um… why not? We've got room in the party."
Frederica couldn't see any reason to turn the offer down.
It was like adding a secret boss to your party to beat the normal one.
And who could object to a guaranteed victory?
"Then let's do it!"
Maple joined their party, and they headed out right after.
Unfortunately, she was stuck moving at turtle speeds. Possibly even slower.
"It might be better if we just carry you," Frederica said. She buffed herself, picked
white-winged Maple up, and then sped off toward the dungeon.
"I'll handle all the defense!"
"That's all we ask."
Maple's mere presence was enough to ensure everyone's safety.
They faced no threats on the road.
Naturally, that meant all seven of them reached the boss room in peak condition.
"Stick together!"
They closed ranks in front of Maple and advanced as one.
The fourth event had proven just how crucial Martyr's Devotion could be, and most
players knew full well it could make anyone in her party functionally immortal.
There was no need to spread out and divide the boss's attention—Maple simply
neutralized all its attacks, leaving them free to commit everything to a frontal assault.
They chipped away at the fox's health, driving it into a corner. Everyone in Frederica's
team was a skilled player, so Maple's support was all they needed.
"Agh, it's getting faster!" Frederica yelled.
The boost was dramatic.
The front-liners were no longer able to keep up with it, and their attacks started
consistently missing.
The fox's HP was below the 20 percent mark, but if they couldn't land any more hits…
"It's not as bad as Sally, but still…," Frederica muttered, her spells never letting up.
Some of these were hitting, but everyone could tell this would take ages.
The fox leaped back again, and Frederica sighed.
"What a hass—?!"
Fighting Sally had taught her a few things.
It helped hone her sense for the kind of hunches Dread always talked about.
And the one she just felt told her something bad was coming up behind.
She spun around.
"Pandemonium!"
Maple's golden locks shifted back to black, and her wings lost their light.
They were replaced with fire.
Maple was now backlit by a purple inferno.
Behind it, a parade of demons appeared. A giant ogre stood on either side of Maple.
She led the procession, which looked like a march of nightmares.
"Go!"
The ogres lunged forward, clubs raised high.
The fox had nowhere to run.
Each ogre was every bit as massive as the boss, and they had it boxed in.
Their stats were still on the low side, so they couldn't fell the fox with a single blow.
Instead, they just kept pounding away. Blow after blow rained down, delivered from
towering heights.
Frederica's eyes went wide as the air filled with red sparks.
The damage effects sprayed from the fox like gushing blood.
Speed boosts were no use if there was no space to run.
And few things were more futile than trying to escape when every step meant certain
doom.
By the time the fox was dead, Frederica's team looked almost meditative.
When the lights marking its demise faded, the path to the fifth stratum finally opened.
"Thanks, Frederica! Lemme know if you need help with anything else! Later!"
"...Uh, yeah… Will do…," Frederica managed to say, trying to shake off her trance. By
the time she did, Maple was already gone.
"Where'd Maple go? Oh, upstairs. Right."
Frederica tried to think, then gave up and turned to the player next to her.
"Any clue what that skill was?"
Her brain was slowly starting to move again. Even as she asked the question, one
answer sprang to mind.
"Oh… the white ogre, huh?"
"Did she find a way to weaken it?"
"Maybe not. I mean… we are talking about Maple…"
For all they knew, she could've taken it on at full power.
Maple had earned enough trust that nobody required proof.
They knew how strong she was, so this was just the logical conclusion.
"Fifth stratum, here I am!"
Maple stepped onto the fifth stratum a few days after the rest of her guild.
The ground was spotlessly white and, surprisingly, a bit springy.
It was a land made of clouds. A paradise in the heavens.
"It's fluffier than my bed!"
Enjoying the spring beneath her steps, Maple headed for her Guild Home.
"So this is the fifth-stratum town!"
Behind a wall of clouds was a town so white, it hurt her eyes.
No real-world walls or roads could ever be this unblemished. But a glance at a nearby
home soon proved not everything was made of soft clouds.
"This bit definitely isn't."
She poked the wall of the home to be sure and discovered it was all smooth.
It felt more like polished marble than anything else. Not springy at all.
"Well, if we can stand on clouds, this stratum ought to have some interesting
materials."
Wondering what sort of items a stratum like this would have, she pressed on, checking
her map occasionally—until she reached their Guild Home.
She opened the white door out front and stepped inside.
"Nobody home? Guess not. Then I'll log out for the day! I'm beat."
She pulled up her screen, deciding to take it easy for a while, and tapped the LOG OUT
button.
A few days later…
Maple was talking to Sally in their Guild Home.
"Oh… that was a big mistake."
"Yeah… I've never been so tired."
"Mm. I thought our conversation wasn't adding up…"
"In hindsight, it totally wasn't."
Maple explained how she'd made it to the fifth stratum after the ogre fight.
And halfway through the story, she realized she'd shown another guild her new skill.
"I was too tired to think straight!"
"Well, it's not too, too terrible. It'll take more than that to really shock anyone at this
point…"
In Sally's mind, Frederica was already convinced Maple could do literally anything, but
she hadn't actually quite reached that level yet.
Sally herself already had one foot in that door, so she tended to assume everyone was
on the same page, but in reality, it took being this close to Maple to truly appreciate
the possibilities.
"I guess I won't worry about it too much, then. You go exploring yet, Sally?"
Sally thought for a second, then clapped her hands. "I haven't seen everything, but I've
wandered around a bit. This map has an insane amount of verticality, and the field is
full of hills and stairs. Also…"
"Also… what?"
"The ground feel changes up a lot, so it's easy to trip if you don't pay attention."
"Really? I'd better be careful."
"That sort of thing could literally be the death of me, so…"
Sally could handle furious blows and multiple enemies, but unsteady footing was a
huge problem.
It meant making constant small adjustments or failing to evade in time.
"You want to see stuff now, Maple?"
"I dunno. I feel like I did a week's worth of fighting, so I'll save that for later."
"Sounds good. Best to enjoy things at your own speed. That way you don't burn
yourself out. I'd rather you stick around for the long haul!"
That had been Sally's motivation from the beginning and would never change.
"Mm, I'm having fun."
"Glad to hear it. But I do wanna explore some more. If I see anything I think you'd like,
I'll let you know."
Sally stood up and shot her a grin.
"Oh! Can't wait."
"I'll explore enough for the both of us, Maple!"
"You do that."
"Bye!"
"Have fun!"
And the door closed behind Sally.
"Ha-ha… She actually did it…"
Sally was leaning on the door, staring up at the skies above.
The clear blue reflected in her eyes.
She closed them, took a deep breath, and then started moving.
"I really don't like losing."
The gap had opened up again, and the only way to close it was to start running as fast
as she could.
"I pull you in here, and then I get all competitive on my own… I do feel bad about that,
you know?" she muttered to no one in particular.
The cloud-based ground had a great deal of ups and downs and wasn't great for
running.
Even Sally could barely manage half her usual speed.
If she tried going any faster, she usually lost her balance and went tumbling down.
"Well, that looks worth scoping out."
A cloud loomed high in the air above, like a cumulonimbus in the summer sky. From
down below, where Sally stood, a path leading upward into the cloud's interior was
visible.
"Should I…? Yeah, I'm thinking yes."
She drew her draggers before stepping into the cumulonimbus.
Once she passed through the narrow entrance, the path branched.
On guard against ambushes, Sally cautiously began exploring the maze.
"Not seeing any traps or monsters… so far, so good."
She was tapping lots of walls and floors, picking her away along. Each time she reached
a corner, she flattened herself against the wall, peeking around.
"Whoops."
There was a monster around this corner—a floating gray cloud. It looked like it was
ready to rain.
"Oboro, Fleeting Shadow."
This skill made her momentarily invisible, and she used that to approach undetected,
unleashing several dagger strikes at the perfect moment.
The monster's HP bar dropped like a brick. When she became visible again, it got ready
to attack but its HP ran out just before it could lash out.
"Going solo is probably gonna start being a whole lot harder unless Sword Dance is
constantly maxed out…"
She had to make quick work of her foes because otherwise the number of evasive
actions she was forced to take would rise dramatically.
In other words, staying successfully dodgy meant she had to maintain a certain DPS.
But since reaching the fifth stratum, even with the Sword Dance buff max, it was taking
her longer to kill enemies. Long enough that they could almost swing back.
The monsters were catching up with her stats.
"Which means I could really use a new skill. Hngg!"
Farther down the passage, she saw another cloud monster up ahead. This one was
crackling with electricity.
"Interesting… so that last one's attacks were probably water?"
If the one she'd killed while cloaked had been a rain cloud, this one was a thunderhead.
"Let's see how big its AOE is."
Ready to backpedal at a moment's notice, she took a step closer.
As she moved into range, it generated smaller clouds, scattering them around itself.
"Yikes!"
Sally quickly bounded back, and a moment later, lightning started arcing between all
the satellite clouds and the main one.
The surge died down after a few seconds.
Once she was sure of that, Sally used Leap to close in before relying on Double Slash
and regular attacks to finish it off.
"Slow on the uptake. Definitely a trash enemy."
The warm-up had been so long that even Maple would probably have had time to
dodge.
It covered a pretty broad range, but it was no threat to Sally.
Sally pressed on through the cloud passage, picking paths that went up.
She had a hunch the goal might be at the top of the cumulonimbus.
And she was right on the money.
"Oh, I'm out already?"
Bright blue skies opened up before her.
She was free of the clouds.
"Nice!"
She followed the path to the end, reaching the peak.
"That seemed more on the easy side."
She'd barely encountered any monsters, and it hadn't been that long since she entered.
She'd cleared dungeons very similar to this on lower floors, mostly for the materials
they offered.
When she looked down, she found a small-petaled white flower growing by her feet.
The moment she touched it…
A sphere as white as the clouds fell from the flower.
Sally picked that up, checking the item name.
"Bubbles to Heaven?"
Since it was relatively easy to get another, Sally used it on the spot.
The sphere popped. Then bubbles, each a yard across, began rising up all around her,
drifting into the sky above.
"Can I catch them?" she wondered.
When she reached out and touched one, it only yielded for a moment before bursting.
"Guess I just watch the show… it is pretty."
The bubbles were catching the light, glittering entrancingly underneath the sun's rays.
After a minute, they stopped generating, and the remaining bubbles drifted out of
sight.
Part of Sally wished she'd found something more useful, but that was just how it went
sometimes.
"Given how easy this place was, maybe that's appropriate. But I bet I end up coming
here at least a few times for Maple's sake."
This was the kind of thing that always delighted her friend. She'd have to show Maple
later.
Finding things that would tickle Maple's fancy was always high on her priority list.
Plus, this wasn't far from town and had only a few easy enemies, so it was no sweat at
all.
"Right, let's find something else."
Sally headed back down the path out of the cumulonimbus dungeon.
While Sally was out searching, Chrome and Kasumi were exploring on the opposite
side of the map.
Chrome tanked the blows while Kasumi cut their foes down.
Sometimes he took damage, but his innate healing abilities quickly fixed that.
After the umpteenth successful fight, Chrome sheathed his weapon, muttering, "It's
kinda relaxing."
"Mm? Ah yes…"
Out of all Maple Tree's members, these two had the most subdued fighting styles.
When Iz was around, the explosions never stopped.
With Kanade, spells were constantly roaring and flashing.
And the remaining four had a distinct tendency to rattle everyone watching them fight.
But right here, they were at peace.
"But taking down a dungeon boss with just the two of us is a tall order. I figure we're
mostly just here to scout out any dungeons we find?"
"That sounds about right. If things get too tough, we can always call in for help."
Iz was generally an exception, but adding anyone else to their party would make a big
difference.
"Sally's out exploring, too, so she should bring back good intel."
"Always does. We can decide how to proceed then."
As they walked, they heard the rumble of thunder. Ahead of them, dark clouds loomed.
Both drew their weapons, proceeding with caution, eyes on their surroundings.
As they drew closer, the landscape ahead came into view.
Clouds blotted out all traces of blue above, and bolts of electricity darted erratically
between earth and sky.
Lightning strikes were making landfall every which way.
It was unclear if there was any pattern or how much damage it would do if any of them
hit.
"Hmm. This calls for Maple," Chrome said.
"Let's turn back. We're not getting any farther."
Unwilling to risk that rain of lightning, they both turned and walked away.
Away from the high-voltage zone, Chrome and Kasumi went up and down the
undulating clouds until they reached another cloudy area—albeit a slightly lighter
shade of gray.
These clouds hung so low, it felt like you could reach out and touch them. And the
terrain itself was so uneven that it was virtually impossible to see what lay ahead.
From these clouds fell softball-sized drops—and rather slowly, at that.
The precipitation was so floaty, it seemed almost weightless, but it clearly still headed
steadily downward. Wherever the drops landed, they leisurely came apart, dividing
into eight identical drops, each of which went its own way, ending its short journey
after being absorbed into the ground.
"Think we should avoid those?"
"Probably a good idea."
They were relatively avoidable, but there were quite a lot of them, so it seemed best
to find out the downside early.
"I'll go. If they do damage, I'm more likely to survive it."
He raised his shield and took a step forward, letting a drop hit him.
As it did, there was a sloshing sound behind him. Water was taking the shape of a
cannon.
"Chrome! Behind you!"
"Mm? I can't… wha—?!"
He tried to move, but he was suddenly going even slower than the drops.
The cannon took a while to complete, but it was in his blind spot, and it wasn't clear if
he would make it in time.
As he struggled, another drop landed near Chrome, and one of the smaller drops
touched his leg.
And another cannon started forming diagonally behind him.
Chrome saw that mid-turn, and if he had been able to move freely, he definitely would
have slapped a palm to his face and turned his gaze to the heavens above.
"Seriously?"
A blob of water shot out of the cannon, striking his shoulder—then the cannon itself
collapsed.
The actual damage was probably 20 percent less than a normal hit from the average
monsters on this stratum. Not particularly worrying on its own.
"Oh! I can move now!"
He twisted and rolled freely, finally escaping the rainy area.
Once he crossed the threshold, the second cannon collapsed without firing.
"Once a shell hits, you're back to normal speed, but every drop that touches you
creates another cannon, huh?"
"You really couldn't move?"
"Yeah, that was definitely bad news. You can't just force your way through. Another hit
is bound to come."
"Then we probably shouldn't push our luck. Want to head back into town?" Kasumi
suggested. "There might be something there that helps clear the lightning or the slow
rain."
Chrome nodded, and they abandoned their exploration efforts, opting to return to
civilization.
They quickly dispatched all the monsters they came across and made steady progress
until the sunlight vanished, and the world grew dim. As dusk arrived, the two of them
finally stopped and looked up.
"That's… no ordinary cloud."
"I highly doubt it, yeah."
A very noticeable cloud was zooming over the field.
It felt just like the two areas they'd turned away from.
This cloud was significant.
And on this stratum, anything like that must mean something.
"How do we get up there?"
"Syrup?"
"I have a hunch that might lead us into some trouble. It is kinda cheating…"
It didn't seem like standing there thinking about it would get them anywhere, so they
resumed their journey back to town.
When Chrome and Kasumi made it back to the Guild Home, only Maple was around.
She was not feeling up to doing any exploring, so bringing her along was swiftly ruled
out.
"Sally's out there somewhere, but…"
"And the other four aren't playing. All right, guess we'll have to try another day."
Chrome filled Maple in on everything they'd found.
"…I'll have to check those out."
Maple had her hand to her mouth, thinking. Neither of them could tell what was on
her mind.
It might be nothing at all. It might also be something entirely unexpected.
Chrome and Kasumi both elected to say nothing more. Instead, they waved to her and
disappeared into the back of the Guild Home.
"I wonder what Sally's doing…"
Maple leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. That was when a message from
the admins popped up.
She read it over. It was a brief description of the sixth event, coming in February.
"Jungle exploration, huh? Ugh, sounds like more rough footing."
Maple closed the message and got up, heading for her room.
"I guess I'll take it easy till then," she muttered.
Then she stopped in her tracks once before deciding to rest.
Sally had continued exploring after clearing the cumulonimbus dungeon, racing
around the map far longer than Chrome and Kasumi had. Now she was finally taking
a break, leaning against some clouds by the side of the road.
"More like cumulonumerous…"
The farther she went, the more clouds she found with doors in them.
She'd checked a bunch out, hoping to find something special… and wound up with
eight of the same thing in her inventory.
"Definitely don't need any more bubbles for a while…"
Sally was starting to think she'd picked the wrong side of the map. She got up, planning
to head for new horizons… then thought better of it.
"Should I just call it for the day? Hmm…"
Exploring a cumulonimbus was a little like climbing a mountain.
The later ones had been smaller than the first, but not exactly relaxing.
Compared to the strain of the guild war during the fourth event, she was nowhere near
her limit, but there was also no urgent need to rush things. Again, she considered just
wrapping up her current session.
As she turned toward town, she looked up. Above her was a real cumulonimbus.
Sailing over her head.
"Whoa, what is that?"
Sally's eyes followed the cloud—she was impressed—and then she noticed something
glitter in the distant sky.
"Is that…? Right, Superspeed!"
She raced past the cloud, getting ahead of it.
And the view from her new vantage point proved she'd been right.
Sally was right under the glittering spot.
And all around her, glistening soap bubbles were rising upward.
"There's gotta be something there…"
She raced around the cloud dungeon area again. The change was clear, but she couldn't
figure out what the significance was.
"If that cloud gets here, it's time up! C'mon, gimme a clue!"
But the main cumulonimbus caught up with her, and she figured the jig was up.
"Oh, well… eeeep?!"
Just as she looked down, something gushed out from beneath her feet, flinging her
upward.
"Oh? Whoa?! Um?"
Her body spun and spun, and when it finally stopped, all she could do was nervously
look around. All this time in the game and nothing this freaky had ever happened to
her.
She was currently on top of the cloud. She could hear the whistling wind, and there
were bubbles filling the air. She slapped her cheeks and took a deep breath, calming
her nerves.
"Okay, let's sort this out…"
She realized now that the gushing thing had been a stream of soap bubbles.
She'd been caught up in that on the ground and sent skyward.
"Focus… stay calm. Take your time."
There was a path—and so she followed it.
While scrutinizing the walls and floors, Sally moved down a narrow hall to a T
junction.
Back up against the wall, she leaned slightly out, checking in both directions.
"!"
On the left, toward the end of the hall, she saw small glowing things hanging in the air.
She ducked back behind cover before she had time to think.
Then a gust of wind roared down the cross-corridor.
The wind itself and the roar that came with it obscured things, but Sally's eyes caught
softly glowing pale spheres flying within.
"…Hail?"
Whatever they were, they were clearly solid.
And they were hurtling down the hall like bullets. With her low HP and defense, any
one of them could instantly kill Sally.
"Oookay, let's go right, then."
She decided it was in her best interests to not follow the wind. She jumped out into
the hall.
"Ice Pillar!"
The ceilings here weren't that high, and her skill easily filled the space, blocking off a
good chunk of the hall.
For another moment, the wind howled, hailstones rocketing past on one side of the
barrier.
Then it went quiet.
"All done?" she muttered before peeling herself off the pillar and moving quickly down
the hall.
She wasn't sure when or if a second wave would hit, so her eye never left the corridor
behind her.
"Ah, figured it was a bust."
Everything was white and rounded, making it hard to tell if there was a turn up ahead
or not. This forced her to inspect every dead end up close.
Even when the hall abruptly ended, she only had to work her way backward, so it
wasn't a serious problem.
And this way, she could be certain there was nothing behind her.
She moved along, ready to act if the wind blew again—but her fears proved unfounded.
It seemed the wind was a trap that only activated when you first entered.
Sally reached the far end of the other passage and found a new path leading upward.
At the top of that was a large room with nothing remarkable inside it.
Besides the three passages leading out, of course.
"Cross this… Guess I'll start on the right."
But as she reached the center of the room, blue-tinted cloud monsters spawned from
the floor and ceiling.
There were ten of them in all, each wreathed in some sort of white mist.
"Fire Ball!"
Given the close brush with hail, she'd figured this white mist was aligned with the ice
element, so she quickly hit one with a fire spell.
The flames certainly dropped the HP bar hard, but it still had a solid 60 percent left.
"That's all I get even when I'm using something they're weak against?"
These days, players without much MP reserves—like Sally—were struggling to make
much headway with spells.
An instant later, she sensed the wind at her back and immediately took evasive
maneuvers.
"These monsters also use hail…"
In Sally's mind, the hail here and in the hall was like a focused beam attack. Tracking
her position versus the ten clouds, she took the fight back.
"Oboro, Fleeting Shadow!"
For a moment, she was free of aggro. Drawing her daggers, she closed in on the cloud
she'd burned.
"Double Slash!"
Sword Dance had boosted her attack quite high.
The stream of combos she dished out scattered cloud after cloud, each melting into
the air.
"Sweet! Clouds are a cakewalk!"
Sally chewed through the crowd like a silent dance, like a well-rehearsed routine.
No wasted motions. She only traveled the shortest path to robbing them of HP.
Even with their hail attacks, they never even scratched her.
"Whew, thanks, Oboro! Now for that path on the right…"
She gave her fox a rub and resumed her exploration. It didn't take her long after that
encounter to learn that this cloud was like an ant nest.
Passages often branched up, down, left, and right. Many of the passages had hail or ice
spike traps, impeding her progress.
The bigger rooms were home not just to little clouds, but also ice golems and wind
monsters.
Sally's fire spells weren't that great, and monsters made of ice were surprisingly tanky,
so they were painful to fight, but since none of them could lay an icicle on her, she
eventually wore them all down.
Their advantages did not ensure victory.
Sally weathered another storm of hail, checked that she was safe for the moment, and
then rapidly slumped to the ground.
"I've gotta be pretty high up…," she said, stroking Oboro's fur.
She glanced at the hall ahead. The enemies in this cloud weren't really a problem for
her, but the layout and all these traps were both wearing her out.
"Let's hope the goal's close. Come on, Oboro."
The path she followed was growing narrower, and the forks became fewer in number.
Finally, she spotted a color other than white.
There was a wall ahead with a blue magic circle on it that glowed softly.
Something was waiting on the other side, no doubt.
"Mm, I'm ready."
She reached out and touched the circle.
There was a crackle, and she was transported away.
The second she arrived, she drew both daggers and spun around, searching for danger.
She was in a dome made of thick clouds, like standing underneath an overcast sky.
The ground at her feet and the dome itself were made of the same materials as the
dungeon she'd just been exploring.
"…There!"
Not missing the faintest sound, Sally swung at it.
Slipping between the clouds beneath her was an arm made of ice. Like any bona fide
monster, it had an HP bar above it.
Incidentally, it was also three times her height and started at the elbow. It grew
straight up from the clouds, but the moment it noticed her, it sank back in—
reappearing right before her eyes.
The arm formed a fist before swinging it down at Sally like a hammer.
"Ha!"
Sally saw it coming, of course, and slipped right past it to run directly to the base of
the arm.
She slashed at the side in passing like she was keying a car, but it did less than she was
expecting; this thing must have had high defense.
Worse, she hadn't foreseen its counter.
As the monster's fist struck the ground, a ripple spread out from the impact.
Sally was well within range, and it forced her to break stride.
Then the frozen vapor hanging around the arm grew much thicker.
It was clearly readying an attack.
"! Okay, Leap!"
She recovered her footing in the nick of time, allowing her to put as much distance
between her and the arm as she could.
As if giving chase, ice thorns shot out of the floor around the arm, covering the ground
of the dome—but Sally managed to stay one step ahead and avoid getting hit.
Soon after, the ice thorns crumbled and melted away.
"If I don't have both Leap and Superspeed ready, I can't risk countering that attack."
Carefully running down her mental checklist, she was forced to jump away without
offering any retaliation the next time the arm came in close and swung at her.
"Fire Ball!"
She swung back as she fled, flinging a spell.
It landed on the wrist. Not much damage to speak of, but every bit mattered here.
"Let's see where that gets me."
Sally didn't mind long battles. And this fight was one-on-one, the kind of fight she was
best at.
She'd decided to play it safe by beating this thing slow and steady.
Fire worked well on ice.
Even the weakest spell did visible damage, which was not bad at all.
Half an hour later, she had the monster down to 60 percent health.
"Sigh…"
Sally glared at the ice arm, looking frustrated.
It had made two clouds, both of which were throwing hail around.
She'd gotten good at dodging those and wasn't exactly struggling, but it was still
utterly annoying.
She focused her concentration again as she began to make another approach.
Monsters had no emotions, but if this one did, it would have been afraid of her by now.
She dodged everything.
No matter how furiously it attacked, nothing hit Sally.
With Ice Pillar to give her hiding spots on demand, it would need a lot more projectiles
and much higher attack speed.
When the arm's HP hit 40 percent, four more clouds appeared. There were now six in
total.
"I'm still in this… whoa!"
A magic circle had suddenly appeared beneath her feet, forcing her to jump away.
She hadn't moved a moment too soon, as a needlelike icicle shot up from it just as she
cleared the space.
It did nothing else and quickly crumbled away.
She looked up and saw the arm holding its palm to the ceiling, apparently summoning
more blue magic circles.
Some were already deploying by Sally's feet, giving chase. She could no longer afford
to stand still. Hiding behind her Ice Pillar wouldn't cut it anymore.
"..."
Could she run headlong into this barrage and make it through?
This thought wasn't motivated directly by this battle, but it did provide the final push
to make her try.
"If I take damage… well, fine. I wanna try."
Sally used Doping Seeds to boost her STR as high as she could get it, then dashed
directly toward the ice arm.
Nimbly dodging the hail or batting it aside with her daggers, she was practically on
top of her target in no time.
"Hah!"
She swung both blades, stabbing the arm.
The HP bar lurched, dropping far beyond what most people would have thought
possible with just daggers.
She started circle strafing it, following up with more blows. Once it reached 10 percent
health, the ground around it glowed blue.
She kept raining attacks on the arm, and sharp ice stabbed her before the arm went
down.
But Shed Skin kicked in, and she took no damage.
And her all-out attack finished off the HP bar before the arm could attack again.
The battle ended with the ding of a system message.
She stretched.
"Not half bad," she said, nodding to herself.
And checked the message.
She'd gained a new skill.
"Subzero Domain?"
Subzero Domain
Usable for ten minutes after using any water-based skill.
Freezes magic or objects.
No direct impact on players or monsters.
Applies the ice element to all attacks, friend or foe.
"Fair enough. Plus, it seems like anyone who beats that thing can get it, after all…
Seems like a good place to wrap up."
She put her daggers away. The arm's demise had generated an exit circle, so she took
that out of the cloud.