Published at 12th of July 2020 8:10 pm

Chapter 31

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

Being appointed by Haruru as the tester of her prototypes, I once again visited the Lawres wetlands.

Why did I come here again where I suffered such a fate yesterday? It was to test out the weapon with a name meaning ball pen.

And the second reason was to try fighting the lizard-type monster that I hadn’t seen yesterday.

Thinking calmly about it, I don’t really get why there are lizards in the wetlands. Are they some sort of aquatic lizard?

A crocodile would have more of a realistic taste to it, but since this was a game, retorting that way felt like I’d lose.

「Yo, Ho, Teryaa.」

While I was hitting the amafrogs leaping towards me as if it were a rhythm game, I was also trying out the performance of this two-handed club.

Its attack power was thirty-five. At this point, it had way more attack power than the super iron club.

Even when transformed, its attack power stayed the same, but it seemed that the durability of the body of the club and the durability of the blade that extended from the club after it transformed are set to be different.

And then, maybe because of the transforming gimmick, the durability of the blade is just not that high.

I would probably have to carefully aim for critical hits and use it like a spear, or in particular, like a naginata after transforming it.

「Serya!!」

I twisted my body with everything I had and did a《Mow Down》while taking a step in. It is the basic art of the《Two Hand Club》, and the technique that was the easiest to use.

Was it because I used Mow Down with everything I had, or was it because its HP had been decreased? I didn’t really change the form, but the two of them turned into polygons at the same time and disappeared.

By the way, maybe since it was a skill that had branches, there was another art from the two-handed club skill group.

And that was an extended attacking art called《Wild Strike》. It was a three-hit thrusting technique.

As the《Wild》in its name implied, other than the first strike, it would hit randomly.

If you were to visualize it, a circle-shaped area would appear from the center of the first hit and within that circle the remaining strikes would hit randomly.

However, seeing that caused this realization once again–one-handed maces, two-handed maces, two-handed clubs–these three types of weapon in the《Blunt Weapon》group were totally different.

According to Haruru, it seemed these three types of weapons were different in《length and weight》.

The shortest was the one-handed mace. Then the heaviest was the two-handed mace. And the longest and lightest was the two-handed club.

And the best in terms of handling was the one-handed mace. Well, since you could use it with one hand, its ease of handling should be simple to understand. And, following that same thinking, the two-handed mace boasted of having the worst handling.

Although, in exchange, when taking the attack power into account, the standings of these two would be reversed. The two-handed mace was both the weapon that boasted the highest attack power in this game, and the weapon that was impossible to handle without having high strength.

Then, what was the greatest feature of a two-handed club?

That would be the overwhelming range of the area in which you could attack.

Although, weapons themselves had different ways of delivering damage.

If it was a mace, it would be the blunt part–you would expect a huge amount of damage from using the side of the weapon. On the flip side, if you attack with the end of the weapon it wouldn’t deal damage matching its attack power.

It wouldn’t hurt that much if you were hit with the hilt of a sword, and being hit with the handle of a spear wouldn’t hurt as much as being pierced by the pointy end of it. Although, in regards to spears, the butt ends were heavy. However, these were an exception.

And just like that, each weapon was handled individually according to how it had been designed to deliver damage.

Understanding that concept, this weapon called a two-handed club had the characteristics of a 《pole》, an object that could deal fairly consistent damage no matter what part of it was used.

That was why, when using《Mow Down》with this weapon, you could simultaneously deal approximately equal amounts of damage to multiple monsters, and why even thrusting with the end of the weapon could do damage as well. Able to deal out damage continuously in any situation, and having all distances fall within its attack range, it was an unusual weapon.

That being said, the firepower of its arts was on the lower side, so it was balanced in that aspect.

Also, in parties, if you didn’t properly choose your arts, you could hit your allies with it. The two-handed club boasted of being the melee weapon with the highest rate of inducing friendly fire.

Though, you could also say that you would be able to handle it skillfully if you were playing solo instead.

And, of course, you could use your《Blunt Weapon》techniques when using this weapon. If you could skillfully use them, then the variety of ways you could fight would increase greatly.

「Hmmmm….lizards. They are not appearing.」

While focusing on hunting for around an hour, the lizards were still not showing any sign of appearing.

Amafrog, amafrog, amafrog, amafrog, it’s just the same monsters appearing again and again. I even managed to grasp the trick to defeating them already.

You either delivered a precise blow to where their brain was or you gouged out their internal organs. I think that these are considered the conditions to do critical hits against frog types.

Although this worked fine with an amafrog, if it were an ushifrog or a tonosamafrog then I could only imagine being unable to deal any critical hits, causing the fight to become messy, which would be annoying.

The transforming gimmick of the《Kugelschreiber》was convenient, but the length of the blade was what you would call short.

It was not that different from a spear and if you compared it with a naginata, the blade was only half as long.

It would be a bit hard to cut off the internal organs of a several-meter, large-type frog with this.

「…………..Kyaaa….」

「Nn?」

I, who was thinking while piercing the weak point of a frog, suddenly heard a voice from far away.

「A scream….so, that way.」

Thanks to the clear surroundings, I could understand instantly which direction the voice was coming from.

Well, I didn’t really have any obligations to help, and in the first place it didn’t necessarily mean that they were in a pinch, but since I heard it I should just go take a look, just in case.

Approaching it, I could somewhat understand what happened. It was on the same small island that we found yesterday.

Looking at it, a girl in a gothic dress was being attacked by an ushifrog. Her HP itself hadn’t really decreased, but she was on her bottom, just shivering.

「Hey, you need help~?」

「P-please!」

「Roger that~」

After confirming her words just to be sure, I defended her from the incoming lick attack with the iron club that I had carried with me this entire time. I jumped towards its head, which was left wide open, made it falter with a《Strike》, and then helped the girl on the ground stand up.

「Can you fight?」

「T-that is….my weapon broke.」

「I see. Then I’ll defeat it, okay?」

Taking a look at the girl’s body, there certainly wasn’t a weapon. As long as she didn’t have any sub-weapons or she didn’t have the hand to hand fighting skill she shouldn’t be able to fight.

While talking to her, I evaded the press attack from the ushifrog with a backstep.

Though really, it sure is agile. Honestly, I haven’t seen an actual bull frog in the real world, are they really this agile?

However, unfortunately for the ushifrog, I had already fought with others of its kind.

「If you don’t change your attack patterns, it will become one-sided, you know?」

Saying that, I took a position for one of the arts.

Did it think that its press attacks wouldn’t hit? It changed its attack to lick attack, which I dodged, and I stepped inward, using my iron club to hit it with everything I had.

To deliver the finishing blow to the faltering ushifrog, I struck it once again. And one more hit. And another freebie strike.

And with that, there were a total of four《Strikes》, creating a《4-Hit Strike》 arts

The advantage was that this consumed less SP than doing four individual Strikes. And its flaws were that you could only do striking movements during activation, and since it was a continuous attack, you needed to deliver hits one by one within a fixed time or it wouldn’t turn into that skill.

That being said, Strike itself was an art with a lot of freedom–as long as you hit with both your hands it counted as a Strike.

But still, if your enemy wasn’t particularly slow, then it was an art that wouldn’t really hit that often.

If I used it against someone like Aria, by around the second strike it would already have taken distance and then my head would fall during the skill’s stun period.

「Since it’s come to this, please allow me to try out various arts, okay?」

Actually, yesterday, thanks to the frogs, who were pointlessly tough against blunt-type damage and who I fought for like forever, my blunt weapon skill mastery had increased quite a lot.

Because of the circumstance with Aria, I couldn’t properly increase my skill mastery which was very low compared to my level. Yesterday when I came here, all I could use were《Strike》and《Finisher》.

《4-Hit Strike》was an art you would learn right after Finisher, but it only reduced 20% of the ushifrog’s HP.

In that case, I should direct my arts in a more effective way.

For a little while, as I evaded lick attacks and struck back, I waited for a chance until finally, the timing I was aiming for came.

I stomped on the ground and jumped. Or, in a set of movements that you could call evading the charging ushifrog, I jumped right before it reached me, evading it and positioning the iron club like a bat.

With the feeling of charging at the ushifrog’s head, I swung my iron club with all my might as I was accelerated by the arts.

Counter Arts:《Homerun》. Using the force of the incoming enemy to knock them away, it was a rather brutal art.

Dogyaa!!! It gave out a rather fleshy sound and then the two-meter ushifrog was blown away.

If you used this art properly the enemy would always be blown away, so you don’t have to care about your stun time after using the technique.

It’s just that, with the recoil of blowing away a huge mass, my HP was reduced a bit.

This recoil damage was based on the enemy’s mass and force and it would change depending on my strength stat, so using it would become suicide against opponents that were way bigger than you. In the first place, before you would even get to use it, there would be a chance that you would have already been blown away.

It was interesting and it had high attack power, but it was an art that was troublesome depending on the situation.

Healing the damage with the potion juice that I bought from the street stall avenue, I gaze at the dying ushifrog.

Did it go into mental shock with only 20% of its HP remaining? It was getting unsteady on its feet.

Since it was not my hobby to prolong things, I once again drove in a《4-Hit Strike》and then completely shaved off the rest of the ushifrog’s HP.

「Phew….it’s fini-…Uooh!?」

Suddenly, a surprise slash was aimed at my neck, which I avoided by squating.

Creating distance, I looked toward the person who had done it. There was a smiling girl in a gothic dress, in the distinct posture of swinging her rapier.

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