Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

Volume 4 - Ch 4.04

It is the same as with detecting enemies via radar. Just because you used a radar to detect the position of the enemy, nowhere it is said that the enemy cannot use the very same trick to detect you as well. I came here to this world from my own world which is vastly different from this one, and because of that, my understanding of it is barely above the level of being able to differentiate right from left, much less understand the more nuanced details, so for someone like me, charging on ahead as if I was swimming in a sea of dark clouds was the only option available. But no more.

Magnificent, Sherry. You sure know a lot about monsters. Whatever we would have done without you and your knowledge?

T-Thank you very much, master. Truly, I do not deserve such praises.

Sherry said, visibly embarrassed.

Oh, but I think you do deserve them more than you are giving yourself credit for, actually. If it is all right with you, then please, continue doing the good job that you are doing now.

I think that from now on, whenever there will be something that I do not know about, I will be asking Sherry about it. And since she is the smartest one of our group, then I also think that entrusting her with the role of information gathering might not be such a bad idea either. After all, if there is someone who can do so efficiently and effectively, it is definitely her, since neither Roxanne nor I do not have the predispositions for that kind of a brainiac task. And as an added bonus, I might some more trust points with Sherry by entrusting her with such an important Job and claiming that she is the only one whom I can count on to do it.

Yes, of course. Leave that to me!

Nice. However, you do not have to worry about anything for now. If the Floor Boss we are about to face, this Pan is exactly like you said he is, then my swords should be more than enough to defeat him with ease.

Because it has the MP Absorption Skill, so you will be able to drain him from all of his MP by continuously attacking him?

That as well, but the main reason for why I am so confident is that this weapon also has the Chant Interruption Skill.

I said while showing Durandal off to Sherry.

Huh? That sword also has Chant Interruption Skill embedded into it? I thought it only had MP Absorption, since you said that this is how you are replenishing your lost MP when you are filling the bathtub. . . . . . . . . . .

Because it does have MP Absorption, but it also has Chant Interruption.

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When I told her that, Sherry gave me a look that could best be described as something between Seriously?! and I cant even with this guy anymore, mixed with a little bit of fright and maybe even possibly disgust? I cannot say for sure, but that was the vibe that I was getting from her current gaze. Uh, Miss Sherry? Could you, maybe, just maybe stop looking at me like that? What are you going to do if you end up getting addicted to it or your face ends up getting permanately distorted with such an unappealing grimace?

Is. . . . . . . . is that bad?

Uhm. . . . . . . . it is not that it is bad, but. . . . . how do I put it? As someone who was aspiring to become a Master Smith, I do know that it is not impossible for a single weapon or a piece of equipment to have more than one Skill embedded into it, but it is just. . . . . . . . .

So it is that unusual, huh?

Not unusual, but extremely risky. You remember what happens when the process of infusing a weapon or a piece of equipment with a Skill fails, right?

Yes, I remember. The weapon or equipment gets disassembled into its base components, and the Skill Crystal used during the fusion process is lost.

Exactly. Now, with multiple Skills, it is even worse, because not only the risk of failure of the fusion remains the same, but when the fusion does fail and the thing that you wanted to infuse gets disassembled, then even if the fusion of the first Skill Crystal was a success, you are going to lose both Skill Crystals without any way of getting them back.

So, what Sherry basically tries to say here is that if you get greedy with the number of Skills that you want to attach to your weapon or equipment, you are more than likely to regret it in the worst way possible. But since the probability of failure is already quite huge when infusing your gear with only one Skill Crystal, then you would either have to be incredibly brave or a very special kind of stupid to go and take an even bigger risk just so that you could maybe attach a second one to it.

Yeah, fusion of the Skill Crystals fails more often than not, and since I cannot allow myself to lose even a single piece of equipment, I would never took such an unnecessary risk unless I had some way of cheating out the odds in such a way that the fusion would end up a guaranteed success. But since I do not know of any such methods, my only option is to not engage in such gambles. The way I see it now, the only people who would be willing to gamble with their gear and resources like that have to be great eccentrics or complete and utter fools. That was probably the true meaning behind Sherrys gaze. Since she is someone who wanted to become a Master Smith, then I wonder if she is able to tell exactly how many Skills are embedded in a weapon simply by looking at it, or is she going to be able to do that only after aquiring some special Skill? Whichever one of the two it may be, it would be best if she obtained it later rather than sooner, when her trust in me is going to increase.

Well. . . . . . . . oh, would you look at that, the door opened. Then, shall we go?

Now that the door to the Boss Room has oh-so conveniently opened themselves, I decided that it was no time like the present to make my escape to avoid Sherrys further questioning. Geez, I think this might actually be the first time when someone tried to escapefromsomethingintothe Boss Room. Heh, talk about being a pioneer in unexpected things. Maybe I should patent that so that all the other people doing the same would have to pay me a percentage of their money to utilize such a strategy? Yeah, right, as if that was possible in this world where there is no such thing as a Patent Office.

Understood. Lead the way, master.

Right.

And we went through the now opened door right into the Boss Room. At the beginning it was difficult for me to see anything through the dense clouds od smoke, but when they finally dissipated, I could have a closer look at our surroundings.

Uwah. . . . . . .

What I saw there has indeed surprised me, but not in a positive way.

The entire Boss Room has been littered with equipment. Counting all of the swords, helmets, breastplates, gauntlet and legwear, there was probably more than twenty of them just lying around. And among all of those pieces of equipment left by the Adventurers and Explorers killed by the Floor Boss, there stood a tall, muscular man with a muscular upper body and the lower body covered by a beat-like fur.

A man? No, when I saw the pair of long horns protruding out of its head, I understood that this was not a man, but the Floor Boss itself.