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

Volume 5 - Ch 5.12

Thank you. I should be fine for now, thanks to your quick help.

Sherry stops me when I tried to cast Heal on her for sixth time. So five times was enough to bring her back to full health? Or is she just trying to be strong in order not to look bad in my eyes? Is she really fully healed now? For her own sake I hope she is not trying to just tough it out, but it would seem that the Plating that she already had cast on her beforehand helped in mitigating the total damage that she sustained from the Green Caterpillars Skills and the attack of the one that slammed its body into her.

But I have to admit that some of the combinations of enemies that we have to face now can really get quite problematic to deal with. Take the NT Ants and Escape Goats, for example. If I want to make sure that I am definitely going to be able to consistently kill them in one or two hits, that would require me to add Warrior to the list of my Active Jobs so that I could use Warriors Skill, Rush.

But the problem with that is that if I want to use Warrior and its Skill, I would first have to get rid of Alchemist Job and its Plating Skill, but plating can provide Sherry with an additional layer of defense whenever she is getting hit by the enemies whose attacks she is unable to avoid in time, and if I were to remove the Alchemist Job in the middle or right after using Plating on Sherry, its effect is going to be cut off prematurely. That is why I was always making sure to use Plating on Sherry in the situations where I would be absolutely sure that she was likely to be continuously attacked, and in any other situations than that one, I usually refrained from using to much so that its effects would not end up going to waste.

So if she were to be attacked now, then she would have to bear the full brunt of the attacks force herself, since the Plating that I have previously placed on her has already worn off.

In the worst case scenario, you might just have to endure a number of the enemy attacks before I will be able to come to your aid. Are you fine with that?

Yes, I should be able to do at least that much. I promise to do my best.

Sherry nodded with confirmation. You are going to do your best, huh? Well, since Sherry is an intellectual and a rational person, then she would have definitely told me if she felt like she would not have been able to withstand the attacks of the enemies while waiting for me to come to her aid in case of an emergency, or at least as many attacks as it would take for me to use three shots of my Spells to come into contact with the Green Caterpillars and deliver a finishing strike to them before they could launch any more of their threads towards Sherry.

But the downside here is that she would have to endure any attack that would be coming her way before that could happen. I could also try removing Warrior and quickly select Alchemist to cast Plating on her again, but on the other hand that would only serve to prolong the time needed to actually take the monsters out.

Then again, what if the situation is going to be a fifty-fifty, or an extremely close call?

What if the attack that Sherry will have to take on is going to be more severe than expected and she is only going to be able to barely make it out alive by the skin of her teeth?

Should I tell her to not be reserved with me and not to act tough and be more considerate with herself without constantly trying to keep up with the rest of the Party?

I could do that, but I do not know how is she going to react. She could either accept my words and start taking better care of herself, or it might be possible that my words are going to have the opposite effect and she might end up resenting me for it. Either way, I should not take what Sherry said at face value.

After all, a short and simple I can would have been much more appropriate in this situation than the I promise to do my best that she gave me, and safety of myself and the members of my Party should always be my number one priority no matter what.

I am definitely glad that the Escape Goat was already running away when Sherry got shot with the Green Caterpillars threads, but I cannot stop thinking about what would have happened to her if it was not running away, or what would have happened if it was another monster instead of an Escape Goat?

If it was an NT Ant, then there would have been a real risk of Sherry getting poisoned by its attack, and I would not have been able to administer the Anti Poison Medicine to her in time to help her. As things are standing, I am afraid that the difficulty level of the eleventh floor of the Labyrinth of Quratar has exceeded the limit of what might be called an appropriate level for us to clear it safely.

After we finished the exploration of Quratars labyrinth for today, we headed to Vales Labyrinth next. There, on the eleventh floor of Vales Labyrinth, the Green Caterpillars hardly ever appeared.

There is still a chance that we might get poisoned by the Spi Spidesr and NT Ants if they ever make their appearance, but some risks are just unavoidable and we have to take them regardless of whether we want to or not.

The danger caused by the increased frequency of magic and poison effects have both increased, and we have to find a reliable way to counter these threats.

if we want to keep on exploring that Labyrinths at the pace that we have been able to keep up until now, then that is the bare minimum that we have to do. But those are just Labyrinths for you. When you enter them, there is always going to be a risk that you have to be prepared to take, and it is not possible to be going through its treacherous halls while thinking that no harm is ever going to come to you and that everything is always going to be fine, because it will not. There is no guarantee that the Green Caterpillars will not appear on Vale Labyrinths eleventh floor, and we have to be ready to take them on if they do show up.

There was a chance of it appearing on the ninth and tenth floors as well, but I am not sure if I could endure long enough to cast three spells if I was covered in that thread of theirs. Actually, wait just a goddamn minute. Where, or I guess I should ask where have I last seen Green Caterpillars in the Labyrinth of Vale? Was it on the ninth floor?

Or perhaps somewhere on the eighth floor? Well, anyway, that is how common of an enemy it is in here, so hopefully there will be nearly no chances of us running into them while exploring the eleventh floor. I want to believe that at least here our hunting is going to go smoothly and we are going to make much faster progress than the one we did on the eleventh floor of Quratars Labyrinth.

Well, I mean, there is still a chance, small as it is, but a chance nonetheless, that we are going to run into Green Caterpillars here after all, so I think we should at least come up with some kind of countermeasures against them and their Skills if such an unfortunate encounter does end up happening. Other than that, I can say that the hunting on the eleventh floor of Vales Labyrinth was pretty stable, but all of that stability can pretty much go to shit in a moments notice if a Green Caterpillar appears.

If it does appear and uses its Thread Spit Skill, it is going to be too late for us to think about anything else, so there is no time like the present to start thinking about the countermeasures and preventive methods that we could implement.

The best option would be, obviously, to increase my magic attack power, as well as Sherrys defense Stat, and maybe we could start at her equipment.

The Leather Jacket that she is wearing right now is pretty much no different from a starting equipment of a beginner player who could not have afford anything better.