Gacha Kingdom Building

Thanks to Erika's team we managed to get to their settlement rather quickly. We didn't have enough drops for two potions though, so they also helped us with that.

Sam told us that my assumption was correct, and those guys really tried to pull the same trick the Steel Fangs failed to use long ago.

As soon as he began to feel the effects, Roy used the potion I gave him, first on himself, then on Sam.

Their party noticed rather quickly that something was off, and tried to corner them.

They managed to push back and escape, but Sam ended up getting shot, so Roy carried her all the way.

It was pretty much how I expected it, but I gotta give points to my boy, not only did he save Sam, but he also managed to chase off, even if barely, assailants of a higher level than his while carrying her on his back.

I know that the sheer desperation can be credited here, but it doesn't change how heroic he acted. And it seems I'm not the only one who thinks that as the way Sam looks at him now is slightly different from before.

Cheeky... But I'll be cheering for them.

Aside from that, we still had the boss battle to face today, but...

We didn't really waste too much energy or mana, it was mostly time and it wasn't even too much, the problem is that Erika helped us a lot, and I wanted to compensate her in some way.

Now, as I said that, she had to twist my words and make it seem like I was making an advance on her but when I finally got her to be serious, she gave us a good idea.

Erika: "You guys were about to fight the floor boss right? Why don't we all tag along for the ride? This way, I won't have to worry about the biggest headache on this floor, and these two can also join Madelyn's group... Since they still have some levels to get on this floor, they can just do so and then go straight to the sixth later."

Normally we avoid having more people with us since it lessens the experience we obtain if they are not [Citizens] but if it's just the boss battle, it will be fine.

Still, there's one thing I'd like to question before accepting.

Miwen: "And how do I know you won't use your Gift to make us willingly sacrifice ourselves?"

A smile more lustful than any I had ever seen from Erika took over, and I felt shivers down my spine.

Erika: "...Good. Very good indeed. This is how you have to be if you want to survive. But you're wrong, that wasn't my..."

Bea: "It wasn't her Gift Miwen. It was a sinful type of elementless magic called Arcanum... I'll explain it later to you but you don't have to worry, she can't do it against us while I'm around."

Erika: "Oh... I take you're a witch then? It's rare to see your kind mingle with others. You do know the cost of using Arcanum for a non-demon right? Are you sure you'd like to contest me with it?"

Bea: "...Are you sure you can afford to get distracted by me in case of a fight?"

Yeah, these two.... they are way too scary.

It seems like through their rivalry they ended up forming a bond of sorts, and while Erika's party was a bit surprised to see someone talking back to her, they didn't seem to mind it too much Bea's threats.

I would have liked to hear something like 'No, I won't use it on you because we're friends!" but I guess having Bea's assurance works fine as well.

Above all, I don't think we have to worry about them. They just missed the biggest opportunity to use us as a sacrifice if they really wanted to.

It's also a tempting offer since it would help Roy and Sam tremendously.

In the end, it's good for everyone, so why not?

Having agreed to Erika's idea, we went ahead to the boss's room accompanied by her party.

Upon entering, there stood the altar and the hole... no matter how unwilling one was, the whisper would always manage to get in their heads. An extremely neutral and cold voice asking if we were ready for a sacrifice.

You don't need to answer it with your voice or your thoughts, what really matters is the decision you make.

If someone falls through that hole, the door will open leading to the next floor without the need to even look at the boss.

A very tempting offer that preys on frustration and fear.

Still, we all passed by the hole and entered the room where the boss battle would begin.

It's customary on Earth to throw the altar down the hole since in the early days people had this theory that if the altar fell down it would count as a sacrifice, but it obviously does not.

Some people still think it's funny to do it though, so it's more of a joke than a custom.

Given that we were accompanied by a lot of people from other worlds, we didn't want to do anything strange, but I could tell that Roy wanted to do it.

All of that was in the past though, since as soon as we passed through the doors, they closed themselves, and the boss was revealed.

It was a single monster, a giant yellow slime standing 6 meters tall mimicking the form of a humanoid creature. Flesh and bones from multiple monsters were exposed everywhere and worked as its limbs.

It's the same type of corrupted monster we see everywhere on this floor but normally, you can tell that the slime took a single corpse and is using it as a puppet like a parasite.

This grotesque sight followed the same logic... except that it used a bunch of corpses, leading to brains and eyes appearing in places they shouldn't be. It does a decent job mimicking a humanoid shape but no one would ever mistake this for anything other than a monster.

When it comes to this boss the battle is pretty straightforward, there's just one gimmick attached.

Every time one of its limbs falls down, the monster will just regenerate them and become a little bit smaller.

As for the very limb that fell down... it will become a slime monster.

The monsters that the limbs become aren't too strong, but they can become a problem if we allow too many to exist at once.

As such, this battle focuses on control more than anything. We have to keep dealing damage to the boss in order to make it lose power and endurance, while at the same time, we must deal with the slimes that appear from its fallen parts.

If we manage it for long enough, we can then use a powerful attack to finish the boss once and for all.

Given Claire's existence, we can probably do it sooner than most parties, but I doubt even her magic could take it down for good as it stands.

Our party started going on the offensive, the monster used acid spit attacks to try and stop us, but Licia managed to prevent them from hitting anyone by freezing them mid-air.

Once they broke on the floor, they made small puddles of acid though, which made the battlefield itself a bit problematic.

Burning the acid would also be a bad idea, and so would attacking the boss directly with fire attacks since if the acid vaporizes, it will become poisonous gas. This gave us another incentive to keep Claire's magic for the last attack, as once the boss was defeated we wouldn't have to worry about the room anymore.

Usually, archers are pretty bad in this battle, and Erika's party has two of them who aren't really doing too much.

They can't imbue their arrows with fire magic, so they focus on increasing their power.

Ellie does the same, but thanks to her Gift, even if she doesn't do much damage she still debuffs the boss, which is a big help.

Our casters in the back were each doing their own thing.

Beatrice focused on using water and earth magic to absorb the puddles of acid and threw them into a corner so that it didn't affect the battlefield.

All the while Erika and the casters from her party focused on wind attacks to cleanly cut off pieces of the boss.

The thing is, once the slimes started popping up, it was up to the mages to deal with them.

It was too big of a hurdle for the frontline to take both the boss and the slimes that were spawning at once.

It seems like Bea purposefully decided to not attack the boss directly in order to focus solely on support, and thanks to that, she was one step ahead when it came to dealing with the slimes.

While Erika's party is good, it seems like we have a bit more synergy than them.

As for Roy and Sam, they were pulling their own weight and It was fun to see how far they've come.

When it comes to the damage they didn't do as much as Mia, Claire, Licia, Anna, and I, but they were still helping, and they also had a good sense of priorities, since the five of us were dealing the most damage, when a slime popped up and the mages didn't instantly deal with them, either Roy or Sam would focus on them in order for us to maintain our focus on the boss.

To be fair, I don't know if this was a more smooth fight than it would've been had we come alone...

I don't wanna dismiss their help, and I think the fight is progressing more rapidly than it would've normally been, but at the same time, our party would be more organized.

In the plan I devised/stole from the internet, we would take our time and slowly damage the boss, then deal with what spawned from its limbs, and then repeat until the boss's health was low enough for Claire and Bea to finish it.

It would've been slower but also more methodical.

The battle was pretty much in our favor anyway... the boss's attacks were incredibly strong, so much so that a single direct hit might've put down any of the girls, except maybe for Anna.

It was good then that we kept him surrounded, and when he focused on one of us, the others would attack him from his blind spots.

The response the monster had was to attack the ground with all its might, sending acid in multiple directions.

This was a bit of a chore to deal with, but mostly because all we could do was dodge or block it.

For Anna who wasn't quick enough to dodge them, she would either get help from Licia or directly tank it.

Claire didn't have the option to use her fire magic, so she would also often come to me or Mia for cover.

Incredibly, even when Mia was farther away, she would still come to me if she could help it.

Rivalries aside, this meant we were wasting a lot of mana, and if not for Bea, we would have had an incredibly bad time fighting at all since the floor would've become a pool of death by now.

After about 30 minutes in this fight, the boss had been reduced to a little under 5 meters tall.

The record for killing is said to be around 3 and a half meters, but I believed Claire could defeat it when it was four meters tall.

We still had a bit to go through though, so I decided it was time to accelerate things.

I gave Mia and Licia the go-ahead to be more aggressive with their magic.

This meant the boss was going to suffer way more from each attack, and the slimes spawning would also become more of a problem, but if we managed to do it quickly enough, Claire could finish them all in one attack.

To do that, I had Claire and Anna be close to me at all times, in case the monster decides to use the acid attack that goes everywhere, I trust Mia and Licia would be able to defend themselves even though they were focusing more on attacking, but I think it would've been too much for them to also help out Claire and Anna, so I took charge of that.

As predicted, the battle became way more intense, but we were also at an incredibly good pace, and not even 5 minutes after, it was time for the big finisher.

Erika and her party seemed surprised once I told everyone to get back as we were going to finish this.

Claire: "Haah... Burn away and let not even ashes remain."

It's not often to see Claire use a chant since her magic is usually powerful enough without it, but it's also incredible to see what happens when she goes all out, even if she only uses short chants.

As expected, even though she didn't receive help from Bea or Erika during this last attack, it was enough to put an end to this battle.

I didn't care too much for any drops, so we left it to Erika and Roy since it would probably be more useful to them anyway.

Once we got outside of the boss room, we were separated since Erika's party had entered the dungeon through a different gate, and thus, after leaving the boss room, they appeared in another settlement.

Since Roy and Sam were going to join Erika's little sister's party, they were going to leave the dungeon for today and then later meet up on the fifth floor, so that they could re-enter the dungeon through the same settlement and explore the sixth floor together.

That's still in the future for them though since for now both Roy, Sam, and Erika's sister, Madelyn, can still get levels on the fifth floor due to not reaching the cap.

As for Erika herself, she's going back to her original party. She only took command of Madelyn's party to help them out of this floor after all.

Even though they will still explore it, now that there's no reason for a sacrifice, it's way safer.

The loot for today was basically nothing since we gave it all to Erika to thank her for the help, but we still concluded our main objective, and due to how much mana we spent in the dungeon, it wouldn't do us any good to try out the sixth floor now, so we decided to head back home early today.