Volume 5 - Ch 5.13
Or at the very least a little bit more fancy to his name, so if we are looking to improve Sherrys situation on the battlefield, then I guess there is no better place to start than there.
I think that once we make enough money from the sales of all the mirrors and abler, we should all go buy ourselves some pieces of armor that are going to be genuinely better than the ones that we already have here on us, because if Sherry manages to increase her DEF Stat, the she is automatically going to take less damage from the enemys attacks, and taking less damage is going to directly influence the amount of time that she should be able to withstand on her own even if she did end up being hit my another one of the Green Caterpillars threads.
There is also the matter of a Wand that I am using. It is nothing spectacular or even enchanted, it is just a simple wooden Wand that I bought at the weapon shop and used ever since then because there was no need for me to be getting myself some other ones, because the Wand that I currently have on me has been doing its job pretty nicely, but I can definitely see how just doing your job pretty nicely might just not be enough anymore, so it would be a pretty good move to either get myself a new, better one or improve the one that I have on me now.
If magic gets strengthened, then the number of Spells needed to defeat each monster is going to decrease, which is directly going to impact the time that we are going to have to spent fighting enemies, decreasing it as well.
If we assume that this decrease means one spell less needed to kill the monsters on the eleventh floors, then that means that the fighting time can decrease by over a quarter, and if a fight lasts only three quarters of the original time that it would have taken to get the desired results, then can such a battle really be called hard or difficult?
Or perhaps in order to be talking about a success in that regard, we would have to achieve the result of only spending half of the battle time that the original battle would have taken? I will have to think about it seriously from now on.
Strengthening my Wand might not be such a bad idea after all, considering the additional damage that I will be doing from the enemies with each consequtive Spell, and as for Sherrys improvements, I can also give Sherry a Sacrificial Misanga to protect her from the attack that would have otherwise claimed her life. Then again, Sacrifice, a Skill that causes Sacrificial Misanga to be such an OP accessory is just a one-time usage, after which the item becomes essentially useless and no different from an ordinary strings tied together in order to create the best accessory possible, so I cannot be putting too much faith into it unless I want to be in for a world of disappointment.
All in all, I guess it all boils down to the matter of whether or not we are going to be able to move around even after getting hit by the threads, because if we are not going to be able to move at all while being afflicted by them, then being able to survive just one attack is not going to mean much at all. Sacrificial Misanga is a piece of equipment that should be used to negate one blow that would have otherwise proven to be a fatal one, and as such should generally not be considered as a legitimate part of any kind of battle plans that we might be strategizing about in the future.
Also, I cannot forget about a very simple, but easily missable fact: I should not make assumptions that Sherry is going to be the only member of our Party who is going to be hit with the Green Caterpillars threads. I should make contingency plans in case that I would be hit with their threads, but we should also prepare one for Roxanne as well.
You might be thinking that with her godly dodging abilities such a thing is not going to be necessary at all, but we are talking about the Labyrinths here, a place where pretty much everything remains a possibility, even if only a faint or an unbelievable one, so as much as I do not want to do this, I need to start thinking about what I should be doing in case that Roxanne ever got hurt or slowed down by the threads.
We then fought and explore in the Labyrinth until dawn, and after we left the Labyrinth , I decided to go to Bode in order to deliver yet another mirror to the Duke in Bode. I know that it has not been all that long since I started doing this, but it has actually become quite a daily routine for me that I could probably deliver the mirrors to Bodes castle with my eyes closed, that is how accustomed to it I have already become.
After I got back from Bode, all three of us had breakfast, after which I told Sherry to continue her Master Smith training by making new Leather-based items. This is also a daily routine that I sincerely hope is going to continue even into the future.
After we finish eating here, I am going to go pay Armor Shops a visit.
Does that mean that the time has come to buy ourselves better equipment?
Yeah, the time has come indeed. I want Roxanne and Sherry to wear stronger Leather Jackets so that you could increase your defensive capabilities, and for that, buying a better piece of equipment is the best possible place to start.
In that case, master should be the one to upgrade his equipment first.
My equipment is not the best, I agree, and there is certainly a room for improvement. But for now, I want to do only that which is necessary to clear the eleventh floor of Quratars Labyrinth.
I tried to convince Roxanne that she should place her own needs before mine, but as usual, I do not know whether my words managed to reach her or not. What she needs to understand is that now that I have taken the role of a rearguard support for her and Sherry, I am not in that much of a need for new armor, because I am not going to be as exposed to the enemy attacks as Roxanne and Sherry going to be in the vanguard.
And in the case that I do end up getting attacked, I do not have to worry about my defenses as much as the others, because I have my Durandal and its HP AbsorptionSkill to cover that for me, so what I should be focusing on instead is to increase the amount of damage that I am going to be dealing to the monsters as much as possible so that the battles could be finished up much faster to allow us to go through the higher floors of the Labyrinth at a much faster rate and without putting the three of us in danger of suffering unnecessary damage. For the time being, our most pressing concern is to upgrade Sherrys Leather Jacket into something better.
Umm I am sorry that you have to do all of this for me.
Sherry said apologetically, thinking that she was causing problems for us.
Do not worry about it, Sherry. Every Party member has a role that the need to fulfill. And since you are in the vanguard with Roxanne, then it should be obvious that we need to increase your defensive capabilities since you are going to be much more susceptible to taking damage than I am at this point.
I told Sherry to not worry about it and just focus on increasing her defenses. She might not realize it, but by being able to take more hits without needing to heal right away after each and every one of them, she is going to be helpful to me as well, because I will be able to focus more on killing monsters with magic instead of having to constantly heal her all the time.
Not to mention that Sherrys worth lies not only in being the second member of my Party who is fighting on the frontlines, but also in being a Master Smith who is going to contribute to our cause by creating new items and equipment.
Yes, thank you, master.
Understood. The current countermeasures are supposed to work with Sherry in mind, but in fact, it would be the height of stupidity to limit the improvement of our equipment to just Sherry.