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

But it is your fault for acting like such an idiots. This is a Labyrinth, a place where people might die at every corner if they are not careful enough, so is should have been obvious that you or your comrades in crime might as well die while delving into them, be it at the hands of the Labyrinths native inhabitants, the monsters, or at the hands of a Party that you have considered to be weak and incapable of holding their own to such a degree that you have designated them as targets for robbing without running any further checks or investigations. But now, serves you right, you made a mistake and you are going to die because of it. Idiots! Shitheads! Worthless dimwits!

No, I should not be getting so toxic and calling them names like that. Maybe my MP did decrease considerably, enough for me to start having these negative thoughts again? Either that, or I am on the precipice of stumbling into that awful depression again, but it is not too late for me to actually do something about it.

All that I have to do in order to immediately make myself feel better. Is to slay these guys with Durandal, so I stepped forward and shook it in the direction of the first of the two low-levelled Bandits. My swing decapitated him and send his head flying cleanly into the air as he was still standing still, too stunned to do anything after witnessing his companion disappear in such a brutal fashion that did not even allow him any space to defend himself.

Okay, on to the second chump who is about to go meet his maker.

The second Bandit was a little bit better than the first one, because he actually collected himself enough to move around when the initial shock of losing two of his comrades in rapid succession has finally subsided, and he was even smart enough to attempt to block my initial attack with Durandal with his own sword, but as soon as the blades of our weapons collided with one another, his weapon got snapped in half as if it was nothing but a dried-up twig instead of an actual weapon.

He gets some points for actually trying to do something to save his own life, but ultimately it did not have any kind of meaning, because the chump is going to die now either way after managing to prolong the rest of his life for a few seconds at best. I mean, what did he expect, that some cheap-ass looking sword is going to be enough to save him in battle against the might and wrath of the Holy Sword Durandal?

Yeah, exactly, he did not stand a chance for even a second there. As expected of my Durandal, this just proves once again how powerful of a weapon it actually is, breaking the weapons of other people on contact as if it was not a big deal.

The last one to regain his composure was the boss of this little Bandit group, Bandit Leader Lv.40. He shook his head strongly to the sides and drew his own sword in a hurry. He was initially looking confused, but now he was looking sharp and alerted. I have to admit that this is a slight fuckup on my part. If only I was a little bit faster, then maybe he would not have the time that he needed to recover, but now he had the time he needed to do so, which may mean that we are going to be in for a much tougher battle than we could have otherwise had.

Maybe I should have aimed for this guy with Equivalent Exchangeafter all, even with all of the risks of doing so still potentially being there? Well, it cannot be helped right now, so there is no use thinking about what could have been and wasting my time on pointless theories that may or may not have been proven to be real. Since I still do not know how does Equivalent Exchangework exactly, going after the Explorer Lv.25 instead of the Bandit Leader Lv.40 was the best, safest course of action for me.

With the Explorer guy, I was fairly certain that I was going to destroy him with Equivalent Exchangethanks to the overwhelming difference in the levels of his Explorer Job and all of my set Jobs and the fact that apparently having a Mage Job equipped has drastically increased my overall amount of MP.

Then again, if I went for that guy instead of the other three, there is a very high possibility that I would have either killed myself in the worst case scenario, and drained myself out of almost all if not outright all of my MP without any immediate way of restoring it quickly enough, but now that I have cleared all three members of the vanguard with only the main guy being left, it was objectively a better thing to do, because at the very least that allowed me to kill the Explorer Lv.25 pretty much in an instant while the slaying of the other two worked towards restoring the MP that I have lost when casting Equivalent Exchange, so yeah, in hindsight, that was a much better course of action than the possible alternative, or so I have judged while keeping a cool head and remaining as cool and composed as possible.

So now, with my MP recovered to a sufficient degree, I should have more than enough measures up my sleeve to manage fighting the Bandit Leader Lv.40. He might be of higher level than me, but as long as I stay composed and shower him with a barrage of strikes from Durandal, I should be able to win this battle without getting myself damaged at all.

Fully recovering from his state of bewilderment at seeing his cronies disposed off like they were nothing more than the pebbles at the side of the road, the Bandit Leader Lv.40 has assumed his battle stance and brought his sword down towards us.

Although his swings definitely packed quite a lot of punch behind them, they were still relatively slow and easy to avoid, just like the entirety of his movements. I though that he was going to turn out to be one of those encounters where even though the enemy is big and you would think that he should be slow and easy work around he was actually going to be deceptively fast, thus creating quite a difficult combo to overcome, so I am glad that this does not seem to be the case with him here. Like I said, each of his attacks must be packing enough of a wallop behind it to actually cleave a man in half or inflict pretty grevious wounds, but they are all pretty telegraphed, so I can see where they are coming from without any issues, so the rest should just be about me reacting fast enough to jump out of harms way whenever he is going to come swinging at me, and even though I am not an expert dodger like Roxanne is, I should still be more than capable of pulling something like that off.

But then. Something has suddenly occurred to me. Why am I even worrying about whether this guy is going to be attacking faster than me or not, when I have access to Overwhelmingsince I am using Durandal? Have I really just went and forgot about something so obvious? I really did, which must mean that the loss of MP from that one Equivalent Exchangemust have affected me more than I initially though. Damn, talk about annoying! But since I have Overwhelming, I can just employ the same strategy as I did with the Rapid Rabbit on the seventh floor of Quratars Labyrinth: wait until he goes in for an attack and then activate Overwhelmingfor his movements to practically grind into a halt so that I could go in and counterattack with my own flurry of attacks that would slice him up into ribbons and chunks of meat before he could even realize what has happened to him.

When the next attack of the Bandit Leader Lv.40 came my way, instead of dodging it, I have took it head on and blocked it with Durandal. Bandit Leader then pushed onto his sword with the weight of his entire body placed behind it in an attempt to push me back and break my posture which would leave me completely opened for an attack, but I managed to withstand it and started pushing against him on my own, however, it did not look like any of us was going to get the upper hand in this peculiar tug-of-war. Could it be that our power and STR stat are about equal?