Live Dungeon!

Daryl carried the unconscious Amira back to the Clan House and, seeing that she was not about to wake up yet, put her on a sofa in the living room.

“Let’s try throwing a bucket of water on her face!” Hannah proposed, her blue wings flapping; apparently, she was still angry about being called ‘Feather Tank’ all the time.

“Hannah, you’re starting to scare me…” Daryl promptly put a stop to her idea.

Tsutomu more or less understood Hannah’s frustration, as he also had to put up with Amy calling him ‘Lucky Boy’ early on for some time.

He took out a canteen from his Magic Bag, opened the lid, cracked a mischievous grin, and proceeded to dump the canteen’s contents onto Amira’s face. The water was almost freezing-cold thanks to the use of Ice Magic Stones, so upon touching Amira’s skin, she immediately jumped right up.

“Whoa–!? What the hell!? Get it off me!”

“Good morning… Well, it’s the afternoon now.”

Ignoring the fact that Amira was already awake, Tsutomu kept pouring, only putting the canteen away when the water ran out. The one who had proposed the idea in the first place, Hannah, said nothing and gave Tsutomu a subtly iffy look as Tsutomu did his thing.

As Amira shook her head like a dog trying to dry its fur after the rain, Tsutomu looked down at her and proceeded to say,

“Amira, your time was one minute and fifty-six seconds, so Diniel won that one.”

“…Ugh, great.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’re not yet able to use your unique skill properly, right? That was disappointing, after how cocky you acted toward Hannah and Daryl before things went down. Now consider this: what would you be without that one skill? Unlike Camille, you don’t particularly excel at anything else, do you?”

“…Shaddup.”

“What I’m saying is, both your raw power and technical skills need improvement. For starters–“

“N-now wait a second, Teach! Let’s just leave it at that, yeah!?” Hannah interrupted Tsutomu as he was about to lay more criticisms onto Amira; she had not expected him to go that far.

Amira simply looked down and let the water drip from her long hair, unable to say anything back. Tsutomu, while surprised that Hannah had stepped in before Daryl, took out a towel from his Magic Bag and handed it to Amira.

“As for what to do about you… that will be discussed among all of us right now. Is that alright with you?”

“……”

Seeing that Amira was downcast and still not saying anything, Tsutomu turned around and told Daryl to go get Diniel, who had already gone back to her room. Daryl ran upstairs in a hurry, while Tsutomu and Ollie, the Clan House’s newly-appointed manager, carried the soaked sofa outside to dry in a sunny spot.

“Sorry for the mess, Miss Ollie.”

“Oh, please don’t worry about it. It’s only a part of my job.”

Ollie smiled calmly before using a towel to squeeze water out of the sofa. Leaving the rest to Ollie, Tsutomu went back to the living room, and at the same time, Daryl was semi-forcefully pulling Diniel’s hand along. Tsutomu then left just Amira waiting in the living room as he led the three others to another room and asked them,

“All right, let’s talk about what to do with Amira. Whether or not to expel her, pretty much.”

Upon hearing Tsutomu’s latter statement, Daryl and Hannah instantly felt awkward, and Diniel looked as sleepy and uninterested as she had always been.

“First of all, Diniel and Daryl, let’s hear your opinions.”

“Don’t care.”

“I-I’m fine with whatever happens.”

“I see. And what about you, Hannah? You’re still on probation, but when and if you join Absolute Helix full-time, would you be against Amira becoming a fellow member? If you would like, we could expel her and find ourselves another Attacker later.”

Caught off guard by the question, Hannah winced and looked in the direction of the living room, then back at Tsutomu again. Tsutomu truly was leaving the decision to her, and fully intended to expel Amira if she were to choose that option. In that case, he would need to go through the trouble of finding an Attacker again, but it was better than letting Hannah go, what with her both being skilled and having a good personality.

Hannah proceeded to cross her arms, trying to calm herself down. After spending a few moments to ponder, complete with knit brows and a few groans, she slowly opened her eyes.

“No, I’m good. Looks like Amira’s learned her lesson now, so I wouldn’t mind her staying.”

“Are you sure? There’s no need to mind Diniel and Daryl’s comments just now, you know. Especially Daryl — he’s probably not being honest with his feelings anyway.”

“E-excuse me!?” Daryl exclaimed and took a few steps forward, objecting to the obvious joke.

“Uh…” Hannah cracked a dry chuckle, then answered to Tsutomu, “I’m actually okay, yeah. She’s been knocked off her high horse already — I’m sure she’ll behave.”

Tsutomu nudged Daryl away by the shoulder, then looked up at the ceiling and pondered things over.

“All right… I’ll have her apologize to you three, and then we’ll accept her as a regular member of the Clan. So I ask again: are you sure?”

“I’m sure!”

“I’m actually fine with this! I was being honest, you know!?”

Seeing that Hannah was not forcing herself to make that decision, Tsutomu ended the meeting and went back to the living room where Amira was waiting.

Amira was still sitting in the same place, the towel still left unused in her hands. Tsutomu started talking to her,

“So… Amira, we’ve come to the agreement that, if you were to apologize and promise to behave yourself going forward, you will be accepted as a regular member of the Clan.”

Amira was, naturally, surprised. She had expected to be expelled; never would she have predicted that she would be accepted into the Clan in this way.

“Well? If you don’t want to do that, I can expel you instead…”

“…Not like you need me around.”

“As you are now, you are not useful to us, yes — but if you’d only behave yourself, you’ll be at least a bit tolerable. I see some possibility, at least.”

“What the hell…” Amira grumbled, albeit too quietly for Tsutomu to hear, before standing up and wiping her hair with the towel. Then she turned to the others. “…Sorry, Hannah.”

“Well, as long as you understand!” Hannah said and reached out her hand for a handshake as Amira kept her head bowing deep down. Hannah then added,”And now that I think about it… aren’t you younger than me? You gotta learn to speak more politely! Follow my example, and stuff!”

[Her example, she says…]

Tsutomu could not help but look on with disbelief as Hannah took a step back and semi-arrogantly puffed up her abundant chest. Hannah, oblivious to the look Tsutomu was giving her, proceeded to grab Amira’s hand and initiate the handshake herself.

“Now, apologize to the others, too!”

“Daryl, Diniel… I’m sorry.”

“O-oh, I didn’t mind any of that at all!”

“Aye-yup.”

Amira bowed to the two, with Daryl reacting with some apparent fright, while Diniel only gave a half-hearted reply. Then, she turned to look at Tsutomu, and the latter nodded back.

“All right, Amira, you’re officially a regular member of the Clan now.”

“……”

Visibly relieved, Amira tried to say something to Tsutomu, but could not seem to come up with the right words. Her expression shifted several times before she ended up looking away.

“Uh, I think ‘thank you’ are the words you’re looking for. C’mon!” Hannah finally said, acting as if she was Amira’s senior.

“T-thank you, Tsutomu.” Amira promptly said and bowed again.

Seeing the two come off as an adult teaching her child some manners, Daryl and Tsutomu cracked a dry grin.

――▽▽――

After the day of Amira’s failed dominance assertion, the Clan started operating as a party of five. The team’s composition included: two Attackers, Diniel and Amira; two Tanks, Daryl and Hannah; and one Healer, Tsutomu.

“<<Dragon Form>>.”

In an area of the Beach without monsters, Amira tried transforming, and once the process was completed, she immediately attacked Tsutomu upon seeing him. Since Tsutomu had prepared a wave of <<Medic>> like a force field around him, Amira’s transformation was immediately disengaged when she got too close.

Such was the first issue the team needed to tackle — Amira’s control over her unique skill, <<Dragon Form>>. Currently, it boosted the ratings of all her statuses except LUK in exchange for her losing control; the effect was already quite powerful, but certainly not wielded to its full potential. Upon activating it, Amira would immediately rush at full speed at any monster she saw, and if there were no monsters around, she would start attacking allies instead. That was in contrast to Camille, who could remain in decent control back during the Fire Dragon battle, only with a somewhat limited field of vision and inability to follow complicated instructions.

All in all, it was impossible to coordinate with Amira once she transformed, and would even start attacking everything that moved even if she was nowhere near a monster.

“For the time being, you shouldn’t use your <<Dragon Form>> unless it’s an emergency.”

“S-sure thing!” Amira answered, her tone a clearly forced change from how she usually spoke.

“……”

Standing behind Amira was Hannah, nodding with satisfaction while folding her hands behind her back like an instructor. Tsutomu, immediately seeing that Hannah was the culprit here, told Amira to not force herself and speak normally. Then, he talked to Hannah about it, getting the latter to reluctantly agree to not influence her peers in strange ways.

Amira, even without the use of <<Dragon Form>>, was still one of the more powerful fighters within the level-40 range. Moreover, after her disastrous losses against all three of her challenges, she was cooperative and calm as an aggression-deprived beast. Thus, sealing away her unique skill probably would not cause any issues at all. Being able to use it was still better, of course, so the plan was to have her train to keep herself in control while the skill was still active.

In the case of Hannah, on the other hand, her flaws had started becoming apparent after a few battles on the Valley layers. One was that her defenses were so weak that a single clean hit could be fatal. Her VIT rating was barely higher than that of White Mages like Tsutomu, so she could very well die instantly when taking an attack in the wrong spots.

It would be somewhat better for her to wear heavy armor, just as she had done before trying out the evasion-based Tank strategy, but then she would lose her mobility — the one thing absolutely essential to an evasion-based Tank. As such, her best shot was to wear lighter equipment to boost her STR and AGI instead, which was exactly what her revealing ethnic-looking outfit did.

“All you need to do is not get hit!” Hannah declared and did some shadowboxing gestures.

“Easier said than done…”

Tsutomu, on the other hand, was quite worried. If Hannah were to die, he would need to use <<Raise>> on her, which would then shift all the aggro she had onto him instead. As such, it was quite risky all around to have a Tank like Hannah, with her dying easily and having him generate a lot of aggro.

And since Hannah was not yet used to her evasion-based Tank role, her skill rotation was poor. In fact, she had not gotten to use <<Combat Cry>> all that much until recently, so her mental energy consumption was inefficient, and she often would run out of energy in the middle of fights due to overuse of her skills. Considering the complexity of her role, her energy management was still lackluster.

“Hannah, let’s get you managing your mental energy properly. For now, you can use Blue Potions whenever you need, so don’t hesitate to use your skills. Also… you should practice <<Combat Cry>> specifically, I suppose.”

“Got it!”

Seeing Hannah full of motivation, as apparent from her pumping her fists up, Tsutomu felt his worries slightly alleviated. He proceeded to oversee her skill practice, making sure that she got a good sense of their proper use.

The following day, the party went through the Valley layers to update Amira’s layer progress while steadily working on their coordination. Among them, Daryl and Diniel were the most consistent with carrying out their roles.

Daryl was especially good, so much so that Tsutomu could not find anything to point out. Being a Heavy Knight and having a high VIT rating, he was able to Tank quite effectively. Moreover, he wielded his skills with great refinement and consistency, and his energy management was perfect.

In addition to all that was his wide area of awareness and ability to follow up on his allies’ movements. Whenever stray projectiles were going for Hannah, he would call out to her or throw his tower shield to intercept them, and whenever Amira generated too much aggro, he would use his skills to shift it back to him — all in all, he was quite flexible with his reactions to unpredictable situations.

“…You know, Daryl, you might actually be a better Tank than Garm now.”

“Huh!? You mean it!?”

“Mm-hm… Well, I can’t really say for sure, because I haven’t been in a party with him for some time now, but I’m sure you’re better than Ealdred Crow’s Bittman, at least.”

“A-are you sure about that…?”

Daryl looked away, feeling somewhat embarrassed and awkward, but then he glanced back at Tsutomu as if waiting for the latter to praise him more. His black-furred tail was wagging so vigorously that it looked like it was going to snap in two.

“Yeah! You’re the best Tank we have, Daryl!”

“Yeah! Your <<Combat Cry>> is great, Daryl! You gotta teach me, too!”

“A-all right, fine! First, you do it like so…”

Flattered by Tsutomu and Hannah, Daryl smiled and began to give a demonstration of his <<Combat Cry>>, followed by a series of explanations. Diniel stared with great interest at Daryl’s wagging tail, while Amira stared blankly at the whole scene, utterly dismayed and bored out of her mind.

Tsutomu had no particular suggestions for Diniel’s Attacker role, either. She essentially never went all out, and so far, had mainly been testing out the various special arrows that Tsutomu had paid for her. She did carry out her role exactly as expected, nothing more, nothing less.

Still, the extent of Diniel’s capabilities could not really be evaluated until the next fight against the Fire Dragon, at the very least. Her Dungeon progress was, as one would expect, still stuck at layer sixty where the Fire Dragon was. There was no telling whether or not she would have to go all out once she got there again, but Tsutomu decided to refrain from giving her any feedback until then.

As for Tsutomu, he himself knew very well what needed to be improved. First of all was getting used to managing support and healing for a five-member party. Things were not so busy right now since they were still in the Valley layers, but the Canyon and its frequent multi-wave battles were sure to make every fight quite chaotic. Before then, as the person giving out commands in this team of five, he would need to understand his members’ every movement.

In addition to that were two particular things that needed special attention: canceling out the out-of-control <<Dragon Form>> and the newly-introduced evasion-based method for Tanks. They added more layers of complexity to his support role — both Amira and Hannah were fast and they moved in irregular patterns, making it difficult for Tsutomu to time his placement-type skills. If he were to not stay on his toes, support effects would start running out of time, and things would only go downhill from there.

And now that there were four people to support, he had to be more careful with energy management as well. There had already been several occasions in which Tsutomu had to operate on almost-empty mental energy for an extended period of time, so he figured that it might be better to gain some levels after the next Fire Dragon fight was over with.

Still, leveling past fifty was incredibly difficult, so he had to put his back into the process. As such, he had been putting it off until he truly felt the need for it — which he knew would come very soon.

The party continued to work their way together through the Valleys, and eventually, Hannah and Amira’s one-week probation periods ended.