Chapter 24 – Evasion Arts
Translator/Editor: Mana
I recalled Force’s advice in my head.
“That’s why if you observe Jin’s techniques closely, you might just find yourself easily learning the evasion arts…”
Honestly, it wasn’t like the usual Force.
Though it isn’t very nice of me to say this after receiving advice, it was so out of character for him. His tone was so unfamiliar, it sounded funny coming out of him.
That was probably why his words sounded even more sincere, helping me understand that he was thinking for me.
It was Force’s own way of encouraging me, the most he could.
If I didn’t accept it sincerely, it’d come back to bite me in the ass.
Keeping these thoughts in mind, I carefully observed Jin’s fighting.
Lava flowed at the bottom of the cliff, its red colour glaringly bright. The heat flickering from the magma sweat to drip from my forehead. Every breath I took burned my throat painfully.
With the features of the inside of an active volcano, it was an environment harsher than any floor so far. A lava flow that meant immediate death if you fell. Dangers like that were spread throughout the scorching hot caves.
Right here, on the seventh floor.
The situation of constantly standing at death’s doorstep wore away at the mind while the hot temperatures made all the moisture in the body evaporate as sweat.
However, such things were no hindrance to my observations of Jin’s techniques.
“‘Withdraw’—”
Jin used an evasion art to widen the distance with a golem blowing red gas in every direction. Then he opens his mouth and exhales.
“—‘Shukuchi’.”
After seeing the golem halt in its attack, he closed the distance. In response, the golem attempted to avoid the approaching thread by throwing out a high-speed punch—
“‘Stream’.”
The fist flew past Jin so smoothly, it was as if the golem was avoiding him. There was only one arm’s length between him and the first. The black sword clenched in Jin’s hand writhed as it passed by. It was the effect of ‘Shapeshifting – Mineral’, changing the blade.
The sharpened tip pierced through the core of the golem.
Jin pulled his blade out of the golem, retreating five steps back before the rock puppet completely stopped moving. A huge pile of rocks crumbled down from the top.
The rocks that formed the head hit the ground. At that sound, I finally snapped out of my awed state. I was concentrating a lot harder than I thought.
I replayed the scenery of Jin’s battle in my head, going over the techniques and tricks and things like that.
Jin used three arts in this battle.
The thief and assassin jobs tended to have a higher number of arts that could be used in one battle compared to other close-range jobs like swordsmen and knights. Therefore, this number was not a problem.
What was important was the features of the art.
‘Withdraw’ was an evasion art. Like its name, its objective is to widen the distance from the enemy. As long as one foot touched the ground, the requirements for activation were fulfilled and your body would be thrown backwards. With experience, the distance of the jump can be extended and jumping position can vary.
—‘Shukuchi’. This one wasn’t an evasion skill. It was an art that focused solely on closing the distance to the enemy. The basic fighting style of thief and assassins was to use this essential art and connect it to an attack right after.
‘Stream’ was an evasion and counterattack art. It had the effect of evading the enemy’s attack and throw them off balance, disru
pting their attack rhythm. There were two methods of activating it, either by evading while touching the enemy with a weapon or part of your body or dodging at the last second without making contact with the enemy.
There were other well-renowned counterattack arts such as ‘Beatdown’, but Jin seemed to prefer to use ‘Stream’.
Generally speaking, ‘Stream’ was of a higher difficulty to learn than ‘Beatdown’, so this was probably proof of his skills.
Other than that, there were a whole bunch of other arts that Jin used in the battles preceding the golem.
The evasion arts ‘Sync Walk’ and ‘Phantom’, ‘Climb’ that was used to run up the bodies of large monsters, the attack art ‘Backslide’, etc. Each of the arts was mastered to a super high standard, surprising me with how perfect of an assassin Jin was.
Wiping away the sweat that had built up from the hot air and excitement with a sleeve, I took a water bottle out from the item bag at my waist and chugged it down at once. Then, a voice called out to be from the corner of my eye. It was Roslia.
“I’m thirsty too. Please give me some.”
I took out her own water bottle from the item bag and threw it at her. For some reason, she had a slightly disappointed look on her face.
“I wouldn’t have minded using Note’s water bottle…” Roslia complained sadly.
I would have minded…
When I unintentionally looked back, I noticed I was exposed to Erin’s unhappy gaze. I broke out in a cold sweat.
It wasn’t like I was flirting or anything. I didn’t do anything from my side… It was Roslia who started flirting herself! I wanted to say that. But because that would probably lead to trouble, I refrained…
At this rate, it was only a matter of time before I was put into a harsh situation. I decided to change the topic by force.
“S-So like, item bags are really convenient, huh…” I said in a complete monotone. Even I was surprised.
Thankfully, Jin received my obviously unnatural conversation starter and continued the topic.
“Come to think of it, it’s Note’s first time using the item bag, right?”
“Yeah…”
I placed a hand on the item bag at my waist. The only ones in this party that held an item bag were me and Neme. The two people who had the least chance of directly fighting.
That, and item bags were simply expensive in value.
Item bags. It was the general term for tools that could hold a certain amount of items, with no regards to their weight. There was a limit to the number of items that could be stuffed inside and the items themselves were limited to non-living items, but there was no mistaking that it was a very useful tool. Unable to be created by human hands, it was a dungeon item that could only be obtained within the dungeons. Supply was extremely low compared to the demand, so its market price was set absurdly high.
It was said that if you found an item bag in a dungeon and sold it, you could easily afford to buy a stately mansion with the money.
That was why even in the town of Puriff, where dungeon items were a dime a dozen, they were barely in circulation and priced extraordinarily high, to the point that even the ‘Arrivers’ only were able to obtain two. Conversely, it could be said that they were “even” able to obtain two.
My item bag was packed with food, water, spare weapons, and valuable items found in the dungeon. There were also items for an overnight stay if the exploration was prolonged. Neme’s item bag was packed similarly.
Just imagining losing this bag was enough to send shivers down my spine. But no matter how chilling the fear felt, it couldn’t beat the heat of this floor.
As I was distracted by the heat, Roslia called out to me.
“Note, can you hand me a towel?”
I immediately handed it to Roslia. She took the towel and wiped the sweat from her face. Since her job was a paladin, she had to wear heavy armour. She must have felt the heat more than anyone else, covered in armour like that. The amount of sweat flowing from her reflected that.
After wiping her face, Roslia stuck the towel inside her collar and started to wipe the sweat on the inside of her armour. The sweat stain spread on her black inner collar.
“Note, I can’t reach my back, can you wipe it for me?”
Immediately after, Roslia dropped a bomb on me. She handed me a damp towel as is.
Wasn’t that borderline out? Even if it was for the purpose of wiping sweat, touching the inside of a girl’s clothes was…
Roslia turned her back to me and straightened up. Looking closely, sweat was dripping down her nape. The faint smell of sweat wafted towards me. It wasn’t an enchantingly sweet aroma, but for some reason the smell coming from Roslia made me want to breathe it in forever—
“I’m really hot and stuffy. Please help me.”
One bomb dropped from Roslia wasn’t enough. Not expecting the second attack, I drew my legs back.
Wasn’t her phrasing really erotic just now?! Was wiping sweat such a dirty act?!
That shouldn’t have been the case… This was not an erotic action. This was safe.
There was no way wiping the sweat from a party member would count as an erotic action! If anything, I started to think I was strange for thinking this way. It meant that I was looking at Roslia as the opposite sex, through perverted eyes. That wasn’t good at all.
Yeah, let’s just wipe it. Not because I want to wipe her sweat, but as a favour to another party member.
I reached my hand out to her and took a step forward. Her scent tickled my nose even more.
Wait, wait! Wait a minute here!
This has to be out after all! I was starting to get excited!
Let’s stop. It was impossible. There was no way I could reach inside Roslia’s inner shirt without any dirty thoughts…
As I was worrying, a lifeline was offered to me from out of nowhere.
“Yes yes! I’ll do it! I’ll wipe down Roslia’s body!”
It was Force. At his expression of interest, Roslia came to her senses.
“Ah, it’s fine. I’ll do it myself.”
She took the towel I held in my right hand.
That was the only time I had felt deeply grateful for Force’s lust. If he hadn’t interrupted, I would have definitely lost to the temptation.
In reality, deep in my heart, I was full of regret at having let the chance to wipe Roslia’s back escape.
Today too, I have yet to evade Jin’s attack even once. Frustratingly, this fact was now a matter of course.
While feeling such sorrow again today, I watched Jin return to the party house.
We had just finished our usual post-dungeon-exploration practice. As usual, I wasn’t able to grasp any sense of evasion, much less lay a hand.
The only thing that was different was the actions I was about to take.
After receiving Force’s advice yesterday, I burned the image of Jin’s fighting into my eyes.
If I couldn’t avoid Jin’s attacks without using arts, I could just use arts to avoid them. Like Force said, there was no one particular way to learn arts.
“Now… shall I start…?”
The reason I sent Jin back first was so that I could practice evasion arts now. Staying back and obtaining Jin’s techniques through imitation.
Since I had been causing enough trouble for Jin, I decided not to tell him about this. If I said I was staying back to practice arts, he would probably insist on staying too. I couldn’t bother him any more than this. With a random excuse like “I’ll rest a bit and go back to the party house”, I sent Jin home first.
From here on, I will practice alone.
“For now, I’ll start with ‘Withdraw’ practice…”
It was an art Jin had used today, and I had decided to practice it first as it seemed the easiest to learn.
If I could avoid Jin’s attack even once, I would be able to narrow down the feeling of evasion. Rather than practising several arts at the same time today, I decided to focus on one art at once.
“‘Withdraw’!”
I moved my body the way I remembered Jin did. Putting my strength in my right foot, I kicked the ground to jump backwards—
However, as I landed and checked the distance I had travelled, it was just the length of one jump. This was no different from a regular jump backwards…
“It’s useless… Putting aside the jump distance, I have to increase my speed to evade attacks first…”
I was even surprised myself at how bad I was. But there was no point in being depressed about it. I just needed to practice from here.
After that, I jumped and thought. Over and over.
In order to get closer to Jin’s arts, I reflected on the points I had to fix and changed it the next time I executed it.
I continued repeating that until it was time to eat the dinner that Erin made.