Year 7446, Month 10, Day 21
We managed to discover just the right ogres.
There was 2 ogres messing around with each other in the middle of some plains with 50 cm or so grass.
They're a distance of about 100 meters from the forest we're hiding.
"Basutoral, Angela. Have you finished your discussion?"
The two of them have already been talking over things for close to 5 minutes.
How about at least replying to me.
Look, just now, even though that was the perfect timing...
And hey!
What are you doing!?
The two of them were tying something long and thin to the end of Basutoral's spear.
Ah..Yeah..that is...
【Arrow.of.Blindness】
【Sawtooth Oak.Iron】
【Condition: Normal】
【Manufacture Date: 24/8/7446】
【Value: 20000】
【Durability: 40】
【Ability: The ability of the launching device plus 15-65】
【Effect: The living creature which this arrow stabs into regardless of the size of the wound or where it is located, as long as the arrowhead pierces through to the point of being completely hidden the target will fall into a state of completely blindness. In the case that it takes effect, the duration of the effect will continue for at least 5 minutes. However, once the blindness has gone into effect once even if the arrow is recovered afterwards and used once again, the blindness effect will have been lost. On that occasion it will just be a high performance magic arrow.】
Are you serious...
I can't say it's not allowed at this point...
But.
"I see now.."
"So that's what they had planned."
Zenom and Toris watched their work with a bit of admiration.
"What are they doing?"
"An arrow?"
Kamu and Kimu tried asking Gwine who was nearby, Gwine said, "It seems to be an arrow..Ah...Nfufu. Just watch and you'll see." while grinning.
"..Isn't it surprising? I had heard about it. When Bel discussed it with me I said that it's fine for Bel to do whatever she wants with them. I was wondering when they were going to use it. I was starting to worry if maybe Bel didn't give it to them."
..Fufu.
I can't help but smiling.
Basutoral and Angela both must have been desperate.
Miduchi knows as well that you can only use that arrow once.
According to Miduchi she already said to Bel, "Most magic arrows lose their effects after being used once".
Even then Bel gave it to them.
Whether it's just one or a bunch of them I don't know but in any case she handed one over.
It might be possible she said to endure it until the last moment or something along those lines.
Well~ something like that doesn't matter at all.
Isn't it fine I guess, using it here.
Including how they're used, I've left all of the arrows in the care of Bel.
And she decided to let them use it.
In that case there's no place for me to comment on it.
I wanted them to be the single arrow that flips over a desperate situation but that's nothing more than my wish.
If you were to ask whether this situation is a crisis for the party then I don't even need to tilt my head and I can deny it but depending on how you think about it, you could say it's a crisis for Angela and Basutoral.
How and why Bel decided to give them the arrow is something insignificant.
There's no way I could understand what she's thinking.
Well it's fine.
It should be a good chance to determine the degree of effect of the arrows.
It's seems they're about ready.
They firmly fixed the arrowhead of the arrow around 10 cm off the end of the spear.
"We're finished with preparations."
"Master, sorry for the wait."
"Yeah, wait just a moment.."
I watch the ogres that are still messing around again while looking for the right timing.
They seem to be messing around almost like baby gorillas or something.
Though they're not that cute.
"..I'll finish off the left one. After I hit it that's the signal. Alright?"
If it's fire that seems like it would stand out a bit too much.
I wonder if I should go with {Stone Arbalest Missile} this time?
Well, I guess it's fine the same as before.
A large flaming arrow was fired from my right hand.
The ogre on the left took the flaming arrow through the side of it's head and died in one hit.
The ogre on the right was confused from the sudden happening.
Zenom has started taking time.
"Iyaaaa~!!!"
Angela let out a loud voice as she was charging ahead.
"!!"
At the same time as that Basutoral ran off as fast as he could while holding the end of his spear ahead.
Angela has a tail with long and tufty hair.
Basutoral's hair is short his tail isn't quite as thick as that of the Tiger-people race.
Those tails weren't waving almost at all as they stood on end.
The two of them should reach the ogre right away.
Obviously the ogre noticed the two of them charging at it and picked up it's club to take them on.
The reason she let out a loud voice to stand out should have been to reduce the amount of time before the battle starts by even just a bit more.
Oh~ it's not the time to just be watching.
I need to be ready in the worst case as well.
Although, if it's them then there shouldn't be anything dangerous about fighting two versus one.
I guess I'll watch while controlling my mana.
The ogre was shouting "Ngooo~!!" while running at them with heavy thuds.
Angela ran off while holding her broadsword ready to swing, Basutoral isn't losing to that as he advances with his spear ready.
Since she doesn't have as much bulk as a spear, Angela's speed is above.
The ogre went for a wide swing with it's club to try and crush Angela's head.
Angela lowered her posture in order to evade that as she tried to circle around to the left of the ogre.
Trying to swing a weapon in the right hand to the right would throw off the stance after all.
And then, Basutoral was keeping up with Angela behind her on the right along the way but he stopped around 10 meters to the side of the ogre.
Magic huh?
However, the attack spell that Basutoral is the most used to is {Flame Arrow} and even that takes over 2 seconds to activate.
Hey now what are you doing, and I started to feel irritated.
After all it's long since passed the 2 seconds needed to activate {Flame Arrow}.
Does he intend to slowly take his time using his greatest attack spell {Flame Javelin} or something?
Depending on where it hits it's not as if it can't defeat it.
Just as I was thinking that it was different.
Basutoral was using magic on the end of his spear.
Even though over 5 seconds have passed his spell still doesn't seem to have activated.
I wonder what he is trying to use?
How dangerous.
Should I back them up?
But, both Angela and Basutoral can defeat ogres one on one as long as they have the time.
I guess I'll keep an eye on things for a bit longer.
The spell still hasn't activated after all.
During that time Angela was still holding the attention of the ogre herself.
While circling around to the left she thrust forward with her broadsword.
It seems while rolling to the right she's trying to use attacks which swipe towards it's legs.
Though overall she's still moving around towards the left.
However, while it's just a bit, she's gradually being pulled towards Basutoral as he concentrates.
After all ogres can't be underestimated.
Just as expected from a monster that's considerably strong in close combat.
As proof that it's not being dragged along with Angela as she tries to circle around it further to the right.
Hmm, that's dangerous.
I wonder what they're going to do.
I can tell everyone around me is tense as well.
There's already no more than 5 meters between Basutoral who's concentrating and the ogre.
If he ends up taking that club while he's concentrating then...
And then finally, it took close to 10 seconds but Basutoral's spell finally activated.
The spell he used was the reverse magic of {Light}, {Darkness}.
If you normally use the spell {Light} then it lasts 5 minutes, continuing to give off light for 300 seconds or so.
The reverse magic of that {Darkness} only has a duration of 1/100th of that at 3 seconds, but it manifests the pitch darkness almost as if it's absorbing all the surrounding visible light on that one point which is the target of the spell.
It seems that what it absorbs is just the visible light and obviously if {Infrared Vision} gets used there's not much meaning to it.
In most cases, the temperature of a weapon is slightly higher than the surrounding air after all.
In the past, when I tried asking the elf squire in Bakuddo, Mikkensu about it and when using {Infrared Vision} metal-based weapons and such appear bluish black.
However, ogres don't have {Infrared Vision}.
It might be effective in hiding the reach of a weapon against ogres.
Though along with how short the duration of the effect is it's a spell that doesn't have very many uses.
Normally no matter how much you practice it takes several split seconds to activate so unless it's a person who can use spells in combat there's not much reason to practice with it.
In other words, myself though.
..That guy, since he can activate in this amount of time, he must have practiced it several tens of times.
The surrounding light started to get absorbed by the center point that is the target of the spell the end of the spear as darkness starts to light up(though that's a weird way of expressing it) and a pitch black orb spreads out.
The diameter of the orb should be around 3 meters I guess?
The closer it gets to the center of the orb the greater the degree of darkness.
Though it's diameter is close to 3 meters, the only part that you really can't see anything but darkness is around 1 meter in the center so the portion that can be called true darkness isn't all that wide.
After Basutoral held the spear of darkness at the ready once again he let out a war cry of "Let's gooo~!!" while charging the 5 meter distance to the ogre.
Noticing the abnormality in Basutoral's weapon the ogre let out a shout of surprise like "Go?!!?"
It seems that while parrying off Angela's annoying attacks with the club in it's right hand it was properly paying attention to Basutoral as well.
However, the moment Basutoral let out a yell while switching to charge at it with the spear of darkness, Angela went for a risky attack!
..!!
Good!
When Angela went to go for a risky attack, the ogre was prepared to receive it with a powerful attack of it's own.
However, it seems Angela had already read that attack.
She lowered her body even lower, almost as if she was crawling along the ground, and avoided it at the last moment in a considerably unreasonable posture, then after evading the ogre's attack jumped towards it.
There Basutoral's thrust also attacked.
Since ogres are skilled with close combat skills it tried to avoid Basutoral's thrust by rolling itself but it ended up mistaking the distance.
"Geo!!?"
It raises a shout in surprise.
And then, it started rolling around while recklessly swinging the club around it.
Basutoral quickly pulled back his spear.
After Angela stood up from rolling her broadsword was covered in blood.
And then, it didn't take much time at all for them to defeat the blinded ogre.
Probably, the amount of time they spent in combat wasn't even 1 minute.
.............................
Basutoral and Angela's time was 17 minutes and 20 seconds.
A total time of 56 minutes and 30 seconds.
It was over 1 minute faster than Kamu and Kimu's time.
So we won't be switching them out huh?
I'm looking forward to next time.
"Aaa..So it was no good huh?"
"Even though the plan we had was good.."
On top of switching to good results from the second round, they used their heads for the combat other than just borrowing magic weapons from Miduchi and Gwine. It seems that they had already asked Gwine and Miduchi about it ahead of time. Yeah. I'm relieved that they weren't just thinking about simply fighting it. We aren't doing something like fair sports after all.
How you can gain the greatest advantage, including negotiations I want them to be able to use their heads.
In that sort of meaning Basutoral and Angela properly negotiated with Bel to use the magic arrow and that {Darkness} spell I can't remember using in a number of years so they most likely requested Miduchi to teach it to him.
"Th..The time is..."
"How was it!?"
Basutoral and Angela came back while holding the magic stone.
"Congratulations. It's your win."
Zenom told them while smiling.
Hearing that the two of them made relieved expressions and sat down on the spot letting out a sigh of relief.
"We lost this time but we won't lose next time."
Kamu is claiming victory next time.
"Congratulations, the two of you. But it's just as sis Kamu said, next time we'll win."
Kimu held out her hands to Basutoral and Angela.
And then, while making an expression like oh?, she looked at Angela's head.
Angela made a shocked expression before taking off her helmet and inspecting the surface of it.
Is it scratched or something?
Incidentally, the design of Angela's helmet is the same as Miduchi, Gwine, and mine. It's similar to the JSDF ones with a helmet neck guard in the back fundamentally made from rubber protectors.
It's almost like the type of helmets from the sengoku era other than the fact that it doesn't have anything like the horns or ornaments out of the top of it.
Though that's only obvious since I made it as an imitation of those.
However, the one exclusively for the dog-people race that was made for the wolf-people Dokushu family of Bakuddo has some protuberances for the ears on the top as well as using three large plates rather than the five layered ones in the back.
I don't know the reason.
There was a scratch along the surface of the helmet.
The ogre's club must have grazed it.
Hey, stop making such a pitiful face.
If it's just that degree of a scratch then you can fix it right away taking it to Rassgu's place.
"Good work the two of you. We'll go to Dorureon today with everyone. It's my treat."
After I said that everyone cheered.
I was able to see the efforts of the four of them.
Well it's fine.
Eh? Even Cathy as well?
Ah, might as well, let's just call everyone.
I'm sure there's a number of members who are bored on their day off.