Frontiers ~Chronicles of Bucket-san’s Detailed Pioneering~ - Chapter 120 – No way, against this many… I can’t believe it

The main force of the battle team is at the farthest away altar.

The minimal defense team left isn’t strong enough to suppress the wave of incoming event mobs.

In fact, it is already taking their all just to stop themselves from dying, never mind protecting non-combatants like us.

Well, even then, dying in Frontiers doesn’t mean dying for good… It’s regrettable that we cannot be here until this battle is cleared, which is surely the climax of the event, but it can’t be helped.

I looked sideways at the avalanche of mobs approaching us… And even then, we kept on wielding our tools to the very end.

Yes, me and my three assistants decided to do this.

Come on, come on! We won’t give up until the end! We will complete this item!

“Ah.” I muttered.

There was a time I was thinking like that.

But reality showed an outcome different from what we had resolved ourselves to.

“Incredible!” One assistant exclaimed.

“So this is the rumored Spider Princess…” Another assistant said.

“No way, against this many… I can’t believe it.” The third assistant muttered.

The events happening in front of us were so amazing that all three assistants stopped to look at it.

A huge thing suddenly fell from the sky. It was Hime’s Spider Doll.

It swung its eight sword-legs, as well as the weapons on the humanoid back, in all directions and created a continuous flurry of attacks that quickly started dispatching the mobs that were close to us.

I can’t see it that well since I have my back turned to the fight, but I’m sure the fangs must also be killing some mobs.

Furthermore, even outside the range of the insect doll, the enemies were in a state of great confusion as they fell over, missed attacks and slipped on nothing.

Did Hime somehow manage to start using the Spider Doll without all ten threads? Because I can’t think of any other explanation for this situation.

After all, she can’t do her usual sabotage when she needs all ten threads to manipulate the Spider Doll, but… I don’t think even Hime should be able to reduce the number of needed threads.

“Hi-Hime! Too much, too much, too much!” One person exclaimed.

“Aaaah! This way, that way, over theeeeere!” Another one exclaimed.

“I can’t do this! I can’t do this! I can’t do this!” A third one was shouting.

“Keep it up.” Hime told them.

Apparently, Hime wasn’t doing her best all by herself. There were three other player Pioneers on top of the Spider Doll, who is fighting non-stop against the incoming enemies.

Seems like the three of them are the ones doing the sabotage behavior that Hime usually handles.

I’m quite surprised that they are able to do it while riding the Spider Doll though, since the doll’s movements are quite violent.

Even if they’re complaining a lot, they certainly seem to be quite capable. And thanks to their help, quite a bit of time was bought.

The avalanche of event mobs was delayed by Hime and those three, which allowed about half of the fighting team to return to our side and start helping with the defense.

Like this, the overrun drama was stopped.

Though the price paid was quite high.

Hime’s Spider Doll fought really recklessly this time around, so it is looking quite shabby right now.

Its durability certainly decreased quite a bit.

Depending on how bad it was, some pieces might even be in broken state.

Sure, the Spider Doll may have gone through remodeling, but that didn’t increase its durability. Therefore this child needs to be handled with care and cannot be used on unreasonable operations.

Though at the same time, Hime needed to go all out, or she would not have been able to hold back those mobs. Even if she did it only for a short while.

The rest of the defense arrived in time only because Hime did her best.

“Hime!” I exclaimed.

“Just in time.” Hime replied.

“Thank you! I thought we were done for!” One of the assistants exclaimed.

“We did it together.” She pointed to her helpers.

“Yeah, that’s right… We… We did it together!” One of the helpers shouted.

The crafters who were ready to die were all very excited about the results of Hime’s desperate defense.

Things were already pretty exciting so far, but this was definitely the biggest excitement of the day.

And of course, I’m no exception.

I was so happy to see her, that I actually hugged Hime, who was on top of the wobbly Spider Doll.

Everyone was watching it though, so I’m now a bit embarrassed…

“Repair, please.” Hime said.

“Leave it to me!” I replied.

“We’d like some help too…” One of Hime’s helpers said.

“Leave that to us!” One of my assistants replied.

“Alright, let’s see it… Oh, wow! This is terrible!” I exclaimed.

Both the Spider Doll and the equipment of the helpers was all in terrible state. It can’t be helped when they had to handle the threads while being on top a doll that was moving wildly though.

The helpers were using event equipment though, so they just needed a replacement.

But the problem is on the Spider Doll. I can repair the parts that were just damaged, but the broken ones need a different process to be fixed, and I can’t do that here.

And well, as there were some broken parts… I guess I have no choice. Let’s use the Marionette Customization to replace the broken parts with event gear!

Hime will need to be careful with it though, since the event gear has low durability… I’ll be sure to warn Hime about that.

******

“Team 4 finished!” One fighter exclaimed.

“Team 6 is done too!” Another fighter said.

“The small fries aren’t spawning anymore. All that is left is the Shadow Lord, everyone!

“Be careful of the long-range attacks, but don’t approach it unless you’re confident in dodging the melee blows!” Mika told everyone.

“Ooh!” The fighters exclaimed together.

A reasonable amount of time has passed since the Shadow Lord appeared.

Most of the small fries that spawned together with it have been defeated, and no other mobs have spawned since.

The problem right now is not the amount of small fries though, but the attack method of the Shadow Lord.

It emanates shadows near it, and anyone who is caught gets its life force sucked. This not only deals tremendous damage, but it also restores the health of the Shadow Lord. So, if you’re not confident in dodging it, you’ll end up just healing the boss, getting in the way of fight.

However, some of the combat-focused player Pioneers are fairly confident in dodging the Shadow Lord’s attacks, so they are going all-out on melee.

The boss also has a powerful ranged attack though, and he starts spamming it if he has nobody on melee range.

When he is engaged in melee combat though, he only uses the ranged attack from time to time.

Therefore, the people fighting at ranged are not struggling much right now, as we have a good group of melee players doing their best.

And Mika is the one who seems to be most confident on dodging. It’s quite incredible to see her fight with the Sacred Silver weapons while dodging incoming shadows from all directions.

Most melee fighters are focusing on dodging, but Mika is actively focusing on offense instead.

She is putting herself in way more danger than everyone else… As expected of Mika.

As for the producers, we are making as much powerful event equipment as we can.

Especially now that the fight is only against the Shadow Lord. The ranged fighters are basically attacking non-stop, so their equipment is losing durability much faster, which leads to them needing plenty of replacements.

However, the small fries aren’t spawning anymore, so we don’t have a supply of a materials any longer.

Therefore, we’ll soon be unable to make any more pieces of equipment, and I don’t think the battle will be finished by that point.

In that case, the battle team will have no choice other than bringing up the equipment that they brought with them, but those are considerably weaker than the special event weapons that we crafted here, so our firepower will surely fall at that point.

“Looks like it will take a while.” I commented.

“Well, we no longer have any intermediate-tier materials left to process.” One assistant told me.

“We’ll run out of processed materials after you finish two more items, Bucket.” Another assistant told me.

“I guess the rest will have to be handled with the normal equipment.” The third assistant said.

I was asked to make as many Sacred Silver items as I could, but that role will soon be over, as we ran out of materials.

I guess the only things we’ll be able to do next will be repairing and giving some moral support.

Well, the producers that can use ranged attacks are trying to help with damaging the boss too, but their damage output is honestly negligible.

Their fighting capability just can’t be compared to the top combat-focused player Pioneers, but… Well, I guess it’s better than nothing. It should be fine for as long as they pay attention to the ranged attacks of the Shadow Lord.

As for me, I can’t really do anything, since all my Magical Formations were already handed over to Hime.

Therefore, I can only give moral support from now on.

Come on, everyone! Do your best!

******

Somehow, the battle against the Shadow Lord ended up being very monotonous when compared to all the gimmicks of the small fry avalanche or the Dummy Divine Goblet stage.

So uhn… Yeah, it took a long time, but its attack pattern didn’t change, nor did it get any extra attack patterns.

In other words, melee fighters just had to keep on dodging, while the ranged attackers dealt as much damage as they could.

This was the end. It’s over. The Shadow Lord was defeated.

“Somehow, nothing happened at the end.” I muttered.

“I was wondering if there would be something else, but that was it.” One of my assistants commented.

“The earlier stages were a lot harder, weren’t they?” Another assistant said.

“Oh, look. The field.” The third assistant told us.

Once the Shadow Lord’s HP reached 0, its body started crumbling into multiple light particles.

At the same time, the shadows that were isolating us from the outside started getting thinner and thinner.

And now, we were back to a familiar scenery.

We were not at the gate though. Apparently we were all transported to the location of the giant crystal.

“How are the other gates?” One person asked.

“There’s a special thread on the forums about it. They’ve all been cleared already.

“However, there is no mention of the Shadow Lord in the thread.

“Nor is there anything written about what happens after the last altar has a goblet put on it.” Another person replied.

“Wait, so we were the only ones that fought it!?” A third person exclaimed.

Seems like it became possible to access the forums again now that the shadow barrier completely disappeared.

And there were quite a few people around us right now. Probably because we were the last group to clear it.

<In the Zabrina Kingdom, the incident of the Mysterious Shadow Servants has been resolved.>

And now we got a Goddess Announcement about it, so I guess the event has ended.

The people here seem to have started a celebrating call now that it’s all over.

Should I join the call together with Mika and everyone else?