S*ave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World - Volume 2

If there is any place for us to get in trouble here on the second floor, then there is no place better for it than the Trap Room. Just imagine it: we’re brimming with confidence, thinking that everything is going to be fine as long as we can one-shot everything with Durandal and avoid the attacks coming our way and then BAM and we’re getting jumped by so many enemies that all our advantages can just go fuck themselves. That is also why I think that being wary of it is not a bad thing to do at all.

[In the first place, stumbling upon the Trap Room is already a pretty rare occurance. It’s that kind of luck that you just don’t see everyday.] [Can you really call that “being lucky” though?] [Well, I guess normally you would call that unlucky, but since you’re here, master, then we will be able to take care of all the monsters in no time! We might get surrounded if we’re not careful, but isn’t that why we worked so hard on obtaining the Monk Job for ourselves? So that we could use Healing Skills in the hour of need? That way, we will fight lots of monsters, waste them with one or two attacks and obtain a lot of their Drop Items. That’s why I said we are being lucky.] [Y-Yeah.]

I know what she wa trying to say, but I still find that idea to be rather strange, but of course I’m not going to say that out loud.

Going beyond the would-be Trap Room, we happened upon another Needlewood-Green Caterpillar pair. Without even thinking about it, I charged at the Needlewood and slashed it with Durandal. Now that one nuisance is taken care of, I can focus on supporting Roxanne by attacking the Green Caterpillar from the back if the need for that arises. For now though, I can just stay on the sidelines and watch how it’s going to turn out.

As expected, Roxanne was avoiding Green Caterpillar’s attempts at harming her without much difficulty. What’s more, she does so by only tilting her body ever so slightly to the sides, dodging the attacks at the last possible moment without making any wasteful or unnecessary movements. After witnessing so many of her fights, I developed an absolute trust in her ability to avoid attacks, and I am confident that she can handle every normal attack thrown her way, probably as much as she must be. When the Green Caterpillar Roxanne was fighting missed its Rush attack and briefly stopped moving, that was a cue for me to whack it with Durandal from the side, so I guess that makes it another time where I have basically defeated all of the enemies by myself, and that makes me feel kinda bad about myself. But just a little bit.

The next group Roxanne guided us towards consisted of two Green Caterpillars. As per the usual routine, I ran up to the nearest enemy and promptly dispatched it with one strike. But just as I was about to turn around to how Roxanne was doing…

[Look out, master! Something’s coming!]

She shouted a warning towards me.

Looking closely at the second Green Caterpillar, it had an orange magic circle glowing under its body. I was too far to interrupt it in time, so it had all the time it needed to finish casting whatever it was that it was trying to cast, and when the circle disappeared, it opened its ugly mouth wide and spat out something.

It’s a thread.

Much like with that one other attack that we saw earlier, Green Caterpillar threw webbings from its mouth, only this time, the threads it spat looked a lot stickier and covered both more distance and had a much bigger radius, flying widely in all directions. Such a move was definitely more befitting of a spider rather than a caterpillar, but now is not the time to be worrying about such technicalities!

Sensing the danger behind it, Roxanne made a hasty retreat to put as much distance between herself and the flying wave of webbing as possible. I tried to slash it away with Durandal, but there was too much of it, so I ended up covered with the sticky stuff. The feeling was every bit as creepy as I expected, and to top it off, the web that landed on me seemed to restrict the movements of my arms and legs, as if a sticky tape was wrapped all around my body. I writhed and trashed about, but no matter how hard I tried, the web just didn’t want to come off!

Meanwhile, the Green Caterpillar that spat all over me turned its attention away from Roxanne and started to move towards me. Damn it! Does it prioritize the targets that it managed to immobilize with its web attack?! Roxanne hurriedly ran towards me with the aim of drawing its attention away from me with her Scimitar, but she will not make it in time.

If the Green Caterpillar’s intent was to slowly devour me, then I guess it will try to do so by biting into me, in which case I should be able to endure a few bites, since with my current levels the damage I would take from a Lv.2 monster should not be all that big, but if at all possible, I would like to avoid being chowed down on altogether. So how about… if I try to do… THIS?!!

The web bound my legs below the knees, so thankfully I was able to bend them and move them just enough to kick the Green Caterpillar in its ugly mug just as it entered my melee range. Following up on that, I threw my bound hand, which were still gripping Durandal’s hilt tightly, into the air, allowing the gravity to do its thing for me. As a result, Durandal’s blade was driven into the Green Caterpillar’s back as if it was made out of jelly, splitting it almost in half, after which it just rolled onto the floor, green blood spilling out of the fatal wound I inflicted.

Not gonna lie, that was a closer one than I would have liked. I wonder if the webby restraints had no negative effect on my attack power, or they did, but it was so miniscule that I was still able to defeat the Green Caterpillar in a single blow despite being under their influence?

The Green Caterpillar disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving it’s usual Drop Item, its thread, behind. At the same time, the threads that were restraining my movements also disappeared.

「Note to self: these assholes have not one, but two web attacks. Avoid at all costs.」

「It really does look that they possess such an ability. I’m sorry, master. Due to my incompetence you found yourself in a position where the enemy could easily target you…」

「It’s fine, don’t beat yourself up over it. There was nothing you could do about it, and besides, it’s also my fault for letting my guard down around them too much, so it is as much my L as it is yours. One saving grace here is that as long as you defeat the monster that use the Skill, then the threads disappear. If it wasn’t for that, then I guess you can say that we would have been in a pretty… sticky situation.」

「….」

「… Also, if we just watch the Green caterpillars more closely from now on, we should be able to easily avoid their attacks and stop them from casting that Skill.」

But the one who got caught in it was just me. Roxanne managed to avoid it without any difficulties.

「So from now on, let’s defeat the Green Caterpillars every time we happen upon one, okay?」

「Yes, no objections here!」

Green Caterpillar can use the Skill that makes them spit sticky threads that seal the movements of whomever it touches. Still, we’ve been around the second floor for quite a while now and that was the first time I saw one of them actually use that Skill, so it has to mean that they do not use it all that often. If we just focus on dealing with them first. The only potential problem can happen once they start appearing I large numbers, like, for instance, in… yes, that’s right, you guessed it, the Trap Room like the one on the first floor. If an entire room’s worth of them were to use their sticky threads at all time, we definitely wouldn’t be able to dodge them all or kill each and every one that used them.

And then there is also the other web attack that will slow you down when it hits you. My bigger concern with it is that if we get hit with enough of those, we might end up becoming so slow that the fight might be grinded into a complete halt, and we will be opened for more thread attacks that will slow us down even more, Durandal’s HP Absorption included.

That, I’ll have you know, would suck some serious scrotum.