Itai no wa Iya nanode Bōgyo-Ryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu

esides, since they were trying to come up with an escape plan, there would be no problem with using up every single skill they had if it helped them succeed.

 

“Okay! Syrup, ‘Activate’ ‘Earth’s Cradle’!”

 

With Maple’s activation, the two of them concealed themselves under the ground.

 

“Do you think it worked?”

 

“Dunno.
But it would be great if it did.”

 

After a while, the effect of the skill ended and the two were ejected back into the underwater area.
Using that momentum, Maple and Sally approached one of the tall rocks and hid behind it in order to see what had happened to the giant fish.
The yellow light could still be seen floating in the darkness.

 

“Aw, it didn’t work.”

 

“Looks like some time has passed.
How much oxygen do you have, Maple?”

 

“I had quite a bit left, so… Huh?”

 

“What happened?”

 

“I have more oxygen than before, Sally!”

 

“Huh? Really?”

 

Sally checked Maple’s gauge and confirmed that it had indeed been fully replenished.
Seeing that, Maple checked on her own gauge.

 

“I’ve recovered too.”

 

“That’s great!”

 

“…Maybe that place over there was actually not covered by water?”

 

Sally thought that it was because they had slipped into the ground.
She had never been affected by that skill anywhere but on the surface before, so there was no way she could know for sure.
But it was certainly possible.

 

“Now we can keep on exploring!”

 

“I wasn’t expecting this, but turns out it was a blessing in disguise.
Let’s check the situation for a bit longer then.”

 

“Yeah!”

 

Since Maple’s oxygen problem had been resolved, there wouldn’t be a problem with them wanting to stay there for a little while longer.

 

With that in mind, they kept a close watch over the giant fish until its eyes finally turned blue, at which point it returned to its usual path.

 

“Oh~!”

 

“It’s gone.
Phew… looks like it finally gave up.”

 

“Let’s go explore some more then!”

 

“We’ve completely replenished our oxygen, and roundtrips to the surface are going to be a hassle.
Let’s keep going as far as we can!”

 

And so, thanks to their unexpected full recovery of oxygen, the two continued their exploration.

 

 

 

After passing through the rocky forest, hiding behind the rocks at the sandy bottom, they looked out for that giant fish’s approach for a while, but apparently its territory seemed to be up to that rocky area.
They waited a bit, but couldn’t see its eyes’ blue light anymore.

 

“Phew, it doesn’t look like it’s going to come this way.”

 

“But what if it sees us from where it is now?”

 

“Dunno.
But I don’t think anything is going to happen.
If you’re really interested in that, we can check the forum later.
Someone else is going to come here eventually and will probably make a post about it.”

 

“I see.”

 

“Finding things out for yourself is fun, but it’s always interesting to see what kinds of things other people discover as well.”

 

“Let’s look for the answer to that later in the forum then, shall we?”

 

Whenever Maple looked for information about in-game stuff, it would normally be limited to things like what kind of skills to get and where to find them.

 

“There are many ways to enjoy this game.”

 

“Alright then, how about some lessons from Know-It-All Sally?”

 

“Well, I like looking for events and dungeons in unexpected places.”

 

As the yet unknown threat of the big fish had left for the time being, Sally and Maple began to walk on the sandy soil of the bottom of the crevice, with only their headlights to help them see in the dark waters.

 

“Unlike before, this place is very wide, so it’s gonna be hard to miss anything.”

 

The environment was very bad for surprise attacks, so Sally could concentrate on searching for events as well.
With two pairs of eyes instead of one, it was very unlikely that they could fail to notice anything within the reach of their headlights.

 

“Looks like there’s nothing here?”

 

“Yeah.
Maybe we overlooked something…?”

 

“Sally?”

 

Sally felt a slight shaking at her toes and stopped, and Maple, who noticed that only after a short while, turned around.

 

“What’s the ma… Waaaah!?”

 

Immediately after that, the sand at her feet swirled up as if swallowing Maple, and a long-bodied fish similar to a moray eel appeared from the middle left.

 

“I thought there was nothing there…!”

 

“Don’t worry! I took no damage!”

 

“Okay! But more of them are coming!”

 

Sally used Maple’s headlight to locate her, as she was being dragged towards the surface inside the moray eel’s jaws she had been caught inside the moray eel’s jaws, and called out to her in the dark.

 

Immediately after that, sand whirled up from several other places, and a large number of huge moray eels appeared, which would be more than enough to swallow Maple and Sally whole.

 

“No way… They’re all so big.”

 

Sally was quite far apart from Maple, so about half of them headed up while the rest moved towards Sally.
She couldn’t figure out exactly how many there were in the dark, but she could tell that they were coming from all directions.

 

“Catch me if you can!”

 

Kicking herself off the ground, Sally quickly began to ascend, fully focused on avoiding the huge jaws of the approaching moray eels.
Getting chomped by those jaws would most likely mean instant death, but their bodies were so huge that dodging their attacks also gave her a good chance to deliver a blow of her own.

 

“Haah!”

 

Taking advantage of the fact she could move freely in three dimensions while underwater, she dodged an incoming attack and retaliated by slashing a single line along its side from its jaw all the way to the tip of its tail with her dagger.

 

“That worked pretty well… Next!”

 

Every time they tried to attack her, Sally would respond by leaving them with two red slashing marks along their bodies and the visual effect of dealing damage.

 

“There’s a lot of them, but I’m not afraid of such large monsters relying on their numbers.”

 

Even if they were to try to take advantage of the darkness, they wouldn’t be able to catch Sally.
They would have stood a slightly better chance if they had all tried to attack her at the same time, but the moray eels couldn’t move around that well.

 

In the meantime, a massive downpour of crimson laser rained onto the ground, tearing through the darkness.

 

“It’s so weird seeing rain falling in the ocean… Even though it’s raining laser beams.”

 

Having lifted Maple high up above the bottom of the crevice, the moray eel had inadvertently given Maple the advantage of the higher ground.
Her lasers burned through the moray eel swarming around Maple on their way to the bottom.

 

The uninterrupted rain of lasers burned and damaged the moray eels throughout their entire bodies.

 

That attack had the capability of dealing such an impressive amount of damage over time that every creature in the vicinity other than her teammate Sally would be completely decimated by it.

 

“I can dodge these lasers, though!”

 

Maple would certainly be able to single-handedly destroy those moray eels with her “Machine God”, but it had a limited amount of uses.
It made sense for Sally to contribute to dealing damage, since they didn’t know how much more there was left to explore or what kind of enemies could appear later.

 

Nothing good could ever come out of running out of ammunition at the wrong time.

 

Sally added some more damage of her own, and Maple’s indiscriminate overhead attack would continue to reduce the moray eels’ remaining HP.

 

Reducing their numbers took some time, but time wasn’t so much of a problem any more.

 

 

Eventually, the moray eels’ HP bars became completely depleted starting from the one who received the most damage from the lasers, and its body turned into light and exploded.
Since Maple’s attack was evenly affecting the area, the moray eels’ HP bars were all depleted at about the same time, so they all died in an almost perfect unison of lights and explosions.

 

The accumulated light briefly illuminated the area, and Sally could clearly see the light coming from Maple’s headlight slowly descend to the sandy bottom once more.

 

“Welcome back.
That was a great attack.”

 

“I’m glad I hit that~ I was worried since I couldn’t see that well from up there…”

 

“They were quite big, so they weren’t that hard to miss.”

 

“Yeah! Whoa… but beating them like this sure looks nice, huh?”

 

Most of the visual effects of the moray eels’ deaths had already disappeared, but since they had been so huge and there had been so many of them, the area was still shining and sparkling.

 

“Looks like marine snow.”

 

“Ah, I think I’ve heard about that!”

 

“But it’s not exactly like this, though.”

 

“Do you think there’ll be more of these up ahead?”

 

“Not in the close vicinity at least.
They all seemed to appear at about the same time.”

 

As Sally expected, it seemed that every monster in the area had jumped out for an all out attack.
And now that the menacing monsters had been completely wiped out, both Maple and her finally seemed to be able to enjoy some peace and quiet, at least for the time being.

 

“I don’t feel like there’s anything around here anymore, so let’s go a little further ahead.”

 

“I hope there aren’t any more monsters hiding in the sand.”

 

“We have no choice but to be very careful while we explore.”

 

“Let’s give it our best shot!”

 

Maple went in front of Sally, checking left and right at every step, looking out for anything that could be lying around.