WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Irevi
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◈ Alone Against the Tower ◈
Chapter 72: Strategy
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Mana Enhancement was a skill that greatly amplified every stat, including attack power and defense, in proportion to Intelligence.
Simply learning Mana Enhancement could turn your life around. It was an absurdly overpowered skill.
Just look at how much I had benefited from [Hysterical Strength].
[Hysterical Strength] only amplified a single stat for a moment, but Mana Enhancement boosted every stat at once.
And it didn't just amplify the four main stats. The fact that it also boosted attack power and defense made it especially ridiculous.
When Strength increased, attack power rose. When Durability increased, defense rose.
But Mana Enhancement separately amplified attack power and defense on top of that.
It would raise actual combat power by an unbelievable amount.
What made it even more absurd was that Intelligence determined the level of amplification.
You could roughly estimate Strength, Agility, and Durability by crossing swords with someone, but Intelligence didn't show outwardly.
That meant you couldn't predict how much someone's stats would rise the moment they used the skill.
There was also the fact that it let a warrior class make effective use of Intelligence, a stat that was otherwise half useless.
Or that raising Intelligence alone was practically the same as raising every stat.
The reasons Mana Enhancement was so overpowered were endless.
Rumble!
An enormous pressure radiated from Mercedes as she slowly walked toward me, wrapped in white mana.
It wasn't just my imagination. My newly awakened Mana Attunement could feel the pressure of the mana flowing from her.
Expecting a surprise attack, I pulled out a large shield and held it in front of me. I also equipped the best weapon Erwen had made for me.
Then a fist came flying at me.
[Iron Wall]
[Hysterical Strength]
Boom!
Even though I quickly raised my shield and boosted my Durability to the limit, I couldn't withstand the impact.
It didn't feel like getting hit by a truck. It felt like getting into a traffic accident with a damn airplane.
As expected, when the physical gap was this great, blocking wasn't really blocking.
And shit, I think the shield that got knocked back the instant her fist struck it slammed into my head.
Blood ran down from my forehead. The bleeding itself wasn't a big deal, but it could block my vision at a crucial moment.
I should use a potion to heal this, I thought, when another attack came at me.
I couldn't even tell whether it was a sword or a fist. All I could see was something flashing.
Boom!
I somehow blocked it with my shield again, but my body was sent skidding backward.
My left arm was done for.
The potion I had pulled from my inventory was shattered by the shockwave and splashed across the floor.
So she wasn't even going to give me time to heal? If she was that strong, she could at least let her guard down.
Still, I could hold out better than I had expected.
If this had been me when I had just entered the seventh floor, I wouldn't have been able to react to even the first attack.
There was no way to follow that thing with my eyes, no matter what I did. I had to predict the attacks through Mana Detection and block them.
She was disgustingly fast and strong, but the form of her swordsmanship wasn't all that different from that bastard named Berit or whatever.
You could say it didn't matter when blocking wasn't truly blocking anyway, but I had thought this through.
Crackle.
The presence of Mercedes using Mana Enhancement was caught by Intuition and Mana Detection.
I could predict the path of her sword swing. With a casual gesture toward that path, I opened my inventory.
'Item Drop.'
I dumped out a huge amount of armor and shields that had been sitting unused for a long time.
* * *
As I made my way to the seventh floor, I had looted dozens of treasure chests and obtained items.
Equipment items didn't just come from treasure chests. Monsters could drop them too. And most of them were honestly useless.
Some couldn't be equipped because of equipment restrictions, while most were simply mediocre enough that there was no reason to wear them.
Still, in preparation for emergencies, I had enhanced even these backup items to a certain degree.
Naturally, with Durability fully enhanced.
I poured out all the armor, shields, weapons, and anything else hard that I had enhanced but never once used.
Booom!
Mercedes's attack exploded with a deafening crash, sending the equipment I had pulled out flying through the air like Styrofoam scraps.
But simply dumping a huge number of obstacles into the path of her attack greatly reduced the impact.
Mercedes's attacks weren't magic or wide-area skills. They were just brutally powerful slashes and strikes.
By creating a physical wall like this, I could somehow block them.
"What is this, spatial magic...?"
Mercedes muttered after her attack was suddenly stopped in such an absurd way.
That was naturally how it would look to a Non-Player Character. A huge number of objects had suddenly appeared out of thin air.
Eleanor and the other Dark Elves recognized me pulling objects from empty air as a spell called an Item Box.
But this wasn't magic. It was simply an inventory function attached to the system, and it cost nothing to use.
Which meant I could do things like this.
Tap!
I stepped on the scattered items and leaped high into the air.
Mercedes quickly spotted me and tried to attack me in midair.
But once again, I poured a huge number of items from my inventory. This time, they were just small pieces of junk.
She could sense her surroundings through mana anyway, but summoning this many obstacles at once made even that difficult.
How did I know? I had tested it myself after learning Mana Detection.
Clang! Clang!
Mercedes swiftly swung her sword and knocked away the obstacles, but I kept scattering them while retrieving the items I had thrown out.
Items weren't the only things I could scatter.
Just like at the smithy, I could scatter Gold in the form of several million gold coins.
"Do you think you can buy time with such petty tricks, human!"
Clang! Clang!
Even while knocking aside countless obstacles, Mercedes seemed able to roughly track my constantly moving position.
Well, I had expected as much. Her Mana Detection was probably at a higher level than mine.
But this was enough.
She might be able to estimate my location, but apparently she couldn't tell exactly what I was doing.
Right now, Mercedes was watching for me to suddenly pop out from between the obstacles and launch a surprise attack.
Without paying too much attention to the various objects raining down, she focused solely on guarding against me rushing her.
Which meant she wouldn't be able to block this thing suddenly flying at her.
Whoosh!
A hand axe I had thrown, passing precisely through the gaps between the obstacles.
* * *
Beings with powerful mana were easier to detect through Mana Detection.
Conversely, inanimate objects that didn't contain powerful mana weren't easily detected.
She must have considered the countless inanimate objects pouring down to be simple misdirection and focused entirely on my position.
That was why she couldn't help noticing the rapidly approaching object too late.
Crunch!
"Ugh!"
Mercedes took the hand axe while completely defenseless, but the wound wasn't serious.
Naturally. Mana Enhancement had likely greatly increased even her defense. A single thrown weapon wouldn't easily become an effective hit.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
I retrieved the items that fell to the ground and dumped them out again. I kicked junk around, tore up the ground, and kept increasing the number of obstacles.
Through the gaps, I continued throwing iron balls, daggers, hand axes, and other projectiles.
"Such pathetic tricks!"
Maybe because she had taken one proper hit, she no longer let her guard down and properly knocked them aside.
But the more she did that, the more overwhelmed she would become. Tracking my position through Mana Detection would grow more difficult too.
Then the move she would make was obvious. Even if she had to force it, she would break through the mountain of items and come after me.
Kaboom!
And just as expected, Mercedes broke through the pile of items with a charge carrying tremendous force.
Too bad that wasn't where I was.
"W-What...?!"
"What, dumbass?"
I sprang out behind Mercedes and swung my sword, cutting her arm.
Slash!
She counterattacked the instant I cut her, and my arm was cut too, but it didn't matter.
If we took wounds of equal severity, I had the advantage because I possessed [Combat Healing].
The reason Mercedes had mistaken my position was simple.
The decoy I had used was [Light Gathering], a skill that gathered nearby light to create a light source.
From the moment she began watching for my thrown weapons, the accuracy of Mercedes's Mana Detection was bound to decrease.
[Light Gathering] was unquestionably a magic skill that used mana, and mana gathered the moment it was activated.
At the same time I used Light Gathering, I deactivated the [Lightning Charge] I had been maintaining, creating a momentary misunderstanding.
"To use such dirty tricks in a sacred duel...!"
"Oh, right. And what you people did was clean?"
Mercedes trembled with anger, perhaps furious at having fallen for such a ridiculous trick.
With a sneer, I continued attacking.
I scattered items like crazy, threw weapons through the gaps, and used [Light Gathering] decoys to mislead her about my position.
But before long, Mercedes was steadily adapting to my tricks and surprise attacks.
Even so, buying time had meaning in itself.
Mana Enhancement was powerful, but it was still a sustained skill. Naturally, maintaining it required mana.
Of course, I was using MP to pull this off too.
But Mercedes had to be using more mana for Mana Enhancement than I was using for [Light Gathering].
It didn't matter if she called it petty or cowardly. That's what strategy was.
Against enemies stronger than me, I found and analyzed every weakness I could before bringing them down.
The moment I entered the seventh floor, this bitch had nearly taken me out.
A forced-defeat event, the uniqueness of solo play, and the Epic Quest route.
A number of special conditions had piled up, but regardless, I had encountered a powerful threat.
So naturally, I had to think of a strategy for dealing with her.
Whoosh!
Once again, I got behind Mercedes and swung my sword at an opening.
But perhaps she had already predicted it, because her sword came at me faster.
Stab!
I forced myself to block it by thrusting out my broken left arm, then brought my sword down.
What did she think I had been training so hard for these past few weeks?
"I told you I'd rip your ears off, you bastard!"
Slash!
My downward strike cut across Mercedes's left ear and shoulder.
Footnotes:
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