Chapter 24

Chapter 24 – Evasion Arts

Translator/Editor: Mana

I recalled Force’s advice in my head .

“That’s why if you observe Jin’s techniques closely, you might just find yourself easily learning the evasion arts…”

Honestly, it wasn’t like the usual Force .

Though it isn’t very nice of me to say this after receiving advice, it was so out of character for him . His tone was so unfamiliar, it sounded funny coming out of him .

That was probably why his words sounded even more sincere, helping me understand that he was thinking for me .

It was Force’s own way of encouraging me, the most he could .

If I didn’t accept it sincerely, it’d come back to bite me in the ass .

Keeping these thoughts in mind, I carefully observed Jin’s fighting .

Lava flowed at the bottom of the cliff, its red colour glaringly bright . The heat flickering from the magma sweat to drip from my forehead . Every breath I took burned my throat painfully .

With the features of the inside of an active volcano, it was an environment harsher than any floor so far . A lava flow that meant immediate death if you fell . Dangers like that were spread throughout the scorching hot caves .

Right here, on the seventh floor .

The situation of constantly standing at death’s doorstep wore away at the mind while the hot temperatures made all the moisture in the body evaporate as sweat .

However, such things were no hindrance to my observations of Jin’s techniques .

“‘Withdraw’—”

Jin used an evasion art to widen the distance with a golem blowing red gas in every direction . Then he opens his mouth and exhales .

“—‘Shukuchi’ . ”

After seeing the golem halt in its attack, he closed the distance . In response, the golem attempted to avoid the approaching thread by throwing out a high-speed punch—

“‘Stream’ . ”

The fist flew past Jin so smoothly, it was as if the golem was avoiding him . There was only one arm’s length between him and the first . The black sword clenched in Jin’s hand writhed as it passed by . It was the effect of ‘Shapeshifting – Mineral’, changing the blade .

The sharpened tip pierced through the core of the golem .

Jin pulled his blade out of the golem, retreating five steps back before the rock puppet completely stopped moving . A huge pile of rocks crumbled down from the top .

The rocks that formed the head hit the ground . At that sound, I finally snapped out of my awed state . I was concentrating a lot harder than I thought .

I replayed the scenery of Jin’s battle in my head, going over the techniques and tricks and things like that .

Jin used three arts in this battle .

The thief and assassin jobs tended to have a higher number of arts that could be used in one battle compared to other close-range jobs like swordsmen and knights . Therefore, this number was not a problem .

What was important was the features of the art .

‘Withdraw’ was an evasion art . Like its name, its objective is to widen the distance from the enemy . As long as one foot touched the ground, the requirements for activation were fulfilled and your body would be thrown backwards . With experience, the distance of the jump can be extended and jumping position can vary .

—‘Shukuchi’ . This one wasn’t an evasion skill . It was an art that focused solely on closing the distance to the enemy . The basic fighting style of thief and assassins was to use this essential art and connect it to an attack right after .

‘Stream’ was an evasion and counterattack art . It had the effect of evading the enemy’s attack and throw them off balance, disrupting their attack rhythm . There were two methods of activating it, either by evading while touching the enemy with a weapon or part of your body or dodging at the last second without making contact with the enemy .

There were other well-renowned counterattack arts such as ‘Beatdown’, but Jin seemed to prefer to use ‘Stream’ .

Generally speaking, ‘Stream’ was of a higher difficulty to learn than ‘Beatdown’, so this was probably proof of his skills .

Other than that, there were a whole bunch of other arts that Jin used in the battles preceding the golem .

The evasion arts ‘Sync Walk’ and ‘Phantom’, ‘Climb’ that was used to run up the bodies of large monsters, the attack art ‘Backslide’, etc . Each of the arts was mastered to a super high standard, surprising me with how perfect of an assassin Jin was .

Wiping away the sweat that had built up from the hot air and excitement with a sleeve, I took a water bottle out from the item bag at my waist and chugged it down at once . Then, a voice called out to be from the corner of my eye . It was Roslia .

“I’m thirsty too . Please give me some . ”

I took out her own water bottle from the item bag and threw it at her . For some reason, she had a slightly disappointed look on her face .

“I wouldn’t have minded using Note’s water bottle…” Roslia complained sadly .

I would have minded…

When I unintentionally looked back, I noticed I was exposed to Erin’s unhappy gaze . I broke out in a cold sweat .

It wasn’t like I was flirting or anything . I didn’t do anything from my side… It was Roslia who started flirting herself! I wanted to say that . But because that would probably lead to trouble, I refrained…

At this rate, it was only a matter of time before I was put into a harsh situation . I decided to change the topic by force .

“S-So like, item bags are really convenient, huh…” I said in a complete monotone . Even I was surprised .

Thankfully, Jin received my obviously unnatural conversation starter and continued the topic .

“Come to think of it, it’s Note’s first time using the item bag, right?”

“Yeah…”

I placed a hand on the item bag at my waist . The only ones in this party that held an item bag were me and Neme . The two people who had the least chance of directly fighting .

That, and item bags were simply expensive in value .

Item bags . It was the general term for tools that could hold a certain amount of items, with no regards to their weight . There was a limit to the number of items that could be stuffed inside and the items themselves were limited to non-living items, but there was no mistaking that it was a very useful tool . Unable to be created by human hands, it was a dungeon item that could only be obtained within the dungeons . Supply was extremely low compared to the demand, so its market price was set absurdly high .

It was said that if you found an item bag in a dungeon and sold it, you could easily afford to buy a stately mansion with the money .

That was why even in the town of Puriff, where dungeon items were a dime a dozen, they were barely in circulation and priced extraordinarily high, to the point that even the ‘Arrivers’ only were able to obtain two . Conversely, it could be said that they were “even” able to obtain two .

My item bag was packed with food, water, spare weapons, and valuable items found in the dungeon . There were also items for an overnight stay if the exploration was prolonged . Neme’s item bag was packed similarly .

Just imagining losing this bag was enough to send shivers down my spine . But no matter how chilling the fear felt, it couldn’t beat the heat of this floor .

As I was distracted by the heat, Roslia called out to me .

“Note, can you hand me a towel?”

I immediately handed it to Roslia . She took the towel and wiped the sweat from her face . Since her job was a paladin, she had to wear heavy armour . She must have felt the heat more than anyone else, covered in armour like that . The amount of sweat flowing from her reflected that .

After wiping her face, Roslia stuck the towel inside her collar and started to wipe the sweat on the inside of her armour . The sweat stain spread on her black inner collar .

“Note, I can’t reach my back, can you wipe it for me?”

Immediately after, Roslia dropped a bomb on me . She handed me a damp towel as is .

Wasn’t that borderline out? Even if it was for the purpose of wiping sweat, touching the inside of a girl’s clothes was…

Roslia turned her back to me and straightened up . Looking closely, sweat was dripping down her nape . The faint smell of sweat wafted towards me . It wasn’t an enchantingly sweet aroma, but for some reason the smell coming from Roslia made me want to breathe it in forever—

“I’m really hot and stuffy . Please help me . ”

One bomb dropped from Roslia wasn’t enough . Not expecting the second attack, I drew my legs back .

Wasn’t her phrasing really erotic just now?! Was wiping sweat such a dirty act?!

That shouldn’t have been the case… This was not an erotic action . This was safe .

There was no way wiping the sweat from a party member would count as an erotic action! If anything, I started to think I was strange for thinking this way . It meant that I was looking at Roslia as the opposite sex, through perverted eyes . That wasn’t good at all .

Yeah, let’s just wipe it . Not because I want to wipe her sweat, but as a favour to another party member .

I reached my hand out to her and took a step forward . Her scent tickled my nose even more .

Wait, wait! Wait a minute here!

This has to be out after all! I was starting to get excited!

Let’s stop . It was impossible . There was no way I could reach inside Roslia’s inner shirt without any dirty thoughts…

As I was worrying, a lifeline was offered to me from out of nowhere .

“Yes yes! I’ll do it! I’ll wipe down Roslia’s body!”

It was Force . At his expression of interest, Roslia came to her senses .

“Ah, it’s fine . I’ll do it myself . ”

She took the towel I held in my right hand .

That was the only time I had felt deeply grateful for Force’s lust . If he hadn’t interrupted, I would have definitely lost to the temptation .

In reality, deep in my heart, I was full of regret at having let the chance to wipe Roslia’s back escape .

Today too, I have yet to evade Jin’s attack even once . Frustratingly, this fact was now a matter of course .

While feeling such sorrow again today, I watched Jin return to the party house .

We had just finished our usual post-dungeon-exploration practice . As usual, I wasn’t able to grasp any sense of evasion, much less lay a hand .

The only thing that was different was the actions I was about to take .

After receiving Force’s advice yesterday, I burned the image of Jin’s fighting into my eyes .

If I couldn’t avoid Jin’s attacks without using arts, I could just use arts to avoid them . Like Force said, there was no one particular way to learn arts .

“Now… shall I start…?”

The reason I sent Jin back first was so that I could practice evasion arts now . Staying back and obtaining Jin’s techniques through imitation .

Since I had been causing enough trouble for Jin, I decided not to tell him about this . If I said I was staying back to practice arts, he would probably insist on staying too . I couldn’t bother him any more than this . With a random excuse like “I’ll rest a bit and go back to the party house”, I sent Jin home first .

From here on, I will practice alone .

“For now, I’ll start with ‘Withdraw’ practice…”

It was an art Jin had used today, and I had decided to practice it first as it seemed the easiest to learn .

If I could avoid Jin’s attack even once, I would be able to narrow down the feeling of evasion . Rather than practising several arts at the same time today, I decided to focus on one art at once .

“‘Withdraw’!”

I moved my body the way I remembered Jin did . Putting my strength in my right foot, I kicked the ground to jump backwards—

However, as I landed and checked the distance I had travelled, it was just the length of one jump . This was no different from a regular jump backwards…

“It’s useless… Putting aside the jump distance, I have to increase my speed to evade attacks first…”

I was even surprised myself at how bad I was . But there was no point in being depressed about it . I just needed to practice from here .

After that, I jumped and thought . Over and over .

In order to get closer to Jin’s arts, I reflected on the points I had to fix and changed it the next time I executed it .

I continued repeating that until it was time to eat the dinner that Erin made .