BOTG 113 – Defeat the Apostle Battle: Opening act.

Noel is blocking the giant Dragon’s mighty arm in front of her. the sound of impact almost making it like a dump truck has come crashing on her.
Noel kept her cool and stood her ground in the face of such an unbelievably powerful attack.

“Fuh, that one is quite heavy.”

The Dragon swung his arm again. But this time, instead of blocking it, Noel caught it with her shield’s center and activated her arts.
Arts – [Knockback]; When the shield’s core catches an enemy’s physical attack, a portion of attack power is reflected back to the attacker.
In extreme cases, if you are a skilled tank player, you can negate the damage by utilizing [Knockback] and [Parry].
Those were the most basic yet most vital skills.

(OK, it’s working.)

Noel has made her decision; At this point, she could tank it alone.
This time, they got three tanks in their party. Noel, Tetsuya, and a member of the Dragon’s Fang, and Noel’s defense is hardest among them.
Therefore, an attack that she can’t take alone is an attack that all the players in this raid couldn’t take.

The reason Noel said “at this point” is because the monster in front of her is a raid monster.
The giant Dragon in front of Noel has five bars of HP. That means, at the very least, it had four phases of the action.
Some monsters will raise their status, some will perform a unique move, and some will change their form.
It’s currently unknown which action the giant Dragon will take when its bar is depleted, but that’s something that only matters if they can deal enough damage to deplete it.

Currently, they’ve only figured out maybe about 10% of the Dragon attack patterns.
She wants to keep this condition to at least until they down it to the third HP bar.
Or so, that is what Noel’s wished.

“ORYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAA!”

A blade swung down with a roaring cry leaving a scar on the giant Dragon’s paw.
The attacker group must have arrived while Noel was gathering the hate of the giant Dragon.
She hasn’t managed to decrease the HP by a single dot, yet this one player already began his attack.
As soon as the number of sword slash exceeded ten, the giant Dragon’s HP began to be reduced.

“Yosh! it’s working, it’s working!”

Only one of the three vanguard players was blatantly happy about this as he continued his attack.
Noel saw a young boy in all black gear, wearing a long black coat and holding a sword with a beautiful jet-black blade.

Noel is staring at his figure and sees his avatar’s name. Lucifer, the Fallen Angel. The moment Noel saw that name, she silently turned her face away from him.
She decided to treat him as an innocent boy who had contracted a disease that affects everyone from the eighth grade. {chuunibyo}

Aside from the half-joking thought, it seemed that other attackers had set their positions while Noel was being attacked.
Tetsuya had caught up with her early and was concentrating on gaining hate so that he could switch the hate target at any time, and the rest of the raid must have used this opportunity to set themselves in proper position.
And Judging by the slightly grim look on Rinne’s face from a distance, Lucifer was probably the only one who was getting a little ahead of himself.

However, the amount of damage was small, so Lucifer shouldn’t be able to turn the hate target just yet.
Noel unleashed the provocation skill [Taunt] at the giant Dragon and sent an [OK] hand signal to Tetsuya and Rinne.
The two of them nodded and gave the order to attack to assault group under their respective side.

“Guoooo!”

The sudden wave of attack has made the giant dragon upset.
The nine attackers… correction, eight people worth of damage, excluding Sukuna, who is still on standby, beside Rinne, who was doing her best to suppress her power, visibly reduce the HP of the giant Dragon.
Even so, the giant Dragon’s HP had yet to be reduced by even ten percent. The combined attack continued, and although HP was slowly decreasing, they were not using powerful arts, so the decrease in HP was relatively gentle.

The hate was still directed at Noel.
Noel, however, judged that the hate attackers were accumulating faster than she expected.
Tanks have the skill to distinguish the hate of monsters by color.
The more proficient you are at the skill, the more accurate you can see the amount of hate, and Noel can see that the damage being done by the attacker groups is gathering hate faster than her provoke skill.

While Noel is a solid and stable tank, she only has provoke-type skills to gather hate in exchange.
In short, she doesn’t have the “offensive” tools that Tetsuya has.
This also means that her skill hate’s effect is somehow reduced against this giant Dragon, which put Noel in a difficult position.
This is because her provoke arts have a downside of triggering the opponent’s rage state while it’s in effect to gather hate, which also increases the enemy’s attack power, albeit slightly.

“Noel, what’s wrong?”
“If I continue to gather hate this way, it might be bad!”
“Why?”
“This guy has provoke resistance!”
“Copy that. Hold on a bit longer. I’ll take this!”

Tetsuya, who also has the skill to check hate, noticed an irregularity in Noel’s behavior had decided to take in her position.
Noel’s weakness as a tank is something Tetsuya is well aware of.
Of course, he also knows the secondary effect of the provoke skill.

“Here I go!”

Tetsuya chose to activate a powerful attack art in conjunction with provoke art: [Howl].
His sword was covered with a red flame and accelerated—high-speed, 10-strike attack slices through the face of the giant Dragon.
And in a single breath, he continued to chain [Brave Slasher], a high-level art of the [One-handed Sword] skill. The giant Dragon screamed and backed away as Tetsuya stabbed the powerful fire-attributed art into its face as hard as he could.
Of course, this would not be enough. To gain even more hate, Tetsuya continued to launch more arts.

This time, it’s a four-strike, one-handed sword skill, [Deep Force]. This skill unleashed a heavy slash with a water attribute.

“Eat this!”

Lightning struck Tetsuya’s one-handed sword as he howled wildly.

“[Cross Spark]!”, Tetsuya swung his thunder cladded sword as hard as he can in X-shape trajectory.
And for the first time, the Dragon’s HP was vividly decreased by just one attack.

“His weakness is Lightning?”
“It seems so!”

It wasn’t clear if the decrease was caused by the lightning attack or his three arts combo.
Nevertheless, the damage of the [Cross Spark] finally took the hate away from Noel, and the giant Dragon slowly turned its gaze to Tetsuya.

With the exception of Lucifer, other players never attacked recklessly before the tank had gained enough hate.
This is especially true for Rinne since she is a mage who specializes in the lightning attribute, and while she can be the greatest firepower against Ars Nova, she is also the easiest to gain hate on than anyone else.
No one can say for sure that the lightning attribute is the weakness of the giant Dragon, of course, but the possibility is high. At least they know that it will accumulate hate faster than any other attributes.

“Rinne!”
“I know!”

Tetsuya doesn’t have enough time to give detailed instructions in the middle of a battle. But He believes Rinne has witnessed what just occurred from her position.
Relieved by the immediate answer, Tetsuya activated his provocation skill to gain even more hate without any worries in his heart.
Noel, who was in front of Tetsuya, blocked the air-cannon-like breath that the giant Dragon released.

“Still the same after all!”
“Of course, it is! did you even need to question it!”

The two tanks, supporting each other as they crossed their arms, smiled fearlessly.

“Well, Erumi. What should we do?”

Leo and Erumi of the Round Table are in charge of the giant Dragon’s left hind leg.
Leo asked while waving his two-handed sword, and Erumi replied while dancing with two rapiers.

“You can do whatever you want, Leo.”

In contrast to her relaxed atmosphere, Erumi never stops her furious barrage of attacks.
Although she didn’t use any arts, Erumi was the one who had the greatest quantity of hits in the current raid.

“u~~mm, other than the attributes attacks, it’s surprisingly hard to get past its defense. “
“Judging by what Tetsuya did, it seems his weakness is lightning. Unfortunately, it’s an attribute that isn’t found in the [Rapier dual wield] skill.”
“To be exact, I haven’t found one yet.”
“That’s a shame then.”

When Erumi glared at Leo, who was blatantly half-teasing her, Leo responded by shrinking his shoulders.

“Hmm, judging by the tank reaction, it looks like they’re having a hard time gaining hate…”
Erumi muttered to herself as she looked at the two tanks as they repeatedly made careful switches and earned each other’s hate.

“That’s part of it, but I think the hate this Dragon directed at the tank is unusually slow too. I’m not sure how agile that Dragon with that size is, but judging from the first leap it showed, it’s not too agile. Or rather, this one is so slow he doesn’t even look at us.”
“Well, because it’s still playing with the tanks. And we haven’t managed to cut down even one of its hp bar.”

Both Leo and Erumi do not like the fact they were playing right into the enemy’s pace.
The tank needs to manage the hate, but at this pace, Leo knew it would be difficult to defeat the enemy within two hours.
Unlike Leo, Erumi is a swordsman who specializes in firepower. Her main strength lies in her ability to deal a huge amount of damage with a barrage of high-powered arts. Erumi also hates making ineffective attacks like this.
It’s not so much to call this frustrating, but she thinks it’s more efficient to do this with a frontal attack than to let the tank continue to manage the hate in their poor state.

“What about Shuya? I thought I would be able to see something unusual like his serious side; I was a bit disappointed.”

It’s not hard to imagine that Shuya, who is always in lazy mode and never takes anything seriously, is participating in this event. Shuya is only motivated when Arthur is involved.
Regardless of how bad Shuya said about Arthur, he never turned down a request or refused to gather information for her.
That’s why it was obvious that Arthur was the reason why he even participating, but there were too many mysterious things about Shuya that even his clan members didn’t know.
They could only say for sure that Shuya’s true style was not a one-handed swordsman with a shield.

“I’m sure he has his own agenda. Just like Sukuna-chan, who’s not taking part in any attacks.”

Leo showed a certain understanding of why Shuya was reluctant to talk about it, but Erumi suddenly frowned when she heard his comment.
Leo is confused at Erumi reaction face, which is quite ugly.

“What is it, Erumi? If you have something to say, say it.”
“I don’t want to be called ‘-chan’ by a man I’ve never met before. It’s a little gross, to be honest.”
“I will hit you, bastard!”
“iyaa – scary.”
“You’re annoying!”

Leo’s angry voice drew the stares of some of the players who were in charge of other areas.
While continuing to attack while minding their hate level, Erumi slowly distanced herself from Leo, who almost crushed his two-handed sword handle.

TL note
[Deep Force] {my inner thoughts: that’s cosmetic brand} in a second later – water attribute attack…. I see what you did there author-san.

Share

You may also like...

4 Responses

  1. Azure says:

    Ahhh, wonder what’s happening with Sukuna, hope she’s just preparing her club, I can’t type it’s name :(. And not experiencing a breakdown like that one chapter

  2. JustCallMeDaBoss says:

    I guess sukuna is waiting to unleash the 10 hit combo?

  3. JustCallMeDaBoss says:

    Ohhh yeah a chuuni kid lost in his own world that’s probably gonna fuck things up later … You hate to see it people that don’t really get mmo’s and don’t care to actually learn how to play and fuck everyone up.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *