Chapter 30
#30. Ruler of Lightning
The automatic defense skill that magic-related classes always seem to have.
A lizardman was using the barrier that bolsters durability so he wouldn't get taken down in one blow by a physically superior foe.
Does he have no conscience? He's a warrior, yet he has a skill that counters warriors.
Could the weapon he's holding actually be a staff instead of a spear? For something like that, he's got muscles like a maniac.
The fact that its element is electricity is another problem. None of my resistance skills cover electricity.
And because it's lightning, there's also the chance that getting hit will slow my movements.
Of course, I won't know for sure until I actually take a hit.
Anyway, let's figure out how to break that shameless barrier first. There's definitely some kind of limitation.
-Tap-tap-tap!
I put some distance between myself and the lizardman charging at high speed, then pulled a few rocks from my inventory and threw them.
At least his speed wasn't that great, so I should be able to keep my distance and harass him freely.
-Crackle!
The rocks I threw were shot down by lightning again. Since it had come to this, let's see how many times he can block them.
I had plenty of rocks stored in my inventory. This time, I pulled out five small rocks at once and threw them in a scattered pattern.
Three of the five rocks were shot down, and the remaining two simply missed.
But in truth, even if I'd stood still, only two rocks would have actually hit. I had thrown them that way on purpose.
Given that he bothered to block rocks that wouldn't even threaten him if they hit, it seemed like the skill was automatic, not manual.
And from the fact that it intercepted rocks that would have missed anyway, I can roughly tell how often the barrier triggers.
And naturally, that barrier can't last forever.
Is it time-limited, limited by the number of uses, or a toggle skill that stays active until the MP runs dry?
Thanks to the speed difference, the first strike is mine anyway. Let's take our time and strip away its tricks one by one.
-Whoosh!
This time, I threw a shield instead of a rock. Because it's so much heavier, the power of the same throwing attack is completely different.
The lizardman's lightning slammed into the shield flying toward him. With a crackling sound, the shield bounced back.
So instead of shattering like a rock, it just gets knocked back by the lightning?
The power of the lightning emitted by the barrier seems to be constant regardless of the projectile's type or force.
-Krrk!
Maybe he didn't like my one-sided barrage, because the lizardman rushed me even faster than before.
I took out a spare shield from my inventory, equipped it, and charged in with my longsword raised.
If the barrier's activation interval was what I thought, I should be able to break it with a thrust rather than a slash.
I used my go-to charge skill, Sword Charge, and aimed for his heart.
Since he probably thought I'd keep spamming cheap ranged attacks, confusion flickered across the lizardman's face.
A perfect thrust against a lizardman who wasn't prepared for a counterattack—this has to work.
-Crackle!
However, my Sword Charge sliced through empty air. More precisely, it went straight through the flashing lightning effect.
The lizardman, turned into lightning, slipped past my attack and stabbed me from behind with his spear.
What the hell, are you seriously immune to physical attacks?
**
I dodged the spear stabbing in from behind by instinct alone, then leaped back and changed stance.
[Intuition Lv.8]
The Intuition skill warns me with its peculiar tingling sensation whenever an attack comes from outside my field of vision, just like now.
When it was low-level, I wondered what kind of skill it even was, but now that it's reached level 8, there isn't a more broken skill than this.
There had been plenty of moments while fighting high-ranking warrior lizardmen when it felt like they had eyes in the back of their heads.
But now I can move as if I have eyes on my back.
-Swish!
When the thrust missed, the lizardman quickly changed his stance and swung the spear horizontally.
His attack transition speed was quite fast. Skill-wise, he wasn't any worse than the high-ranking lizardman with the red band.
An attack like a swing of the spear shaft could probably be taken and countered, but I just dodged for now.
Since he used lightning, there might be electricity running through that spear shaft too.
More importantly, this wasn't an opponent I should be brawling with at such close range. If I slipped up, I'd end up inside the barrier's range.
I threw the hand axe hanging at my waist and kicked off the ground to widen the distance.
“Phew.”
Fuck, that really startled me. What the hell was that just now.
He's not some Logia-type Devil Fruit user from a pirate manga, so how the hell is he dodging attacks by turning into lightning?
If that were real, wouldn't he be impossible to beat? That manga's protagonist only won because he was rubber.
No, even so, he can't be truly immune to physical attacks. It must definitely be some evasion skill with a limitation.
Either it can't be used consecutively, or it's limited in uses. One of the two has to be true.
The biggest problem was still the barrier. The moment I stepped into its effective range, I risked getting shocked, so there was nothing I could do.
“Maybe I should switch weapons.”
I put my sword into my inventory and took out a spear similar to the one the lizardman used.
[Basic Spearmanship Lv. 8]
I had learned spear technique just for a moment like this.
**
Once I started seriously sparring with the high-ranking warrior lizardmen, I quickly began to feel the limits of my weapon.
More precisely, I realized just how important reach is in close combat.
The lizardmen used everything from swords and shields to axes and hammers, but the weapon they used most was the spear.
Besides that, all the lizardmen were massive brutes standing nearly 2 meters tall.
With their superior physiques and even longer weapons to maintain distance, they were extremely troublesome.
Thanks to that, my forced close-quarters skills improved a lot, but a sword still had clear limits as a weapon.
So, since my swordsmanship growth had also slowed down, I started trying weapons other than swords.
The first one was the spear.
Conveniently, I had excellent instructors. The lizardmen's most commonly used weapon was the spear, after all.
I learned spear technique through actual combat, clashing spears head-on, and eventually got the Spearmanship skill up to level 8.
It wasn't just spears.
After getting used to the spear, I also learned how to handle axes and blunt weapons, and even how to fight using only a shield.
I still handled the sword-and-shield combo best, but now I outclassed the high-ranking lizardman warriors in most weapon techniques.
My class may just be Warrior, but I'm practically a Weapon Master.
Though calling me a master would be a stretch since I was still stuck at beginner level across the board, this was excellent for the third floor.
When I took on the lizardman-style spear stance, the white lizardman adjusted his grip on his spear in surprise.
-Whoosh!
I rushed the startled bastard first and thrust my spear.
I kept my distance so I wouldn't enter the electric barrier's range, and used spear technique like an outboxer.
This bastard looked pretty skilled with the spear too, but odd openings showed up here and there.
“Ah, now I get it.”
As I learned spear technique, I found that lizardman spear fighting had its own forms, or set sequences.
The more seasoned the lizardman, the smoother those sequences were, and the better he covered the gaps between them.
But this guy, maybe because of that broken lightning barrier, had his defense fall apart a lot when he moved outside those sequences.
-Crackle!
And if I attacked into that opening, he'd use that earlier lightning-transformation dodge to change position.
He covered the gaps in his spear technique with skill rather than experience.
But after seeing it like this several times, the pattern showed itself too. Looks like long fights are new to him?
-Swish!
I predicted where the lizardman would be after using his evasion skill to get behind me, turned around, and swung my sword.
It'd be a waste not to switch gear mid-battle and exploit openings after learning all sorts of weapon techniques.
I had already figured out how many times he could use the lightning-form evasion in a row. He couldn't dodge and got his face cut open.
And when I threw the hand axe just now, I was able to completely confirm the weakness of the electric barrier.
The lightning it fired when you stepped into the barrier's range wasn't all that strong.
I had been thinking I wanted to raise electric resistance anyway.
-Crackle-crackle!
As soon as I stepped into the barrier's range, the lightning it fired pierced through my body.
It was definitely tingling and all, but not to the point I couldn't endure it. I threw my spear aside and raised the dagger at my waist.
But just as I was about to stab the dagger toward his neck, the lizardman's face twisted strangely.
I had fought lizardmen so much by now that I could roughly tell what that twisted expression meant too.
That was a grin.
Not a smile from happiness, but the sneer that appears when an opponent falls right into the trap you've prepared.
“Shit.”
A shining bolt of lightning coiled around me. I could tell at a glance—he'd been hiding a trump card capable of subduing me.
The lightning around me formed a ring, then rained lightning down inside it.
-Crackle-crackle-crackle!!
The dagger slipped from my hand. It didn't hurt much, but every muscle in my body was trembling.
A skill that uses electricity to paralyze and subdue opponents who enter its range? It's the worst possible counter for a melee warrior.
The white lizardman strode toward me leisurely, wearing his usual mocking grin, as I stood unable to move, scorched by electricity.
-Keh-keh, keh!
He picked up the dagger I'd dropped and raised it high, as if telling me to dodge if I could.
He seemed to know very well just how broken this paralysis trap was in fights between warriors.
Which is why he was deliberately exposing an opening with such smug confidence.
But, you little lizard bastard.
What level do you think my Paralysis Resistance is?
-Thuk!
The new dagger I took out of my inventory pierced the lizardman's neck and triggered a critical effect.
I had been a little cautious because I'd never been hit by electric attacks before, but in the end paralysis was only a secondary effect.
It probably wasn't enough to break through my resistance, which I'd built by force-feeding myself a cocktail of all kinds of poisons, paralysis poison included.
Well, that was only natural for a third-floor field boss.
[Paralysis Resistance Lv. 11]
There was no way a double-digit resistance skill would be broken by something this trivial.
The electric barrier I'd feared, and the evasion skill too, were all flash and no substance once I looked closer.
“What was your name again, Ruler of Lightning?”
What the hell are you going to rule at this level, you pathetic little lizard bastard.