Chapter 36
#36. Warrior Bro
We did defeat the golem without much trouble, but honestly, the three of them weren't much to write home about.
It was only natural that their specs were lower than mine and their attack power weaker, so I had no intention of pointing that out.
Their skill outside of raw specs was just lacking. I wasn't sure about Kim Jina, the mage, but the two in front were the problem.
First up was the level 45 gladiator, Kim Jinseok.
Even if there was a separate tank, using dual swords as your weapon—does that make any sense?
I had once practiced various weapon arts on the 3rd Floor and even tried training in a technique that used two swords at once.
And before long I decided it had zero practical use and quit. Dual swords are a crappy technique.
Setting aside the drawback of giving up a shield, the situation where you can actually make full use of two swords at once just doesn't come up.
It seems like two swords would double your attack patterns and let you unleash flashy combos, but that's just an illusion.
In fact, your movement becomes far more monotonous than when wielding a single sword with both hands.
With a two-handed sword, you can unleash an endless string of combos just by moving your wrists and elbows smoothly.
To perform combos with dual swords, you practically have to twist your whole body into knots and make a damn fool of yourself just to barely make it work.
I did try finding a way to make the most of both swords, but the result I eventually reached was ridiculous.
The most efficient method was to use one sword entirely for offense and devote the other entirely to defense.
In other words, dual swords are a downgraded version of sword and shield.
Of course, there is also a method of using two swords of different lengths to pull off irregular attacks and catch people off guard.
But if you're going to do that, you'd get even more unconventional and varied attacks by using a one-handed axe instead of a sword.
What's more, the dual swords Kim Jinseok uses are two identical longswords.
If he were using two short swords, there might at least be some advantages, but not even that.
The funny thing is that Kim Jinseok even carries a small shield.
He says he switches to sword and shield when the situation calls for giving up damage and tanking instead, but that's just absurd.
Moving on, there was the obnoxious level 44 Paladin.
This bastard clearly carries that hammer around as decoration.
There's nothing wrong with focusing on tanking, but even in situations where he could land a meaningful hit with the hammer, he never even reaches for it.
He just keeps blocking with a shield in one hand; if that's all he's going to do, shouldn't he ditch the hammer and just use a two-handed shield?
It would almost make more sense if what he held in one hand wasn't a hammer but a wand shaped like a hammer.
And finally, the problem they shared.
They use their skills too much.
Of course, you do need to use skills a lot to raise proficiency, but even taking that into account, they were using them unnecessarily.
Skills tied to Mastery work by having your body automatically move into a technique when you perform a specific motion.
In other words, once you use a skill, you can't change the motion midway through.
We were lucky there was only one golem; what would they do if another suddenly appeared and butted in?
Beyond that, every move they made in combat was so careless I couldn't even list them all.
A fighting style that takes it for granted your party members will cover your weak points.
If you wanted to put a nice spin on it, you could call it trust, but all I saw was a weakness to variables.
Was I only feeling this way because I was a solo player?
I didn't know.
**
Even after that, golems kept appearing one by one at regular intervals to block our path.
Each time, the three of them put together their attacks and brought the golems down, and the results were pretty good.
[Festival Coin]
[Meteor Stone Fragment]
[Golem's Golden Fragment]
This time, one golem dropped three items. Kim Jina was delighted when she heard what had dropped.
“Wow, another fragment? That's our third one already—this is amazing.”
“Is that a lot?”
“Yes. In dungeons at this level, the main haul is usually two or three drops when you beat the boss.”
She was bouncing around, saying we'd already gotten three even before beating the boss, so we were incredibly lucky.
“Do you maybe have some kind of luck buff on you? Why are they dropping so well?”
Ah, come to think of it, I hadn't considered that. I was always eating White Rolls for every meal, so I always had a luck buff on me.
When I told Kim Jina that, she made an even bigger fuss, saying it really did seem like the drops were coming out too well.
She even went so far as to call me a luck totem and kept squealing about how glad she was that I'd joined them.
“Mr. Jinhyuk, you don't have to do anything today. If you just let your luck buff rub off on us, that's one person's worth! No, two!”
The obnoxious Paladin bastard made an uncomfortable face, but I naturally ignored him. So what?
I get why he's being pissy, but understanding that doesn't mean I have to put up with it.
He hasn't really crossed the line yet, so I'm letting it slide, but if he keeps acting so snide, I might not be able to hold back either.
A little later, while I was walking through the dungeon with an excited Kim Jina, something unexpected happened.
-Rumble!
The ruin floor began to tremble. It was similar to when the golems appeared, but the scale was absurdly larger.
That paladin bastard quickly raised his shield and hammer, and Kim Jinseok also raised his dual swords...ugh, every time I see dual swords, I let out a sigh.
Anyway, since we didn't know where the monster would come from, we took positions with Kim Jina in the center.
-KWAANG!
The trembling ground soon split open with a loud noise.
And from between the cracked ground, a huge hand rose up. It looked similar to the hands of the golems we'd fought so far.
That wasn't all. One after another, golem hands sprang from the ground, then slowly rose up and surrounded us.
Let's see—one, two, three, four, five, six... quite a few.
“W-what is this...? A trap? There was nothing like this in the walkthrough!”
Kim Jina was flustered by the many golems. As expected, once a variable showed up, she couldn't judge properly.
The Tower of Trials had been fully cleared for over ten years, but the Festival mini-dungeons were a different story.
Since the event itself only runs for a short period once every three years, no strategy had really been established.
Even if some information had leaked, something like a special system that only triggers this rarely wouldn't have been known.
“Jina, hide behind me!”
The Paladin dragged the startled Kim Jina behind him and thrust his shield forward. He's still trying to pose in a situation like this.
No matter how you looked at it, this was a situation where the tank should be out front, clearing a path. What was he trying to do, just hold the line there?
No, this was perfect. Just keep standing there with your shield up.
-Thud.
I fiddled with my sword for a moment, then stepped forward. Then the obnoxious Paladin suddenly raised his voice.
“What are you doing, you damn Warrior Bro? You want to die or something?!”
Oh, what, he's telling me to hide too? He might be rude, but is he actually not such a bad guy?
“I'm not going to die, so stay put, you holy cockroach bastard.”
I snorted with a laugh and pulled a heavy iron ball out of my inventory.
**
Throwing has been one of my go-to attack methods since the 1st Floor.
For a soloing Warrior Bro like me, any ranged attack I could get was desperately needed.
The iron ball in my hand was an item you could get on the 6th Floor, a junk item that wouldn't even fetch much if sold at a shop.
But paired with my [Throwing] skill, which I'd honed over time, it became a means of attack far stronger than most weapons.
My opponent was a golem that was big and stupid, and it even had a clear weak point: the core in its chest.
The core was weak enough to shatter in two hits from Kim Jina's Magic Missile.
I didn't know exactly how strong Kim Jina was, but I could roughly guess from the party's overall level.
I tensed my shoulders and hurled the iron ball in my right hand with all my strength.
-Boom!
With a sound like a bomb going off, the golem's chest—the part containing the core—was blown to pieces.
As expected, my throw was stronger than Kim Jina's magic attack.
I put away the sword I'd been fiddling with and pulled out a few more iron balls I'd prepared in my inventory.
-Boom! Boom! Boom!
Every time I threw one iron ball, one golem after another went down.
They'd said the recommended level was 40 to 50, but since these were basically just trash mobs, they were ridiculously weak. The core's durability was way too low.
Unless I threw with all my strength, it would be hard to break one in a single hit, and I was throwing iron balls, not boulders, after all.
At this rate, I probably could've cleared it easily as a solo run.
[Who dares cause a disturbance in my temple!]
Once I smashed every golem that had crawled out of the ground, a system message suddenly appeared before my eyes.
A huge, statue-like figure made entirely of gold crawled out, splitting open the crack where the golems' hands had burst through.
[BOSS - Ruler of Shattered Gold]
It was the mini-dungeon boss I'd seen on the open community. I drew my sword again.
“Boss! Let's fight too, hurry!”
“No need. Just stay right there.”
I waved off Kim Jina, who was trying to jump in late. What was there to help with now?
I didn't need help or anything, so just watch.
This is how a solo Warrior Bro fights.