Itai no Wa 200
Defense Specialization and Pretending Not to Look
Several hours go by after Maple started to poison the entire room.
The ‘Venom Capsule’ that has been protected by ‘Predator’ and the slime quickly grows to such a size that nothing can be done to stop it.
Maple returns the ‘Predator’ as it has fulfilled its role, and so far, everthing goes according to her plan.
Just like she said a moment ago, she’s good at winning by persistence, and nearly filled the room to the brim with poison. But she’s not getting the results she wants.
“The poison doesn’t seem to work? Oh…”
However, the twins continue to attack with their swords, spears, and fire as if nothing happened, despite being completely covered by poison.
Maple keeps a close watch on the twins, but their movements don’t seem to have gotten any slower.
As time passes, their attacks begin to shift their target, and are aimed at the slime instead of Maple.
For better or worse, the slime is still being manipulated by Maple, since it’s naturally resistant to poison.
The twins change their target because far too many of the weapons that they throw are getting destroyed.
The ‘Venom Capsule’ that covers the room absorbs the twins’ attacks, preventing them from reaching the slime.
And the twins’ attacks are not strong enough to damage the ‘Venom Capsule’ that keeps on growing up to its limits.
Maple seems to be in a situation in which she cannot be defeated, but at the same time she cannot defeat the enemy.
“Hmm, what should I do? They keep avoiding my attacks… I wonder if I can hit them if I get really close to them?”
Thinking about trying that approach, Maple pushes her way through the poison and advances upward to the other side of the room.
Since the entire room is submerged in poison, Maple can move in the air as if she was swimming.
“Just in case, let’s try many things that they might not escape from!”
Maple takes a handful of tags out of her inventory and spreads them into the sea of poison.
“I wonder if I can disturb them with exorcism tags… will this work?”
Then, Maple lays a large number of random items to serve as obstacles, and finishes by making the slime grow to its limit, wrapping around the area where the twins are several times.
“Alright! Well then, please excuse me.”
Maple opens a hole into the slime and gets inside it in order to control it.
Then, just like that, she gets close to one of the twins, and holds her sword still near her abdomen.
“Please hit! ‘Hydra’!”
The lump of poison that Maple fires runs rampant around the room, which is already nearly full of poison.
Naturally, it stirs around Maple over and over.
After a short while, Maple begins to check around the area to make sure that the attack was effective.
“Did I miss? Where… Ah! Is that…?”
On that place Maple found the twins, pierced by the slime, with many of the items that Maple had scattered embedded in their bodies, and barely surviving.
“U… ugh…?”
For some reason, Maple can only help that something out of place.
“A… are you alright?”
As Maple becomes anxious and extends her arm to poke one of the twin’s leg, they suddenly begin to speak.
“Ah… you caught us.”
“You really got us now.”
“Well, playtime is over then.”
Just as they say that, light begins to converge around the twins and they begin to shine brightly.
“Let’s play again sometime.”
Leaving those words behind, the twins disappear.
Maple cannot help but stay speechless as she sees that happen.
“Ah! I see, they didn’t have HP bars, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve defeated them… Oh, there’s a treasure chest?”
In short, these twins were just like that snail she had encountered back in a previous event, save for their means of attack.
That’s a detail that Maple had overlooked, since she was so busy falling into traps and thinking about how to pay those twins back for what they had done.
“But…”
Before heading for the treasure chest, Maple drops to the ground.
Then, as she cancels the ‘Venom Capsule’, all of the large items and the low-rank materials suddenly fall to the ground as well.
“Was I not supposed to do this? … I… I have to hurry back!”
Maple hurriedly picks up her items and materials, throws them into her inventory, and runs away from the room without checking the contents of the treasure chest.
Then, on the other side.
A few days later, the GMs make some corrections.
“That Maple! Being like a living bug is good and all, but abusing bugs is not good!”
“Being inside the slime…?”
“That’s mostly because of how the slime is programmed! Why did you put such a thing inside a random trap?”
“Even if you can attack it, if you can’t slip through it, you’ll be buried.”
“If not for that detail, the Capsule could have been broken as well…”
“Calm down. Let’s adjust the Ghost Twins warping… The slime can be left as it is. There’s no problem with the trap itself either, its error cannot be reproduced.”
This is how the voices fly past each other.
As a result of this, they report that the game will enter a short period of maintenance, during which the area around the slime and some bosses will be corrected.