Editing Skill Tree Goddess:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 5===

When the combat guild’s deadline for accepting the job had ended, Gilbezos and the others participating in the quest gathered to board a Queen Size wagon. The black-haired boy spoke aloud without thinking.

“You’re kidding.”

You could call it sparse or even deserted. Far fewer people had gathered than he expected.

…The wagon was fairly large, but he still hadn’t expected the entire hunting party to fit in just the one. He hadn’t counted, but were there even 20 people here?

The target was SS-rank, so maybe a lot of adventurers had been reluctant to participate.

But now that Gilbezos was doing this, he had to think about winning.

They grabbed a snack in the wagon while holding a strategy session.

The first to speak was Juina Melonsut, a dancer in a seashell bikini and slitted skirt. The sexy older girl had long, fluffy hair and brown skin. Her hair was mainly a dark brown, but it was dyed lemon yellow on the inside. The 17-year-old girl held metal rods of about a metora in length in her hands. Metal. They were a dancer’s tool used by striking them together like clappers, but they would probably also hurt like hell if she hit you with them. The maracas worn at her hip were probably blunt throwing weapons.

She was older but spoke in a cutesy way. Was that just how she talked, or was it a habit picked up at her job?

“From what I’ve heard, the SS-rank Uroboros-type dragon Yuileen is light type and really big! Word is it’s 50 metora long!”

“Eh?” “Eh?”

Gilbezos and the bearded man perfectly synced their reaction.

…That was a good bit smaller than the S-rank they had seen. When that Lindworm-from had spread its wings, it had been more than 250 metora. With an SS-rank, they had been expecting 1000 metora or something like that.

“Still…this isn’t going to be easy. It’s SS-rank. Ah, hot!?”

“Don’t burn your tongue, Gilbezos. We bought this fish skewer freshly cooked at that food stand, so you want to enjoy it while it’s hot. But you’ll want to blow on it first, okay? Fwoo.”

The brown dancer smiled bitterly at those two as she continued.

“I’ve also heard the Uroboros-form doesn’t do much flying.”

“How much is not much?”

“They normally run and will only fly when cornered. Probably something like a chicken.”

Between flying and non-flying, the former was more of a pain. Especially on the floating Sky Territory. If it could snipe them with its breath while flying around out in the open air…they wouldn’t have many options left. Which was why they were putting together a battle plan to keep that from happening.

The bearded man rubbed his chin and continued.

“There is a large cave near where it is said to live. Supposedly it was originally used to grow white asparagus and to let wine age.”

“And if the dragon goes in there, the ceiling over its head will keep it from flying?”

The 16-year-old must have been bothered by her chest because Boxer Penelope kept tugging at the cloth wrapping with her thumbs as she talked. Apparently she was still growing. Gilbezos wanted to look away.

And the seashell bikini dancer, who he wanted to look away from even more, winked and chimed in.

“For that, I can dance up a storm to draw the dragon’s aggro. By guiding it toward me with the cave’s entrance behind me, it will charge right on in.”

…Hmm. Ideally that’s what would happen, but would it actually work?

“I just hope it doesn’t blast you with its breath from a distance.”

“I’ve planned for that. By hitting it with the trance status effect first, its accuracy will be too low to hit me no matter how many breaths it sends my way. Using my dance!! And once the dragon gets fed up, it should charge at me★”

Well, a dancer who set foot on the battlefield with a bare midriff was probably used to that kind of risky evasive fighting style. Jut looking at her was enough to know her gear didn’t provide much in the way of defense.

“But if this Sky Territory has a cave, does it have a small mountain? Even though it’s floating in the sky?”

“Anything’s possible in nature. There’s a forest and a lake up here too,” said Penelope striking her fists together. The action drew the eye to her chest.

The bearded man kept the discussion going.

“Of course, the dragon will try to leave the cave after realizing its error. Or try to destroy the entire mountain. So once its inside, I want to use that opportunity to ensure it can’t fly. Using part destruction.”

“Then the question is which part exactly.”

Tearing off the dragon’s huge wings…would be difficult. Those individual parts would probably have tens of thousands of HP.

“The horns,” said the man.

“Why?”

“Apparently they are an important organ used for reading the air currents and keeping its balance during flight. And they have significantly less HP than trying to sever the wings or tail. They’re the perfect target.”

The dragon would still be a threat without flight, but they fortunately didn’t have to continue a marathon battle wearing down all of its hundred thousand or even a million HP.

Sleep, faint, or any other way of rendering Yuileen unconscious would be sufficient. Then they could trap it inside that special talisman.

If that was true, they could take a major shortcut along the path of the battle. This was completely different from when they were thrown onto the front line against Balsta without any kind of plan.

“The Seal Talisman, was it? That Saint person really is incredible,” said Gilbezos, holding the item in question between his fingers.

It only looked like a flimsy piece of parchment. It would be hard to find again if he lost it and he honestly wished someone else could look after it, but no one would look him in the eye. Not even the goddess. Forcing the responsibility onto him seemed cruel in his opinion.

The bearded man raised two fingers before speaking again.

“That means we need two teams. The first will keep firing probability-based status effect attacks and hope we’re lucky enough for the sleep or paralysis or whatever to take effect. The second will keep firing high-power magic. Instead of its HP, the idea is to wear down its guard endurance until we break it and get it to faint.”

Since neither option was certain to succeed, they would be doing both. If either one worked, the SS-rank dragon would be defeated.

Gilbezos spoke to the bearded man and Penelope.

“Which one are we?”

“The faint team targeting its endurance. I’m a physical punching specialist and the man’s an other type heavy gunner mage. The dragon Is light type, right? Fire, water, wind, earth, other, light, shadow. See, his attacks will be super effective.”

“Then let’s go with that.”

…Like in the forest, Gilbezos could use status effects to give himself 100% odds of knocking someone out with the slightest touch of a weapon, but he had no guarantee that would work against an SS-rank monster. In fact, he seriously doubted it would work since that was even higher than the Lindworm-form. It would be best to have everyone start attacking with their specialty and, if that didn’t work, change tack.

“Got it. Then we’ll try to hit it with sleep and paralysis and that sort of thing.”

That naturally left the party centered around Dancer Juina Melonsut to be the status effect team. They had a dancer, an assassin, and other jobs that accomplished something (including instant death) at some probability instead of going for a lot of damage, so it was probably the perfect job for them.

The power of inertia groaned loud. The wagon came to a stop and the coachman called out to them.

They had arrived at their destination.

“…”

They all fell silent.

Gilbezos left the wagon and found a dead land.

It appeared to have been a large field to begin with, but everything there was brown and dried up. The ground swelled up and stone steps had been used to adjust the height in places. The brown continued as far as the eye could see.

The only thing that hadn’t withered and rotted were the large windmill and silo made of stone and brick. They sat there abandoned, making the scene look all that more melancholy.

“This may have originally been a testing ground★” said Goddess Seliphenia with a sigh.

“What makes you say that, Lady Seliphenia?”

“Instead of a stable farm growing a single crop, they had a wide variety of vegetables and grains planted here. Dozens if not hundreds of cultivars. They may have been testing to see what grows in the Sky Territory’s different air pressure and temperature. Although it looks like their tests and selective breeding ended in failure.”

Gilbezos recalled the dried up Cure Herbs at the city’s drugstore.

…That was originally a plant growing in the ground, so had it not liked this chilly environment?

Visually following the stone waterway clogged with fallen leaves, he spotted a fairly large lake. Narrow bridges or walkways made of wooden planks crisscrossed the water’s surface, but they had rotted and broken away into the water in many places. They may have originally created square sections of the lake where something had been cultivated.

“Where’s the cave…? Is that it? Wow, it’s a lot bigger than I expected.”

At one side of the scene were some small mountains standing about 200 metora high. It was hard to say if they were natural or if people had built them up out of dirt. The sides of the mountains were sturdy and covered with useless weeds.

“What, are you nervous, Gilbezos?”

The seashell bikini and fluttery skirt dancer laughed.

…This had to be her first time fighting a dragon.

Gilbezos may have been similar before his clash with Balsta. But he and the bearded man knew what it was like, so even the way they breathed differed right now.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll be drawing aggro, so it’ll target me first. So at the very least, you don’t have to worry about being one-shotted right from the start.”

“Shh.”

The bearded man cautioned the 17-year-old. He was staring intently at a distant field that appeared to have once grown corn. It was hard to tell at first because of the camouflage.

They heard some crunching noises.

It was a lot like a big tree being split and smashed between two boulders, but not quite.

That was a bear being crunched within a dragon’s jaws. A bear alone would be enough for the average traveler to prepare for death. The 3-metora beast was thrashing about, but it was helplessly and noisily crushed and chewed between the jaws. It happened all too easily.

The fields were withered and the scenery was dead.

…But this explained how the dragon could make use of it. It was a hunting ground for catching wild prey.

The dragon slowly raised its head which had some dried brown plant wrapped around the horn above its right eye. The 50-metora creature was clearly focused on them now.

It was time to steel themselves.

“Begin the hunt.”