STGB Episode 528

Escape Plan

It’s been a while since one of my comrades has received a stat upgrade.

After Erwin had monopolized the spotlight after consuming the Chaos Essence, this event seemed positive to me.

Well, I’d need a proper analysis of the essence’s specs to know for sure.

I was about to approach Aynar and ask her in detail about the changes, when-

“Jandel.”

“…Huh?”

Feeling an inexplicable chill, I turned around to find Amelia glaring at me with cold eyes.

“I want to talk about what you did earlier.”

“Ah that..”

I thought she’d let it slide since she hadn’t said anything until now.

But I guess she couldn’t speak because of the essence and was waiting for the right moment.

“Oh! That!”

I laughed heartily and approached Amelia, praising her for her contributions in the battle.

“Taking down the giant was all thanks to you and Misha. If it weren’t for you two, that thing would have regenerated again and the hunt would have failed! You did a great job! Aynar! You should thank them too!”

“Th-Thank you!”

Although Aynar and I both expressed our genuine gratitude, Amelia’s expression barely changed.

“So… that’s how you’re going to play it.”

She’s seen right through me.

This is a bit troublesome.

While I racked my brain for a way out of the situation, she made her next move.

“Karlstein, why are you just standing there?”

Amelia called for reinforcements.

But it backfired on her.

“…Huh?”

“You should speak up too. If something bothers you, you’ll just keep suffering in silence—”

“Huh? I don’t really mind, though…?”

“……What?”

The sheer nonchalance of the answer left Amelia stunned.

“What… do you mean by that?”

Amelia’s tone made it clear that she really didn’t understand.

Sensing this, Misha glanced at me and then spoke softly.

“That… I feel like I’ve finally been helpful… So, I’m not feeling bad or anything…”

It was clearly not an excuse.

Misha seemed to be just stating the facts.

“Karlstein, you…”

“…Yes?”

“…Never mind.”

Amelia seemed to have a lot left to say, but shut her mouth. Then, with a deep sigh, she simply said:

“Let’s end it here for today. I’ll be watching you, Jandel.”

Seems like Misha’s answer took the wind out of her sails…

Okay, then the issue is settled for now.

“Aynar, do you feel the changes?”

“Uh… I’m not sure yet! I think I feel stronger, though.”

I put the rest of the team on alert and began to test the newly acquired essence.

First, the active skill.

“Okay, get down on the ground.”

At my command, Aynar immediately hunched over, exactly matching the pose we’d seen from the Hipramagent earlier.

“Now, use the ability.”

「Aynar Pheneline has activated [Crouch].」

Unlike with her first essence, Aynar, having consumed and used multiple essences by now, smoothly activated the new skill.

Whoooosh—!

A translucent yellow barrier formed around her, shielding her as she crouched.

「All resistance increases by 20x for 3 minutes.」

「Natural regeneration increased by 20x for 3 minutes.」

「Until the end of combat, all the stats increase relative to the damage absorbed while crouching.」

After several tests, I confirmed that the skill itself was identical to the ogre’s.

I had wondered if there might be some differences, but…

‘The resistance and regeneration boosts seem about the same too.’

The effect of stat increase in response to damage taken only applies to monsters, like in the game.

Probably a monster-only feature.

“Um… would you like our assistance?”

Just as we were about to check the stat changes, the three mages from Myul’s team approached.

“We… have brought essence testing kits with us… They won’t be as precise as lab equipment, but they should still be quite helpful.”

“Oh, in that case, sure. We’d appreciate the help.”

This was far better than rough estimates like “I feel stronger,” so I handed Aynar over to them.

And after some time…

While exact numbers were impossible to determine, and some unique stats couldn’t be measured with the kits, we still got a general idea of his basic stats.

Strength (High), Natural Regeneration (High), Physical Resistance (High).

Magic Resistance (Mid), Bone Density (Mid), Lung Capacity (Mid).

Vision (Low), Patience (Low), Mana Sensitivity (Low).

And…

“There’s one debuffed stat.”

Only one negative stat.

“A debuff? What is it? Tell me.”

At my insistence, one of the mages looked at Aynar before answering.

“Fighting Spirit…”

Considering Aynar’s unusual calmness right now…

She would usually have suggested stopping this boring experiment to hunt monsters.

“How much has it weakened?”

I asked for exact numbers, but the mage said that their current equipment couldn’t determine that.
So I tried something more old-school.
“Aynar! Are you up for a spar to kill some boredom?”

A barbarian never refuses a duel.

If you visit the barbarian sanctuary, you can see warriors sparring from morning till night.

But what about this?

“A duel…? Umm…”

The fact that Ainarr, even as an Upper Barbarian, hesitantly trailed off and then…

“Let’s do it later! Now is the time for research!”

She is refusing?

‘No wonder that giant kept running away…’

Just how much has her aggressiveness dropped?

**

The explorer you saw yesterday and the one you see today are different people.

Although this is a common saying about the nature of explorers, it’s literally true in this case.

To explore the labyrinth filled with monsters, one must consume essences, and it’s all too common for those essences to influence the explorer’s personality, as with Aynar now.

“A fight? Well, if it happens, it happens… But do we really need to go looking for one? It’s peaceful right now, and that’s nice…”

Just minutes ago, this barbarian warrior considered killing monsters and proving her bravery the greatest joy in life. Now, she’d changed in an instant.

“Battle cry.”

“…Huh?”

“Let out a battle cry. Now.”

“Bethel… Raa…?”

“Damn it.”

This is no laughing matter, this is serious.

While personality changes weren’t uncommon, Aynar’s greatest strength was her ferocity.

“Jandel… is this really okay?”

“…It’s scary how she is right now.”

Even my other teammates, hearing her half-hearted battle cry, sensed the gravity of the situation and cautiously approached me.

With our frontline fighter acting like this, they were naturally worried.

But there was nothing we could do now.

The next essence I planned to feed her had a high aggressiveness stat, so that might help…

‘But until then, she’ll stay like this.’

I couldn’t help but wonder again:

Given her naturally combative nature, it’d take more than a few dozen points to reduce her to this state…

‘It must be at least -100.’

In a way, I was worried too.

While it was good that the debuff was on a non-combat stat rather than strength or resistance, there were limits.

‘…If I consume it, will I end up like this too?’

Especially since when I consume this essence, the 40 fighting spirit attached to the Orc Hero would already be gone, so the change would appear even greater.

For now, I decided to focus on identifying the passive.

“For passives, our equipment can’t pinpoint the exact effects. But we can determine the general category.”

“Go ahead.”

With my permission, the mages approached Ainarth with their tools. About 30 minutes later, they returned with results.

“The passive seems to be support-oriented. The readings lean heavily in that direction.”

“Not survival or defense?”

“There were small signals in those areas, but they were negligible.”

This was completely unexpected.

Seeing her survive a head injury, I’d assumed it was something like [Last Stand], [Phoenix Heart], or [Miraculous Survival]…

But apparently not.

‘Then what is it?’

With no way of knowing, we ran every test we could.

“Aynar, this might sting a bit.”

“I don’t like pain…”

“That’s because there’s something wrong with your head right now.”

“Oh, really?”

We settled for cutting off a fingertip to test, but didn’t find any significant data.

Same with the reluctant sparring session.

“…We’ll stop here for today.”

“Oh? Really?”

In the end, I decided to check the passive when I had more time. We’d already spent too much time on this.

“Alright, let’s go.”

And with that, the expedition resumed.
***
During the three days we were able to stay on the island, we explored every corner without wasting time.

Our top priority was completing the island’s map.

Naturally, this meant encountering countless monsters, including more Hipramagents.

I think we ran into about eight of them.

Three times, we skipped fights because two were together. Twice, they managed to escape.

In the end, we successfully hunted three more.

But this time, we didn’t even get magic stones.

All three distortion spells had failed.

‘Distortion magic needs to succeed, then there’s the chance of getting an essence…’

I hadn’t realized it at first, but now it hit me: How lucky we were to get an essence on the first try.

The difficulty of obtaining essences from disappearing corpses was insane.

‘Well, the essence was thanks to “Beginner’s Luck,” but if the distortion spell had failed… It wouldn’t have worked at all.’

Anyway, separate from that, repeated battles with the Hipramagent gave us a better understanding of them.

‘The village chief’s book estimated it as Level 2, but…’

To me, it didn’t seem like a Level 2 at all.

The magic stone size was almost on par with high-tier Level 3 monsters.

Sure, [Crouch] raised the minimum damage required to defeat it, but…

Its offensive power was relatively low to compensate for its survivability.

So… taking into account its pack behavior, it’s probably around level 2.7.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Honestly, it’s strange to classify something as a level 2 when it doesn’t even have a single level 2 skill.

For a moment, I doubted the accuracy of the village chief’s book, but I decided that this was just a special case.

After all, he did mention that some entries were based on rumors rather than firsthand observation—

As I gazed at the gradually receding island, lost in thought, Wyatt Hex approached me from the side.

“Finally… we’re leaving this island.”

“You look relieved. Even though we haven’t found a way back to the city yet.” I asked him

“Still… this is much better than being trapped on that island. Back then, I had no idea what would happen.”

Part of me wanted to say that nothing had really changed—but I kept quiet.

At least now they have something to rely on

***

Just then, a sudden gust of wind blew in from the island, violently shaking the ship.

‘What was that?’

I was about to call for Erwin, who was at the observation deck, when Wyatt Hex besides me pointed a trembling finger.

“Th-there…!”

There? There what?

As I turned to see what the issue was, I froze. No—it wasn’t just me. Every explorer on the deck stood just as still.

“…….”

“…….”

Something was rising from the center of the shrinking island – and it was staring right at us.

With a furious, deafening roar.

[UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH——!]

The only small mercy was that, for now, it was just screaming from afar—not rushing after us.

“Wh-what the hell is that…?”

Staring at Wyatt Hex, who looked utterly stunned, I muttered under my breath.

“Seems like that guy who died back then… wasn’t just seeing things after all.”

A colossal titan, easily over 40 meters tall.

Even among the Floor Lords, none had ever reached such a size.

At that scale, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how we’d raid it.

But even so—

Whoooooosh—!

As the ship sped away from the island, fleeing his reach, a single thought crossed my mind.

‘If we want to clear this island for good… I have a feeling we’ll have to take that thing down too.’

But… How the hell are we supposed to kill that?

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