Chapter 91: The Strongest Family

We were to be escorted by the Dragon Knights to the rocky mountain where the monsters were.

Someone suggested that my mother fire a Firestorm from the sky, but there are monsters like the Fire Demons that are resistant to fire. It would be disastrous if the monsters we couldn't defeat all attacked us all at once.

In the end, we decided to have the Dragon Knights draw the enemy's air force, mainly the Harpies, and then attack the group from the ground on the other side.

There are so many monsters, we'll get surrounded if we fight outside. First, we'll head for the cave in the rocky mountain where the monsters are based, and narrow down the direction from which the enemies will appear. Of course, one of our main objectives is to investigate what lies deep inside the cave.

"Looks like it's started," Julia's mother muttered, leaning her hand over the eaves and looking up at the sky.

The Dragon Knights, who had landed us on the other side of the monsters, circled around the group and began their attack from the sky. The Dragon Knights have a surprisingly high ratio of magicians. This is because magic is the most effective means of attack from atop a dragon. Every time a red flash resembling a Flame Lance or Fireball flashes in the air, harpies engulfed in flames plummet to the ground. The hordes of monsters are in an uproar, rushing toward the Dragon Knights, but most of them can only look up at the sky and roar in anger. There are only a limited number of monsters that have effective means of attacking flying dragon knights.

"Up ahead, there's a flock of one armored turtle, two emperor slimes, four petrified chickens, and six owl bears. As a breakthrough route, this seems to be the weakest."

Elemia said, searching for signs from behind a rock.

"...There's quite a few of them."

Mother said with a difficult look on her face.

It's true, this is quite a lot for a route with the weakest forces.

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"Well, we can manage somehow. I'll take care of the turtle, and Edgar, can you thin out the petrified chickens?"

"Understood."

The leader of this party is my mother.

Of course, it's because she has the most experience as an adventurer.

"Then I'll take care of the Emperor Slime."

That was Alfred's father.

He usually has work for the Royal Knights, but today happened to be his day off, so he decided to come with us.

"I'll take care of the Owl Bear."

Steph promised, holding the great sword he was carrying on his back.

"I, I'll..."

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"I guess Elemia will be my mother's bodyguard."

I asked Elemia, whose prey had been taken, to be my mother's bodyguard.

Elemia looked a bit dissatisfied, but there was plenty of work for her to do once we entered the cave. I'd have him conserve his strength here. Well, Elemia doesn't get tired thanks to her [Fatigue Transfer].

After deciding on our division of labor, we nodded to each other and immediately got to work.

The monsters included the Eagle Lion. Even the Dragon Knights, an elite unit, could suffer unexpected damage if a flying A-rank monster appeared.

"I'll start then."

I took out my favorite bow from my dimensional storage, which I'd learned to use from Melvy. Of course, it was a gift from my brother Chester five years ago. Every year, he adjusts it slightly according to my physical growth, so it's still perfectly usable even now that I've grown bigger.

I nocked an arrow I'd taken out from the dimensional storage as well, and aimed it at the nearby petrification chicken.

The petrification chicken, as its name suggests, uses a special attack that turns its target to stone.

That said, it's not as vicious as in the fantasies of my previous life, where a single glance can turn someone to stone. They will shoot feathers containing petrifying poison, or grab you with claws that are also exuding the poison.

That may not seem like a big deal, but it is still a threat to the average adventurer. Since the petrifying chickens are only about twice the size of a chicken, it is easy for them to blend in and get hit by the petrifying poison from a blind spot in a melee.

Just to be safe, I had Dad, Steph, and Jeremiah, who were on the front lines, equipped with a drop item that gave them resistance to petrifying poison. At the back of the abandoned den of the ancient fire dragon that Dad had gotten for us, there was a petrifying chicken's nest, so we ended up hunting a lot of petrifying chickens. However, thanks to that, we were able to collect drop items (items that are found inside monsters and are endowed with monster abilities). There wasn't enough for everyone, and it only gave them resistance rather than completely nullifying the petrifying poison, but it was better than nothing. According to mother, even A-rank parties rarely have a sufficient amount of armor that resists abnormal conditions, so I'll just have to be satisfied with this.

Plus, I was taught [Healing Magic] at the Samsara Temple, so I can remove abnormal conditions. If I get affected by an abnormal condition and can't move, I can just ask Melvi to heal me. Melvi's pet rainbow cactus, Tusharavati, has a special ability called resistance spray, so if we're together we can rely on that. And of course, we've made sure that each of us carries an antidote made from [Medicine Grind].

With this, we shouldn't have to make a fool of ourselves like we did when Gazane attacked us at night.

Although Melvi has returned to Fairyland today and isn't coming with us.

So, we have enough countermeasures against the petrification poison, but with four petrification chickens around, who knows what kind of accidents might happen. We should make sure to kill them all.

Using the [Bestow Magic] skill of my Alchemist class that I've acquired over the past five years, I imbued the arrow with the blue flames of [Extreme Fire Magic]. [Bestow Magic] is a higher-level skill of [Additional Magic], and [Extreme Fire Magic] is a higher-level skill of [Fire Element Magic]; both I and my mother have mastered it.

After various experiments, I found that this arrow enchanted with [Extreme Fire Magic] is five to ten times more powerful than Flame Lance. The reason there is some variation is because the power changes depending on whether or not it can penetrate the target's skin. The skin of the petrified chicken is hard, but I know from experience that this will penetrate it.

With a whoosh, the blue flaming arrow split the air, piercing the petrified chicken's body and exploding.

While I took out an arrow from the dimensional storage and aimed at the next petrified chicken, the other members started to move.

"--Gatling Flame!"

Mom activates Extreme Fire Magic using Silent Activation and Simultaneous Activation.

A spear of blue flame was born in the air, just like the one I had imbued the arrow with earlier.

And there were not just one, but eight in total.

Each one of them was more than five times the power of a Flame Lance.

"Argh!"

With Mom's voice as the trigger, eight spears of flame attacked the armored turtle.

The first was blocked by the armored turtle's hard metal shell.

The second was also blocked by the shell, but at this point the metal shell had turned red-hot.

The third melted the red-hot shell, and the fourth shaped the molten shell into a cone facing the inside of the turtle's body.

From the fifth spear onwards - even my vision enhanced by Senjutsu Master was unable to keep up. The blue, scorching hot spears landed and exploded one after another, burning to shreds the soft internal organs deep inside the heavily gouged shell.

Gatling Flame is a magic developed by the enemy reincarnated person, Kisasaki Toru, to counter tanks if they were to bring them out. I think it can also be used as anti-aircraft fire against airships and airplanes.

I feel sorry for the armored turtle that was hit with such a spell right from the start, but as expected of a monster famous for its hardness, it seems to still be barely alive.

The armored turtle spat out a large amount of metal fragments from the many small holes in its shell. It's a special attack of the armored turtle called granules.

I quickly got in front of Mom and said,

"-- Electromagnetic Barrier!"

I created a double barrier with [Electromagnetic Magic] and the trajectory of the granules was twisted upwards, passing far above our heads and disappearing behind us.

The Electromagnetic Barrier is a defensive magic that Kinezaki developed in case rifles or machine guns were put to practical use. If you wanted to break through it with firearms, you would need the same power as the gunfire of a battleship from your previous life. There's no way you could break through the gold debris, which is light and only moves fast enough to be tracked by the naked eye.

I had a lot of trouble developing the Electromagnetic Barrier to protect against arrows and bullets. At first, I thought I could use magnetism to attach them together, but metals other than iron barely react to magnetism in their original state. If you increase the amount of magical power you pour into them, they will react very slightly, but if you make the magnetism that strong, it will react to iron products you are wearing and iron sand nearby, and it will cause a lot of trouble.

So I wondered what to do, and after searching through the documents in the Library Labyrinth with my brother David, I discovered that it would be a good idea to use something called "electromagnetic field interaction force." I had never heard of electromagnetic field interaction force before, but after looking into it, I realized that it was the same thing that was called the Lorentz force in my previous life.

The way it works is that you only need two barriers, one for the electric field and one for the magnetic field. Thanks to magic, it's easy to create electric and magnetic fields of any scale in this world.

Then, the first electric field charges the flying metal, and the charged metal is plunged into the magnetic field. Then, an electromagnetic field interaction force (Lorentz force) acts perpendicular to the direction of the bullet's movement. This is the same force that acts when you bring a magnet close to a coil with an electric current running through it in middle school science.

This force can be increased by strengthening the electric and magnetic fields, so if you just pour in the right amount of MP, you can deflect the bullet in a direction determined by the direction of the magnetic field, as long as the flying object is made of a material that conducts electricity. However, there is a limit to the amount of MP that can be released per unit time, so if the time between firing and impact is short, there are cases where sufficient electromagnetic field interaction force cannot be obtained. Still, with the speed at which I can deploy my magic, it was enough to defend against anything except for battleship gunfire.

Electromagnetic Barrier is of course useless against insulating materials, so over the past five years I've developed several other defensive spells besides Electromagnetic Barrier.

Among them, Electromagnetic Barrier is particularly easy to use, as it can be easily deployed over a relatively wide area.

However, since it only deflects bullets rather than blocking them, you need to pay close attention to the direction you deflect them in. With David's help, I practiced repeatedly until I could intuitively grasp the direction of the magnetic field and the direction the bullets will be deflected. I know that this can be determined by the so-called left-hand rule, but when you're fighting, you don't have time to look at your left hand.

David has also mastered Electromagnetic Magic, so although he can't deploy it as widely as I can, he was able to use Electromagnetic Barrier. He didn't even need to practice repeatedly, saying, "You can figure out which direction it will deflect if you just think about it," and he used Electromagnetic Barrier exactly as he had done.

Now, when I looked at the armored turtle again, it wasn't moving at all. It seemed the gold flakes were a final struggle.

"Thanks, Edgar! I can't believe you can still move after that."

"Ugh... my job..."

I turned my eyes away from my mother, who was thanking me, and Elemia, who was complaining, and looked at my father.

My father was fighting a special slime called an Emperor Slime.

Slimes are usually inert monsters, and only a few mutant species actively attack. However, this Emperor Slime was different. It is said that Emperor Slimes are born when slimes of the same species fight each other. Its shape is an oval sphere just over one meter in diameter, and it can bend its body greatly and jump using the unique elasticity of the slime.

。

However, this is not a simple body attack as it appears. The Emperor Slime slams into the opponent and unleashes the magical power it has stored inside. This magical power is troublesome, and unless the victim is extremely blessed with MP, being hit by this attack will knock them unconscious, no questions asked. The Emperor Slime then jumps onto the unconscious and defenseless victim, sucking out all the magical power within their body, completely destroying their mind. The damage from this attack can sometimes extend to the soul, and according to the Goddess, if damage is done to the soul it will be difficult to purify, so if you see an Emperor Slime, you should make killing it a priority.

There are two Emperor Slimes here.

This, too, is strange. Emperor Slimes grow by eating their own kind, so if two Emperor Slimes meet, they should be unable to resist cannibalizing each other.

But in reality, the two Emperor Slimes were trying to block Dad's escape route with what seemed to be primitive cooperation.

However, it was just the shallow wisdom of monsters.

Dad used ice frost to stop one of the Emperor Slimes in its tracks, and at the same time guided the attack of the other, causing the two Emperor Slimes to collide head-on.

And then,

"Mysterious Technique - <Ice Spear Crystal>!"

When Dad swept the spear imbued with magical power, supercooled cold air blew out from the space the spear passed through, covering the Emperor Slimes.

<Ice Spear Crystal> - that was a special attack that combined magic and martial arts.

We had decided to call these types of attacks, which combine magic and martial arts, "magic techniques". The most typical example of this is, of course, Steph's magic sword.

However, Dad Alfred couldn't let himself lose, so he evolved his ice frost, finally elevating it to the level of magical technique. Before I knew it, Dad's status showed the legendary skill [Magic Spear Technique].

Thanks to this skill, his magical techniques have been refined, and he is now able to perform feats like this, freezing a target in an instant. Of course, this is only possible because he has gained a magic-related nickname that allows him to expand his maximum MP. For now, the MP consumption of <Ice Spear Crystal> is over 100. Compared to Mom's <Flame Storm>, it's not so great in terms of MP efficiency.

While I was thinking about magical techniques, Dad aimed one thrust at each of the two frozen Emperor Slimes. Countless cracks ran through the bodies of the two Emperor Slimes, which were frozen to the core, and in the next moment, they were shattered into pieces.

It was as easy as breaking ice with an ice pick, but Dad must have used the effect of the high-level skill 【Fighting Spearmanship】 that he had mastered by maxing out 【Spearmanship】.

Now, all that's left is Steph.

Steph headed towards the six owl bears by herself. In terms of numbers alone, she attracted the most of them.

However, for Steph, who wields a great sword, fighting against large numbers was actually her forte.

"<Rising Wind Slash> -- <Downfall Wind Flash>!"

Steph wrapped her sword in wind and unleashed a slash that focused on speed, steadily dealing damage while deflecting the owl bears' attacks.

The owl bears are bear monsters with owl-like heads. They seem to have a slightly charming face, but they are carnivorous, and they particularly enjoy eating human flesh. Even in the heat of battle, they will try to eat soft parts of the flesh like the eyes and cheeks, so they are apparently hated like snakes by front-line adventurers.

The <Magic Warrior> style of fighting, which uses magic with a greatsword, has high firepower, but of course that is not its only good point.

Over the past few years, Steph has also become able to use her magic sword to make up for the weaknesses of her greatsword.

Now it is not Steph but the owl bear that is making the brute force attack.

Steph is swinging her greatsword compactly and then cutting back, moving around to prevent the owl bear from focusing its attack.

Steph's greatsword literally blew through like wind, leaving behind a flock of owl bears with their arms and legs sliced ​​off.

Finally, when there were no more that could move properly,

"It's the end. <Wind Blade Slash>!"

Steph disappeared -- and in the next moment, she appeared beyond the owl bears, swinging her great sword.

The rest goes without saying. The owl bears were cut in half down the middle and collapsed to the ground in a pile.

It was at this point that I finished killing the last petrified chicken.

--A few minutes later.

We hadn't encountered any major obstacles and had reached the cave in the rocky mountain guarded by the horde of monsters.