A Certain Middle-Aged Man’s VRMMO Activity Log - Chapter 63

OVRMMO 063: THIEF’S PRIDE

Toaru Ossan no VRMMO Katsudouki
Author: Shiina Howahowa
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A/n: For the most part Thief has largely support roles, but for those thieves, it’s something to take pride in.

Thief’s Pride

[A? What’s the most important thing to being a Thief?
First of all, those guys who steal money and things from others aren’t thieves, they’re just scum. Maa, we don’t allow those kinds of guys to exist in this guild, though.
Thieves contribute by plundering valuables from monsters, dismantling traps;maa, that’s standard, but if that’s all you got than you’re second-rate.

The number one thing that you steal is the risks potential factors that will annihilate your party.
– – scouting for enemies, destroying the ranks of monsters or those guys who’s fallen to scum with sneak attacks, saving the lives of your allies.
If course it ain’t flashy; the brawniness of the swordsman or the bang and glitz that accompanies the magic users’ attacks are only hindrances for us, so therefore there will be people who say we’re weak-ass guys; I’ve been badmouthed pretty badly myself.

But you know, it’s fine that that’s the norm; even if they say those things, it’s fine to laugh foolishly than yell back at them. The only times we should yell are when the party steps on something, there’s a trap, or when we’re challenging an impossible fight and there’s people dying from it.
If people are dying while their fighting monsters, that’s not our problem; that just means they were weak.
But, death by a placed trap, being cornered into the dilemma of triggering the trap on a treasure chest, or the party being wiped out by a sneak attack, for a thief, is the most embarrassing occurrence; in order not to make that blunder, we’re practicing today as well.]

– – The teachings of a certain Thief Guild’s Guild Master

――――――――――――――――――――

“There really are a lot of traps; I’m asking you, place don’t touch anything recklessly.”

The number of traps that I have dismantled since we descended to the 4th floor has already surpassed 30.

And this is just with me dismantling the bare minimum traps necessary.
As expected, that chilling feeling means that the floor is going to be nasty.

“Sorry for relying on you so much; to think we’d get hit with such bad luck…”

Reiji said that; maa, this here is what the Thief should naturally do …

“Don’t mind it, this is my job after all … that over there is your show; straight ahead is 4 bones, about 2 ghosts.”

Thief’s Danger Perception is doing good work as usual. The party members immediately prepared for battle.
There’s the possibility of suddenly being assaulted, but because this is a VRMMO, it’s not the easy situation where taking a hit while you’re defenseless for 1 turn; your cooperation and formation can be destroyed, and for those clearly a class below, there’s even been cases of being annihilated; it’s a very real-life like scene.

That said, if you can evade sneak attacks and avoid getting into impossible battles with higher level opponents, then you can more or less avoid being annihilated.
The Soldier Skeletons and Wights that came to assault us this time were turned to dust in a matter of minutes. I faced the Wights with the ability that clads things in an elements, using Wind-blown Arrow to pierce through and erase them; for the Soldier Skeletons, Rona’s hand-to-hand attacks played a huge role in beating them up.
Of course with the Fairies joining in, they had enough firepower, aa, Zwei’s wolf Fairy is so cute, naa; when we leave the dungeon, I’m going to cuddle it.

“Are there no reinforcements?”

Rona raised the question for verification, because if you’re not this careful, it’s a given you’ll die right away…
I confirmed that neither Danger Perception nor my own eyes register the existence of monsters, and so I said, “Now it’s fine,” all of a sudden, every party member let out a huge sigh. The stress of having an assault coming right in front of there eyes was pretty heavy; when it’s to the point where forget to let out your breath at times, it’s pretty hard on your nerves.

We somehow managed to finish that trap-heavy 4th floor and stepped onto the 5th floor … that chill isn’t here.

“We shouldn’t be careless, but it looks like it probably won’t go as bad as the 4th floor.”

I tell the party that. Our goal is one more floor below; I really hope to be spared the situation on the 4th floor where we were slowed down so much … but even so, on this floor there’s sometimes a Lesser Lich, so we can’t be careless.s

“It that’s so, then let’s proceed immediately; our goal is further on,desunoyo!”

Eliza is making a fuss yet again.

I directed a glance full of the thoughts of, “Shut her down, because if I do it, we’ll go nowhere even faster1,”at Zwei, and having received it, he calmed her down, saying “And that’s even more reason to be cautious, so calm down.”

This really is better; rather than having me do something that’s so out of my department, have the Guild Master say it is way easier to calm things down … the laughable matter of having the atmosphere in the party be broken down while still in the dungeon hasn’t happened yet.

Even with that quarrel, we steadily and calmly proceeded towards the 5th floor.
The formation is me in front (for dismantling traps), Reiji and Zwei right behind, left to her own discretion on when to dash ahead is Rona protecting the center, and Eliza and Milly are the rearguards.
Milly took staff fighting, so since she can fight in close quarters to some degree, they didn’t put a fighter in the rearguard.
Maa, if something comes from behind, the extremely fast brawler Rona can also turn around quickly.

Our footsteps are unpleasantly loud … the enemies on the 5th floor are mostly the Wight types that float in the air, so it feels like I should be assuming that monsters that don’t make footsteps are the majority.
Other than the Lesser Lich, I can’t see these party members losing to anything, but I can’t let my guard down … Cautiously using Danger Perception, we proceed like that while on guard.

It was when we had opened the doors of several rooms, filling out the map.
The reactions of Danger Perception that were clearly heading here are … 12. That’s quite a lot; this is kind of a bad situation.

“Monster group, 12, and there’s no doubt they’re coming this way, so let’s ambush them in this room; this room doesn’t have any traps, so it should be better than meeting them in the hall!”

Our nerves tensed in an instant.
For the most part, a normal monster swarm is no more than 6; even if it’s a big group it’s around 8.
Even with that, this time the number is 12; this is quite a large force for a monster swarm.

“What’s the monster group consist of?”

Zwei’s voice is strained as he directs that question to me.

“… tch. This is bad, there’s 8 Wights, and there’s the strong guys, but there are also 4 Lesser Liches there!”

– – As for why there’s this kind of number of monsters gathered together, the party that came to this room shortly before had pulled a monster train; that party that had pulled the train has, right now, just a little previously, succeeded in running away to the stairs to the 6th floor; before that train had dissolved naturally, Earth and the others unluckily turned up.
On top of that, the monsters still haven’t been released from their combat state, so it’s a situation where their perception abilities can detect even further than normal; one by one the bad luck combined. Naturally, Earth and the others don’t know about this reason at all.

“So it’s more dangerous to run away, huh … even so, 4 Lesser Liches is quite tough, na.”

The one who answered me was the normally reckless Zwei, who is now stern-faced.
It’s not just him; this situation is completely unexpected; it might have “Lesser” stuck in front of it, but it’s still a Lich; it’s a strong monster in a class by itself.

“We just have to do it, ne; un, let’s think about this as a good time to level our Skills.”

Rona tried to overturn the bad feelings too late; if we overcome this, it will be more than enough Skill Leveling. That is also an undeniable truth.

“I wonder how it will turn out ~, anyway, I’m going to start chanting, ne~”

In order to get the first strike in for whenever the monsters entered the room, Milly began chanting a Fire Magic aria; her way of speaking is laidback, but her movements are quick.

“It’s about 20 seconds until those guys enter; they’re the ghost types so they’re just going to slip through the door!”

I’ve been measuring the time, so I convey the time I expect them to draw near to the party. Furthermore, I used Danger Perception one more time to check the monsters.
There’s nothing other than the 12 presences drawing near here; if any more reinforcements came then it would be fatal, though this isn’t much comfort; I prepare my bow.

“Another 5 seconds, 4, 3, 2, 1, – – shoot!”

With an arrow, the Fire Magic Explosion, and the Light Magic Holy Light meeting the ghost monsters that slid through the door, the battle began.

SKILLS
[Wind-Blown Hunting Bow]Lv7
[Assaulting Kick]Lv21
[Farsight]Lv50 ↑1UP
[Craftsmanship]Lv52
[Small Shield]Lv 6
[Stealth]Lv40

[Physical Ability Reinforcement]Lv30
[Chivalrous Thief]Lv20 ↑1UP
[Whip]Lv36
[Fairy Language]Lv99 (Forced Acquisition) (Unable to be moved to Reserved Skills)

Reserved Skills
[Woodworking]Lv34
[Blacksmithing]Lv39
[Alchemy]Lv40
[Advanced Cooking]Lv4

ExP 4

Titles Possessed:  The One who Charmed Even the Fairy Queen, The One who Defeated a Great Foe Alone
His second name from other players is “The Fairy Queen’s Husband-san”
Status Abnormality: Maximum MP is at minus 15%

A/N: The dungeon is a place where things are always happening, ne.

 
Literal is “if I say it, we will stand further into the corner,” so I mussed with it to make more sense in English.

T/n: Thank you RS and MF for your donations!
… I don’t know who reads what, so there’s prob a lot of duplicate “thank you”s lol.
Mou, this must have been a rushed chapter … It was a little all over the place, making it much more difficult to translate than usual.
Got my first Japanese spam comment. I almost didn’t delete it to commemorate the occasion, but since I don’t have any former girlfriends I need advice for in order to get back together with them, I let that one go.