Party's Growth
"Leader, there's 3 skeletons up front." Yuka said and alerted everyone. As a long range attacker, her eyesight was pretty far and could see quite the distance. With her warnings, Vergil's party members were able to avoid ambushes and getting caught off-guard.
It was already their fifth time encountering monsters on the first floor. True to his words, Vergil didn't let a single enemy pass through. Although his class skills were quite useless to him, he decided to utilize them since he's not using Yamato at the moment. Using a different sword made Vergil a little uncomfortable but he adjusted himself rather quickly. When he first used his class skills, he muttered the incantations inside his head to avoid the cringy chant. After that, he never used the chants anymore as he already memorized the flow of mana when he used the skill.
Everything that Vergil does is considered as training for him to be better. His master, trained for his whole life while he only trained for 3 years straight. Sure, he could perform the same attacks of his master but the power behind them is still not on par with the original. There was a large discrepancy within skill. A massive skill gap between them, but Vergil was not someone who was disheartened, instead, he treated it as motivation as he had more room to grow.
"Nana, slow one of them down and freeze the other. Yuka, aim for the slowed one. Taeko, use your whip to hold the monster's arm that I'm going to attack. Hajime, after the freeze effect is over, root the skeleton with your earth manipulation." Vergil gave orders and they followed their leader's orders. His tactics made it easier for them.
The free skeleton that was not hit by any debuff looked at their way and charged forward. Vergil stepped forward and the skeleton brandished its weapon to strike down. Taeko used her whip to hold and capture its wrist and held it.
Vergil raised his palms and flicked his wrist. His attack hit the wrist of the skeleton that is holding its saber. With its bones cracked, it dropped its saber and Vergil used heavy slash to end the skeleton's life.
Vergil raised a thumbs up to Taeko before fighting the slowed down monster. The frozen skeleton got free of being frozen and was about to rush towards the back lines when the earth around its feet, softened and sucked it's bony feet before hardening.
Their coordination was flawless and their teamwork is getting better the longer they get used to fighting monsters.
Vergil finished the slowed down monster with Yuka's help. Hajime, not idling around, ran towards the places where Yuka threw her knives. He picked the knives up and gave them back to Yuka. Vergil's party made quick work to the third skeleton and wrapped it up.
"Alright. Its been 30 minutes after going deep in this floor. You guys should rest." Vergil said as he placed down the heavy bag and took out two water canteens, one for the girls, one for the boys. Vergil chugged down a little bit of water and passed it to Hajime who drank little amounts as well.
"Our party's efficiency is improving after every fight. It means our teamwork is improving as well. You've been doing a good job, keep it up." Vergil praised them for a job well done.
Even though they were lacking in physical aspect since three of them are girls while Hajime's stats is that of a weakling, their strategy aspect is flawless with Vergil and Hajime at the lead.
"Leader, I'm still astounded about how you don't need to chant your skills, Nagumo also don't need any chants, how did you do that?" Nana, who's a person who speaks her mind, asked them.
"I taught them how to effectively control their mana." Vergil answered and it earned their curiosity.
"Eh? How? Can you teach us as well?" Nana asked as Vergil chuckled.
"Hajime could teach you how to do it. I'm going to patrol the perimeter." Vergil said and his party members pestered Hajime to teach them.
With his party member's attention away from him, Vergil sighed as he closed his eyes and meditated. With his eyes closed and in a conpletely focused state, his senses were sharp and he immediately noticed the abnormality around them.
A skeleton horde. They were getting surrounded by the second. Because of the dim lighting, no one noticed a thing and the skeletons were slightly far away from Vergil to be noticed.
Opening his eyes, he rushed towards his teammates who were being taught by Hajime. Loa's advice was right. Once you enter the labyrinth, consider your life to be always in danger.
"Let's move. Now!" Vergil ordered as he placed the water canteens inside and carried the heavy bag.
"Why are in you in such a hurry, leader?" Yuka asked him.
"We're being surrounded by a skeleton horde. We're going to move to an advantageous location and face them." Vergil replied and they had looks of confusion on their faces but Vergil hurried them up, going as far as forcefully ordering them to move.
Vergil moved his eyes quickly, finding a spot they could use to their advantage. Finding a pretty big crevice, Vergil went towards it as his members followed him from behind. While they were running, skeletons jumped from their left flank and caught them off guard. Vergil placed himself at the front and parried their attacks with his sword. He then punched the incoming skeleton hardly that it instantly crumbled to dust.
"Run towards the crevice, now." Vergil spoke calmly this time, he knows that they will be able to get to that place safely. Vergil used another heavy slash and killed another skeleton. He was slowly being surrounded by the skeletons which made his party members. Seeing that the skeletons are blocking sight of hhim he changed his sword into force edge.
After training with his master for 3 long years, Vergil was a close combat expert. He could fight at any angle and attack from weird spots making it unpredictable. But there was a big flaw in Vergil's fighting style, he's not heavily trained in long range attacks. Sure he knows how to use it but he's not sure if he's using them effectively and efficiently.
He plans to use this skeleton horde as practice targets. With Force Edge in hand, black phantom swords appeared beside Vergil, blending with the darkness of the labyrinth.
Vergil dodged the incoming strikes while sending out some phantom swords to the enemies making them crumble into dust.
" We've got to help leader, he's surrounded!" Taeko said and was about to come out of the crevice when Vergil jumped up, his normal sword in his hand and landed in front of Taeko who almost got stepped on.
"Leader... you almost stepped on me..." Taeko murmured as her heartbeat was really beating fast because Vergil's boots almost stomped her face when she looked up.
"Sorry, sorry. I told you to wait for me inside and you didn't follow me." Vergil flicked her forehead and dragged her back inside. Although he reduced the numbers by half because of him sending phantom swords at all directions, there's still quite a lot and he will let them have experience in fighting hordes of skeletons. With Vergil at the choke point, the hordes of skeletons could not pass through.
Meanwhile, the three girls were slowly being depleted by using their skills in succession, the only one who's not yet low on mana was Hajime and Vergil.
Hajime learned how to control his mana and with that, he learned how to only use the appropriate mana for every skill. If he wants to bind his enemies, he determines the second he wants the opponent to be rooted by the amount of mana he poured. By pouring a lot of mana, the root duration is pretty long, and if he used low amounts of mana, the root will only take for a few seconds.
After Vergil's party cleared the last skeleton, the girls plopped down from exhaustion. Vergil placed down the bag and passed them the water canteen. He let them rest because he knew that they were under the pressure of the huge amounts of skeleton that seemed neverending.
"Rest for now. I'll help you by teaching tou how to control your mana. It doesn't matter if the hero party get ahead of us, what you guys need is proper fighting experience. Its not a race on who reach the deeper part of the labyrinth, its about who will have the proper growth." Vergil explained to them but they were too exhausted to reply.
"You too, rest well. Try to recover as much stamina as you can." Vergil reminded Hajime who nodded his head.
Vergil stood at the entrance of the crevice like a gate guardian and meditated to rest.