Live Dungeon!

“Yah!”

Amy pierced the head of a Snow Wolf with her swords, then shook off the dispersing light particles as she dashed towards her next target. Tsutomu watched the live broadcast of her in action through a Monitor as he sat in a seat in the Guild’s Dining Hall, resting his chin on his hand.

Three days had passed since Amy and Garm joined Absolute Helix. During that time, Tsutomu had been told something quite interesting by his fellow healer, Korinna, so he decided to observe Amy through the Monitors to confirm it.

The members of Absolute Helix party that Tsutomu was observing included two Attackers: Amy and the green-scaled Dragonewt Leleia — two Tanks: the Cynokins Garm and Daryl — and one Healer, Korinna.

Amy had been dissatisfied when the lineup was announced, but she complied when Tutomu sent the team to explore the Snow Field layers. Tsutomu, after getting to see them fight on the Monitors, now believed what Korinna had told him.

[It’s true — this does look different from the other Monitors.]

The footage of the Monitors were projections of what the God Eyes saw, so most of the time, the action was shown in such a way that every element was visible. However, the Monitor that currently showed Absolute Helix was clearly focusing on single individuals more often than not.

The God Eyes did have some capability of following the intentions of the Explorers. If Explorers thought they were in the way, then they would move out of view automatically, and if someone thought of wanting to show some specific thing, the God Eye would try to show it.

Amy, being a local idol of sorts, was quite good at giving instructions to the God Eyes. In her mind, she would always instruct the God Eyes to focus on not only herself, but also her comrades, whenever the time was right.

She did not do this to make herself stand out, but rather out of consideration of what the audience would find eye-catching and entertaining.

One did not have to do much for the God Eyes to move around, output footage, and zoom in to highlight select individuals. However, as Amy was much more skilled than the average person at instructing God Eyes to show nice-looking scenes, she was able to draw more attention to whatever Monitor she was on compared to the others.

[I didn’t notice this at all.]

Tsutomu’s priority was to conquer the Dungeon, so he had never taken the audience on the other side of the screen into consideration. Moreover, since he tended to view the broadcasts as learning material, he did not pay all that much attention to the entertainment value.

Having been told by Korinna about Amy’s superior skill in manipulating the God Eyes, tried looking at many other Monitors and considered their ‘camerawork’. He found that the higher the Monitor number, the more basic the footage was due to leaving everything to the God Eye, while footage on the lower-numbered Monitors tended to be dynamically manipulated at least to some extent.

“Come on! Don’t be shy, Korinna!”

“O-oh, no… I’m not important enough to be shown.”

“Nah, nah! C’mon!”

“Wha–! I… I never thought I’d get to share the screen with Amy!”

Scenes of normal exploring and conversations among party members while they were not fighting monsters were abundant, too. Right now, the Monitor was showing Korinna looking half happy, half embarrassed, and Amy doing a peace sign as if she was in a photoshoot.

Afterward, Amy called over the God Eye again, this time directing it to show the conversation between Daryl and Garm. This turned out to be helpful to the audience, too, as the conversation between them concerned the fighting styles of Tank-type Explorers.

Amy would also casually bring up her sponsors and the products she was using in her conversations. Tsutomu, now that he paid attention to what she said, was genuinely surprised by how much attention she paid to the marketing aspect of things.

[That’s amazing.]

The Explorers’ equipment was also being shown on the Monitor in a way that makes the sponsors’ logos on them more visible and naturally eye-catching. Seeing all this, Tsutomu could not help but consider trying this camerawork thing out whenever he was exploring in a team as well.

Impressed by Amy’s capabilities that he had never noticed until Korinna told him, Tsutomu positively reevaluated his opinion of Amy as he kept on watching her five-member party.

As the team’s Tanks, Garm was doing quite well, and so was Daryl, who had been looking especially good ever since he successfully completed Melchor’s mission. With his lack of self-confidence largely resolved, he seemed to have started developing a great deal of self-awareness as a Tank.

Garm and Leleia’s synergy had improved significantly over the past three days. Their general style included long-ranged magical attacks using the Spirits and closed-ranged attacks with elementally-enchanted swords. Garm seemed to have gotten used to it, too, as he was now able to work with Leleia without any hiccups. Moreover, he seemed to have formed a contract with the clay doll-like Gnome for a boost to his VIT.

Korinna, the Healer, was practicing to increase her time management precision and ability to juggle multiple support spells. In particularly busy battles such as ones against layer bosses, it was understandable that she would be able to only support the Tanks, but in normal battles, she would have to be able to support the Attackers as well.

Moreover, Tsutomu wanted her to be able to support Attackers during layer boss battles as well, so he had instructed her to consistently practice both that and time management. He wanted to also teach her how to efficiently use > and skills with long channeling times, but ultimately decided to have her start from the basics first.

At one point, Tsutomu had wondered if there was anything to help with time management, and as it turned out, various shops had been crafting various prototype tools that did just that. If one was unable to accurately estimate time in their minds, then it was better for them to rely on tools instead — in fact, said tools would be especially useful to Channelers due to the long durations of most of their skills.

[It must be harder to make than it sounds, though…]

Since pocket watches existed, mechanisms for accurately keeping track of time were already a thing, but Tsutomu was not sure if the technology of this world was advanced enough to build on top of that and create a tool that enabled one to track the durations of multiple effects at once. As such, Korinna currently still counted the time in her mind, but the results were not particularly satisfactory.

Even if she were to concentrate on counting the seconds, there usually would be some margin of error. And while she did that for her four comrades, she also had to keep track of the ever-changing battle situation and provide healing as needed. It was a difficult thing to keep up with, and from Tsutomu’s point of view, Stephanie was the only one able to do it competently so far.

[Speaking of Stephanie… I wonder how she is doing. Oh, and Eunice, too.]

These days, he had been spending his time off trying out Spirit Contracts and helping Amira practice her >, so he had not gotten to watch the Monitors much. Remembering the newspaper article and what Misil had told him, Tsutomu moved away from the Monitor that was showing Absolute Helix.

First, he went to check on Golden Tune, which was shown on Monitor #6. They had won against the boss monster of layer seventy after obtaining a Scorchstone Robe, and now the lowest layer they have reached was layer seventy. After being wiped out by the Winter General almost immediately, they had switched to leveling up their party members, so now they were often seen exploring the Snow Field layers regardless of whether it was day or night.

The biggest change was that Leon, who used to be an Attacker, was now a Tank. Having learned of the evasion-based Tank style from watching Hannah, he had since practiced it, getting his own style down to some extent by the time his team fought the Mount Golem again.

Leon possessed no aggro-pulling skills like >, but he did have his unique skill, >, which increased his AGI by two ranks. As the fastest fighter in Dungeon City, he could simply generate enough aggro by attacking repeatedly.

Their team currently was made up of one Tank, two Attackers, and two Healers — though sometimes they would have one less Healer and one more Tank instead. Still, their regular composition of having two Healers was not very often seen in other parties, so it had become a topic of conversation among the audience.

[Oh, that’s what was mentioned in the article.]

As Tsutomu looked on at Leon cutting up the monsters with ridiculous maneuvers, Eunice in her same white robe held her staff under her arm and started putting her hands together as if she was making a snowball. As the camera was far from her, Tsutomu had to focus his eyes on Eunice to even see what she was doing.

[Is that… >?]

A mass of energy formed in the space between Eunice’s hands. She proceeded to take the energy ball and place it on the ground, then she started moving her hand around it as if kneading it. Her yellow-furred tail was standing upright perhaps due to her concentration.

Normally, Eunice’s AGI would increase if she touched the gaseous mass of >, but currently, that did not happen despite her apparently putting her hands on it.

[Is she solidifying the > shot? No, that’s not right. It still looks like gas to me. Feels more like she’s locking it in… which means she must be using a >.]

The mass of > in Eunice’s hand now took a more solid shape, and even when she squeezed her hands together, it did not activate and instead just stayed there. In the end, she dropped the sphere down onto the snow-covered ground.

Eunice proceeded to make four more of the > spheres, then she picked them up and handed them over to Leon — while looking pretty tired after all that kneading. She then drank down a vial of Blue Potion… and stuck out her blue-dyed tongue due to its bitterness.

[So she’s using > to ‘package’ the >, and then she hands it to Leon… And when the > is disengaged, Leon would get the effect of >, huh?]

Seeing some of the energy aura’s light occasionally leaking out of Leon’s clothes, Tsutomu believed that his guess was more or less correct. Eunice was not predicting where to place her > casts as Tsutomu would, and instead used her self-invented method of ‘solidifying’ the > casts for Leon to keep on himself.

“>… and >.”

As a test, Tsutomu cast > in front of him and tried surrounding it with >. As it turned out, it was quite tricky to cast them at the same time and properly wrap them together. Then, when he tried to bend the > forcibly, it shattered.

Changing the shape of the > spell had always been difficult, so it must require a great deal of effort to make it as small as Eunice could. Tsutomu tried again and again, but even when his mental energy ran out, he did not manage to make even one > sphere.

[This is… not mental energy-efficient at all,] he grumbled an excuse to himself and pressed his temples to relieve the weighty feeling in his head that resulted from the exhausting of his mental energy.

After that, he looked up at the Monitor again, and as it turned out, what he had just said was surprisingly on point.

The duration of skills such as > and > decreased as time passed after the initial casting. As such, the efficacy of this ‘portable sphere’ > was lower the longer it was kept unactivated.

In consideration of that, Eunice would always cast > with the maximum amount of energy she could before packing it into a >. And whenever Leon’s buff was about to run out, she would disengage one > after another, continuously boosting Leon’s AGI.

The first few of the spheres would quickly be used up, so she did not need to pack them with that much energy, but the ones that Leon would hold on to for a longer time would be weaker when he got around to using them. That resulted in Eunice’s mental energy running low easily, making it necessary for her to drink more Blue Potions, and also for there to be two Healers in the team.

[I should practice this more later.]

Tsutomu could stick to using the placement type >, so he did not really need to learn this portable sphere type. However, he was feeling somewhat irritated that Eunice was able to do it but he could not, so he decided that he would try again.

Afterward, he moved on to Monitor #2, where the Ealdred Crow team was being shown. They were focusing on leveling up their members these days, so there was no clear division between the first two teams to be seen. Regardless, Tsutomu took a look and saw Stepanie on the screen.

[…Has she really changed that much?]

From Tsutomu’s point of view, Stephanie did not seem to have changed in any particular way. She seemed to have lost some of the enthusiasm in her eyes compared to before, but other than that, she was apparently doing fine as she conversed normally with her fellow party members.

“Next.”

“Wolves to the north. Collect only Ice Magic Stones.”

“All right. Let’s get this over with.”

Their interactions did not exude any tension or hostility, and Tsutomu felt like he was watching a perfectly normal high-efficiency team. Stephanie was blending in quite well with the rest of them, and she was not getting any negative looks from her comrades.

“>, >.”

In fact, when it came to healing and support, and also attention to detail, it was impressive how much improvement she was showing compared to before. She was growing in a way that best fit the mold of a by-the-book Healer, and her style was exactly what one would expect from a student of Tsutomu’s. She had also gained a nickname recently — ‘Conductor,’ due to the shape of the staff she would usually wield.

Lorena was known as a > due to the style she had created herself, and Eunice had even invented a whole new way to cast her skills. The latter case was a far more major improvement than what Tsutomu had expected to see from Eunice, causing him to somewhat positively reevaluate his opinion of her.

[Well, I’ll remember to greet them whenever we meet in the Dungeon.]

The major players — Ealdred Crow, Golden Tune, Silver Beast, and the Guild — currently were concentrating on leveling themselves up on layer seventy-nine, so Absolute Helix’s teams were bound to run into them eventually while exploring.

After having his fill of spectating for the day, Tsutomu returned to the Clan House and decided to spend the rest of the day taking it easy.