Although there was no reason for him to put himself at a disadvantage, he had a friend at his side, so there was no harm in doing as Herohero said and briefly disabling his magical vision.
He entered the command to change vision modes into the console.
In that moment, the world became a sea of cloudy white.
“Uoh!”
The difference between his expectations and reality forced a quiet gasp of surprise from him.
“Haha, scared? Actually, it’s been like this for a while now.”
An aura of wicked amusement seemed to be coming from Herohero. It might even have qualified as satisfaction.
“Come on, give me a break.”
Although the bitter smile he was showing seemed to imply nothing was the matter, the fact was that it had touched a nerve. The terror of not being able to see anything aside, the shock blended with the lingering dark thoughts from earlier, and he felt as though he was alone again.
Momonga operated his console, and restored his vision.
It seemed everyone in his party could see through the mist. Or rather, that was to be expected. They had been through all sorts of adventures to get to their current levels, so everyone had already made the necessary preparations for this endeavour.
Just then, Momonga felt something was amiss, and asked:
“Still, Herohero-san, how did you come to have human eyesight?”
Herohero was a slime. Slimes used a sort of motion detection sense to learn about their surroundings in place of ordinary vision, so he should not have perceived the world like a human did.
“Ah, I equipped a magic item that gave me that ability. The innate motion detection ability which all slimes possess is very useful, but it’s only effective within a limited radius. I can’t see beyond 100 meters, which is pretty spooky if you ask me. I’d be in trouble if someone attacked me from outside that range, so I decided to give myself something to let me see normally.”
“Any advantage comes with a weakness. It’s how this game works.”
“The good balances out the bad. Oh, I’m picking up something on my vibration sense.”
He turned to where the black tentacle was pointing, and saw the outline of a massive worm.
It was a vast purple worm, over ten times the width of a human torso, its surface gleaming wetly.
These worms moved in packs, so it would be troublesome if it detected them.
The group suddenly halted. The magic casters pointed their fingers at the worm, while the warriors readied their ranged weapons.
If it spotted them, they were ready to destroy it in an instant, before it could summon its friends.
Momonga had a spell ready on his console, and took the stance he always did for attack spells. While Momonga’s usual role was to buff and debuff people, it would be more effective to attack directly given their numbers now.
After several seconds had passed, it seemed that their enemy had not spotted them, and slowly slithered back into the swamp.
“I’m not one for sneaking about. I want to cut a swathe through them,” Ulbert complained from somewhere in the distance.
“Ulbert-san, please don’t waste your MP. You should spend it all on the boss.”
Ulbert’s character build revolved around World Disaster, a class with incredible firepower. On top of that, he took levels in classes which further specialized in offensive ability. By attack power alone, he was easily among the top five in the guild, but he had a weakness. Though he had an ample supply of MP his consumption rate outstripped even that, in other words, he burned through MP quickly.
One could say that the difficulty of a dungeon expedition was directly related to how much MP he could bring to face the boss.
“Aw, I was just kidding. I know that. I’ve been saving up all this time, haven’t I? This is the maiden adventure of Ainz Ooal Gown, no? I’ll make sure it all works out!”
He clenched his right fist to show his sincerity. Momonga could feel his motivation, which was quite uncharacteristic of him.
“Ah, but I wouldn’t mind if you gave me some MP. That way, we could blow right through them and still have enough for a grand display at the boss.”
“Hm? Were you talking to me?”
Yamaiko was a magic caster who was adept at spirit-type magic, and she had further specialized within that field as a healer, which granted her curative spells. If it was her, she could transfer MP to another person via the appropriate spell.
“It’s not a bad idea, actually. Do you mind if I do it when the time comes? I can use staves and wands for healing anyway.”
“I don’t trust wands and staves for healing during a boss battle, and besides, you run out of juice fast, Yamaiko. If you want to transfer MP, I’d rather you get it from someone else.”
Yamaiko’s role in one sentence was that of a defensive healer. With her innate defenses and regeneration, combined with a build which emphasised those two qualities, she could even serve as a tank of sorts. Even when surrounded by the enemy, she could still heal her allies.
That said, being able to off-tank was a far cry from being able to main-tank.
Her weapon of choice, a huge gauntlet, could not do much damage. In exchange, it had an increased ability to inflict knockback on her foes. The fact that she used a weapon which put distance between herself and her enemies was ample proof that she was a healer at the core.
In this sense, she had two weaknesses.
The first was that she did not have much MP. Of course, she had more than enough for general healing, but it was insufficient when one factored in the need to cast buff spells and other things. The other weakness was that her attack power was very low, in exchange for improved regeneration.
With these in mind, she could be said to be the final defensive line of the group. Her role was to off-tank if the battle line started to crumble, heal everyone’s wounds and revive dying comrades.
“Still, why are we speaking so quietly?”
Ulbert and Yamaiko looked at each other's’ faces, and confusedly replied, “I have no idea.”
It would seem that they had unconsciously lowered their volume since they were trying to be stealthy. After all the monsters could detect them with their programmed senses — vision, hearing, smell, and magic. Because of that, it was not wrong to crouch and speak softly.
However — those considerations were only applicable at low levels. Once players reached high levels, they could use a variety of spells and skills to conceal the entire party and infiltrate together. Given the abilities they had been using up till now, there was no need to sneak around.
When the worm from just now had appeared, the others only raised their weapons because they saw someone do it first and thought, “me too”.
“Maybe it’s just because visibility is better here.”
“Ah. Yes, that’s right. Like how you’d feel, leaving the house in just your underwear.”
Although Ulbert’s meaning was quite subtle, Momonga managed to get it, more or less.
“Mm, it sounds kind of wrong, but I guess that’s how it is.”
“I don’t get it.”
Keeping quiet for reasons they did not quite understand, the group followed the pioneers into the swamp.
They encountered many Tuvegs along the way, but they carefully went around the detection radius of the bipedal frog-monsters. Their attitude was different from just now, because some monsters had the ability to see through concealment, and the Tuvegs were such monsters.
Of course, they used magic to improve their mobility, but the journey still took a long time, given that they had to detour around the Tuvegs. However, they could finally see something different on the other side of the swamp.
This was their destination, the dungeon. Part of it looked like a small island
“So that’s it…”
After overlaying the map drawn by Nishiki Enrai on top of the current area minimap, it was easy to ascertain that they had arrived at their objective.