“Maki, Ayane. How did the footage turn out?”
“It can be seen perfectly, like the skill didn’t affect it.”
“I feel like people will spot them more easily after seeing this!”
“Well, knowing what an enemy looks like makes its detection easier…”
People don’t get close to this place because of their stats too, but more importantly, because they don’t know what these look like and heard rumors of sneak attacks by monsters people don’t even know what they look like. I think an invisible fear makes it even harder to advance here.
Surely it will be easier for the others if we figure out how to get past them based on their skills.
“Aira.”
“Yes, here.”
I reach out, and Aira hands me the skill orbs and materials from the hide hunter.
First, the skills.
Name: Hiding
Grade: Rare
Classification: Arts skill
Description: Makes one melt into their environment and makes it harder to detect with the naked eye. More effective when the user wears camouflage clothing.
Name: Presence Obstruction
Grade: Rare
Classification: Arts skill
Description: Lessens the presence one releases unconsciously, and the feeling of being there.
Name: Hide hunter camouflage film
Grade: Rare
Classification: Material
Description: Copies the environment and colors around it and causes visual misrecognition. It takes time to completely blend in, so the effect lessens if one moves.
This film seems pretty useful if you sit still. But as the explanation says, it seems to take some time to replicate the information of my hand, and it’s slowly turning into the color of my skin. It seems to take more than a minute, so I can’t use it in an emergency.
What would it be useful for? Hide and seek?
“Aira, is Hiding the lower rank version of Invisibility?”
“Most likely.”
“Hm. Then what would happen if we took a photo of you while you had the Invisibility skill active?”
“It would show, but unfocused. Since the monster appeared clearly, I would say it is a difference in the skill’s abilities.”
“I see. So Hiding only works when someone looks at them directly, not through a lens.”
“I assume so. But the camouflage patterns remain the same, so I believe it still works to a certain extent even through a lens, from a distance.”
Then these are much easier to deal with than the bees. They just have to take photos with a smartphone or go around filming. Thankfully, hide hunters won’t attack unless people get close, so they can attack them from a distance or lure them in.
I share that with everyone, and we put it into practice. Erasing their presence with Presence Obstruction won’t let them escape from Omni Detection. I don’t even need my map to tell where they are.
I pinpoint a general area, have people with low detection abilities like Ayane and Kasumi use equipment, and try to prove my hypothesis.
“I feel like it’s over there…”
Click!
“Ah, there it is. Near that rock thirty meters in front!”
“I saw two!”
“Only Miss Kasumi’s older brother would come up with a solution so quickly…!”
“I guess when dungeons first appeared, people recorded them with smartphones and cameras, but no one thought to use them to look for monsters…”
“Only you, Shouta.”
The girls find and hunt twenty hide hunters. That ends the experiment, so I think it’s time to move on to the real deal.
“Yes, everyone gather!”
I clap my hands to get everyone’s attention.
My team goes without saying, but Kasumi’s also immediately stops chatting and turns this way. It’s a girl only team, but one that fought a lot to get to B rank.
They’re being led around a low level dungeon by me, but their attention is still sharp.
“It looks like the experiment was a success, so let’s move on to the next stage. I explained it to you all, but generally, to make rare monsters spawn in this dungeon, you need a certain amount of luck and to hunt a hundred of a kind of monster. We have the necklaces, so it’s a little different. Aira.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to advance here while exterminating monsters, while you go the other way and bring about twenty of them to me or take them down. Can you do that?”
“Leave it to me.”
“Haru, come with me in the meantime. You can’t keep up with Aira hunting at full speed.
“I understand, elder brother.”
A few dozen minutes go by after we split up.
The monsters mostly act alone, and it’s rare for them to gather. It’s easy to find them with the map, but this is my first opponent that blends in with its surroundings. I try not to use the map and stick to a self-imposed challenge.
My pace drops because of this, but it’s important to do this. And after Aira comes back, I soon hit a hundred.
“Is it coming?”
The smoke lingers, and swells.
“Isn’t it going to the center of the mountain?”
I’m confused, because this isn’t what the map showed me, but there are a lot of features I don’t know about yet. Maybe I misunderstood something, but I need to deal with what’s in front of me first.
With that in mind, I have the girls stay behind me as a bipedal lizard appears.
＊＊＊＊＊
Name: Lizardman Hunter
Level: 93
Physical Strength: 900
Dexterity: 1000
Constitution: 800
Agility: 1100
Magic Energy: 600
Intelligence: 600
Luck: None
Boost skills: Great Strength II, Super Strength II, Asura
Passive skills: Physical Strengthening Lv3, Spear Techniques Lv5, Assassin Techniques Lv5
Arts skills: Invisibility III, Presence Severance, Armor Pierce
Equipment: Black iron spear, hide hunter camouflage jacket
Drops: Random equipment
Magic stone: Large
＊＊＊＊＊
‘Kururururu’
I figured there would be an assassination skill, but this is more of a military monster than I thought.
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