Chapter 451 - 451 - Ambush Monsters? I'll Just Trigger Them All!

The thought of a body made supple and long-limbed by years of dancing sent a flush of heat through Leon.

There was no helping it. Persephone was just that good, not only making the most of every advantage she had, but carrying tags like unattainable flower, cold aloof female boss, gap-moe older woman, center-parted blonde waves. She had practically maxed out the anti-Leon buff stack. It wasn't his fault she had him wrapped around her finger. Just thinking back on it a little nearly broke his composure.

In short, she was smoking hot.

"Heheh!"

A poison needle took advantage of his distraction and slammed into his Frost Armor with a hard clang. The sick green glow of the venom jolted him, and his face changed.

"Son of a..."

He emptied the magazine in a fast string of shots.

The fight went on for a quarter of an hour.

As everyone gradually adjusted to the desert environment and worked out a rhythm for dealing with it, their coordination got smoother, and they began striking out in all directions together. The ambush monsters lurking around them were wiped out before long.

"Whew, it's finally over."

Never mind Laurier, who let out a huge sigh of relief and crouched on the ground with her head buried between her legs, gulping down air. Even Aura, the cool-tempered Mage with the traditional elf disposition who never hurried over anything, let her expression slacken for once.

It seemed this ambush mode had put enormous pressure on her too.

As for Irisviel and Margaret, there was even less to say. They had plenty of tricks, but at only Lv.1, and Mages besides, moving through Sand Land left them feeling like that vague sense of pressure was crushing the breath out of them. The constant danger left them with no sense of safety at all, and in combat the two of them stayed back to back at every moment to handle attacks that could come out of nowhere.

Only when Leon stood guard in front of them did they feel any safety at all.

"This ambush mode is just brutal for Mages. That close, that sudden. If nobody was protecting us..."

Margaret shivered.

The ambush monsters appeared without warning. It wasn't like other floors, where a monster takes time to be born. By the time one came into the world, Adventurers had usually already reacted and had plenty of time to respond.

But the traps of Sand Land were nothing like that. Once triggered, the monster launched its attack with no warning whatsoever, and if an Adventurer wasn't alert enough, reacted a little slow, or handled it wrong, the only outcome was being torn to pieces.

All the way here, Leon's group had been ground down miserably by this kind of trap at first. Beyond keeping their nerves stretched tight and bracing for an attack at any moment, they had no more effective answer.

And the result was this.

Kureha gripped her sword hilt tight, her cheeks under the hood covered in sweat.

She braced her hands on her knees and gasped for air. Once she'd recovered a little strength she straightened up with effort, took the waterskin from Aura, said "Thank you," and tipped her head back to drink it down in one go.

"We can't keep going like this," she said, voice a little hoarse. "The ambush traps drain everyone's nerves and stamina way too much. Most of a day has gone by, and we've probably explored less than a twentieth of the 32nd floor."

"Jeanne, Rose, Persephone, Leon, what do we do next?"

Leon, with his Frost Armor up, looked at the exhausted faces around him and frowned hard.

Ambushes... what exactly do we do about them?

How do the other Familia handle this? There are only a dozen or so of us and the constant sneak attacks have already worn us out. What about an Expedition group of dozens or a hundred people? Do they just bull straight through it?

They'd be sitting ducks, dropping bodies left and right.

Tch... those big Familia must have some special trick for avoiding the ambushes...

Leon thought carefully back over the intel he'd gathered through various channels, combined it with his own four years of adventuring experience...

Then it hit him, like a lightbulb clicking on over his head.

He punched his fist into his palm, his face lighting up.

"Jeanne, I've got an idea!"

Everyone had been resting, brows furrowed, and at his sudden outburst they all looked over.

Jeanne raised an eyebrow and studied him with narrowed eyes.

"What idea? If it's something stupid like slaughtering our way straight through, you can save your breath..."

Leon grimaced and waved both hands.

"How could I possibly suggest something that brute-force? That's what meatheads do. I'm a Mage. An elegant Mage, all right?"

Nobody said anything. They just watched him quietly.

"...Fine."

Leon shrugged, spreading his hands like a bear cub showing its paws.

"My idea isn't straight-up brute force, but it's, uh... pretty close. Just with a slight twist."

"Meaning?"

"I mean we've all been stuck on a wrong assumption. We keep waiting passively for the mine field to get triggered. Because we're passive, we're always scrambling to keep up."

"So what if we flip it around?"

"Flip it around?"

"Right. What if we go trigger the mines ourselves?"

"After all this time, everyone should be familiar with how the ambush monsters work. Trigger the trap and they show themselves instantly. So... has it occurred to any of you that we don't have to step on them with our feet? We could trigger them with attacks."

Rose's eyes lit up.

"Triggering them with an attack works exactly the same!"

Leon's mouth was already curling up uncontrollably.

"Exactly! To cut down the odds of being ambushed, we use long-range, wide-area attacks to set off the traps. Magic Swords, Wind Arrow, things like that, to force the ambush monsters out early. That way, the initiative is ours!"

Persephone pushed her glasses up lightly.

"Blizzard."

"Bingo! Correct!"

Jeanne packed away her waterskin briskly, stood, planted her battle standard in the yellow sand, and standing atop the dune, pointed down at the sandy gully below.

"Right there. Let's try it!"

"If this tactic works, the pressure on us for the rest of the exploration drops by more than half!"

Leon nodded to everyone and took a step forward. A large magic circle with a radius of over five meters spread open under his feet.

"Blizzard!"

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