Live Dungeon! Novel Chapter 61, Evaluation Meeting of the Golden

Chapter 61, Evaluation eting of the Golden

The party returned ho, two of their mbers in a gloomy mood. Then the next day, Eunice did not respond to Tsutomu when he tried talking to her, so he instead focused on Barbara’s training while they were exploring the thirty-ninth layer.

Barbara was showing great signs of improvent, perhaps thanks to the practical experience gained from dealing with ten Skeletons at once yesterday. The number of Skeletons she could reliably take on had increased by one, and she was becoming more stable even without buffing effects. As long as she did not get hit by critical attacks, she would not have any difficulty with the Skeletons; she herself knew that, resulting in her maneuvers getting better, too.

[At this rate, we might be fine throwing in so Skeleton Archers in a day or two after this.]

Since their eventual training targets were the Orcs, which naturally had archers among their groups, the party needed to get used to long-ranged attacks as well. While watching the Skeletons being blown away by Barbara’s blows with her buckler, Tsutomu thought about the next thods with which to train her.

Eunice, on the other hand, was constantly grumbling to herself in annoyance; she had been trying to do the sa things as Tsutomu had shown, but since there was no way one could do everything right off the bat, she kept on failing and failing. Tsutomu had advised her to focus on healing and supporting the Tank at first, but ended up leaving her to her own devices after being asked by her to leave her alone for three days.

Barbara took on the ten Skeletons while enduring the pain in her joints, while Diniel frequently sighed as her body’s senses were altered repeatedly by her

effect running out and being applied again.

[Diniel’s the type of few words, I see. She might even pass as a Japanese person on that front.]

From Tsutomu’s experience, the act of simply walking away without a word was the most common reaction from Japanese players when encountering Healers with bad personalities. There were also those who would kindly teach them the ropes and others who would hurl profanity at them, of course, but most of the ti, people would simply leave the party and find another elsewhere to avoid the hassle of a conflict.

In this case, however, there was no way to imdiately break up the party, so Diniel could only keep silent while putting up with her displeasure. The situation was, needless to say, not good — not the kind of good silence where everyone involved acted naturally in sync with one another. This was the kind of silence where everyone had complaints and suggestions for improvent, but could not bring themselves to say them out loud.

Tsutomu kept on watching the three while he twirled his white staff around in his hands... and then saw Diniel starting to act up.

She began to dodge Eunice’s

shots, deliberately letting them pass her by as she kept on shooting the Skeletons down. After the first several tis, Eunice realized the aning behind Diniel’s behavior; now she was insistent on landing the

shots on Diniel.

In fact, she was so focused on getting

to hit that she had forgotten to support Barbara; now the latter’s

had expired, and she was not getting enough healing. Tsutomu, reminded of so many stray parties in Live Dungeon that had gotten wiped because of these very sa behaviors, held his head regretfully.

[If this goes on for two more days, I think even Barbara might lose her temper.]

Seeing Barbara being subject to the Skeleton’s attacks without any buffing effects made Tsutomu want to intervene, but he knew that intervening now would only satisfy him and do nothing to help Eunice’s improvent. He kept on watching the trio fight, suppressing the itch to take action all the while.

Eventually, Eunice finally realized that Barbara was in a critical situation, rushing to cast her

and . Eunice’s panic might have transmitted to the skills she used, however, as apparent from how her

and

were in half-vapor forms, failing to reach Barbara before fading away.

Diniel, losing her patience upon seeing that happen, let loose her arrows in quick succession. One after another, they pierced the Skeletons’ skulls with great accuracy, eventually temporarily incapacitating all ten of them.

“.”

With the Skeletons gone for now, Eunice seed to have regained her composure; her

shot this ti was a spherical shape, and she successfully hit Barbara with it. Tsutomu, after confirming that a few more shots landed without issue, shouted out,

“All right! Now we retreat! Everyone, gather around!”

The three turned around at the sound of Tsutomu’s shout. Diniel, looking bored, imdiately put away the arrow in her hand and rushed over to Tsutomu. Barbara also ran over, looking sowhat nervous, while Eunice clicked her tongue out of annoyance at the reconstructing Skeletons before grouping up with everyone else.

After leaving the Team Graveyard and returning to the Guild, they sat down on the chairs in the Guild’s dining hall, as asked to by Tsutomu. He proceeded to take out a pen and a piece of paper from his Magic Bag and put them on the table.

“Our Tank and Healer have gotten the basics down since yesterday, which enabled us to carry out training in a real combat environnt. So from today on, after the training sessions are over, the three of you must be present in an evaluation eting.”

“E-evaluation etings?”

Barbara, after taking off her helt and wiping her face with a towel to release so heat, looked awkwardly at the two others sitting in front of her. Seeming to still hold an inferiority complex due to her Job and the fact that she had not been in the main party until very recently, she still could not act all that naturally toward the two.

“Now then, let’s start with Barbara. Is there anything about the party you’re not satisfied with?”

“I-I’m first!?”

“Yes.”

Tsutomu smiled at Barbara then raised his hand to the Guild Staff mber who was taking orders, and ordered drinks for all four of the party. And then, seeing that Barbara had yet to say anything, he turned to look at her as if to urge her on. Afraid of Tsutomu’s silent gaze, she eventually brought herself to speak up,

“I’d like more healing, I guess.”

“You want Eunice to heal you more frequently... noted. Anything else?”

“...No, I don’t think so.”

“All right.”

After quickly writing down Barbara’s opinion on the paper, Tsutomu then turned to Eunice. In response, Eunice glared at Diniel and pointed at her.

“She’s been dodging my

shots, I can tell! She’s been doing that just now, too! What’s wrong with her!?”

“Diniel has been dodging ... noted. Anything else.”

“...Nothing. But, well, I’m sorry, Barbara. I’ll do better.”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about it.”

Bowed to by Eunice, Barbara hurriedly waved her hands as if to tell the forr that she ant no disrespect. Tsutomu took a sip of the cold water that had been served to him and then turned to Diniel. She cast her gaze down, her expression suggesting that she wanted to hurry and be done with this.

“The

shots were in my way, so I don’t really need them.”

“Diniel doesn’t need ... noted. Anything else?”

“What!? You stop ssing around!”

Eunice, yellow tail flicked up in response to Diniel’s blunt remark, retorted with quite a rough tone; the latter winced at Eunice’s volu and held her long, sharp ears with her hands.

“Don’t force yourself — there’s no use in doing sothing you can’t.”

“Ngh... S-sure, I can’t do it now, but I’ll get it down in three days, you’ll see!”

“I don’t think it’ll be that easy, though.”

“If that guy can do it, then there’s no way in hell I can’t!”

“N-now, just calm down for a bit, you two!”

Eunice was about to grab Diniel when Barbara leaned forward over the table and pushed the two apart with her arms. Tsutomu kept on noting things down while thinking to himself how surprised he would be if they were to actually get things in place within the next three days.

“Anyway, we’ve gotten everyone to voice their opinions, at least. Now I’ll be explaining all of your battle performances from what I observed. First, Barbara.”

“Y-yes.”

“You were very good at countering the Skeletons today. It seems that you were able to grasp the essential concepts from yesterday’s combat practice. Please do keep up the good work.”

“Yes,” Barbara nodded firmly in response to Tsutomu’s explanation.

Looking at them, Eunice groaned as if she was looking at sothing silly. Tsutomu proceeded to turn to Eunice and said to her,

“So, Eunice... you said you’ll get things down in three days. I won’t say anything until then, so do your best with whatever you’re trying now.”

“...You don’t even need to tell

that.”

“But if you don’t show any improvent in three days, I’ll have you strictly following my instructions going forward.”

Eunice reluctantly nodded to Tsutomu’s statent, then began drinking from her cup of cold water, holding it up with both hands. Tsutomu still had much he wanted to say to her, especially since they both had the sa Job, but he decided to refrain from doing so for now. Seeing that she had learned all the basics in a short period of ti, there was plenty of ti to spare. As such, he decided to give Eunice three days for her to do whatever she wanted with.

“And Diniel... I don’t have anything in particular for you. You didn’t seem to be taking things seriously in the first place, so I can’t really evaluate your performance.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, but I do have a feeling that you’ve been keeping things to yourself too much. If there’s anything you want done, maybe you should try speaking it out more.”

“Okay.”

Diniel did not seem to pay much attention to what Tsutomu had to say, only giving curt answers as she held up her cup and twirled it around. Tsutomu, thinking back to how she had started dodging

shots earlier, thought to himself how she had always co off as unpredictable and eccentric,. The eting ended for now, however, and after a short break, the party headed back to the Team Graveyard of the thirty-ninth layer.

――▽▽――

Two days had passed since the evaluation eting, but Eunice had not been shown to change much; with one day left on her bold claim, she was now constantly worried over what she could do.

To make it easier to keep track of her skills’ durations, she had tried shortening the effect of , which lasted longer , and made it so that she could count the two skills’ tis in relation with each other. However, whenever she’d had to pay attention to Diniel’s movents to get

to land on her, she ended up losing or confusing the seconds’ counts.

Moreover, Eunice knew all too well that the timing at which Barbara would use , as instructed by Tsutomu, was when the Skeletons finished reconstructing themselves. Despite knowing that, she would need a wide field of vision and good awareness to make sure to support both Barbara and Diniel while healing as needed while also noting the locations and tis at which the Skeletons would co back. As she was now, Eunice still possessed insufficient abilities to grasp the whole battle’s situation.

Now, she was at her wit’s end, failing to understand why she could not do what Tsutomu could despite the latter being a White Mage with a level of lower than fifty — essentially a beginner to the scene. Using her frustration to fuel her drive on the third day, after she was done exploring the Dungeon with Barbara and Diniel, she asked Leon and so other Clan mbers to give her so combat training. During the session, she tried imitating another one of Tsutomu’s moves. Thinking she should be fine if she were to succeed in at least placing

pick-ups, she ended up being quite shocked to know how difficult it actually was.

Tsutomu, through learning and predicting Leon’s movent behaviors, had been reliably placing

on the ground in the directions of Leon’s steps. Eunice, however, could not manage to get Leon to step on the right spots, even when she abandoned her other obligations to focus on him.

placents had a slight delay between the spell activation and the pick-up actually spawning. Despite anticipating that and placing the pick-ups in advance, Leon would already have passed the spawn points by the ti they were ready. After about five hours of practice, Eunice was not able to get Leon to step on her

pick-ups even once.

To fully excel at her role, she must do the following: Use the skills Tsutomu had taught her to maintain the buffing effects of her three party mbers, while also keeping an eye on the Tank and healing them as necessary. Reliably place

pick-ups so that Leon could get them, while also knowing the monsters’ positions and managing their aggro on her. And at tis, making herself function as a Tank, attracting the attention of many monsters and keeping herself alive. Eunice still could not do even the first thing on the list. Moreover, this ti, unlike when she had learned to use skill shots and placents, she did not feel that she had improved at all. She could not even picture a future where she managed to learn all those skills and tactical prowesses.

Eunice kept on practicing with Leon and the team until late into the night, but all she managed to understand was the overwhelming difference between Tsutomu and herself. By the ti she was back to the Clan House, it was already pitch black out; she cleaned herself, changed into her pajamas, and went back to her room.

She had to admit that she was inferior to ‘that guy.’ That Garm, Camille, and Amy were not fully responsible for his team’s victories over the Fire Dragon. That her assessnt of him had been wrong.

Feeling as if she was getting all that implicitly beaten in, she shook the staff in her hand in frustration, then proceeded to throw it at the wall with all her might.

The staff fell to the floor with a hollow rattle. Eunice heaved a deep sigh and went to pick it back up.

[...I’ll admit, he’s better than . For now.]

Eunice then wiped her red, swollen eyes with her sleeve, jumped into her cutely-decorated double bed, and almost imdiately fell asleep.

The next morning, Eunice woke up with a refreshed look on her face. She quickly got ready and ate breakfast in the Clan House’s Dining Hall, then waited at the entrance for Tsutomu’s arrival.

She had been trying to imitate Tsutomu’s moves for herself, an effort which had gone largely unsuccessful. Now she felt that, if she kept stubbornly going at it like this, she would not ever be able to do it. She had resolved to bow to him, to ask him to teach her, and as such decided to do so first thing in the morning.

But ti ticked on, and even when it passed nine o’clock, Tsutomu did not show up. Up to now, he had always arrived much earlier, looking over so docunts in the reception room by the ti it was half-past eight. Eunice had her arms crossed and was thumping one foot in frustration when Barbara and Diniel spotted her on their way out.

“Oh, there you are, Eunice. I’ve been looking for you.”

“...Did sothing happen?”

“No, nothing — it’s just that we’ll be doing so training today as well, you see... do you have other plans?”

“I don’t. Of course I’ll go with you... but that guy isn’t here, and I’ve been waiting since early morning! Why even train today, of all days, anyway? I swear, he’s the worst...”

Seeing Eunice wagging her tail as if to show her annoyance, Barbara put her fingers on her temples, reluctant to explain what should have been obvious to the forr. Diniel, standing next to them, heaved a sigh and said,

“Tsutomu did tell us yesterday that he won’t be here today, though. Didn’t you hear him?”

“Huh...”

Having been so desperate to learn all the skills yesterday, Eunice had completely missed Tsutomu’s announcent. Diniel sighed again, exasperated. Eunice now realized that it had been a complete waste to have waited at the entrance so early in the morning. Her face flushed with sha, poked the ground hard with her staff as if she was throwing a tantrum.

“Why’s he taking the day off now, of all tis? Isn’t he here on Golden Tune’s request!? He can’t just take ti off like that! What’s his explanation for that, anyway!?”

“Well, it’s not like I know, either...”

“...Oh yeah, I think he said sothing about being called over by the Guild Master, and that he’ll be away for two days. Can’t bla him, I guess. He did get permission from Leon yesterday, after all.”

Barbara tried to pacify the red-faced Eunice as the latter scread at the top of her lungs, while Diniel simply covered her own ears. Ten minutes later, after the scene died down, the three headed to the Guild to begin today’s training.