Jack of All Trades, Party of None

The day after Luna joined the silver rabbits of the night sky, the five of us—me, the three members of the tenth squad, and Luna—arrived at the thirtieth floor of the Great Southern Labyrinth.

“—Log! Now!!”

“Got it!”

A gigantic demonic beast resembling a huge boar charged straight at Carole.

Seeing this, Sophie immediately gave orders to Log.

“‘Earth wall (rock wall)’!!”

Both of them activated magic, causing two walls to materialize between Carole and the boar.

The boar’s charge was powerful, leveraging its massive body to break through the first wall, but its momentum was halted, and it was stopped by the second wall.

The boar came to a halt.

“—Haah!”

Carole had already moved before the boar was stopped by the wall and rapidly slashed at its legs using daggers held in both hands.

(Alright, they’re handling it smoothly without any trouble.)

I muttered to myself as I watched the three fight.

We were currently in the boss area of the thirtieth floor of the Great Southern Labyrinth.

The boar Sophie and the others were fighting was the floor boss of the thirtieth floor.

“Carole is fast but moves with precision. And Log and Sophie—just mastering parallel construction is impressive enough, but to also utilize activation waiting is remarkable. As expected of Mr. Orun’s disciples,” Luna murmured beside me as she observed the three fighting.

Magic is only activated when mana is flowed into the constructed technique.

In other words, magic can be activated at any chosen moment.

The period between completing technique construction and flowing mana is called activation waiting.

Anyone can do activation waiting, but it is mostly utilized by those who have mastered parallel construction.

Without parallel construction, one can only maintain a completed technique and cannot construct a new one or activate magic in the meantime.

Therefore, mastering parallel construction is essential to make good use of activation waiting.

However, activation waiting puts as much or even more strain on the brain as technique construction itself, so it can’t be used indiscriminately.

The most cost-effective approach is to flow mana immediately after completing technique construction, so activation waiting isn’t used all that often.

Even so, it’s undoubtedly a useful skill, and those who can quickly choose to activate waiting depending on the enemy or situation are excellent judges.

In Sophie’s case, she had decided beforehand to use activation waiting.

So it wasn’t a snap decision, but even so, being able to make that choice was good enough given the current circumstances.

“My power is minuscule. It’s all thanks to their efforts,” I said.

“Hehe, is that so? …If only their hearts—if only they could change their mindset, the day they become the representative explorer party of Tsutolairu won’t be far off,” Luna replied.

As I thought, Luna had seen through it.

What the tenth squad currently lacked critically (…………).

But that’s something only they can realize for themselves.

My words alone wouldn’t reach them.

“…Yeah. The sooner the better, and since it hasn’t been long since their big defeat, now is probably the best timing,” I said.

“A big defeat?”

“Come to think of it, this information was withheld. Actually, about a month ago, they fought against Amuntzarse.”

“Against Amuntzarse!? Why would rookies do that…? And pardon me, but how did they survive?”

Luna looked genuinely shocked.

No wonder—the organization was nothing but a threat to advanced explorers.

They hadn’t appeared in the Great Southern Labyrinth for the past decade but had recently begun showing up again.

I hope the Seeker’s Guild eventually releases this information, but for some reason, the guild has kept it under wraps.

We had considered releasing it from the silver rabbits of the night sky, but due to the content and to avoid causing unnecessary chaos, we also kept it quiet.

We tried to spread it as a rumor, but so far, it hasn’t spread widely.