I hate being in pain, so I think I'll make a full defense build

Itai no wa Iya nanode Bōgyo-Ryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu 189

Defense Specialization and Inside the Darkness 3

“Huh?! I-I can’t see anything!”

Maple tried to use the lantern again, but the result was the same.

“Wh-where? Woah?!”

While Maple looked around frantically, a cold hand grabbed her from the back.

It had a temporary effect of taking away her STR and AGI. Thankfully, that didn’t mean anything to Maple.

“Tsk…Ughh! I can’t get away…”

Of course, not having any STR meant that she could not escape from the ghost’s grasp either.

For half a minute, the hand slowly rose and lifted Maple up into the air.

“The damage…what?!”

Maple closed her eyes in preparation, but this time, the pain did not come.

Instead, Maple lost all of her HP. Indomitable Guardian activated, and Maple was thrown to the ground.

While there was no fall damage, Maple would not be able to survive if she took another hit.

“Uh, what? Oh, wha-what should I…!”

While Maple was confused, there was one thing she knew very well. She could not allow herself to be hit again.

“Thr-throne! Where!?”

Maple ran through the darkness and searched for the throne she had left somewhere.

It would take some time before she would be able to use it again if she deactivated it, and she wasn’t sure she could survive that long.

However, Maple was not even thinking that far ahead. She was mostly just running from the present danger.

And that happened to be a good thing for her.

“I can’t find it…!”

Maple sensed that something was coming up behind her, and so she ran in a zigzag.

After a while, she began to calm down enough to consider her various options.

Maple thought of using her self-destruct flight in order to gain some distance, but since she couldn’t even see anything, there was a possibility that she would fly straight into the enemy. And so she gave up that idea as something that should not be tested.

Currently, she could really do nothing but run, but there were times when she felt a cold wind at her back and she grew pale.

Maple breathed heavily as she ran. And then she thought of something else and decided to put it into action.

“Return, Syrup. And…good. The Soul Canon is ready! With this…I can deactivate the throne as well!”

Maple was now feeling very optimistic about her chances. She started to run again when something got caught around her foot.

“Huh…”

When Maple looked down at her right foot, she saw that a pale hand had stretched out of the ground and was wrapped around her.

“Ohhh! Let go! Ah…”

Cold hands wrapped around Maple’s body.

The hands were keeping her fixed to the ground, so while she was not lifted this time, death was approaching.

Almost by instinct, Maple called Syrup, but her mind could not concentrate, and she was unable to give any orders.

“Uh, uh! Ah, oh, what should I do!”

As she panicked, Maple instinctively did the only thing she could do within the short amount of time she had left.

“‘Predator,’ ‘Oozing Chaos,’ ‘Pandemonium,’ ‘Hydra,’ ‘Soul Canon,’ ‘Mother Nature’!”

The line of monsters appeared behind Maple’s back. And the two Oni stood up in the darkness.

Thick vines shot out of the darkness while the Soul Canon fired with a thunderous noise that was followed by the Hydra.

The fire that the Oni breathed filled the darkness. The roar of the monsters and the sounds of the clubs banging echoed as the vines shot up into the air.

“Ohhhh!”

Desperately, Maple pulled out the sheets of paper and began to stick them onto the hands around her.

Maple was filled with the fear that she could be dead in the next moment.

However, before Maple’s HP could reach 0, there was a cracking sound, and the darkness was filled with a blinding light.

“Huh…?”

It was as if the darkness was being shattered like glass. And the room was filled with more and more light.

“Hahh…ehehe. Thank you.”

Maple was so relieved that she collapsed onto her back and looked upward.

She looked up at the faces that looked down at her and smiled gently.