Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)
Volume 3 - Ch 4.11

Usually this is the part where I start saying that as long as I have Roxanne with me then everything is going to work itself out on its own, but just because she can dodge the enemy attacks like its nothing, that does not mean that I can constantly push her into harms way on the front lines simply because that is more convenient for me. Even if she says that she is fine now, sooner or later she is bound to give in if too much strain will be placed upon her.

Now that I have gotten more of a hang on fighting various types of different monsters and begun to learn how to dodge their attacks more gracefully (although I still have ways to go to get on Roxannes level when it comes to that), I think it would be a good idea to conquer the seventh floor at a more steady pace while being more aware of our surroundings, especially since for the time being I dont think we are going to have a repeat of the situation from the fourth floor where I allowed my paranoia of getting hurt to make me afraid of the Minos whereas in reality they were not all that difficult to deal with, only my panicked brain has made them out to be like that in my head. In a stark contrast to that, we have broken through the fifth and sixth floors of both Veils and Quratars Labyrinths so fast that it is actually legitimately scary, so it might be a good idea to calm down and have ourselves a little change of pace and go easy on ourselves for a while instead of running through the Labyrinths contents at a breakneck pace.

The next enemy we happened across was a lone Escape Goat Lv.7. Since it was by itself with no other monsters near it to provide it with reinforcements, I decided to defeat it from beginning of the battle to its end by only using magic. I have already confirmed that I will need five shots of it, so as long as it wont start running away and dodging my attacks like crazy while doing so then everything should be over relatively quickly, right?

Up until the third Fireball that it has taken straight to the face it behaved like any other monster, meaning that all it was trying to do was to charge blindly towards me, but once the third Fireball connected, its Skill must have kicked into effect because while in the middle of a charge attack it suddenly stopped, changed directions and attempted to escape.

Three shots of Fireball right? Right, I made doubly sure not to mess up my counting. If three shots of Fireball were enough to bring the Escape Goats HP down to roughly fifty percent, then that definitely reinforces my earlier theory about escape command kicking in when they are at half HP. If only I was just a little bit closer to it, then I could have just Rushed to it and finish it of with a sword slash or two, but unfortunately I have to keep using magic to finish the job. Oh well, it has already been hit with three Fireballs, so two more should do the trick. Yeah, I can definitely do this!

Or that was what I thought, but as per the goddamn usual, this world just had to shit in my oatmeal and then rain piss on my parade. Fourth shot of Fireball connected nicely, just as I intended, but the fifth Fireball has narrowly missed the Escape Goats ass, leaving it free to escape. Seriously now? You really are going to make me bust out an AoE spell to use against a single enemy just because of one missed skillshot? Ugh, fine, whatever, Ill do it, okay? See, Im using Firestorm to finish it off just before it could turn the corner and escape for good. Sheesh. Good thing that I still have more than enough MP left, because if I was driven to its red zone now and started having negative thoughts because of one goat, that would be both pathetic and extremely unnerving.

Great work, master. Even though it almost looked like it was about to escape, you still managed to defeat it with your magic with ease. As expected of you.

True enough, but that does not change the fact that they still are some seriously troublesome monsters.

And that does not even begin to describe it. The enemies that are all about running away from the battles and nothing else are truly the worst kind to deal with in video games.

Should we avoid fighting them from now on in order to save our time and strength?

That would be an ideal scenario, but you dont have to push yourself too hard to try and replace groups of monsters without them. Its not that they are unbeatable for us as we are now, but having to run after them or use magic every time they attempt an escape would be extremely counterproductive, so if we can help it, we should make it our priority for the time being to fight monsters other than them.

Having Roxanne and her nose here with me is a very big help. If I were here by myself, theres no way I would be able to tell where the monsters are and how many of them are there and I would simply thrash around trying to finish every encounter as fast as possible only to fail miserably. But with Roxanne here, we can just avoid fighting Escape Goats altogether and focus our efforts on fighting other, easier to beat monsters.

I understand. From now on I will try searching for groups of monsters that do not include Escape Goats among them.

Roxanne, you really are wonderful. Thank you for always doing your best for me.

No, I should be the one thanking you, master. I will do my best to be even more helpful to you in the future as well.

I will definitely be looking forward to it.

If we can avoid fighting against Escape Goats altogether, then so much the better. But in the case where we will have no choice but to fight them, I have to make sure to hit them with Fire Storm to kill them before they will have the chance to run away, and if that tactic fails, hit them with as much magic shots as possible and them immediately move in for the kill with Durandals two strikes in rapid succession. It will always be a tradeoff between the speed of battle and battle efficiency, but whatever ends up happening, as long as I have Roxanne with me there is no need for me to be getting too nervous.

Afterwords, we simply walked around the seventh floor exploring it and fighting the occasional groups of enemies. Thankfully, we didnt bump into that many more Escape Goats, but whenever we did, we always had to make them our priority target so that they would not run away, which annoyed me to no end.

The next morning, we went into the Quratar Labyrinths seventh floor along with its map.

Back when we were breaking through the fifth and sixth floors of both Labyrinths like it was nothing, Roxanne was always in the front of enemies and I was keeping myself busy in the back, and that strategy was working wonders especially in the Quratar Labyrinths sixth floor which was inhabited by Minos and as a result had a Hachinosu as its Floor Boss. The only difference to our regular strategy was that whenever it tried to kick me with its hind legs, all I had to do was to move away and slash diagonally at it instead directly from behind. All in all I was hitting it with Durandal pretty comfortably and without overexerting myself all that much, until the boss started to shift its position because it deemed me as a higher priority target. I expected him to do it when enough damage was dealt to it, but to be honest, I didnt expect it to be so nimble and surprisingly sly when it comes to turning around. Since Minos and Hachinosu are basically little more than oversized, more muscular bulls, I thought the only things they will be good for was going to be charging in, attacking with their horns and kicking whatever came behind them, but apparently I was mistaken in that regard. However, as surprising as it initially was, it essentially changed nothing in our fighting strategy. All I had to do was to get out of its range, then move myself to its sides and attack again from there. Like that, we have safely defeated the Hachinosu without getting hit by it even once.

Once that was done and over, we moved on to the seventh floor of Quratars Labyrinth proper.