Heavy Knight Volume 1 – Chapter 22

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Chapter 22 – Impenetrable Golden Wall

Rana…. The same kind of frog monster that I first killed after gaining the Heavy Knight Class in this world.
A small fry monster that serves as a mascot for Magic World.

There are many Rana type monsters, and one of those that’s called a Golden Rana is our current target.
With my current situation and Luce’s Status, I could only choose the Angel’s Toybox as our next hunting ground.

The Golden Rana is a gold colored frog that has a low spawn rate, but in exchange it has a high probability of dropping highly valuable items when defeated.
In addition to that, it has a high level, but its Attack and Magic stats are low and doesn’t have any attack Skills.

In other words its fighting power is low, it gives good xp, and drops valuable items. An all around awesome monster.

There are a few examples of similar Rana type Bonus Monsters like the Golden Rana, which were called money toads as a whole in Magic World.
Many players said that they enjoyed hunting money toads the most.

The number of money toads that can spawn from this Dungeon is limited, but according to the information I gathered in Rondalm, we shouldn’t need to worry about this Angel’s Toybox running out.

“The Golden Rana has the highest chance of appearing in the middle layer of the Angel’s Toybox. Routes with high chances of coming across one, routes with high chances of spawning, monsters that might accompany them and monsters that would absolutely not. I know all of that.”

Also, the spawn rate of a money toad depends on Luck.
All that’s left now is to let Luce’s Luck work and attract a Golden Rana to us.

“….um, hey hey, if it’s the Golden Rana, then I heard about it too,” Luce said anxiously.

“Then that makes this easier.”

“I heard about someone telling a story about it in a tavern that if you manage to defeat one, then you would be able to live it up for a few years. But they also said that it usually gets away from not just D rank, but even C rank adventurers? And that it can run away frightfully fast….”

That’s right, the Golden Rana has little means of attacking, but it can run away extremely fast.
However, C rank adventurers should be around 【Lv:60】.

With a level that high I would expect them to be able to properly hunt down Golden Ranas at least, but, well, even though this world resembles Magic World a lot, it’s still different.

Like how death means the end here.
Instead of focusing your build on squeezing as much power out of your Class as possible, it’s more likely that people would focus on survival first.
In addition to public information on Classes, Skill Trees, and monsters being severely limited, you can’t even choose the Class you want.
Even finding competent people to team up with is exceedingly difficult.

Hunting Golden Ranas in these circumstances is indeed harder.

“They even said that in addition to it being so fast you have no hope of catching it, even if you manage to hit it, there is no sign of it taking any damage… or so I heard. And that there were some who managed to run after it, only to end up in trouble from being surrounded by other monsters. …uuh, there may even be adventurers that lost their lives because of a Golden Rana.”

Luce’s whole body shuddered.

“That’s because the Golden Rana is not just fast, it has exceptionally high Defense and powerful Resistances.”

The Golden Rana has a complete Resistance against elemental effects, abnormal status effects and debuffs.

To defeat a Golden Rana, it’s important to first trap it and to also possess a high enough Attack to pierce the golden surface of its body.
Even if you had enough attack power based on your stats, you might not be able to properly make use of it if your movements get disturbed by trying too hard to keep up with its mobility.
That’s why even C rank adventurers can’t always defeat one before it runs away.

“Weell….doesn’t that mean we have no ways of dealing with it then? Certainly, this knife, the Iron Piercer, is better the higher Defense the opponent has, but…. even with that I don’t think I would be able to damage a Golden Rana…. And I wouldn’t be able to catch up with it to begin with.”

“Well, yes. That’s true. A Golden Rana in the Angel’s Toybox has an 【Agility: 67】 and 【Defense: 200】. Against that impenetrable golden wall, even the Iron Piercer’s 【15%】 Defense pierce through effect might as well not exist.”

That kind of Agility was more than double of Luce’s who’s Clown Class was one of the faster ones.
And three times what my slow-poke Heavy Knight Class has.
The moment it becomes a chase, it becomes impossible to catch up.

And with 【Defense: 200】…. even if my [Rampart Reversal] manages to hit full-on, it won’t be able to deal any damage.
Not that the timid Golden Rana would try to attack me to begin with.
My [Vital Blow] also has a 【15%】 pierce through effect, but it’s far from enough to damage a Golden Rana.

“….um, then, isn’t it impossible for us? Even if we come across it a hundred times I don’t think we would be able to kill it a single time.”

“It’s fine. I chose this place to hunt because I know of a way of defeating a Golden Rana.”

No elemental techniques, abnormal status effects, or debuffs would work on a Golden Rana.
However, that doesn’t mean that no Skill can affect it.
On the first look it looks like its resistance is total, but there is a way around it.
If my calculations are correct, then we might have a method of barely piercing through the Golden Rana’s Defense.

“Elma-san, do you have a Skill that can damage a Golden Rana? I haven’t heard about the Heavy Knight having a Skill like that though….”

“Nah, both driving the Golden Rana into a corner and piercing its Defense will be something that Luce will have to do.”

I pointed at Luce and told her.

“M-me!? Um, ah! I’m happy that you think so highly of me! Very happy indeed! But, um, I can’t do that, you know!?”

“You should have eight Skill points after raising your levels before. Put all those into [The Fool’s Acrobatics], please.”

With that she will have 【10】 points in [The Fool’s Acrobatics], which means getting two new Skills.
Those will be the core of our Golden Rana hunting strategy this time.

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6 thoughts on “Heavy Knight Volume 1 – Chapter 22”

  1. Really, if you think about it and do a little math, given the mechanics here where defense works by having half of defense subtracted from attack, if lowering enemy defense by 15% would make the difference in whether you can deal damage or not, it would provide the exact same effect if you instead raised your attack by between 17 and 18%. Unlike negating enemy defense entirely, in such a system small reductions in enemy defense aren’t that different from raising your own attack by a similar amount when an enemy has defense in the vicinity of being able to negate your attack.

    At best, if the amount of lowered defense is just barely enough to make the difference in whether you can damage it at all, if you take the percent reduction, and convert it to the percent defense remaining and then to a decimal (for instance, the `15% reduction changes to 0.85), then divide 1 by that decimal, the resulting number is the percent increase you your attack that would give that effect, and then if their defense was lower than that number instead, the defense reduction just becomes comparatively worse, and if it was higher it’s irrelevant as you can’t damage it at all anyway.

    If this is all that vital blow skill does, he would have been able to get the same result while using normal attacks against the mad head by simply having 3 more points in attack, which by the progression he would have with 4 or 5 more levels.

    So basically, the author way overestimated the value and implication of that sort of effect and didn’t do much to go over the math.

    It also makes little sense how he said earlier that multiplying the drop rate by five or ten times, you can only make full use of it if you understand what the drop rates are, as really that would mean that whatever monsters you kill, you would average that many times more in total drop items compared to if you didn’t have that skill. The point of this expedition is beside that point as this monster is well known to be lucrative to kill anyway, and having this luck increasing drop rate would just mean killing one would be as valuable as killing several of them, just like any other monster.

    And that whole “dropping 2 of that shield in a row would only be possible if her luck is even higher than I thought” is a very naive understanding of statistics, as with such a small sample size, dropping 2 in a row would only be shocking if the chance was so low that it would be an extremely rare to begin with, to the point where even if you doubled it then it would still be very surprising to happen twice. Also it seems rather out of placed how he was supposed to be rationally calculating things, but he threw in the line about “using up our luck”.

    So basically, this boils down to if you are going over the numbers and stuff in such detail, the character can’t be smarter than the author, and to someone who is observant and knowledgeable enough, the clever plans will not leave the desired impression.

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