Chapter 143: Luring Monsters is An Essential Skill! (2/2)

“Then, Eleena and Jessica would ambush them from the right!” Joe continued.

Edward nodded again. With Eleena, their strongest party member attacking on the second wave to give the enemy an impression that they were being attacked from two sides and add to the confusion? Good idea!

“Then, I will attack them from the front!” Joe then added solemnly.

‘What?’ Edward thought.

“Then, we’ll work together on all three fronts and get the Sapphire!” Joe then concluded.

‘What???’ Edward thought.

‘Is that it? What about a backup plan? And there is the strategy in that?

‘Isn’t that just direct, frontal charge right?! Would I have asked for strategy if we could do that?!’

Edward’s face darkened, feeling stupid to have put his hopes on Joe.

Logically, with so many fishmen at the central zone, having every single Player gathering there to fight those creatures directly only had a fifty-fifty chance of success, much less just the five of them.

“You don’t think that’s a good strategy? Then how about this: you four attack from the front, I’ll slip to the rear and ambush them—I promise you I’ll take down one fishman with one slash!” Joe quickly changed his position when he saw the look on Edward’s face, even making a proud face that basically said ‘What did I just say? Did I really just think of such a wonderful strategy? I’m so awesome!’

Edward, eye twitching continuously, ignored him.

“Forget it. Doug, draw a group of fishmen out. Joe, Taunt them when they reach you and don’t get carried away—fight but do your best to draw them far away, while Jessica keeps their HP in check.” Edward gave up on asking about strategies and started distributing tasks as per usual. “Both Eleena and I are long-range fighters, and when there are less fishmen around, we’ll see if we could take down the Fishman High Priest in a single stroke.”

Aside from Joe’s upset grumblings about how his strategy had more ‘feeling’ to it, the others accepted Edward’s plan.

And yet, the problems began with very first part of the strategy when they carried it out.

Gou Dan was unable to lure any fishmen out: his arrows simply could not draw the creatures despite having substantial effect in dungeons. Moreover, fishmen priests would immediately arrive on the scene after he killed one or two, and Gou Dan was barraged by the spells that the fishmen priests squawked out.

Afterwards, Edward, Eleena and Jessica attempted taking turns to use their own long-range skills to draw the fishmen out, but they failed just the same—aside from Eleena, who directly alerted the Fishman High Priest because of the sheer power of her skill.

The girl was therefore chased over half the Fishmen Island as every fishman poured out of their dens (killing Marni in passing just as he came ashore). As a matter of fact, Eleena would have fallen right then if she hadn’t made it to the coast and reached the Killer Fiddler Crabs that were immune to water magic that in turn scared off the fishmen.

After multiple failures, Edward and the others all quickly decided to give up on that plan and were ready to come up with some other method or simply swap their target. Even so, their desperate attempt of sending out Joe somehow managed to lure out a pocket of fishmen—there weren’t many of them, but it finally worked.

Then, they also realized that the fishmen would only chase after Joe without regard of the others.

Why was that so? Could the Spirit Swordsman have something special that would get the fishmen chase him by instinct?

Edward could not help feeling curious, but his eyes slowly fell upon Joe’s massive chest muscles and he became thoughtful…