Nasby has the swimming skill and can fight Rather well in the water, Pythana is slower but can still move pretty damn fast while I have slimerene focus on using wind ball to give them air if they need more.
Ratina focuses on blocking with primarily water wall as it appears to be stronger with all the water pressure and she also uses Rupture to deal some damage while adding obstacles to slow down the manatee.
Rupture makes a crack in the earth that rises out of the ground and slams the opponent from all sides, with enough MP it can trap the manatee for a few seconds before it breaks loose making a good mixed offense and defence spell despite not dealing much damage due to being an aoe skill.
Throw rock deals more damage than Rupture and is used while it is on cooldown.
I don't use any magic other than monster buff and awaken hidden potential in order to prioritize keeping Nasby alive and keeping Ratina's spell strength up.
Nasby only uses her MP to taunt and use first aid as needed, Pythana sticks with the hit and run stratagy to try and accumulate poison damage.
The manatee seems to have a trample like skill as it keeps trying to either ram into Nasby or crush her against a wall if she latches on, Nasby needs to save her bunker down skill in case it has an explosive last resort like the bear, but taking a full spped ram can deal up to 75 damage in one go so Ratina's interferance is a neccesity. The manatee also doesn't attempt biting at Nasby much, prferring to just crush its opponents.
The manatee however can use water manipulation to disrupt Ratina's water walls if there isn't enough MP behind them, so I need to occasionally disrupt the disruption with my own water manipulation leading to my and Ratina's MP reserves gradually decreasing, I only hope that the Manatee has the same problem and that this will prevent its last resort skill from having as much strength behind it.
Pythana managed to learn the swimming skill a few minutes into the fight, and she started moving noticeably faster and having no problem biting into any scratches in the manatees hide due to a bite from Nasby or a rupture from Ratina.
The manatee will sometimes tries to use water manipulation to trap Pythana so it can crush her, but Nasby just taunts it and it has to re focus on her.
After about 10 minutes I begin to run low on MP, allowing the manatee to disrupt more water walls and attack less inhibited, but the amount of earth raised from successive ruptures and a few stray rocks prevent the manatee from building much speed.
We are all tense for it to use its final desperate attack, and it reacts in a way none of us were prepared for.
It ran away.
Ratina tried to block it with earth and water skills, but it used its own skills to escape relatively unimpeded.
None of us died so it isn't like we lost the fight, we gained some skill levels as well, but it is frustrating to have our opponent just up and leave after an exhausting fight and not be able to stop it at all.
"All of that effort..... I'm not about to let you get away so easily" (Ratina)
A giant ball of electricity discharges around the manatee, Ratina's MP bottoms out and she loses half of her health in the process of vaporizing the water around the manatee and leaving it with serious burn marks.
The manatee however only stumbles in the water for a short while before showing a yet to be seen burst of speed runing away as fast as it can, it apparently does not want to feel another one of those.
I pull up Ratina's skills to see what the fuck she just pulled off.
So magic overdrive is one of those last resort skills that fucks over carefully laid out plans like an exploding bear, good to have but bad to rely on, and you only get 1 shot at using it during a fight.
Ratina is throwing a temper tantrum by blasting the walls with magic as soon as her MP recoves enough while screaming all sorts of profanities she must have learned form me, and some inventive new ones about how the useless overweight buffet should just lay down and die instead of spreading its image of profound ugliness to ruin the rest of the world's day.
Meanwhile me and Simerene start reparing the cave ceiling so that we don't have to swim in the cavern for the rest of our expedition, it will already be a pain to find out just how much got filled in our 10 minute fight.
I shouldn't be suprised that the manatee had a way to deal with underground ambushes, other monsters that spawn here have probably tried similar tactics in the past.
Suprisingly after we reseal the ceiling the water level begins draining into the walls being converted into magic, it is an intiguing process but not one I can even begin to figure out how to replicate.
I begin checking up on everyones new skill levels while Ratina scares of every monster that can feel the shaking caves.
For myself
For Nasby
For Pythana
And poor Slimerene got absolutely nothing, I gave her some extra mushrooms and she was happy though.
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It impressively takes an hour of us all waiting around before Ratina stops blasting the walls with magic, levelling up has been slow and that was a prime oppurtunity but even with Ratina's last minute upgrade we had no way to stop it from getting away, it even had a speed skill of some kind and I am not convinced that it didn't have another skill or two hidden up its flippers.
We proceed down the caves once more with Slimerene using sticky grasp to carry me as Ratina isn't in the mood to carry me right now as she is still sulking, but Slimerene is comfortable in her own way, like having one of those water beds but with wheels carry you around.
The strength of monsters in the caves have been increasing over the past week, there are several monsters at least level 10 and the occasional level 20 where all the monsters used to be mostly rank 0 with a few level 10s, there is more mana in the caves now leading to more mushrooms growing and a higher spawn rate of monsters.
A level 10 doesn't give much xp when split between the 5 of us, and level 20s are still rare but we hunt them as we find them.
Ratina and Pythana reached level 20, Nasby 14, and Slimerene reached level 19, I haven't levelled up
Ratina learned
Nasby learned
Pythana
Slimerene
Auxentius
Some mushrooms were poisonous, but Slimerene wanted to eat them anyways and ended up with poison resistance.
Pythana has finally reached the evolution level to get rank two
The sea serpent and wyven options are tempting, even princess cobra assassin is interesting, but lamia evolution is the only viable option.
It is important to have the right priorities, and you can never go wrong with waifu power, no matter how tempting an option that aknowladges itself as a variant is.
We all take a break and set up base to protect Pythana while she evolves, Ratina practices magic, I cook for Slimerene, and Nasby just naps away.
Pythana finishes evolving, and she is still shorter than Ratina bur only by a little bit. She has glistening black scales now that go up to her waist and cover her back, she has a human torso and face, but has lizard like eyes with puruple sclera and a black slit for her pupil. She is still too much on the loli side for my own tastes, but the potential is growing, she is also naked, but all of us are as Ratina has fur covering her important parts and Nasby is well Nasby.
First however I need to decide which skill she should get
Lesser venom spray is the obvious choice as the other two should be easy for her to learn naturally.
I have Ratina use stone manipulation to craft basic stone armor for Pythana, Nasby, and herself, something I probably should have thought of without needing to be reminded by seeing a naked child. I also hand Pythana the Rare quality beast blade that we haven't really used since we got it.
The vest doesn't cover the sleeves because stone is inflexible, I use some monster hides to make some leather boots and leggings for Naby and Ratina
I apparently suck at leather working, but it is better than nothing albeit barely.
I check up on Pythana's new class description for curiosities sake.
What the fuck, monster teacher had such a useful effect and didn't tell me about it! I had suspected based off Ratina's growth, but how many hidden effects do the classes have, how do they work, and how do I get this stupid menu to answer my mountains of questions. ALSO! 2 main stats and no sub stats, is that rare and op, or is it common at the higher ranks? Now that I look again Pythana did get a new title.
I suppose this means that other creatures have the magic mouse and snake assassin races, but no other lamias are in this world.
This world was so tragic before I got here, a magic fantasy world with no lamia waifus. Don't worry broken world, I will fix you by showing you the glorious splender of monster girls that you have been missing out on.
I have Pythana carry me for a little bit, but Ratina is still more comfortable with her amazing fur. Its just so comfortable to sink into.
It doesn't take long for slimerene to hit level 20 as well, so we stop once again to evolve her.
There are less slime options than I hoped for, I don't know why wind and fire slime are unavailable, but there are several good options to choose from.
Hidden slime likely focuses an ambushing and camoflauge, but Pythana is already our assassin and while what our party needs most now is a healer, that isn't an option. Speed slime is ruled out on the same basis.
Greater scavenger slime is out because the path of a scavenger isn't very battle oriented.
Poison slime would aloow more poison damage, but would weaken our party to foes resistant to it with acidic slime being a better alternative.
Magic taster seems like it could lead down a very interesting path as it further evolves.
The attribute slimes would be my first attribute based monster, and may gives me more insight for future evolutions and battles with attribute based creatures.
I could also hold off until getting her all of the resistance skills Ratina can provide, but Slimerene is as unreceptive to that plan as Nasby and Pythana are.
So I decide to evolve her into......