Thanks to the exploit I've found, we easily defeated the boss monster without much problem and stepped out onto the next floor of the Dungeon.

Of course, we still had that party of Mercenaries that were hired to take my life to worry about so we were planning to set up a trap here to prepare to attack them once they come out from the boss room.

Well… It's not really much of a trap since we were planning for me to just spam my [Static Bolt] to paralyse them and keep them in place while the others do the same thing to them like what they did to the Rat Commander.

Just in case, I was also prepared to call out my Shadow Summons to back us up if they were somehow immune to the effects of paralysis and they turn the tables on us instead.

I wanted to avoid using my summons as much as possible since I did not want Edir to know about my capabilities of controlling an army of them if I could help it. I was already risking quite a bit with the chantless spell casting which she has yet to notice right now.

Otherwise, I may need to silence her and I'd rather it not come to that.

All of us simply waited at the area outside the boss room patiently for their party to appear, which only took us about an hour of waiting before that happened.

The leader was leading the way and I recognised him immediately because of his sword that was strapped to his back, prompting me to start spamming my [Static Bolt] at the entire group immediately.

None of them were able to react to the ambush in time and ended up being hit by my paralysis magic.

Unfortunately for us, it seemed like some of them might have been able to resist it or possessed artefacts that prevented such effects from affecting them.

More specifically, both the mages, the priest, one of the tanks and the leader himself were unaffected by my paralysis spell but it did send them into a small panic at the sudden attack that came out of nowhere.

I guess the 'spamming of status effects' plan wasn't as foolproof as I thought, but at least that told me that there are ways of preventing yourself from being CC-ed infinitely.

We had also planned to incapacitate them instead of killing them if we could, not because of compassion or some sentimental reason like that.

If they had been ready to try and kill us, then they should be prepared to be killed in turn.

No, the reason why we wanted to capture them was to interrogate them to find out if there were any traps or other parties after us and who was the one that sent them after us.

We already knew it was most likely that stupid noble but it doesn't hurt to get some confirmation too.

But if the circumstances become too dangerous, we'll probably just kill them and be done with it. Especially when they were each relatively strong on their own.

Odeta immediately went for their leader, probably sensing him to be the strongest in that party to challenge him.

She casted [Body Current] on herself before punching at his head, clearly intending to kill him with that blow.

The leader managed to raise his sword in time to block the blow with the side of his blade, though the force still sent him skidding back a few metres.

"Heal them, quickly!!" The leader instructed, ducking his head to avoid the poison needles and arrows that Katsuki and Edir threw and shot at him.

The priest obeyed while the others moved to support their leader by trying to take Katsuki and Edir's attention away from him.

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"Return yourself to your pristine condition. Your body, mind and soul shall be renewed, may your ailments cease and disappear! Return yourselves to your full health! [Cleanse]!"

An aura of light covered one of the archers and his paralysis status was removed, allowing him to move again.

Ok, that's a new spell I just learned. I guess I never needed this spell before since none of us suffered from any status ailments so far...

The priest started to chant the spell again since it was a single target spell and I guess he needed to repeat it for every member affected by the paralysis, which meant that all I needed to do was to cast [Static Bolt] again to shoot it at the archer he just freed to negate whatever he had done.

The priest was so surprised that he stopped his chant midway as the archer fell back down onto the ground, paralysed by the spell I shot at him.

"N… No way?! They've already anticipated my healing ahead of time?!"

Oh yeah… I don't need to chant, so I don't need to preempt his moves before coming up with a counter. Meanwhile, he can't do that since he needs to chant his spells.

Ehehe~ Guess I'm still cheating here~

A loud 'bang' roused me from my musings as Odeta and their leader still continued their clash at the side, my Amrap having just delivered another blow to the side of his sword that he used to block.

Katsuki managed to keep the mages busy by constantly moving around them while throwing her hidden weapons from time to time, disrupting their spell castings and forcing them to hide behind their tank.

Edir was supporting my Inugami maid by firing arrows at the tank, preventing him from engaging Katsuki directly or the archer would get a clear shot on the mages.

For now, things were at a stalemate as neither side seemed to have the advantage over the other.

Well, things are about to change right now…

I called up a Shadow Summon and sent it rushing towards the priest that was still trying to cast [Cleanse] on his affected party member.

He was so focused on his chant that he did not notice the shadowy figure approaching from the darkness to appear behind him.

The tank tried to let out a shout of warning but he was too late as my summon struck him on the neck from behind.

The priest's eyes rolled to the back of his head before he slumped forward and collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.

I then went ahead to knock out the others who were still paralysed on the floor as well, effectively reducing their party to half strength and even out our numbers.

The mages tried to chant again but Katsuki appeared above them to throw her hidden weapons at them once more, forcing them to duck their heads to avoid it while their tank had to defend them against Edir's arrows that she shot at their direction.

While they were occupied with the other two, I came in from the other side to flank them.

Thanks to using [Shadow Wall] and [Shadow Glide], I managed to reach the mages without anyone noticing my presence.

The mages were trying to cast another spell again but I moved in to chop the neck of one of them while they were distracted.

The other one spun around and widened his eyes when he saw me dropping the unconscious form of his friend onto the ground.

He opened his mouth and I drew my blade to point at his throat.

That instantly shut him up which made the tank guy turn towards me as he felt something amiss happening behind him.

When he did, it was to the sight of me knocking the last mage out to drop him on the floor beside his companion.

The tank roared out in rage and tried to ram me with his shield, only to miss completely as I stepped out of the way and watched him slam himself into the wall.

Katsuki then took that opportunity to throw several needles at him, hitting him in the gaps of his armour.

The tank cried out and tried to pull the needles out but his gauntlets were too big to reach into those gaps to pull them out.

That gave me all the time I needed to move close to him and hit him with a close ranged [Static Shock].

His body seized up but it didn't seem to be that effective as he quickly broke out of it and tried to slam me again with his shield.

I backed away from him and tried another approach this time.

Mentally flipping through my library of spells, I settled on using [Darkness Paranoia] on him.

I thought that would not be as effective either but surprisingly the blindness spell worked and even the fear aspect of the spell seemed to affect him too.

I guess whatever was protecting him from the paralysis was only limited to that and did not protect him from other types of status effects.

He let out a wail of fear as he started swinging his shield and sword around randomly, as though he was trying to swat away some invisible demons that were tormenting him.

I decided to put him out of his misery by using the other tank's discarded shield to smack him across the head, sending the poor dude crashing into the ground in an unconscious heap.

Well… That's everyone else dealt with… I wonder how Odeta's--

"Wahahaha!! Take thiiiiiis!!"

There was a loud bang and I saw the leader of this party of Mercenaries get sent flying across the corridor to crash into the wall.

He hung there for a moment before slowly sliding down to fall face first on the ground, joining his party in blissful unconsciousness.

Ok… That was easy~