Shujinkou Janai! - CH 41

A week has passed since the attack on the <Seven-Colored Lava Cave>.

I have been busy with the Status appraisals, but the hectic situation has finally calmed down.

Because of this, Radd and his party hadn’t attacked any dungeons since then, but after conquering that cave, Mana had reached Lv 10 while the rest had risen to Lv 11 in one fell swoop.

My guess was that “they wouldn’t be able to exceed the Lv 10 barrier”, but perhaps the EXP of the Boss was that many.

Anyhow, now that they had gained enough ability values, the next step would have to be grinding Skills.

Skills roughly fall into two categories: “Unique Skills” and “Class Skills”, the former of which doesn’t require training.

Unique Skills are acquired by leveling up or through events, and many of them, such as the “Hero’s” various Light techniques, <Prince of Light, Ain>’s <Magic Sword of Light>, are powerful and strongly accentuate the characteristics of a character.

……In fact, <Lone Wolf Adventurer> also has a Skill Category called the <Self-Taught Swordsmanship>, which only I can use.

At Lv 50, I’m able to use the <The Cross of Sin>, a Skill with a really cool name.

It’s a stylish skill that attacks one enemy by swinging the sword in a crisscross pattern, creating a cross made of dark flames, but it’s so useless that I shuddered about it.

It’s a technique that is so low-powered, slow to activate, and can’t be manually activated because it’s not an Art, and it consumes a lot of MP. And yet, despite its many disadvantages, at the end of the motion, Rex would stylishly turn around, making me wanna smack his head and yell at him for making light of combat.

And most of all, that technique’s Attribute had to be “Dark”!

“”

The Dark-Attribute isn’t effective against the four Attributes, “Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth”, making it ineffective to most enemies other than the Light-Attribute monsters such as Angel-type monsters that appear rarely in the latter half of the game. Furthermore, when used against Undead-type monsters, which tend to appear in the early stages of the game, it has the worst characteristic of “conversely recovering their HP”.

It’s a complete show-off technique. A garbage skill that takes the royal road of trashiness, looking cool when only seen once, but ends up being a burden when used in a serious situation.

He may be the Dark Hero who stands in the shadow of the “Hero” of the Light, but I can only say that Rex is really unfortunate. I mean, he was seriously made to fall off the main party in all the circumstances.

W- Well, Rex aside, those who have inherited the characteristics of their race through being of pure blood or their ancestry may also receive a <Race Bonus>, which allows them to use their race’s Skills as their level increases.

Random characters may also have random Unique Skills, but this is quite rare.

On the other hand, anyone can learn “Class Skills” by becoming a specific Class.

However, there are conditions for this. For example, just because you become a Mage doesn’t mean you can use Mage Skills right away.

After you become a Mage, you will have to fight a lot of battles to gradually become familiar with the Skills and be able to use new techniques and magic!

……is the official explanation and the common sense of this world.

However, it isn’t really necessary to actually engage in combat. If you repeatedly use the “Basic Skills” available at the moment you become a member of that Class, your Class Proficiency Level will increase, and you will learn the higher level techniques and magic set for that Class.

The official explanation isn’t really wrong, as Class Proficiency itself can be increased through combat, but considering the Acquisition Speed of new skills through this method, it isn’t very efficient.

This is why I suggested to Radd and his party that they should “practice their Skills”.

It was a simple and uninteresting training, but surprisingly, Radd and the others agreed to the training.

Apparently, Radd and the others had a lot on their minds after their first dungeon attack.

I was surprised at how open-minded and serious they were about the Skill grinding.

When I peeked into the Guild’s training hall, the first thing I saw was Radd.

Radd, who relies on Manual Arts for firepower, is an exception in his group and doesn’t need to raise his Class Proficiencies much.

In order to increase the number of techniques he can use with Manual Arts though, he was training as before, but with more enthusiasm than ever.

Feeling the difficulty of using Manual Arts himself, Radd chose to have his body memorized as a style.

Therefore, even though he isn’t fast, he’s steadily increasing the variety of techniques he can use.

Most of all……

Radd had a Status that made me instantly know is strong the moment I used <Inspect> on him.

That much should be given.

In addition to his naturally high aptitudes, he has the high-level Class <Brave Leo>, and out of his four Armor Slots, he wears armor that increases his growth potential in three of the four slots.

Of the <Brave Blade>’s party of four, Radd has the highest growth rate.

Even without doing anything too fancy, he should be able to function as the core of his party if he continues to grow like that.

Next is Nuku. I had him put aside his training as a magic-user for now…… and had him do training as the Special Class, <Chemist>.

Even if he had mastered Mage magics, the <Flare Cannon> available with the <Red Flare Rod> is far more powerful.

Therefore, his immediate goal is to acquire the <Maintenance> skill, which can be learned as a <Chemist>, to “reduce the probability of item destruction” so that the rod will not break even if the <Flare Cannon> is used.

The possibility that 50 million wen might be destroyed seemed to be considerably stressing his mind, as even now, he continues to train with a ghastly expression on his face.

In addition, if he becomes more proficient as a Chemist, he can even learn the most powerful technique <Final Break>, which “inflicts super-special damage to surrounding enemies according to the weapon’s Fixed Attack Power, but the cost of the weapon being destroyed. When I told him about this though, Nuku turned pale and he ran away.

It’s the best technique for <Red Flare Rod> and <Goblin Slaughter>, which have high Fixed Attack Power, and since it’s a Skill that doesn’t reflect the user’s ability value, it can be expected to be quite powerful even in the early stages of the game, but it’s probably too much to ask Nuku, who has a weak stomach, to use it.

Incidentally, if I try to use <Inspect> on Nuku, I will see the following Status.

Comparing this to Maisie’s Status when I used <Inspect> on her before……

You can see that there’s a rather harsh difference in each entry.

I don’t intend to blurt it out loud, but it’s a value that makes one realize how correct my training plan is.

Next to her is Prana, who is single-mindedly shooting at her target.

Since I haven’t given her any special instructions other than the Attribute Arrows, she’s currently trying to acquire Bow-user Skills simply to increase her firepower.

And as for her Status……

She is superbly specialized in “FOC”.

This is probably due not only to the fact that she has the highest FOC aptitude, but also to the fact that she’s wearing growth equipment on all of her four armor slots, unlike her three other party members that are wearing only up to three pieces.

The FOC stat in B&B really feels like the DEX in other games, greatly affecting the attack power of the bow.

It can be said that she’s growing steadily as a main attacker.

And then, the most peculiar among the four is Mana.

It’s still fresh in my mind that during the one-month training period, only one of their party performed “prayer”, which all of them had been doing as training, in a different dimension and achieved a frightening level of efficiency.

I was curious and asked her about it, and she told me that not only was her “Class” a Priest, she also had the way of life of a priest.

[I- It’s not that impressive. I’ve just been doing this since I was born.]

As she said such a thing without hesitation, I’m not sure if I’m seeing some sort of dark side behind her or not.

“”

She was the only one who had left the Skill grinding early and continued to pray during this period.

[The reason I am here, the reason I was able to meet you, all of it was because God willed it after all.]

As an atheist, I can’t say anything when someone declares something like that.

I have always been interested in knowing about matters of faith in a world where Deities exist, but at least as an actual phenomenon, her MND stat is growing at an alarming rate, even from my point of view.

Of course, prayers are still considered a training exercise, so the efficiency of her MND growth will probably drop soon, but I really want her to keep going at it.

After checking on all four of them, I returned to the Guild building and headed for the reception desk.

[Ah, thank goodness. Rex-san, the Guildmaster is waiting for you in the inner room.]

When I got to the reception desk, the Guild’s receptionist, who I have recently become friends with, told me this and took me behind the counter.

[Well then, I will show you to his room.]

I was uncharacteristically moved as I watched the receptionist say this with a smile on her face.

(Thinking about it again, their attitude towards me has changed quite a lot.)

I’m no longer the A-Rank Adventurer who people kept at a distance, where even the receptionist looked at me with a suspicious look.

Now, I can feel the respect in the way people look at me and if I go to the Guild, I’m even allowed to go to their inner rooms like this.

……However, the one whose status changed the most isn’t me.

After the news of the attack on the <Seven-Colored Lava Cave> broke, there was an even bigger incident in Frelia’s Guild.

The three leading Adventurers in Frelia, Verteran and his party, retired from active duty.

After gathering as many Adventurers as he could, Verteran politely explained that he had made a mistake in what he had been telling them, bowed his head in front of them and apologized.

At the same time, he announced that he was retiring from adventuring.

Some were surprised, some were angry.

However, while most of the people there tried to keep him from retiring, he stubbornly refused to budge, saying “This is the only way for me to take responsibility” and “This is something only I can do”.

Verteran’s ability levels certainly weren’t very high by game standards.

Considering his level, it’s fair to say that he didn’t have much room for growth.

(But if he hadn’t met me, he would have continued on as an Adventurer.)

Frankly, I’m feeling a lot of pressure because I have changed one, no, three people’s lives.

[Is something the matter?]

The receptionist in front of me asked, to which I realized that I had been brooding on this matter deeper than I had expected.

[……No, it’s nothing serious.]

I shook my head and chased the stupid thoughts out of my head.

That’s right.

That may have happened, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop now.

Everything has yet to come, and this and that has just begun.

There’s no time for me to look back.

[Guildmaster, I’ve brought Rex-sama.]

The receptionist’s voice urged me on, and I stepped into the room.

[Oh……]

Just as I raised my gaze, I saw the Guildmaster’s eyes met mine.

The large-statured, bearded man looked at me and raised his fist in greeting, to which I returned the gesture.

[————-You’re late, Rex.]

[————-Thanks for waiting, Verteran.]

We exchanged grins.