Chapter Sixteen #4
Back to Lupa, she looked like she was in thought for a moment before shaking her head. “I picked daggers because they felt like the easiest… because I wanted to make sure I was useful to Master, not because I care about them the most.”
“I see.” In that case, I wasn’t sure what to recommend.
I thought back to our trip to the dungeon.
Lupa was… hmm. She was graceful, for one. Claw weapons, in hindsight, wouldn’t fit her style. Lupa was a graceful, agile fighter whereas claw weapons typically fit a more feral vibe full of bloodlust.
“The easiest, obvious answer here is to go Thief,” I said.
“The Thief class plays into the whole robbing a bank thing and is commonly associated with daggers, but… it doesn’t feel right.
I feel we can do better than that for something that really maximizes Lupa’s potential and goes with her graceful charm when fighting. ”
Lupa tilted her head. “Graceful charm?”
“Yeah. You’re beautiful when you fight. The way you read your enemies’ moves, how you dance around them and effortlessly cut them—watching you fight is like watching someone dance. It’s a beautiful display.”
Rosie nodded and joined in. “I get it! I thought the same! You were super beautiful when fighting!”
Lupa’s cheeks took on a very subtle hint of red coloring as she looked away, her tail starting to wag behind her. “M-mm… I see.”
“I’ve got it,” I said. “Duelist primary, Hunter secondary.”
Rosie looked surprised with her raised eyebrows. “Huh… I was expecting you to say Bladedancer. Or regular Dancer.”
“Dancer is more of a buffing support class while Bladedancer is good, but best when built to be a parry tank.”
“A… parry tank? But all the Bladedancers I’ve heard of are focused on damage.”
“That’s the obvious route, yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with it, but Bladedancers also have a more…
Arabian feel to their aesthetic that I don’t think would fit Lupa.
Duelist is basically a Bladedancer with higher DPS, but purely single target.
Bladedancers have more variety in how they can be built and get some AoE attacks while Duelists don’t.
So, we take Duelist and combine it with Hunter.
Hunter has a bunch of variety, but we’re actually going to choose a specialization for it later that takes all that variety away to turn it into a single target monster.
So, when you combine the two, you end up with one of the strongest, single-target hybrids in the game—in the world.
In a PvP situation, it’s one of the only classes that would be able to defeat your Juggernaut/Shielder combo with sheer, overwhelming damage.
Of course, as soon as it’s no longer a one-versus-one, Duelist/Hunter gets destroyed, but I don’t plan on letting Lupa fight alone.
In the dungeons, as long as you’re there to tank, Lupa’s power will be insane.
It’ll take a while to build up to that point, but it’s an investment that’ll pay off. ”
Lupa looked down and whispered to herself, “Then… maybe I could—”
“What’s that?”
Lupa raised her head and looked at me. “I’ll pick those. Duelist/Hunter. There’s… someone I want to get stronger than. I—”
“Is this a new quest that’s only possible from interacting with new characters?!” I knew it was most likely related to her scars, but I wanted to keep the mood light, so I acted a bit extra.
Rosie stood up and shouted, “Don’t treat real people like they’re video game characters!”
I leaned back in my chair. “You’re right. My bad. Sorry, Lupa.”
Lupa gently smiled and shook her head. “Mm. It’s okay. I love when Master gets like that.”
Rosie let out a long sigh. “You’re going to reinforce his bad habits and make him even worse.”
“As long as Master keeps me… I’ll be happy.”
“Maybe we really do need higher standards in this world…. Anyways! So, I’m going Juggernaut/Shielder, Lupa is going Duelist/Hunter, and you’re going Reaper/Chronomancer. You know, your hybrid sounds a lot flashier. And it sounds like it’s going to be crazy overpowered.”
I blinked a couple times when I heard that. “Hm? No, not at all.”
“Really?”
“Really. Both of you will actually be stronger than me. I’m just picking a build that I think will be really fun.
However, if I picked something else—like if I also went Duelist/Hunter, I would objectively be improving the party’s strength over my plan.
Well, I mean, Reaper has the potential to be one of the most overpowered classes in the g—in the world, but I’m not going to build it that way.
And even then, it’s only—wait. Actually, the build I’m going for—it could be disgustingly strong if we get a party member with a class custom built for powering my future build up.
One way to look at it is… Juggernaut/Shielder is S-tier solo and A-tier in groups.
Duelist/Hunter, in one-versus-ones, is S+ tier but becomes D-tier when outnumbered.
My Reaper/Chronomancer build would be all around B-tier…
but if we get a party member who synergizes with my build, it could shoot up to S++ tier all around.
In the game, that’d be easy. I could pick anyone I wanted and make their build perfectly synergize with mine.
But in this world, that’ll be harder, because I would need to find someone willing to build themselves for my sake.
” Which probably wouldn’t be hard at all with how desperate women were.
“Mm, I’ll do it,” Lupa said.
“I’m sorry, Lupa, but it wouldn’t fit you. This other party member would need to be a caster. Your beautiful fighting style would get wasted if you’re stuck in the back casting spells the whole time.”
“Mm… but—”
“Don’t worry, you’d still help me out, especially when you unlock Hunter. Duelist will give you access to some debuffs that’ll only boost your damage, but Hunter will give you debuffs that boost everyone’s damage and crit rates, so you’ll already be synergizing with me.”
Lupa’s tail wagged some more. “Good. I want to help Master.”
Rosie then asked, “Wh—what about me? Is there anything about my build that’ll help you?”
I looked at Rosie with a wide smile and said, “Nope!”
“Really?!”
“Really.”
“Why not?!”
“Well, you’ll help me in the sense that you’re the tank, so we’ll be alive thanks to you, but there’s nothing in particular you’ll have that can boost my combo’s potential.
You’ll have some nice synergy with Lupa, though.
Once you get Mountain Crush, you’ll sunder armor that opens Lupa up to dealing a lot more damage, even against enemies who might be resistant to her.
I mean, it’ll technically help me as well since it’ll help anyone who deals physical damage, but the true potential of my build comes from non-physical damage. ”
“Are you going to let us know what your build does yet?”
“Nope. The fun will be in seeing it yourself. Besides, you don’t like spoilers, right?”
“You’ve got me there…”
It was my turn to clear my throat. “That aside, I have to confess something to both of you know that I know you won’t be happy about. It’s about how to unlock Reaper.”
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
“It’s no big deal, and I promise it’ll be fine. Probably. Anyways… I have to let a boss kill me.”
Rosie and Lupa both shot out from their seats and looked at me with expressions that screamed, “Absolutely not!” Rosie also literally screamed that.
“Master!” Lupa shouted as well. “You can’t!”
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “It’s a quest I’ve done a ton of times before, so I know exactly how it goes.
The only issue will be reaching the boss in the first place since I’ll have to sneak solo through a dungeon full of higher-level monsters that could oneshot me.
But, once I make it to the boss’s room, I’ve basically won. ”
Rosie shook her head. “No way! That’s suicide! I won’t let—”
“Rosie.”
Rosie went quiet when she heard how serious I got.
“I’m not going to let anyone tell me what I can or can’t do anymore. I’ve already decided that this is what I want to do, so with this life… I’m going to be selfish and follow my dreams no matter how dangerous they are. Alright?”
“… I’m the worst,” Rosie said. “Even though I know what you’ve been through, I still… am trying to control you.”
“Hey, you care about me, so of course you’re going to get mad at me when I say something like I’m going to let a monster kill me. And I’m sorry for getting so serious about it, I probably could have been a little nicer.”
“No, it’s fine. If you of all people say you know what you’re doing when it comes to a dungeon, there’s no reason to stop you. Not trusting you when it comes to dungeons is probably one of the worst things we can do…”
“Mm, Master,” Lupa said. “Will you… really be alright?”
“Of course,” I answered. “That’s a promise.
It’s really not a big deal. I’ll get resurrected right away and be back here with you two before the day is over—when I get around to doing it, that is.
The world being set to permadeath doesn’t matter for this specific event or else it would have been impossible to become a Reaper in permadeath runs. ”
It wasn’t like I wasn’t scared. To become a Reaper meant intentionally getting myself killed. There was also the possibility that things wouldn’t turn out the way I expected, just like with going to the slave market. Maybe I wouldn’t need to actually die.
But I really wanted to try this build out and the only way to get it would be to let myself get killed.
And I wanted to believe in the world that I loved so much—
No.
I kept on doing it and I was about to do it again.
I was treating the world like it was the game still.
Meeting Rosie’s parents, living with them, meeting that other party at the cemetery, Valencia already being purchased and buying Lupa instead—the world kept on reminding me that it was not the game and that things were different now.
Even slipping on that mud in the dungeon—what if something similar happened while trying to sneak past the mobs?