Chapter 6: Essential Skills
Morning came.
I got up in a quite refreshed mood and had breakfast at the bar.
My plan was to go to the library today.
『Royal Great Library』―― a.k.a. “Comiket”.
Maybe it has no such alias in this world.
Why was it called Comiket, you might wonder? It has to do with Mobius’ skill acquisition system.
There are two main conditions for acquiring skills.
The first one is to read skill book.
The second one is to complete that skill’s quest.
The former is a condition for many of the basic skills, while the latter is a condition for many of the derivative skills.
And, the Royal Great Library has many of these skill books.
You should already be guessing it.
When beginners from the 『Castall Kingdom』 come to the 『Royal Capital Vinceton』, they visit the Royal Great Library and read all the skill books. Well, even if I say read, the condition is satisfied by just flipping through the pages, so you can just go to the shelf on the far right and go through all the skill books one by one around the bookshelf. Because many beginners and alt characters form a line and silently do that, it is said that the situation became similar to that of the Comiket, and thus, the alias was attached. Some people even went as far as to make signboards of 「The line ends here」and others too played along yelling stuff like 「Na○ has been sold out!」. Ahh, those were indeed good times…
……While being reminiscent of the past, I arrived at the Royal Library.
After paying the entrance fee, I went inside. Going to the rightmost shelf, I immediately started my pilgrimage.
The ones I got this time, the two basic skills of each【Short-range combat】 and 【Long-distance combat】, 【attack magic】 of the four elements’「First Form」, plus Bestowal Magic and some quality of life and production skills.
There are nine types of combat skills, which are Pawn/Soldier (Fuhyou), Lance(Kyousha), Knight (Keima), Silver General/Silver (Ginshou), Gold General/Gold (Kinshou), Bishop (Kakugyou), Rook (Hisha), Promoted Bishop/Dragon Horse(Ryuuma), and Promoted Rook/Dragon King (Ryuuou).
TLN: These are named after the shogi pieces, the names in bold are the ones I’ll be using.
The four basic skills that I’ll be learned this time are 《Soldier Swordsmanship》, 《Lance Swordsmanship》, 《Soldier Archery》, and 《Lance Archery》. Soldier is a normal attack skill, while Lance is a penetrating attack.
Next is 【Attack Magic】, but that is simple since it only has four attributes: Fire, water, wind and earth. All the books here are only for the First Form for the four attributes. The magic books for the Second Form and Third Form can be found in the 『Royal Magic Academy』. Afterwards, the Fourth Form can be earned as a reward for capturing a dungeon and the magic book for the Fifth Form can be obtained after completing a hidden quest.
Additionally, there’s a magic that has the ability to grant an extra effect to equipment, that one is called 《Bestowal Magic》. In the early stages it is barely visible, but in the late game it exerts tremendous effects. This is one thing you must absolutely remember to take.
Lastly, quality of life skills and production skills are quite useful. Potion Mixing, Alchemy/Transmutation, Blacksmithing and so on. I won’t be able to make use of them in the early stages, but I’ll learn them since I’m here and they are skill I will need later on.
Well, that’s how it is. I finished reading all the books and learned the skills I wanted. It didn’t even take half an hour. I hurried and left the library.
As for the future, the order in which I’ll prioritize leveling my skills will be 「【Archery】→【Swordsmanship】→【Magic】→【Summoning Magic】」.
I’ll earn experience while safely attacking from a long distance, then solidify my stance with damage-efficient and easy to use Swordsmanship, and prepare a trump card for those tough opponents with high-firepower magic.
As for 【Summoning Magic】, my avatar is the reason why I’ll try to raise it at this relatively early stage. Along with the “Limited Premium Avatar” I purchased when making this Alt character, came a “Premium spirit ticket”. Since it promised to summon a powerful spirit, there is no reason not to raise Summoning Magic. However, being an auxiliary skill, Summoning Magic has a limit as to how much you can use it as your main means of attack, so it’s usually judged to raise your skills to a certain extent before.
Well, now that the plan has been stablished, lets allocate my experience points and raise the skills I’ve acquired.
《Soldier Archery》 Rank 16→Rank 3, 《Lance Archery》 Rank 16→Rank 1. I think this is the minimum line to be able to fight by only using Archery.
All four attributes of 【Attack Magic】First Form Rank 16→Rank 5, let’s stop here for now. The fifth rank of the First Form reduces the casting time.
I think there’s no problem even if the others remain at rank 16, but let’s raise Soldier Swordsmanship to rank 9 just in case. It’ll be insurance in case it becomes a melee.
And so, all the experience I had was used up raising up my skills. Well, nothing wrong with that.
With this, I’ll have a solid foundation. I can come back to the Comiket and learn anything else I might’ve forgotten.
“Well, I’ve got to learn the essentials of Archery.”
In addition to Soldier and Lance, 【Archery】’s essential skills are Knight, Silver, Gold, Bishop and Rook. Almost everything. The only ones that are not needed are Dragon Horse and Dragon King. Those two are flashy and powerful, but they got almost no practical use and they had a stupidly high cost.
《Knight Archery》is a sniper attack, 《Silver Archery》 is a powerful single-target attack, 《Gold Archery》 is a ranged attack with added knockback, 《Bishop Archery》 has a strong penetrating power and 《Rook Archery》 is an extremely strong single-target attack. Those are the characteristics of each type.
In particular, 《Knight Archery》, 《Gold Archery》, and 《Rook Archery》, the number of strategies one can use by learning those 3 skills would increase by one or two digits.
However, these skills, unlike the Soldier and Lance ones, require que completion of their respective skill quest. But it’s not needed to grab the quest, as long as their conditions are met, you can obtain the skills.
I dropped by the weapons shop and bought a bow. The one I choose was a long bow. A simple, standard long bow.
“Alright, let’s go, Seventh Teiō.”
I returned to the Inn’s stable and set out on Seventh Teiō. The destination is the mine, once again.
Along the way, I took a small detour to the forest. Adding a Soldier Archery strike, I shot an arrow from atop of the horse towards the slime that came out.
It missed. As expected, it wasn’t possible to hit it the first time. I repeated until the shot connected.
“Pikki! ” With that cute dying scream, the slime splattered and died. Leaving the forest, I returned to the highway and checked my stats.
“Good, good.”
Since I met the conditions for acquiring the skill, “Knight Archery” was added to my archery skills. The condition is quite simple, 「Kill a monster from atop a horse」.
After that, by the time I arrived at the mine I’ve already met the conditions for acquiring 《Silver Archery》 and 《Gold Archery》. The conditions are simple too, the first being “kill 20 monsters in a row in a single hit” and the latter “kill 10 monsters in a row within 3 meters”.
The next one to learn is 《Bishop Archery》. This one is a little bothersome. For example, you need to meet two conditions, one is 「Kill five monsters at the same time using 《Lance Archery》」 and the second 「Kill two monsters at the same time from a distance of 25 meters or more, using a combination of 《Lance Archery》 and 《Knight Archery》」.
After entering the mine, I wandered around searching for a group of Flame Ants.
The lower-class monsters called Flame Ants have weak individual strength, but more often than not, they act in groups of dozens and attack relying on each other. In particular, their nest house hundreds of them, and it get pretty troublesome when you get surrounded. However, they are not hard to deal with if you put some distance between you and them. The two conditions can be cleared at the same time if you use 《Lance Archery》 from a very long distance.
“Whoa, found them…”
I sighed in relief after finally finding a group of Flame Ants. When I estimated our distance was approximately 30 meters, I used 《Knight Archery》 to aim.
Schhwaff―― With that sound, the arrow flew from the bow, coated in red and white effects. The red one is the effect of Lance and the white of Knight.
“……Alright.”
Taking a victory pose, I said in a quiet voice. That arrow pierced more than ten Flame Ants. The operation was a success from just a single shot, and 《Bishop Archery》appeared in the skills column.
Since I was not able to find the nest of the Flame Ants, I quickly left the place.
Well then.
The only one left is 《Rook Archery》.
This is the most powerful, yet most annoying skill to get.
Why is it powerful, you might wonder, it’s because this is a 「Scaling attack skill」. Even at the 16th class, a single attack has a power of 250% raw firepower, and if you raise it to the 9th grade, it scales up to 600%. 【Archery】is the skill that, against a single target, has the potential to produce the most power.
However, due to the skill acquisition conditions, including all other bothersome skills, this one is definitely inside the top ten worst.
First, 「Kill 1,000 monsters using 《Silver Archery》」. This one isn’t so bad since you end up meeting the requirements anyways. Next is 「Get 500 critical hits using 《Silver Archery》」, this too can be completed without issue.
A critical hit is a phenomenon that occurs depending on the amount of LUK and the 《Critical》 skill rank, and also the additional effects your gear might have. A critical hit will deal damage equal to 300% of the original damage. The Critical skill is easy to learn, and can be obtained once you deal a critical hit.
My current rank is 16. My current LUK stat is at 31, and there’s no additional effect from my gear. Therefore, the critical rate is approximately 13%, you get it by dividing LUK by 10 and adding the rank 16 correction of +10%. By the way, if you rank it up all the way to grade 9, it adds a +40% correction. I wonder if I should give priority in raising it when I acquire the needed experience…
Anyway, the talk has gone in a tangent. Let’s get back to the conditions to learn 《Rook Archery》.
In any case, the two previous conditions can be cleared in time as I go along. The problem is the last condition.
And that is 「Using a combination of 《Knight Archery》 and 《Silver Archery》kill three monsters in a row that have attacked another player and dropped that player’s HP by 50% or more, from a distance of 15 meters or more」.
It annoys me just thinking about it.
First of all, I need to come across a situation where someone is being attacked by monsters. Then, I need to way until their HP has been reduced by more than half. And adding to that, I would be troubled if the enemy is a strong monster, since it has to be killed in a single hit. And in case you fail even once, you need to start it all over again. This is the worst.
If this was still an online game, I could ask someone to stay there until their HP is below 50%… and it would be relatively easy to do, but this isn’t a game anymore, it’s the real world. A situation where your HP has been reduced below 50% could already be considered a “life or death situation”. It is impossible to ask that of someone. And then, I have to make such situation happen three times? There no way I can do it.
However, I really want to get my hands on 《Rook Archery》. It is one of the essential skills of 【Archery】.
“……Well, I guess it can’t be helped, I’ll have to find other things to fill that gap.”
Since it couldn’t be helped, I decided to shelve it and complete the 1000 silver kills and 500 silver criticals while waiting for the opportunity.
And that opportunity suddenly came in an unexpected way.
＊ ＊ ＊
Royal Great Library.
The director, Paloma was resting after finishing the day’s affairs.
“Paloma-sama, could I have a little of your time?”
“Umu, what happened?”
A librarian has come to meet Paloma. She opened her mouth, and asked along a simple bow.
“Today, there was one suspicious man.”
“Fumu.”
The young librarian women said that, and handed over a single document to Paloma.
Paloma looked over the report while stroking his white-haired beard.
“……Ohh, nothing but skill books.”
“Most likely, he didn’t read them. He took each book for about 10 seconds before returning them. I believe his purpose was something else.”
“I see.”
According to the report, the man “departed after 25 minutes”.
“He wasn’t reading them, huh… I’ll keep it in mind. If that man visits this building again, be sure to report it to me.”
“By your will.”
The librarian lady bowed and then she left Paloma’s office.
With a quiet murmur, Paloma took a sip from his cup of tea. 一Just what did he came here for――?
His monologue quietly disappeared into the teacup.
=====
Thank you for reading.
【Archery】Skill list
《Dragon King Archery》 Powerful on-impact range attack.
《Dragon Horse Archery》 Powerful piercing range attack.
《Rook Archery》 Very strong single-target range attack.
《Bishop Archery》 Strong piercing range attack.
《Gold Archery》 Range attack with added knockback.
《Silver Archery》 Strong single-target range attack.
《Knight Archery》 Precise sniping range attack.
《Lance Archery》 Piercing range attack.
《Soldier Archery》 Normal range attack.