“What do you mean?” Sam asked when Janik stated he had a way for him to work through Defence ratings.

“Just what I said, we spoke about it a while ago that since you fling around small weapons, and you don’t have damage scaling, you need a way to get through Defence. I mean... how much damage could you do on me, with my armour?” Pointing at Sam with a ‘got you there’ expression, Janik continued. “All your little 5-damage weapons are basically useless, even a 20-damage weapon won’t do much to me even while critting.”

Sam had to agree, this was a problem he had on the island, due to the presence of armour on at least the leaders. It was a bit odd that most other people only had shit-tier armour but the leaders would keep theirs. Perhaps the System selected individuals based on something?

In either case, as soon as a Defence rating surpasses 10, his smaller weapons are useless, and as it surpasses 20... and so on. It became basic math again, simple in concept but frustrating as Sam didn’t have any direct damage scaling of some statistic, he needed to compensate for it with volume, which was a problem when the Defence rating affected each source of damage individually.

But, having a way to get damage through Defences, would dramatically increase the practicality of his way of fighting.

“And how much will that cost me?” Assuming it’d be a skill crystal or something, it could be worth it in the long run.

“Zero moneys, just time.” Janik smiled back.

“What? That... feels too good to be true...” Sam looked at Janik with a suspicious look, this didn’t sound logical at all.

“It’s actually simple... In theory. Since Defence ratings affect each incoming damage source, you just need to time it so your weapons hit at the same time, roughly at the same location.” Using his fingers to emphasise his point he placed his two index fingers parallel and mimicked a thrust with them. “It sounded dumb, I agree. But I looked it up and I found some mentions of other people thinking the same, but few actually bothering as not everyone uses multiple weapons.”

“Well, you do, and I absolutely do... So all I need to do is to time my attacks so they hit at the same time?” Sam asked, sounding confused that it could be that simple.

“And in the same location, at least somewhat. When I tried to get the hang of this it was easier with thrusts or cutting the same way, it was harder to time the hits attacking from different sides.” When explaining his problematic attack he mimicked a twin-cut almost like a hug.

“So...” Sam telekinetically reached out and picked up four training daggers, hovering them back. “If I just time the attack properly.” Moving them slowly he thrust them towards the floor, all four of the daggers hitting the floor with a dull thunk.

“No, you see.” Janik commented. “The four weren’t as one. You could barely hear multiple sounds there, it needs to be really fucking close to work. And since you use different-sized weapons, it might be hard to get the hang of it.”

Sam thought about it as he tried a few more stabs at the floor. Every time there was the slightest difference in the sounds, it wasn’t until he held them together in one cluster and moved them, that it was a single sound.

“There, like that!” Janik exclaimed as he pointed at the daggers. “That sounded right.”

Sam let out a dissatisfied sound between his tongue and teeth, this was annoying. “If it needs to be that perfect, doesn’t that make it very hard to use it in combat?”

“Yes and no. I had to get it right on my own many times before the System gave me a passive Utility skill, now I can usually do it most of the time as long as I pace it correctly.” Janik had a better-than-thou tone like he was explaining something as elementary as breathing.

“Oh... You got a Utility skill?” Sam sounded surprised, if he had just led with that, things would have been different.

Sam knew that Utility skills were kind of odd in the Player world, you could rarely buy or obtain them through the normal way of levelling or finding them. You had to earn them.

Like the Force Pulse he had learned before, it was him testing and working on a different way to use his already existing powers, and doing it correctly enough for the System to acknowledge it. But once you got it, you just had to activate it, or in the case of a passive skill; meet the triggering effects.

So if Sam could manage the timing properly, he could also get this skill as it applied to him. He could also see people not considering or bothering with this, as there existed other skills that gave armour penetration, or just getting better and harder hitting weapons or spells. So the ways around them were more common. Especially since this idea only benefitted multi-weapon users.

“Yep, I can’t remember how many times I needed to get it working... Since I didn’t have anyone to help me with this, I had to train on goblins and dummies to get it right, but now I can do it almost every time as the System helps me with timing.” Janik smiled as he made a cross-slash with his hands in the air.

“From what I can tell and from the description, it combines the total damage before the Defense affects it. So if you have ten 5-damage daggers, the damage wouldn’t be 10 instances of 5, but one instance of 50. So in my case 4 damage would make it through. Not massive... sure... but with your other weapons that could become a thing.”

This was incredibly valuable information, it would bring a swarm of daggers back to practical use when Defence values become a thing on monsters.

“Just a warning.” Janik added. “It took me weeks to get it working the first time. I’ll admit some of it might be due to not being sure if it’d work at all, but... I don’t know if it’s easier or harder for you with your... voodoo hands, but you might need a while.”

Sam took the ‘warning’ to heart. As Janik hinted, at least now he knew it was a real working thing, he just needed to get the timing right, often enough to have it considered a success.

“I would offer myself.” Janik looked slightly uncomfortable. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea to use my current armour as a critical hit could kill me if everything hits at once, and I don’t feel like getting stabbed hundreds of times with a weaker armour on so... you’re on your own for that one.” His uncomfortable expression changed to a smile in the end.

And Sam couldn’t blame him, after all using a Defence 10 armour would mean that he could try with two 5-damage daggers, at worst this could do 20 damage which is even something Sam would have survived with his old health. But... Even if he learns it at a modest 10 attempts, this would be 20 stabbings. Though the Player armour kept the damage from getting through, you felt the attacks most of the time...

“Understandable.” Sam nodded. “I can’t blame you there, but just knowing it’s real removes the doubt, I can take my time learning it properly.

Manifesting a Psyhand, he gave Dia some head patting as she sat next to him, rubbing her head and muzzle against him like a happy cat, letting out some purring as she did. As his Psyhand contacted with her head it startled her for a brief moment, but realizing what it was, as he started petting her, her smile just grew as she leant into the invisible force.

Janik seemed to have realised what was going on as his normal smile softened a bit, still smiling but his eyes softened slightly like remembering something.

“Well!” Janik seemed to like to use this kind of sudden exclaiming to change subjects or to get the focus.

“I think you should consider gearing up, getting some better scabbards, and get ready. If you’re good for it, Daddy needs some money.” He got up from the floor and stretched a bit before picking up his swords. “Considering going back Aetheria, taking some runs through some Dungeons, perhaps peeking into the second Floor if we do well.”

Sam pondered a moment, he was feeling surprisingly ready for it, he had a good night's rest and an amazing breakfast. Seeing Dia do well in their duel also made him feel better when it came to fighting alongside them. He had seen her fight before but it was different seeing her against Janik like that.

Gearing up also sounded good, he had spare hands now, no reason not to fill them with something, if nothing else; more low-level daggers. They were cheap, after all. And any armour he could find for Dia was better than nothing, if memory served the cheaper stuff was also cheap.

“I think I’ll go get some more weapons, and perhaps some armour for Dia.”

“Oh, yeah, for sure. That’s a good idea.” Janik nodded as he sheathed his swords.

Using a minute to pick up all his weapons and get them sheathed, Dia’s purring stopped as he left her sitting there, but she followed him every step of the way. Elara remained around his neck like a scarf, coming along for the ride.

Sam noticed the information in the corner of his view about Elara having levelled up, something he had completely forgotten after he returned to Earth. After a quick check of her info, he put it all into Vitality, like before, this raised her health yet again and increased the potency of her Venom, and since she got Venom 2, this made things even better. Some test math put the extra math at about 20% harder to resist, and the damage was 500% as it went from 1 to 5. Hopefully, that would be more practical as time went on.

They all left for the main hall, Sam walked over to the trade kiosk and started looking around. Dia came with him, holding onto his arm as her life depended on it. He had dedicated a Psyhand to remain on her head, giving her reassuring petting, which seemed to help a bit, but she still seemed drastically overwhelmed.

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Checking his account, he had just over $53 000 left, which was plenty to live well on, but purchasing good Player gear...

He would have to start with something, it was better than nothing. And though he could bank on them getting something from Random Boxes, it didn’t feel right to possibly have her go in there unarmed until then.

Taking some inventory, his current weaponry was the Moonblade, 3 named daggers, a short sword, five cheap daggers and a horrible cleaver. In total 11 weapons. Opting to get rid of the cleaver as it was impractical, for example, he couldn’t stab with it, his math put him at 10 weapons. Keeping the weight low enough that he just needed one hand per blade, and with his current hand count, he could wield 15 more daggers.

Checking the price for weapons, the 5-damage daggers were cheap, $125 per dagger. Probably due to the massive supply from the starter dungeon. But just bumping that to the 10-damage daggers increased the purchase price to $50 000....

Sam had to keep himself from reacting loudly seeing this massive jump for the first time.

Compared to other weapons, like the 10-damage swords, they cost the same so there was some damage-scaling math they had made...

It seems he would just have to buy a bunch of cheap daggers, and rather grind his way to upgrades.

Armour was a similar case, the armour class he sold earlier for $1 000, cost 5 000 to buy. He knew they had a 5x markup, the introductory pamphlet even said so, it was still insane seeing it first-hand. He could get a decent armour but that would break the bank, and even if he wanted to, he couldn’t get anything close to the one he was wearing... For Dia, he would have to settle for a High-mid end, E-rank armour for her, giving her a Defense of 10. It was much better than nothing, but it would set him back 5000.

In the end, his purchase ended up with 1x armour for Dia, costing 5000, and 15 daggers costing 125 each.

They had enough random scabbards lying around that for a total of $100, he could get one for each weapon he was already carrying.

A bit under $7000 was used in that go. Though it was surprisingly little compared to how much he earned in the runs of the Beastfolk Dungeon, it still felt a bit wrong doing this.

Getting all of this collected took a short while, and getting everything strapped on properly took longer. Having Dia wear the armour was not a problem, but she didn’t seem to like having to wear clothing and armour on top of that. But after fastening it properly, making sure it wasn’t in the way of her arms, it seemed to be fine. This was something Sam was particular about when he picked out one, it should have a small footprint on her torso and arms so he ended up with what looked like a leather vest with extra tightening mechanisms here and there, to get it as good as possible around her joints.

Though, it looked a bit weird with some leather armour on top of a dress, at the same time; Sam had to admit that the dress suited her well, the armour just made it more functional in a weird way.

Sam felt a bit more bogged down, wearing just under 8kg/17.6lbs of weapons, not counting the scabbards, was somewhat annoying. Though he found out that he could cheat and have his Psyhands active all the time, each hand grabbing around a weapon, it didn’t matter if it was drawn or not he could ‘hold’ them and lift them slightly to lighten the load. It wasn’t perfect but it helped.

Janik had sat down on a bench, doing things on his phone as he waited. Knowing some more about his life, Sam could understand why he was on his phone so much, having guardianship of 17 kids probably meant a lot of chatting, and since one of them was a Player, he was probably super paranoid.

As the duo walked over to Janik, he looked up to see it was them before he looked back down to the phone. “Hold on, just go-” Stopping himself he lifted his gaze again to Sam. “Dude... I knew you were getting more weapons but that looks kind of ridiculous...”

“If it’s any consolidation, having 25 blades hanging off me, probably feels dumber than it looks...” Sam knew this was a necessity and wouldn’t stop doing it, but he was considering getting a backpack that he could just stuff it all in... But the way the weight was placed over his body, letting him control it that way, felt more practical.

Letting out a chuckle, Janik completed whatever he was doing on his phone before pocketing it and getting up.

“There we go, let’s go to Aetheria!”

Now that it was happening, Sam felt a mix of emotions. On one hand, he wanted to return for many reasons. But on the other, this felt oddly daunting. Following Janik out of the building and towards the tower, Sam considered that it wouldn’t be too problematic; after all, his problems have been Player-related, not the monster.

As they exited the building to high-rises, distant skyscrapers and everything being made of concrete, Dia looked like she was about to short circuit. Her eyes were wide, her tails were gone under her dress, and her ears were flat. Sam expected the size of everything was probably a huge part of this. She was terrified at this alien planet she found herself on, barely a tree in the distance it must have been horrifying for her.

Her eyes landed on Sam’s, and getting a reassuring head pat, like before seemed to help a lot. But she didn’t seem comfortable in the slightest as they walked through the plaza. As soon as she properly noticed the Tower, looking up into the absurd height it reached, Sam could feel her scrunch up trying to make herself smaller.

“I don’t think your girl likes the city much.” Janik commented with a worried expression.

“Well, it is probably the first time she has seen something like this, so I have no idea what she’s thinking. Not like I can explain it to her either...” Sam mentally made a note that he needed to find a language course or something for her.

They walked closer to the Tower until they came into the area of its influence, once they did the familiar window popped up asking if they wanted to join. Sam accepted it as a group and the white warm light again wrapped around them.

Landing in the familiar place in Aetheria, Dia’s expression changed dramatically. Gone was the terror and fear of the uncertain, and in its place was a wide smile and relief. She started running around on all fours like a kid in the grass.

“You know... I have been thinking...” Janik stated as he looked at Dia running around.

Sam walked up to him and looked at Dia as well, both of them having the same stare and deadpan expression.

“I didn’t know she would be on all fours that often when I brought the dress...”

Running around happily, Dia had her tails lifted often.

Sam manifested a Psyhand and weakly fake-slapped Janik. “Stop staring at my girl’s ass.”

Janik didn’t stop, even when ‘slapped’. “I think you need to get her some underwear if she’s going to keep doing that. Or some pants...”

“Stop staring at her ass.” Sam commented to Janik who still didn’t look away.

“It’s oddly hypnotic...” Janik replied instead, still staring.

Sam made a point of not being gentle as he placed a Psyhand over each of Janik’s eyes. “The pulse of my Psyhands is probably a few kilos, it won’t damage you but based on what I’ve seen; it’ll hurt.”

Janik turned around, looking at Sam with a wide smile. “Point taken. Let’s go!” He started marching towards the local village not far from the landing area.

Sam despawned his Psyhands, he didn’t intend to pulse them, but he did get a strange jealous sense, he hadn’t considered it properly before now, but he really saw Dia as ‘his’.

Letting Dia run around as she wanted, she was clothed which was enough for her to not be killed on sight, so he didn’t consider that a problem. Following Janik, it didn’t take long for Dia to run up to them and walk alongside them in the grass. She was much more comfortable here, walking upright with a content expression, tail lifted and swishing happily, ears perked and her walk was much more free and relaxed. Modern Earth was alien to her, though Sam expected her to get used to it over time.

“We’ll get on the next truck out of here, I think we can go to the Raven dungeon.” Janik explained as he started heading towards what looked like an off-road minibus. “They are a pain to deal with most of the time since they like flying around, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you, right?” He smiled as he put most of the responsibility on Sam.

“As long as they are within my range, I think it could work?” Sam honestly replied, not playing along with Janik’s joke.

“From what I read, the dungeon is a pain due to them flying around, only rangers or mages tend to handle it, but it’s not only lucrative, but it’s the end-dungeon for the first Floor, so I think it’s a good test.” Janik looked at the blue sky for a few seconds. “It’s not just flying enemies in that place, some Ravens don’t fly, and they have ground forces.”

This sounded interesting, he had seen pictures of the Ravenfolk, they looked like large birds with some slight human features, and they were known to just fly above you and drop shit on you. But for it to be more lucrative, it sounded like it could be a good day. Not only considering what they had discussed so far, but Elara’s venom was increased and Dia didn’t need much XP to level up either!

He was looking forward to this!