The location for their battle was an ancient ruin. There was nothing remotely special or even mysterious about this place as the title might suggest. It had simply been in ruins for so long, there was hardly anything left to hide or suggest any deeper secrets about it.
A couple of stone pillars lay strewn about, one standing as tall as a man’s waist, the other lying half-buried. Some evidence of a broken paved floor poked out here and there among the overgrown.
A corpse of a place having been reclaimed by nature for so long no one could guess its original function anymore. Hardly a standing wall to provide shelter from the elements for wayfarers. Not even enough nooks and crannies for the children to use as an adventure-worthy place.
A place desolate, forgotten, emptied of all mystique.
It could have once been a castle, a temple, or even just a public bath, for all the townspeople knew.
Even so, the light of day shone brilliantly on the beaten stone, turning the few patches of visible slabs under the layer of verdant grass into a golden haze. So it was a nice enough scene for a battle, if uninteresting.
Since the place lay only a bit out of the way from the main road leading out of the town, it felt like a pleasant post-meal stroll to the two groups who headed there.
One group consisted of a dozen or so young girls in black habits.
The other was a mountain of a man wielding an oversized club, a woman in a tracksuit walking hunched, a girl in a wheelchair, and a girl with a pair of half-broken glasses.
“Mission briefing time!”
Jophiel declared when they arrived, a good deal less gloomy than the day before.
In fact, she looked smug.
“Have you come up with something?” the barbarian eyed her with suspicion.
“Huh? Something like that, yeah, I will explain shortly. But first let’s go over the main objective of the day.”
Customarily, the angel took out her codex--materialized it from thin air, to be exact.
“I’m sure you guessed this already,” she said as the pages flipped on their own, “but you get stronger even when fighting normally, not just through training. My training regiments, the daily training, are but to put your battle experience to more effective growths. But on occasions like these when you face a real challenge, limiting your methods of fighting would just be a nuisance. What I’m saying is you can just go ham this time.”
“Good enough for me,” the barbarian nodded.
“Then allow me to state the obvious: your mission today is to defeat Hanael’s Player Character #4, Maria. As for the girl, the restrictions put in place that prevent me from checking my competition's information should be lifted when you enter a proper battle with her. We will learn more about the opposition then, but for now I can give you the basics: Hanael’s specialization is her affinity for the Holy Element.”
“Specialization?”
“Haven’t I mentioned this before?” She arched an incredulous eyebrow.
“No, you definitely haven’t.”
What the hell is wrong with her?
“My specialty,” ignoring his accusing look, Jophiel wagged the Codex of Everything and Anything, “is this. Information digging. Intelligence gathering. My domain is Knowledge. Get it? And don’t play dumb, I told you about it before! I’m one hundred percent sure!”
As in, when she had said the codex was what set her from the rest? And that she was the Angel of hidden knowledge or something?
What a dumb and misleading way to impart information.
“Anyway,” she went on with her lecture, “Elements have more applications than just the direct channeling of them in combat. You find them in enchanted effects on items, people, places and even concepts, et cetera--Hanael’s speedrunning is an art in and of itself, but it was also thanks to Holy affinity that she managed to so smoothly take over an entire Theocracy. And this is the gist of it: Hanael is someone who plays to her strengths. That is, she’s the opposite of me. While I attempt to salvage even the worst of character templates with my specialty, she picks her Player Characters based solely on her specialty, and with almost the perfect starting point with it too.”
The angel was of course hinting at her picking of the barbarian as her Player Character--a class at a major disadvantage in a meta that heavily favored Magic Users, that much, he understood.
“In fact, you could say,” Jophiel lifted her chin smugly, “pulling all the stops like that is the only way for her, my self-proclaimed rival, to hold any hope in contending with me.”
“I take it that you have a fool-proof plan then?” The barbarian couldn’t care less if her self-worth got further inflated thanks to how seriously other angels took her. It would just make his life harder.
He was only half-listening to the strategy talk anyway, for he never intended to fight in any way other than what he was used to. If a need for a change in approach arose in the fight, he might follow her instructions then, but he was not going to devise a plan in advance.
“Not so much as a plan, but a realization,” the angel laughed, “I did not spend last night thinking in vain, you know.”
“So what is it? Did you find out their weaknesses?”
“Not really. Well, it’s more like a lack of strengths. Think about it, no matter how much of a speedrunner Hanael could be, there’s a limit to what she could have done in just a few days.”
Dubious.
Though to be fair, it really had only been just a few days. If you’re being strict about it, since it was currently morning and he had been summoned over in the afternoon, it had not even been three days. In that span of time, he had fought, what, four or so battles? And he had gained some meager stats out of it and a couple of shitty weapons. While according to Hanael, she’d spent the majority of her time in this world exerting her influence over a country and then traveling across the sea. So logically speaking, she must have been able to do even less for her Player Character.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
There’s such a thing as building too wide.
“Yup,” Jophiel nodded, “I have no way to know for sure, of course, until we are shown her character sheet. But there’s absolutely no way she has trained her character up to the point she could prove a real threat as she made it out to be. At most, if I’m being charitable, that Maria girl could have obtained some favorable stats, one or two pieces of equipment that suit her class, maybe even an offensive skill if we are being extra generous. None of which should give her a clear advantage over us. Think about it, I know it’s not your forte, but try thinking: what main factors do you think could decide a fight between two individuals?”
“Sheer strength and strategies?” Agravain ventured.
“Basically. Those factors are part of why Magic users are the meta. Their tools are highly versatile and their damage ceilings overshadow Physical classes. But as of right now, a character three days old could possess neither many tools at their disposal nor the ability to reach the full potential of their class.”
The barbarian’s brows furrowed, “But when you put it like that, aren’t I the same? I haven’t any tool yet, hell, my only weapon is something of ‘awful’ quality, worse even than ‘mediocre’. Now I kinda wish I didn’t leave my axe in that village... and there’s the fact of what you said about my weakness to magic. No matter how you put it, they may lack strengths, but I am the only one with an exploitable weakness.”
“Hah? So your brain could even establish that level of sophisticated thoughts? Clearly I underestimated ya a little, eh? But that’s also the absolute limit of a barbarian’s brain! Listen here, you are not just anything. Everything about your class is an abnormality. Abnormally shitty in most cases. But not this one. Remember the only advantage of your intelligence attribute being dumped? That’s right, every other attribute of yours skyrocketed. And what makes a difference between two practically naked characters? That’s right, attributes! Pure raw stats! You, Agravain, are a goddamn walking, talking stat stick!”
The barbarian rubbed his chin. “While I have a lot of problems with your choice of words and probably only getting half of what you’re saying, I think you managed to convince me. Somehow”
“Even such a thick skull as yours should get something so simple. So well, I guess that brings us around back to the most appropriate tactic for this battle. As I said before: just go ham.”
“I suppose you can call that my favorable tactic. Well, let’s get this going, enough explanation.”
But still, all she had achieved after a night thinking was that they had nothing to fear in the first place? No strategy or whatever, just that there was nothing to worry about?
Oh well.
It was time to go.
Maria and Hanael were coming over. It seemed their side had also been done with discussing battle strategy.
Or so he thought.
“There is something we want to do first,” Hanael declared.
“What is it?” Jophiel sneered, “Don’t tell me you want to discuss handicaps at this point. Even I am not generous enough to allow it, you know?”
She really was brimming with confidence. The polar opposite of last night.
“Ugh, insufferable as always,” Hanael muttered. “I’m only allowing it because it wouldn’t sit right with the girls otherwise.”
“It’s Ophelia who suggested it,” Maria said. The girl’s summoner had not come over but remained with the rest of her group. All of them were watching intently. “She wanted to fix your friend’s thing.”
Friend?
The barbarian looked around. And he realized, of course, there was no one else for her to refer to that way. Not him, the Player Character. Not Jophiel, the angel. Not Soraya, the summoner. But the last person, who she could only refer to as a ‘friend’.
“Oh, you mean this?” Rania asked, taking off her glasses with one lens broken.
“Aye,” Hanael said, “Ophelia thinks it would be unfair otherwise.”
So instead of asking for a handicap, their side was looking to remove one of their opponents.
So they were confident too. Or maybe just too magnanimous.
“Well, may I?” Maria extended her hand hesitantly.
Jophiel shrugged. “It’s fine, Rania. I doubt they are going to sabotage your eyewear of all things... even Hanael is not that low, right?” She narrowed her eyes.
“Pissing me off already?” Hanael rolled her eyes. “Are you incapable of saying thank you like a normal person or what?”
Despite the needlessly useless exchange going on, Rania handed her glasses over with a humble thanks.
“Well so...” Maria muttered, then held up the locket hung from her neck. It was a plain accessory, round and seemed thick enough to keep a picture or certain small objects within its case. Although the girl did not seem all too used to the magic she was about to perform, the locket glowed for a brief second, infusing the pair of glasses in the same light, and when it was done, the lens had been fixed without a trace of its broken state before.
“Phew,” the girl sighed and returned it to Rania, “so even I could do this without problem.”
“Don’t say it like something unexpected,” Hanael chided, “Do you have so little faith in my tool?”
The barbarian was no stranger to the girl’s self-deprecating nature anymore. But something the angel had said something that piqued his interest. “Some handy tool, how did you find something like that?”
“Hmm?” Hanael seemed surprised, “Did Jophiel not tell you about my specialty?”
“Yeah, your affinity with the Holy element or something.”
“Aye, and that means an affinity for items of that element. It lets me find Holy items easier. In fact, I looted the Theocracy’s treasury for their store of holy items. This is just a little thing.” She folded her arms, taking a step away. “Well, that’s done with. Can we begin this already?”
“Let’s,” Jophiel nodded. “But put some distance between us and the non-combatants first.
So they went away, Hanael returning to the group of girls and Maria to the empty area in the middle of the ruin.
Before moving, Agravain asked Jophiel with a concerned look, “You heard what she said? A store of magic items. Can we be sure that she’s lacking in options as you think?”
“We-well,” the angel stammered, suddenly looking away, “even with magic items, it’s not like just about anyone at any level could equip anything too powerful. Just get out there!”
Her complete confidence seemed to have flagged. Not that the barbarian would run from a fight just because of that. Grunting, he left a worried Soraya for the battleground.
“Be careful out there!” Soraya’s voice followed from behind.
The barbarian gave her thumb up without turning around.
On the other side, it seemed Maria’s summoner was also giving the girl some much-needed encouraging words.
Well, nothing to it.
Agravain heaved his war club up, preparing to enter his first battle with another Player Character.
And as soon as he faced the girl. The now-familiar disembodied voice rang through his head.
Main Event Duel Engaged
Duelist:
Player Character #5, Agravain
Class: Barbarian
Focus Attributes: Strength, Endurance
Traits: Novice Fighter, Dump Stat Intelligence, Pugilist
Feats: Boss Brutalizer
Modifiers: Pigman’s Metal Club
Rage bar: 100%
Str 52 (+8) | En 28 | Dex 9 (-5) | Int 0 (-∞) | Wis 8 | Cha 11 | Luck 15
Player Character #4, Maria
Class: Acolyte
Focus Attributes: Intelligence, Endurance
Traits: Novice Mage
Modifiers: Necklace of Regeneration, Ring of Thousand Prayers, Variable Chains
Feats:
Attributes:
Str 6 | En 15 | Dex 14 (+2) | Int 22 (+4) | Wis 13 (+1) | Cha 7 | Luck 10