As an advocate for peace, educator Shadyna believes spanking bad kids is not the answer.

The answer is lecturing bad kids until they prefer being spanked. Muahahaha~!

Anyway, I was lecturing for her treatment of the poor receptionist when brought a wagon full of pizza to the camp. It appears that she still makes these food deliveries for because their sloppy guildmaster still has not trained the replacement team to cook on their own!

Worse still, the replacement team doesn't even exist! Turns out, SOMEONE has been screwing around and focusing on everything else but the one thing essential to her guild's daily operations!

For this brilliant display of leadership and management, the "model" guildmaster has earned another lecture about logistics and its role for any organization from !

Good job, . You have managed to outperform and become the only person getting special treatment from three members of the cafeteria in the span of 30 minutes! For free even!

…Are you sure you don't have some kind of scolding fetish?

_ Hessy: That's definitely not it.

I sure hope so~

Since 's lecture is going to take a while, we quietly pick up the pizza pile and distribute it among other members. Excuse me, pizza coming through~

There's also asking for help with some side job she's working on in the guild chat while we are handing out the food. I don't pay much attention to it, but it seems like we get hired occasionally for a plethora of gigs unrelated to [Cooking]. Is Hessy not paying our crew properly…?

_ Hessy: …For the record, I AM paying everyone fairly. Where do you think most guilds other than the big four would go when they need to hire specialists that they do not have?

_ Shadyna: Ehm… I guess they would ask on the board, or the… tavern? Ah.

_ Hessy: Exactly. If we have the expertise, we will offer our own services first. It's also good income that does not have to go into bookkeeping since… well, you know what we were doing back when we were still separated.

Working at the go-to place for information in any fantasy setting sure is convenient, isn't it? Why ask destructive marauding adventurers who will rob you blind if the cute barmaids would gladly do it for much cheaper~?

Well, maybe not much cheaper, considering how much we are charging customers for meals. Cute barmaids absolutely still apply though.

_ Magni (Guild): , I would really appreciate if you could tell us beforehand that we would be moving a full cargo hold.

_ Thelia (Guild): …Sorry. I'll ask to transfer owner's wage to yours as compensation. agreed to pay for additional workers so no worries on that part.

Why me?! And what's this mysterious wage that you girls kept talking about?!

_ Magni (Guild): Apology accepted. Now then, let's clean up guildmaster's mess as usual. Should I burn these boxes?

_ Thelia (Guild): I did tell you that we were MOVING these boxes didn't I?! And aren't you a WATER mage?!

I think our all-red water mage has warmed up to the idea of fire magic after the fight with the big fridge, just saying. That, and the set effect from its materials.

…It's probably the set effect huh.

____________

There are few things that can surprise members of when it comes to combat.

Because they are so good at it, they could go against without batting an eye. For them, higher numbers in the status menu are just that, higher numbers. It takes actual skills and out-of-the-box strategies to make these hardened warriors raise their eyebrows. Not that anyone is trying to impress them to begin with though.

To be fair, their "don't judge a book by its cover" mindset could make them quite popular with the ladies in theory. But since only combat-focused "books" are considered, all it did is reinforcing the ranks of musclebrains rather than abrasive girls with hearts of gold.

Nevertheless, the supposedly desensitized professional fighters are dropping their jaws en masse on the western wall today.

The reason for that is the two kids rampaging on the other side of the wall. No, the damage is not the problem. showed that aplenty as she escorted her party here earlier.

The problem lies in the way the damage is delivered.

_ Fensen: [Deep Tunnel]!

A bottomless pit opens up in front of them. The unlucky mobs above helplessly fall into the hole, then something resembling a big flying squirrel that stands upright and has two heads full of sharp fangs pops out in their place.

_ Fensen: Fire~!!!

_ Poltea: Attacking!

With the target right at their doorstep, the girls throw everything they have at it. That includes all fourteen weapons in their arsenal, two thrown [Alchemy] items, their two pets, and said pets' own [Alchemy] items.

*WHOMP*

The boss was completely eradicated from the surface of the game world, to no one's surprise.

Being the carefree children who do not understand the concept of "holding back", they proceed to repeat the blatant boss kidnapping without any hesitation. At the same time, the floating flower pet's beetles spread in all directions and aggro the surrounding mobs, allowing their masters to perform this maneuver unhindered.

Striped carnivorous dinosaur with a jaw as long as its body? To pieces.

Spiky eyeball that rams players like a morning star? To pieces.

Tiny smoky rodent that is not even a boss or variant? Someone input wrong coordinates and is getting scolded for it. Still, to pieces.

It's obvious to everyone that these girls are amateurs at VR games in general, let alone actual combat. They can barely attack the targets thanks to predetermined positioning. And yet, their lack of player skills further signifies how effective their tactics are.

Because is not a spell effect, there is no way to resist unless the target can fly, float, jump instantly, or too fat for the tunnel.

Because targets are brought to any position you want them to be, there is no need to worry about missing attacks.

And because everything was brought to bear to end the fight in the unmissable alpha strike, the increased attack cooldown for multi-weapon wielding does not matter.

Rather than an epic boss fight with three phases and some ultimate attacks or heroic sacrifices thrown around, these girls are just demonstrating how to snipe bosses before the loading screen can even pop up!

Once the big boss-like enemies in the vicinity become extinct, Shield Lady (new designation) turns to Cannon Lady (new designation).

_ Poltea: Let's clean up.

_ Fensen: Un! I'm counting on you, Fran, Glen!

The two fairies who were sitting on their shoulders this whole time stand up and begin flying in circles around their owners. Considering that the only known humanoid pets in this game are from unique bosses, it is not hard to guess where these two came from.

_ Poltea: Fran, [Flame Chant]!

_ Fensen: Glen, [Ice Chant]!

The red and blue fairy pair swing their tiny swords as if doing a ritual dance, then light glows corresponding to their theme color enshroud their owners' bigger pets. A buff, most likely. No one in knows the actual effect however.

An attack buff to decimate bosses in one shot, even though they are already doing just that? A defense buff to withstand all incoming attacks? A summon skill to call forth the drill that pierces the heaven? While the muscular intellectuals are throwing out all kinds of wild guesses about the mysterious skills, they certainly did not expect the girls to get off their mounts and put their hands together to form a big heart shape.

_ Fensen & Poltea: Combination attack! Love love [Molten Beam]/[Glacial Beam]!!!

*ZZZZTTTT*

Everything melts away in a literal sense as a red scorching ray from the golem and a blue freezing ray from the flower swipe horizontally through the area.

The beams move together clockwise, so mobs in their path get burnt AND frozen. It is a nasty combo, considering how rare it is for monsters to have resistance against opposite elements at the same time. Not that anyone thinks having resistance would help much in this case.

As a result, the Love Love Beams (temporary designation) mow down the horde of darkness in droves despite their inability to pierce through multiple enemies. Anything blocking the way is vaporized too fast for that to matter.

Witnessing the carnage unfolding before their very eyes, the experienced and hardened warriors of …

_ Brave warrior: It's not real. The lasers are not real.

_ Experienced warrior: Calm down, me. I have gone through this before. My muscles will protect me…

_ Hardened warrior: Tell my muscles I love them!!!

… Start to bravely tremble in terror.

They couldn't help it, okay? They were just reminded of their time fighting (and dying) their way through a certain hellish landscape full of doom lasers where one may be running one moment and get blasted back to Tyrel the next. That trek to hell didn't last long, but it appears that the players involved got quite an impression in their subconscious.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Weirdly enough, there is no beam from the fairies nor the posing magical girls.

When the fear finally subsides, mainly because the lasers swing back counterclockwise before hitting the camp, the watching members feel a discrepancy deep down in their mind. Something about this scene of magical girls (' pets) is clashing against their understanding of the world, and they are pretty sure it's not the morality. Magical girls are known to be extremely violent to anything they disagree with anyway.

It takes another minute of looking at the sea of monsters rapidly shrinking in size for them to realize it.

Shield Lady and Cannon Lady have solved the weakness of [Multi-weapon Wield].

By delegating the crowd control duties to their beasts, they don't have to worry about attack cooldowns or reduced max MP. In fact, pets are the only way for these honored ladies to cast any active skills, aside from the lesser known "attack the ground so hard it explodes into an AoE" secret technique. Many players are skeptical of multi-weapon builds, but even they would have to admit that using pets is a way to overcome the inherent problems of multiple weapons.

The same can also be said for any kind of build, and the whole strategy boils down to throwing money at the problem until it goes away. Nevertheless, there are times when an issue is so glaring, people start to accept it as something they just have to live with instead of figuring out a solution.

Receiving such a basic yet crucial guidance, the proud warriors hiding behind the walls can't help but be moved to tears.

_ Brave warrior: Even though they are already at the top, Shield Lady and Cannon Lady are still working hard to improve their creation. *Sniffles*

_ Experienced warrior: *Sniffles* I'm not crying. It's just blood getting into my eyes.

_ Hardened warrior: *Sniffles* So beautiful…

Truly a bizarre sight. These muscular maniacs, that is.

____________

It was getting noisy at the wall so we came to check it out. What we found were my apprentices showing how to murder an endless horde, a cult full of posing bodybuilders worshipping them, and Su bleeding to dead while muttering "So precious".

…Seriously, what the heck happened here?

_ Poltea (Party): Uhm, Su, do we really have to say "Love love" before calling our skills?

After a few seconds of trying to comprehend the situation, Hessy proceeds to stab the degenerate elf and makes sure she stays dead. What in the name of Sateri did you make my apprentices do, you damn lolicon~!!!

Checking the current situation of the battlefield, or what's left of it, it seems like Su did guide the two properly at least. Strong as they are, I highly doubt they could wipe everything in a 300-meter radius with only basic attacks. That, and the lasers are kinda eye-catching, to put it mildly.

_ Shadyna: This is terrifying.

…What's with that look, people? If you have something to say like "You of all people have the right to say that?", speak up so I can show you how much pacifism I can pack in this small body of mine!

Speaking of pacifism, the two fairies contributing to the peacekeeping mission were loots from the weird fridge by the way. Turns out, pets can also be unique drops, and that boss kindly dropped two of them for us! and contributed the most damage in that fight to boot, so there was no objection to giving them the pets.

The fairies do not possess a [Form Switch], strangely enough. In exchange, they have [Astral Folding], a limited [Mass Recall] that brings their masters as well as their pets to the other fairy. Not sure how to abuse… I mean make good use of this skill yet, since a wooden board will allow the same thing with [Recall]. Maybe it will be useful in fast-paced aerial underwater combats?

Their specialty, and the main reason for the lack of survivors on the field, is the attack skills though.

Before anyone ask, no, they technically cannot attack, being [Symbiosis] pets and all. What they DO have is the ability to give others attack skills. Namely, the [Flame Chant] and [Ice Chant] skills.

[Flame Chant: Bestow the power of the divine flame. Grant the target and . Increase the target's defense against Fire.]

[Ice Chant: Bestow the power of the divine ice. Grant the target and . Increase the target's defense against Water.]

[Molten Beam: Unleash the divine power to melt everything in the form of a beam. Increase effects of on the same target.]

[Glacial Beam: Unleash the divine power to freeze everything in the form of a beam. Increase effects of on the same target.]

[Molten Star Strike: Unleash the divine power to melt everything in the form of a comet from above. Increase effects of on the same target.]

[Glacial Star Strike: Unleash the divine power to freeze everything in the form of a comet from above. Increase effects of on the same target.]

…I don't know about others' opinions, but this skill set just screams "DUAL BOSS FIGHT!" to me. Everything from the fridge is like that, but these two pets are just on a whole different level. And we are giving them to the duo who almost always play together…

Then again, they also have pets, so wouldn't it be a quad or hex boss fight instead, depending on how we count?

To make it worse (better), the target for the buffs are not limited to the owners, allowing the floating flower and golem to cast the skills. The whole setup will be pretty useless otherwise because my apprentices, despite their unparalleled firepower, still cannot cast spells as their arsenal uses up all of their MP. Thank Sateri for that.

They are not using the Star Strike skills, from the looks of it. It's the AoE meteor throwing attack the fridge used in our battle back then by the way. A good decision, since the long casting and travel time make it much harder to use with [Alpha Strike Power] compared to the near-instant laser. Still a very good AoE attack when you need to quickly oneshot a group and the basic attacks are not cutting it.

…It's almost as if Sateri was fine-tuning the unique drops for the receiving players now that I think about it. I'm grateful for her considerations, although she really has to stop treating little girls as potential endgame bosses, just saying.

If my apprentices had known and utilized these new skills earlier, the battle for Sateri's statue would have turned out very differently. Now, it wasn't their fault, but they sure took their sweet time to put their new minions to use! All because they are good girls!

When we split the weird fridge's loots, they didn't have enough LDR for [Multi-summon Control] and therefore couldn't summon both their current pet and the new ones. More importantly, they were attached to the old pets (which we kind of randomly caught in the wild), and would not throw away their virtual friends in favor of better ones.

That was very kind of them, admittedly, but what about materialism?! The demon lord and the audience will probably cry in a lot of ways if the hero forgoes the legendary sword in favor of the cypress stick due to sentimental values you know? Double that if the heroes proceeds to kick the last boss' behind with said cypress stick you know?

Well, pets are a level above wooden swords so I didn't push them further, considering that I would never completely stop using Gelly after getting Lutena either.

Besides, my apprentices were putting attributes points from level-ups in ALL eight categories, equally. While such builds will make someone like scream in agony, that also means they already have some LDR rather than grinding from scratch, so they could do it much faster than, say, Elri. All in all, it would only take a little grinding… or so I thought.

Out of all attributes, LDR is the hardest to grind. The common attack skills are all about STR or FOC. The poor girls would need very rare or borderline useless skills that normal players won't even touch to get LDR experience. Between that and going around blasting bosses during Sateri's event… Let's just say they didn't achieve much during that time.

They still couldn't grind in a meaningful way after that. Being Elri's friends who weren't recruited by Hessy, they were the best practice partners she could get without leaking intel. Their player skills have improved thanks to that though.

I myself isn't entirely without fault this time, as much as I hate to admit it. There was Hessy's extreme method of grinding attributes, which was supposed to be shared knowledge among guild members by the way. However, I quickly found out the reason why no one has ever taught them that, despite knowing darn well these two need a lot of guidance.

To put it plainly: Teaching children that beating a crazy woman ('s alt character) is the fastest way to gain power is about as bad as it sounds. And that's not taking Mera's personality into account yet!

We did help them unlock some skills that give LDR experience afterwards though. Combined with the crafting training from Elri, they started grinding in earnest and finally got to 50 LDR yesterday.

…Then we realized that they didn't need to grind in the first place.

Apparently, no one told those innocent girls that attribute bonuses from title counts as base attributes for skill requirements. That's how I unlocked [Multi-summon Control] in spite of my actual attribute values. Heck, I wasn't even aware that there was a LDR requirement!

Titles giving attributes are on the rare side, so it's understandable that it just slipped our minds at the time. Anyway, and both have [Against All Odds] title from blowing up stuff that was way above their level, giving them more than enough attributes to unlock the skill without putting in extra work.

In other words, all they got for their efforts was a slightly higher LDR bonus for their pets. Whoopsie?

That's probably why Su insisted on the combat test today. She needs know our full capability so this kind of fumble does not happen again. Her virtual pride and reputation as the intelligence head of our guild depend on it.

Or she simply wanted to accompany little girls.

Probably both.

Oh well, it's better than going with I think. I'm not sure how much information I should reveal to her, so having Su acting as the mediator might be the best way to handle the consulting service offer. Considering their history of working together, the only thing I'm worried about is getting TOO MUCH out of ' service.

No point in thinking about it now though. Judging from my cute students' performance, it's most likely inevitable anyway.

_ Hessy: , it's your turn now, in case you haven't noticed.

And my time has come~

____________

Today, at the biggest oriental mansion in Tyrel, a house move (kind of) is underway.

Due to the scale of the operation in question, the delivery girl in charge had to ask for additional support from her guild.

_ Thelia: Sorry about this, you two.

That being said, she certainly did not expect the bartender team to lend a hand.

_ Linny: Don't worry about it. We are here on our own volition.

_ Helen: We will need some compensation however~

_ Thelia: My body is off-limit, but sure, I'll pay you for your work at a fair wage.

_ Helen: Ehm~…

_ Thelia: …Why the heck are you not denying that?!

_ Helen: But but! I only want YOU!

Knowing this woman, there is no chance in Sateri-chan's preferred way of eternal punishment that she means what her tone and body language imply, thinks . So that leaves…

_ Thelia: …What kind of job are you talking about here?

_ Helen: You see~, approached Linny earlier and begged her to help with importing a surplus of goods from another guild, which we cannot disclose until you accept the offer.

_ Thelia: …You don't mean… No, I will lose if I think about it. I'm surprised managers are not doing it themselves though.

_ Linny: They are busy preparing countermeasures so the market does not collapse once the goods enter, if you are wondering. Of course, I cannot tell you the identity of the other party, but the projected supply is massive. You can only get such amount by killing everything in several corruption raids, or so estimated.

_ Thelia: Yes yes, I understand. I accept your offer. Make sure the records don't show anything weird, okay?

_ Linny: Of course. Our official roster is full of members who just happen to be unavailable at the moment, and it is my duty as the manager to find a replacement at the last second so our operation goes smoothly. Their usual play time being the RL daytime is irrelevant, I assure you.

_ Helen: And with that, let us work hard today as well, my lovely partner~

Ignoring the womanizer's oblivious flirting, begins to think that this job may not be that bad.

She's going to get paid twice for doing the same task, after all.

--- Topic: Character build theory ---

…

## Maximus Archery

No, because Blood Arrow requires 70 STR. You don't put one-fourths of your attribute points into STR and call it a DEX build. Use Arrow Rain or other DEX-based attack skills.

##

## Shining Knight

One-fourths? I thought attributes are not capped?

##

## Serious Mage

Not capped, but your time is.

On average, a capped player will have somewhere between 300 to 350 attribute points in total, including points from level ups. The stronger players in the game have around 400 attribute points, and they started since beta. That's how tedious it is.

Your time is better spent grinding new equipment or summons.

##

## Nearseeing Sage

Exactly. Put barely enough points for the skills you want to unlock, then the rest to your build's preferences.

Visit DFC Sages fortune telling stores to get insights on the best skills for your favorite builds today! (*^3^)/~☆

##

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--- Topic: No MP? ---

## Newbie Charisma build

Disclaimer: I'm not a multi-wielder.

At level 0, [Multi-summon Control] and [Multi-weapon Wield] each reserves 50% your max MP to use. Does that mean it is possible to get your max MP to 0 in theory if I use both? Will I drop dead on the spot doing that? (°_°>)

##

## Manly Warrior

Reminder: We are not in a setting where people faint or die when their MP reaches 0. (^_^)

##

## Deeply Intelligent

You can also achieve that by having negative MP regen from debuffs. Quite effective against magi in PvP.

I'm not sure why you would do that to yourself, but I'm not judging.

##

## Heaven Piercer

Do you know the two little girls who sometimes help out in the tavern? Their MP is not even 0, it's negative. I don't think anyone has ever seen them with positive MP.

There's a rumor that it's a skill to sacrifice their MP for the massive firepower they display in previous encounters.

##

## Mage of Sin

Are you sure that's not just because they have [Weapon Slinger Origin] and wield like 7 weapons at the same time? (・・?

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