PLEASE ENTER NAME : LEVEL 5
DAY 37 : E-DAY, FIRSTWEEK, BOREAS, YEAR 1
EXTERIOR 1 : ANIME RAID 1 : PRIORITIES
[ NEW S.T.A.T.S — STRENGTH: MAGICAL=24 - PHYSICAL=16 — TENACITY: DEFENSE=24 - SPEED=16 — APTITUDE: MANA=24 - STAMINA=16 — TILT: CONTROL=24 - LUCK=16 ]
[ NEW COMMON C.L.A.S.S. ACTION: DULLAHAN / SUMMON ARMOR 1 — EFFECT 1: SUMMON 1 ADDITIONAL ARMOR ONTO A POINT WITHIN 1 BODY LENGTH OF YOURSELF — EFFECT 2: BASE MAX SUMMONED ARMORS += 1 — COST: SMALL MP ]
[ NEW COMMON C.L.A.S.S. PASSIVE: DULLAHAN / BODY DUPLICATION 1 — EFFECT: MAX SUMMONED ARMORS *= 2 ]
[ NEW UNCOMMON C.L.A.S.S. ACTION: DULLAHAN / SUMMON ARMOR 2 — EFFECT 1: SUMMON UP TO 3 ADDITIONAL ARMORS ONTO A SMALL TARGET AREA WITHIN 1 BODY LENGTH OF YOURSELF — EFFECT 2: BASE MAX SUMMONED ARMORS += 2 — COST: MEDIUM MP — PREREQUISITE: SUMMON ARMOR 1 ]
[ NEW COMMON C.L.A.S.S. PASSIVE: DULLAHAN / BODY DUPLICATION 2 — EFFECT: MAX SUMMONED ARMORS *= 2 — PREREQUISITE: BODY DUPLICATION 1 ]
[ NEW COMMON CORE PASSIVE: SONAR — EFFECT: AUTOMATICALLY DISTINGUISH EVERYTHING REACHABLE VIA SOUND WAVES WITHIN 104 METERS OF YOUR BODY — RESTRICTION: EFFECT ONLY ACTIVE WHILE ‘SIGHT’ SYSTEM SETTING IS TOGGLED OFF — TILT SCALING: CONTROL ]
[ NEW UNCOMMON C.L.A.S.S. PASSIVE: DULLAHAN / BODY DUPLICATION 3 — EFFECT: MAX SUMMONED ARMORS *= 2 — PREREQUISITE 1: SUMMON ARMOR 2 — PREREQUISITE 2: BODY DUPLICATION 2 ]
[ NEW RARE C.L.A.S.S. ACTION: DULLAHAN / SUMMON ARMOR 3 — EFFECT 1: SUMMON UP TO 7 ADDITIONAL ARMORS ONTO A TARGET AREA WITHIN 1 BODY LENGTH OF YOURSELF — EFFECT 2: BASE MAX SUMMONED ARMORS += 3 — COST: LARGE MP — PREREQUISITE: SUMMON ARMOR 2 ]
[ NEW COMMON C.L.A.S.S. ACTION: DULLAHAN / RECALL HEAD — EFFECT: TELEPORT YOUR HEAD INTO YOUR HAND — RESTRICTION: HAND MUST BE AN OPEN AND EMPTY PALM — COST: TINY MP ]
This whole last week, I’ve been learning to walk. Not too fast or it’s called ‘running’, not too slow or it’s called ‘go faster’. It got easier when I turned off my ‘sight’ setting and bought the Sonar Skill. Especially with each of my 56 current bodies acting as a different origin point. But that mostly just improves my situation in a macro sense. On a micro level, I still struggle every time just to establish the right speed and maintain constant leg movement while keeping balance with the rest of the same lopsided body, all without getting yelled at. Compared to that, it’s practically effortless to split focus and individually coordinate dozens of bodies at once. Just so long as none of them have to walk. But I’m practicing and getting better all the time. Not that I have anything else to do while Oneshot one-shots everything.
As the rest of my bodies practice walking, Oneshot teleports up to, and subsequently pokes all the poorly hidden men with headbands and large, tetrahedral knives littering the antechamber. Then, he turns to the masked one in the center trailing a large chain connected in the middle by a clamp on either wrist.
That one just watches Oneshot with its one eye exposed through the singular hole in his stripe-pattern mask. After a brief face-off, they both jump at each other.
Oneshot chuckles to himself as he throws one of the thick knives he got from the last guy he killed.
The masked man flies forward, straight into the oncoming knife. But it just phases through his head as the robed hand extends towards Oneshot’s chest. But just as he’s about to touch Oneshot’s flank, the latter vanishes.
The same instant, Oneshot reappears above the still-lunging robed form. Winking at me, he uses his sudden lack of momentum to swing himself around in midair and gently tap his arm blade against the chain-wielder's back from above. The new corpse goes instantly limp and collapses in a sprawling heap as a nearly opaquely glowing, blinding ‘1’ rises out of its back.
The next moment, Oneshot falls the remaining foot to the ground, landing on his neck to take the closest thing to real damage since we got here. “FUCK!!!” In an obvious rush to cover for the flubbed landing, he gets up and hurries to put himself together before turning to me and clearing his throat. “Now PEN, before we go through that final door… Do you know why we’re here?”
I nod. “So you can show off to me and thereby cement yourself in my mind as ‘impressive’?”
Oneshot’s stiffens. “Civetta told you that, didn't she?”
“Yes.”
Oneshot groans to himself as he leads the way to the raid boss door. “That’s not entirely wrong, I guess. But it’s really more of a side-benefit, rather than the reason we’re here.”
I nod.
Oneshot waits for some reason before elaborating. “‘Dullahan’ is good. It’s a great choice in general if you’re a natural multitasker… And can stand the head-detachment thing. But that doesn’t really seem to bother you. And you’ve got some crazy affinity for it since you can already effortlessly support, what, 47 armor bodies like you’re doing now?”
“56 is the maximum allowed by my current Skill selection.”
“Really? How many do you think you could support at a time? I mean if you had the requisite Skills, that is.”
“16,384.”
“Really? That many? All at once? I know that’s the maximum with all the right Skills, but… And you’re saying you could control them all as well as you’re doing with the body I’m looking at right now?”
“Yes.”
“What about a 16,385th?”
I nod. “Impossible.”
Oneshot blinks. “Huh…” He shakes his head in bemusement. “So yeah, safe to say you’ve got an affinity with your CLASS. But your CRAFT? No. It’s basic. Basicer than basic. Medieval is the most simplified, classical version of armor there is. Culturally, anyway. I guess the mesopotamians did have some sort of armor system. But that’s not exactly what comes to mind when you think of ‘armor’, is it?”
“Nothing approaches my brain when contemplating ‘armor’.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Oneshot sighs. “Ignoring the fact that you don’t actually have a brain, mine is approached that way. Same for just about anyone from Earth. This makes ‘Medieval’ one of the most historically accurate armor categories out there. Now there’s another term for ‘historically accurate’ in this world. Do you know what that is?”
I nod in recollection of one such synonym. “‘Realistic’?”
“Technically correct. But the word I was going for was ‘weak’. All the legends, myths, and even slight exaggerations have been filtered out by people showing up with actual, factual knowledge about medieval armor. It is, in other words, weak. And that brings us here. After I kill this next boss, we can hopefully get you a real armor CRAFT. Maybe ‘real’ isn’t the right word… ‘Overpowered’, maybe? Yeah… An overpowered armor CRAFT. Or at least something to hold you over until you can do this raid again with someone else.”
I nod. “Are you unavailable after this? It took several hours to get this far, and I know your time is valuable, so I understand if-”
Oneshot shakes his head. “It’s not that I’m unwilling to carry you in a raid again. If I could, I’d do this shit all day, every day, for as long as it takes. Not like I have anything else going on… But I can’t. Not with you, anyway. Within the same cycle, you can’t team up with any of the same people to do the same raid. The System won’t let you. And this raid is a bit special besides.”
“It has personal meaning to you?”
“I mean kinda? But no, not like that. This place is special because the drop rate is amazing. Do you remember what I showed you right before we came here?”
I nod. “Macross Frontier. Should I watch it again now?”
“…Now? I mean no. We’re doing a raid, remember? We’re almost done, but this sort of strategizing conversation aside, the rewards will get a little worse if we take 20 minutes to watch an episode of something.”
“I can do both. One of my bodies is always in my room. From there, I am consuming media on a permanent basis.”
Oneshot blinks. “‘Permanent’?”
I nod. I’m using a media playback option that treats the screens as system readouts, so their visibility isn’t affected by the ‘sight’ slider. “Is that a problem?”
“Kinda fucks up my whole plan with Macross Frontier… Actually, you said you could watch it again? So yeah, do that right now. But just the final battle. Let me know when you start and that’s when I’ll-”
“Done.”
Oneshot freezes mid-enunciation. He stares into the open neck of one of my headless bodies. Then, he smiles wide. “Wonderful. In that case, just stay out of my way and enjoy the show.” Turning his smile towards the door, Oneshot kicks it down. Or he would if it actually counted as an environmental object. Which it doesn’t. So his kick like a System Train only results in the door creaking open and inward, totally unhurried. Once it finally clicks into place at a 90º angle to form an ostentatiously arranged opening, Oneshot walks through it and into the next room with a dejected grumble.
Inside, a lone figure sits on a rectangular chair, nonetheless unmistakable for anything but a throne. Covered neck to toe in some kind of armor with a bunch of flappy bits, his uncovered head rests on his closed and glove fist, itself supported at the elbow on the plain chair’s arm. As he lackadaisically rises from his seat, the spiky-haired man’s eyes flash with a kaleidoscopic pattern before settling into a set of concentric circles. Stepping forward, he wordlessly cracks his neck.
I don’t even have time to fully process my jealousy over the flappy armor before Oneshot teleports in front of, and subsequently boops him on the snoot. They both disappear in the resulting wall of blinding ‘1’s.
While the identical numbers exist, reality itself seems to lag as everything takes just a bit longer than the time that actually passes. Afterwards, only Oneshot remains anywhere near the throne as a pedestal rises from the room’s central deus. On top are four balls. two emanate a distinct feeling of tranquility. The others, violence. Each is adorned with a different symbol.
Dusting himself off mostly of leftover remnants from falling on his neck earlier, Oneshot walks over to the pedestal. “So like I said, ‘we’ just completed the Anime Respec Raid. And here’s our reward. The only reward, in fact. But it’s exactly what we were after. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have any business being here in the first place. What we have here is one CLASS and one CRAFT respec tailored to each party member. But each of us can only take one, so don’t bother trying to split them evenly or anything.”
[ C.L.A.S.S. RESPEC: SUPPORT / UTILITY / TELEPORTATION / ANIME ]
[ C.L.A.S.S. RESPEC: ATTACK / MID-RANGE / VAMPIRISM / ANIME ]
[ C.R.A.F.T. RESPEC: COMMUNICATION / ENTERTAINER / SINGING / ANIME ]
[ C.R.A.F.T. RESPEC: DEVELOPMENT / SMITH / LIGHT ARMOR / ANIME ]
Oneshot’s eyes seem to flash just like the spikey-haired flappy-armor guy’s did as he immediately chooses the first option, even while scoffing at it.
I nod. “That expression is meant to denote disappointment, yes?”
Oneshot sighs. “That’s right, PEN.”
“Then you are disappointed?”
“You could say that, yeah.”
“I am confused. Did you not begin by saying you had nothing to gain from this raid?”
“I guess… Look, it's complicated. I got an Anime CLASS specializing in teleportation. Which is perfect for me. It’s even something I’ve been fantasizing about for over a century at this point.”
I nod. “Ah, I understand now. You are disappointed that you were wrong.”
Oneshot shakes his head. “I can’t use it. I mean I could… But I couldn’t. And wouldn’t. And aren’t we here for you? Which one do you want?”
Belatedly, I examine the reward options. After careful consideration, I indicate the vampire CLASS.
“What? We’re here for you to get a CRAFT. It’s why I just chose that CLASS without letting you pick. But suddenly you want the other CLASS of all things? Why?”
“It is the first choice.”
Oneshot grumbles to himself. “We’ve gotta get you to stop doing that… I’d ask which of the remaining two you want, but you’ll just pick the first option, won’t you?”
I nod. “That is correct.”
“And you’d pick it strictly because it’s the first option… Right?”
I nod. “That is correct.”
“Great… Do you even know what singing is?”
I nod. “No.”
“That’s what I thought. Also, don’t nod while saying ‘no’. It’s confusing. And you should pick the Light Armor CRAFT. Heavy would be better. Or medium. Or really anything other than Light. But even that at least has better synergy with your CLASS than singing.”
“Very well.”
“You don’t have a problem with me dictating your future like that?”
I rotate my head in three consecutive circles. “No.”
“You should really be dictating your own future. Don’t leave it up to anyone else. Not even me. The sooner you take fate into your own hands, the better.”
I rotate my head in the opposite direction. “Very well.”
[ C.R.A.F.T. RESPEC GAINED: COMMUNICATION / ENTERTAINER / SINGING / ANIME ]
Oneshot watches, enthralled as the anime armor respec disappears from existence along with the vampire one. “Oooh… Oh, that’s just greeeat…”
I rotate my head once more. “I am happy you approve.”
“Then why didn’t you do as I said?”
“I did.”
Oneshot groans again. “I guess It’ll be a while before you can use more and better armor than you can buy super cheap in bulk… And it’s not like you can’t get another respec later. So fine. Go with singing. See where it gets you.”
“Are you… Disappointed in my choice?”
Oneshot can’t help but sulk. “Why yes, PEN. I am. But like I said… Whatever. At the end of the day, it’s your afterlife. Now, next up is your attunement. What element do you want to specialize in? Probably Agni, right? That’ll make you attuned with fire. And I think Dullahans have some tie to fire. Like, they can throw flaming pumpkins or something?”
I nod. “I don’t understand. Is fire the best choice? Also, what is fire?”
“You… Wow, you’ve really never experienced fire, huh? But no, I don’t assume you’d choose it because it’s the best choice. I expect you to choose it because it’s the first choice. At least alphabetically.”
I nod. “What is the best choice?”
“That’s entirely subjective. All the elements are pretty balanced, so how effective one would be over another really just comes down to your build. And some other things. But mostly, your own personal preference and affinity.”
“What is your personal preference and affinity for my build?”
Oneshot throws me whatever a side-eye is. “PEN, that’s not even remotely what I was hinting at. But alright, fine… So what would I pick in your place?” Oneshot seems to think for a moment. “Now this might just be on my mind thanks to the theme of the raid boss. Or the teleportation respec, now that I think of it. But I can’t get the idea out of my head that you’d be missing out by not picking wind.”
I nod. “Then that is what I will do.”
Oneshot’s eyes bug out. “Really? Why, though? Alphabetically, Horus is the last choice. So is ‘Wind’, I think. I’m not entirely sure, but I can’t think of any synonyms for the other elements that start with an ‘X’, ‘Y’, or ‘Z’.”
“Would that not make it the first choice in reverse-alphabetical order?”
“I… I guess..? That’s still a bad reason to choose it.”
“That’s not my reason.”
“So what is the reason?”
“I don’t wish for you to be disappointed a third time today.”
Oneshot’s eyes go wide and damp at the same time as his shoulders slump. “Oh… I mean… That’s still not…” He seems to think better of whatever he was about to say. Instead, he opts for a single word. “Thanks.”