Defense Build and Skill Selection

When the event concluded, they were sent back to the square they'd started in.

And the flow of time returned to normal.

The announcement from the admins said the exchange of medals for skills would

happen in thirty minutes, so if any medal redistribution had to happen, they should

handle it now.

Maple had already given Sally her share, so they were taken care of.

"I wonder what skills they'll have?"

"We'll just have to find out."

Half an hour later…

There was another announcement, informing participants they'd be transported to

private rooms for the selection process. There would be no discussing things with

other party members, so each player would have to pick skills that seemed right for

them.

Anyone with more than ten medals was wreathed in light and vanished.

Anyone with less would simply carry those medals over to the next event.

Maple's view was blocked by a screen—the same blue as her stat window.

She found herself in a room with no doors—nothing but the screen.

She stepped closer to it and saw a list of skill names.

Tapping a skill brought up a description box.

"Um… There's, like, a hundred of them…"

Combat skills, crafting skills, stat boosts, and skills that didn't fit any of those categories.

Row after row.

"Doesn't seem like I have a time limit… so I guess I'll be thorough!"

Maple had enough medals for two skills. She didn't have any need for combat skills, so

she skipped past those.

Lots of skills had names like Holy Sword Arts or Dragon Spear, meaning they were

obviously not for her.

And her Dexterity was too low for any crafting skills.

That narrowed down the list of skills she could actually take.

In fact, of all the players with medals, Maple had the least skill options that would

actually be relevant to her build.

But that meant less time mulling it over.

"Resist All… But Fortress is also good. Or maybe just plain Magic Boost…"

Maple had a short list, but…

"Mm? Hmm…"

One other skill caught her attention.

She stared at the description so hard, it was like she was trying to bore a hole into it

with her eyes.

"O-okay! Definitely taking that one," she decided.

She'd felt a flash of inspiration, and she let that sweep her along.

"Now, what about the other one?"

She looked through the full list again. If she found something else inspiring, she

decided she'd go for it.

"Anything else… um…"

But nothing else really leaped out at her. After some thought, she picked Fortress.

Fortress was a simple skill, giving her one and a half times VIT.

Activating it carried no disadvantages—it seemed well worth the medals.

Maple already had similar skills, but that was because Maple's build was far from

ordinary.

Either way, once she'd made her selection, she was enveloped in light and disappeared.

The day after the event…

The usual crowd gathered on the forums.

542 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

Event's done!

So much to talk about.

543 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Done and dusted!

Superlong.

544 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

Only two hours real time!

Kinda a weird feeling.

545 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

I know!

546 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Anyone nab ten medals?

I sure couldn't.

547 Name: Anonymous Mage

Nope.

Those dungeons were rough!

And seven days of exploration takes its toll.

548 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

Truth.

549 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

We climbed the tallest peak, but there was nothing up there. So exhausting…

550 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

The tall one with a circular clearing on top?

There was a shrine, though, right?

551 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Oh, yeah. That's the one.

You know anything?

552 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

I'm curious.

553 Name: Anonymous Mage

Tell us more!

554 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

OK.

Long story, but here goes.

We climbed it, too.

There was a magic circle by the shrine.

We stepped on it, and inside was a bird monster that roflstomped us.

Like, complete devastation.

It generated so much hail, we couldn't see through it. Totally melted us.

Completely ludicrous DPS.

But if you got to the top and found nothing, someone must have taken it down.

555 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Huh?

No way.

Unless it had like, 1 HP…

556 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

I mean, you're Chrome, right?

If you can't do it, then who…?

Oh, wait. I see where this is going.

557 Name: Anonymous Mage

I know this one girl…

558 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

I ain't done yet!

There was this other party on the peak with us…

And it was Maple and a friend, I think? They were together.

She was in all-blue gear, cool and cute.

So if the magic circle vanished…

Odds are those two cleared it.

They must've gone in after us.

559 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Yeah, those two could maybe pull it off.

Maple just tanks her way through.

Or maybe this friend (?) of hers is a big monster.

What do we think?

560 Name: Anonymous Archer

Sorry I'm late

But I do have two valuable bits of intel.

561 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

Like what?

562 Name: Anonymous Mage

C'mon!

Nothing's gonna shock me now.

563 Name: Anonymous Archer

First

The event's sixth day had a mass slaughter

Like a humanoid monster in blue roaming around…

May have been a player?

Either way, nobody saw her use a skill, but she dodged every attack, came right in for

the kill.

Folks claim she vanished into thin air or their blades twisted to avoid her…

And she took down a lot of people.

And then later on, the same girl was acting like a mid-boss in a cave nearby.

And I saw a post claim that a Hydra came out of that same cave.

564 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

I get ya

Blue gear, huh?

And a Hydra.

Sounds familiar.

565 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

That Hydra is def Maple

Can't be two of her!

So then, uh…

Blue Gear's her friend?

566 Name: Anonymous Mage

Sounds likely.

Which means she's also broken.

Humans can't just dodge swords mid-swing.

567 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

And it was during the event, so not even a medal skill.

Maybe one with unknown acquisition conditions?

Or… just her own raw gaming ability.

Which makes her superhuman.

568 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

Oh, speaking of medal skills

One of those seemed like it might be the root cause of Maple's super defense.

Fortress.

Gives VIT x 1.5

Odds are she's stacking several skills like that.

One wouldn't be enough.

1.5 my VIT wouldn't do it—that's for sure.

569 Name: Anonymous Mage

Maybe Maple took that

No, she definitely did.

We know she had at least one gold medal.

So she's become even tankier?!

570 Name: Anonymous Archer

Back to my intel, part two!

After the event, I spotted Maple and her friend in the desert.

I was all, oh, Maple, been a while…

But she was riding around on a flying turtle, making it rain poison.

571 Name: Anonymous Mage

Stop, can't process

572 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

There's no skill like that

There can't be

Is there?

I don't even know anymore

573 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Seriously, how many medals did she get?

How would that even be possible?

574 Name: Anonymous Archer

I have no clue

Weirdness:

Turtle

Flying

Poison rain

Triple crazy

Even if we chalk up poison rain as "typical Maple," that still leaves two insane things!

What happened during this event?!

575 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

There's no taming skill

Wait

Unless that was an event item?

576 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

Maple's earning herself nicknames left and right.

People already called her a Fortress…

But we gotta change that.

She's a Flying Fortress now.

577 Name: Anonymous Mage

Take your eyes off her for a second and she goes flying away

I'd kill to see her skill and equip lists.

She's literally a Flying Fortress now.

I assume there's gotta be time limits?

578 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Keep an eye on her friend, too.

Anyone grouping up with Maple's gotta be a bit bonkers.

579 Name: Anonymous Archer

I'm sure she ain't run-of-the-mill anything, yeah.

I'd like to fight her myself.

Maybe there's some gnarly skill out there that makes attacks miss.

Can't tell how bad it is without fighting her myself.

580 Name: Anonymous Great Shielder

I'll approach 'em soonish, then.

I'm on Maple's friend list, after all.

See if I can scope out this friend of hers while I'm at it.

581 Name: Anonymous Spear Master

Waiting for your report, then.

582 Name: Anonymous Greatsworder

Looking forward to it!

"What skill did you choose, Sally?"

They were sitting on a bench in the second stratum's town, having picked their medal

skills.

"Hmm, I thought about it for a while, then took Chaser Blade."

"Chaser Blade?"

Maple hadn't even read the attack skill descriptions, so she didn't know what it did.

"Uh, so if you attack with a weapon successfully, it adds an extra attack at one third

strength."

"Um…"

"It basically doubles the hits I do. Since I dual wield, that means Double Slash now

does eight hits."

"Wow!"

"Of course, I also have Jack of All Trades, and dual wielding lowers the damage from

both hits, so it'll be a while before that really starts to matter."

Sally favored swift hits and lots of them.

Maple favored raising her durability.

"What'd you grab, Maple?"

"I also got a skill that might not be useful!"

"Huh?"

This confused Sally.

Why would she take a skill if she wasn't sure it would work?

"Can we hit up the desert? I wanna try this where no one'll see."

"Uh, sure… okay…"

Sally couldn't begin to imagine what skill Maple had picked.

"All righty, come on out, Syrup!"

Maple summoned her pet.

"Syrup! Giganticize!"

At her order, Syrup's body was wreathed in light—and enlarged.

It was now three yards tall.

And five and a half yards long.

This was a skill Syrup had learned on the sixth day, after leveling up.

Giganticize

Doubles HP.

The giant version had twice the health but was also a bigger target—so it would take

more overall damage. Without much in the way of speed, this was not a great skill for

Syrup to have right now.

"Please work… please work…"

Maple had her eyes closed and her hands clasped together in prayer.

She remained like that for a minute; then her eyes opened, gleaming.

"Psychokinesis!"

At her cry… Syrup's body levitated.

Ignoring all the weight its bulk would imply, Syrup wafted upward, hovering a good

ten yards overhead.

"Wha—?"

"Yes! Yes! It worked!"

Maple was jumping for joy.

Meanwhile, Sally's jaw had dropped. The girl who'd kept her cool all through the giant

bird fight was completely floored.

She could see for herself what had happened, but it had banished all rational thought

from her mind.

Maple had picked this skill on a hunch and nothing more.

Sally could never do that.

But that was how you discovered the truly absurd.

The skill Maple had chosen was not, at a glance, something Maple would ever want.

Psychokinesis

Makes monsters levitate.

Skill success varies depending on the monster's resistance.

If it fails, that monster cannot be targeted again for one hour.

Can be used only on monsters.

MP required varies based on target's resistance level.

Even when Maple showed her the skill, Sally was still baffled.

The skill description contained nothing that would explain why Maple had picked it.

To Sally's eyes, it read like a skill that would immobilize an enemy, but even then, it

had only a chance of doing so, at a potentially steep cost.

"Why did you take this?" she asked.

"I thought it might let me fly around on Syrup!"

"Ohhh, right."

There was no deeper reason.

Maple had just thought it sounded fun. She wanted to fly, so she had chosen a skill that

might let her.

And, as previously demonstrated, Maple's gut instincts could sometimes create the

most fiendish results.

"Uh, Maple… how long can Syrup fly?"

"Er… wow, good question."

Maple checked her MP. It wasn't draining at all.

"...… You're kidding me."

"What? You figure something out?"

"Syrup isn't your typical monster. It's bound to you via the Bonding Bridge."

"Yup! And?"

Maple was, of course, wearing that ring.

"So with that ring… and with you two being connected… would it have any resistance?"

Sally figured the Bonding Bridge would cancel that out.

And if the resist rate was 0 percent, how much MP would that take?

The skill description hadn't specified, so Sally had overlooked it.

She wasn't the type to waste good medals on a long shot.

"So… this means I can fly around on Syrup a lot?"

"Uh… yeah."

"Then to heck with the details! Syrup! Come back down!"

Maple's pet returned to her.

"Put me on your back!"

Syrup's jaws closed around Maple's head, and it tossed her in the air.

"Oof!"

She landed on its shell with a clang. The shell was large enough to be pretty comfortable.

Maple had Syrup rise up a bit, maybe seven yards off the ground. She looked around.

"Maple! Pill bugs incoming!"

Maple heard Sally yelling from down below.

She looked around and saw the sand plumes rising as the pill bugs rolled in.

"Stay back, Sally!" she called.

Instantly realizing Maple was about to try something, Sally used Superspeed to get out

of Dodge.

There was no telling what was about to go down.

"Acid Rain!"

Maple aimed New Moon at the sky.

A magic circle appeared, spawning six-inch-wide balls of purple water that fell

randomly in a ten-yard radius around Maple.

"Rain away! Rain today!" Maple sang. Each time her toxic shower struck a pill bug, it

stopped moving.

And if they weren't darting around, their destruction was inevitable.

There were two figures watching this from a distance.

One was Sally.

The other was a man with a bow.

""Wow…""

Maple's arcane exploits were enough to demolish anyone's vocabulary.