Ch28. Ainz's questions 2
Ainz, Rei, and Solution entered the Guild Master's office in order to get some privacy. For a second, Ainz glanced at Solution, wondering why she was following them as if it was natural but since Rei didn't say anything, he wouldn't either. After all, these were Rei's secrets he was asking about and if the man was fine with revealing them in front of Solution, Ainz had no right to say anything about it.
To be honest, Ainz was aware Rei kept many secrets from him and the guild even during its golden age. It was obvious, expected even. Every player had his own discoveries and secrets. Yggdrasil was a game that focused on exploration and as such, information was extremely valuable. With proper knowledge, things that would otherwise seem impossible could be accomplished.
A proper example of that was the creation of Rubedo, the strongest NPC in the guild. Without knowledge of an exploit that allowed a world item to be used in her creation, she would never be so strong. And even then, only Tabula knew the exact secret of how he managed it.
Ainz didn't begrudge Rei his secrets. That said, he knew Rei knew he was a magic enthusiast. That was actually the reason why he and Rei became friends. Unlike Touch Me, Rei played Caster and helped Ainz a lot with customizing his build. If not for that, Ainz would never be so pushy and tried to make Rei give away his hard-earned secret as it seemed impolite to him. But this was about magic! Ainz just had to know! The wet dream of every Caster in the game was dangling in front of him, dammit!
Ainz sat in his usual chair while Rei sat opposite him and much to Ainz's momentary astonishment, he quickly pulled Solution into his lap, making a surprised look flash through her expression before she calmed down and relaxed into Rei's body.
Ainz didn't know what to think about the relationship between Rei and Solution. He felt a bit conflicted about it but... Solution looked extremely happy and Rei told him his instincts are making it quite hard to reject her. At times, he really pitied Rei and thanked his past self for choosing the undead race.
Then again, Rei warned him this thought process might be influenced by his race too. Not that Ainz cared overly much. Or, more precisely, was capable of caring about it overly much.
"So... Instant Casting and Silent Casting in one build, huh?" Rei reluctantly started, causing Ainz to lean forward.
It was impossible to have both in one build in Yggdrasil. The reason for that was simple. Casters would dominate everything. If somebody could silently AND instantly cast tenth-tier spells, there would be no way for warrior classes to do shit.
As such, the developers made a limitation. One could either have Silent Casting, which, as its name suggested, made the user capable of casting magic without saying the name.
Actually... many players tried to do that in the game but if one didn't have Silent Casting and didn't say the name of the spell, the game was programmed to announce the name of the spell for the spellcaster.
The problem with Silent Casting was that despite it being silent, there was still a cast time. The higher the tier, the higher the cast time but it really started to show from tier seven and upward.
"Yes, Holy Smite has three second cast time." Ainz expectantly nodded, "Solution..." He glanced at Solution who seemed to ignore him in favor of delighting in her current position on Rei's lap, "cast it instantly by just calling the spell's name. That would suggest you gave her Instant Casting but I did notice she cast some silent spells too."
Instant Casting, unlike its name, wasn't really instant and it was done that way to balance the game. It still required the caster to call out the name of the spell which took a second or two, giving warrior classes ample time to dodge or counter-attack.
Yet, a vast majority of casters actually took Instant Casting rather than Silent Casting. The reason was simple. Ninth and Tenth Tier spells. Their cast time was long. It easily took around ten to fifteen seconds to cast them which made them unusable in PVP. Instant Casting, however, was capable of shortening these ten to fifteen seconds to a mere one or two, depending on how fast it took the user to call out the spell's name. Compared to that, Silent Casting was useless.
It was general consensus of casters that if somebody was capable of acquiring both Silent and Instant Casting, he could fire spells like a Gatling gun considering there would be no cast time and even the requirement of calling out the spell's name would be avoided. Yet, none could ever find a way to get both of them at the same time.
Rei wryly smiled, "You know how exploitable Yggdrasil was."
"Umu, I also know how much attention did the developers focus to this issue. They would have never allowed it if they knew. Not even for an NPC. No wonder you could clear raids single-handedly with just Solution as your aid." Ainz dryly remarked, a bit of accusation seeping into his tone.
"Hey, I donated half of the gold from those raids to the guild treasury." Rei defended himself and Ainz's lower jaw almost fell when he saw a small glare Solution sent his way.
'Well, that's the first time an NPC showed signs of displeasure with me.' He inwardly mused, finding it refreshing while deciding to ask Solution the next time he needed proper advice. It seemed to work for Rei so why not for him? At least, now he was assured Solution wouldn't mince her words or try to praise his intelligence without providing any answer.
"Sorry... Ainz sighed, "I know it was always a big risk taking Solution outside of Nazarick and that you spend more money I could ever hope to earn in my life to make sure the impossible penalty from NPC's death would be negated every time she died. It is your right to make use of her after you invested so much into her build. I just wished you would have told me."
"Meh, you are just pissed I kept the answer to the 'holy dilemma' of casters to myself." Rei amusedly quipped, trying to ignore how Solution stiffened in his arms when she heard Ainz mention just how costly she was. "It actually has to do with why I picked the hard way to level Solution up." Rei admitted, causing Ainz to widen his nonexistent eyes.
When Rei received Solution, Nazarick didn't have any free NPC levels and she was just a measly level 55 NPC. There were two roads he could take. The easy and quick one, or the hard, rigorous, torturous, masochistic, costly-as-fuck, and utterly bat-shit-crazy one.
Much to Ainz's disbelief, Rei... naturally chose the second option. Instead of buying more NPC levels for Nazarick through the cash shop, he decided to buy a cash item that would make Solution akin to his personal NPC. She was still Nazarick's NPC but now she was also bound to Rei like mercenary NPCs or a personal summon. This gave Rei a skill capable of summoning her too.
The problem with that was it reset her level to 1 and made it impossible to level her through the free NPC levels of the guild. Since she was categorized as his personal summon, Rei had to level her up manually.
Honestly, Ainz couldn't complain as Solution's previous levels were distributed to the other Pleiades maids, making them stronger.
The problem with manual leveling of NPC was a big one, though. There was a reason why almost nobody was running with personal NPC in Yggdrasil and why people preferred summons or mercenary NPCs.
NPCs were easily PK'd by players outside the guild base and there were tremendous EXP and gear penalties for each death. NPCs simply weren't as flexible as players so they became easy pickings for PK'ers who liked to gang upon them for the free and bountiful loot.
In the end, it was far easier to get a mercenary NPC that was already summoned all leveled up and ready for use than spend unending excruciating hours leveling up a personal NPC. Unlike when a player died and lost a bit of EXP, when NPC died, it lost five levels and gear drop rates were higher too. It was a feature the developers implemented to prevent players from actually making an army of personal NPCs for raids. Dumb... but effective.
Rei had to continuously buy one-time use cash shop items [Amulet of Lifetime's Experience] that negated EXP loss upon death while using cheap gear when leveling Solution up in case some idiot tried to jump them with his guild. The amount of money that was spent on these Amulets... Ainz didn't want to know. He was sure it would make his head spinning.
"So? How did you do it?" Ainz asked again.