Chapter 26: Chapter 26

"Why the hell did you bother taking Miner and Blacksmith?" Lisa asked. "You're well aware that Familiars still give synergies, right? And also that I am no longer limited to being two below your level?"

"I'm also well aware that Class Unlock items are so cheap that Nicky and Akane stopped bothering to sell theirs after the one month period and just let me keep them," Roxy said. "And that, well. I wanted to see if I'd get anything special if I, personally, took all six crafter/resource-gathering classes."

"And did you?"

"I did not. But!" Roxy held a finger aloft. "I will note that, with four conventionally-recognized categories of delver, three crafter classes, and three resource classes, that perfectly adds up to ten slots, and that kind of serendipity appeals to me greatly! Yes, I am aware that Mystic Artificer becomes slotless after one advances a spellcasting class to Level 10, bringing the total to nine slots. Yes, I am also aware that someone with Extra Class Slots 10 would have twelve class slots, not ten. And yes! I am once again aware that I, personally, have fourteen class slots! But none of that stops me from noting the serendipity. Maybe throw in Merchant once Mystic Artificer goes slotless. I don't know."

"Really makes you wonder why Traits all go the way up to 20," Lisa mused.

"Oh, that's easy," Roxy said, shrugging. "The system, while seemingly-opinionated, is ultimately not actually capable of exercising discretion or judgement. It's a system. The rules are the rules and if the rules react to some edge case in weird or unintuitive ways, then, well, that's just how it goes. One of the rules says that Levels go from 1 to 20, and another rule says that some Traits have Levels, therefore those Traits can be anywhere from Level 1 to Level 20."

"True, true," Lisa said. "The system does feel like it was designed, but... well, whoever designed it was clearly most interested in delvers and delving, considering that there's, what, eighteen delver classes? That's like three times the number of classes that actually make things and keep civilization running."

"Eighteen confirmed," Roxy said. "We don't know for certain that the theoretically-predicted quad-role delver class doesn't exist. We just know that, if anyone's found it... they haven't gone public with it."

"Mmm, fair," Lisa said.

"Anyway!" Roxy said. "Speaking of delver classes..."

"Yeah, we've both taken a few of those, too," Lisa said. "I gotta say, your research was thorough."

"It was also partially crowdsourced," Roxy said. "I just made a post on Grindr asking what the smallest arrangement of delver classes that would grant as many unique and or useful abilities as possible. Along with a note that said that filling all four roles was the bare minimum, but any other criteria for unique or useful had to be brought by answerers and explained."

"And that worked?"

"It started a large debate amongst like half of the Guild's level 14s, who apparently had nothing better to do, which I then had to skim through, collate, and compile into a comprehensive answer... which, of course, I shared with the community afterwards, and then started an even bigger debate, even though my article explicitly said no one answer was the best and that, like all build-related questions, the question has to start with 'what do you actually want to do with it?'"

"You did that in the twenty minutes it took to prepare all this shit?"

"I did that five months ago when I also had nothing better to do, and just wanted to talk to people."

"...Fair enough."

"Anyway," Roxy said. "Since we're kind of at a point where class slots simply... aren't really a limiting factor, I decided to go with a build that had all four base classes, plus Sorcerer- the only 'super' base class we've got so far- and Ranger for the ability to make our own monster traps and the ability to shapeshift, just not as mana-efficiently as a Druid can. Which, y'know. With Sorcerer, that hardly matters."

"I'm surprised you didn't go with Commander instead of Ranger, for maximal serendipity," Lisa said. "Considering that Ranger is security/mage/healer, that means we've got three classes filling mage, and only one class boosting warrior. Commander, though, is warrior/security/healer."

"Yes, but," Roxy said. "Commander doesn't do anything unique that I actually want. And while that does make my brain itch, it is also not something I can really do anything about, besides maybe throwing Swashbuckler and Paladin on my build. Which... I mean, okay, yeah, I've got fourteen slots, and only eleven of those are filled, I've got three empty class slots, but, all the same... I don't think I'm comfortable filling all my slots until I've got a good enough source of those that I can in fact literally take as many as I want."

"Well, fair enough," Lisa said. "So... what now? We gonna do some delves, break in the new classes?"

"Eyup," Roxy said, nodding. "As a Level 14 Wizard, I killed a boss with an effective level of 11 with a steak knife and no spells. As a Level 15 Wizard... I bet I can take on a Level 11 Dungeon with an actual sword and shield, and a delve partner."

"Sounds good to me," Lisa said.

"We've just first gotta do some contract fuckery to make this work better," Roxy added. "So, uh..."

---

"Okay," Roxy said, after their seventh delve that day. "That is... all of our new classes brought up to Level 11. I am now much more grateful that Clara made me do sword drills in her tactics class as part of the cross-training."

"And I am... not so confident about using swords," Lisa said.

"Yeah, that's..." Roxy sighed. "Classes and stats and levels can only do so much. Using swords is a skill that you've just... gotta learn the hard way. Which, thanks to you being Level 11, will not actually be that hard. Just gotta get set my Adjustable Dungeon Gate to Training-Type, and you'll be plenty good in no time."

"What constitutes 'no time' for 'getting good at swordfighting?'" Lisa asked.

"Four hours a day for a week," Roxy said.

"...Okay, that's actually not that bad," Lisa said.

"Especially if I dig Clara out of storage to train us on everything," Roxy added. "With her, a week of four hour training sessions should get us both up to snuff on all four roles."

"I see, I see..."

"And, in the meantime, I'm gonna see about getting hold of the other three rare classes," Roxy said. "Which... may take some doing. Might be that I have to consult System Knowledge 10 about it."

"What makes you uncertain?" Lisa asked.

"Those classes are heritable Traits, and they are known to exist, so... there should be someone with them, right?" Roxy said. "But, y'know. They are also rare, and so finding a source of those Traits is going to be... tricky. Gonna have to do scrying and shit, which is... not always easy."

"You don't seem to have any trouble with making screens so we can watch Nicky and Viceroy get milked like dairy cows from a different room," Lisa said.

"Yeah, because that's happening in my house," Roxy said. "This place is mine, and it's also enchanted to hell and back to let me see anywhere I want within it."

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"Ahhhh," Lisa said, suddenly understanding. "Meanwhile, seeing people who you know nothing about, aside from their possession of a particular class or Trait, is a lot harder, right?"

"Precisely," Roxy said, nodding. "And considering that the deep elves were apparently extinct outside of dungeons, and that dragongirls were definitely that before Anzerath's mom was brought outside, I will inevitably see my scrying spell find nothing, and be forced to consider which of these very likely scenarios was the case: the thing I'm looking for does not currently exist... or it does exist, and is simply hidden well enough that I can't find it."

"Sounds like a huge pain in the ass," Lisa said.

"It's less of a pain because I'm also a Mystic Artificer, and can have scans running automatically and repeatedly, collating results over time, but that in itself is gonna be a pain to set up," Roxy said.

"Maybe you should just grind out Dungeons until you get the monstergirls that naturally have those Traits," Lisa pointed out.

"...Oh," Roxy said. "That... would make more sense, wouldn't it?"

"Kinda," Lisa said. "It's still grinding out Dungeons, though, so it'll still take you a while. But, it's something that will work eventually, without having to worry if this Trait is currently extinct in the broader world."

"And it's something to do," Roxy said. "Since I'm really not actually working towards any actual goal, besides a vague thought of 'hey, wouldn't it be cool if I was Level 20 in literally every class?' This will, at least, stave off boredom for a while longer."

"Or turn your boredom into a more productive boredom that's constantly delving Dungeons for various loot drops," Lisa said.

"Or that," Roxy said, nodding. "I've got the Adjustable Dungeon Gate, anyhow. Might as well use it."

---

"Okay, so," Roxy said, sitting down on the couch, a sour look on her face. "It's been a week of delving the optimal Dungeon type and level for these drops. And I am already sick to death of this process, considering that I am not even two months out from my last very long grind for a single rare drop."

"So, what now?" Cecilia asked, taking a long pull from her beer bottle. Keeping her out of the milker had been a challenge at first, but when confronted with an excuse to go back to delving with a practical end goal, she was more than happy to have something to do. Especially since delving, when done with a high enough skill level, was something that occupied your thoughts even outside of the delve itself. "You gonna just... quit delving again?"

"I might," Roxy admitted. "If you don't mind going in my stead..."

"You don't hit Level 15 if you don't like delving enough to do it every day for most of your adult life," Anzerath said.

"Well, you specifically do, but, the rest of us don't," Clara added.

"Thanks," Roxy said. "It's just... Ugh. I've managed to automate every other tedious, repetitive chore for making resources, but I can't automate delving."

"If it makes you feel better," Akane said, "All of us can hit Level 14 soon enough." While Roxy did like the monster sisters, they were still old and well-connected, and really, truly did not need to know that Roxy could make Level 14 Dungeons. Not unless Roxy could get them to agree to a very strict nondisclosure contract.

"Only a little," Roxy said, sighing. "I mean, sure, the knowledge that I've successfully paid it forward and carried some fresh graduates up to 14 is nice, but..." She shrugged. "Iunno. Right now I'm more frustrated about having come up against a problem I just don't see a way to solve. Sure, I can get other people to delve for me, but... well, I only have three Familiar slots, and as nice as it is to have Volex and Lucy, neither of them is terribly interested in delving, or really anything that isn't sucking and/or fucking. Hell, they've told me to leave them in the milkers unless I was sixty seconds or less from fucking them senseless, and then to put them back in once I'm done."

"What about Ranch Familiars?" Nicky asked.

"Those won't help any," Clara said, shaking her head. "Ranch Familiars are nice to have and all, but they've got limits. For one, you get one slot per every 128 monstergirls you have, and Roxy's only got... what, a little less than a thousand? You need more than a thousand for eight of them, and that's only two parties."

"She administered Breeding 13 potions to her monstergirls on the second day," Viceroy said. "It is now the fifteenth day, when the second generation of monstergirls are being born."

"It's a very good thing the system is a little simplistic," Roxy said. "Real cows have to eat extra food to convert that into milk. Ranched cowgirls, though, just need to be fed an arbitrary threshold of nutrition, regardless of how much milk they give. I don't even have to use my farm for feeding them, they just consume a bit of their own milk."

"...How many monstergirls-" Clara began.

"More than enough," Roxy said. "I actually had to seriously restrict the amount of offspring each monstergirl was allowed to produce through enchantments, because one litter from a Breeding 13 monstergirl was around sixty seven million without those restrictions. The bottleneck was mainly milker apparatuses; I'm thinking about a redesign that'll make production and storage expansion a lot easier, but for the time being, I have... about a million, actually."

"...Well," Clara said. "That's... impressive, but unfortunately, that doesn't solve the second problem with using Ranch Familiars to delve. See, regular Familiars get two class slots, just like regular people. Ranch Familiars don't. They don't get any class slots."

"Hrm..." Roxy murmured, brow furrowed. "...Well, that's a damn shame. I think, in all honesty, that I might as well just give up on this whole damnfool thing entirely. You can keep delving if you want, but... I've just kinda lost interest in this goal."

---

The next morning, after Anzerath, Cecilia, and Clara had gone back to the milkers with Roxy's admission of defeat, Roxy felt secure enough to... experiment.

"Alright," Roxy said, examining the four deep elf beta exemplars before her. Careful experimentation had revealed that, while deep elf omegas, betas, and alphas all had objectively the same amount of curve and padding, it simply looked bigger as one walked omega-wards and thus the rest of the body became smaller. But beta exemplars, who were typically about as large all-round as alphas, while having the same proportions as omegas, were the absolute curviest.

Roxy figured that, if she was going to indulge in a vanity project, she would not skimp on the vanity. Besides, it wasn't as though beta exemplars were hard to come by on this ranch.

"Right now, the four of you are just mindless monstergirls," Roxy said. "Outfitted with expensive, high-level jewelry, but mindless nonetheless."

Indeed, the elves were all sporting collars, nipple piercings, and cock rings.

"That changes now," Roxy said, reaching out with her will towards the elves, straining enough that the next part had to be out loud. "I offer each of you a spot as a Ranch Familiar."

The elves all instantly accepted, and seemed to awaken, their faces animating with expression and emotion.

"So, little elves," Roxy said. "Do you have class slots?"

"We do."

"Excellent."

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