Chapter 9: Chapter 8: Upward Progress

“What’s Status Tennis?” Tess asked, frowning. “I can’t figure it out by the name.”

“Oh, that.” Ker said, tapping his finger on his chin thoughtfully, “Usually it’s considered a pretty trash Skill, but it might have merit for you. Basically, if you resist a status effect, you have the opportunity to reflect it back at your opponent, lowering their resistance against the status. If they succeed, it reflects back to you, giving you the same penalty, if you succeed again it goes back to them at a larger penalty and so on. Higher rarities allow you to turn it off and on at will, and I believe at max rarity you can apply it to statuses you attempt to give enemies, meaning if they resist there’s a shot at getting them anyway.

“This issue with it is simply a matter of numbers. Yes, it is more likely to hurt your enemy than it is to hurt you, but in the long run those times it backfires become debilitating. Certain status effects can decide a fight by themselves, and sure, getting a few extra kills with it is good, but that doesn’t matter much when it could kill you just as easily. Fortunately, it is a togglable Skill, so most people just keep it off if they get it. However, that drawback isn’t that much of an issue for you, seeing as how your enemies will always get the status if it’s possible for them to get that status, and you will never get it if it’s possible for you to not get it. I’d consider it if I were you, it’s got real potential.”

Tess nodded, putting a check next to the entry for Status Tennis on the packet. It was listed as coming in Uncommon, Rare, and Epic, so Tess figured she might as well just grab the highest rarity version of it. Unless Ker advised against it, anyway. “Is there ever a case where I shouldn’t go for the highest rarity version of something?”

“No.” Ker replied. “Higher rarity versions of Skills or Classes are strictly upgrades, as far as we’re able to tell. If they add extra features to something the new features will be toggleable, so you can just turn off any aspects you don’t like, provided there’s a lower rarity version that lacks those aspects. Oh, but do be sure to specify “highest rarity” and not a specific rarity – it’s often the case that rarer Skills have Legendary or Mythical versions that we don’t know about.”

“Good to know. In your opinion, what’s the best magic Class out of the ones offered here?” She asked, proffering the packet.

Ker waved it away. “Yours. As Alice pointed out, it’s the most powerful Class that any of us have ever even heard of. You’d be stalling your progression in it while you work with another, and that’s a bad idea until you get to higher levels. As I understand it, you only have a problem with ejecting cores, and levelling up Monster Breeder will give you more capacity, so you won’t have to eject cores as often, and you get more slots to use Attributes or the original versions of Skills you get. Once we get past the beginner dungeons, you’ll start seeing monsters that can use magic, so you can just get magic Skills from monsters if you want them. But, if I’m wrong about only ejecting cores being uncomfortable, then I’ll give you my recommendation.”

Tess sighed. “No, you’re right. And I did say I would try a bit more with Monster Breeder, so I can wait, I guess.”

She looked over the list a little more. “Is there any reason I wouldn’t take the Magic (All Normal Types) series of Skills over individual attributes?”

“For you, not really.” Ker replied, “The main drawback of it is that it starts a step below the other magic Skills in terms of what you can learn. With any type of magic, if you want to get access to the more advanced Skills then you need to have the previous Skills in that tree. The All Magic Skills start a step below, with “Cantrip” level magic, while everything else starts at “Basic”. It’s also a lot rarer than typed magic, so even the most advanced magic users have at most the Intermediate version. The most use high level people tend to get out of it is that it counts as a prerequisite for higher versions of other magics and removes the lower or equivalent versions from their pool of possible rewards, as the spells it allows them to use are generally obsolete at that point. But, again, you don’t care about the rarity, so you could just take that all the way to the top.”

“Speaking of, how are there any cohesive magic users, with how luck-based getting the ability to cast any of those spells is?”

“Classes. Having high Luck helps too, but for the most part it’s Classes. As far as everyone’s been able to tell, when you get a Skill that lets you use more of an attribute of magic, it just gives you the next level, so even if a Class only gives one or two of those Skills, that could put you well along the path to using the good spells from that attribute, and unless you’ve already got all the spells, it’s equally as useful no matter when you get it.”

“How many ranks of magic Skills are there?”

“Five normally, six if it’s All Magic. We…think six for All Magic, anyway, no one’s recorded getting anything over Advanced. There’s a chance there’s no Master or Complete, but we don’t see why there wouldn’t be.”

Tess put a check near Magic (All Normal Types) as well. “So, theoretically I could just get all six All Magic Skills and have the ability to use all magic?”

“Yes and no.” Ker replied, “There are combination types that you need Skills for too, and All Magic Types doesn’t grant those. People have theorized that there’s a Magic (All Combination Types) series as well, but there have been no substantiated reports of it. Anyway, with your stats you’re only going to be able to handle maybe one Advanced spell with your mana pool and won’t even be able to use the later tiers. If you really want it get at most Intermediate, but really, I’d recommend picking up a magic Skill only once per dungeon and focus on other things instead. It’ll be more beneficial in the short term, and by the time you have all that magic available to you you’ll actually be able to use most of it.”

“Right, so, I’m getting All Magic and Status Tennis, should I be interested in some sort of weapon Skill?”

“My gut says no.” Ker said, “At least not for the time being. You’d be better off taking something that you can use with anything. I’m not exactly sure how your whole Attribute thing works, but there’s a real possibility you’ll be able to take natural weapons from monsters and use them, and weapon-only Skills won’t apply there. Although…Skills that buff your unarmed combat might. Maybe pick up something like Stunning Blow that only works with unarmed combat just to test it out. Make sure it’s a Skill that causes a status effect, so that way it’ll help you out even if it doesn’t work with natural weapons.”

“I’m not sure being up close and personal is something I’m really suited for with my stat spread.” Tess retorted.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. You’ll likely be at a disadvantage in terms of stats with whatever you meet, yes, but there are ways around that, especially with your Underdog Skill and buffing magic. And most monsters will always go for your teammates first due to Target of Affection, so as long as you’re careful with what you hurt you can choose how many enemies you’re fighting at once. You’ll almost never have to worry about that if you have someone like Ellie with you, so I think it’s a good idea.”

Tess shrugged. “I can try it, I guess. Worst case scenario it’ll be useful in self-defense against other people.”

“That’s the spirit. I…” He trailed off. “Come to think of it, how specific can your choosing of what you get be? Can you make conditions for what you get?”

“Not sure. Haven’t had much of a chance to rigorously test it.”

“Next time we fight monsters, let’s do an experiment, then. Try and get cores from male monsters, and materials from female monsters. You won’t be able to tell what they are in the heat of battle, so I think it’s a workable way to check. If you can specify conditions, then try and grab Stunning Blow only if it works with natural weapons.”

“Sounds good. Anything else you’d recommend before I make my final choices?”

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“If you’re getting Status Tennis, work on rounding out your list of resistances. Bleeding is a common status, as is Stun and Dazed, since most pure physical Skills have a chance to inflict one of those. Honestly, though, I would just leave it up to your Luck. If I’m right about how it works, and that is an if, since, due to its nature, Luck hasn’t been able to be seriously tested, then until you decide what kind of role you want to fulfill it’ll just give you the best general-use Skills, and those are not to be sneezed at. Yeah, it’s boring, but it’s also highly practical. Once you do figure out what you want to be doing, I would honestly just leave everything up to luck unless you really want something. It’s more exciting and will fill out your toolkit as best as possible.”

“Best how? Who decides?”

“We don’t know who decides or what criteria they use. You’d have to ask Fortune. We really don’t know much about Luck other than what we can observe, and our best observation of people with high Luck is that they have more synergistic toolsets. I mean, so far what you’ve got works really nicely with what you already had, so expect something similar in the future.”

Tess nodded. “Fortune, any input?”

They waited for a moment, but nothing happened.

“Great. Now I just feel silly.”

“Eh, it was worth a shot.” Ker replied, “You ready to go?”

“I still have to look over the Challenge rewards.”

“Don’t.” Ker said, “The best Skills all come from Challenges, but they’re also the rarest. Our databases for what Challenges give won’t have the really rare stuff in it, so you’ll probably miss out on really nice things if you try and pick.”

Tess sighed, standing up. “I suppose you’re right. In that case, I’m ready.”

“Not quite.” Ker told her. “You’ve got a free slot for a core, right? Let’s find the smallest one and absorb it.”

“Don’t have any reason not to, yeah.” She took the cores out from her bag. The largest cores were from the bear cubs, with the lion cub’s being slightly smaller, and the fawn cores being the smallest. They were generally only barely smaller than a slime’s core, so she felt pretty confident about absorbing it. “If you, um…let me use the bathroom after this, I think I would feel comfortable ejecting it and trying another. Something of this size isn’t much worse than pooping.”

Ker smiled. “Good. I’m proud of you.”

Tess blushed and absorbed the core.

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