CaTastrophy427

Hello all you lovely guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! It's been a while, hasn't it? So... I don't know how to say this. Erm... basically, I had this chapter mostly complete back in October, but I suffered a nerve injury in my wrist that made typing nearly impossible for several months, and even now it's still not really something I can do much. At pretty much the same time, the treatment for (some of) my chronic health conditions stopped being feasible, so those issues, which had been relatively well managed, have returned for the most part, making thinking hard too. I decided to split the chapter I had mostly complete into two parts (about a 75/25 split), this is the first and can reasonably stand on its own as a full chapter so I decided to publish it after polishing it a bit - and even just that bit of polishing took almost a month. There's another note at the bottom with information on the future, as opposed to just the past and present.

{-120}

“Nice that we found a low-leveled elite while gathering wheatstones, I’m leveling up quite quickly”

“Bonus points for dropping a rare Feather Bundle”

“Oh, it dropped one? Can I have it?”

“Yeah, of course. I wouldn’t be able to make anything with it besides some basic movement speed charms and a low-tier wind magic wand, and if I sold it... well, at most I’d get a handful of large copper coins. I’ll sell it to you for one, ‘k?”

A few seconds later, I was 10 copper poorer and one bundle of feathers richer - if I’m lucky, this’ll save me almost a large silver coin in buying premade arrows. 50 rare feathers in the bunch, combined with the 7 loose rares I got, gives me enough for 19 arrows. 20 arrows costs a large silver coin - 10 silver, a tenth of a gold coin. To be honest, she might as well have just given it to me for free, 10 copper is basically nothing.

“How many wheatstones do you have now?”

“Twelve”

“I’ve got fifteen, so we need three more. I think there’re some over there?”

“Hm? Ah, yes, I see them. I also see the Flockatrice mob boss guarding the patch. You really think we can take it?”

“I mean, it’s a level 15 mob boss and a group of level 10 base mobs. With a level 24 Earth Star Sage and a level 21 close-combat archer, we should be fine, no?”

Close-combat archer, or in other words, a Sniper who can pull out a pair of swords if things get close. I don’t call that a good tank, at least not yet. Once I have more HP from my swordsman class, maybe I could do so comfortably. For now, I’d call myself a reinforced glass cannon. Not completely helpless in melee range, but not exactly made to take more than a hit or three.

“The issue is less the boss and more the group of base mobs. The group will keep growing as they call for more and more reinforcements from the flock. I’m not a dedicated tank, nobody will pull aggro from you, and I can’t block more than a couple of them at a time”

“Well... just snipe them. They don’t call the flock if they don’t have a target, you know”

“Oh sure, I can do that, but... their clear sight aggro range is 80 meters, and there’s no cover within that range to snipe from. Only a minor issue, probably pretty simple to resolve”

The sarcasm was quite evident in my tone of voice, and I was starting to look around to see if I could spot any other patches of wheatstones when I heard a very matter-of-fact reply from Artemis.

“Why, yes, it is pretty simple to resolve. I think I could give you a decent hiding spot with Stalagmite Forest, and if that’s not enough, there’s always my Clay Shield”

“Isn’t that, like, kinda a waste of MP and cooldown time? Stalagmite Forest is one of your current ults, right?”

“It’s a strong skill, but it’s not at all an ultimate. I’ve got a few grade VI spells, and several grade V. Astral Smite is one of my new ults, but it’s got a surprisingly low cooldown despite that. Decently low MP cost too, but despite the size of the attack, it’s basically a single target skill. As for Stalagmite Forest, I’ll just use it so you can have some cover”

“I’m not sure if that’ll work, but the worst case scenario is it doesn’t and we have to run”

With those words, I sprinted into the maze of earthen spikes, put my swords into my inventory and pulled out my bow - thank you, hotring, for making that an instant action - then drew an arrow from the quiver on my waist. Nocking it to the string, I peered out from behind a tall but narrow stalagmite to aim at one of the closer birds before releasing and quickly ducking back into my hiding spot.

{-88}

“One down, almost two dozen to go”

Six more arrows later, I got another level in my Swordsman class and the flock was noticeably thinner, but still unperturbed. Unfortunately, that didn’t last much longer, as my 11th arrow missed the mark.

[-28]

“Damn, I-”

No sooner had I uttered that curse than my eardrums were nearly ruptured by the screech of the mob boss, who my arrow had evidently tickled inadvertently. Poking my head out, I could see that, while it was mad, it wasn’t sure who to be mad at. Unfortunately, that meant it took its anger out on the birds near it, causing them to flee in all directions - including into the forest of spikes I was hiding in - and to scream bloody murder, attracting the attention of every other bird within earshot. One of them, its left wing already ripped off by the boss’s beak, found me and immediately attacked.

“Hello, whole damn flock. Can I maybe get a refund on that arrow?”

I wasn’t expecting a reply, but the squawk of the bird staring daggers at me sounded a whole lot like a response, and not the one I was hoping for. So, I shot an arrow into its still-open beak.

{-144}

"Wow, that’s some serious overkill. The thing only had 44 HP left, and I overshot that by exactly a hundred. I don’t think I’ve ever done triple the mob’s HP in my first attack before, right?"

But I stopped thinking about it at that, prioritizing fleeing over useless elation at a meaningless PB. After about five minutes of running in the open plains like a headless chicken, fleeing from things that looked like giant chickens that were very much not headless, they seemed to lose interest in me, returning to their mob boss... making the flock around that thing about three times as large as it had been before my attempt to trim it down.

“Well, what now? That patch is super heavily guarded now, and there’s no wheatstones in sight elsewhere”

“Might as well try picking them off again, just don’t miss this time”

“JuST dOn’T MisS fiVEhEaD, that’s a tall order you know. Even professionals with several decades of experience don’t always get an 8 point shot on a stationary target 50m away in a controlled environment. I have only one decade of experience, this is not a controlled environment, my bow and arrows aren’t on par with ones made with modern manufacturing techniques, my bow is neither a recurve nor a compound so I’m not as familiar with the general style of bow in the first place, and let’s not forget that these things are moving fast and unpredictably. Not missing any crits on fifty-plus mobs, from that kind of distance, is basically impossible”

She raised her hands and pulled back a bit, visibly upset at my retort.

“Easy there, it was just an idea, and evidently a bad one”

“Yeah... well, no. It’s not a great idea, but it’s not like there’s a better one, now that I think about it. I’ll do it, you just make sure I don’t lose my cover, okay? If I miss, we’re gonna have to go for a jog again”

“I hate jogging, this game doesn’t have any sports bras so I get a really bad backache”

“Preaching to the choir, miss. My first experience with having boobs was running fr... well, no, my first was the standard male curiosity, my second was a bowstring trying to slice my nipples off, and my third was trying to run from some spiders and ending up with a horrible ache - more from them slapping against my torso than a backache, honestly. Perhaps because I’ve trained my back and shoulder muscles for the sake of drawing really heavy bows?”

Artemis’s face shifted several times, from confusion to a slight blush while cringing, then to a wince and even a truly pained expression, and finally ending on a ponderous one.

“If that’s the case, should I take up archery?”

“In-game? You won’t gain muscles that way, won’t help at all. IRL? You’re blind, right? How do you expect to hit a target you can’t see?”

“Uhhh... I didn’t think about that. I guess I’ll stick to my current exercise routine in that case. As for the situation at hand, if you wanna go for it, by all means, try it, I’ll support you as best I can”

“Let’s see how this goes... maybe we’ll get something good to drop in the process, eh?”

15 minutes, 20-something shots, and a Swordsman class level up later, the best drop I got was a few uncommon Feather Bundles. Artemis got an uncommon Petrified Beak from a Mutant Flockatrice, the first time I’d ever seen such an item, but upon Artemis looking it up, it seemed to be completely useless unless you were an alchemist (or knew one) and wanted to make a Lesser Stoneskin Potion.

{-92}

{-88}

“Huh?”

“What’s up?”

“New class option... oh right, the prerequisite for Marksman is to land 30 consecutive crits from 50 meters away, I guess I hit that”

“So, take a 10 minute break while you upgrade your class?”

“Nah, I’ll keep going like this, I’ll only upgrade it before we fight the boss. Until then, it’s too risky to be here when there’re a ton of mooks wandering around, one of them might well discover us by chance and we’d want to be able to run without the penalty”

And that’s precisely what happened - about a dozen shots later, a bird wandered too close and spotted me, alerting the rest of the flock and initiating another chase, only this time there were just a dozen or so chasing me, which I felt comfortable kiting around the earth dome Artemis was hiding in while occasionally ambushing the birds with a Stone Skewer from below. She picked off five before we realized that that was refreshing their aggro, extending the chase to the point my legs wanted to give in. 

Fortunately, they lost interest before my jelly-like knees betrayed me, and I returned to the Stalagmite Forest to snipe the last few, retreating into the same dome Artemis never left to upgrade my classes - both Sniper to Marksman and Twin Swordsman to Swordmaster - before the boss battle... a battle which was extremely uneventful, it almost felt like we were bullying it. I guess it makes sense, the main difficulty comes from its ability to call other mobs, but since there were none left in the area, it was just a glass cannon that ran out of ammo, while I got a bonus to my crit multiplier from the class upgrade, 3 raised to 4 from Sniper, and then to 5 with Marksman.

“Wait, another class option?”

“Seriously? You’re getting so many of these”

“I know, I don’t even have a clue what this one is”

“I mean, you can always check your class list”

“Obviously, but, like, I wasn’t aware of any classes I was close to meeting the requirements for, that’s what I was trying to... you know what, never mind”

“Damn, two new ones. Magic Swordsman seems kinda useless, it’s a tier 2 side path and, like, it’ll turn me into a tripleclass - swordsman, archer, and mage. No thank you, but I’ll still take it at some point for the mastery bonus. Stardust Swordmaster seems nice, but it’s off the path I want. I’ll take it temporarily, at least until I reach the required level for Trueblade”

“Speaking of Trueblade, which sword will you set as your One True Blade?”

“Uhh... well, both, because I should be able to get Bladelord as soon as I class up to Trueblade”

“But if you had to choose one?”

“I prefer freeze to burn, and Luna is better than Sol for me, so the Moon Sword. Plus, the extra MP regen and drain helps more than HP regen and drain, because I generally don’t get hit”

“Do you even have any use for MP right now?”

“Innately, no, but the swords both give me a skill that costs 10 MP, which I use frequently. Haven’t you seen my blades conjure an image of the sun or moon overhead to envelop me in some kind of aura?”

“That’s what that is? It costs MP? I thought it was just some RNG effect from the sword, not an active skill”

“Oh, no, those are active skills, and damn good ones. Lemme show you the skill panel”

I finally could show off some game knowledge instead of just listening to her, even if it’s just because I got curious and tried to see if there was some hidden secret connection between the two swords. They didn’t say they were set items, but I couldn’t help but wonder given that they had basically identical names and descriptions, and their effects were pretty much identical if you swapped HP for MP, day for night, and changed the second effect of Luna.

“Luna is basically the same as Sol, except the source is the Moon Sword, the third effect triggers at night, and the second effect ignores a portion of enemy damage mitigation and armor. Even fully invulnerable bosses can be hurt by Luna, from what I’ve heard. Just because of that, the Moon Sword is considered to be one of the best one-handed swords in the game, and any put up for auction reach upwards of a few million gold in a matter of a couple of minutes, compared to most other mythical weapons, which generally have a final auction price of about 300~600 thousand, Sun Sword included. Last Sun Sword put up sold for 485,000 while the last Moon Sword sold for 7.6 million”

“That’s on par with some relic tier items, holy shit”

“Yeah, if you wondered how I managed to chop off that boss bird’s wing, that’s Luna. Feathers count as armor or something. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m curious about my new class options, and I wanna look them up”

Having said that, I returned to the earth dome, sat down, and opened up the forums, quickly finding a couple of promising threads.

The thread went on for quite a bit longer, until the 200 post cap limit, actually, Momo appeared a few more times, and the general information I got on that class is that it’s nice to have for a swordsman, especially one who’s dualclassing as a marksman like myself. And if you were wondering, TBI is short for Traumatic Brain Injury, or in other words, brain damage. It’s basically used to point out the dumbest mistakes, comments, or questions one can find.

The next promising-looking thread wasn’t helpful at all, it was just unsupported bashing of the Magic Swordsman class, and the class tree as a whole, by a bunch of non-swordsmen, mostly pure mages. The third, however, was interesting, and once again written by a member of Momo’s guild.

Of course there was more to the thread, almost a full dozen posts by Nerd 404 alone before anyone else had a chance to post anything, but that’s it on the Magic Swordsman class. 

From my experience browsing the forums, it’s hard to find a major thread centered around swordsmen that doesn’t mention or have posts from Momo, and it’s like I’m seeing a whole new side to my brother I never knew about, yet it’s one that perfectly fits him as though it always belonged there. I wish I’d started playing earlier, just so I could’ve experienced this part of his life and his interests firsthand. Speaking of, I wonder when I’ll meet his guildmates? I sent them a message, but haven’t gotten one back yet. It’s only been a day though, so it’s not too surprising. 

“Gaia! I collected the wheatstones the boss was guarding! If you’ve finished your class upgrade, let’s move on over to the east to get the pig iron, ‘kay?”

“I, uh, haven’t actually done it yet, I was looking them up first”

“Seriously?”

“I’m sorry, I’ll do the upgrade now, and we can move there on the way”

“We’ll be staying put, we can’t exactly fight some of the stronger mobs in the area when our main tank can’t move quickly and half our DPS does reduced damage”

“Fine...”

I first changed to Magic Swordsman, which raised my MP by 10 and lowered my HP by the same amount, or it would’ve had I not been dual-classing with Marksman. Instead, my HP went down 4 points and my MP went up 3 points due to rounding. I won’t bore you with the stat calculation formulas¹basically, for each of Base HP, Base MP, HP Growth, and MP Growth, the higher of the two values is taken and then reduced by a third of the difference between it and the lower value (rounded down), and in this case, the difference in the base stats went from 20 to 30 for HP and 20 to 10 for MP, meaning the 1/3 rounded down difference went from 6 to 10 and 6 to 3, respectively. but I’m not too annoyed by that, because this is rather temporary. I immediately consumed the Astral Eyes I got from killing Arachnea Astralia to change to Stardust Swordmaster, raising my HP from 200 to 209 and my MP from 207 to 246 - the power of changing from a tier 2 class to a tier 3 class. Actually, it’s the power of changing to a dual class where half is focused on the physical aspect and the other half is somewhat leaning towards the magical aspect.

Unfortunately, while Stardust Swordmaster gives me the ability to use White magic up to 4th grade, I won’t be able to keep that when I change to Bladelord. I’ll keep the +2 to crit multiplier on bladed weapons, as that’s a mastery bonus, but not the ability to use White magic. Speaking of mastery bonuses, the one for Magic Swordsman allows me to use Fire and Water spells up to 5th grade - half of what I can theoretically use when I’m actually in the class. Given Artemis specializing in Earth magic, all we need is some Wind magic for the full Anima series.

Unfortunately, it is a side path advancement, meaning I was debuffed for a full 100 minutes. During that time, Artemis and I ended up chatting about our IRL experiences, and among several other bits of information, we discovered that we actually live in the same city - well, I live in the woods a few miles outside of the city she lives in, but close enough. If I knew her actual address, I could probably reach her house on my bike in under half an hour. I learned she was homeschooled, and her family is, shall we say, filthy rich. Like I have two personal maids rich. Kinda explains what little I’ve seen of her spending habits.

The reason I know this is she mentioned going out of her house for the only time this year, about a month ago to listen to one of her favorite singers perform live because she’d come to the same city, and I remembered seeing billboards plastered around town with her name advertising her tour showings. So I also learned she’s into eurobeat music, which is nice because that’s true for me too. Unfortunately, I can’t hold a tune to save my life, so when Aremis started to sing, I just kinda sat there without joining in despite knowing the lyrics by heart.

“Wait, did you go to the Saturday afternoon one or one of the Sunday ones?”

“Saturday, why?”

“So we might have encountered each other before. Interesting”

“If you saw me, you’d remember me”

“Are you that distinctive? Flaming orange hair or what?”

“Nothing of the sort, but I’d expect that a teen girl with four men in suits and sunglasses surrounding her on all sides as bodyguards is kinda hard to forget”

“Oh, true. Plus, I bet you had VIP tickets, meaning you were in the big box up top. You might’ve seen me, but I never would’ve seen you”

“Well, I’m blind, so no, I wouldn’t have seen you”

“Sorry, poor choice of words. You might have... uh... hrm...”

I was about to say she might have heard me, but at a concert, not a chance. There’s no good way to say she might have taken notice of me given the circumstances - which probably is indicative of the chances of her having noticed me in the first place. Right place, right time, wrong barriers to recognition.

“Never mind. How long’s left... six minutes. Let’s get going, we can see everything we might encounter in the next few minutes from here, there’s nothing unless that guy in the traffic light outfit tries to PK us”

“Holy shit you’re right, he does look like a traffic light! Red light armor, yellow pants, and green boots. All he’s missing is to be suspended a dozen feet in the air above an intersection”

“Wait, you know what a traffic light looks like? There aren’t any in this world, right?”

“There aren’t, but I’m not fully blind. I can make out some things that’re either bright or close up, and I’ve watched quite a few movies from a few inches away, so I know the basics of driving, I think”

Color me surprised, and ask her to name that color. No, seriously, what is the color of surprise?²So, fun fact, I (speaking here as the author) have synesthesia in a few forms, including color-word synesthesia, meaning I see words as colored. For me, the word “surprise” is a pinkish purple, while “surprised” as a word is lime green, so for me surprise is green (no clue why green and not that pinkish purple). But upon looking it up, most think of surprise as blue. Just something interesting I thought I’d note That being said, there’s a big difference between knowing the theoretical basics and being able to do it.

“Out of curiosity, what’s your HP and MP at?”

“As a level 26 Earth Star Sage, 123 HP, 384 MP. That’s including the +45 MP from my Quartz Eardrops. But with the increases from having my subclass be a C grade Alchemist, 136 and 410”

“Damn, that’s almost double my MP. Makes sense, you’re a mage while I’m a swordsman and an archer, but still, what a difference for just a few levels... no, wait, as a dual class, my level calculation is a bit different. How does my status screen display it? Does it show both levels, all three, or just the modified level?”

 “Okay, that’s new”

“What’s new? Oh, but first, how does it show the dual class level?”

“It shows all three. But there’re two new things, the first is that I have a new title, the second is an active class skill”

“I bet the title is [Disciple of the Stars], but what’s the skill?”

“Let’s see, I haven’t checked it either”

Oh, she’s right, that is indeed my new title.

“Is that... supposed to be good? It lowers your damage output...”

“Well, if the decrease isn’t much more than 50%, three hits is still a net positive, and if it gets more than that, it’s even better... Still seems kinda weird though, like, does it create some phantom swords or does my arm get forcibly swung extra times at a high frequency?”

“You can test it, you know”

“That’s true, but I can still wish that the devs at CAP Castle would give us some clear descriptions for skills so we don’t have to guess and test”

“Be grateful you have anything to go off of, NPCs don’t have the system at all, so all they’ve got is a vague idea of being able to do something”

“Geh, my enemy - sound logical arguments”

“Wasn’t your enemy unreasonable expectations?"

“Unreasonable expectations of sustainability is my archnemesis, but I have other enemies. Now, it’s been a few minutes, my debuffs have fully worn off, let’s go for real this time”

CaTastrophy427

So, what's going to be happening in the future? Well, the extremely short answer is "I'm not sure", but the long answer is... long, and not quite as bleak. The treatment plan is entirely up in the air at this point, no clue when we're going to get my issues under control again, meaning I'll probably be writing very slowly and sporadically, even compared to before. However, I had been considering changing my upload style even before this happened - I'd been thinking I'd change at the end of book 1, but at this rate it'll be 2030 before we reach that - wherein I'd change to smaller, more frequent chapters, about 1500~2500 words long instead of my current 8000~10000. This one is about 6000 words not counting the author's notes, meaning chapters about a third the size of this. The upside of that is I could release quite a bit more frequently, the downside is I can't go back and edit as much as I'm used to doing. However, since I can only write on the rare few good days I have, spending more of it on writing and less on, frankly, mostly unnecessary editing is probably a good thing? So I'm thinking of trying that out... and is anyone even still reading at this point?Probably not... c'est la vie, you go AWOL for a year, you gotta expect to come back to a nonexistent audience, right? Oh, and I'm not even sure I'll be able to sustain writing for long, I haven't actually started doing that yet but I figured I'd give y'all this chapter anyways since I had it ready.