After getting away from the party who couldn’t decide on a name, we tallied our loot and I decided to once again change my class... or rather, twice again. First was the upgrade to Trueblade, which required me to be a level 20 Swordmaster and to own a one-handed or hand-and-a-half sword with a scaling level. That’s not hard, but what’s harder is to change from a Trueblade to a Bladelord. 

“You never did say what’s needed for the upgrade to Bladelord”

“It’s a scaling requirement, needing 2.5 points per level in the swordsman class, meaning 50 points at level 20. Points are gained by owning high-rarity swords, Epic swords grant 1 point each, Legendary grant 5, Mythicals grant 20, and Relics grant 50. If they’re bound, it’s an additional 5 points. Thankfully, I have two bound Mythic swords worth 25 points each, so I get that immediately upon becoming a Trueblade... but only at level 20. If I was level 21 I’d be fucked”

“Damn... so, what are your stats now? I’d imagine tier 4 is a big boost, right?”

“331 for HP, 299 for MP. I had had 239 and 282”

“That’s triple my HP but still almost as much MP as me, and I’m a mage five levels higher than you. When can I get a 4th tier class?”

“Well, what does your class advancement list say?”

“It has three requirements, two are 0/1 and one is 15/31. I think that last one has something to do with my learned spells, as it went up when I learned Aurora Gate. The requirement is equal to my level though, so it’s only going to get harder”

Interesting, but not likely to be fulfilled anytime soon. After all, one of the 0/1 requirements is likely a blessing of the stars, and it’s probably not a low blessing. Based on other tier 4 mage class requirements, the other one might well be learning a high grade astral spell, grade 8 or above at least. The forums might know, actually. I’ll check... some other time.

“Well, for now, we have enough Pig Iron, we need some Oinkmints, and what else? Sand Salt, and Butterbee Honey... perhaps some G’Oats too?”

“What in that list would be easier to buy than to find ourselves? The honey for sure, and the Yeet Yeast. I haven’t heard of G’Oats before, are they a mob, or...”

“They’re a pretty common mob you can find in the mountainous region to the west and southwest, but the drop of the same name isn’t very common, and they’re a passive mob, meaning they’ll run from a fight at the earliest opportunity. It’s better to buy them... though with your bow’s range, we might be able to snipe them before they notice us, they’re pretty frail after all, most of their attributes were put into speed and the ability to run up sheer cliff faces”

“So we go south for the Sand Salt and then west for the G’Oats? Do we stick around here for the Oinkmints?”

“Nope, we just go. If we’d found more than one or two while farming for Pig Iron I’d say keep at it, but with zero luck thus far, just buy half a dozen and call it good”

With a plan established, we headed south until we hit a wide river, its slow-moving waters crystal clear, showing the patches of pinkish-white sand on the bottom of the river. I unequipped most of my equipment, only wearing the Dragoon’s Bikini Armor and my basic unremovable underwear (plus my accessories), and waded in. I’d rather not have to deal with my gear being wet and uncomfortable for the next few hours, thank you very much. Scooping out handfuls of sand, I brought it up to the faster-moving surface waters, and watched as the lighter sand was separated out from the salt crystals. It’s like panning for gold, but with salt.

I was left with a few large crystals each time, which I stored in my inventory. The quest needed 70 standard units of Sand Salt, each of which is about 5 grams. The crystals were large, so you’d only need 5~10 to make a single unit, and the inventory will automatically grind up and portion out the raw crystals into standard units if you want it to. As such, the two of us got all we needed in about half an hour.

“You two leaving already?”

“Yep. Did y’all enjoy the show?”

“We sure did”

“Whose show was better, would you say?”

Artemis was visibly annoyed at the fact that we garnered a small audience, and her terse words carried an undertone suggesting a fiery rage beneath the calm and playful face she put on. Two people with big boobs bending over in the river while wearing nothing but their underwear was bound to attract some unwelcome eyes, but we weren’t expecting to encounter anyone this far from town, nor for them to be as candid about it as these people were. I struggled to keep a straight face when she asked her second question, because I knew what the response was going to be, since I completely bared my chest while drying myself off and putting on my main gear. Sure enough...

“I preferred your partner’s show, personally. How’d she manage to get around the system bra?”

“I’m a guy, that’s how. The system fucked up and gave me some tits, but I’m male”

It feels like all of my interactions with players besides Artemis have been nothing but explaining my identity. Would it be easier to just... not correct the misunderstanding? Should I care what people assume my gender is? That’s another thing to think about at a later time, for now, I might as well laugh at the guy whose friends were making fun of him for ogling another guy... like they weren’t doing it themselves just a few minutes earlier.

We followed the river to the west, and started trying to gather G’Oats. Turns out, they’re really easy to kill if you’ve got a bow with at least a 120 meter range - and with the bonuses to bow range from my Marksman class more than doubling my bow range, I was able to get that quite easily. They stand completely still if nothing spooks them, so I decided to see what the craziest shot I could pull off was, eventually landing on the tiny targets that were their eyes.

I was only able to hit the eye three times in a row at most, but I still got about a dozen such shots before the sun set behind the hills and mountains. In that time, I killed 30 or so G’Oats, and got 3 of their eponymous drops. I also got a levelup in both classes, and the last kill got me a second levelup in swordsman, bringing me to 22 and 26, my dualclass level going up to 35. 

“Two more levels until my first talent awakening, it’s so close I can taste it.”

“Yeah, but with your luck you’ll probably get a trash talent”

“Oh yeah, what’s your talent?”

“I don’t have one, I’m only level 32 you know”

“But you’ve been playing for over a year right?”

“A year, but most of it was spent as a crafter. No exp or levels in crafting classes, only proficiency”

“Oh, right. Well, I suppose I’ll be the first of us to get a talent then, since you’re 18 levels away”

“I mean, you could get it right now if you wanted to”

“Huh? Say wha?”

“You need to have 50 levels in all your class trees right? Currently, you have 22 in swordsman and 26 in archer, plus 0 in each of mage, healer, rogue, and warrior. But if you change to a new class tree you immediately get a level in that tree, so changing to a basic mage and basic healer would get you the two levels you need. Likewise, I’m kinda only 13 levels away, not 18”

I looked at her blankly, but it made sense. I just hadn’t thought of that. So, I changed my classes momentarily to Mage and Healer, and got a notification.

I changed back into my normal classes and chose “yes”. Immediately, I was presented with three options.

So, as was helpfully explained by several forum guides, the first option in a given talent awakening is always related to your classes and/or your racial baptisms/evolution. The second is always related to something besides the aforementioned factors, such as titles, bound items, learned skills and spells, hidden quest completion, and so on. The third is purely random, every talent in the game has an equal chance to appear, even if you haven’t met the requirements for that talent. Unfortunately, about 80% of the talents in this game are cosmetics or otherwise almost entirely useless.

Outside of the third option, the others have specific pools with individual weighting depending on what rarity the talent is, as well as how many lower-rarity forms there are feeding the highest rarity version of the talent you can obtain at the time. For instance, Legendary Battle Technique likely has Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Epic versions as well, meaning five chances to roll any of them, and if I were to roll one, I would obtain the highest in the line I have met the requirement for, in this case, that seems to be the Legendary version. ¹AN: this is actually a bad example, as there’s only one Unique-rarity Battle Technique talent, it just has multiple levels of scaling. Only one chance to roll it, Gaia simply got lucky

Speaking of, that’s the one I picked. Lord of the Sword is a good talent, don’t get me wrong. I very nearly picked that one without even looking at the other options, the ability to tripleclass is phenomenal, not to mention the cooldown reduction on Luna and Sol. But it can’t compare to true damage. Even just Common Battle Technique would likely have won out... no, maybe not, but Rare almost certainly would’ve. True damage is what Luna dreams of being. If Luna can triple my damage, 35% true damage is anywhere from a 50% damage boost to a 200,000% damage boost. It can allow me to do damage to enemies that can’t take damage for one reason or another. My attacks now can only be blocked, but not resisted. A single crit with this true damage effect would likely be able to do over 2000 damage to Armora Boarealis.

“So, what’d you get? Given your titles, I wouldn’t be surprised if you got an Epic talent”

“I was offered one, yes. I didn’t take it, even though I almost took it without thinking”

“You should’ve”

“No, I very much should not have. I did the right thing. Have you heard of the Battle Technique talent series?”

I wasn’t sure if she would’ve, I hadn’t heard of it before but it should be good enough to have become famous if someone found it.

“No, I haven’t. Is that what you picked? What does it do?”

“Legendary Battle Technique adds about 12% true damage per attack on average, and it can be upgraded further”

“Can I get some of that luck please?”

“You’ll most need it 18 levels from now, I’ll see if I can find a way to share the intangible concept known as luck in that time”

She went from hitting me playfully to mumbling in no time flat, her face going from red to a different kind of red somehow.

“...anks...”

“What was that?”

“I said thanks, asshole! I was expecting some shit along the lines of lol nope but you actually gave a thoughtful, if somewhat sarcastic, response to my fucking joke of a request”

One quick flip to anger later, and I was more taken aback by her language than anything else, even the shy expression I managed to take a screenshot of.

“If that counts as thoughtful I’d hate to see what counts as thoughtless. Also, weren’t you some kind of upper-class young lady? What’s with the sailor-ese I’m hearing from a prim and proper girl?”

She yelped a bit, then sat down and pressed both her knees and her face into her chest, stammering out a few muffled words before gathering the courage or whatever she needed to talk to me face to face.

“I... there’s a reason... I just... can’t say that. All I can say is... the ones who help me... my guards and caretakers... they come from a background where, like, this kind of thing, swearing like that, it’s normal. My father too, since he’s their boss. I learned from everyone around me, I guess is what I’m trying to say. I’m neither prim nor proper, though my father’s people call me princess”

“Sounds like there’s a lot to your situation, and I’m not close enough to hear about it”

“It’s more like you’re both not close enough and yet also too close. But enough talk, let’s finish up this quest. It’s time we head back to town and buy the last few materials, right?”

Oh right, we still have that quest, I almost forgot in my excitement.

“I’m still weakened from the class change penalty, but it should be fine to head back, most of the mobs on the way will be level 8 at most”

“Yep, I can handle those even if you’ll struggle to them”

“I’m not that weak”

We began the trek back, however we didn’t get very far before we faced a trio of players in front of us. Two red names - by the looks of it, a knight-class with a sword and shield and a warrior holding a spear - and a green name with a staff, probably a healer.

[Steadfast Sacrifice]

FURDaddy 

[Level 66]

[Rightful Saint]

Moon Rabbits

[Level 48]

[Heretic Lance]

Injust Ice

[Level 59]

“Hello cuties, I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling a bit weak. I think we can provide some escort services for a fee, we’ll even send you to town in no time flat. How does 3 gold each, plus some of your items sound?”

“How about no?”

“Ooh, that’s an expensive choice. That’ll be several gold and some of your items, payment due up front”

We ran. Neither of us had any confidence in winning when both of us were outnumbered and underleveled, even ignoring the fact that I was weakened due to the class change penalty. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned penalty, my movement speed was slower than theirs, so they were quickly catching up to us. 

Artemis was casting magic to change the terrain behind us to slow them down, creating mud and mazes of spikes, and I was shooting arrows at them every now and then. I got a few small hits in, but quickly stopped when I noticed that the red names were trying to make me hit the green name, as that’d make me a yellow name who is subject to death penalties in pvp. ²Thinking about it after the fact, we both could’ve just walked right past them and not fought at all, even if they attacked us we wouldn’t have gotten any death penalties, nor dropped any items or money. But in the moment, we were only thinking about how to survive the encounter. C’est la vie. I, spoiler alert, got a title out of it, so it’s all good.

As we ran north, we saw the Starfall Forest in front of us, and veered off to the right, heading more towards town and the Flockatrice Field. That did however allow them to close the gap further, and we began fighting in earnest. I managed to take down Injust Ice with a well-timed Astra+Luna combo, landing a lucky crit on one of the true damage hits to deal more than half his HP in a single blow, the other five hits obliterating the rest of his HP. However, I was reduced to merely 6 HP, not even 2% of my max HP remaining. Artemis hit FURDaddy with Rocky Restraint, encasing his legs in thick rocks that gave us a ten second head start on fleeing once more. I’d already used my potions, meaning I could only wait to heal or steal HP from mobs via Sol. Both of us intentionally avoided attacking Moon Rabbits, so their healer was able to heal them constantly, meaning if we couldn’t burst down that tank’s HP in a short time, he’d be back up to full the next minute.

Unfortunately, the first mob we came across was an Elite Flockatrice, who survived my Sol hit and pecked the last dregs of HP out of me.

CaTastrophy427

So yeah, this was delayed a lot. Like an unfortunate amount, I'm sorry. I had a flare and ended up kinda braindead for about a month, only returned to finish off the chapter like a week ago, rushing to get it done by the end of August so I could say I released a chapter near-ish my birthday (August 22nd). Anything to give me a little extra bit of motivation helps, even if it's a dumb reason. But hey, it's almost twice as long as usual, simply because I didn't notice how long it was getting and then didn't feel like splitting it anywhere.

If you want to be informed of these kinds of delays, or ask questions, join my discord, I try to keep y'all updated there in the progress-or-lack-thereof channel. Finally, go check out my other series, which will be getting another chapter or two before I return to settle the intentional cliffhanger I'm leaving you on here lmao. That one is also getting close to the end of book 1, just another 6~8 chapters left I think (not including the epilogue and afterword).