Not long after we left out the west gate, I noticed that our party’s speed was limited by Artemis’s speed, and with a bit of experimentation, I learned I could still outpace her without the boost from the Swarm set. Since it was rather heavy if you added it all up, I decided to remove it and just wear the normal clothing I’d bought with Artemis when we first came to town, to reduce my fatigue as we traveled up the hills and over the rocky terrain of the mountains. Meanwhile, White Powder began chatting me up, though it felt a bit more like an interrogation at times.

“So, Gaia, with two tier 4 classes, you must be pretty strong, right?”

“I mean... I don’t dare to say I’m strong compared to you, but... compared to others around level 50, yeah I think I’m pretty strong”

“You wanna show us how you hunt?”

“I mean... sure, why not?”

Since we were still in G’Oat territory, I didn’t even bother reequipping my armor, I just pulled out my bow and began sniping them as we walked. After casually oneshotting about a dozen, White Powder told me I could stop, and I instead decided to kick it up a notch, trying to get eyeshots on all of them - something made substantially easier than before with Deadeye’s visual acuity and bow range increases. It was now better odds than a coinflip, and I was getting them several times in a row before a miss would break the streak. If I didn’t have the class already, this performance would’ve been enough to get it several times over.

“Okay, we get it. Momo did mention that you were a national-level archer as a kid, I guess that training carried over here”

“That it very much did, and I’ve been doing well in regionals since then. My sword training carried over too, to a lesser degree. Since I haven’t practiced much in the last decade or so, I’m kinda rusty”

“Oh, the same sword arts Momo used? He said they work even better for fighting monsters than they do for fighting people”

“Yeah, apparently our family’s sword arts were originally designed for combat against cavalry, as well as wild bears and boars, all much larger targets than a normal human”

Of course, there’s the family legends saying it was once used to slay a dragon, but I have a suspicion the first dragon-slayer to use our family’s sword arts was Momo. Maybe someone cut down a dragonfly but that’s it

“Care to demonstrate your swordplay to us?”

“Not on the mobs around here, it’s not really suitable for hunting things that run away that fast”

“Well, there’s a boss a few hundred meters in that direction, I think it’s in the right level range for you to solo it”

“Solo hunting a boss... sure, let’s see how I manage”

“Hey Art, this thing is like you on crack”

“Step aside, asshat. I’ll show you and this bleating oaf who the real master of earth magic is”

“Nah, they asked to see me solo it, so I’mma solo this thing”

I left the party so as to not have their aura buffs affect my evaluation, and walked towards the wary boss while putting on my armor. I left the brigandine off, as I knew I’d need to wear something stronger to put up a good fight against a boss solo. I instead tapped my collar, and my shirt vanished, replaced by a scale-patterned metal bikini and a singular pauldron on my left shoulder, both crimson trimmed with gold.

“Woah, that’s quite the armor choice! I approve!”

“Boob idiots should just die...”

“Shut up you two, he probably doesn’t like having his tits on display”

“Shut up, all three of you, that’s your late friend’s younger brother whose boobs you’re ogling”

Ignoring the heckling from the audience, I drew my bow while continuing to advance, nocked an arrow, and after aiming for a breath, I let it fly, embedding it squarely in the big goat’s left eye, for 970 crit damage. Immediately after firing, I put my bow away - three cheers for hotrings - and summoned my swords as I broke into a full sprint. 

Meanwhile, the boss began thrashing around, half blinded but unfortunately not asleep. I don’t know the proc chance on the Deadeye class’s class bonus, but having it does mean that crits have a chance of putting the opponent to sleep. The issue is, except for bosses, most things I get a crit on just straight up die, now that my crit multiplier for bows is 10 - swords having an additional +2 for a total of 12, thanks to the mastery bonus of Stardust Swordmaster.

I used the opportunity granted by its chaotic movements to circle around its left side and prepare to start carving up its flank. When it stopped, I used Luna and Astra and dealt... a single blow?

“Oh right, I’m no longer a Stardust Swordmaster, silly me”

It was still 1236 damage with a crit, a solid chunk of its HP, and the boss whipped its head at me in retaliation, slamming my pauldron with its horns. I would’ve been able to get another few hits off, and probably could’ve dodged the retaliatory strike from the boss, if I hadn’t been dumbfounded when the skill I tried to use didn’t exist in my arsenal.

[-326]

Holy shit, that’s over two thirds of my HP gone in one hit, I think if I’d been wearing the Brigandine of the Swarm I’d’ve lost at least 90% of my HP, if not been killed from full outright.

[-143] (+94)

[-137] (+90)

[-161] (+62)

“Thank you, Sol. Now I can live another hit like the last one”

Unfortunately, the boss had other plans, as it reared its head back and let out a long, sustained bleat that was loud enough to cause a few points of damage to me. As I stumbled backwards, somewhat disoriented, I felt the ground beneath me tremble as over a dozen G’Oats charged towards me from all directions, discarding their normal skittish nature in favor of obeying their boss’s summons.

I held my ground, and spun out of the way of the first G’Oat’s charge at the last second, stabbing both swords into its side as it flew by, and I proceeded to repeat that a few more times. While that wasn’t enough to kill any of them, it did do over 200 damage every time, which left each of them on double-digit HP. I then activated Flame Slash, killing two before its duration ran out, at which point I activated Frost Slash and killed another three. 

Before I could do more, however, the ground beneath me erupted in an oddly familiar way... oh right, it’s the same as Artemis’s Stalagmite Forest. I guess the boss wasn’t too happy with me killing its mooks... err, maaks? No, that doesn’t have the same ring to it... and it’s not like mooks have anything to do with cattle most of the time. Still, I had to thank the boss, as that spell did remove a lot of the threat of the mooks, since they no longer had the straight lines they needed to effectively charge.

“Me and my big mouth. They’re mountain goats, of course they can run on steep, uneven terrain. I rescind my thanks, this is a big-ass fuck you now”

I jumped to the top of a short but wide stalagmite, flung my swords in the boss’s general direction - dealing a couple hundred points of damage, and pulled out my bow once more. From my vantage point, I could now see the mooks charging at me at all times, so I took aim and shot them down, one at a time. The ones I’d already dealt damage to I didn’t bother trying to get a good hit on, as any hit would reduce their HP down to 0. For the rest, I did try for headshots, and usually got what I wanted. 

As I killed the second to last one, I got a notification I didn’t pay attention to, thinking it was the same as all the other ones telling me I’d killed a G’Oat and gained experience, but when my HP was refilled, I realized I’d leveled up in both classes - and not a moment too soon, because the moment the last G’Oat died, I was sent flying, having forgotten to keep tabs on the boss’s location.

[-488]

“HOLY FUCK, that would’ve oneshot me if I’d been - yep, that’s exactly what I was thinking”

I interrupted that thought when I got another notification, for a title whose requirements matched my thought perfectly.

I stood up, downed a potion to heal most of my HP, and shot another arrow into the boss’s good eye. This time, I procced Deadeye’s effect, putting it to sleep with a 1040 damage crit. It fell on its side as I walked towards it andI resummoned my swords. Once I was standing behind its back, I raised the Moon Sword in my left hand, and activated Luna while swinging it down into the boss’s neck.

{-6720}

Unfortunately, compared to the four titles, and gaining another two levels in each class, the boss’s drops were just about as plain as can be. The best drop was a spell book for Hand of the Dwarf, a grade 2 earth magic spell, which I planned to gift to Artemis, and a few potions that more than made up for the one I wasted right before killing the boss.

“Holy shit! How many hits was that? Five?”

“Six, but just the last one would’ve sufficed”

“Wait, so you got an Obliterator title?”

“That I did. And three others. I’m starting to lose track of what titles I’ve got¹Author's note: you and me both, buddy"

“How many is that now?”

“An even twenty. A few are purely cosmetic, a few more provide boosts I’ll never use, but overall... it’s a lot”

“What caused it to fall asleep?”

“A crit that luckily procced Deadeye’s eponymous effect”

“That’s... kinda OP, no?”

Before I could respond, my conversation with RDAS and White Powder was cut short by Artemis and Stalwart starting to walk away while yelling at us to get a move on before it got any darker.

CaTastrophy427

This took a while. I did something stupid and put myself out of commission for a few days when I had this like 90% done. Normally I say something about that in my discord server, though I will admit I forgot to this time. Now to work on the final chapter and the epilogue of book 1 of my other series, you should really check it out.

But first, I'll apply the recent formatting changes to all the prior chapters, and I'll add in the remarks for the titles I forgot to include those for in early chapters, they're funny (I think, you be the judge of that). [Edit: this has now been completed, took a few days lol] See ya next time!