“Hold still, you’ve got a bad cut here.”
“Yes ma’am,” Syd groaned, wincing as Aila slathered more of the minty-smelling poultice on the back of her legs.
“You need helmets. I have no idea how you managed to avoid having one or more of your skulls split open with how you three get knocked about in that fight,” Aila mused as she tended to Syd’s wounds. “Frankly, it’s a miracle.”
“Not sure I didn’t put a bit of a crack in one,” Syd touched the back of her head gingerly.
Aila slapped her hand away from the lump there, admonishing her not to mess up the application of aid she’d already given.
Syd was lying face down on the grass of the valley, stripped of all armor and clothing except for her undergarments. All the wounds Jadis’ three selves had received over the course of the intense fight had been transferred onto her body so Aila could apply a healing salve while the other two of Jadis gathered the eyeball cores of the demons to turn in for bounties. The two also took the time to fully investigate the sea cove, looking for any signs of more danger or items of interest.
Aila worked diligently to soothe and mitigate what damage she could, fretting over Jadis’ injuries while doing her best to not look like she was fretting. Jadis smiled to herself, immensely relieved just to have Aila safe and mostly uninjured despite her fall from the cliff. She was content to let Aila say and do whatever she wanted in whatever way she wanted, so long as she was unharmed.
Seeing Aila drop off the edge had scared her more than any other moment in her fight against the gigantic sea bull monster. If she hadn’t been able to catch her in time, if Aila’s acrobatic enhancement from Dance of the D hadn’t given her the boost she needed to kick off from the cliff and into Dys’ arms, then Jadis wasn’t honestly sure she knew what she would have done. Ever since coming to Oros, Jadis had been dealing with near death experiences on almost a daily basis while fighting demons. The danger was real and she knew it was, but somehow, she handled it well, the fear and panic mostly staying in the back of her mind while the thrill of combat kept her focused. She didn’t feel invulnerable or anything, but she could accept the risks she was taking with her own life when she took bold action. She was putting in her best effort, so she didn’t fear the consequences of what could happen.
Aila’s life, though, wasn’t something she wanted to risk again.
Not that it was her choice. Aila wanted to be a mercenary. She wanted to cast battle magic and slay demons and be in the thick of combat. Jadis couldn’t tell her not to pursue what she wanted to do, not just because she herself was suddenly feeling nervous about her companion’s survivability in dangerous situations.
What she could do, though, was swear to herself that she wouldn’t let Aila come that close to death ever again.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Syd asked, glancing over her shoulder at Aila.
“I’m fine,” Aila said. “My health only went down by seventeen points. I’m very lucky you caught me.”
“Quick thinking, pushing off the cliff like that,” Syd said, trying to not sound overprotective. “Very smart. I’m glad you have such good reflexes.”
“Thank you,” Aila responded, eyes focused on her work. “And thank you again for saving me.”
“Of course, any time,” Syd said with a half grin. “Though not literally, please. I’d like to keep you around.”
“I’d like to keep around you, too,” Aila quipped, tone light, but with an undercurrent of some emotion Jadis thought might be bashfulness.
A shy silence fell over the two for a short time as Aila continued to apply treatment to Jadis’ injuries. Briefly lacking something to say, Jadis had the thought to check through her mental notifications. One notification prompted her to break the silence.
“Nice! I got level fourteen in my ritualist class,” she exclaimed happily before remembering to ask the most obvious question. “Oh, shit, did you check your notifications? Did you level?”
Aila looked up from her self-imposed task of tending Jadis’ injuries and blinked owlishly, a confused look washing over her face.
“Gods, I completely forgot to check. I just got so distracted by everything that happened…” she trailed off, a distant look enveloping her expression as she read something only she could see.
A second later pure elation beamed from her face as she excitedly cried out her news. At the same time, she pounced at Syd, wrapping her arms around her neck and hugging her ecstatically.
“I leveled! Level twenty!”
“Congratulations!” Syd said, rolling over with a wince as she tried to hug her companion back.
Two more shouts and whoops of congratulations also echoed in the cove from where Jadis’ other two selves joined in on the excitement.
“Thank you, thank you!” Aila said between a flurry of little kisses applied to Syd’s cheeks and lips. “I owe you so much!”
“No you don’t,” Syd assured, turning one of Aila’s little kisses into a deeper one. “I wanted to help you. You don’t need to give anything back.”
Aila broke away from Jadis’ kiss and gave her a determined look that told her that Aila wouldn't be okay with just accepting her good will without giving something back. She didn’t push the matter, though. Aila had her own moral code, one that Jadis quite liked. If she felt she needed to show her appreciation, that was fine, so long as she knew Jadis wasn’t requiring anything in return for what she had done freely.
“Alright, lie back down and let me finish bandaging you up,” Aila said while pushing Syd back into position on the ground.
“Are you going to tell me what class options you got?”
“Yes, definitely,” she nodded. “Let me review for a second and I’ll go over them with you. I’d like to discuss what might synergize best with you without crippling my own versatility. Hopefully the gods gave me several options of mage classes.”
Syd raised an eyebrow curiously. “Did you get more than three options? I only ever got three for primary and secondary.”
“No, just three. I’ve heard of some people getting more or less, but that’s unusual. I’ve heard some say the Hero gets dozens of different hero related classes to choose from, but I don’t know if that’s true.”
As Aila explained, Jadis started to bring her other two bodies back up from the shore. She wanted all her selves to be present while Aila’s new class was decided. She was also just about done with her investigation of the sea cove, more or less.
“Hey, before you start, it looks like there was some kind of fight here before we showed up,” Syd remarked, interrupting Aila’s commentary on class mechanics to give her the information her other selves were coming across.
“What do you mean?” Aila asked, looking up from where she was gently applying more salve to the bad wound on Syd’s calf that had happened from the sea bull’s water jet spell.
“Jay and Dys are finding more bodies along the shore, west side of the cove,” Syd pointed without looking. “Has to be a dozen twisted wretches at least so far.”
Aila looked in the direction of the two distant giants picking along the shoreline.
“That makes sense, actually,” she said. “I would bet a gold coin what we stumbled on here was the tail end of a demon possession of that sea bull. The twisted wretches must have subdued the sea bull somehow and brought the arcane corruptor to possess it.”
“How’s that work, anyway?” Syd asked, sitting up on her elbows to look back at where Aila was still tending to her leg. “Looking at my notifications just now, the message that came from you sticking that fucker with your knife said we killed an ‘Arcane Corruptor of Flesh’. I thought you said it was called a sea bull?”
“The magic beast was a sea bull,” Aila explained. “But the demon, the arcane corruptor, had possessed it. It killed the sea bull’s mind but kept the body for its own. Corruptor demons can do that, it’s what makes them so much more dangerous than more regular varieties of demon.”
“It possessed the sea bull’s body and that gave it control over its skills and spells, too?” Syd guessed with her brow furrowed in thought. “Does that mean magic beasts have skills and spells, and a class system the way we do?”
Aila looked up and met Syd’s violet eyes. Her normally neutral mask was softened with a tinge of obvious concern.
“Did no one in your village explain these kinds of things to you? About magic beasts and demons and the like?”
“No,” Syd shook her head. “I’ve never had any of this taught to me before. It just didn’t come up, I guess,” she said while shrugging one shoulder lamely.
“I don’t know how it is you can come across as both educated and ignorant at the same time, Jadis,” Aila grumbled before shifting forward and pushing Syd to lay back down again. “You’ve had a peculiar upbringing.”
“I guess so,” Syd agreed, feeling a bit uncomfortable with how she wasn’t quite being truthful with Aila on why she didn’t know anything about demons and magic.
“Well, to put it simply, magic beasts have spells and skills, but they don’t have classes. Any other sea bulls you might come across would have those same spells that one was casting, only difference might be in how powerful the spells are or how much magic they have to keep casting or what have you. You won’t find a sea bull that casts earth magic because it chose a different spell path or anything like that.”
As Aila talked, she pulled some cloth bandages out from her pack lying on the ground at her side. The blue eye of the demon hatchling that they had brought with her watched unblinkingly as she wrapped Syd’s skinned leg with the bandages. Aila had taken the jarred demon out of her backpack and set it on the ground nearby so she could get to her supplies underneath.
Jadis idly wondered what the demon thought about being tossed around inside of the pack, if it had any conception of what had been happening at all.
“People like you and me have more options with our classes. Even if by some strange joke of the gods I was given the option to be a Mirror Knight like you, I wouldn’t necessarily have the same options as you. Depending on the skills I chose to take and focus on, I could end up being wildly different from you functionally, even if some of our base abilities were the same.”
Jadis had already figured as much. Since whenever she reached an odd numbered level she was given two different choices for skills or spells, and those choices offered were dependent on her activities prior to leveling, she could easily imagine a lot of variety between individuals who had the same named class.
“Magical beasts don’t have any options like we do. They’re only going to have what all of their kind have, just with varying levels of proficiency.”
“Interesting,” Syd hummed. “And corruptor demons? How do they work?”
“Most demons are like those wretches,” Aila motioned to the bodies further up the slope. “They twist and warp flesh and bone, or create bodies from things like stone—”
“Like the grundwyrm,” Syd interrupted.
“Yes, like grundwyrms,” Aila agreed. “The malformed bodies they create relate to the spells and skills they use, but a wretch won’t get any skills or spells from the dead they stole their bodies from, not even if they’re from an intelligent race.
“Corruptor demons, though, when they take possession of a body, they keep the abilities of the creature or person they’ve corrupted. They also don’t change the bodies much, not the way a wretch would for example. Some corruptors you can’t even tell that the body has been possessed.”
“So, demons can do to people what they did to that magic beast back there?” Syd asked.
“Some can, yes,” Aila confirmed. “Some even have skills that let them blend in, using the memories of their ‘host’ to make them seem normal.”
“…that sounds like fairly intelligent behavior to me, Blue.” Syd pointed out, thinking about how Aila had said she doubted demons were any more intelligent than animals.
“Maybe,” Aila allowed, “but they’re using skills to mimic actions and words, not thinking for themselves. From what I’ve heard, they can be spotted easily once you get into any kind of real conversation with them. Gerwas told me he knew a man that encountered one once. Looked just like any other human, but when it spoke it just kept repeating the same greetings and nonsense phrases until it was confronted and it started attacking.”
That was some interesting nuance to the demon situation Aila had provided. Demons could possess a person and mimic their actions and words. That had to mean they were smart, at least more intelligent than Aila and those who had instructed her were giving the demons credit for, did it not? Jadis didn’t think an animal could pretend to be a person for any length of time, whether they looked like one or not.
Except, she couldn’t know how much skills would affect something like behavior. Maybe the demons that possessed humans or other races and managed to infiltrate communities really had no idea what they were saying or doing and were just using the lingering memories of their victims to duplicate actions. How could she test the facts, one way or the other?
Turning her head to look at the demon hatchling, Syd narrowed her eyes. She didn’t think there was any circumstance that would convince her it was okay to let her little pet demonling do to a person what that arcane corruptor had done to the sea bull. She wanted to know more about demons and see just how much agency they actually had in the war between gods, but she wasn’t going to sacrifice a person to a fate as horrible as what had been done to the giant seal monster.
As she considered the little demon, its glowing blue eye turned to meet hers.
Odd.
“Well, thanks for the lesson on beasts and demons,” Jay said, catching Aila’s attention as she returned from the seashore. “But how about we get up and head back to the city and you tell us all about the amazing new spell casting class you’ve received.
“We found eighteen dead wretches in total along the west side of cove,” Dys added, hefting a bundle of scavenged weapons over her shoulder.
“We took their demon eyes, too,” Jay held up a large burlap sack that was stained with black splotches soaking through the material. “Free money, I guess.”
Aila nodded in acknowledgement at Jay and Dys. Finished with binding Syd’s leg, she got to her feet and held up the jar of salve towards the two.
“Need me to apply any of this to either of you two?”
“No, Syd’s wearing all the damage right now.”
“Convenient,” Aila said before turning to repack her supplies.
“Not for me,” Syd groaned as Dys helped her to her feet. “My back is killing me right now. It sucks being the injury mule.”
“And this doubly fucking sucks,” Jay held up Syd’s leather pants-skirt, showing the torn material of the lower leg. “Just got these and already ruined.”
“I’m sure Karla can patch them,” Aila said, slinging her pack onto her back, supplies and hatchling tucked away.
Jay passed the leather pants-skirt to Syd so she could get them pulled on. “Nah. We can patch them. We’ve got a sewing needle and thread back at the inn.”
“You mean like how you patched your old leather armor?”
“Yeah,” Jay replied, picking up Syd’s shirt while Dys helped Syd hop into her pants.
“You should probably just let Karla do the patching.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Aila turned away and abruptly changed the subject.
“So, my new classes. Let’s see…”
Jadis eyed Aila suspiciously but decided to let the matter drop. She was more interested in finally learning about Aila’s new class options than she was in defending her admittedly poorly trained sewing ability.
Aila read her first secondary class option aloud for Jadis to hear while Syd got dressed and reequipped.
Supply-Line Strategist You have an excellent grasp of strategy and logistics, particularly when it comes to the supplies necessary to keep a military organization running. Taking this class will aid you in better running and coordinating an efficient supply chain for any form of military campaign. Skills from this class are focused on support, but there are some options that will aid in personal defense. |
“A quartermaster style class…” Aila said with barely hidden disdain. “I suppose that’s actually an extremely good upgrade from Cart Driver, if I was interested in that kind of career.”
“No magic though, I bet,” Jay commented with a frown. “So, skip it.”
“This next one has an odd name…”
Battle-Ready Cliff Diver Surviving a lethal drop and then slaying the foe that threw you over the edge is a unique feat. This class will make you more capable of surviving deadly plunges without injury and will boost your attack power against enemies that wallow on the ground while you fall with style. This class’s skills can lead to powerful aerial attacks. |
“What is this?” Aila exclaimed, her voice growing more and more shocked as she read the description. “I’ve never heard of any class as ridiculous as this! Who would take a class that’s focused on falling off of cliffs? Why would the gods even offer something so— so wrong!”
Jadis had paused while Aila had read out the odd class details. The description gave her an odd mental itch. Something told her it wasn’t gods in general dictating the classes Aila was being offered. Just one god in particular that was sticking his non-descript nose into her business.
“I swear D, if you screwed Aila out of a good magic class I’ll track you down and choke you with your own cookies,” Dys whispered under her breath so Aila couldn’t hear.
Aila was showing a lot of worry in her expression. “I guess there’s not a lot of options, huh?” She gave Jay a worried look. “But, it’s fine, as long as I get at least one magic class, it’ll be fine.”
With a deep, nervous breath, she read the last class option out loud.
Nephilim Powered Arcanist You’ve gained great arcane power from lewd interactions with a lost race, the Nephilim. See just how far your power can grow from continued licentious involvement with Nephilim by taking this class. Skills from this class will allow you to cast unique force spells, their power and effects changing and scaling depending on skill modifications and the level of charge applied. |
A gentle sea breeze was the only sound as Aila stared off into the distance. Jadis waited, all three of her stock still, anxiously watching the redhead.
Aila slowly turned and looked up at Jay, bewildered. “Did what I read out loud really just imply—"
“That your magic will be powered by fucking me?”
Aila flinched, then nodded her head. “Yes, that’s what I thought.”
There was another beat of silence before Jadis awkwardly gave an increasingly mortified Aila six thumbs up.
“Congratulations?’
“…Thanks.”
That was rude on D's part. Way to force a choice. Then again the "totally not a dragoon" class looked decent.
Seems like a class that would be hard to advance without Nephilim around....
@WhiteNekoKnight The "Dragoon" Class is a deceptively good choice if you can spec your stats and skills to take advantage of it. Sadly no magic though.
@Aodhfyn Guess Jaydis needs to work on making more of them.
Well, D has always been this way, no? Offering 2 joke/trash classes and one good option.
@ALX23 all classes were relatively good for what she had done in her current life and how hard they are to actually unlock.
The Dragoon Class is really good, same with the supply line one, just that they weren't what she wanted, the last one is both the worst class and the most wanted as it is the only magical class.
Pretty sure the Dragoon class is not just about falling on people but that it actually reduce fall damage as a passive, maybe it also has a jump skill that let's her jump absurdly high in the air and fall down on top of an enemy. Skill that allows her to increase the falling speed and maybe even transfering the full falling damage as extra damage.
The supply line one could even have a storage skill to preserve goods so she can provide fresh food to the army and whatnot, great for a traveling merchant class too if so.
@Ruiso 2 of Jadis' first classes were joke classes about her being naked and perverted.
For the second class, "primeval barbarian" and "specialized bone thief hunter". Both deserved and both bad. The first is more of a joke about her appearance while second became next to useless after slaying the Matriach.
About Aila, the dive class is just a nearly useless for humans as its' application is too hard to find. It would be a good class for fliers though. Offering it to a non-flier is straight up trolling.
@ALX23 well jadis is quite strong and aila is not that heavy, so jadis could most likely throw her quite high into the air
Let's break the classes down a bit
The first clas she got was because she spent most of her live naked when she was accostumed tobwearing clothes. Imposible to obtain under normal circunstances.
The second option was because she spent most of her life looking at her reflection, quite hard to unlock for a grown-up person that is actively looking to unlock it.
The other is even harder to unlock, like spending most of your entire life doing perverted stuff... litterary imposible as they cannot do those while they are babies or children.
All of these clases imposible to get for a second or third as you'd be wasting time to level to 20 to choose the second class much more for the third class... time you are wasting doing whatever you need to get these 3 classes.
In rpg games novels, usually the harder to unlock the class is, the better it is. So Mirror Knight is the weakest of the one provided as it was the easiest to unlock by a huge margin, the most usefull of them for sure but the weakest, specially at the time where she was almost killed.
Like the system description mesages are always vauge as heck so it means nothing to the actual class even if the class are good or not.
Her options for her second evolutions were all also pretty good, a Barbarian class, please, that was by far the best in there, the bone stealer specialist class was not bad but she was moving on and it was a bit useless at the current circunstances.
I've been thinking about it over the last day, and I agree. Give her a genuine combat class now and make her tertiary class her caster class. Also there's no reason why magic imbued attacks can't be a part of her repertoire.
@Ruiso you misunderstand certain things. The classes are offered by gods and can be created on whims. They ought to follow some balance else other gods will be pissed. And balanced in the sense as not overpowered - jokes and weak classes don't break the balance. Rarity due to weird condition implies nothing about class' power or usefulness.
The Barbarian class option was weak. Probably good compared to what is normal in Oros but weak compared to Ritualist and Mirror Knight as it isn't tied to her Eldritch attribute. The class offered improvement to "naked defense" and "barbaric combat style". Basically getting proper armor and learning proper combat technique should give better results over time.
@ALX23 You do realize that there are people that pays them for revealing how to unlock the classes so they can train on them and get the options, there is a reason they give you a sword class if you fight with a sword or a perverted class if all you is fųck around, it isn't on a whim or random like you said, the classes existed just that no one unlocked them, the Magister told Jadis that if she wanted she could sell the secrets of her Mirror Knight Class at the capital, there is a reason for that, if classes were at random amd at the whims of a said God, then there is no point in documenting how to get said clases.
Like in Alia's case, she has been a cart driver for a long time, and she got a class for that, two as she unlocked a requisite for the kamikaze cart class. But the only note worthy thing she has done after getting her cart class and wanting to be a mage was the rituals that boosted her Arcane attribute, they were perverted and they involved a Niphilim, there is nothing random, just plain obvious and extremly litteral what she did to unlock that class.
Also Barbarian Classes are great, specially with her build at the time, high strength big smashes, and what whatnot, it would've been more usefull. The Ritualist is better for the ritual that let's her copy her Eldritch stat into another one, and the one she used on Alia to boost her Arcane attribute, the rest doesn't really revolve around it, it is not fulled by it, etc... even if her eldritch was shit, she would've still be able to do the rituals and get the same result.
Also a naked build are busted in most game that allows it, like Monks don't need armor in rpgs as they get pasive defense with no armor, there is evade tanking too, also look at Elden Rings and Darksouls top players, they wear nothing but Weapons and/or Shields for the roll speed and parry as the bosses killed them in one hit anyways, there is a lot of stuff, obviusly not the most ideal as she wants to live with people, but with how hard it was to unlock for a normal person, it should have some good skills to make up for it. Like why would you bother to get a hard to get class if it doesn't offer anything of equal value to the time required to get the stuff for it.
@Ruiso
The Ritualist is better for the ritual that let's her copy her Eldritch stat into another one, and the one she used on Alia to boost her Arcane attribute, the rest doesn't really revolve around it, it is not fulled by it, etc... even if her eldritch was shit, she would've still be able to do the rituals and get the same result.
I'm pretty certain it was somewhere mentioned that the stats you have influence the class choices you get, so having no eldritch could lead to her not unlocking the perverted ritualist class at all, or a weaker version of it.
And regarding the naked meta like in souls likes, is that is only viable in situations in which death is irrelevant and you have a lot of time to practice. In this story though should you die, it's over. So relying on strategy that relies to perform perfectly or die otherwise really doesn't really seem all that smart or survivable to me.
And regarding the monk balance thing, the issue i see is that every class is limited to the same amount of skill unlocks so having a class that has to get both defence and offence from skill unlocks is going to be less powerful than one that can supplement one or both with non unlock based increases. Like what is the point of making your skin as tough as steel when you can just wear plate armor. Especially when one costs an unreplenishable resource and the other doesn't?
It was mentioned that if you have Arcane you get arcane stuff, same with the other two, but you also need the requirement, for her ritualist of D class, she unlocked by having sęx on a church, if she didn't have Eldritch it would probably give her a similar one, based on one of her other attributes, there is a lot of requirements for the classes, but the main one from her class was desecrating D's church.
And regarding the naked meta like in souls likes, is that is only viable in situations in which death is irrelevant.
Not really, if you are still fighting things that can kill you in one hit, like all the giant things she is killing, armor is useless as if she gets hit or get's stepped on, she dies. Armor is useless when fighting things like that Bone Matriarch. But having the extra weight of a full plate mail will hinder her movement when dodging out of the way. In the souls game is the same, wear a bunch of powerfull bulky armor and you start fat rolling, good defense and will let you tank minor hits like a champ, but when it counts, like fighting most bosses... good luck playing the game like that... you are gonna die.... a lot....
Like what is the point of making your skin as tough as steel when you can just wear plate armor. Especially when one costs an unreplenishable resource and the other doesn't?
You got it backwards, like having skin as strong as steel means you always have armor, and with armor you are limited to what you can buy, how long it can last, the material and stuff used to make it, etc... while the steel skin as you call it, scales with you and your stats, and also get's healed with you. Also armor will also not protect you when getting stabbed through joints or you neck, but steel skin can, even when you are sleeping, if something or someone gets a jump on you you will be dead as you don't sleep on a metal armor, you have to don it, which takes several minutes with help of several people, not a problem with your steel skin though as you are always protected... oh what's that, you fel or were thrown into a deep water body while wearing a full plate armor? Good luck not drowning, the list goes on and on and on.... personal growth is always beter than external help from equipment. Like if you could tank bullets and punch through mountains, why would you bother with equipment? Just to look cool on fancy armor?
@Ruiso
Not really, if you are still fighting things that can kill you in one hit, like all the giant things she is killing, armor is useless as if she gets hit or get's stepped on, she dies. Armor is useless when fighting things like that Bone Matriarch
Well she did take multiple hits from the corruptor and i think from the matriarch as well, so she is not actually in the territory of getting one shot by everything she encounters, which means defenses are actually viable in this system. After all the answer to is armor viable is not always no, but down to balance, who knows maybe in this world armor far outstrips offensive capabilities making it possible for you to become functionally immortal
You got it backwards, like having skin as strong as steel means you always have armor, and with armor you are limited to what you can buy, how long it can last, the material and stuff used to make it, etc... while the steel skin as you call it, scales with you and your stats, and also get's healed with you
And with skills you are limited by the amount of unlocks you get. Money you can always get more of and that at an ever increasing rate, as the stronger you get the more rewarding monsters you can kill. Whereas skill unlocks behave the opposite way become more rare the stronger you get as the amount of xp needed for a level up seems to scale quicker than you ability to earn it. Additionally not all skills scale with your stats, and even if steel skin would scale with your stats, so does armor, as you can buy better armor for more money.
personal growth is always beter than external help from equipment. Like if you could tank bullets and punch through mountains, why would you bother with equipment? Just to look cool on fancy armor?
Personal growth is not always better than external help, like in the real world no matter how much you flap with your arms you will never be able to fly. There is reason why all throughout time people have used tools, after all there is only so much you can achieve with personal growth. And given that people seem to be using tools in this world as well it seems to be holding true for this world as well.
...armor far outstrips offensive capabilities making it possible for you to become functionally immortal...
Yet instead of focusing Defense, she is evading and mantaining high mobility. She isn't blocking the damage with said armor, as it suicidal.
She wasn't tanking the Matriarch either she was runing around it and was 'grased' by one of it's foot and nearly died, or atleast the body that was down with it, that matriarch was way out of her league smashing houses with it's movement alone, if she stepped on Jadis she is dead, she did great on that fight but she really didn't take any direct hits from that building sized crocodile.
Personal growth is not always better than external help, like in the real world no matter how much you flap with your arms you will never be able to fly.
Considering that in the realworld we cannot be super humans, I don't know why you bring it up, pretty sure if humans could get powers, if one could fly they wouldn't use planes and other stuff, if a human could shoot lasers from their eyes, why use a gun? If they could tank a nuke, why use armor? The world in this novel can have people doing crazy stuff because of their skill and their systems, why use normal world logic on a fantasy setting? It makes no sense.
Look at powerful swordsmans from fantasy series, most of them don't even need a sword to cut an army in half, like a random stick is enough, like their skills are so advanced than even their fingers can cut through metals. Personal growth is always beter, in any fantasy setting.
@Ruiso
You do realize that there are people that pays them for revealing how to unlock the classes so they can train on them and get the options, there is a reason they give you a sword class if you fight with a sword or a perverted class if all you is fųck around, it isn't on a whim or random like you said, the classes existed just that no one unlocked them
You are forgetting what D told from the start. That gods almost never both to do anything themselves and automated most of their work. Which is how system normally functions. But with Jadis and her close allies D is definitely the one deciding what goes.
the rest doesn't really revolve around it, it is not fulled by it, etc... even if her eldritch was shit, she would've still be able to do the rituals and get the same result.
All the rituals revolve around Eldritch. Even if they don't use the stat, to get a powerful ritual one needs high Eldritch stat. She'd be getting far weaker skills and spells without high Eldritch stat.
Also a naked build are busted in most game that allows it, like Monks don't need armor in rpgs as they get pasive defense with no armor, there is evade tanking too,
That's for monks and maybe some barbarians. She'd get a class with low Agility and Dexterity. Dodging is highly reliant on these two. Before the Ritualist's buffs her agility and dexterity were some of her weakest stats.
@ALX23
1. I think there has to be a way to get specific clases, not just luck, it is automated, true, but there has to be a way to sort from all the clases to get a specific set of ususaly 3 clases. Like if Arcane is high, provide an arcane related class, but if he comes from a race that revolves around let's say fire, the the arcane class be related to fire. Like I imagine each person has a set of achievement that the system tracks tracks to compare the available classes amd give what it considers the most compatible. Hence why Jadis got her three clases by masturbating while looking at her reflextion. Like she was new and her achievements are empty, and she only has those to check vs the clases available. She got her seconds set the same way, it looked at her achievements, she fighting a bunch of Bome stealers including their matriarch, her build was basically a barbarian build but with improv weapons and having s*x on D's church. So far all clases are awarded from things she is doing I'll not be surprised of she get's a Groundwyrm or a Wretched specialist class option for her third class after she kills one of their Matriarch and the system achievement.
2. Maybe, I can see how getting a higher Eldritch stat would net her better rituals. Hope she boost her MP and get some spells from her Mirror Knight class. Like get a skill that increase her mind stats, like +10 to both the MP and the magical resistence stats. Also hope she get a regeneration skill that scales off Eldritch.
3. If she were to take the naked class, she will not have the Mirror knight skills, I was banking on her getting mobility with the skills along with the naked resistance. High strength to hit harder, dexterity for precision and attack speed, etc... like it was perfect she didn't even have armor, nor clothes, just a loincloth. It will also protect her from climate temps, nature and whatnot. Mirror Knight is definatelly cooler but... something inside of me is telling me, that those other two first clases were not joke classes but diamonds in the roughs.
@Ruiso
3. If she were to take the naked class, she will not have the Mirror knight skills, I was banking on her getting mobility with the skills along with the naked resistance. High strength to hit harder, dexterity for precision and attack speed, etc... like it was perfect she didn't even have armor, nor clothes, just a loincloth. It will also protect her from climate temps, nature and whatnot. Mirror Knight is definatelly cooler but... something inside of me is telling me, that those other two first clases were not joke classes but diamonds in the roughs.
Well not every class is a combat class. Like cart driver doesnt make Aila really capable of fighting so maybe class whose purpose seems to make being naked better might not be a combat class either. So Instead of making you Skin tough as steel it could just make it shinier or make your more convincing towards others that being naked isn't frowned about, neither would really be helpful when fighting something that wants to steal your bones
@mittens like at first glance it looked like a perverted class, but it said it reduced damage and protect her against the elements of nature and temperature while naked. It looks like a class that was made for hunting stuff while naked in a forest rather than just flash people, kinda like it knew she will be fighting naked against a bunch of bone stealer. Like if it was just a perverted class with how high her Eldritch stat is, one could asume that maybe there are even some charm and illusion spells in there, maybe all her three original choises are like that, like assuming D cherry picked those classes with what achievement she had available in like her 1 - 2 hours of living.
Makes the question as to how naked before the skill activates, like she had a loin cloth and then she was naked... maybe underwear like clothing are excluded from that thing. So maybe a chain mail micro bikini count's as being naked? Like she doesn't need the protection of armor as there might be bonuses to damage resistance while being naked like at some point her body will be tougher than whatever armor she can get...
@Ruiso 1. the problem is that there are 3 classes offered. If all options were available then hundreds of options wouldn't suffice. I am sure the automated system is relatively fair but it bends to gods' wills. It is not the system that decides what classes are offered to Jadis but D's perverted will.
3. She'd need to get huge boosts to Dexterity and Agility. Getting 10 stats from a skill is considered to be a rare powerful skill for normal standarts of Oros. The possible boosts offered are incomparebly weak to what Ritualist provided. Only benefits provided by Barbarian classes that aren't covered by Ritualists are addional specialized skill improments like Sword Fighting or Heavy Weaponry skills as well as some mana based attacks with weapons, and similar stuff. In terms of stats, even current Dexterity boost is at peak of what Primeval Barbarian would provide.
3. No, D was definitely having fun offering those classes. Just like with the suicide jumping class.
I am currently re-reading and going through the comments, I have read up to chapter 176. What I am about to say should not contain spoilers, but is an opinion that has been shaped by future chapters. I have trimmed it down so that my conclusions here can be reasonably reached by this point in the story.
I think the system is an automated algorithm. Each class has its own weight determined by several major factors, although I am only certain about the first 2.
1) Unlock condition (the harder the higher the weight),
2) How immersed a person is in the class (aka how long they have been doing similar things to it)
3) Divine weight on the class (A god putting his finger on the scale)
4?) Possibly a dice throw to add a luck factor
The 3 classes with the highest weight win and are shown, all others are discarded.
For "Supply-Line Strategist" this one made it because of immersion obviously, Aila has been doing this for the last few months and being the intelligent women she is might have had thought, or discussion about how to better the supply line, and has shown herself to be a competent strategist.
For "Battle-Ready Cliff Diver" it is because of rare unlock conditions.
For "Nephilim Powered Arcanist" Also rare unlock conditions.
However I will admit, that the Nephilim Powered part is likely created by D (with its description being messed with by D)
Something I realized while typing this argument (I think I cracked the code on classes)
All known classes we have seen up to this point are made of an Archetype (knight, barbarian, etc) and a modifier/specialization (mirror, perverted, primeval, etc) this includes Cart Driver Aila's primary, which is made up of the driver archetype, and the cart specialization. (Also possibly a bonus modifier that can be given by gods aka "of D" from Perverted ritualist of D.
Maybe Aila didn't have a strong enough modifier for her wizard/sorcerer archetype to beat the immersion weight of her other primary classes. Therefore it couldn't be shown and was discarded.
However the newly made "Nephilim Powered" modifier from D could be bound to a magic archetype, but was maybe not compatible with wizard/sorcerer and bound itself, to the uncommon Arcanist archetype.
I mean we can assume that Jadis didn't meet the requirement for the witch archetype (shitty magic stats aside from eldritch), maybe if she did it would have offered Mirror Witch Class instead of the dedicated pervert one, or maybe instead of mirror knight.
I would also assume there is some system in place that prevents classes that are too similar from being shown.
@SeriousBlueJewel That makes complete sense and is consistent. I agree this a likely explanation.