Kiyomi: sup, need u for our raid team. u down or wat

He took about 10 minutes to reply.

Razor: wat raid we doing

Kiyomi: kim

Razor: yo fr?

Kiyomi: yeah

Razor: u have team size?

Kiyomi: we r going w/ 10, ur 11

Razor: …

Kiyomi: wat

Razor: u need exactly 50

Kiyomi: nahh, we r good, just need u to attack w/ electric 

Razor: wats ur lvl and rank

Kiyomi: 221 D

Razor: WAT

Kiyomi: wat

Razor: im not wasting my time wth u

Kiyomi: rofl the rest r s-rank w/ higher lvls

Razor: still not doing it

Kiyomi: do it

Razor: wats in it for me

Kiyomi: loot obviously 

Razor: i want more than that 

Kiyomi: ill give u my own loot too and ill give 10 mil even if we lose, promise 

Razor: k we can try, but u better give

Kiyomi: yeah ofc, ill give after we try 

Razor: k, meet u at luthyia adv guild in 20 min

~~~

Rika with her team, Kiyomi, and Razor sat at a table.

Elora was sleeping behind the counter as usual.

Razor eyed all 10 of them carefully.

As an Assassin, it wasn't a surprise that he was in black, though he had small touches of purple in some places to show his electric element. His hair was silver, and his mouth was covered with a scarf.

“Make me the leader. None of you know what the hell you're doing.”

“Alright.” Rika opened her UI and pressed a few buttons.

“Are you sure?” Kaz asked Rika.

“He's a Level 900 S-rank. I trust his judgment.”

A crown icon appeared next to his name on the party list.

“Good,” Razor replied. “Now, I don't know how we're going to pull this off with 11 of us.” He thought for a moment. “Let's start with introductions. Tell me what you do and what your strengths and weaknesses are. Then we can make a plan around that.”

Kiyomi nodded.

“Sounds good,” Rika replied.

“I'll start. I'm an experienced Assassin with high attack power, crit damage, crit rate, and Agility. I prefer evading over blocking. Most of my physical attacks are electrified, and my primary weapons are daggers. I like using a lot of debuffs including DoTs. I’m not a frontliner, and stealth and surprise attacks are my greatest strengths. I've killed a lot of things, so I'm pretty good in combat.”

DoTs meant damage-over-time abilities.

“And your weaknesses?” Kiyomi asked.

“Don't have any.”

She found that hard to believe. But his lie didn't matter because she would find out during the fight from his fighting style. Actually, she already had ideas. If he really used debuffs, then Immunity and Cleanses would be perfect counters. Even regeneration if the regen rate was high enough to out-heal the over-time damage from his DoTs. And there was high resistance…

They went around the table, taking turns.

“I'm Rika, a Dark Necromancer. My biggest strengths are animation and resurrection. I mainly play support. I can be a backup DPS, but I'm not very good at that or fighting at close range. I prefer to handle buffs and debuffs in the background and let my minions do the fighting. Fighting is such a pain.”

“Kaz. I play a Dark Knight. I mainly tank most of the damage to protect the team and keep the enemies’ attention on me. My damage is really low compared to everyone else’s, and I’m bad at long range, so I need to get in close either to the enemy or to the team to be effective sometimes. I hate taking Defense Breaks and attacks that counter high Defense or just outright ignore it.”

“Felix here. Big, close-range DPS with twin swords. I roll with Elemental Duelist, a mid-ranger. I can’t be too far back, but I also can’t be in the frontline too much. I’m weak to long-range attacks. But I can almost always counter effectively in close range. I dish out both physical and magical damage. Don’t get in my way, and we’ll get along fine.” He glared a little.

Who was left spoke up. Then all eyes fell to Kiyomi expectantly. She was the last. 

She thought about it.  Should I be totally honest? Of course not. That would be stupid and naive. The fact that she had even considered it meant Sako’s good personality was rubbing off on her. Just a little bit. The trick to a good lie was sprinkling in some truth. “I’m a Dark Wizard, and I’m still new to the game and trying to find my way around. Sort of a noob.” That was true, except for the combat aspect of course.

“Sort of?” Razor eyed her disdainfully. “You are a noob.”

Kiyomi wanted to PK his ass just for that comment. But that wouldn’t help anything. The fact that he was a Level 900 S-rank was commendable, since the game was still fairly new. He must’ve busted his ass grinding for those levels. 900 levels in a matter of days? Maybe a week? Had he slept? Pretty hardcore.

She looked back at everyone else. “Anyway, I’m decent at spellcasting. And I don’t have to say the words to cast the spells.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” Razor cut in.

“No, we saw it. It’s true,” Rika replied.

“Oh.” He accepted it.

Hang on a minute. He’s trusting her and not me? Do I look like a thief or something? Okay, probably… “I’m better at support than offense, and I’m really weak against short-range attacks and surprise attacks. My Resistance and Vitality are really low, so I try to avoid debuffs and damage in general.”

Razor pulled up a holoscreen and stared at it. “Why’d you hide your info?”

Her spell Shroud was active. “I’m just…” She looked down at the table coyly. “You know… insecure…”

“Fair enough.”

Good. He bought it.

Kiyomi looked up and realized that everyone else had doubt all over their faces. They didn’t buy it at all. That was to be expected. A weak, insecure girl who had easily beat all their asses in PvP? Likely story.

Luckily, Razor didn’t notice everyone’s looks, as he was busy staring at his holoscreen.

“All right. Here’s the plan.” He looked up at everyone.