Chapter 5: The Awaited One Doesn't Come; Yours Truly Is a Barbarian
The scene changes to Firstia, the town that serves as the first base for players newly starting Shangri-La Frontier.
With summer vacation season arriving, the servers have been strengthened even further and the town is ready to accept new players by the thousands. In this otherwise ordinary town, with no particular landmark spots to speak of... that was there.
???: "Whoa... You can tell that gear is high-level just by looking at it..."
???: "I've seen that emblem online. I'm pretty sure it's from one of those hardcore progression clans..."
???: "Doesn't that clan require you to be at least level 90 before they'll even let you take the entrance test?"
???: "Then why is someone that hardcore in the beginner town...? Whoa, they looked this way!"
Platinum-white full plate armor covers the player's entire body. The cape fluttering behind them bears an emblem modeled after a wolf holding a sword in its jaws. And while beginners mostly hang their weapons from their belts, a greatsword floats against this player's back as though held there by some unknown force.
Dressed in a way that is obviously nothing like a beginner, the player stares intently at newly logging-in players as if searching for someone.
Some players mistake the figure for a story-related NPC and try talking to them; others ask for screenshots. The platinum-armored player struggles through all of it and stubbornly keeps waiting, but after about two hours in real time, finally seems to give up and leaves.
Sunraku: "This is a problem... I really didn't see this coming..."
Apparently I can't save unless I'm at an inn in a town or somewhere similar. Since I wasn't planning to log out for a while anyway, I kept wandering the forest and hunting every monster I came across. But two problems cropped up.
The first is equipment weight. Unless an item is especially large, most things can be stored in the inventory, but apparently once the total goes over a certain amount, your actions start taking penalties.
I'd collected twelve Goblin's Hand Axes, worn out four of them, and just had another one drop. When I put that ninth axe into my inventory, my movement started feeling subtly wrong, like I'd suddenly put on a bunch of extra layers.
Besides Goblins, I'd also killed horned rabbits called Almiraj, pig-headed Orcs—the strongest monsters of adult fantasy, standing shoulder to shoulder with Goblins—and, on the rarer side, two-legged neck-cutting rabbits called Vorpal Bunnies.
Every Vorpal Bunny action seemed to aim for the neck and smelled like a critical hit, but once you get used to an attack pattern with only one target, they're perfect prey. Even if they are rabbits.
That said, the Vorpal Chopper, a drop weapon Vorpal Bunnies seem to drop at about a five-percent rate by feel, was a pretty useful weapon.
Compared with the starting Mercenary's Twin Blades, it's basically an upgrade across the board, and its additional effect of boosting critical damage fits my fighting style nicely.
My level went up too. Both in terms of items and experience, Vorpal Bunnies are pretty profitable enemies.
PN: Sunraku
LV: 12
JOB: Mercenary (Dual Wielder)
9,000 Mani
HP (Health): 30
MP (Magic): 10
STM (Stamina): 25
STR (Strength): 10
DEX (Dexterity): 15
AGI (Agility): 25
TEC (Technique): 20
VIT (Vitality): 1 (2)
LUC (Luck): 55
Skills:
・Spin Slash
・Scoopias
・Knuckle Rush
・Tap Step
・Flash Counter
Equipment:
Left/Right: Mercenary's Twin Blades
Head: Staring Bird Mask (VIT +2)
Body: None
Waist: None
Legs: None
Accessories: None
For now, I'll save the Vorpal Chopper until the Mercenary's Twin Blades break. In this game, leveling up gives you points that you can distribute among your stats.
Reaching level 12 gave me 55 points, so for the moment I put about half of them into Luck.
My impression is that the change in drop rate is so small you could only call it within the margin of error, but I do feel like items are dropping just a little more often.
As for skills, I learned two from leveling up, and while I was parrying Vorpal Bunny attacks and knocking the rabbits down, I automatically learned another one on my own.
Looks like there are also skills you can learn by satisfying certain conditions rather than by leveling up.
As for what using a skill feels like, it's almost as though a certainty gets added to your mind: This is how you should move to use this skill.
Some older games forcibly made your body move according to the skill, but that could be exploited in all sorts of ways, so nowadays the mainstream is thought guidance... no, that sounds bad. Thought assistance.
The two skills I knew from the start use big, sweeping motions and aren't very effective against enemies my size or smaller, but their DPS is high.
Among the newly learned skills, Scoopias activates quickly, uses a compact attack, and hits hard in a single blow... but since I can't fire it off repeatedly, it isn't really my style.
Tap Step applies assistance to evasive actions, while Flash Counter, by contrast, assists a counterattack after a parry.
To put it simply, I have to say that the only skill that's even barely useful to me right now is Scoopias. The starting skills are too wide and sweeping to get much use, and my own player skill is already enough to handle evasion and parrying.
These trash mobs are so merciful compared with the countless trash games whose game balance goes beyond personal taste and can only be called shit that I could almost cry.
They don't phase through things, they don't split into copies, and they actually die when they're supposed to. Trash-game bugs aren't funny precisely because some games can't even satisfy those minimum requirements.
Back to the point.
The first problem is that my inventory is getting packed to the limit. I could deal with that by consuming the meat items... except consuming them is the second problem.
Sunraku: "I screwed up... I never expected raw meat to be inedible."
Apparently, in this game, meat items can't be used to recover hunger unless they've at least been cooked somehow, whether by grilling or boiling. No matter how many times I try to eat raw meat, a sensation like my appetite being suppressed keeps me from putting it in my mouth.
And the biggest problem of all is that Sunraku has no way to start a fire.
The fact that my MP hasn't gone up or down from level 1 makes it painfully obvious that I haven't learned a single piece of magic.
Sunraku: "At this rate, I might end up respawning from starvation..."
If I'm going to respawn, I'd at least rather a monster kill me, but getting beaten by a Goblin would piss me off.
On the other hand, respawning because I starved to death would be way too stupid. As I wonder what to do, I hear another person's voice—something that, for some reason, feels like I haven't heard in an incredibly long time.
For the record, every tool shop in the game sells a Flint that has a chance to start a fire, so as long as you buy one, you basically never have to worry about fire.