D-Class Training

In the thick of our run-up to the tournament, our current stats stood as follows.

Their skill lists had grown again. The plan was to grind levels as high as we could push them, and if we picked up useful skills along the way, our win rate would climb that much higher.

… Incidentally, the System was helpful enough that it not only displayed the effects of skills you'd learned, it also registered any skill you'd been hit with even once and made its effects visible too. In other words, if you had the wherewithal to check the System mid-battle, you could pull up basic info on a skill's effects.

Sometimes finding out what a skill did after the fact was useless, but a Garumon only had four skills to choose from at any one time, so knowing was still better than not knowing.

Granted, for skills well known out in the wider world, you could probably just buy the information. Things like Air Blast, since plenty of other Garumon used it.

I wondered if I could research that kind of info from books… Or so I thought, but the books in this world were absurdly expensive, way out of my reach.

I mean, seriously, what the heck. 10,000G or 30,000G for a single book?

That's an unbelievable amount of money.

… So my "research from books" plan went nowhere. Maybe in this world, strategy guides counted as cheating.

Well, if cheats like that weren't available, I had no choice but to grind through the training step by step.

From there, with about ten days until the tournament started… we trained without letting up.

We holed up at the D-Class battleground and piled battle on top of battle.

We learned how to use our skills, scrutinized which ones to keep, and drilled the two girls' coordination and combinations.

… But it wasn't an easy road.

For starters, from the second day on we entered the D-Class matches as 3-vs-3 battles, matching the tournament's rules.

Day one had convinced me it wasn't impossible, but the road was rough.

Naturally, that meant fighting at a disadvantage: three of them, two of us.

… But I went in fully aware of that.

If we couldn't win even with that handicap, there was no way we'd climb through the tournament and beat the champion.

"All right, here we go!"

The strongest opponent we'd faced so far. All three at LV40…! How thoroughly had he trained them up?

"… So you're the rumored otherworld Master. Fielding only two Garumon… Don't get cocky. Crush them, Fiore! Aleya! Lila!"

The three of them quickly formed a triangle.

For early-game positioning, parties usually split into either two front-line and one back-line, or one front-line and two back-line.

Guido's was two front, one back.

Fiore was a dual swordsman, Aleya a knight with a shield. Lila looked to be the healer and defensive support.

… An orthodox lineup, and that was exactly what made it tricky.

One Attacker handling offense.

One Defender handling defense.

One Supporter handling everything else.

For a three-person formation, this was supposedly the most balanced setup.

Mine was Adelia as Attacker and Kazami-san as Defender, with no Supporter.

I'd thought to myself, if only I had a support and recovery role, more times than I could count.

… I'd come close to capturing other people's support Garumon plenty of times.

I'd been tempted to just keep one and roll with it.

… But I'd decided I wouldn't capture any Garumon I didn't truly want. So, with tears in my eyes, I'd let them go.

And besides, even without a support role, there were ways to fight.

… Oh, by the way, in this world, a Master can't use items or anything else mid-battle to heal a Garumon.

Post-battle recovery items that restore HP and skill uses do exist, but they're outrageously expensive, so using them at this rank was out of the question.

"Adelia, Boost Power! Kanan, Wind's Blessing!"

"Yes, nya!"

"Right!"

… All you had to do was layer on your own buffs. It cost a turn, but the effect was worth it.

Shara… fwoosh… Kanan waved her hand and began clothing herself in wind. The Speed-UP and evasion-rate-UP magic.

"Fiore, cut them down! Aleya, pierce!"

The two of them attacked.

"Kanan. Cover, then evade."

"I know."

Before the attacks landed, Kanan stepped out and shielded Adelia. As she did…

Hira… hyoi!

"All right!"

Success. She dodged it cleanly. With bad luck she could've failed, so I let myself relax a little.

This kind of action, the kind that didn't consume a skill use, was apparently called a "Skill-less Skill."

Cutting in to protect an ally from an attack: Cover.

Avoiding an attack with your own body or with a skill's help: Evade.

These were the most well-known Skill-less Skills.

If the enemy tried to attack Adelia and Kanan stepped into the line of fire, the enemy had no choice but to hit Kanan.

If she then evaded, the attack on Kanan whiffed completely. Their shot was a total wash.

Wind's Blessing raised Speed and evasion rate, making evades easier to pull off.

A genuinely useful skill, worth more than the numbers suggested.

"Adelia, Boost again. Kanan, Wind's Blessing again."

"Tch, slippery little…! Switch attacks. Fiore, Black Blade! Aleya, Pierce Sword!"

Kanan went to cover again. But…

"Wind Shield!"

KLANG! Fiore's Black Blade slammed into the auto-activated shield and was blocked.

Defensive skills auto-triggered just by being kept on hand.

Yukishiro-san's Shadow Step was probably the same kind of thing. That one was a chance-based dodge.

Wind Shield had a humble, beginner-skill-sounding name, but it could block up to ten consecutive physical attacks. Genuinely cheat-tier stuff.

"Tch, a defensive skill?! But…"

"Au!"

Zaku! Kanan took damage. The shield didn't trigger… a piercing attack!

Aleya's Pierce Sword was a piercing attack. The shield wouldn't activate against it, and damage was guaranteed. A nasty weapon.

5 damage. But piercing attacks of this type were uniformly on the weaker end of the power scale.

Even so, weaker power was probably enough. Aleya was a heavy-armor type, all shield and full plate. With Lila in the back keeping her healed and warded, she could just keep fighting forever.

Fiore landed the big hits when they connected while the other two locked down defense. That was their fighting style.

… Lila kept quietly layering defensive magic on her two teammates.

So, would it be safer to run the buff one more time? No, I wanted to see how much we could shave off their gauges as we were.

"All right… here we go. Adelia, Flame Claw! Kanan, Air Blast!"

"Yes, nya! Haaaaaaa!"

Vwooom… Adelia's right hand burst into flame. And then…

"Flame Claw!"

DOGOOO!

Adelia's strongest skill! Her magic-imbued right fist drove forward with everything she had.

About 50 damage. Back at E-Class, this had wiped out 80% of an enemy's HP, and Kanan's Air Blast had cleaned up the rest for a one-turn kill, devastatingly effective. Even at D-Class, it took out half their HP in a single shot.

Which meant… if I stacked Boost Power twice, the math said one shot would finish them off.

Boost Power was crazy strong on its own, too. At a glance, "x1.5" looked weak, since attacking twice would be x2 and burning a turn for x1.5 seemed pointless. But the fact that it stacked was the key. Your current attack power kept getting multiplied by 1.5. Two stacks made it x2.25, three made it x3.375, and so on.

By the way, "+50%" would just add to the original stat, so the multiplicative "x" notation was the stronger version.

Adelia's Boost Power might prove to be an incredibly useful ability going forward.

"Shield!"

But… they had auto-activate defensive skills too. Their heavy-armor knight had a defensive skill running, with defensive magic layered on top.

Taking her down in a single hit was, predictably, impossible.

… Sure enough, we only managed to shave off half her gauge.

"Air Blast!"

Then Kanan's magic crashed in.

With the Speed-UP skill on, the double-attack from x2 Speed was starting to proc occasionally.

That was a strong one: skill use cost was just one, but you got two attacks. Another effect that reeked of a cheat.

Of course, the same conditions applied to opponents.

But this time, it didn't proc. We were still a little short.

"Magic Shield!"

And against magic, yet another defensive skill went up!

"Two defensive skills?!"

I hadn't seen that coming. So far, opponents with counters to both physical and magic had been few and far between.

Her gauge had about a quarter left.

"There's no way Aleya should be getting chipped down that hard… Lila, High Heal!"

"Yes!"

High Heal. Not the shoes. I'd heard the name before, but I'd never seen it in action. An advanced recovery spell that could restore around 50 HP.

Aleya's HP was healed back to roughly 3/4.

Fiore's attack got blocked by Wind Shield again.

This was going to drag out… but at least I'd worked out the math now.

"Adelia, Boost Power."

"… You're seriously stacking it again?! Lila, Protection on Aleya! Aleya, Pierce Sword until they go down! Fiore, Black Blade until it lands!"

"Kanan, Bind Whip on Aleya!"

"Right!"

The whip lashed out and coiled around her, leaving Aleya unable to move. Bind Whip was crazy reliable, landing a high-chance stun even with sloppy aim.

Fiore's blade got knocked aside by the shield once again.

"This'll do it. Flame Claw. Air Blast."

"Yes, nya!"

Three stacks of Boost Power: x3.375. With Flame Claw, a skill that already pumped out about 50 damage, juiced up that hard…

DOGAAAAN!

"Aaaaaaah… the shield… it's breaking…! No more…!"

She blocked it, but barely any of her gauge was left.

"Air Blast!"

"Magic Shield… n-no, no more…!"

BAM!

Blew her clean away. Aleya's HP was 0.

"N-no…!"

"So, you want to keep going?"

"Tch…"

The Defender was the linchpin of dragging out a fight.

Once that was gone, it was painfully obvious he had no chance left.

"… I surrender."

YOU WIN

Thank god…

Yeah, that was the right call.

Putting myself in his shoes, if you kept fighting after the outcome was already decided and got pointlessly wiped, all three party members would be left incapacitated and have to leave the battleground in that state.

If a Garumon Battle got slapped on you in that condition, you'd be utterly screwed.

If you could get back to town within the System-protected ten minutes, you'd be fine, but anywhere farther out you'd have a high chance of being attacked along the way. So preserving your fighting strength and giving up was the right move.

From my side, the longer they held out, the more skill uses I had to burn, which I didn't love. But unless the opponent was deliberately griefing, they wouldn't go that route.

… Well, some people did fight to a total wipeout out of pure spite.

The message Captured Fiore popped up, and I immediately hit Release.

I pocketed 1000G, and on his end he probably lost 2500G and got Fiore back.

"You're strong… like a champion…"

A compliment, I guess?

"Have you fought the current champion?"

"Yeah… back in a tournament qualifier… You're about as strong as the champion was back then."

It was just his rough estimate, but it meant I was about on par with Noda from two months ago, then…

I still had a lot of work to do.

And so, we threw ourselves into training even harder.

The brutal training brought us to the brink at times, but we steadily sharpened our edge… and just before the tournament, we hit LV16. Two levels above my original goal.

If we could push 2-3 more levels during the tournament, that would put us at the planned 18 or even 19, and depending on the post-tournament training, maybe LV20, which would put us in shouting distance of challenging the champion.

"And here it begins, the monthly Eora D-Class Championship Tournament. 136 D-Class Masters from across the world have gathered in this town with their sights set on the championship. Among them, who will take the crown and stand before the strongest champion of all…? All eyes are on this tournament!"

And so… the tournament began.