Day 9 of the event. To be honest, Rin and I didn't have much to do this day.

　We had both gotten the key to the trials for the apostle battle yesterday, and we had also finished replenishing the items yesterday.
　The weapon I asked Haruru for will be finished around noon on the last day, so there's no need to wait impatiently for it.
　The only thing I can do now is to collect stardust shards in order to get a high ranking, which has become a little thin.

　That's fine, of course, but with the big game coming up tomorrow, I don't feel like going around as hard as I did yesterday.
　After much hesitation, Rin and I decided to have tea at a cafe.


'Nana, have you decided on the skills you'll use in the battle to destroy the apostles?

　With a cup of coffee with cream in her hand, Rin asked me.

'Not yet, not really. My level has gone up a lot, so I can put in most of the skills I've grown up with.

　I'm over level 70, and I have 10 skill slots.
　I have 10 skills: the initial two, the two with the level 10 bonus, and one for each of the 20-70 levels.
　Striking Weapon, Throwing, Detecting, Hungry Wolf, Instant Displacement, and Demon Dance. These six skills are the ones I can't do without because of my playstyle.

　In fact, "Demon's Dance" is the first skill I added as a regular skill after reaching level 60.
　The reason for this is that buffs are basically short-lived and have a cool time.
　If they have a cool time, you're afraid you won't be able to use them at a moment's notice, so you tend to save your arts.
　As a result, you won't have a chance to use them unless you're in a serious fight, and even then, that fight will only happen once a day or so.
　In addition, learning arts depends on your strength, not your proficiency, so there's no concept of nurturing.
　I didn't want to waste my time on skills that I wouldn't use, so I kept them as regulars until level 60, when I was on the edge.

　In fact, when I dove into the Monster House for the first time on the second day, I left off "Oni no Mai" because I thought I wouldn't use it during the event.
　The reason why I started wearing it all the time was simply because I had an empty skill slot and an easy-to-handle long-time buff called "Weeping Dance".
　I've already used up a lot of the charge of the Wailing Dance, so I hope to recharge it for at least 10 minutes today.
　In addition, I got a new rare skill in this event, "Diva's Embrace". I'm sure I'll have a chance to use it in raid battles, so I'll give it priority at this point.

　Other than this, the skills I've trained are mainly "One-handed Mace", "Two-handed Mace", "Two-handed Cudgel", and "Bare-handed Fighting".
　Even though I have 11 skills so far, I naturally have other skills as well. We must carefully consider the remaining four slots.

'I want to bring 《Bare Handed Fighting》 with me, don't you?

'Oh, that's a good idea. You finally have a place to show your true potential.

　Lin nodded happily at my words.

　First of all, I want to make sure I have the 《Bare Hands Fighting》 skill.
　Because this skill was originally designed to be used against boss monsters, with its extreme firepower.

　Since this was a raid battle with many players, hate would be distributed. If you have a chance to aim for a big gap, you can expect extra damage with this skill.
　It's a safer and more effective damage source than trying to get high risk and high return with Meteor Impact.

　In addition to that, the fact that all of your arts are released from the beginning is also a big advantage. This skill, which can only be acquired with skill proficiency, has a total of 10 arts that are unlocked from the start.
　In the end, it is the most powerful skill when used without hands, but it can also be equipped with weapons such as a merikensack, gloves, or gauntlets.


　I was planning to use it with the Heavy Metal Gauntlet this time as well, since I'm not very proficient in the "bare-knuckle fighting" skill.

　Anyway, with this, eight slots were filled.
　Of the two remaining slots, the 《Two-Handed Cudgel》 and the 《Two-Handed Mace》 were to be left unused.
　As for these, we simply don't have any weapons.
　I destroyed the Meteor Impact Zero, and I haven't gotten a two-handed mace since the Kugelschreiber.
　I've got some limited edition weapons, but I don't think they'll be able to keep up in this fight.

　That's why I'm keeping those two for now.
　As for the 《One-Handed Mace》, it's not very skilled either, but even so, I've raised it to nearly 300 and have learned a few arts with attributes, so there may be a use for it.
　That's why I decided to bring the following weapon skills with me this time: 'Striking Weapon,' 'One-Handed Mace,' and 'Barehanded Fighting.

'So, what about the last slot?

'I'm planning to bring my newly learned "Mastery of Striking" skill to .......'

''The Art of Striking?　That's a skill name I've never heard before.''

'It looks like you need to complete the Strike Weapon Skill and have a Strength value of 250 to get it.'

　Yes, that was the new skill that I suddenly realized I had acquired after checking the results yesterday.


--It's a new skill.

The Art of Striking skill
Rarity: Common (Master)
Proficiency: 15/1000
You have mastered the [Striking Weapon] skill and are fully equipped with the body.
You will be given the essence of striking.
Requirements: 500 proficiency in the "Striking Weapon" skill and 250 strength.

--


'It's a master rank skill, isn't it?

'That's right.

　I nodded my head in agreement with Lin's words.

　There are basically two rarity levels for skills, common and rare.
　It is said that there may be higher levels of rarity, but for now, there are only two.
　As for the "Named Skill" that is attached to the armor that uses the soul of a Named, it is a special case, so I won't worry about it for now.

　If you want to know what a master rank skill is, this is purely a 'higher version of the common skill'.
　A higher rank does not necessarily mean that its performance is higher than that of a normal common skill.
　It is more like 'a skill that requires proficiency in other skills to acquire'.

　For example, the "Two Swords" skill. The requirement to acquire this skill is '200 or more proficiency in the one-handed sword category weapon skill'.
　In other words, this is a skill that can be learned by training one-handed sword skills such as "One-Handed Sword", "Curved Sword", and "Fine Sword".

　While the two-handed sword can deal overwhelming damage due to its large number of moves, it is significantly less flexible than the one-handed sword, which allows you to use one hand freely.
　With a one-handed sword, you can equip a shield or use items, but with a two-handed sword, you cannot.
　This is an example of why master-ranked skills are not necessarily more powerful than common skills.

　Nevertheless, all Master-ranked skills are specialized in their own way, and they can be very powerful if they are combined with other skills and players.
　It's all about usage and combination.

In the event that you have any questions regarding where by and how to use it, please contact us at ....... So I thought it would be worth it just for that.



'You can have as many passive effects as you want. Since everyone only raises a single weapon skill, there's hardly anyone who's been able to properly strengthen the [Striking Weapon], and it's kind of funny that Nana has become a pioneer.

'I've been really lucky with [Fireworks], though.

　As Lin Chan said, the [Striking Weapon] skill isn't really that popular.
　There are several reasons for this, but the biggest reason is that the proficiency level stops at 500.
　Basically, weapon skills depend on the level of proficiency to learn more powerful arts.
　While others can go up to 1000, striking weapons are limited to 500.
　It's easy to see why the future looks bleak at that point.

　On top of that, the two most powerful moves are "Finisher" and "Meteor Impact".
　The fact that you're constantly forced to destroy your weapon every time you activate a powerful move is quite dark.
　The other arts are basically just blows, so it's hard to have a variety of attacks.

　Even though you can learn skills such as the "One-Handed Mace" by improving your striking weapon skills, you can still buy all the derived weapon skills from the striking weapon skills at the store. You can also buy them at very low prices.
　In the early stages of the game, most players want to save money, so they train their striking weapon skills and then get the derived skills, but once they get the derived skills, the striking weapon skills tend to be useless.

　Incidentally, Haruru saw Meteor Impact on the last day of the beta test.
　She was shown it by the only player who was fully proficient in this skill.
　Well, it's amazing that he got 500 in the beta test period, and it's no wonder that he couldn't develop the master rank skill beyond that.

'But looking at the requirements for mastering the Art of Striking, I think it's a weapon type that requires a status that's more muscular. It's probably no wonder there was no information until now.

　That's right. The reason why there is no information on this "Mastery of Striking" skill at the moment is probably because of the problem of muscle strength.
　It's impossible that I'm the only one who has mastered the striking weapon skill.
　There are 10,000 players who started two weeks before me.
　No matter how few of them there are, one of them must have mastered the striking weapon skill before me.
　If there is a group of players, there will be a certain number of players who put their heart and soul into a minor genre or an unfavorable job.

　But we can't say for sure that those players will have reached 250 Strength.
　I'm a demon who specializes in physical status, and I've been devoting my status to strength since about level 30, and I finally reached a strength value of 300.

　In other words, the "Mastery of Striking" skill will not appear unless the player is in the same level range, has a lot of emphasis on strength in his or her stats, is a striking weapon user, and has mastered the striking weapon skill.
　If you've narrowed it down to this level, you'll be convinced that there are no such players in the preceding groups.

　Well, maybe there was a player who was so peculiar as to keep the information hidden.

'The issue of equipment weight is a very nerve-wracking one for vanguards. The amount of strength you can allocate to armor and the amount of strength you can allocate to weapons. It's also important to balance agility, sturdiness, and dexterity, and most players don't throw away magic defense. In that sense, Nana's red wolf costume is not fair. It has almost no strength requirement.

'And it also has agility compensation.

　No, it's not a joke, but I've been indebted to this equipment for a long time.
　It has more than enough defense for an enemy of Fierce's level, agility compensation equal to 10 levels of status points, and most importantly, it is unbelievably light with a required strength value of 5.
　Thanks to this, I can devote all of my energy to weapons and allocate a large portion of my stats to strength.
　I can see why Lin says it's a joke, but it's not fair.
　It was such a high performance piece of equipment that I found myself nodding in agreement.



''Well, I know how Nana is going to act, so that's fine. Today, let's increase the proficiency of [Mastery of Striking] as much as possible.''

'Is Lin going to be okay?

'Yes, I found an interesting skill combo when I was playing by myself yesterday. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.''

　Judging from the way she was smiling so happily, it was probably a very evil combo.
　I wanted to ask her about it, but she wouldn't tell me since she said it was for tomorrow.
　Also, through this event, I'm just about to meet the requirements for using a certain art that I thought I'd never be able to use.

　This is all in preparation for the apostle defeat.
　Since there's no way to start without hunting monsters, Rin and I chatted for a while before diving into the dungeon.