CH 19

“I’m Maria Alexia von Zavarish. Alexia is fine. Thank you for accompanying me today, Chaos.”

“I’m her chamberlain, Irene. I ask that you please avoid disrespecting Lady Alexia. By the way, is payment really unnecessary, even though we’re hiring you?“

“Yeah, I don’t need it. We can just split the reward when we complete the quest.”

Alexia and Irene share a look. Did I really say something that strange, though? When I asked to join their party, they said something about paying me in advance for guarding them like they were paying me some sort of friendship fee and I felt weird about it. If possible, I’d like us to have a healthy friendship with no money involved. Anyway, what’s up with those introductions? There’s a lot of things to point out here. Firstly, Irene, what do you mean ‘chamberlain’? There’s no class like that in Another World. Judging by the rapier hanging from your waist, you’re a Warrior no matter how I look at it. And Alexia…This is the first time I’ve met someone who goes by their middle name, so it feels a bit weird using it, but first of all, the character limit on names is 15, so it’s impossible to give yourself a name that long, and wasn’t ‘von’ what nobles used in the past?

At first, I thought this was some sort of event, but I didn’t accept a quest, so they must be players. Is there some event that only I don’t know about that lets you become a noble? But there’s no system for obtaining court ranks.

Wait a minute, are they roleplaying as characters with a noble-and-maid type setup, maybe…? Sometimes, people will borrow the name of a game or anime character and roleplay as them, so maybe they’re doing something like that. The RPG in MMORPG stands for roleplaying game, so it wouldn’t be that weird if there were people who roleplay as their character. It’s true that Alexia’s character is an amazingly beautiful girl, and if someone told me that she was some sort of sheltered maiden, I could probably believe it.

I’m bad at talking to people, so I’m always trying my best not to make people uncomfortable when I talk to them, but this goes in a whole different direction, roleplaying to become a completely different person. …There’s a chance that the ‘young lady’ act might actually be for real. For now, I’ll just not mention it. It’d be bad if I butted in and made things awkward between us in our first meeting because I misread the mood.

The quest they accepted is a quest to hunt blood rabbits. Despite their cute, timid appearance, blood rabbits make powerful ramming attacks and are level 3-7. They’re enemies suited to beginners.

Irene has invited you to join her party. Do you accept?

When the message window pops up, I accept the invitation and join the party. Now that I’m in the party, I can see the party window and the ally information displayed on it, including levels. Alexia’s level is 3, and Irene’s is 14. 14, that’s amazing. The open beta only just started. Has she been playing this whole time? …Wait, 14?

“Is this your first time forming a party?”

“Yes, it is our first time. Is there a problem?”

I see, that’s why they don’t know. These two might be total newbies playing their first MMORPG.

MMOs tend to have a lot of specialized terminology and unique game rules. The world’s first VRMMORPG especially would have a lot of differences from normal MMOs. However, it’s also true that people who have played other MMOs would know the rules and systems that it shares with them. Even if the content is different, other MMOs have similar rules, such as the restrictions that occur when players with a level difference form a party. Therefore, I can make an educated guess that these two lack experience in party play as well as MMORPGs. I should warn them.

“Irene, it would be best if you didn’t participate in the party.”

“…What?” she says, raising her eyebrows. I might have worded it badly, but I need to be clear about this. After all, in this game, if there’s a level difference of 10 or more, you won’t be able to gain experience points when the monster is defeated.

“Your levels are too different. If you fight directly, it’ll only keep Alexia from growing.”

After a short pause, as if giving this careful consideration, Irene responds, “…You mean, I shouldn’t fight. Understood. However, staying by her side will pose no hindrance to her. Also, call her Lady Alexia! You’re being overly familiar with her!”

“Right, got it.”

Even if the person themself says it’s okay, it’s bad to suddenly act friendly with someone you just met. She looks younger than me, so I wasn’t really thinking about that, but it looks like the maid-like Irene took issue with it. I’m not too sure about calling her ‘Lady’, but Alexia– I mean, Lady Alexia does look sort of embarrassed. And if Irene wants to be near her even if she can’t fight, they must be pretty close.

Well, if they know each other well enough to roleplay together, they must be friends in real life, too. Don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t be long until you reach a level where you can be in a party together.

I’ll reform the party. To make a party, we’ll have to temporarily disband it. To form a party, you go to the party window and press the invite button while looking at the person you want to add to your party, and then it’ll send that person an invite message. This system sure is amazing. I don’t think I’ll mess it up, but this is my first time, so I carefully stare at Alexia while sending her the party invite. Woah, fast response. The party’s all set up.

…Anyway, sometimes Alexia has a complicated expression… No, more like gloomy. I wonder what that’s about?

In the grassland to the east of Stolbrussen, there’s a blood rabbit spawn point nearby.

“So that’s a blood rabbit? I researched them beforehand, but they’re larger than I expected. Oh, it ran away.”

After seeing us, the bright red rabbit about the size of a small dog hurriedly runs away. By the way, the red isn’t from being covered in blood splatter, it only has blood-red fur. Anyway, she’s studying the wiki even though she’s only a newbie, huh? This might not be necessary, but just in case, I should explain about blood rabbits.

“Blood rabbits will run away if they see you. Thankfully, since this is grassland, you’re sure to make the first move if you hide in the bushes and attack. If you hit it, it’ll attack you back, but it tends to run away when its life is in danger, so you should defeat it before it runs.”

“Oh, you’re quite knowledgeable,” Irene says in admiration, but Alexia looks somewhat uneasy. I wonder what’s wrong? Oh, I’ve got it. It may be big, but it looks like it’s just a rabbit. It sounds like it’s her first time seeing it, and it looks cute, so maybe she’s conflicted because she doesn’t want to hit it. …It’s a bit late to worry about this, but isn’t this the kind of thing that animal welfare groups would protest?

Alexia’s expression changes. It looks like she’s found her resolve. After spotting a level 3 blood rabbit and cautiously approaching, Alexia readies her staff. She’s a Magician, just like me. If she allocated her stats like I did, putting most of it into Intelligence, she should either defeat it in one hit with Mana Bolt or deal enough damage to make it run away.

“Chaos, um…” Alexia says, as if hesitant to continue. “This is embarrassing to admit, but my spells aren’t particularly strong. It most likely won’t be enough to defeat it. Therefore, please provide support before it gets away.”

‘…Wait, is she…?’ A certain theory comes to mind from her words, actions, and facial expression. No, I’ll think about that later.

“Alright. Lady Alexia, I’ll support you after you land the first strike, so aim carefully.”

I also point my staff at the blood rabbit Alexia is aiming for. Seeing this, Alexia grips her staff a bit tighter and fires a Mana Bolt.

The blood rabbit, hit with purple lightning, trembles from the impact, but this effect is trivial and, just as she said, it isn’t enough to defeat it. As a result, Alexia’s attack only increased the blood rabbit’s hostility. Hostility, called aggro in MMORPGs, increases the more damage you deal or when you use threat skills. Basically, the enemy will concentrate its attacks on the character with the highest aggro.

When playing in a party, the common strategy is to have classes with high defense power like Warriors in the vanguard drawing aggro to protect the classes with weak defense like Magicians.

Naturally, after Alexia attacks the blood rabbit and gets aggro, it charges at her. At the same time, I fire a Mana Bolt and finish it off.

When they see the blood rabbit suddenly collapse, Alexia and Irene’s faces brighten. I knew it, the reason she was feeling down wasn’t because she had to hurt a bunny.

“Just as I expected. It doesn’t go very well when I do it. It would be dangerous if I was doing this by myself,” Alexia says with a sad smile. Then, I hear her mumble, “I can’t do anything by myself. Why am I the only one whose spells are this weak?”

‘I knew it, she’s…’ After hearing this, my theory from earlier turned to conviction.

She isn’t enjoying this game. The reason for that is because there’s a problem with her spell strength.

That would explain the many suspicions I had. Her gloomy expression up until now was probably because she was worried about that.

Now I understand why a beautiful woman and a pretty girl weren’t being invited to a party. It’s true that it was hard to approach when Irene was yelling so angrily, but since they’re both so beautiful, I’d usually expect them to be invited by a guy with ulterior motives. They were probably avoiding her because they knew her spells were weak and useless in combat. Magicians are a DPS class whose role in a party is to annihilate the enemy, so if she can’t deal much damage, it’d be hard for her to contribute. Not to mention that Magicians already have low HP and defense, so they can’t defend, and they don’t have any healing or support skills like Healers do, either. Players who value efficiency would only see her as dead weight and make fun of her for leeching off of the party. That’s why nobody invited her to a party except for her friend Irene.

But even if she plays solo, the fact that her spells are too weak would make it really difficult. It would probably be frustrating for only one person to be struggling while everyone else around them is defeating enemies effortlessly.

I think everyone has different ways of enjoying MMORPGs, but combat classes would generally want to have fun in combat. Levelling up to become stronger, defeating strong enemies, competing in PVP (fights between players), coordinating well with your party, saving your allies when they’re struggling. They may experience the hardships of defeat, but even that can be shared among allies.

But she can’t experience that yet. That’s probably why it feels pointless to her. If Irene wasn’t here, she’d probably be a solitary player like me or give up. If this keeps up, she’ll probably quit the game someday.

I can’t let that happen. Another World isn’t a boring game at all. Her problems need to be fixed so that she can experience the fun of this game.

Why are her spells so weak? That’s because she’s a Magician who’s raising her Wisdom stat. If you don’t raise your Intelligence, your Magic Attack Power will be low and the Magician’s magic skills will be that much weaker. Also, your Intelligence value has a direct effect on Mana Bolt. That’s why her spells are so weak. Magic Attack Power is a hidden parameter deduced from other players’ analysis. It’s common for newbies to misunderstand because it’s not displayed in their stats.

Of course, it’s also possible that she raised other stats, or she might not have raised any of them. However, it’s hard to imagine that a newbie who’d look up monsters on the wiki before going hunting wouldn’t look at Magician builds. The wiki also lists the stat allocations for Magician builds. Sage was recommended as the Rank 2 class, so naturally, it would also describe a build centered on raising Wisdom. Of course, it also describes builds centered on raising Intelligence, but the Wisdom build emphasized as being strong in parties probably had a strong impact. That’s why she most likely chose that build.

If she’s raising her Wisdom, there’s three ways she could go about this.

The first is to delete her character, create a new one, and reassign her stat points to Intelligence. She’d be starting over from level 1, but since she’s level 3, that won’t take much time, so it’s the safest method. However, since she’s a roleplayer, she’s probably attached to her character, and we only just met, so I’m a bit hesitant to tell her to remake her character all of a sudden.

The second method is to assign her stat points to Intelligence when she levels up from now on. However, she can’t recover the points she allocated to Wisdom so far. Plus, it’ll be too time-consuming and in terms of ability, she’ll be slightly behind players who’ve been raising their Intelligence from the start, so this method is no good since it’s too sloppy.

The final method is to keep her build as is. To be frank, this one is the toughest. It would be nice if we could figure out some kind of efficient fighting style, but…

I open the skill window and think about which Magician skills I’d choose if I put my points into Wisdom. There are some skills that are directly affected by the Wisdom value. There’s Wisdom Burst, a skill that attacks enemies within a certain radius around you, the strength of which is dependent on Wisdom. However, you can’t learn that skill until you’re pretty high level, so what do we do until then…?

Come on, think. I looked through the skills thoroughly yesterday. Is there really no way for her to contribute in parties and fight by herself with low damage…?

…There is. These skills don’t rely on Intelligence or Wisdom. Luckily, they’re on the same path of the skill tree that Wisdom Burst is on, so there are no problems there.

Now, it all depends on Alexia’s decision.

“Lady Alexia,” I say, and both of them look in my direction. “Do you want to become stronger as you are now?”

Does she want to become stronger with her current build? If she says no, then I’ll recommend that she delete her character no matter what else she says. But if she says yes…

“…I can become stronger?”

“There’s a way. If you learn a certain spell, you can become much stronger than you are now.”

Alexia looks down in hesitation. I can feel Irene’s gaze becoming more intense, but I pay it no attention. Within this tense atmosphere, Alexia gives me a small but unmistakable nod.

In that case, there’s only one answer. I’m the one who got her hopes up. You may call it selfish. So, it’s my responsibility to watch over her until the end. Until she can enjoy this game and smile for real.