arc01 · 006-ep6

Episode 6: What Skill Should I Get?

Hitting level 10 added a skill slot, meaning I can now learn a new skill.

Skills are, as a rule, acquired by spending SP through your status screen. Unless you happen to be something like my 【Plunder】 that can interfere with other people's skills, there's no other way. In the fantasy works I read in my past life, plenty of them let you learn skills from skill scrolls or grimoires, or even develop them on your own through experience, but this world apparently works differently.

Back home, I immediately called up my status screen and touched the SP section.

Up popped the list of learnable skills—the same one I'd seen in the dungeon earlier.

　SP: 11

　――Learnable Skills List――

　【Strike (Minor)】 Required SP: 3

　【Night Vision】 Required SP: 3

　【Sprint】 Required SP: 5

　【Leap】 Required SP: 5

　【Evasion】 Required SP: 5

　【Staff Arts】 Required SP: 10

　【Martial Arts】 Required SP: 10

　――――――――――――――――

Every single one of these reflects actions I took inside the dungeon. A lineup that makes sense. For anything other than your starting skill, what you do in the dungeon has a big influence like this.

By the way, the higher your level rises, the more the list supposedly shifts toward skills that match your personal aptitude. I want magic and all, but honestly I get the feeling that's a lost cause……

For now, I searched up each skill on the net and dug through the info.

【Strike (Minor)】—someone at school mentioned this one yesterday, too. It apparently puts a bonus on strike-type attacks. As the "minor" suggests, the effect isn't much.

【Night Vision】 makes it easier to see in the dark, like it's daytime. Though apparently it consumes MP.

【Sprint】 makes you run faster & lets you keep running all-out for longer. Guess I ran too much.

【Leap】 raises your jumping power, and apparently lets you double-jump in midair. So freakin' cool!

【Evasion】 supposedly puts a bonus on evasion actions. Honestly, no clue what that means, but according to people who have it, it's saved their lives before.

【Staff Arts】 raises attack power when wielding staff-type weapons, and makes you extremely good with a staff. You learn techniques as it levels up.

【Martial Arts】 puts a bonus on every action, and makes you extremely good with your body. You learn techniques as it levels up.

Hmm.

First, the big premise: some skills have level displays, and some don't.

Skills like "X arts" or "X magic" carry level displays, and they apparently level up through proficiency. The more you use them, the higher they level and the stronger they become. That's why both 【Staff Arts】 and 【Martial Arts】 cost quite a bit more SP than the rest. At the acquisition stage there might not be much difference from the other skills, but if they keep getting stronger as their skill level rises, then really, it comes down to these two.

The other skills aren't bad, either, but it bugs me how little they seem like they'd contribute in combat.

So I narrowed it down to 【Staff Arts】 versus 【Martial Arts】.

The catch with Staff Arts is being locked into staff-type weapons.

Martial Arts, on the flip side, applies to every action, but the effect is supposedly on the weaker side compared to weapon-type skills. And on top of that, the proficiency needed to level it up is supposedly pretty brutal.

Such a dilemma~~~!

Or maybe I keep the slot empty for now and scope out floor 4 first?

Leveling up might expand the learnable skill list, after all.

Yeah, let's do that. I'll put it on hold for now and go explore floor 4 tomorrow.

◇

The next day, I spent school—actual classes had started—being the very air itself, then blazed home at top speed after class.

My gear is still the same old steel pipe, but my stats have climbed a lot, so I shouldn't get instantly wrecked or anything.

I'd done my homework on the monsters that show up there, too, so I judged it wouldn't be all that dangerous.

I flashed my D-rank license at the guild reception and entered the dungeon.

Floors 1–3 are just straight corridors, so I jogged straight through. I dealt with a few horned rabbits on the way, but I reached floor 4 without any particular trouble.

Floor 4's interior is far more spacious than before—a complete change from the mine-tunnel feel of floors 1 through 3, with open space stretching up and out to the sides. It's still a cave walled in by bare rock, but there's a sense of openness to it somehow.

There's no such thing as a proper path, so all I could do was walk wherever, but the floor 4 entrance should be visible from anywhere, so I wasn't going to get lost. Ah, that's it—it feels open because there are no obstacles. Also, for some reason it feels a touch brighter than floor 3. What light even is this?

As I walked along with those thoughts, a monster came into view dead ahead.

"Ohh, that's a giant land turtle. Big."

Not a 'continent turtle'—just a big land turtle.

"Supposedly it's rock hard, but will my attacks even get through?"

Its speed is slow even compared to horned rabbits and giant centipedes, so me taking a hit was basically out of the question.

So I closed in and swung the steel pipe down at its head.

Whiff!

"Whoa!? Since when does it yank its neck in that fast?!"

No help for it, then—I smashed down onto its defenseless shell instead, but what came back was a clang like I'd struck metal, and my hands went numb.

"Wait, seriously? Not a single scratch."

Shaking my hands out to get the feeling back, I tried hammering it a few more times.

"Haah, haah, haah……… dammit, it's way too hard."

Most likely I wasn't doing any damage at all. With me right there in front of it, the giant land turtle just stayed holed up in its shell, motionless—at this rate we're in a mutual stalemate. Continuing the fight felt pointless.

So: retreat, retreat. Turtles are on the ignore list for a while.

"But seriously, that defense spike out of nowhere is insane. How's everyone else handling these?"

They're slow, so anyone without a way around them probably skips them, same as me… Talk about running face-first into a wall.

After walking a while longer, I ran into my next enemy. The giant venomous spider.

This one's fast, and on top of that its poison and thread attacks are nasty. Get caught in the thread and it strips away your mobility, then the poison slowly wears you down—or so I hear. The difficulty just skyrocketed, lol.

Giant venomous spiders will fire thread even from long range, so be careful of that.

"Hup—going for the thread right away, huh."

The thread shot out, and I dodged sideways.

It kept up the follow-ups, so I wove my way closer while dodging. On speed, I'm a good deal above it.

But this enemy had game too—sensing me closing in, it instantly leapt away to open the distance back up. I barely got in range and slammed the steel pipe into a leg, wrecking its balance and slowing it down.

"Alright, I've got this!"

No letting my guard down—watch the bite, too. With that poison, even a graze is dangerous.

Carefully, from its flank, I targeted the legs, robbing it of mobility bit by bit. Slow going, but it looked winnable.

"Hey, no reinforcements allowed! Whoa!? That was close!"

Whether it picked up on the sounds of combat or for some other reason, another giant venomous spider came at me from deeper in and fired thread. Dammit, I was this close…!

"Dammit, two at once is impossible! Retreat, retreat~~~!"

I dashed away from the pair. They chased me for a while, but that's the AGI gap for you—I was faster, and I got clean away.

I ended up not killing a single one, but it did feel like a fight I could just barely win.

Still, if it's going to be like this every single time, that's rough. Guess I really do need to grab a skill.

For today, I'll just hunt on floor 3 and head home.