[Shu: Perhaps I simply drag back wicked fellows who trample the farmland.]
Even Shu couldn’t resist joining in on the joke.
If Eriri could read Shu’s Moegirlpedia page, then naturally Shu could open the links Yakumo sent and examine her own page as well.
She had indeed seen the description of her so-called “Skill 3.”
Of course, what she used was her own authority.
It didn’t literally produce a “healing” effect the way a game skill description claimed.
Still, after gradually watching the videos and seeing operators get defeated, retreat, and then get redeployed, she began to understand Yakumo’s situation.
For Yakumo, death was probably similar to an operator retreating and then being redeployed.
That phenomenon applied only to him.
It didn’t work on anyone else.
Therefore, there was no real concern that it would cause him to disregard the value of other people’s lives.
[Eriri: Wait, wait! I just noticed something! Is time moving normally on your sides? Time has completely stopped over here!]
Eriri had originally been preparing to say good night and go to sleep.
They’d been chatting for so long that she assumed it must already be four or five in the morning.
If she didn’t sleep soon, tomorrow was going to be miserable.
But when she instinctively glanced at the time on her computer…
Not a single second had passed.
She stared at it for a long while.
Then she checked her phone.
Then the clock beside her bed.
All of them showed exactly the same thing.
[Furina: Huh? Of course time is moving. It’s not like anyone here has authority over time. How could it possibly stop?]
[Shu: The same is true on my side. Time continues to flow.]
[Yakumo: Moving normally +1.]
[Yakumo: I think I know why. Among us, Eriri is the only ordinary human. Sister Shu’s major events aren’t happening for another sixty years, Fufu still has more than a century left, and I’m probably not going to die of old age.]
[Yakumo: The group can’t exactly wait until the rest of us reach our main storylines only for Eriri to already be buried underground, right? So it probably adjusted the flow of time for that reason. Considering it can pull people from multiple worlds into the same group, something like this isn’t particularly surprising.]
[Eriri: Doesn’t that mean I can use this state to finish my deadlines?!]
[Yakumo: Of course that’s the first thing you think of. You’re still working right up against the deadline, aren’t you? But your mental state matters too. Even if your body doesn’t change, spending too long in stopped time could still gradually change your mindset.]
[Yakumo: Although this is Eriri we’re talking about… You probably don’t have to worry about mentally growing old.]
[Eriri: Are you calling me childish?!]
[Yakumo: You’re the one who said it!]
[Yakumo: Ahem. Anyway, I’m still figuring out the group’s other functions. Logically speaking, a chat group like this should have some kind of world-travel function, but I haven’t found one yet. Maybe I need to keep leveling up. Looks like I’ve got work to do.]
Yakumo didn’t know whether the chat group’s functions were tied to his job level.
Eriri was still an ordinary human.
Even though time had stopped, her mind still got tired.
She said good night and went to sleep.
Furina had originally wanted to chat for a while longer.
But Yakumo needed to go level up, while Shu had farmland to tend.
Neither had time.
Reluctantly, she could only bid everyone farewell for the moment.
It had been far too long since she’d been able to speak so freely with other people.
She was terrified that all of this might simply be a hallucination.
What if she woke up tomorrow and the chat group was gone?
What if the people from other worlds disappeared as though they’d never existed?
That possibility frightened her even more than the thought that the news about “only another hundred-plus years” might be false.
“Lady Furina, if you are feeling tired, you may return to your quarters and rest. There is currently no work requiring your presence. The next trial is tomorrow, so you still have plenty of time.”
“Huh? No… Oh. Right. I’ll go rest first.”
Furina answered absentmindedly before hurrying back toward her room.
The entire way, she continuously checked whether the chat group was still there.
She was terrified that the moment she looked away, it would vanish.
Because of that, she walked into walls no fewer than five times along the way.
Even after she finally returned to her room, the chat group was still there.
No one was speaking, however, which made it feel strangely quiet.
“Should I send everyone gifts like Yakumo did? But besides Mora… desserts aren’t exactly special, are they? Uwaaah! What do I even have that would count as a special gift?!”
Lady Furina found herself troubled yet again today.
Meanwhile, after leaving the chat group, Yakumo looked at his level and sighed.
He still had a long road ahead of him.
Should he grit his teeth and max out Max MP Increase on all three skill tabs first?
“Wait. Theoretically, that does sound good, but I’m already getting extra Ability Points every level, so doesn’t that sort of balance things out?”
“I still need an actual attack skill first. Energy Bolt alone definitely isn’t going to cut it.”
If he couldn’t leave the village, his leveling speed would slow to a crawl if he relied only on village quests.
Fighting monsters was the only way to gain levels quickly.
Yakumo had checked the magical beasts he’d encountered.
Most of them were practically equivalent to field bosses. Get faster updates on g.com.
If he could successfully kill one, the experience reward would definitely be substantial.
Although Energy Bolt was a targeted skill, its damage was low, its projectile speed was slow, and it could easily be blocked.
The system came from a game, but Yakumo himself existed in reality.
Some game mechanics still applied, but most things had been adapted to function more realistically.
For example, despite having invested so many points into INT, he didn’t feel noticeably more intelligent.
If Yakumo’s guess was correct, INT probably increased things like comprehension of magic rather than raw intelligence.
Perhaps that meant he would be able to learn the magic of this world extremely quickly.
LUK, on the other hand, appeared to provide a very tangible benefit.
For fruit-gathering quests, he’d begun finding the target fruits more easily.
He occasionally stumbled across treasure chests in the wilderness as well, even if they usually contained nothing but junk and a few copper coins.
Still.
Every little bit added up.
Aside from that, as his level increased, Yakumo discovered another issue.
Unless his system had some kind of one-click max-skill function, MapleStory normally didn’t provide enough Skill Points to maximize every skill.
That meant players had to make choices.
For example, first-job Magicians usually only put one point into Energy Bolt, while Clerics left Holy Arrow until last.
Yakumo had originally planned to max out two copies of Magic Claw and one copy of Energy Bolt.
But while allocating points, muscle memory caused him to dump everything straight into Magic Claw.
At first, he thought he’d made a mistake.
But during later battles against magical beasts, he discovered that the increase in Magic Claw’s power was far greater than expected.
In other words…
The Magic Claw bonuses from all three skill tabs stacked with one another.
Whether the final result was exactly triple damage or some other ratio would require repeated testing.
After discovering that, Yakumo immediately abandoned the idea of maxing Energy Bolt.
He would max all three copies of Magic Claw instead.
“What an unexpected surprise.”
“In that case, I can actually save Skill Points from two copies of Magic Guard and use them to max two copies of Energy Bolt.”
“Once I reach second job, as long as I’m not getting one-shot, Magic Guard shouldn’t usually be necessary anyway.”
“Actually, I could skip Magic Guard entirely and max all three Energy Bolts just to see what happens.”
“Worst case, I can buy Skill Reset items from the Cash Shop later.”
“I’ve been carefully saving all those time-point rewards, after all.”