“Aside from potions, there’re still a lot of undiscovered ores as well, right? The description on apoitakara says that it’s a type of rainbow ore, which means that only two of them have been found so far…”
“Well, the developers are one thing, but I think the game company’s mad as well. I mean, with all the content, you can play for a long time… but they seem to have forgotten the word restraint. They must have left the term ‘user friendly’ back at their main office.”
“Indeed. Speaking of the main office… the guy they sent over from our company’s head office a while back was terrible…”
“Uwah, sorry, let’s not talk about this. I seem to be having an allergic reaction to the word ‘company’… Should we make it a guild rule not to talk about the workplace? Maybe only allow it in the half an hour or so before you log off. You know, when you have to return to reality.”
Momonga chased away the words in his ears.
He did not know who had spoken last, but he agreed fully with him. He did not want to think about work. Whether you wanted it or not, tomorrow would come anyway.
As these dark thoughts slowly began to swallow Momonga, he decided to use the conversations around him to try and motivate himself. Therefore, he kept his ears open for anything game-related which the others might be talking about.
“—Knowledge-type skills, huh? I’ve been thinking about respeccing towards those. I’ve almost unlocked a class which uses special attacks derived from monster lore. Do you think my DPS would go up if I branched out from there?
DPS was an acronym for Damage Per Second.
It measured how much damage one could do in a second, and to attackers, it was the most important thing in the game. Theoretically speaking, one could create the ultimate weapon by embedding damage-increasing data crystals into a big weapon with high data capacity. However, weapons like that were unwieldy, and would result in fewer attacks due to the difficulty of using them. As a result, the wielder’s overall DPS would go down. No right-thinking attacker would even think of using a weapon like that.
In addition, as monsters went up in level, they gained all sorts of special abilities. At this level, they could greatly decrease any damage done to them. Therefore, it was quite common to require weapons made of special materials or with the appropriate elements to bypass these abilities.
“But that would mean you wouldn’t be as focused on attack power as you are now, right?”
“I’m thinking I could make up for it with an elemental weapon.”
“Ah, that’s not a bad idea, but then you’d really need those divine-class items, right? Wouldn’t that be difficult?”
“Is that so~? Well, it can’t be helped~ I wanted to experiment a little but it’s too troublesome…”
If one could make a second character in Yggdrasil, this sort of complaint would not exist. However, that was impossible in games like these. Experimenting with different classes was only possible by dying and losing levels.
Even if it was easier to gain levels in this game as compared to other DMMOs, it was still a time-consuming process. One would not go to that kind of trouble just to fool around.
Momonga often longed for a second character himself. He had heard people complaining about how unfair it was that one could not make another character in this game, and he personally agreed with them.
If he could, he would like to be a warrior, like Touch Me.
Although it was said that the warrior classes were limited by one’s real-world reflexes, that restriction only came into play during duels between top-class warriors. It was not a deciding factor during normal play.
Touch-san gave himself a scarf, but I think I’d like a big, flowy red cape… My sword would have to be huge, just like Warrior Takemikazuchi-san’s. I could swing it around stylishly.
Incidentally, Momonga had learned the warrior transformation spell, but it was not very useful, and so he had almost no chance to use it. In a party, each person divided the workload among themselves and did their part in order to achieve victory for the team. In order to do that, they had to excel at their assigned function.
Momonga was a back-liner, and when he went adventuring in a party, he was obliged to use magic that made a meaningful contribution to the group.
If he could not do that, then there was no point in playing in a group.
That being the case, if he were travelling alone — if he were playing solo, there was a good chance he could bring it into play.
However—
Momonga looked to his guildmates, quietly advancing through the poison swamp. He watched his friends chat as they walked, flitting from topic to topic.
He was suddenly lost in a memory of loneliness.
When the guild had still been a clan — although it had been a clan until recently— the only members had been working folk, oddly enough, and they had gathered to meet at night. While some of them had unusual jobs and thus kept odd hours — Bukubukuchagama the seiyuu being a prime example — for the most part, nobody would be online during the day.
Momonga would return straight home after work, log on ahead of everyone else, and then he would summon undead to protect himself and hire NPC mercenaries to hunt monsters. So technically speaking, he was used to playing alone.
However, he never felt lonely, because he was certain that someone else would log on. But if they were not around — if nobody logged on any more, what would he do?
Should he quit this guild, and join a new one?
Or should he recruit new members?
He disliked both options. It was not as though he was afraid of strangers. After all, he could get along normally with the people in his company — although they probably thought he was antisocial because he did not go drinking with them.
Still, he disliked having to make that choice.
This opinion was not born of logic, but his emotions. Therefore, he could not bring himself to accept those options.
“What’s wrong, Momonga-san? Are you low on nanomachines?”
Herohero was beside him.
“My nanomachines are fine. I topped them off before going online.”
“Really? That’s good, then. This may take a long time — although I’m not sure if that’ll be the case — but it would be a good idea to make sure you’re topped off before entering the dungeon. It would be bad if you were forcibly ejected at a critical moment. I’ve a friend in real life who was playing a different game, he was kicked out of the game during a guild ranking battle, and by the time he came back, his guild had lost and they reamed him out for it. And it wasn’t even his fault that they lost.”
“…That’s pretty scary.”
“I know our guild won’t be like that, but there are guilds like that out there. You know, the try hard types. I hate those picky guilds. Games are meant to be played, after all…Oh, what’s this? You look pretty suspicious, comrade. The type that Touch-san would arrest.”
“That’s mean, saying I’m suspicious,” Momonga smiled bitterly. “I’m just a guildmaster wondering about how we’re going to breach the dungeon soon, and it made me feel a little melancholy.”
“…Hahaha. Seems you’re worrying right from the start… However, if we manage to find data crystals loaded with rare data or artifacts, it’ll be worth it. Well, if you ask me, being able to actually clear an unknown dungeon in one shot would be a greater treasure than any of those.”
“Exactly. It’ll be an unforgettable memory.”
Halfway through their conversation, a squishy sound, as though one were walking in a pair of flooded long boots, came from the side.
“Oh, visibility is poor now.”
“Eh?”
“Looks like some mist just rolled in. Momonga-san, if you change your vision mode, you’ll see it.”
Momonga had cast the spell 「Widen Magic — Complete Vision」, which could pierce fog up to a distance of 200 meters ahead of him. This was why everything looked clear to him.