Level Is Everything

After waiting for a long time in front of the dungeon entrance, Ryou and Luna haven't able to find a new party member. When they are about to give up, suddenly a timid girl comes up. Her hair was coloured blue and tied up in a ponytail. She was short, even shorter than Luna who is at Ryou's chin height. Ryou himself is 160cm tall. Someone who saw her might mistaking her as a sixth grader.

"Um, are you still looking for party member? May I join you?" the girl asked in a small voice. Ryou and Luna almost couldn't hear her.

Before they got the chance to answer, the girl talked in quick succession. "It's alright if you don't want to accept me. My class is lifestyle oriented and my level is still quite low. However, if you accept me as your party member I guarantee you that I can act as a decent tank. I can take four to five hit from a mini boss monster. Ah, sorry. I am overstepping my boundaries here. It's up to you to accept me or not."

「Such a chatterbox. I can feel headache coming again. She on the other hand should be quite capable to be able to withstand attack from mini boss monster such as the tempest wolf for four to five hit. Let's find out more about her. 」

"So, what's your class?"

"Ah, my class is a 'farmer'. I know this class is really useful in terms of battle but I assure you that I am durable and able to take hits from monster. My level is low at level 5 because I have died too many times. Most of my former party member is already leaving the beginner's village. That's why I am here alone."

When she said that, the girl gripped the edges of her clothes. Ryou realized that it may not be as simple as she said it. As the tank, she should have been sacrificed by her party member for quite a bit. While her party member level keep increasing, she on the other hand keep stagnating or even getting lower and lower. There is also a sign that she has been watching Ryou and Luna for quite a bit of time before deciding to speak to him. Probably the experience she had from her previous party member still haunting her and made her be more careful in choosing a party.

Some party required their member to laid b.a.r.e all their status and skills, that is to make sure that they know their party member and what kind of skill available for them. For example, if a shield bearer is asked to use "devotion" by his party member but he doesn't have the skill, it will be a disaster at crucial time because devotion can save a party member by redirecting the damage that is received by the skill target to the user.

An expert player on the other hand striving themselves to remember every class skill and their cooldown. It is to make sure that they can control when each skill is used and when is the best time to use it again. It may not apparent at this stage where most player are low levelled, but at higher level and more skill available, this will be one of the most crucial point.

Ryou is pondering whether he should ask her status and skill and show his own but it may as well become his doom. One of the reason is his own status that is focusing on STR attributes as an archer. He may have a reason to do so but most player doesn't care about it. They want to have a party member with optimal status distribution and useful skill. They don't want to have a party member who will only be an extra luggage or extremely useless. After all there's a limit of 6 maximum party member for hunting on the field. There's a rumour of a 20-man and 50-man dungeon on the world map of Aaru on the forum but it wasn't confirmed yet. The only thing that makes it possible is the feature of [guild] option on the system interface.

While Ryou is thinking and the girl seem to be waiting for his response, Luna speak up.

"Hey, what's your name? My name is Luna and you can call him Ryou."

"Ah, my name is Gefa. It was in reference to the goddess of agriculture in Norse mythology. As you can see, I really love farming. That is also why I choose farmer as my character class. I enjoyed playing it so far but that is also why it is hard for me to raise my level alone."

As Schneider planned in the first place, every class have equal chance to level up based on their character attributes distribution and skill. However, as most of the cases, lifestyle oriented player chooses to increase their non-battle skill as it was their reason to choose the class in the first place. That is also why usually lifestyle oriented player depends on their party to power level them.

Ryou at that point is sending a private message to Luna.

"Luna, why are you being so friendly with her?"

"Eh, what's wrong with being friendly with her? Aren't we going to be in a party after all? In the first place, I never got the chance to choose my party so I accept anyone that is willing to accept me back. I don't really understand about skill and status but isn't harmony is the most important thing in looking for a party member? I can feel that I have an affinity with her. Besides, she is the only one that show up to register as our party member."

Without asking for Ryou's opinion Luna sends Gefa a party invitation. After all, Luna is still the party leader and not Ryou.

"Um, are we going to show our attributes and skill? If that's the case, let me start by showing mine."

Gefa unexpectedly start to show her character attributes and skill on her own initiative. It seems that it was the most logical things to do considering that she is the newest member of the party.

---

Name: Gefa Unique ID: 874582004

Level: 5 Race: Human

Class: Farmer

HP: 1250 MP: 80

STR: 1 Atk: 1 + 10 Def: 23 + 15

AGI: 1 Matk: 1 Mdef: 1

VIT: 23 Cast: 1 Aspd: 1

INT: 1 Hit: 1 Crit: 1

DEX: 1 Stat point: 0

LUK: 1

Equipment:

- Wooden Hoe (Atk 10, Dur:40)

- Leather armor (Def 5, Dur: 40)

- Leather shoes (Def 5, Dur: 40)

- Leather gloves (Def 5, Dur: 40)

Skill:

- Farming Lvl 2

- Blessing of the Aphaea Lvl 2

---

No matter how Ryou look at it, she has normal equipment and her skill distribution is really not oriented for battle. What's more surprising for him is her attributes that is solely focused at vitality. Although VIT is an important aspect for a tank, in the world of Aaru, there's several build that is favoured by tanks. Some tank mix VIT and AGI for the purpose of increased mobility to dodge enemy attack. For player versus player (PVP) tanks, they will choose the VIT and INT build to increase their magic defence. For tanks that is focusing their build for hunting monster, they usually go with VIT and STR build to also attack the enemy and maintain the enemy aggro on them.

It was rare to see someone put their stats solely in VIT even as a tank. Ryou however couldn't say much because he himself put all of his point in STR attributes. Since Gefa has started it, Ryou also shared his current status.

-----

Name: Ryou Unique ID: 1093029102

Level: 9 Race: Human

Class: Archer

HP: 140 MP: 120

STR: 35 Atk: 35 + 40 Def: 1 + 10

AGI: 1 Matk: 1 Mdef: 1

VIT: 1 Cast: 1 Aspd: 1

INT: 1 Hit: 1 Crit: 1

DEX: 1 Stat point: 0

LUK: 1

Equipment:

- Wooden Bow (Atk 10, Dur:40)

- Wooden Arrow (Atk 5, consumable)

- Leather armor (Def 5, Dur: 40)

- Leather shoes (Def 5, Dur: 40)

- Beginner's village badge (no attributes, Dur: 100)

Skill:

- Double Strafe Lvl 2

- Bow Mastery Lvl 5

- Hawk Eye Lvl 2

- Yaga's War Cry Lvl 1 (Unique, Un-upgradeable)

-----

Gefa was a bit surprised seeing Ryou stats because a normal archer will put most of their stat point on the DEX and AGI attributes. For him who is focusing on strength, it was weird for Gefa but she couldn't say anything. After all everyone is free to distribute their stat point in their own way just how she put all of her points on VIT. She also doesn't have any problem because Ryou solved her lack of damage output. She was also surprised to see that Ryou have a unique skill. It can be said that even the forum has minimum information about unique skill.

After examining each other status, they are now looking at Luna.

"Eh, why are you guys looking at me like that?"

"Aren't you going to show us your status?"

"Eh, sure. How to show it to you?"

Ryou is clearly a newbie when he first start playing the game. However, he has a drive to improve himself and he quickly grasp some basics of the game. Luna on the other hand is completely oblivious to this and thinking that everything will be fine. She will just let it flow and everything will solve itself naturally.

"It's easy, you just have to open your character screen and there will be an option to show it to your party member."

Gefa is guiding Luna patiently and Luna's stats is presented to the two of them.

-----

Name: Lunaria Unique ID: 3025

Level: 8 Race: Human

Class: Jester

HP: 130 MP: 110

STR: 1 Atk: 1 + 1 Def: 1 + 35

AGI: 1 Matk: 1 Mdef: 1

VIT: 1 Cast: 1 Aspd: 1

INT: 1 Hit: 1 Crit: 1

DEX: 1 Stat point: 0

LUK: 35 + 5

Equipment:

- Two of Diamond (bronze rank, Atk 1, ∞)

- Jester hat (bronze rank, Def 15, Dur: 60)

- Jester clothes (bronze rank, Def 20, Dur: 40)

- Fortune badge (LUK + 5, Dur: 100)

Skill:

- Fortune in Misfortune Lvl 1 (Unique, Un-upgradeable)

- Coin Flip Lvl 1

- Card Throw Lvl 1

- Draw Card Lvl 1

- Throw the Dice Lvl 1

- Frost Joke Lvl 1

- Lullaby Lvl 1

- Trick or Treat Lvl 1

---

When seeing Luna's stats, Ryou immediately went speechless. The same case also happened to Gefa. Not to mention the absurdity of putting all of her stats on Luck, her extensive amount of skills is jaw breaking. Ryou also silently cursed inside his heart that he never saw Luna used any of those skill. Not to mention her bronze rank equipment.

At this stage, Ryou only read about some information about ranked equipment. For those that have go out to the world map of Aaru, they found out that some NPC are selling items with rank. With common rank equipment have no rank shown on their item description, the tier of equipment is bronze, silver, and gold. Some say there are still ranks above them which they have yet to discover. It was surprising to see that in this small beginner's village, Luna actually have three of them. Beside from her defence that is almost rivalling Gefa, she is actually in possession of a bronze rank weapon which she never used before.

「I wonder if she's actually amazing or not. 」

Luna on the other hand was oblivious of why her party members are only standing there and seem to be out of their mind when seeing her stats.

"So, shall we go to the dungeon now?"

Luna asked innocently to Ryou and Gefa which can only nods because they have yet recovered from their shock. They even forgot to ask her about the details of her skill and equipment. It was only when the notification was shown that Ryou and Gefa brought back to reality.

「Welcome to the beginner's village dungeon. You have selected the impossible difficulty level. Monsters inside the dungeon will have 500% of their normal stats. The amount of the monster spawned inside the dungeon is 5 times the amount of normal difficulty dungeon. The EXP and drop rate of the monster have been multiplied by 5. 」

Ryou can only silently cursed "F*ck" inside his heart. He thought that Luna will at least choose nightmare difficulty since it was their first time dungeon-ing with Gefa. After all they need to get familiar with each other.

Gefa on the other hand when reading the notification almost lose her consciousness. It was surely one surprise after the other. If she was given a chance, she might want to retract her decision to join the party. She read the notification again to make sure that she didn't read it wrongly.

"I-i-i-impossible." Gefa said that almost inaudibly.