But for a Slime

They made it through the clan city gate and inner city gate easily enough, and soon were in the crowded outer streets heading towards the beginners dungeon once again. They arrived midmorning, as Joe had predicted, and the line was long to enter. It took them almost an hour to make it in, and Joe frowned at the long wait. Despite that, he was able to spend the time looking over the jobs he could level as well as going over the various new skills he’d gotten during the monster tide once again. He didn’t have long, but did review it quickly..

He’d gained quite a few new combat jobs up to around level thirty five; twenty to be exact, with several new jobs opened in mercenary, duelist, soldier, and warrior. Each of them seemed to be simple advancements of the other. Mercenary jobs seemed rather blunt and simple, focused on sword, shield, bow, and armor for weaponry while basic skills seemed to give extra bonus into finding loot. He did see a bit of an enhancement in strength as well, but other than that, mercenaries seemed to focus on equipment and loot, which seemed to make sense to Joe.

The duelist line of jobs seemed to be focused on skill based combat in various forms with quite the variety of weapons. Joe even found dual axes and hammers, which he knew were utterly impractical, but they were there. All their skills were focused on fencing skills, although it seemed each line of jobs were uniquely focused on a single weapon. For example, the initial duelist used swords, while the next job in the line used dual wielding swords, which had caused Joe to frown deeply. The weapon after that was an axe, and still defined as a fencing form, which Joe struggled to understand how one could fence with an axe. The only other thing to note was that these jobs seemed to be focused on single combat. In any case, they also had garbled skills as well, so Joe didn’t find them too important, although certainly intriguing.

The soldier line of jobs proved much better, offering very blunt and specific skills for combat as a unit as well as general buffs to various stats with a strong focus on defending others and attacking many. He found all the soldier jobs pretty focused on typical military combat roles and enhancements to accomplishing them as well.

All of these jobs were… rather useless, except in the wonderful amount of physical stats and resistances they gave. All in all, the combat jobs had been uniquely surprising disappointments. That didn’t stop him from continuing his focus on them, as their stats added to his baseline and also ultimately greatly increased his learning, allowing him to be able to return to other jobs to push them to ever higher levels.

The greatest thing he’d found that really excited him was the doubling of experience gain and a thirty percent boost to learning that his latest Loki priest line of jobs had given him. He’d been incredibly excited when the first couple jobs had given learning and experience bonuses, but when they disappeared when he went to the Loki cleric job, he was quite frustrated.

However, it appeared they had returned, and Joe could only hope they would stay. He was ecstatic about this simply because now he could always just keep his priest job now, although having his job change skill as an optional skill to add a ‘char:’ skill to in case of an emergency would make it incredibly important if he ever lost his priest job for whatever reason. Other than the return of the bonuses to learning and experience gain and a small increase to the number of main job and sub job changes he had, all his other skills were essentially the same as the previous Loki job.

Now, however, there was almost no point. That one priest job gave him a double experience return as well as increased his learning stat by thirty percent on top of the job change skills which he needed two of; one to change main jobs and one to change the sub jobs. While it was true that he didn’t really need to worry about the latter as he could just simply use his ‘char:’ skill to give him access to the job change skill, change his main job to a priests job, then make all the changes he needed. Now, he didn’t think he would want to. He would lose an entire job slot, but in return it doubled his other three jobs’ growth rates. That essentially allowed him to level six jobs in the same time that he could level four if he swapped out the priest job for another.

Of course, his best course of action would be to free all those skills from the control of their jobs and allow him access to them at any time. But, he wasn’t able to do so simply because the amount of time it would take, especially for the passive skills, was absurd. Joe sighed and moved on from the priest jobs to the last set, taking a look at the partier group of jobs that he’d rapidly unlocked.

As he’d found, there were quite a few very much appreciated utility skills that he’d initially used in both defending the wall and in finding Kilniara. The initial job, partier, allowed him some interesting skills, including making groups, but he was still stuck at a group of three, as that was the max size his partier job was capable of at the moment. He did gain another subjob, but as it was locked by his gifted job still, he… Huh… should I try to level that one up then? Unlock another subjob? That would be… really nice! Let me see… Need about… uh… eight million for level forty… forty million for forty five… but… getting… one and a half million per kill with my current learning… so… only need eight kills to get to forty and… about fifty… just to be safe… so sixty kills… yeah… can do. So… can do about … well, I’ll make about forty two… three if I’m lucky… hmm… but… I could get gifted up to forty, maybe I can unlock another subjob! Nice! One job decided… what’s the others? No… wait… the skills!

Joe returned to looking at the skills he’d gained from his partier line of jobs. The guide, one of the three available jobs once the initial party job had leveled, offered interesting possibilities, giving him bonuses in understanding and finding dungeons and monsters. It also allowed him to set a goal and have ‘magical’ assistance in accomplish that goal. Joe wasn’t quite sure how useful it could be. It could go from utterly broken to absolutely useless.

Navigator was the one he was pretty happy with simply because of the new map skill, although it still wasn’t useful for one job slot. He already had one locked out by his priest job. It would definitely be become one of the slots used by the others, though. He figured each person could sacrifice one slot for a very useful skill to help the group. Having a group shareable map with a long range communication skill was incredible.

Looter was ultimately useless, although if he really needed to find a specific treasure, it might prove useful. Mule was likewise useless, simply giving him a lot of strength to carry a pack of things.

The last three really excited him, but he wasn’t sure they would be useful now to actually use them in a slot. Transporter gave him a magical space to put his stuff. Magic storage space! Magic storage space! He’d been so excited about it he’d spent way too much time playing with it. The fighting on the wall had been so constant that his exhaustion hadn’t allowed him to play with it to his satisfaction. But, he’d been able to practice with it every night since, even if some of it had been for fun and not always for experience gain for the skill as he had three skills he needed to work on and only two ‘chars:’ he had to swap between. He’d made sure to focus on healing, and swapped between healing and job changes.

What he could do, however, was make a group for them all. He couldn’t make the group, but maybe Gwenvair had an option. Didn’t the guild say the clan might have a six group partier, right? That’s what they said… I’m sure. Oh… Hmm… need to figure out how to show a party interface as well. Wish that was something that could just… be on the status… nah… not the status… more like some kinda HUD! That would be perfect!

“Gwenvair, I heard from one of the guilds that you, or your clan, sorry… your clan had a partier that could make a group of six?”

Gwenvair looked up at him, surprised by the question and obviously struggling to figure out how to respond. Joe found himself also at a loss, and considered retracting his question and implied request but Gwenvair interrupted him with her reply.

“Our advanced partier is not available at this time. They happen to be out of the city right now.”

Joe nodded, “Oh. OK. That makes sense.”

Gwenvair, “I can see when they return, if you wish.”

“Sure. Later.”

Gwenvair nodded and Joe turned back to his thoughts and plans. Hmm… what else can I do. Or… other party jobs… can’t really do much right now, except… what about… huh… last one is enhancer… enhances buffs and buffs… but… no buffer… wait… Joe looked at some of the skills and noticed that they also gave some basic buffs. He looked over the buffs offered but then frowned. Not worth it… not right now… Definitely in a big fight… or when we have space for jobs to burn, but no need now. These fights are too easy.

Joe then turned to job options, considering things carefully for a bit before just quitting and choosing he next jobs in line for duelist and warrior. There… my four jobs! He swapped out his jobs for them. He made sure to take a look at the next Loki priest job and found a Loki Cardinal open, and smiled. Nice! He swapped out his previous priest job for that, trusting that the cardinal job would soon be able to change jobs as well, especially as the last five Loki priest jobs had all been able to change jobs at level five. He could hit level five in pretty much one kill, and actually closer to level twenty, if he were to guess, so he wasn’t concerned.

With that done, Joe looked up the line and grimaced, as they had advanced only about half the distance, and he struggled to stifle the disappointment. He turned from his study of his jobs and status to people watch, but quickly grew bored and turned to the others' conversation before also growing bored quite quickly. His attention bounced around the area, finding nothing of interest, and he finally forced himself to engage in the conversation with the others. That helped pass the time relatively quickly and they were soon at the entrance of the dungeon and heading down the stairs. Finally!

The return to the dungeon almost felt nostalgic simply because of the overwhelming pressure that the monster tide had brought on top of the long days that left him exhausted. It felt a little strange to be back, but Joe also felt relieved, in some way, to be able to return to what passed for normal. Gwenvair tried to speak as soon as they entered the dungeon, but Joe quickly shook his head and she silenced herself politely although she did look at Joe expectantly.