“That doesn’t mean you can slack on this race! We’ve made it this far, so we might as well win! I’ll shut up now. Focus, girls!”
“Yeah, true! Let’s do it!”
“Bleeeh.”
For a while, the only noise was the sound of our pencils against paper.
Maeda, who had been looking at the Dealer’s Desk, suddenly piped up, “Huh?! What is this?!”
I glanced up from my work. “Hm?”
Yano did the same. “’Sup, Kotomi?”
“What is it?” Akira asked.
“Everyone, look!”
She turned the screen toward us. There was a video on it with familiar scenery: Aswarth’s Undersea Ruins. So this was a gameplay video, was it?
“Hellooooo, boys and girls!”
The Death Chariot appeared on-screen, accompanied by a cheerful girl’s voice. It waved its hands at the camera, something that the real Death Chariot would never do.
“Is that Death Chariot gear?!” I blurted. “And hey, I know that voice. That’s Emily!”
The person in the gear took the mask off, revealing Emily’s face beneath it.
Smiling sweetly, Emily said, “We’re just about to go and fight the Hadean Rose everyone’s been talking about at Aswarth’s Undersea Ruins!”
“Ooh. Did Emily’s party win too?!”
“They must’ve!” Yano insisted. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have put the video up.”
“But why has she donned that equipment, I wonder?” Maeda said thoughtfully. “Nothing else looks like it, correct?”
I shrugged. “Dunno. I think it’s the real-deal Death Chariot gear.”
So did her party collect all the pieces, then? I guess she was there back when Ryuutarou received the robe. Of course she’d come to the same conclusion as me. I wouldn’t expect anything less from her!
“The keys to this raid will be this equipment and this magic right here: Elemental Circle!”
Having put the Death Chariot gear back on, Emily cast Elemental Circle. Due to its hidden effect, it naturally guaranteed a dark circle. The purplish black circle appeared on the floor.
Wow, she’s using symbologist techniques!
“Huh?” Akira blinked. “Did Emily change classes to symbologist?!”
Yano seemed floored. “Is she tryna do the same thing you did, Takashiro?!”
“It’s the one-shot, ignore-the-mechanics strategy!” Maeda pointed out.
“It did let us win with just a minute left,” Akira said. “That’s about as easy as it gets.”
“She stole your strat, Takashiro! Doesn’t that tick you off?”
“Heheheh. She has a good eye! This means my strat caught the eye of a pro, doesn’t it? That sounds great to me!”
I had told Emily all about my basic symbologist strategy, complete with skills and talents. If she thought it would help her, then I was happy to let her use it all she wanted. As long as people saw the symbologist in a new light thanks to my experimentation and planning, that was good enough for me.
In fact, I was overjoyed that people would imitate me. That meant that people saw worth in what I was doing. I didn’t necessarily need to be the one who initiated its spread. Emily had adopted my method and streamed it, so she had my full support.
“So are Emily and her pals gonna win?” Yano asked me.
“Yeah. Like you said, they wouldn’t have uploaded this video otherwise.”
“And does that mean everyone’s gonna copy you?”
“If so, I couldn’t be happier. I bet symbologists wearing Death Chariot gear are gonna line the streets.”
“Yeah, but it just doesn’t look good. Like, it makes everything else around it look ugly.”
“That’s cool! Function over form!”
“But we still don’t have the Rainbow Guard yet.”
“Oh yeah. Let’s hurry and finish this homework!”
“What happens if the people who copy you turn in their homework first? They’re gonna overtake us.”
“That’d be tough! But the video’s up, so we can’t stop them. As soon as we finish watching, let’s speed things up.”
Maeda gave us a stern look. “You’d better. In the end, it’s a contest to see who’s finished their summer homework.”
“Kinda wholesome, if you think about it,” Akira commented.
While we talked, Emily explained their strategy—which meant explaining the basic construction of the drama cannon and how the Elemental Circle worked. Unsurprisingly, the key to all this was the dark circle. The max-HP boost it gave doubled firepower along with durability.
Elemental Circle was still relatively new. The fact that it hid such an explosive boost to symbologist firepower was its greatest draw. Plus, all it took to get the dark circle every time was the full set of Death Chariot gear. With this, it was possible to go specifically for dark circles and use the resulting HP increase to boost firepower. Relying on pure chance just wasn’t a real strategy. Nobody would have been willing to adopt it then.
“Ren, what do you think she’s gonna do? That won’t be enough, will it?” Akira asked.
She wasn’t wrong; according to Emily’s explanation so far, she was only at the step where I had initially given up and sent the gang to fight for me. Specifically, that was the step where she could only break through 20,000 of the Hadean Rose’s 30,000 HP. I had Tie Shan Kao (temp) thanks to Master Mommaru teaching me it as a limited quest reward. That was what had allowed me to break the 30,000 damage barrier.
“Good point. But since they put the video up, they must have found a way.”
At that moment, Emily wrapped up her explanation.
“Well, it’s time for the main event! Here we go! Let’s do this thing, Lucas!”
“Yeah! This will be over in the blink of an eye, so don’t miss it!” came Lucas’s voice.
When he appeared on-screen, he was also wearing the Death Chariot gear.
“Oh, I get it!”
20,000 times 2 is 40,000. In other words, insta-death for the flower!
To change classes while retaining your level, you needed the item Wings of Reincarnation. In order to get that, you needed to trade in 800 Merit Points, which were supplied based on test scores in school. That meant you needed to score 800 points on the test.
Our MEP was close to zero, so we never had the option to change someone’s class in the first place. Of course having two symbologists in full Death Chariot gear with Caneswords bearing Peregrine Stones would make any job easy. Without Tie Shan Kao (temp), I would have had to find a way to clone myself.