“See you later then,” Lily said with a smile, then turned on her heel and left.
“Lily Harmonix...”
I unconsciously muttered her name as I watched her retreating back. No matter the situation, she made sure to always keep the perfect posture and make the perfect gestures to charm men. Even I couldn’t tell if I was praising her designer or cursing him.
“Goddamnit, her designer really did a good job with her!”
Well, whatever. For now things are going well, and that’s what matters.
My second meeting with Lily had gone more or less as well as I could have hoped. Seeing as she’d been cordial today, I probably hadn’t messed up too bad last night. In fact, it was possible me getting completely wasted had been a positive as far as my relationship with Lily went.
At the very least, I haven’t locked myself out of her events. In which case, I absolutely needed to recruit her to my side. Not because of her looks, but simply because of how useful she’d be.
I glanced down at my notebook, which was open to the page that had all of her growth rate information.
Strength: Normal
Vitality: Normal
Intelligence: Bad
Mind: Good
Agility: Bad
Focus: Amazing
Looking at just her growth rates, she didn’t seem like a particularly powerful character. Her total number of stat increases per level came out to just 19, which was higher than the average 18, but still lower than most unique characters, who had 20 or higher. Furthermore, her stat growth distribution wasn’t great either. She had high Focus, which was good for the Thief class, but sadly her Agility was too low. Her decently high Mind meant she could make for a good healer, but her garbage Intelligence would always hold her back.
There was, however, a singular class that could take full advantage of these particular stat growths, and that class was Bard. Performances required high Focus, and a high Mind raised your aesthetic sensibilities, both of which were things the Bard class needed. They were also the only two stats that were vital to the class.
BB was filled with many unique classes, but Bard was special even among them. It had no combat capabilities of its own, but the music and songs a Bard could perform buffed your entire party and debuffed groups of enemies. The Bard’s skills had large areas of effect, and unlike Mages and healer classes, their Class Skills didn’t cost MP to use.
While all of that made the Bard class sound amazing, they were incapable of doing anything else while in the middle of a performance, which was a pretty big weakness. Furthermore, it took way more class experience for them to learn their skills than it did for practically any other class. In fact, people had initially thought it was a bug when they’d seen the class experience requirements to learn them. To top it all off, any time you gave a bad performance to a crowd, you got rocks and tomatoes thrown at you, which was unpleasant to say the least. I’d given up on learning Bard’s skills from the start, and not even bothered to class change into it.
For that reason, someone who was already a Bard and knew a bunch of the Class’s Skills would be a valuable asset to my team. But Lily had even more to offer than just that. If you’d bought the limited edition first press run of Braves and Blades, your copy of the game had come with an extremely bulky character guide. And if you happened to peruse Lily’s entry in that character guide, you’d happen to learn her ultimate secret—her unique skill, Lorelei Voice!
Lorelei Voice allowed Lily to charm anyone who heard her voice. I had no idea if it worked on monsters, but it would be extremely useful when it came to negotiating with other people. That was why I absolutely needed to convince Lily to join me! With the people I had now, I could probably navigate most combat situations one way or another, but a lot of events required you to negotiate with people who weren’t enemies. If I had Lily by my side, I’d be able to leave negotiations to her. Which was why I’d taken action to meet her as soon as I’d escaped Recilia’s looming presence in my room at the inn, and why I’d continue on that path until she caved!
❈❈❈
From that day on, I made sure to visit Lily as frequently as possible between going around gathering items and farming levels. I gave her small gifts and listened to any requests she had. At first she’d kept her guard up, but after five or so conversations she finally started opening up to me.
“Umm, if it’s all right with you, can I just call you by your name? Adding ‘Mr.’ to it just makes it seem so formal...” she said in an adorable voice.
Oh my god, she’s too cuuute!
I agreed to her request without a second thought, of course. And it wasn’t because I was letting myself fall prey to her charms, oh no. I just figured she would lower her guard faster if I acted like I was acquiescing to her every whim.
Honestly, who am I even making excuses for...?
Whatever—regardless, around the twentieth conversation with Lily, the chance I was hoping for came. Until now, she hadn’t asked for anything despite me constantly telling her she could make whatever requests she wished of me. But this time when I’d asked, she’d finally taken the bait.
“There isn’t anything I want, but there is a request I’d like to make if that’s all right,” she’d said in a serious voice, looking up at me. “Would you be willing to go to a dungeon with me? There’s something I need to tell you.”
❈❈❈
“Here I go!” Lily cheered, launching into another song.
The dungeon she’d wanted me to take her to was the Cavern of the Flickering Moon. It was a special dungeon that was filled with a unique type of mana that rendered regular equipment and spells useless, so you had to go through it using the equipment laid out for you at the entrance.
Despite these special restrictions, the Cavern of the Flickering Moon was an extremely easy dungeon to conquer. The equipment you were forced to use was crappy beginner-tier equipment, but the enemies were also as weak as the monsters you’d find in a beginner dungeon. And while you couldn’t use spells or skills, you could still use Arts, and if you had the Motion Controller Z you could use those Arts manually too. Most importantly, Lily’s performances were not restricted by the dungeon, and her skills made getting through it that much easier. While she couldn’t fight, the many songs she played with her harmonica gave me boundless Strength and weakened the enemies considerably. Her songs were sometimes passionate, sometimes tender, and sometimes mystical, but they were always captivating.