Chapter 1:
The Ruthless Talker
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I WANTED TO BECOME as strong a Seeker as my late grandfather. No, stronger—the strongest of them all. That was how I could honor his memory.
But strength comes in many forms. Someone who defeated any foe they faced could be called the strongest, but such a person could never exist. We always brought our weaknesses into battle with us. Nobody was so accomplished a fighter as to be impervious to every enemy. Even my grandfather, the EX-Ranked Overdeath, exquisitely balanced in both offense and defense, had his limitations.
My class, Talker, meant that I would never develop combat skills of Grandpa’s level. It was impossible for me, as an individual, to become the strongest Seeker.
So what could I do? There was only one answer.
“I’ll create the strongest clan and become its master.”
A clan was an organization of multiple Seekers. Unlike parties, which were formed on a mission-to-mission basis, clans were officially recognized by the government. To put it simply, a clan was a glorified party. Certain conditions had to be met in order to be certified, but once a group became an established clan, they could also accept missions from the government directly. In other words, a clan was a true professional organization.
I could never become the strongest Seeker on my own. People are strongest when they work together, and so I needed to find the strongest individual Seekers to fill every class and forge them into an unstoppable fighting unit—the most powerful clan in the world.
Fueled by that ambition, I started looking for allies as soon as I arrived in the imperial capital. Luckily, I was able to put together a party with three excellent allies.
The slender, red-haired Lloyd was a Swordsman. Walter, a massive man with dark hair, was a Warrior. Our Healer was Tanya, a blonde beauty.
They were all rookies like me and had graduated from formal Seeker-training schools. They were all older than me. The only thing that matters to a Seeker is actual skill, but among rookies, there can be an excessive focus on small age differences. Infuriatingly, I wound up being considered the group’s kid brother. Lloyd was our party leader; I was practically a mascot.
It couldn’t be helped, at least not at first. I remained calm, bided my time, and took the opportunity to rack up some experience. A party’s roles weren’t set in stone. I could still rise to a leadership position, and if my comrades balked, I’d quit and find a new crew to run with.
I didn’t dislike the rest of the party, and I trusted them, but it wasn’t common for parties to stay together for long. I could leave at any time. Basing your decisions on logic, not emotion, was a skill a Seeker had to master.
But for now, I was a member of Blue Beyond. In order to fulfill my role on the team, I put everything I had into my work.
An Abyss could arise anywhere that mana concentration reached critical mass. It didn’t matter if the area was populated. That said, it was easiest for mana concentrations to occur in spaces far from human settlements, such as deep in a forest or in a cave, since such remote places weren’t routinely cleared of mana.
This time, the four of us had been dispatched to an abandoned mine that was once exploited by dwarves for mithril. The mine was deep and wide, but luckily, the Abyss had progressed slowly and was only affecting a fraction of the space. The abyssal depth was 4, a relatively low danger level. Even the beasts that had manifested, bloodsuckers known as lesser vampires, were ones for which we had established strategies.
Vampire types generally looked like humans, with great physical strength and regenerative abilities. They were onerous beasts with strong magic at their disposal, save for lesser vampires, which were an inferior subset of the species. Lesser vampires were vaguely humanoid, with four arms, a single cyclopean eye, and pure white skin. They were primitive and unintelligent, but could reproduce, and were even capable of parthenogenesis. A single vampire could birth a dozen offspring in a month’s time, making them a horrifying menace.
If we took too long to root them out, this cave would be overflowing with lesser vampires, and we’d need to call for major reinforcements. Even incapable of magic, they were still bloodsuckers who could tear apart an ox with their bare hands, and their superior healing powers allowed them to recover from any injury short of decapitation. Even a proficient Seeker would be doomed if surrounded by vampires.
No one in our group had scouting or tracking skills, so we had little knowledge of our surroundings. It would have been convenient to have a Scout or sharp-eyed Archer, but it wasn’t easy to find new members who meshed well with the current ones, even in the huge imperial capital. We couldn’t recruit just anyone—a member with subpar skills could do us more harm than the beasts we fought.
But Blue Beyond needed the work, so for now, we relied on Tanya’s Illuminate skill—a sufficient replacement for a trained Scout. We all kept our eyes open and beheaded lesser vampires as we came across them. We were careful to kill them quickly and quietly, so the great beast in the center of this Abyss wouldn’t notice us. We didn’t want to trigger a boss battle before we were ready.
A party with more raw combat power might be able to go straight for the boss and win. Eliminating a boss meant destroying the Abyss, causing all the lesser beasts to lose their connection to this world and return to the Void. Unfortunately, our party wasn’t that strong yet. In fact, we shouldn’t even have qualified for this mission—the minimum requirement was B-Rank, and we were all Cs.
It was up to me, the Talker, to make the impossible possible.
With my skills, I could not only boost the base combat power of the other members, but also increase the rate at which their HP and MP replenished. We wouldn’t tire out easily, even when using consecutive attack skills. Unless we were ambushed, we could keep winning. I could also limit depletion, so we didn’t need to rush into dangerous battles in the hope of winning them before we exhausted our stamina.
Talkers and other support classes were typically scoffed at as weak links in the chain, but I was no typical Talker. My grandfather had trained me well, and I was able to provide powerful support without burdening the party. It had been a year since Blue Beyond had formed, and our tactics had served us well. Our persistent ambition had gotten us mockingly nicknamed “The Rookie Giant-Slayers.”
Though it was still our rookie year, Blue Beyond had surpassed the other parties and was already recognized as the most effective C-Rank party in the capital.
But If I wanted to honor my late grandfather’s dying wish, I needed to aim even higher.