Kraant struck, violently, at his opponent, but could score no more than a glancing blow. It was infuriating, this… this thing being stronger than him, but he could absolutely, under no circumstances, ever let that win. That was the path of Raging Flurry, and while it was certainly ferocious, it was ultimately weak. Gina had finally gotten through to him, over the past few days, that he could not simply rely on strength. His magic, and his last-ditch attempts at melee combat, were both reliant on creativity, on intelligence, and not on brute strength. Perhaps, he admitted, letting his stat points allocate semi-randomly was a bad idea.

The annoying thing was that he was getting better. While he left his stats to luck (to a degree- he had a weighted-chance randomization formula), he couldn’t expect his first few levels to be easy. But if he switched to a more “optimized” formula, then he would lose the elusive “outlier” bonus that Gina insisted he still enjoyed- if only barely. Apparently the rumors were true, and more extreme playstyles would lead to more extreme results. Someone who had planned for a specific role since even before they created a character, and played that role to the hilt, would be more… impressive, than their counterparts. The hellish part was, it had to differentiate to a fairly extreme degree from the “average” playstyle. His choices were, apparently, random enough to give him a sort of “wild card” effect. Luck would play a much more obtrusive role in his game than in most anyone else’s, but he had to continue to rely on Luck to keep getting the benefit. It was both easier and riskier than relying on, say, a careful balancing of stats.

So, in order to capitalize on his… odd... stats, he had to find a balance between magical and mundane combat techniques. He pulled up his Interaction window, which showed (theoretically) his odds of success at various types of encounter, from physical combat to social intercourse.

Interaction Status

Physical

P. Def.

7

P. Dodge, Complete

0.7%

P. Atk., Melee

6

P. Atk., Range

0

Social

S. Def.

3.5

P. Dodge, Partial

7%

Soc. Atk.

4.5

Blend %

3%

Mental

M. Def.

3.5

M. Conceal

1.5

M. Atk.

3

Retain %

3%

His Shin of Trent was helpful, at least slightly, as both a physical and magical weapon. Those specific stats were in his Weapons Table, but they were good enough for now. His Physical attacks were… fine, as long as nothing needed him to attack at range (and he suspected holding a ranged weapon would change that value from zero… hopefully), but for some reason his Magic Attack value was still horrifically low. Maybe Trent shins just didn’t conduct Life mana well, who knew? There certainly weren’t a lot of Life Magi around for him to ask. So, despite his decent complement of surprisingly useful spells, he had to rely more on physical damage for now, so he could keep enemies off of Gina. Which would be easier, he suspected, if he could devise traps that he could deploy later… but his Trapper skill, even at level 5, wasn’t letting him create anything beyond set-and-wait traps.

On the positive side, at least Gina was better! She did, in fact, get a small scar on her knee, which didn’t impair her at all, and Pebl was…

Fuck! OW!

Pebl was smirking mentally as he chided Kraant for not paying attention during training. He’d been Kraant’s partner during these physical spars for a few reasons. First, he hardly took any damage from anything, while Kraant might accidentally injure Gina and mess up their progress… again. Second, Pebl needed practice moving under his own power, now that that was an option. As it turns out, gliding along behind a Master isn’t nearly the same as ducking and weaving while casting spells in combat. The last reason was that it gave Pebl an excuse to burn off some of his extra MP, which seemed to return according to different rules than Kraant’s. While Kraant had a certain chance of recovering an MP over time, based on how much effort he was spending and what he’d eaten or drunk, Pebl simply seemed to recover his at exactly one MP per 5 minutes. Which left him, normally, with a lot of downtime at Full MP. Since there was no reason not to cast spells, then, he’d been casting them pretty indiscriminately with the hope of improving his reserve and his skill at casting. Sadly, no real results could be seen yet, but everyone agreed that it was worth the risk of being caught early by a raiding party. Pebl never dropped below 4/5 MP, and if a group was near enough to notice any of his spells, they were near enough to catch the travelers anyway. All in all, it had been a very boring couple of days… but look! Through the trees! Kraant could almost see the vague outline of what might, possibly, be a village!

Of course, Gina had gone on ahead to determine what inhabitants the village might have, their disposition toward travelers, and a thousand other important details, leaving Kraant and Pebl to… train. Kraant swung his Shin of Trent half-heartedly. This game was boring. At least he could look forward to editing out this bit for the viewers- ow! Stupid Clara- ow! Fuck! Fine, full immersion… “stupid dumb grumble feggin’…. BASTARD. Grumble grumble…” he muttered under his breath.

He caught Pebl trying to send the image of birds winging toward his sudden outburst, but he resolutely ignored the rock. After several days, he was pretty sure his mental defenses had shored up enough to keep the rock out of his mind, dammit. His stats hadn’t changed, oddly, but the results were better.