Chapter 36
<Best Free Board Posts>
[I'm the Only Paladin]
Author: Save the Grad Student
Anyone interested in reading a Paladin guide?
First-ever solo Nightmare clear as a Paladin (8/6/7) (Combat Power: 100484)
(Screenshot)
-The Paladin's pick rate is 0%. Who's going to read this?
-What the hell, is this photoshopped?
-This is so boring it's obviously fake.
-Isn't this 'Daesal,' vice-master of the 'Korea' clan?
ㄴWhat the—it's legit lol
-No, what the actual fuck is this lololololololololol
-It's hard enough to solo Nightmare as a Paladin, but you cleared it with three types of debuffs applied?
ㄴWith 8/6/7 substats and 100k combat power, wouldn't it work in the Arena too?
ㄴEven a decent Diamond player would get their head chopped off, yeah.
-Can you even deal damage to the boss?
-This has to get featured.
<Best Strategy Posts>
[World of Arseria's New Meta: 'I'm the Only Paladin' (Serious/Long)]
I'll cut to the chase and start with a three-line summary.
Infinite healing
Infinite bonks
????
PROFIT!
Introduction)
The current Arena meta in World of Arseria is far too monotonous.
No matter how well-balanced the tank-DPS-healer setup is, the Arena is ultimately a battle of combat power, as even my runaway Poppy knows.
Let me emphasize this once more for you Bronze-Silver-Gold scrubs. The current meta isn't rock-paper-scissors; it's scissors-scissors-scissors. The bigger, more imposing scissors always win. I'll explain why below.
To pull your weight in the Arena, you need to be able to clear at least Solo Nightmare (5/5/5) while leveling through the story, but the accepted wisdom was that clearing was impossible in the first place because the Paladin, a healer class, couldn't deal enough damage to kill boss monsters.
That was, at least, until the Dimensional Descent Scroll appeared...
* * *
“Happy birthday once again, Laura.”
“Waaaaaaah! So we can really play games together now, Sis Name?”
“Yeah. You can use the capsule in my room. I’ll use the one in Professor Cheon’s room.”
“Sis, my heart keeps going thump-thump! What do I do...!”
Laura bounced on her feet, giddy with joy.
To celebrate Laura’s birthday, I invited her over to our house.
Professor Cheon Gyu-jin, who had been sipping coffee in the living room, burst out laughing when he saw us come in side by side.
“Looks like it’s snowing. You’ve got quite a pile of snow on your head!”
“Hello!”
“Oh, you must be Laura, Name’s friend. I hear it’s your birthday today?”
“Yes! I’m seven now!”
“Haha, happy birthday.”
Laura proudly held up seven fingers as she spoke.
The professor said he had to go shopping for the things we would eat for dinner later, and while he got ready to leave, I gave Laura a brief overview of today’s schedule.
“Once you’re inside the capsule, register your personal information first. If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask me and I’ll tell you what to do.”
Since Laura was using a capsule for the first time, there were several procedures to complete at the start.
Creating an ID, for instance, and creating an avatar.
“The game we’re playing is World of Arseria. Once you finish the initial setup and move to the waiting room, there should be a bookshelf. Go to the ‘Popular Games’ section and choose the second one from the left.”
“Hmm... Okay, I’ll try it! Sis, should I go in right now?”
World of Arseria.
A masterpiece of the RPG genre that appeared like a comet five years ago and completely turned the gaming industry on its head.
What made this game noteworthy was that it used a unique system belonging neither to RPGs nor MMORPGs.
It completely separated its ‘RPG-style story’ and ‘AOS-style PVP’ systems.
Once the story was cleared, a character’s final stats were determined according to its achievements and difficulty, and those stats could then be used in PVP.
New users had enough to enjoy just by playing the RPG, while hardcore users could create characters with the stats they wanted through repeated clears and test their characters’ performance during the PVP week.
Since the concept of each PVP battlefield changed every season, finding the classes and skill trees that suited the meta was part of the fun.
Of course, Laura and I were only planning to enjoy story mode for now.
I had thought it was just simulation software that let you use a little magic, but it had dethroned Legacy of Legends to take second place in PC-bang usage.
Remembering how viewers had once recommended it without telling me it was a game made me inexplicably annoyed.
“Sis, come check if I made my account properly!”
“Yeah, it worked. Now you just need to log in and make your avatar.”
“Uuugh, how should I make it? I definitely thought about it last night before going to sleep.”
Avatar creation was so important that some people even claimed the flower of any RPG lay in sculpting one’s avatar.
Of course, that was only something you could say after choosing your class.
“You have to choose your class first. What class do you want, Laura?”
“I want to be a hero! I’m going to be a hero, a hero!”
“Got it. Then I’ll choose a role that supports you.”
Laura chose the Hero class without a moment’s hesitation.
Since we planned to play through story mode as a duo, I naturally chose the ‘Healer’ class.
Just as the Hero class was divided into choices like using a two-handed sword or a longsword, the Healer class offered several options, including a Paladin, Priest, and Shaman.
None of the classes appealed to me.
That was only natural, since most mages could use healing magic too.
But today was, after all, a game I was playing with Laura, so I chose the Priest, which I estimated would have the highest healing potential.
[Creating avatar]
[Automatic/Semi-Automatic/Manual]
I was given a choice.
Whether to leave it completely to chance, or to carve every bone, bit of flesh, and tuft of down myself.
But what was this ‘Semi-Automatic’?
[Would you like to select semi-automatic avatar generation?]
[The AI detects the user’s brainwaves and generates the optimal avatar]
[Semi-Automatic]
[To generate a precise avatar, vividly picture the image of a person]
[Countdown: 10]
[Countdown: 9]
Brainwave detection?
What did brainwaves mean?
Anyway, since it told me to picture the typical image of a priest, I vaguely imagined the appearance of people from my previous world.
[Avatar generated]
But when I saw the completed avatar a little later, I slowly clenched my jaw.
Brilliant, curly silver hair.
Eyes with blue irises and not a single black pupil to be found.
Even the corners of her mouth, curved into a sneering smile, and her sharp jawline.
Above all, there was only one person who could possibly possess breasts of such monstrous proportions and thighs so firm they looked ready to burst her stockings.
“Sylvia Alphenheim...”
How vile.
Of all people, why did it have to be her...
[Would you like to delete the character?]
[Deleting character]
[Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?]
[This character has already been deleted] [This character has already been deleted]
[Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?] [Would you like to delete the character?]
[Runtime Error -2147217900 (80040e14)]
“Sis Name!”
“Huh...?”
“I finished making mine! How is it?”
Before I could get lost in my thoughts, Laura’s impatient voice brought me back to reality.
She spun around once in front of me, proudly showing off her avatar.
A fresh-faced country girl who looked about sixteen smiled brightly.
Her features so closely resembled Laura’s that I wondered if this was what Laura would look like after growing for ten years.
AI really was amazing.
“Is it really strange...?”
“No.”
[To generate a precise avatar, vividly picture the image of a person]
[Countdown: 10]
When I had been around the age of Laura’s avatar, I recalled my past life.
The day I first entered the academy.
I returned to that day—the day I was so excited to have escaped hell that I stayed up all night.
As expected, it was hard to adapt to someone else’s body.
[Avatar generated]
“You’re pretty, our Laura.”
Estasha,
It looks like I’ll have to borrow your body once again.
“Sis...!”
That brought our heights to roughly the same.
I forced myself to smile brightly and hugged Laura tightly.
“You’re really pretty, Hero Aurora.”
“Eee...”
“Laura?”
Laura suddenly began trembling.
“Sis, I can’t breathe...!”
“Ah, sorry.”
I must have hugged her too tightly.
“Um... Sis Name? Over there... um...”
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Aren’t your breasts a little too big...? It might be uncomfortable to walk around... I think...”
“This is big?”
Compared with mine, hers was undeniably pitiful.
Was it a difference in values?
Well, I had lived as an adult once before, so even when I looked at my body at sixteen, it hadn’t seemed particularly unnatural to me.
It was just a shame that I couldn’t bring myself to show Laura Sylvia Alphenheim.
Should I show her what truly big means?
“Anyway, let’s start.”
“Yay! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
[May the World Tree’s blessing be with you.]
* * *
What a letdown.
You could defeat wolves this easily?
A tutorial had appeared that hadn’t existed when I played before.
Laura diligently followed the arrows provided by the tutorial.
Then she found a wild-animal trap left on the ground by a forest hunter.
While I was wondering if something was off, I realized that a child named Repi was also nearby, not far from us.
[Prologue: The Child of the Oracle]
The familiar story-introduction text appeared, naturally accompanied by the howl of a wolf.
[Lure the wolf to the hunter’s trap.]
“Wolves are scary...”
But despite having complained, Laura succeeded in attracting the wolf’s attention, even bringing stones into play.
“Awooooooo!”
That wasn’t the wolf’s cry.
It was the sound coming from Laura’s mouth.
She really didn’t need to go that far.
Anyway, the wolves, now thoroughly enraged, charged straight at us instead of slowly closing the distance.
Naturally, the trap was more than capable of catching ten wolves.
With a metallic clack, they collapsed one after another right in front of us.
“Wow! We caught a doggie!”
“It’s a wolf, not a doggie.”
Correcting Laura’s mistaken knowledge was an added bonus.