The Hero and the Demon Lord have fought since time immemorial, since before there was a definition of what was “just” or “righteous”. While the Demon Lord still lives, peace can never be obtained for humanity. On the flip side however, the Hero will always live on to combat the Demon Lord. When the Demon Lord is slain, a new one is crowned to replace the old, determined by a duel of the strongest between the many demon tribes. When the Hero is killed, his title is passed on to a worthy successor blessed by the Goddess.
There were many different kinds of Demon Lords and Heroes, from the honorable and the wicked, the strong and the sly; and then, the magical. They rose up from nearly all walks of life, from the rich to the poor and from villagers and legends. The only thing they had in common was how abnormal they were. Even if other races existed, there was no one in the entire world who could match them in battle except for the other. These two were simply pure monsters of combat potential.
The continent that they lived on was shaped like a left-facing crescent, where humanity lived in the south and demons in the north. The battlefield would constantly change, from the valleys of the human territories to the snowy mountains of the demons. The elves and beastmen lived in their cities to the east, who refused to participate in the bloody war. However, there were many beastmen tribes who lived in the plains located in the center of the continent who were dragged into the conflict.
Many Demon Lords and Heroes have died to satisfy the desires of man and demon, but even if they wanted to, there was no way for them to break this tie of fate that bound them together. These two existences are doomed to fight each other until the utter annihilation of the other is completed.
. . . But what if there were two Heroes?
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At least, that’s the setting of the game that I was playing called Adventurer’s Union Online, otherwise known as “Auo”. You played as an upcoming new Hero unknown to the world that would finally end the conflict of man and demon. The game was also known as “Ow” because of how punishing the game was. Yeah I know, it’s not the most inventive pun, but that’s what the rest of the community came up with. The difficulty of it was no joke however, and most players who joined it on a whim were usually ousted by the incredibly massive customization of skills and classes. If you weren’t able to join a guild soon after creating an account, you were probably going to be destroyed mercilessly by the tutorial boss of all things.
It’s just that there were so many ways for you to mess up your class, that picking what looked like a probable synergistic skillset wouldn’t be enough to tackle on the game. Take note of how I didn’t say that those skillsets were “bad”. In fact, it was kind of hard to make a truly horrendous skillset, and most are actually quite good. The problem is they aren’t good enough.
For example, the first boss of the game that you meet is a “Giant White Spider” which was level 12. In comparison, the mobs leading up to it only ranged from levels 1-3, so there was no reasonable way to grind up and fight it properly. Boasting high hp in the 300s and attack stats in the 100s, she was commonly known as the “Newbie Eater”. The average player reached level 5-7 before the boss with hp in the 50s and attack in the 20s. Taking this thing on alone was basically Game Over.
Or rather, I swear the developers are just miserable sadistic sacks of meat who take pleasure in causing suffering. To overcome the lack of stats in the average skillset, players banded together to make up for the missing firepower and utility. It was at this point when the game first came online, that most people formed a traditional 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 dps compositions. However, those developers made such a thing that the boss scales with more players! And they even gave the tutorial boss an actual title of “Newbie Eater”, which gives it 20% more damage against new players!
It was atrocious.
Of course there are certain players who live with a reckless playstyle of going at it alone. You could count the number of players who did this on your fingers though, and were basically legends in the community.
What’s that, you think that I’m probably one of those players? Ahahahahah.
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Yeah, no way. Those guys are just way too crazy for me. I’m perfectly fine with teaming up with my guild members for quests and using them as shields you know? When I looked at one of those crazy people’s classes and skill choices, everything was always focused towards one thing, in other words, an extremely one-sided build. There wasn’t any other way to beat things that were usually tackled by parties of 4 to do.
You could overwhelm the enemy and kill them before you died, or rely on complete evasion to dodge all attacks. There were some who dedicated themselves to a one-sided tank build(like my friend), but they definitely lacked the ability to kill things for themselves, so they just ended up in normal parties. In general however, people spread out their skill points and chose class cards that supported whatever they wanted to do.
Agggggh.
Speaking of which, my friend is squeezing me to death from behind. It must be closing time at the internet café that we frequent. We aren’t NEETS, okay? It’s just that we have a lot of free time! I had just gotten too lost in thought thinking about the new class card I had gotten, a custom class card.
How had I gotten such a thing you might ask? Well, let’s just say that my friend is probably suffering from a low sanity level in order to help me grind and win it.
Guuuuh.
And making me suffer for it too. It’s alright if you just leave now you know, you don’t have to wait on me. If she were still thinking in a normal person’s frame of mind, I think she would have insisted on staying behind for me, but the way her eyes were dead like a fish made me worry if I was in more danger by being with her.
In any case, she waved at me from the entrance of the net cafe and left just as the streetlights were starting to light up. I was soon ushered out by the café owner too as he began to lock up.
Remember how people always say to look left and right before crossing the street?
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I wish I could have used that custom card.
Recastdev 