We spent three whole days learning "Transform".
Once we had the equipment, the skills and the target to make the repdigit damage, all we had left to do was to pray to heaven for us to be lucky. Therefore, it took a while.
Well, that was fine. But the thing is.
...What I was afraid of, became a reality.
"In the name of the Knights of Justice, I will bring judgement upon you, bastard! ――Transform!"
Currently in the garden of the mansion in the east.
Silvia was practicing poses alone against a palm tree, thinking nobody was watching her. Then, before I knew it, she was also trying to change her lines.
"Hmm, for my chivalry...no, your sins have been...」
And thus, she tried to improve them.
I would like her to stop walking around while muttering those lines since she totally looks like a suspicious person, after all, she can't transform again until the transformation wears off.
By the way, in case you're wondering what kind of appearance one has after transforming, that's quite simple. The color and patterns on the gear currently equipped changes, and a mask and a cloak are added. With "Transform" you can select any of the four major attributes. In the case of Silvia, since she chose 『Fire Attribute Transform』, her equipment became the color of a flame, and the mask she wears is also fire-like, her cloak appearing as if she was wearing a flame.
However, as you'd expect from what was a game, it's not just a fire-like pattern. It's more like "living flames". And they are in 3D. Her whole body looked like it was actually engulfed in flames. And since that's an appearance you wouldn't see in reality, it looks very cool. That can be said to be the main reason Silvia got addicted to using it.
Well then. An unexpected point came to light with this attribute selection thing for me.
That's right, I was able to choose 『Lightning Attribute Transform』. Of course, leaving aside the four major attributes, this was a transformation I had never heard about.
And I was even more surprised when I actually transformed. Unlike Angolmois' red-black lightning, mine was a blue-black lightning. And it gushed out from my whole body. The design of the mask and cloak was one I had never seen either.
A never-seen-before design―― no way. Was it an element originally hidden? Or maybe, it just something newly designed?
There's no problem if it's the former. But if it's the latter, most likely this world has received an "update".
In other words, there are elements that have been added that I'm not aware of. This gives me both anxiety and joy at the same time.
In any case, this is a problem I can't do anything about, so no use worrying about it. But I have to keep it in mind. If I am to reign as the top in the world, then eventually I'll face something unknown.
"Divine punishment――First Shot! "
I decided to ignore Silvia, who started practicing her special attack and went to see Yukari.
In addition to ordering certain weapons and armor, I need her to do "Performance Enhancement"――
———-
———
It's been a while since then.
I think around two weeks have passed. We've been earning experience all this time.
I've got companions. I've got a home to return to. That home is a mansion. This truly is great! We're filled with motivation.
However, Silvia and Eko's Dragon Horse and Dragon King haven't gone up that easily. The required experience points are ridiculously high. And adding to that, that stupid Silvia trying to pointlessly raise "Transform" has made it even less efficient.
Yukari, on the other hand, has gotten her "Disassembly" skill decently up. It's almost time for her to begin playing an active role as a blacksmith.
And, as for me――
"...Alright, preparations completed."
――I'm ready. My preparations have been completed.
As of right now, I've raised "Transform" to Grade 9.
The skills I needed to 'prepare' were "Rook Archery"at Grade 9, "Bishop Swordsmanship" at Grade 9, "Dragon King Swordsmanship"at Grade 6, "Lightning Attribute・Third Form" at Grade 6, "Critical" at Grade 9, "Spirit Possession" at Grade 9, "Transform" at Grade 9, and "Tame" to the 11th Class.
Any attribute of magic was fine, but I chose Lightning Attribute just because I felt like it. "Transform" was quickly raised to Grade 9 due to its low experience requirements. And although I'd have liked to get "Dragon King Swordsmanship" to Grade 9, I stopped there because of the incredibly high amount of experience required to raise it from 6 to 9.
"Tame" is from the [Summoning Magic] system, a skill to train monsters, and at the 11th class it can be used on 「Wolf-type monsters」. It can be used when the monster's health was in the remaining 2/10s of HP, and while the probability is said to be 20%, that probability greatly varies depending on the type and strength of the target monster. By the way, increasing the skill's rank also increases the success probability and the variety of monsters that can be tamed with it.
Well then.
For what reason did I go through these preparations?
The answer is, I made all these preparations in order to tame a certain monster... no, a certain demon.
Its name is 「Darkness Wolf」.
The answer is, I made all these preparations in order to tame a certain monster... no, a certain demon.
Its name is 「Darkness Wolf」.
Inside the upper-class dungeon 『Isoreus』 a mutant species of the dungeon boss 「Dark Flame Wolf」 has evolved after hundreds of years living in the solitude of darkness. The 「Darkness Wolf」 is a rare and terrifying demon ―― Or at least, that's the setting it had.
...Let's get straight to the point.
It's no exaggeration to say that I was able to maintain my position and reign at the top of the world in Mobius all thanks to this Demon. It was overwhelmingly more powerful than any other monster that could be tamed, making it almost cheat-like.
In other words, in the ranking of 'Demons that I really need to tame no matter what', this one ranks first by far.
In the past, there was only one person who was able to tame the Darkness Wolf. That's right, me. At least, during the time I played Mobius, no other player was able to tame it.
Why? Because its difficulty level made it nearly impossible to be tamed.
In the first place, normal players never even got the idea of "Let's go and tame the Darkness Wolf". The reason for that was "Bosses can't be tamed". It couldn't be helped since that was common sense.
And on top of that, the Darkness Wolf was incredibly strong. It was so strong, people even had a hard time trying to defeat it. Therefore, nobody even thought of trying to tame it.
But the truth was, the Darkness Wolf was tamable. The reason was simple. Although in the lore, the Darkness Wolf was a mutated evolution of the dungeon's boss, it was treated as a completely different entity compared to the boss.
I noticed that fact by the way the corpse disappeared. Originally, whenever you defeat a boss in an upper-class dungeon, a cut-scene will play and the corpse will disappear somewhere along the movie. However, there was no cut-scene when defeating the Darkness Wolf, and its corpse disappeared after a certain amount of time, just like a "normal monster".
Yeah, that's when I had my suspicions. Maybe there really is a chance to do it――Thinking so, I repeatedly tried to tame the Darkness Wolf after bringing it down to less than 2/10s HP.
The result was a crushing failure. After attempting 1,000 times I felt "As expected, it's impossible to tame it", since it would be an unheard rate below 0.1% at this point.
At first, I went at it deciding to try for at least 1000 times and see what happened. And obviously, those 1000 times were no good. However, I wondered why? I couldn't shake off that feeling. No matter how you looked at it, the way its corpse disappeared was similar to a normal monster. Therefore, the Darkness Wolf should not be a boss.
Whyーーーーーー? I didn't think my reasoning was wrong on this.
Gradually, I was just pissed off, or rather I was simply stubborn, so I continued to hunt the Darkness Wolf endlessly afterwards. 2,000 tries, 3,000 tries. Day after day, from morning until night. I wanted to settle this doubt as soon as possible, so I just pushed through. But there was a silver lining. Since the battle was short, I could keep my motivation.
And finally, the time came. After trying for over 4,600 times, I was finally able to tame it. Yeah, and my predictions were correct!
This is something I found out later, but it seems the taming chance was about 0.0001% and it ignored Tame skill's probability correction. I remember a GM saying to me at an in-game event "It was prepared as a joke, but you did well taming it (lol)", and I almost flipped out.
The Darkness Wolf can be tamed――all the game addicts that heard that information embarked into the taming journey. However, no player was ever successful in it.
The obvious result. Even if the no-life gamers tried, they struggled and gave up, moreover, with a probability of 0.0001%, it couldn't be done without discipline. "It's impossible", complaints like that were posted a lot in the wiki.
...And that impossibility, I'll be challenging it again. I was getting ready for that.
And as for the method, I sorted that out in the past. My body remembers all of it. It can be called a complete strategy, in and out. A plan to easily shave off the Darkness Wolf's HP. However, although the same, this world is definitely different from Mobius.
"It's over when you die", being the main difference.
However, if I can tame the Darkness Wolf, the world's top spot is as good as mine. There's no way I won't try it.
Geez, it's been a while since I last felt scared.
I might die. I tried reducing the risks as much as possible. I also have an insurance in case of an emergency. Still, I can't get rid of this anxiety.
...And just in case, I should raise "Dragon King Swordsmanship"to Grade 9 just to be safe. I'll also raise "Lightning Attribute・Third Form" magic to Grade 9. Simply put, I have to raise my stats more. It's okay to try and be safer, right?
That's right, that's the case! Or so, the weaker parts of me screamed loudly. But I forced myself to swallow those words. Once I start to think about more safety, there will be no end to it. I'll simply continue to make excuses in order to run away from it, and I won't be able to get back up for the rest of my life. Back in Mobius, I never ran away. If I were to run away once, the whole of my persona will collapse.
Currently, the Castall Kingdom and the Marubell Empire are fighting under the table. If I'm taking things too slowly, it'll be too late once something happens. I really want to tame the Darkness Wolf before fire comes raining down on me.
And since I don't know how long it will take for me to do it, in terms of timing, now is the only moment. I know it will be hard.
—————–
"Alright, now it's only the finishing touches."
Carefully pondering over my resolution, I went over to Yukari.
I told her to complete the equipment I asked her about first, over everything else.
A Mithril Longbow and a Mithril Sword, plus a variety of Mithril Alloy armor. The weapons were ordered at five out of six enhancement stages, and the armor at four out of five. Each weapon enhancement is specialized in attack speed first and attack power second. And all armor is specialized in defense. Additionally, I asked for a stage three enhancement for the 『Ring of Pursuit』.
Incidentally, I noticed it. It's wrong to overwork Yukari this much.
However, I can no longer think of reaching the top without her. Hmm...That's right. While I'm with the Darkness Wolf, I'll let her spend her time relaxing.
Silvia and Eko on the other hand, are becoming hopeless.
These days, those guys are reluctant to leave their elegant life in the mansion. The times they work on their official role has also decreased. Some days, just seeing them pains my heart. If they get too full of themselves, it would only endanger their lives. Therefore, I thought of a special training menu for those two.
Aside from getting the equipment from Yukari, I'll also hold a strategy meeting with everyone.
There's a lot of things I need to tell everyone. Well, for example, I have to tell them what they should do if I were to die.
We–ll then, tonight will surely be a long night...