Dragon X Someone You Forgot

By the time our little hunt had ended, my Level had increased all the way from 1 to 22, and the Lizardmen that had started as an insurmountable danger were now a foe I could fight evenly 1-on-1.

Well, “evenly” was probably the wrong word. When they hit me, it still chipped off a fairly sizeable portion of my HP, since I still lacked any armor save for the meager protection offered by my starting tunic. Meanwhile, it still took me almost a dozen direct hits to actually carve through their thick scales and take even one of them down, even if I did dominate the fight thanks to my newfound speed.

...Though I was beginning to realize that my speed was actually part of the problem. Imagine, if you will, what it would feel like if you went from being able to run about as fast as an ordinary high-school student to being able to match pace with an Olympic athlete, all within the span of a few hours.

Yeah. Maybe there was a reason the early game was designed for slow level progression and gently easing you into the combat system. For all my experience in VR games, I mostly stuck to those that expanded the player's options by giving them new weapons and moves to use – not by actually changing the parameters of the user's body and abilities. As a result, I barely had time to adjust to my new stats before they leveled up again and sent me tumbling through yet another hedge.

And speaking of “new moves,” that was the other problem – one which I only realized during a bit of idle chatter after our last pull. Dairoku had gotten a little bit carried away, and, in attempting to show off one of his flashier spells...

“[Diamond Phalanx]!”

...he had buried an entire clearing beneath hundreds of gleaming shards of ice, wiping the entire group of enemies I'd lured into our trap before Gray and I could even do anything.

“I'm glad you're enjoying yourself,” I had teased. “But is all the dramatic chanting really necessary? Why not just cast your spells without announcing it every time?”

“What are you talking about?” Dairoku looked at me like I'd just grown a second head. “You can only use the Special Attacks provided to you by your Skills by declaring their name.”

“...Huh?” Now it was my turn to be confused. “Really? Then how come Gray can enchant his arrows without saying anything?”

“Ah, no, I still have to say the names of my moves to activate them,” The elf corrected, hopping down from the tree in which he'd been hiding. “I'm just using [Stealth] to conceal myself so the enemies don't notice me, which means only people in my party can hear me.”

...Which I wasn't, thanks to our little leveling trick. But while I was wondering that, Dairoku had realized something else.

“...Wait, then what about you?” He asked. “Weren't you using [Skirmisher] to draw their aggro?”

“...I thought I was?” Somehow it came out more as a question than a proper answer. “I just kind of threw some rocks at them and then booked it.”

Dairoku sighed. “Well, it's not like you would have gotten much XP for your Skills anyway when you weren't the main source of damage... but did you seriously not pay any attention during the tutorial? The system AI explains all of this in detail.”

“I mean, I listened to what the NPC had to say, but he just told me how to equip skills – Wait, the System AI is supposed to tell you?”

Realization slowly dawned upon me as I began glaring up at the sky. After all, there was someone who'd been too busy telling me how silly I looked flailing a stick at rats to actually do her job and teach me the rules of the game she was invented to help oversee.

Someone who had been suspiciously silent for a long time now.

“SiLVA... Mind explaining why you left that part out?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Came the all-too-innocent voice of my digital assistant. “Besides, even if I didn't happen to mention it then, you always could have asked for my support if you had any questions, rather than just waiting for your all-knowing friend over there to tell you what to do.”

“...Wait, are you jealous? And hold on just a minute – I only started asking Dairoku for help after I cleared the tutorial, which you didn't help with one bit! If you wanted me to rely on you, maybe you should have offered me some advice sooner!”

“You've made it perfectly clear on numerous occasions that you dislike my backseat gaming, so I was merely following your instructions. And you, my heartless Young Master, then chose to ignore me entirely on your own, so you only have yourself to blame for your ignorance.”

“Why you –” I began, but stopped myself as I realized that the other two occupants of the clearing were staring at me in bewilderment, at the apparent argument which they were only getting one part of.

“...I don't really get what's going on,” Gray said. “But did you find some kind of hidden setting to make your SiLVA into a tsundere?”

“...If that setting exists somewhere, then as soon as I find it, I'm turning it off.”

- - -

...The less said about that, the better. At any rate, just because my Level had been going up didn't mean my combat Skills would do the same. Although [Detection] had raised up to Level 6 just from locating targets and picking fights with them, [Swordsman] and [Skirmisher] – the Skills that actually mattered – were still both stuck at Level 1.

Not that I needed the system to tell me how to swing a sword, mind you. I'd had plenty of experience with that, both as a hobby in real life back before my hospitalization, and in various VR games ever since. But judging by the difference in our combat performance against the Lizardmen, Dairoku's Spells and Gray's Special Attacks were vastly more powerful than any damage I could dish out just by following the age-old strategy of hitting things with the pointy end.

And while they'd been able to help me raise my Level, it seemed that increasing my Skills was something only I could do.

I was fine with that – and things worked out that way anyway, since Dairoku and Gray received a message from some of their guildmates shortly thereafter.

“It seems a new sub-area has been discovered deeper in the woods, with dangerous mobs and rare materials nobody's seen before,” Dairoku explained, apprising me of the message's contents. “Our [Midnight Council] wants to be the first ones to raid it before the [Silver Phantom Knights] catch wind of its existence, but apparently there's a roaming Boss that keeps attacking anybody who gets close – so they need all hands on deck.”

“Sorry,” Gray said, giving me a sheepish bow. “I would have liked to at least help you out with leveling your Skills some more, but...”

“It's fine,” I answered, dismissing his worries with a casual shrug. I'd been getting tired of riding the bus, so to speak, anyway. “I'm faster than the Lizardmen around here, and I can pick and choose my targets with [Detection]. Should be easy enough for me to do some solo hunting while you guys handle your raid, and once we're all done we can all meet back up in Alharth.”

So, we split the party, and I went back to stalking lizards through the underbrush. They tended to move in large groups, so there was a whole lot of waiting and not a lot of fighting – and a whole lot of snark from my assistant as I tried to wheedle out of SiLVA an explanation of what Special Attacks I even had available.

By the time I finally coaxed her into actually doing her job, I had found one: a lone [Feral Lizardman,] with its back turned to me. I crept closer as best I could...

...And then it immediately pivoted on the spot, gave a loud roar, and lunged for my throat.

Somehow, I had forgotten that [Stealth] was also a Skill – a Skill that I didn't have.

But as I scrambled backward, swiping my sword to keep the furious reptilian at bay, I could at least take comfort in the fact that this was still an even fight. I might not have had Dairoku and Gray watching over me anymore in case anything went wrong, but under their supervision I had taken on a couple of these beasts already and fared pretty well. Plus, my rate of growth had slowed down over the past hour or so, once I finally got close to the Lizardmen's own level and my XP gains dried up.

I was finally starting to get used to my new stats. There wasn't any reason to panic. I just needed to take this slowly and carefully, not trip over my own feet, and everything would be fine.

...It was at this moment that [Detection] helpfully informed me that something hostile was standing right behind me, too, and I remembered what Dairoku had warned me at the beginning of our hunt: the Lizardmen were pack hunters.

Which meant... Oh. That roar hadn't been to scare me. It was calling for help.

I spun around just in time to be greeted by a maw full of teeth.

“...Clever girl.”