Skills
Composition: Allows the creation of music data. Created music can be automatically played using Performance.
Performance: Plays music based on data. At certain proficiency levels, the user can play an additional instrument.
Codebreaking: Enables the decryption of any type of code.
Items
Insulated Gloves: Thick gloves that block electricity. Crafted by an advanced civilization to prevent electrocution, they're designed to save lives during work accidents, not for combat defense. Sturdy but not battle-ready.
White Night Witch's Lipstick: An item attributed to the renowned White Night Witch. She loved a noble's fifth son and used her powers to make him heir. This lipstick enhances the user's ability to charm the opposite sex. It's a finely crafted replica.
Prisoner's Chains: A specialty of the crumbling town. Heavy, durable, and nearly unbreakable, they can't be escaped through sheer strength alone, making them ideal for restraining prisoners. Their status as a local product speaks to the town's grim reality.
Three days into resuming the North Dungeon strategy, our progress is surprisingly smooth.
The dungeon's monsters are tough, no doubt, but their respawn timers are long. Once defeated, securing a safe zone is easy enough.
Traps—mostly electronic locks and optical sensors—aren't much of a threat if you're cautious.
It feels anticlimactic. The danger's creeping back, but unlike before, we're mentally prepared, not careless.
"Still, tackling it like this, Kayaba's successor isn't half bad as a game designer," Shinon says.
"Yeah, true. The enemies are grotesque, but their placement isn't malicious. Events are plentiful with solid rewards, and tough foes drop decent items," I reply.
"That's the thing. That lunatic's drop rate balance is something other VRMMO designers should study," Shinon adds.
While bantering, Shinon and I take on two eight-legged mechanical spiders at once. Diavel, behind Shinon, methodically picks off a swarm of floating, ball-like security robots trying to flank her.
These floating bots yield low EXP and Col but give a big boost to weapon proficiency. Unlike party-shared stats, weapon and skill proficiency grow individually based on performance.
Diavel's Red Rose has painfully slow proficiency growth, still at stage 8. Shinon's Spirit Bow Akatsuki, meanwhile, is at stage 13—a glaring gap.
Higher weapon proficiency unlocks a weapon's true potential, boosting power, critical rate, or hidden features.
For example, Shinon's Akatsuki can add a fire attribute boost to physical arrows, toggleable on or off. She turns it off for cheap wooden arrows but on for iron ones, like now. Each hit ignites the target, dealing extra damage. For robots, sustained fire damage weakens their armor, making attacks hit harder. This lets me take down the spiders with minimal effort.
The Red Rose has a hidden feature, too. Its description blatantly lists "???? - Unlocked at a certain proficiency level." Since Akatsuki's hidden feature unlocked at stage 12, Red Rose likely will, too.
No gamer, especially not a pretty boy like Diavel playing a gruesome game like this, would miss such a juicy opportunity. During dungeon runs, he obsessively checks proficiency, targets high-yield monsters, and grinds them.
Red Rose's insane durability means it can go three or four days without repairs. Diavel's also reinforced a longsword as a backup, so we're fine.
"…Whoa! Close one!"
One spider unleashes a new attack: a short-range, web-like laser—or rather, beam. I dodge with a quick backstep, but if its range were longer, I'd have been toast.
This is a chance, though. I unveil one of my two new skills from leveling up.
My feet glow green, and I lunge forward at bullet speed—Footwork's sword skill, Rabbit Dash. It burns some stamina but closes gaps fast. More importantly, the speed boosts motion value, skyrocketing normal attack damage. My war pick slams into the spider's head, the satisfying crunch of a critical hit echoing as it wipes out the remaining 20% of its HP.
It's practically a sword skill, and terrifyingly, Rabbit Dash combos with many others. But when I tried two sword skills at once, the stamina cost wasn't just doubled—it was like 1+1=2.3, draining extra. My stamina plummeted, and a tear-mark warning appeared in my status bar.
"Don't let your guard down! We don't know what new tactics or attacks these things'll pull!" Shinon snaps.
"I know, I know. You're as loud as ever," I retort, tapping my shoulder with my war pick's handle.
Shinon's melted the second spider's armor and destroyed its cannon the same way as before. It's no threat now.
Time to let our party leader finish it.
"Diavel, you done?"
"Just now. Can I take that?" Diavel asks, standing beside me like a knight from a heroic saga, probably thanks to his new Blue Shield.
ZOO gifted it to us as a token of trust and aid for the North Dungeon. The real motive? They wanted info on acquiring the Spirit Bow Akatsuki, still a mystery to most. Swallow, stuck with a starter longbow, needed a firepower boost, making her upgrade a priority for ZOO.
We tried prying the Blue Shield's acquisition method from them, but Rayfox shut us down: "No way, we bought that info from a broker for a fortune."
So, info brokers are popping up in DBO, too. Someone as gutsy as that rat girl. She once said no job has as many allies and enemies as an info broker.
"…What if it's her? How many unlucky SAO returnees are stuck in this death game? Guess that's why they call us Returners," I mutter, watching Diavel slice the spider in half with ease.