Raven Hunters (P5)- Status Qou

The party consolidated its rewards before Darius called them together for another meeting to decide what the new party rotation would be with Queen's change in occupation and who among the party would go back to sell the useless items filling their inventory. Before he could start though, Soldier motioned for him to wait, clearly having some problem.

"Is there a problem Archer?", Darius asked Soldier straightforwardly as the two of them had gained a good enough understanding of one another to not need pointless posturing, prodding and posing to gauge one another. "I believe the party's current situation warrants either a change in item priority or for me to bring over more of my other party members to warrant us getting a 60% share", Soldier started straight-forwardly.

Darius knew it would come back up eventually once the others who were drafted on this mission with him adapted to the game and started showing their gifts, but it was clear that something in that last fight triggered this reaction from him early. "I understand the sentiment, but what made you bring it up now?", Darius once again asked straightforwardly. "The sole fact that you have mastered two of the seven Fangs of Basilisk", Soldier said simply.

"For something like that??", Darius asked in confusion. Sure, his techniques were comparable to some of the best complete technique sets out there despite him only revealing 7 of them. But simply showing two techniques shouldn't warrant what is clearly a skilled and fairly knowledgeable gamer to feel his side was lacking. "Let me be clear, I am doing this because I have a gnawing suspicion that you are closely connected to Basilisk himself, probably some lesser-known rising star in Ethereum", Soldier elaborated.

"And you are relenting on this as both a way to acknowledge the value being brought by both sides within the raven killer party... and as a means of giving your party a means to show your stuff to a member of the country's biggest guild to see if you all make it", Darius summarised out loud after the realisation. "Alright then, call in whoever you wish", Darius decided, "just note that we aren't accepting more than 10 people in this party", He said before letting Soldier and his group step aside to discuss.

"This Ethereum that you kept mentioning during the briefing, what is it?", Bjorn asked in a serious tone, "None of your business Sargeant Sanders... It has nothing to do with the mission so you don't need to know", Darius responded calmly as he started walking off towards the new field-zone beyond the bridge. A tomahawk to flew past his head and plant itself on the ground in front of Darius.

"Whoops- My hand slipped", Bjorn said with as much sarcasm as he could muster, "But since you're over there already why don't you help me pick my wea-", Before Bjorn could finish what he was saying he saw a notification that he had been kicked from the party before catching the tomahawk that was thrown straight as his head.

Bjorn took 15 damage and blinked in confusion at what was happening, " Sargeant Bjorn Sanders... It was you who insisted on joining this party in place of your betters", Darius started with a sigh, "So you are either going to remain silent and speak when spoken too... or I will execute you now and make an example out of you for the rest of our group on the real meaning of 100% immersion", Darius stated in a matter of fact tone as he drew his weapon and turned to face Bjorn.

"What?? Do you think I'm scared of you or something?? I took your orders because of the mission Masters... If you don't pipe down I might have to take over this opera-", Once more Darius didn't wait for Bjorn to finish talking and blitzed in front of him in an instant. Bjorn was faster though and swung both his weapons to cleave Darius' head off just to hit the air and have Darius cut clean across his Pelvis, dealing no damage but triggering the bleeding effect.

"It is Officer Masters to you my friend," Darius stated from a few yards away, "I will now educate you on the difference between us", Darius said with a frown and Bjorn rushed at him swinging wildly at Darius hoping to overwhelm with a higher speed stat. This annoyed Darius slightly thanks to the clause that came with his 2nd Fang technique, he wouldn't be able to fully supress him like he planned but instead had to settle for a regular victory.

Darius dodged mindlessly for 10 seconds letting the bleeding effect stop naturally, taking 42 out of Bjorn's 210 health. Once that stopped, Darius waited for Bjorn's next attack to launch before disappearing from Bjorn's line of sight. Bjorn's head was cleaved clean off of his shoulders with his taking 160 damage naturally, an extra 160 perfect critical damage, and an instant 'death' for taking off Bjorn's head. All in all, even if he didn't severe Bjorn's head, Bjorn would have died from the 240 damage.

Bjorn's body dissolved dropping both of his weapons, with the party getting no exp since one only got a quarter of the natural exp count for killing players and regional NPCs. That being distributed among 6 other people after already being dropped resulted in 0 exp for everyone. "That's disappointing... I was hoping to win without needing to do use that", Darius muttered taking solace in the fact that Bjorn's exp was likely going to be butchered by the death. And he was right, normally for being killed by something of the same level you would simply lose 5 exp, now that amount is doubled because it was a player kill, and then multiplied by six because the player was in a party of 6.

In total Bjorn lost 60 exp and his weapons from one fight, while that didn't seem like a lot, his total damage went down by 30 and he had gone back down to barely halfway to level 4. For context, even the weakest players in the region were level 1 by now, the sub-par were high exp level 1 to level 2, the average player in the region was level 2, the elites were low exp level 3, the upper echelon of players were mid to high exp level 3, and the top 100 players in the region were at least level 4 with nobody having any specifics on how strong they all were at this point. Bjorn had dropped from a strong upper echelon to barely upper echelon in 1 fight.

"If you don't mind my asking boss... I would like you to explain your techniques further, at least the ones you used just now", Queen asked earnestly. Removing Bjorn was one thing, but she refused to let herself be on the receiving end of someone else's techniques and have no idea how to defend herself. "Listen well then", Darius said as he sheathed his weapon. "Like you were briefed when we were preparing for this mission, games like these often allow some level of technique translation from the real world into the game... It is the function that allows a 5-star chef in the real world to cook better than your average player as the technique he built up while cooking would translate into an in-game technique", Darius started.

"These techniques carry on the full drawbacks and benefits that they would have in the real world, however, they would also be subject to the laws of the game... for instance, if someone cuts off a living thing's head, the natural effect would be for the attack to be counted as a perfect critical, regardless of skill, and also be automatically counted as an instant kill regardless of defence", Darius summed up to get the background information out of the way. "With that in mind, I developed a series of techniques based on my experience in the military that I translated specifically to assist with combat holding a shield... There are 9 of these techniques so far, 7 of which I have used in public, and 3 of which I used earlier", Darius continued.

"Each set of techniques has a name- They are given either by the creator or the general public, with mine being called the Fangs of Basilisk, Named by my guild, Ethereum... The set of techniques won't be complete until I create the final 10th stage but that isn't important at the moment", Darius added before taking a seat. "The 3 techniques I just showed you guys are the first three Fangs of Basilisk... they are named First Fang: 'Overload', Second Fang: 'Increase', and Third Fang 'Reversal' respectively".

"With Overload, I block in a certain way that makes the opponent lose strength with each strike correctly blocked, their weapons get heavier to them and they steadily lose speed until their body is entirely paralysed and at my mercy; that final paralysis lasts for 30 seconds before the effects of overload wear off and I have to start over... There are a bunch of other factors that go into it but that is the basic idea of my first technique, in this game the technique allows me to ensure that every block I make with it is a guaranteed perfect Block".

"Increase is a more observation-based technique that allows me to react to any type of attack at most 5 times faster than myself, it was initially developed to react to bullet fire but was made into a technique... There is a lot of stamina burn but to summarise I can only use the technique for a little over a minute and a half in one go before i face draw back", Darius finished before sitting up. "As for Reversal, I only used this technique once and it was when I beat Sergeant Sanders just now... I make a sudden counter-attack in the middle of the target's initial attack swing, my counter does twice the damage I would have received for taking the attack, and it ignores any unique physical defence or anatomical benefits the target may have, dealing damage directly to the muscles and organs of the target depending on where they are hit".

"In terms of power I'd say each technique is just about stronger than the previous form with some being used as support to make other techniques more powerful... this being especially prevalent with the 8th and 9th 'Fangs'", Darius finished up with air quotes before turning his attention to the returning Soldier, Blade, and Silence.

Queen digested all of the information she just received from Darius, taking a military perspective to the matter rather than a gamer one. A perspective that any tried and true military man would have shared after hearing about Techniques from an ex-militant. This world would serve as the perfect training ground to hone the instincts and combat styles of soldiers across the world.

Darius reached a similar conclusion when he initially discovered it himself but chose to keep mum about it as his way of staying uninvolved in political affairs in the world. Now that he was involved anyway he might as well have someone else be the one to share this discovery and take credit for it. "How quickly does one usually take to develop these techniques?", Queen asked incredulously. "Depending on the skill of the player, the talent of the player, the experience of the player in the given field, the difficulty of the field in question, and the efficiency of the technique in question... It takes your average player over a year to develop a technique, while most players never complete technique sets in their entire lives", Darius admitted honestly.

"How long did it take you to develop your 9 techniques??", Queen then pried further as she wanted to have a rough idea of how long it would potentially take her, " I finished the first technique in 3 months, the rest were completed in a month each, but I waited 2 months between each technique creation... All in all, I took 2 years and 3 months to complete my 9 techniques", Darius admitted honestly before turning to face Soldier, Blade, and Silence who had finally rejoined them.

"Our Parties Mage, Bow staff wielder, and other swordsmen will be arriving with our healer to join us in this field zone", Hearing this Darius froze for a moment, "You guys had a healer??", He asked before realising that if it was him and some random player was looking to hire a party he wouldn't be jumping at the gun to mention his party's healer either. "Actually Never mind, just tell them to get here within the next 5 hours and be level two at least by the time they are here", Darius ordered before looking ahead at the field zone before their group- Things were about to get a lot more serious very quickly.