It Seems My Job Aptitude Didn't Come with Human Rights

【Flashback Arc】 The Joy of an Addict

『Lord of Grandeur』

Since its release five years ago, it has been a major title boasting one of the largest player populations in the world.

It was a game like a swamp, which I started playing near the end of my student years, and am still playing while working today.

I was so hooked on it that I would get frustrated when my game time was cut short due to increased overtime.

However, I had been playing since the early days, so I could always rank highly both in one-on-one battles in the arena, where strength is contested, and in castle sieges involving multiple guilds.

I was, indeed, one of the players recognized as an addict by myself and others. My player name was taken from my real name, Hayato Yuma, and I went by HAYATO.

An indispensable system in LOG (Lord of Grandeur) is the job aptitude. You can choose it when setting up your initial stats, and there are basic roles like warrior, mage, archer, thief, cleric, and merchant.

From there, you can advance to higher classes such as knight, magic swordsman, grand magician, summoner, hunter, ranger, assassin, rogue, priest, monk, alchemist, and Magitech Engineer(Machine Meister).

In LOG, the direction of your character is somewhat determined right at the character creation stage. This is because each job has a vast number of skills, and the combinations are countless.

The intention of the developers was to make it easier to raise characters. As they intended, players have continued researching the strongest characters for each job aptitude.

Due to the large player population, various character types have emerged, such as the one-on-one strongest characters, dungeon-specialized characters, and support characters for sieges, adapting to different situations.

Among them, there was a job aptitude said to be the most challenging: the merchant. Most of the merchant's skills are specialized in crafting, making them clearly the weakest in battle.

Additionally, it's only after advancing to the higher classes of alchemist and Machine Meister that they can finally become strong, and both are late bloomers.

Due to the long and painful training period, few players chose merchants as their main characters.

However, it excelled in crafting equipment and earning money, making it the most popular position for a sub-character.

But, in this scenario, as a veteran player, I considered the merchant's advanced class, the Machine Meister, to be the strongest job. While there was a need to overcome hardships, I believed it was worth the effort.

In fact, after mastering the Machine Meister over the course of six months, I created a character that boasted significant strength in both one-on-one and multi-opponent battles. The only miscalculation was needing five more skill points to reach the next level of strength.

Although I managed to develop it somewhat ideally, ideally, I would have ranked within the top fifty in the one-on-one arena and created a skill build capable of defending against multiple opponents solo in sieges.

However, in reality, my highest rank in the arena was world sixty-third. In siege battles, I was able to display the expected combat power, but I anticipated having a slightly more defensive skill configuration.

Would recreating it bring me closer to being the strongest?

As I was pondering this, a new update notification from LOG's administration arrived.

The introduction of the 『Reincarnation System』.

Characters that reached level 100 in an advanced job could reincarnate and start over from level one. At that time, their ability stats would return to almost the initial values, but they would begin with the remaining skill points.

Only LOG players truly understood how incredible this was. In contrast, those not playing LOG were unaware. LOG players were ecstatic. Skills that were previously abandoned could now be acquired. As soon as this update information was announced, players began reevaluating their skill configurations from scratch.

Players could now create ideal characters that were previously impossible, such as knights with automatic recovery and evasion skills, assassins with back-to-back critical hits, grand magicians who could cast two large-scale spells consecutively at high speed, and priests who could both create barriers and heal party members.

Until the update was implemented, I worked on my skill configurations daily. No one realized the potential of the Machine Meister.

In other words, three months post-update, there might be a future where my Machine Meister becomes the king of the world.

"... Okay! I'll do my best next week! Well then, good work, everyone!"

I turned off the power of my laptop and swiftly packed it into my gray free-address bag. After lightly cleaning the window seat I had used all day with a wet tissue, I stood up and bid farewell as I left the office.

Quickly storing the free-address bag in the personal locker at the entrance of the office and locking the dial, a junior colleague approached me.

"Oh, are you leaving already, senpai? That's early."

"I'm busy today. See you next week."

"Hey~ how about grabbing a bite together on the way home?"

"Next time, okay? Next time."

With that exchange, I quickly left the office. The truth is, it was six o'clock on a Friday night—the new system update was scheduled. There was no time to waste.

-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=
What could go wrong, right?