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CH.516 Testing a Skill Weapon
CH.516 Testing a Skill Weapon
“Brian!” Wilma burst into my office, holding a spear in her hands. “It’s done!”
“Already?” I asked, knowing fully well what she was referring to.
“Yes. Just finished. We are about to see if it works.” She responded.
“Alright. I’ll be there.” I agreed, as I put away my current smartphone designs.
We then headed to one of the practice grounds, and few of the others were also there.
Molly was there, because out of everyone on HomeBase, she was the only actual employee to hold the Spear Technique skill. A few of the current dhampir students also have it, but they are students and not employees.
Wilma then brought out a second spear, nearly identical to the one she was holding, and tossed the second one to me. I caught it and tested it out a bit.
Because while I might not have the Spear Technique skill, I have held a spear a few times, so I can at least get a feeling for it.
I did a few practice thrusts and slashes with the spear. Yes, you don’t usually slash with a spear, but depending on the spear point, you can slash with it.
I brought out a few practice dummies and retried with them. The spear felt fine, but it didn’t feel like I really knew how to use the weapon, and I was just playing around instead.
“Alright. Can I try the other one?” I asked, as I tossed the spear I was holding to Molly, while making sure I could stop it with Telekinesis in case the centaur wasn’t paying enough attention, but it wasn’t necessary, as Molly snatched the spear I tossed towards her.
“Of course. How was the base spear?” Wilma said, as she handed the spear she had been cradling in her arms to me.
“Pretty nice, but I’m no spear expert. I can summon one if you want some better feedback.”
“Later, please. Test out that one. I think you’ll be able to tell the difference.” Wilma said.
I did a similar exercise with the second spear, and admittedly, I did feel the difference. My thrusts were a bit more accurate, my slashes faster. Almost like the spear was telling me how it wanted to be used.
It wasn’t nearly to the point where you can get with Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword, but it was clearly better than just a regular spear.
I turned back to Wilma, ready to give her my feedback.
“I think you noticed, but it is better.” I told her.
“Yes, I noticed.” Wilma confirmed, as I returned the spear to her. “1 to 10, how good is it?”
“If a regular spear is a 1, doesn’t help at all, and 10 is my Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword, which can do almost everything, that spear is like … probably 3? Maybe 4.” I answered her, and then explained to her how the spear helped.
“... That is worse than my assessment. I hoped it would get at least a six.” Wilma said, sounding more than a bit disappointed.
“... do you want to test out the Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword? You’ve never used it, so you don’t know just how much it can do.”
“Well, since we are testing out weapons.” Wilma said.
She handed the skill spear back to me, and I summoned the Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword for her. Wilma looked at the dragon sword for a while, and then sent one of my monsters (in an avatar doll) to go get a weapon from the HomeBase weapon showroom.
While we waited for that, Wilma was testing out the Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword and Molly was testing out the regular version of the spear.
Wilma was cutting up our test targets at a fast rate and Molly was delivering quick stabs to the targets. I was constantly bringing them back into Storage and using Storage’s repair function to fix them up.
… what? Did you forget Storage can do that? Well, it can. It is a unique skill after all.
Sure if the dummies are completely broken, Storage can’t repair them. But as long as they still have durability left, Storage can fix them up.
After the first round, Molly changed to the skill spear while Wilma picked up the sword that was brought to her. The sword wasn’t an exact replica of Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword, but it was pretty close in size.
The two then redid the exercise, and while the difference with one of them was minor at best, the difference with Wilma’s sword skills were huge. Simply put, while she wielded the Red-Eyes Black Dragon Sword like a decently skilled swordswoman, her cuts with the regular sword were extremely amateurish. Not quite beginner level, but still not good.
And if you didn’t catch it, the difference for Molly wasn’t great. She did well with the regular spear, and she did just minorly better with the skill spear. The difference could be counted down to the fact that she was doing the exercise for the second time in a row.
“... Okay. I think I get what you are talking about. Your dragon sword is way too good.” Wilma said. “It is a living weapon. So my goal of making a weapon with a skill is nothing but a stepping stone. My real goal should have been, and will now be, making a living weapon as good as that dragon sword!” She exclaimed.
“... you know, that escalated quickly. But happy to hear that.” I told her.
Molly then walked up to us with the two spears in hand.
“What will we do with these?” She asked.
“You can keep the regular one, if you want.” Wilma said. “The skill one will be stored in the showroom, because it was the first weapon that came with the appropriate skill.”
“... I’m sorry, but this isn’t the type of spear I like.” Molly apologized.
“That’s fine. I’ll just put it into weapon storage.” Wilma said. “Some dhampir will probably want it, and it isn’t made of super expensive materials.”
“Probably not. They always want vampiric steel or blood iron, as long as we allow it.” I reminded Wilma. And as someone who holds the True Blood Magic skill, I can definitely tell why they prefer those materials. They just feel better and since you can influence them with the magic …
“Well, we can always sell it.”
“Or keep it until we have some human students. We will run out of dhampirs to teach eventually.”
“Or that.”
Before we took the weapons to where we will store them, I summoned Gravekeeper's Spear Soldier to test out both the skilled and regular spears.
With him, the difference between the skilled and regular spear were even less than with Molly, likely because his Spear Technique was higher leveled than hers.
But despite that, there was a difference that you could notice, so we were able to confirm that even in the hands of a more skilled person, a weapon with a skill is slightly superior to one without a skill.
Sadly, it didn’t mean much in the end. The ‘enchanting space’ on the weapon that was used to write the skill enchantment could be used for other enchantments that would just be overall better.
So for now, while it wasn’t exactly a failure, I think the ‘weapons with skills’ idea will have to be shelved.
Now, for the next thing. Continuing with Pack Opener.
Today isn’t singles day, instead it is a speedrun day. Aka. let’s try to complete a set.
And the set that is facing 200 pack tokens today is … .
Okay. As expected, a bunch of new stuff.
Black Potan, the one common I somehow didn’t yet have, is not very good. Sure it keeps itself from being destroyed by battle, and even heals when a Tuner monster leaves the field, but its stats suck.
Berfomet isn’t technically new, got it from the fusion challenge, but didn’t have it from this set yet.
Evil Blast is dumb and I have way better cards that do the same.
Djinn Prognosticator of Rituals is fine. More Djinns are always nice to have, because if I use Ritual monsters, with the Djinns, I can give them additional effects.
Djinn Disserere of Rituals is the same, but it is arguably worse than Prognosticator. Being immune to traps is nice, but there are barely any traps anywhere, so it doesn’t really matter.
XX-Saber Emmersblade is an X-Saber battle recruiter, so it is nice.
Earthbound Linewalker is good if I want to use an Earthbound Immortal without needing a Field Spell. … actually, all of my Earthbound Immortals can survive without a Field Spell if they are in a divine sleeve, so … still nice to have.
Underground Arachnid is pretty meh, but it has its uses.
Tuner's Scheme is too situational.
Dragonic Guard is too slow to be good in the TCG, and I have unlimited searching and summons, so it is useless to me.
Oracle of the Sun is fine, but I’ll only use it as Synchro material for the Sun and Moon Dragons.
Dragon Queen of Tragic Endings is fine. A bit low on the stats, but it isn’t bad. Looks a bit creepy though.
Gravekeeper's Priestess is fine, but I don’t really use Gravekeepers.
Iron Core Specimen Lab is good, but it just feels like a stop-gap for the Koa'ki Meiru archetype. Like the archetype is so bad that it needs to have a busted card like this to be even usable.
Cards of Consonance makes Pack tokens, nothing more to it.
Alchemist of Black Spells works with Spell Counters, so nice to have access to it.
Sun Dragon Inti is nice. Just the entire Inti Quilla loop is really good. And even outside of that, Inti is a 3k attacker that destroys the monster that destroyed it.
Moon Dragon Quilla is the second part of the loop. It isn’t as good as Inti, but the healing it can give is no joke.
Witch of the Black Rose isn’t new, I already got one from the Synchro challenge, but new from this set.
Koa'ki Meiru Urnight is another one of those OP Koa'ki Meiru monsters that is just OK because Koa'ki Meirus suck.
Now, let’s check out what I’m missing.
And there aren’t many of them. Six in fact.
The Dragon Dwelling in the Deep isn’t a dragon, it is a sea serpent. And it isn’t that good.
Battle Fader is fantastic. Don’t know if it is better than Swift Scarecrow, but both are great.
Shield Wing is not bad, but not amazing either. Just a wall that can take a few attacks.
Core Transport Unit is another good Koa'ki Meiru card, but I still think the archetype sucks. Outside of a few specific cards. I mean, have you ever seen anyone run a pure Koa'ki Meiru deck?
Cactus Bouncer prevents special summons, so no thank you.
And Synchro Control is too situational and people won’t summon Synchro monsters against me.
But that is Absolute Powerforce complete.