294. Selecting Raid Members
294. Selecting Raid Members
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Nickname: I'll Put One Between Your Eyes
Class: Archer.
Title: A Thousand Shots, A Thousand Hits.
Level: 64.
Guild: Cheonshin.
Total Equipped Attack Power: 1958.
Top 0.38% of all users
Total Equipped Defense: 2045.
Top 0.45% of all users
Arena Ranking 147th. Equipment Ranking 417th.
......
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"Serin, what about this person?"
When Sua asked with a bright smile, Serin's view filled with the character's detailed stats and portrait.
The character appeared to be a male elf with a striking appearance, and every piece of equipment he wore looked excellent, but nothing really jumped out at her.
His arena ranking and equipment ranking were specs anyone would call ranker-level, so he seemed fine.
Every time a user's status window was brought up, footage of the user's gameplay appeared—Sua must have put it together.
...
An elf drawing the string of a massive longbow at a monster appeared, and the moment he released the taut bowstring, an arrow wrapped in a huge burst of light pierced straight through the forehead of a large demonic beast.
The viewpoint then shifted to show the distance between the large demonic beast and the archer user, and it was clearly visible that they were far, far apart.
"It's not bad, but...."
But Serin didn't give a definite answer.
"...I guess he's not quite it?"
When Sua closed the user's status window and asked, Serin gave an awkward laugh.
"Honestly, I can't really tell. If I'm just looking at specs, they're all similarly decent."
Right now, Serin was looking at the user list Sua was showing her and picking the 'last' member to bring into the Five Million Project's 3-Person Raid.
The users on the list Sua showed Serin all had impressive specs, and with both arena and equipment rankings placing them on the leaderboards, they could be considered rankers in the truest sense.
And now Serin felt a little strange, and a little ridiculous, evaluating them.
Objectively speaking, whether by equipment or arena ranking, she fell far short of them.
Setting aside actual skill, if you picked based only on the visible status window, that was the reality.
So right now, Serin strongly felt: was there even any point in picking someone just by looking at a status window like this?
But Sua, seeing Serin like that, instead gave a subtle smile.
"Sure enough.... Among the list I showed you, there's no one who catches your eye, right?"
Even though the users she'd shown were top-tier users worthy of being called rankers, Serin hadn't shown any real reaction to any of them, and Sua found that a little fascinating.
But at Sua's reaction, Serin shook her head.
"Honestly, leaving aside whether they catch my eye or not, I guess you could say I can't tell a person's skill just from looking like this? It feels really ambiguous."
Looking at the users Sua had shown so far, objectively saying who was better seemed meaningless.
But even at Serin's words, Sua nodded as if she understood.
"Well, I figured you'd say that. So I have a few 'special' rankers I prepared separately."
When Sua spoke with a confident expression, Serin stared at her.
"Then why didn't you just show me those people from the start?"
"Oh, come on, that's no fun. There's such a thing as gradually raising expectations, and I wanted to show you that there are rankers like these first, and then show you even more amazing rankers!"
At the question of whether that wasn't more fun, Serin let out a hollow laugh.
Sua immediately manipulated the hologram and separately marked the special users.
The list that appeared in the air showed only three user nicknames, unlike before.
"These three are rankers I think even you'll be satisfied with."
Sua spoke in a confident tone and brought up the first user's status window.
Ding!
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Nickname: Isrilda
Class: Gunner.
Title: Giant Slayer.
Level: 65.
Guild: Small Elite.
Total Equipped Attack Power: 2204.
Top 0.27% of all users
Total Equipped Defense: 2325.
Top 0.35% of all users
Arena Ranking 34th. Equipment Ranking 107th.
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The status window displayed in the air was on another level compared to the previous ones.
The attack power and defense values were clearly higher, and simply put, the arena ranking had risen to an absurd degree.
'That ID feels familiar, too.'
As soon as the status window appeared, that user's gameplay footage began playing, as before.
A user who appeared to be a gunner clad in an all-black suit pulled out a machine gun, a sniper rifle, even a shotgun—switching between various weapons as the situation demanded and taking down monsters in a short time. The sight was stylish, to say the least.
But.
Did he have anything that stood out compared to the gunner classes she'd seen before?
The question settled in Serin's mind without her meaning it to.
"Sua, besides slightly higher equipment and ranking, is there any big difference with this user?"
"...Serin, didn't you just see Isrilda handle multiple weapons yourself, from a shotgun to a sniper rifle?"
"Well, that's.... It's definitely an advantage, but does it feel especially outstanding? That part doesn't really hit me."
As Serin spoke, several scenes came to mind.
Compared to Minha, the player she'd met during the earlier scrim against G1, the sniping left no big impact, and the shotgun felt ambiguous compared to the player named Hajun.
Comparing pro players to rankers was ridiculous, but what could she do about the memories that came to mind first?
To Serin, it was true that the user called Isrilda seemed neither one thing nor the other.
When Serin showed that she wasn't particularly impressed, Sua let out an involuntary hollow laugh.
"Seriously... sometimes when I look at you, do you know you give off the feeling that you live in a world of your own?"
"What's that supposed to mean all of a sudden?"
"No, I just meant you don't seem interested in other rankers. I thought someone like Isrilda would at least be a ranker you'd know. But you clearly don't know him at all, so I don't know whether to call it fascinating. Or maybe it's just like you...."
When Sua closed the status window after saying that, Serin felt curious.
If Sua was saying that much, maybe there was something special she didn't know. When Serin glanced over, Sua let out a small laugh and added.
"Since you probably don't know, I'll explain a bit more. The user called Isrilda has a really versatile play style. In terms of party play, other users find him very comfortable to play with. He's a gunner class who can handle both melee and mid-range, and even his long-range sniping is top-notch, so he pulls his weight in any situation. You could say he's the most preferred type of user in raids."
When Sua defended him with a lengthy explanation, Serin nodded without much thought and parted her lips.
"Yeah? Then shouldn't we just go with this person, Isrilda?"
"Well, I'm just saying he's solidly decent. And I'm asking for your opinion right now, so I'd like you to look at the other two at least once and judge for yourself."
With that, Sua immediately brought up the status window of the second user on the list.
Ding!
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Nickname: HammerHammer
Class: Berserker.
Title: Pilgrim of Wrath.
Level: 65.
Guild: Special.
Total Equipped Attack Power: 2339.
Top 0.11% of all users
Total Equipped Defense: 2455.
Top 0.12% of all users
Arena Ranking 251st. Equipment Ranking 55th.
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The newly displayed user's status window definitely had better attack power and defense stats than any user shown so far.
And there was one distinctive point.
Sua and Serin were a Dancer and a Knight respectively—melee classes—so they had introduced mostly ranged users to balance the party.
But this person was a melee class, a Berserker Class.
The gameplay footage of the user called HammerHammer began playing right away.
In the scene, the leg of a massive demonic beast slammed down toward the ground, and a man holding a crystal hammer with spikes jutting out suddenly kicked off the ground and soared into the air.
His rush into the space where the leg was falling looked reckless at first glance.
But when light burst from the massive crystal hammer and struck the leg, a shocking sight appeared.
A tremendous shockwave—beyond a boom, it had to be called a roar—erupted and swept through the surrounding area, and the leg of the demonic beast, as large as a building, rose back into the air.
As he displayed unbelievable strength, a gap opened up, and the footage stopped right as other users poured attacks into it.
Even so, Serin's expression as she watched was odd.
—Zervallua, Beast of Destruction.
Considering the traits of that demonic beast, an absurd sight like hammering the beast's leg right back up was hard to imagine.
Sua, who had been watching Serin, shook her head when she saw her ambiguous expression.
"I really didn't know your standards were this high. This person's not it either, right?"
When Sua made a deflated expression, Serin smiled faintly, as if apologetic.
"Wouldn't it be better for you to just pick, Sua? And I don't know much about rankers—what's special about this person?"
"Should I just say the user called HammerHammer is a raid specialist? He's someone who's been through the wringer hunting large demonic beasts. The raid monster we're targeting this time is a large demonic beast called the Beast of Destruction, and even if we won't see an effect like what you just saw, he's still a pretty good user against large demonic beasts."
Continuing, Sua closed the status window and looked at the nickname of the last of the three users on the list, parting her lips.
"Serin, then I guess you don't know this person either?"
At Sua's words, Serin tilted her head.
"Bloody Night...?"
When she read the last nickname as if openly admitting she didn't know it, Sua shook her head and made up her mind about Serin.
"You really do live in a world of your own."
Ding!
Immediately after, the status window of the user called Bloody Night appeared in the air.