“Alright, I did some research and math,” Veyra said.

  We’d barely said our hellos, when she placed a large screenshot of a real-life drawing on the wall of our usual tavern. She’d drawn the assassin class’s full skill tree, listing all thirty-six available skills, the good and bad. Each one had notes and numbers written on them, with enough details that I had to look closely just to read her small handwriting.

  “You haven’t allocated any skill points yet, right?” Veyra asked, sounding focused.

  “I haven’t.”

  “Good,” Veyra said. “I calculated the potential damage every skill in your class can reasonably inflict. We’re probably ignoring all the fake-out and illusions skills, except maybe Dark Mirage, since that one is similar to Afterimage. The venom skills are also all terrible. So after thinking, the closest thing to your playstyle would probably be a classic Piercing Strike build, or maybe some version of Dragrath’s Fracture build.”

  She glanced at me and noticed that I was just smiling at her during the explanation. “What?” she asked.

  I grabbed her into a hug, snuggling my face onto her shoulder.

  “What, what, what?” Veyra squeaked, voice soft and high.

  “You really researched all this?” I asked. “Just to help me craft a build?”

  She breathed in, nervous, until she lightly pushed me away, revealing that her face was beet red. “We’re playing in Worlds together! Of course I’ll help you. I’m flying to goddamned Sweden, and I’ll lose my mind if I still see you wearing that monster avoidance quest charm!”

  I couldn't help but grin. “Thank you. Truly. I’m happy to be back playing with you.”

  She looked away awkwardly and spoke quietly. “Welcome back.”

  I hugged her again. I couldn't see her face, but I could imagine how she looked. Her body felt warmer than usual.

  “Aiden…” she said. “Stop getting me flustered. We need a new build for you. You’ll be left behind.”

  I chuckled, letting her go for real now. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll focus. I have twenty-eight skill points to use now. I was actually thinking I’m going either for Fracture or Eviscerate.”

  She turned back to her drawing of the skill tree, staring at it. Her face was still red. Her brain didn't seem to be working anymore.

  She slapped herself in the cheeks repeatedly. “Yes, back to the topic. Fracture would be good, I think. Eviscerate, though? Really? Isn’t that skill widely considered just trash? Or at least, useless for PvP?”

  “It’s a worse version of Vital Strike in a lot of ways. But it also has insane potential.”

  I opened the skill details at level one.

  Eviscerate (Passive): Landing an attack on a target inflicts them with a mark of evisceration. Consecutive combo hits strengthen the mark or leave new marks, stacking up to 254.

  Eviscerate (Active): Open marks of evisceration. Landing a critical strike rips each mark open for grievous wounds, enhancing the next attack with increased critical strike damage. Each stack increases critical strike damage by 10%.

  In practicality, what that meant was that hitting an opponent with an attack left stacking marks, and all of those stacking marks would blow up when landing a critical strike for extra damage.

  “I calculated Eviscerate’s damage as well, of course,” Veyra said, looking at her drawing. “But I’m pretty sure it just doesn’t do enough. Even at skill level twenty-five, I calculated that you’d need to build fourteen stacks of evisceration before the damage even matches a fully charged Lichfang crit with the old Vital Strike.”

  “Yep, I only need fourteen hits to match the damage I did previously,” I said. “After that, I can keep stacking it for even more damage.”

  Veyra didn’t look convinced.

  “Eviscerate is worse for one-shots,” I said. “But against tanks, it’s going to be completely overpowered. I noticed against Henrift how easy it is to just get random hits in. With Eviscerate, I could have kept stacking, and the fight would have been over much quicker.”

  “And what about opponents like Annath?” Veyra asked. “Do you plan on hitting her over fourteen times before finally landing a critical strike?”

  “Honestly, I think I can,” I said. “Last time we fought, I didn’t hit her at all because my regular attacks just don’t do damage. I needed to land a fatal critical strike in hopes of one-shotting her, which I failed. But if I actually tried to keep stacking evisceration on her, I reckon I could.”

  Veyra gave me a look. “I know you’re good, but I don’t know. What about Fracture? That skill could be good for our teamwork.”

  I opened the skill details.

  Fracture: Imbues a dagger type weapon with crushing sharpness for ten seconds. Attacks ignore all defence by 60%. If Fracture pierces the target’s armor, the dagger can be left inside the armor, reducing the target’s defence by 30% for the enhancement’s remaining duration.

  “At skill level fifteen, the max level,” Veyra continued, “the effect gives seventy percent defence penetration, and that I can use that as well. Seventy percent is enough for Ray Of Time to just burn through armor. You’d play more as a support to keep applying the defence penetration everywhere you can, but if you can keep it up, I’d deal much much more damage.”

  “I actually tried a solo Fracture build with the dagger and katana setup a few years ago,” I said.

  Veyra smirked. “You were a Dragrath fanboy, then?”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I tried to imitate his style. He makes Fracture look super strong. Once he plants the dagger for the Fracture debuff, his katana melts through tanks like they’re nothing. But there’s a reason why only Dragrath is dominant with that build, and why I switched to my Vital Strike one-shot build.”

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  “That is?” Veyra asked.

  “Well…” I said, thinking of my words. How could I explain this without just saying it was a skill issue. “The Fracture build just has too many conditions that need to be met to win a fight. The dagger needs to first pierce the target’s armor. After that, you’ve got ten seconds to win a duel with a katana, until Fracture runs out and time’s up. That’s not easy.”

  “Dragrath is still the rank one player with that build, though,” Veyra said.

  “Yeah, because he can win that ten second duel against anyone,” I said. “He mastered the Fracture playstyle because he’s also a literal god of one-handed katana combat.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, you’re not on his level,” Veyra said. “You can’t use his build because it’s too difficult.”

  I sighed. “I’m just saying that it’s not his build that’s overpowered, it’s the player himself. Dragrath is completely crazy.”

  Veyra’s lips formed a contemplative pout. She sighed, tapping her hand on the table. “Well, I guess we should head out and test which one is better. How about some scientific monster hunting?”

  ***

  We teleported onto the snowy mountains in the wilderness to test the build options against open-world monsters. We avoided difficult dungeons for now, since something as difficult as the Portal Mage’s Crypt would require our full attention, leaving us without margin for failures. Failures, which were inevitable when testing new builds.

  The average monster level out in the open was 290, and our opponents were mostly Snow Trolls, Tundra Shamans, and the usual Stone Wyverns with the occasional goblins.

  I placed all twenty-eight skill points to [Eviscerate] first, bringing it to level 29. Now, each stack of evisceration improved the next critical strike damage by 290%, meaning that if I landed roughly ten stacks, I could deal the same amount of critical strike damage as I could with the old Vital Strike crit, and if I kept stacking further, I could do more than that.

  [Eviscerate] was overpowered against the trolls, as was expected. I could easily stack marks of evisceration onto the large, clumsy monsters, especially if they were isolated. When I had over twenty hits in, and with [Blood Desperation] active, I opened the marks and landed a crit for a visceral one-shot, each mark ripping open to execute it.

  Conversely, [Eviscerate] was pretty much useless against the wyverns. The only time I could hit them was when they dove at me, and landing a critical strike to blow up the few marks I could land was difficult as well. By the time they dove down for a second time, more than ten seconds had passed, and the old evisceration stacks had closed, and I had to start from zero. The skill was pretty much useless against the Wyverns.

  The shamans were an oddity. It was a mage-type summoning monster, casting icicles and ranged projectiles, while protecting itself with Frozen Stone Golems. Hitting it was much more difficult than hitting the trolls, but I also didn’t require as many stacks of evisceration. After seven clean hits, a critical strike to the head executed it, and the golems lost sapience.

  Admittedly, the build was just a worse version of my previous Vital Strike build. Two or three critical strikes would have killed the trolls. I could have landed a critical strike to the stone wyvern’s eye for heavy damage. And with the shamans, I could have just straight-up one-shotted them.

  But to be fair, my previous build was just straight-up overpowered. And it wasn’t like [Eviscerate] was unplayable either. Game balance-wise, [Eviscerate] felt fair.

  We also decided to test the other option. I spent ten gold to respec my skill points in town, placing fifteen of my points into [Fracture].

  That skill was much better against the Stone Wyverns. I could plant the [Fractured] dagger on the wyvern as it tried to dive on me, which pierced the armor of its scales, letting Veyra one-shot it with any spell of her choosing.

  Problem was, [Fracture] was utter trash against both the trolls and the shamans. I could easily plant the debuff straight to the troll’s neck, removing the natural defence from its thick skin, but it still had close to a million health. The troll’s tankiness didn’t come from armor, but from bulkiness, and with [Fracture], I had no way of doing heavy damage.

  Veyra could still, of course, deal with it, killing it in around two minutes with [Chronorift] and freehanded icicle spam. She did marginally more damage with the [Fractured] debuff active, but [Eviscerate] was still tenfold faster.

  The same was true for the shamans. I could land [Fracture] onto them, but the shamans really had no armor regardless. Veyra didn’t have trouble killing them even without [Fracture].

  Dragrath could deal heavy damage because of his mythic katana, which was overpowered either way. I didn’t have that luxury with Lichfang. The item had been powerful due to the charged up crits, but now that its ability to crit was outright removed, the item suddenly felt underwhelming.

  We teleported to other areas for more tests, and the results stayed consistent. [Fracture] was really good against low health targets that had a crazy amount of defence, but terrible against anything that relied on health instead of defence. [Eviscerate] was generally much better. I struggled against certain high mobility targets, like the wyverns or other assassin type-monsters that I couldn’t combo down, but against tanks, it was overpowered.

  We then returned to Rayshire, stealthed. The mist in the dark city felt thicker today, with the air getting gradually colder, as if winter was coming. Not so cold we’d need to wear jackets, but it was noticeable. We talked under a street lamp.

  “So,” Veyra said. “Eviscerate is probably the better build. But it would be useful to keep Fracture as a secondary skill. Maybe five points into that, and another five for miscellaneous skills? Dark Mirage, maybe?”

  “Every point I don’t put into Eviscerate means I’ll have to stack more marks against my opponent,” I said. “I’m dumping everything into my main skill.”

  Veyra crossed her arms. “Isn’t that precisely the reason why assassin players don’t like the skill? Eviscerate needs all of your skill points, or it’s bad. What if we try an actual generalized build with more skills unlocked? Piercing Strike and Fracture being the main skills.”

  “Nah, the assassin class sucks with a generalized build,” I said. “Fuhad and SoulShadow both use builds like that, and they both suck. I beat them easily. Dragrath is the rank one player, and he’s specialized. My old Vital Strike build also required dumping everything to the skill. It was only underrated because it relied on straight attacks, and people also suck at landing crits without the system Thrust.”

  She studied my eyes, as if trying to see a weakness in my statement, until she shrugged. “Well, if you believe that’s best, I’ll trust you. But regardless of what we choose, you’re still getting one-shotted by anything that breathes in your direction. You don’t have any health or defence, let alone a good balance of resistances.”

  “That has to be fixed with items,” I said. “Skills won’t really help.”

  Veyra bit her lip, thinking. “Honestly, the assassin class feels a bit underwhelming. Your skill options just aren’t good. The class relies too much on tricks and illusions, which you don’t use, and for damage you’re really item reliant.”

  “Shadow Dash is still OP, though, and Vital Strike is decent even with the level cap,” I said. “With the Eviscerate build, the potential one-shot damage is still massive.”

  “You’re still a glass-cannon,” Veyra said. “Except, now you won’t even one-shot enemies. You’ll need to land over ten hits first. Conversely, if you get hit once, you die.”

  “That’s why I have my dash,” I said. “And for lower health players, five stacks will probably kill them. But, yeah… I guess you’re otherwise right.”

  “AoE is still a huge weakness for you,” Veyra said. “Anything you can’t dodge or block will just kill you, like Henrift’s ultimate. We need to figure out something for skills like those as well.”

  “Yeah…” I said.

  “Not to mention, we’re still underleveled,” Veyra said. “Most players that enter Worlds will be close to 270 by now. We’re barely 250.”

  “Also yeah…” I said.

  She leaned against the lamp post, looking troubled. “Goddammit, our builds are just sub-par, aren’t they? It’s not like I’m that great either. Annath completely outclassed me in the last fight.”

  “That was purely an item difference though,” I said. “She has a full mythic set. Skill-wise, you matched her easily.”

  “Mechanical skill can only take us so far,” Veyra said. “Worlds starts in a month. Our items just aren’t good enough.”

  “That’s a full month of monster hunting and gearing up,” I said, grinning at her. “If you think about it, we’ve only been playing for just under three weeks now. We’ve pretty much doubled in strength from the start.”

  “That’s arbitrary, but sure,” Veyra said.

  “If we have a full month, we’ll double that again,” I said. “Let’s clear a few dungeons, and we’ll both reach top five hundred with full legendaries before Worlds starts.”

  20 chapters ahead on !