Chapter 143
As he listened to Sparrow and the others, Merlin started to understand the general power level of those aboard the motorboat. Of course, in terms of level alone, Merlin was inferior to them. Even so, he could use Aura Vision to gain a general idea of their levels at a glance.
‘Scorpion is Level 8… no, Level 9? And the rest are mostly around Level 7.’
Though Merlin was unaware, this group was a relatively high-leveled party. As Bear said, it was rare for there to be more than one Level 7 user in a city of 500,000 or more residents. Additionally, there’d only be a handful of Masters, or Level 10 users, in an entire country, and that was if there were any at all. In Korea, there were currently three users who had reached the Master level, which could be seen as an unprecedented number.
“Yeah, but Sooyoung is an archer! She has a strong foundation and understanding, so once she gets used to battle, she’ll quickly become a high-level player!”
“Hmph! Speaking of archers, do you know how many professional archers are playing DIO? If combat ability were solely based on hitting a target, there would be an abundance of Master level archers in Korea!”
While professional archers did have an advantage in leveling up relatively easily in-game, after a certain point, they’d understand that accuracy wasn’t the only skill required to succeed in leveling up. Merlin didn’t know this, but DIO’s level-up tests were designed to place users in the most unideal setting, and it also paired them with an enemy that took advantage of their weaknesses.
For example, if a mage took a level-up test, a monster with a melee combat ability would appear near the user. If it were a warrior, monsters with ranged sniping or magic abilities would spawn from afar. In addition, single-use consumables and Rank 5 items or higher were forbidden during a level-up test, so the enemy would need to be subdued solely based on the user’s skills and abilities. Even Master skills or Master weapons were prohibited. The Level 9 Ilyia could only defeat a Level 12 monster during the event’s assessment testing because this restriction did not exist there. If the circumstances were favorable, it wasn’t impossible for a lower-level being to beat a higher-level foe; hence Ilyia defeated a much higher-leveled enemy.
To sum it up, it would be difficult to level up with only ranged sniping skills unless a user had an excellent close-range archery technique or any other methods to fight nearby enemies. At the very least, a well-developed lightness skill was necessary to create distance from an enemy. It didn’t matter if ranged attacks could defeat a higher-leveled monster on the field; the level-up test was an entirely different story. However, it seemed that Sparrow wasn’t willing to face the truth. Bear didn’t know anything about Sparrow’s friend, so how could Bear be certain?
“Y-you’ve gone too far! Why are you belittling a woman you don’t even know well in the first place?”