Chapter 210: Guilty Associates
———Orrel———
<3: 33 pm>
“So just to be clear, she was the only one who caused any collateral damage, right?” Jeff asked.
“As far as we know, yes. Emmie didn’t even actually fight anyone, as shocking as that still sounds.” I answered with that tidbit thrown in. “We have already called her out on it enough. Any more and she would probably threaten to do it again.”
“That’s the one thing with her, ain’t it? Very much a loose cannon.” Gregori remarked. “She’s a nutcase, that’s for sure, as far as we know she had a rather ordinary life. We used to always talk about how no one has a single clue what Emmie’s deal is but even she doesn’t seem anywhere near as nuts.”
“Well it’s clear all that parenting doesn’t work out. Those two were quite sweet so I’m not sure what went wrong, but this isn’t really about them.” Qyunda said with a slight sarcastic tone. “I don’t even think they realized what happened. Probably best to keep it that way, plausible deniability all the way.”
“I don’t think any of us are thinking about saying that. Especially since Kenni herself doesn’t exactly confirm as much as being cheeky. Even she knew how problematic it’d be if this all got leaked out. Not that it changed the fact that it happened.” Gregori said. “It’s just a headache to even think about. I hope none of you actually cause any trouble yourselves. Fighting adventurers and beating them up is fine, but property damage and killing? No way that’s defensible.”
“I think violence in general is hard to justify if we’re being real with ourselves. Not that the current climate lets us talk and be peaceful all the time.” Malk chimed in. “...Say, she was the first one to really demonstrate that we can blow up a city, right?”
“Mind you, she is more than twice as strong as most of us, so it’s not exactly accurate to say that we can do everything that she can do, but that attack also clearly didn’t completely burn her out. Taking that into consideration, then we can probably still deal a similar level of damage, albeit with a much greater strain.” I explained the topic in further detail. Of course it does loop back around all of us theoretically being in the ballpark to cause such destruction, but that caveat seems quite important. If we, for whatever reason, need to blow up a city, that needs to be taken into consideration since it’s likely that we’ll burn all of our mana in the process, and the consequence of that is not pretty.
“...By the way, is jumping her an option if she’s trying something stupid again?” Qyunda asked.
“It would be. Unless you are vastly above the others in terms of strength, you can’t really risk taking a few clean hits.” I answered. Thankfully it’s not the case that the stronger one always wins even with a huge power gap. I’d imagine that’s why things haven’t escalated even quicker. The more megalomaniacal individuals probably drew too much ire and were taken down no matter how much sacrifice took place, and the more intelligent one knew better than to take on a few dozen people at once.
“More than that, she clearly spec’d into her offense and speed. She’s far from the most durable in her class.” Gregori chimed in. “I don’t think anyone has fully figured it out, but the power in one’s combat state could be simplified as a stat menu, with points allocated in each stats. Of course it’s nowhere as rigid as a few clearly defined stats, but that’s how it works. Also stuff like fluctuating power output and such, it’s more of a flow state than solid and stable numbers.”
“Most people’s combat state would’ve been more well-rounded, though in her case her defensive capabilities seem rather lacking.” I chimed in. “That does admittedly explain why she can form such a devastating attack, but like Gregori said, it’s more of a flow state that could be changed more quickly as your combat ability grew.”
“It just kinda loops back to everything being relative to your mana pool, doesn’t it?” Qyunda remarked. That would be correct at a higher level where the difference in stats barely mattered, but right now when the numbers are low it would be more apparent.
“It’s still relevant right now, at least.” Gregori said. “I do wonder when we are going to get another checkup. They always say not to take the numbers as gospels, but I’d like some visual aid at least.”
“Tomorrow, probably.” Malk said. That is obviously a reasonable time to expect it, with the P.E. class and all. “One thing we can all agree is that Rico is still unreadable.”
“It certainly doesn’t look like she ever tried. Admittedly we haven’t used our strongest attacks on her, but something tells me those won’t work.” Gregori said in response. It probably wouldn’t. Even if our strongest attacks don’t faze her, there’s no guarantee that the surrounding environment could take it, including the spectators. “Best we don’t poke the hornet’s nest anyway. We don’t have nearly enough space to try. I hope none of you forget that time Kenni blew up a large chunk of a monster habitat. That takes a while for the school to cover up.”
“...So will we have any place to actually nuke then?” Qyunda, please don’t say stuff like that out loud, such words can easily be taken out of context. It doesn’t help that we’re being associated with someone who has caused damage on such a massive scale already.
“Shut your mouth. We’re not exactly in a private place here.” Gregori said with way less tact. “We couldn’t afford any rumors to keep brewing up, got it?”
“Yeah yeah.” Qyunda said without much thought. “By the way, I don’t think most of us even got into any trouble, right? As in people running into us, I mean. I don’t want to hear any of you fumbling.”
“I was plenty fine on my end.” Gregori said, almost sounding a little bored.
“The two of us also didn’t run into any problems.” Useph spoke up after a long period of silence. “From what you have said in the group chat, instead of riling people up they came to your ‘help’?”
“Yeah. It was extremely embarrassing to witness. They act like we can’t handle things ourselves.” Malk said with a clear sign of displeasure. Being underestimated isn’t something most would find amusing. “No one got hurt or anything, so at least they didn’t end up looking extremely foolish.”
“In their defense, they probably thought two newcomers won’t be able to accomplish much. Did you two show them your identification?” I asked, since that part wasn’t elaborated on.
“Of course not. It won’t be fun otherwise.” Qyunda unapologetically answered. Well that was the main problem wasn’t it? Obviously not everyone is going to take the leaderboard of the guild placement seriously. It’s an amateur website that appeared out of nowhere and is said to contain the internal ranking of each adventurer. Kinda crazy to think about, and make me wonder if they’re ever going to have an official ranking system. “Is anyone gonna look us up anyway? Feels like they won’t even bother.”
“I mean how could anyone know without you two actually identifying yourself? Whatever, the damage was done.” Gregori pointed out. “...Jass was the only one who didn’t go anywhere, right?”
“Yeah, same with Karra. Make sense with her, she got way too much clout to pull a stunt like that without causing a massive domino effect. As with Jass. I don’t know. The guy seems rather pacifistic, he’s mainly a healer anyway, he’s clearly not the type to go out and fight even if he’s probably stronger than I am.” I answered. Not that it’s easy to verify. He’s always the type to mostly interact through text rather than in-person. Everyone has their own preference. Best to not bother him if it’s not warranted. “Seni is also not involved, as one would expect. None of us are really too weak to travel far across states to different guild branches, but of course this isn’t exactly a school assignment, it’s just something we organize among ourselves. Whether someone actually goes through with it doesn’t really mean much.”
“Speaking of going. Are we gonna do that again?” Useph asked, sounding a bit worried. I guess the expression on his mother’s face once he returned isn’t exactly comforting, even if she didn’t say anything.
“Honestly I don’t really know. If Kenni tried to do some funny shit again we might need to make it ‘less official’ so to say. Just so it doesn’t seem like we’re goading or encouraging her.” Malk replied. That implies we expect our chat log to get leaked. Even she wouldn’t go that far.
“A bit too much ain’t it? Those stuff are never gonna get leaked anyway.” Meanwhile Qyunda doesn’t seem concerned at all. “We never say anything to imply that you can just destroy wherever you go to anyway. You’re thinking too hard about this.”
“Contingency never hurt anyone, but I can see why that might get a little awkward.” Gregori chimed in. “Heck, that would probably just goad her into doing it even more. She’s not exactly a contrarian for the sake of it, but she’s certainly a rebel.”
“Definitely hard to convince her or put her on a leash. Maybe make Emmie stick to her and see how that goes.” I threw the idea out there.
“Either that works or make things twice as bad…” Qyunda said while tapping on the table as she thought about it.
“Screw it. That’s probably the best way we’re gonna deal with it as it stands, unless we wanna try to convince Karra to convince that person to do something about it.” Gregori said before he suddenly brought out his phone to look at something. “By the way, have any of you ran into one of those people in Karra’s stream?”
“No? We didn’t even run into people from last week’s show let alone those guys.” Qyunda answered. “We didn’t really go far enough to meet those guys did we? The cat and the black armor are really far from the area all of us covered.”
“I see.” Gregori muttered. The silence filled the place as no one seemed to have anything else to impart. “All things considered, aside from that hiccup there wasn’t anything else to worry about, it seems.”
“If there was, we'll probably get a big scolding or worse.” I pointed out. Who knows what the top brass are thinking of doing if it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that we were involved in something really destructive. “Hopefully they’ll only drag the one responsible down and not the entire class.”
“Who knows if they’ll actually be reasonable. We just have to wait and see. Obviously we shouldn’t let stuff like that get uncovered in the first place.” Gregori replied. “...By the way, what’s the effect of that explosion like? I know more than half a city is gone, but what about the reactions? From the people here, I mean.”
“As you should be able to see by now. Some have already connected the dots and avoided us. As if we weren’t looked at with suspicion before.” Qyunda said with a clear look of disapproval. “They can’t prove anything, of course, so nothing actually happened. Don’t really know how they’ll act around Kenni. She doesn’t take normal routes anymore.”
“She would probably taunt people if anything.” Gregori replied. “If people make enough buzz she’ll definitely cause an even bigger scene. We can only hope she get distracted by something else for long enough for the noises to die down.”
Certainly caused a lot of trouble for us even though she didn’t really convey much to us at all. That’s just how she has always been, but right now it is truly getting ridiculous. The longer this goes on the bigger the incidents she causes are gonna be…