Loner High-School Girl And The God-Tier Game — Level Up

A colossal meteorite fell to Earth, the planet cooled with terrible speed, and humanity died out. Several thousand years later, the AIs humanity left behind began mass-producing female-model humanoids: the Space Girls. The AIs’ developer had wanted the human race brought back. The AIs inherited that will, and the Space Girls inherited it from them, so together they drove the development of space forward and set about building a new world where humans could live.

But space was far too dangerous a place for humans to live in… Mysterious life-forms had adapted to the space environment exactly as the Space Girls had: the Machine Beasts. They appear on any Planet or Colony, and they seek to exterminate humanoid life. Until they are wiped out, no land of rest for humanity can be built.

Can the Space Girls destroy the Machine Beasts? Can they build humanity’s land of rest? And can they obtain the two sets of biodata needed to bring the human race back, Adam’s Key and Eve’s Door? That, at any rate, is the story this world is telling.

In practice, from what I hear, everybody ignores the humanity part entirely and spends their time throwing themselves into gunfights with other Space Girls, or squabbling with them over Colonies. The dawn of mankind is a long way off yet, I reckon.

Not that I can talk. I’ve shoved the resurrection of the human race aside myself and thrown all my energy into hunting.

“This is a problem. Armaments aren’t dropping at all. Or do armaments just… not drop, period?”

I’ve taken down Mecha Dogs, Mecha Bears and Mecha Worms, and the only things they’ve dropped are ammunition, Something-or-other Parts, Repair Kits, and EN Bottles (bottles for replenishing your EN; they look exactly like bottled beer). My level has climbed all the way to 8, but I still have only two armaments.

Every time you level up, you get 3 status points. Pour a status point into one of your stats and that stat is multiplied by 1.05. Two points make it 1.1×, ten points make it 1.5×. So your starting stats matter enormously. Take a Sniper’s starting Armor value of 20. Even if I sank 20 status points into it, it would only ever reach 40. Put those same 20 points into Radar instead and it goes 100 → 200. The very same status points, and a gap of 80 in what they buy you.

Once you know that, there’s no sense putting status points into a low stat. Grow your strengths and leave your weaknesses alone. That has to be the correct build.

For now I’ve put my status points into Thruster Capacity and Precision. Personally, I think Thruster Capacity is the single most important stat there is. Just raising it has made it dramatically easier to open distance from an enemy unit.

Precision, put simply, speeds up the orders running from your brain to your body, and raising it sharpens the feel in your fingertips and makes your shooting more precise. Your reflexes get faster too. It has nothing whatsoever to do with attack power, defense or mobility, of course, so for people who don’t need it, it’s a stat they don’t need. But for a Sniper the feel in the fingertips is everything, and I intend to keep raising it until my nerve transmission sits at a level I can live with.

Also, leveling up gets you 1 skill point. You spend it to raise your skill EXP. There are sixteen kinds of skill: Shooting, Rapid Fire, Sniping, Blades, Axes & Spears, Hammers & Bows, Whips & Claws, Hand-to-Hand, Guarding, Repair, Modification, Artillery, Brainwave, Flight, Piloting and Enemy Detection. That’s a lot.

Skills are ranked from S down to G, and the starting values seem to change depending on your Role. A Sniper’s shooting-family skills were all high across the board, and the close-combat skills were all low. It looks like you can also raise a skill just by using an armament heavily. I haven’t put a single skill point anywhere, but thanks to all the knife work, a little EXP had built up in Blades. Apparently there are armaments you can’t even use unless your skill rank is high enough. Neither status points nor skill points have to be spent the moment you level up, either; you can hoard them and hoard them and spend them all at once later.

What struck me as unusual is that this game has none of the special techniques or magic you find in almost every RPG going. No ‘Double Slash!’, no ‘Multishot!’, no ‘Fireball!’. I’ve never liked the sensation of having my body moved for me by the system, so this design suits me perfectly. In the really bad games, the system was moving me around for something like half the combat time. What exactly is fun about that? The multi-hit techniques were the worst of the lot.

The manual the Guide Girl gave me carries a genuinely well-judged amount of information. There’s nothing as detailed as a strategy guide or a walkthrough site, only enough to keep you from getting stuck. None of the surplus material, no ‘Recommended Stat Builds’, no ‘Recommended Walkthrough Route’. You get to play the game without losing the feeling of groping your way forward.

“Ah.”

Right. The manual only covers the basics. Which is why a sudden appearance by an enemy unit like this one is impossible to predict.

Hundred-Bite Sand Worm¹ “Centipede.”

A Machine Beast with an epithet to its name had come bursting out of the sand. The thing is shaped like a centipede and a good 20 meters long. Countless metal-colored legs with keen blade tips run the length of it, and its mouth holds a gun muzzle and fangs.

“So this is what you’d call a boss monster.”

Is the spawn condition me defeating a certain number of the Machine Beasts around here, I wonder? Or did I just happen to run into it by chance? Either way, it doesn’t matter.

The details spell it out: Recommended Level 15, Recommended Party Size 2. I’m level 8, and I’m a party of one (a loner). Not a problem.

I’ll shoot it dead.