As Maya and Dante slowly killed the robots in the mob farm, Cipher sat atop the mob farm platform, watching over Selene and Ryker.
The B-rank robot stood before them, its mechanical eyes glowing red as it assessed the two opponents. Ryker moved first, his sword slashing forward towards the robot’s chest. Most of the humanoid looking robots had their cores in the chest so it was considered the weakest spot.
The robot’s thrusters ignited, propelling it backward just out of reach. It retaliated immediately, firing a laser beam from its eyes.
Selene was already moving. She dove to the side, rolling across the ground and coming up in a low sprint. The robot tracked her movement, preparing another shot, but Ryker closed the distance, forcing it to focus on him instead. His blade rang against its metal arm as the robot blocked, sparks flying from the impact.
"Stubborn thing," Ryker muttered, pivoting to strike from a different angle.
The robot’s other arm transformed, panels shifting to reveal an energy cannon. It fired point-blank. Ryker twisted away with gritted teeth, barely managing to escape. Before the robot could fire again, Selene crashed into it from the side with a flying kick. The impact sent it stumbling, but it recovered quickly, its thrusters flaring to stabilize itself.
"My turn," Selene said, landing in a crouch.
She sprang forward, her fists a blur of golden light. The robot raised both arms to block, but she was already adapting - ducking under its guard and slamming an uppercut into its torso. The robot’s metal frame dented under her knuckles.
It staggered back a few paces before retaliating by detaching one of its forearm panels. The panel shot toward her like a projectile.
Selene deflected it with a backhanded strike, sending it spinning away.
"That’s new," she thought. She hadn’t seen any of the other robots use such a move. Maybe it was reserved for the higher level ones. But even the ones Cipher fought hadn’t used it. Then again, with how fast they were annihilated, they wouldn’t even have had the chance to think of using such a move.
Ryker took advantage of the opening, darting in low. His sword carved through the robot’s leg joint, severing the connection. The robot wobbled but stayed upright, balancing on its remaining leg and thrusters. It fired multiple energy blasts in rapid succession, forcing both of them to scatter.
"This thing doesn’t quit," Ryker said, breathing hard.
"Then we hit it harder," Selene replied.
She charged again, weaving between the energy blasts with ease.
When she got close, the robot attempted to grab her with its remaining hand. She caught its wrist mid-reach and twisted, using the momentum to swing herself up and drive both knees into its head. The robot’s neck joint cracked but didn’t break.
Ryker circled around behind it. "Hold it steady!"
"Got it!" She grabbed the robot’s shoulders from above, her legs wrapped around its torso, locking it in place.
The robot thrashed, its thrusters firing erratically as it tried to shake her off. Its chest began glowing. Charging up what seemed to be a self-destruct mechanism.
Cipher summoned a dagger from his inventory, wondering if to intervene.
"Now!" Selene shouted.
Ryker dashed forward, his sword glowing a bright blue light that extended well over the range of the sword. At the same time, Selene wrenched the robot’s head back, exposing its neck joint fully. Ryker’s blade pierced through the hard magi-steel exoskeleton, weakening it considerably. Selene took advantage of this and ripped the head clean off with her bare hands.
The robot’s body went limp, the glow in its chest fading as it collapsed to the ground in a heap of sparking metal.
Both of them stood there, breathing heavily.
...
"Not bad," Cipher said as he dropped down from his position, landing behind the two.
"So, what do you think?" he asked as they turned back to look at him.
"It’s a little harder than I expected, but still doable," Selene said.
"I think so too," Ryker said.
"This is about mid-level B-rank. It’s impressive that you two can beat it after just entering B-rank," Cipher praised. "You still have a long way to go though. I want each of you to be able to face a peak B-rank by yourself," he said.
Seeing their down expressions, he quickly cleared his throat. "Ahem, anyway, you did well. You’re just a little lacking in adaptability, which we can work on. Let’s go rest before we start moving again," Cipher said and began walking to the mob farm.
"What is this thing?" Ryker asked as they approached it.
"It’s the mob farm I made. What do you think?" Cipher asked, stepping forward and pointing to it with a smile.
Ryker looked at it with a disgusted expression before forcing a smile and showing a thumbs up. "Very nice. It’s... well... it’s there," he said.
Selene nodded. "Well, it’s something," she said.
"Don’t judge it just by looks. Although my design skills aren’t the best, the functionality is real," Cipher said as he guided them to the other side where Maya and Dante were killing the robots in turns.
"This is..." Selene’s mouth widened. Ryker also gazed on in shock.
"What do you think now?" Cipher asked with a proud smile.
"So this is where I kept getting experience from," Selene said.
Cipher nodded. Although it was just these two killing the robots, since the three of them had contributed to their capture as well as dealt quite a bit of damage to them when immobilizing them, they were still getting contribution EXP for every kill. Though most of the EXP was still taken by Maya and Dante.
Selene observed the mob farm. It was quite an interesting idea.
Usually, the supports had trouble leveling up as they relied on contribution rather than gaining EXP directly. In low-level parties, they would take forever to level up due to the low-level challenges, but even in high-level parties, it wasn’t all that better as there wasn’t much for them to contribute.
This meant that they would always have to reuse the high-level supports everywhere as training new ones took so long. In the entire Association, there was just Elaine and Victoria as high-level supports. The rest weren’t even close. But with this method, they could quickly make high-level supports.
Still... "Isn’t this a little counterproductive?" Selene asked.
Cipher nodded. It was indeed a little counterproductive. Although classes dictated one’s progression, their actions also did. Like how he got Aura and Assassinate despite not being an assassin nor a magic swordsman. In the same way his actions influenced his progression, Maya and Dante’s actions would also influence their progression.
If a support was to kill thousands of monsters, she would progress towards offense rather than support. Same was for tank.
He turned to look at Dante and Maya who were approaching after finishing killing all the robots.
In other words, he had ruined their natural progression.