Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 21 - Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Miss Zeta’s Expository Lecture—Job Builds

Imperial Capital, Vandelheim, Noble District

In the heart of Vandelheim, surrounding the pre-ancient fortress of Imperstand—the symbol of Dryfe—there was a district full of noble residences. In recent times, though, many of them were inhabited by people other than nobles—specifically, Masters.

The reason for this was the recent civil war, which had killed many nobles and freed up their lands and mansions. Reinhard’s faction was a small one and had little support among the nobility, so this was a somewhat expected result of their victory.

However, they’d made the best of this situation and used these now-vacant mansions as a way to win over Superiors and other powerful Masters. They had served as an example of the luxurious rewards Dryfe would present them for their performance in the previous war.

And one of the Masters granted such a mansion was Logan Goddhart.

He was very pleased with it. The gaudy mansion and the many servants that came with it had more than satisfied his vanity. In a way, Dryfe’s plan to win over Masters had been more effective on him than anyone else.

However, the state of his mansion had recently changed completely. The beautiful residence fit for the highest nobles had undergone changes that at first glance did not make a great deal of sense.

And it wasn’t just its appearance that had changed.

The sound of boiling emanated from Logan’s room day and night, and the scent of blood traveled even beyond the closed door.

To top it off, occasionally a saddened voice would say, “Not enough... It’s not enooough...”

These frightening occurrences didn’t sit right with the servants. Over half of them had already quit, fleeing the manor before the horrors within overtook them. What had happened to Logan Goddhart, exactly?

Answering that would mean going back to the moment right after he and Zeta made their deal...

◆◆◆

2045, Early April

Logan was one of Dryfe’s Superiors, as well as their top-ranking duelist.

However, his standing had since dropped all the way down into the dirt.

His first failure was his defeat at Quartierlatin.

Logan had lost against King of Orchestras Veldorbell, followed by Ray Starling the Unbreakable. This was also recorded and made public in a video that made it seem as though he’d lost to Ray Starling alone, leading to him being ridiculed as the Superior who was beaten by a newbie.

Ray had also defeated Franklin before that incident, but Franklin wasn’t a combat job and it was well known that most of his firepower—his monsters—had been taken out by King of Destruction before Logan overcame him. This made Logan’s defeat stand out even more.

But Logan would go on to lose to Franklin later on—and after the Giga Professor had lost to Ray Starling.

His second major failure was Logan’s loss of his duel champion status.

He was defeated in a duel against King of Thieves Zeta, which cost him his first place rank. Logan had been using his status as champion to keep his spirits up despite everything, but with this, he had lost even that.

This finally broke him to the point that he considered quitting Infinite Dendrogram altogether, but he was stopped by Zeta—the very person who’d defeated him.

She invited him to join her clan—Illegal Frontier—and offered to make him stronger in return.

◆

Logan was in his room, and before him was a bandaged woman—Zeta—standing in front of a whiteboard. The whiteboard had been brought by Zeta herself.

“Awareness. I am sure you know this, but when it comes to wide applicability, your Embryo is among the most powerful of all.”

Logan was silent. He found himself unable to even nod in response to that. After all, how “powerful” was it really when it had set him on such a losing streak? And this argument just wasn’t convincing when it came from one of the people who beat him.

“Job. It multiplies 10 values in your usable job skills by 10. The increase in total strength that it can provide doesn’t need to be explained.”

The core trait of Logan’s Embryo, Rumpelstiltskin, was “job skill modification.” No matter what the job skill was, as long as it had numbers in its description, Rumpelstiltskin could overwrite them. When it came to the variety of things that could be done with it, this Embryo was definitely near the top.

“Explanation. I will tell you about an effective build, but let me preface this by saying that Hell General’s synergy with other jobs is absolutely awful.”

“Huh?” Zeta had just come out and said that Logan’s SJ was no good. He did know about the importance of synergy between main and sub jobs, though. He’d spent a lot of time looking into it personally.

“General. The General series is very quirky even by Superior Job standards. First, they allow you to operate with armies that number in the thousands—far beyond the party slot limit. Second, they have active buffs that they can give to everyone in their army,” Zeta explained as she wrote down these job details on the whiteboard.

Even mass buffs from the enchanter grouping weren’t able to affect so many individual units at once. Not even the Over Enchanter Superior Job was an exception to this.

“Loss. The General series pays for this by losing some degree of versatility.”

Logan was silent, and Zeta continued. “Specialization. You might have tried this before, but you can’t use any Creature Enhancement-type skills from your sub jobs. This is because Hell General is a commander specialized exclusively in leading devils. Skills that buff other monsters too are outside its synergistic scope.”

He was indeed familiar with this fact. Logan had been able to use such skills before he became a Superior Job, but when he made Hell General his main one, they had become unusable. That had been disappointing for him, since if this synergy existed, he would’ve been able to enhance his devils’ stats by as much as 600% with just one of Rumpelstiltskin’s ten multipliers.

Now, however, it had turned out that this wasn’t just another case of main and sub job incompatibility, but a flaw in the job itself stemming from its place in the General series.

“Unbuffable. Other Generals, however... For example, while Bug General has a level EX Insectoid Enhancement skill that buffs all their forces by 100%, Hell General has nothing like that.”

“HUH?! I knew Hell General didn’t have a skill like that, but other jobs do?!”

“Compensation. In exchange, you can summon your devils instantly.”

Logan fell silent. He’d abused this feature of the job enough to be quite familiar with it. He did find it unfortunate, though, since if he had access to the same kinds of buffs as the other Generals, he’d be able to increase his army’s power by 1,000%. On one hand, there was summoning armies from nothing—but on the other, there was greatly enhancing the army one already had.

Most people would probably be unable to say which one was the better option.

“Incongruence. While many Generals sit at the top of the tamer grouping, they lack versatility. Because of this, they have bad compatibility with many sub jobs. I suppose you tested that yourself.”

Logan said nothing, but she was completely right. He’d thought of picking up some job with armor or shield skills that cut damage by 10% and multiplying that tenfold to make it 100%. With his High Tamer job having become useless to him, he’d picked up a shield-focused job and actually tried it, thinking he’d be invincible.

However, that had gone nowhere, as the skills of the shield-focused sub job stopped functioning whenever he had Hell General as his main. His other such attempts ended the same way.

“Why is it so incompatible?”

“Role. Generals are commanders—not martial artists who wield their skills on the battlefield.”

“But history is full of generals who were good at fighting one-on-one!” Logan blurted out, thinking of the military commanders of ancient China and the like. Logan himself was a Hell General who commanded devils, but that didn’t stop him from standing on the front lines either.

“Compatibility. There are Generals that are compatible with such skills, but only the Generals that command humans.”

“But I... Hell General has good growth in physical stats too! Why is it not compatible with direct combat?!”

“Agreement. I also think it should be. But this is how it has been set within Infinite Dendrogram’s job system. Hell General doesn’t even count as a tamer, but a summoner, so that’s all the more reason it is the way it is.”

“The devs really don’t get it, huh?! Why didn’t they give growth to other stats, then?” Logan expressed his rage at the developers for the way his job was configured—though from the perspective of the control AIs, everything about jobs had been set up by their predecessors, so it was something they couldn’t do anything about. If they could, they would’ve started by adding more Superior Jobs and given all of them more slots to motivate players to grow and evolve. But they couldn’t even do that, which spoke volumes about their power to affect this particular area.

“Exception. There is a sub job with a damage reduction skill that even a General can take.”

“Oh? Which one?”

“Paladin.”

The name of the job made Logan freeze.

Paladin was a high-rank job from the knight grouping—and it had Paladin’s Aegis, a skill that cut damage by 10%. And in the current state of the world...it was a job exclusive to Altar.

It was also heavily regulated, so there was no chance that Logan, being on Altar’s wanted list, could ever get the job for himself.

And most importantly, he had bad memories associated with it and thus was averse to the job on an emotional level.

“Knight. Then again, according to historical writings, it was in a Knight General’s build, so it might be that it’s a limited combination acceptable only in this particular case.” In other words, it was an example of the Generals that commanded humans which Zeta had mentioned earlier.

“Ohhh, so that’s how it is. Then I guess it doesn’t matter to—”

“Unrelated. Well, the bigger problem is that Hell General is a devil-focused job derived from the satanist grouping, so there’s no chance a holy job would ever work if you had it as a sub. The incompatibility at play here is worse than any caused by it being a General job.”

“Then why’d you get my hopes up in the first place?!” Logan barked again, betraying a little bit of the player’s true nature. He felt that there was no reason for Zeta to have even brought up Paladins at all.

“Understanding. I believe this explanation helped you understand something.”

Silence.

“Incongruence. Rumpelstiltskin and Hell General currently have poor compatibility.”

“Yeah! I can tell!” Rumpelstiltskin’s core focus was job skills, but all ideas for enhancing Logan’s build had been crushed by Hell General’s lack of synergy with other jobs. The General series itself was lacking in versatility and had a narrow range of jobs it meshed with well. Perhaps due to its Resources being focused on instant devil summoning, Hell General was especially bad.

In fact, it could be said that Rumpelstiltskin was the only reason Logan was able to get any use out of it at all.

“There’s nowhere for me to go from here!” Logan yelled. “What am I supposed to do?!” First he got on a terrible losing streak, and now it was clear that his job was no good. Once again, Logan contemplated quitting Infinite Dendrogram.

Zeta looked at him and thought—wondered—about the abnormality of the Hell General job.

Even if you ignore all those factors, she mused, Hell General is still more unbalanced than the other jobs in the General series. Zeta felt as though the job was...lacking an important piece. Then again, Hell General has advantages exclusive to that job, so perhaps the system’s designer just placed more value on those things. Still...the base costs are far too steep. I’ll think about this at a later time, alongside our leader and Rascal.

Zeta once again looked at Logan, who was feeling miserable again. He looked like the broken man—or rather, elementary school boy—that he had been before Zeta came to negotiate.

“Advantage. One of the advantages only Hell General has is that you can summon your devils instantly.”

“...But other jobs do that too. Summoner, for example...”

“Denial. Summoner and elementalist groupings have to prepare their summons ahead of time. They might need a medium for summoning or an area abundant in the appropriate kind of natural magic. Meanwhile, Hell General’s instant summoning can be used again and again as long as you can cover the costs. And that cost is just the number of Resources that you have to provide.”

The monsters summoned by the summoner grouping had their info and concept stored in mediums. Summoning them involved making them materialize by sending magic to that medium, and if they were defeated, you had to wait until they could be summoned again. Of course, there were summons like Balloon Golem which specialized in quick recovery, but that was besides the point.

Meanwhile, the elementalist grouping, represented by the likes of the fairy queen Titania, summoned elementals that had preferred environments based on their element and couldn’t be used to their full potential if summoned away from them.

In contrast, Hell Generals could summon their devils whenever, wherever, and many times over. As long as the costs were covered, they could be summoned right as the previous batch was defeated, and there would be no end to them.

An inexhaustible army—an advantage that perhaps made it as good as any other job in the General series.

“But it’s not like I can pay for the costs forever. Especially when summoning Zero Exceed.”

Indeed he was correct—but even ignoring the Mythical Zero Exceed that could only be summoned by sacrificing an MVP reward, summoning many Legendary Gigaknights wasn’t cheap either. Logan could multiply the rewards of each sacrifice by 10, but it made little difference to him.

“And it’s not like the devils I summon are guaranteed to win either. Zero Exceed lost against him.”

He’d always thought that Franklin was beneath him, yet the Giga Professor had easily beaten Logan’s trump card—the enhanced Zero Exceed. This dealt a huge blow to Logan’s self esteem.

However, Zeta shook her head.

“Unrelated. The power of the individual devils has nothing to do with the heart of the problem.”

“What?”

“Forte. The combination of Hell General and Rumpelstiltskin is undoubtedly a wide-scale suppression type build. It should not try to depend on the power of just one devil...to stand in the same field as solo combat builds or wide-scale extermination builds.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Calculation. Ten times twenty is greater than one hundred, so you should just summon lots of Gigaknights. As many of them as your Soldier Devils...enough for them to compose your army.”

“What?” Zeta’s explanation had become so absurd that a single word was all Logan could manage in response. He knew what she was saying, but it was like they weren’t on the same wavelength.

“Combination. Put the summoner grouping in your sub jobs and learn Mass Simultaneous Summoning. This synergizes with Hell General and can be used when subbed. You can probably multiply the simultaneous summon count too. You will be able to instantly summon lots of Legendary devils. Maybe not a thousand at once, but still enough to fill the slots of a few summons. Even a tenth of that might be overkill though.”

“Were you listening?! I told you that I can’t cover the costs!” Logan himself had considered the combination with Mass Simultaneous Summoning. However, it only increased the amount he could summon at once—and the cost grew accordingly. Even as a Superior, Logan didn’t have even a fraction of the wealth needed to summon thousands of Gigaknights like he did Soldier Devils.

And despite having to eat these costs with every summon, he wasn’t making enough to cover them.

Dryfe gave him something for his expenses whenever they had a task for him, but the battle in Quartierlatin had pushed him beyond the provided amount. It had been a financial loss as well as a physical one.

Logan was about to lose his temper at Zeta’s nonsense, but...

“Question. Why do you even have trouble covering the costs? Knowing your abilities, there is no way you should,” said Zeta, her tone full of confusion. “Switch. Then again, it is precisely because you haven’t realized it yet that I can present this to you as a way to make you stronger. I have a plan to optimize your somewhat incompatible Hell General.”

“Again, what do you want me to do?”

In response to that question, Zeta put her hand on Logan’s shoulder...

“Change. Become a crafting job.”

...and said something that Logan had never once considered.

“Why would I ever be a...?” Logan said, clearly apprehensive, the image of Franklin looming in his mind.

Zeta ignored him and continued. Writing words on the whiteboard, she finally reached the heart of her lecture.

“Resemblance. The logic behind it is similar to the ‘Gem crafting-storage-barrage theory.’”

“Gem crafting...?” As Logan tried to remember what that was, Zeta went on to explain.

The Gem crafting-storage-barrage theory was one proposed candidate for the strongest build, coming from a time before the Guardian-Jaguarman theory when Masters only had high-rank jobs and Embryos.

Crafting jobs in the gemcrafter grouping created Gems by filling them with spells from their magic sub jobs. The Gem crafting-storage-barrage theory was based around making plenty of high-rank offensive spell Gems before combat and throwing those in alongside your actual spells in combat. Though producing the Gems was costly, they enabled the users to spam spells nearly as powerful as high-rank job ults instantly and without MP costs, making it quite a fearsome build.

However, when AGI-focused combat jobs that moved at subsonic speeds became commonplace, the theory declined when its users began dying before they could throw enough Gems. It also stood no chance against the stat-focused Guardian-Jaguarman theory. Still, it had once been quite well known.

And Zeta was about to bring it back.

“So you want me to make Gems?”

“Denial.” No—she was about to make Logan evolve in a way that only he could. “Gold. Start by making some gold. Or metal, rather.”

“Huh?” Logan tilted his head. Zeta held up her index finger and, somewhat cheerful in a way her mummy-like face couldn’t hide, said this...

“Alchemy time.”

◆

Infinite Dendrogram had many kinds of alchemy.

Some specialized in the creation of magic items, others specialized in concocting medicine, and yet others focused on the production of homunculi. There were many and varied approaches to it.

Among them, the closest thing to a basic approach to the science of alchemy was the concept of “transmutation of lesser materials into greater materials.”

An example of this was the Mithril Transmutation skill.

It was a skill that had a different description depending on the user. For example, an Alchemist who had Mithril Transmutation at skill level 1 and DEX at 100 would see this:

“Transmutes the Silver used into Mithril with a mass ratio of 10 to 1. Has a 100 (DEX) x 1 (skill level) ÷ 100% chance to succeed.” The skill description included the calculation and success rate, which was based on the owner’s DEX.

In a way, crafting jobs cared about such equations even more than combat jobs.

Most metal transmutations in alchemy were like this, with the numbers being the only difference. They transformed a higher amount of lesser materials into a smaller amount of greater materials with a success rate based on DEX. This meant that alchemists without high DEX or skill level would only end up wasting the base material.

However, this was what the skill would look like with Rumpelstiltskin involved:

“Transmutes the Silver used into Mithril with a mass ratio of 10 to 10. Has a 1000 (DEX) x 10 (skill level) ÷ 100% chance to succeed.” Basically, it would transmute all the lesser material into Mithril with a 100% success rate.

It was an absurd kind of alchemy—literally like making money out of thin air.

By simply using the skill, Logan could increase his wealth and create something to cover the costs of his skills. With just a little funds and stats, he could snatch Resources from the world itself without end.

Zeta had realized that he was capable of this almost immediately and wondered why he hadn’t been doing it before now. After all, Logan was already using Rumpelstiltskin to inflate the points he got from items or sacrifices. In a way, it was a real mystery why he hadn’t hit upon the idea to inflate the number of the sacrificial items themselves.

The reason he’d never noticed something so obvious was simply because he had never considered becoming a crafting job at all. It wasn’t like he would face them in battle, so he hadn’t even looked into them to know what they were about.

Another reason was that, to put it lightly, he didn’t exactly have the best impression of Dryfe’s top crafting job.

Regardless, Logan went on to become history’s most efficient Alchemist.

Of course, alchemy grouping skills were unusable with Hell General set as his main, but he could simply change his main job whenever he had to do alchemy. And since his MP and DEX stayed the same even when he had swapped Hell General to a sub job, he had more than enough MP and DEX to use for alchemy. Obviously, the efficiency of his alchemy would only increase as his job and skill levels grew—and when he achieved that, he would never need to worry about costs ever again.

This was what made it similar to the Gem crafting-storage-barrage theory.

The fusion of crafting and combat jobs. He would sacrifice the results of his inexhaustible work as an Alchemist ahead of time to cover the costs of using Call Devil Gigaknight to summon dozens or even hundreds of Legendary devils whenever it was time for combat. There was no need to use any tactics, to worry about being wasteful, or to pick and choose which devils were right for the situation—he would easily crush most enemies with an army of powerful devils.

It was a brain-dead build centered around using immense resources to summon wave after wave of potent minions.

If it were named like the theory Zeta had likened it to, it would be “alchemy storage-legendary-barrage theory,” and it could be realized by Logan alone.

After being taught about this build, Logan immersed himself in alchemy. His skill level grew, and eventually he wasn’t producing just Mithril—some of his transmutations were a huge success and produced High-Quality Mithril. He sold part of what he produced and used the earnings to buy lesser materials to do more alchemy.

Soon, he had amassed a vast amount of points for devil summoning.

Zeta looked at him, saying nothing. Logan became stronger, just as she’d intended, but it did bring a thought to mind.

As a low-rank Alchemist, the best Logan could do was Mithril, but High Alchemists had a job ult that made it possible to make even Mythical metal. Normally, the success rate for that was extremely low and burned through a huge amount of the lesser materials used, but that wouldn’t be a problem for Logan.

Mythical metal was extremely valuable. It not only fetched high prices on the market, but also had immense amounts of Resources stored within. It was the peak of all metals mankind could currently create and was often used as material for weapons whose legends were told for centuries to come. Some of these weapons were so powerful that they exceeded even Epic MVP rewards.

When you think about it like that... Zeta thought. Mythical devil—until now, Zeta had assumed it was called that just because it was a Mythical monster.

But now, she thought that perhaps it had gotten the name because it could only be summoned by sacrificing a sufficient amount of Mythical metal.

It had the “pay with a single sacrifice” condition, but if a hunk of metal could be used for that purpose, Logan could build toward it again and again.

In that case, it wasn’t out of the question that Logan could eventually make armies composed not of Gigaknights, but Zero Exceeds.

Imagining that, Zeta felt that she might’ve given him a bit too much of a boost. At the very least, it was clear that she had to keep him reined in as a member of IF.

Regardless, this build had inspired Logan so much that he’d actually gone on to reset most of his low- and high-rank jobs. He rushed to have them replaced with jobs from the alchemy and summoning groupings. Despite that, he was so focused on transmutation that he hadn’t leveled them much. He’d also avoided alchemist guild’s job quests to keep his new powers a secret.

He didn’t think it was much of a problem, though—and when the peace talks came, he’d gone there with the intention of overwhelming the enemies with lots of Legendaries.

However, Tsukuyo Fuso had acted first—and because his level was too low, her Fatal Field had killed him instantly.

And that was why his “alchemy storage-legendary-barrage theory” had yet to see the light of day.

◆◆◆

Imperial Capital, Vandelheim, Noble District

Some time had passed since Logan became an alchemist.

Following the instakill incident, he’d gone on to level up, and now...

“Not enough... It’s not enooough...”

...he was muttering all of this with a pained expression on his face.

In his room, there was a still with alchemical pure water boiling inside and a pile of base alchemy that gave off the bloodlike smell of iron.

“It’s not enough materiaaals...”

And as he continued his alchemy, Logan also continued to whine.

He was currently working on the High Alchemist ultimate job skill, Hypothesis: Ars Magna. It was a crafting skill that produced rare and special metals, Mythical metal included. And, as the Hypothesis in its name suggested, this High Alchemist skill was incomplete. And this was despite the fact that it was an ult.

Specifically, greater metal transmutation demanded a lot of materials, as well as many catalysts. And to top it off, the skill didn’t give complete control over what metal it would produce. It wasn’t unusual to set which metal you wanted to create, only for the transmutation to give you something else.

That in itself wasn’t a problem for Logan. His Rumpelstiltskin was capable of influencing the chances of getting what he wanted.

“I ran out of materials and got almost no Mythical metal for it...” Logan’s problem was that he wanted to create Mythical metal, but Hypothesis: Ars Magna didn’t allow him to set it as the goal. He had no choice but to try getting it by accident.

As a result, he was now struggling with a lack of materials—and the alchemy gacha. Thanks to Rumpelstiltskin, he hadn’t lost much metal and could just pour most of it back into the gacha, but the same couldn’t be said about the catalysts.

“Apparently, King of Alchemy has the non-Hypothesis, proper Ars Magna...” Zeta had told him that that version of the skill could probably set Mythical metal as the goal. “But I’m not getting the message that I fulfilled the job conditions...”

However, Logan had yet to do whatever was necessary to become King of Alchemy. In fact, he didn’t even know if the throne was open or not. It wouldn’t matter much if it was a tian but if it was a Master, he’d never be able to get it.

“And I’m about to use up all the catalysts Zeta left...” The items that King of Thieves had been providing for him hadn’t seen a resupply since the day he’d gone to the peace talks. This was because Zeta herself hadn’t returned to Vandelheim yet.

“I dunno where she is or what she’s doing, but I hope she comes back fast,” Logan mumbled. “That reminds me that the new Superiors are about to arrive...”

He’d heard the rumors that Dryfe had invited several independent Superiors and that some of them had accepted.

The fact that Zeta and Murdoch weren’t enough for the imperator and that he was securing more forces had shown Logan one thing: the imperator planned to finally end it this time.

“I dunno who they are or where they come from...but I hope they have better personalities than Franklin, are less introverted than Behemot, and can handle enemies I can’t...”

At one point, Logan would’ve certainly said that he could take Altar all by himself. However, his losing streak had left him broken, and the things he’d learned through Zeta and alchemy had changed him.

He considered the risks of playing solo, thought of compatibility, examined the costs, and was mindful of social disposition.

In real life, Logan Goddhart was nothing but an elementary school boy.

But now, the effect that his growth would have on the world remained to be seen.