Volume 4 - Ch 3.15
(Here it goes. . . . . . . Abstinence Attack!)
I shouted that in my mind as I swung Durandal down onto the monster when it was withing my melee range. Durandals edge made its way through the Cheap Sheeps body. . . . . . . and that was it, nothing else happened. I mean, something had to have happened, because I definitely felt the hit connect as well as the slight resistance of the monsters flesh when the attack continued to go through it thanks to the momentum and the power of gravity from my overhead slash. . . . but it did not look like that attack did any kind of noticeable damage to it. Like, at all.
Oi, what the hell, dude?! Why is this attack not working? Did I mess something up? I do not know. Maybe somehow this first attack turned out to be a fluke? Maybe it is going to work properly if I attack the Cheap Sheep again? At the very least, it should be worth a try.
(Abstinence. . . . . . . . . Attack!)
I tried repeating the attack with the Skill, this time by slashing the Cheap Sheep normally with it. . . . but once more, it did not work out.
(Damn it! Fuck! Abstinence Attack! Abstinence Attack, Abstinence Attack, Abstinence Attack!)
I tried the same thing over, and over, and over again, but the result was exactly the same each time. Could it be. . . . . . . . . . . could it be that Abstinence Attack is not an Active Skill? Because there is absolutely no way for an Active Skill to be literally weaker than a regular physical attack! No, wait, I definitely felt the sensation of the Skill activating itself, so it definitely is an Active Skill, but then why is it so weak? Hmm. . . . . . . hmmmmm. . . . . . maybe. . . .. maybe. . . . . no, no no no no no no no, please, let it be not what I think it is! Abstinence Attack. Abstinence. A Skill granted by the Sex Maniac Job, so in this context, Abstinence attack can only mean one thing. . . . . . . that you can use that Skill to its full potential only if you maintain sexual abstinence!
WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD EVER WANT TO TORTURE THEMSELVES LIKE THAT JUST SO THEY COULD USE SUCH A WEAK-ASS ATTACK?!!!!
I mean, let us be real right now! You want to tell me that if I want to be using that Skill, I would have to purposefully decline having sex with Roxanne and Sherry? Because if anyone thought that I would accept such a trade offer, then they can think again! There is no chance in hell I will ever willingly let go of something so awesome just so that I could use one Skill attack that is not guaranteed to be any stronger than the regular attack! What kind of sadist even designed it in such a way? Is this some kind of sick joke the developers of this game designed to make fun of the people who would use this game as the means to go on a sexual adventures spree?!
Now, instead of trying to use Abstinence Attack again, I slashed the Cheap Sheep with a regular attack, and it still did not fall. Seriously, in its current state, this skill really is much, much weaker than a normal attack, because if it was on par with it or just slightly weaker, this second attack should have finished the enemy off, but since it survived, it got the perfect opportunity to ram itself into me, which it did. The physical damage that I sustained from that attack was pretty negligible at my current level, but the mental shock from realizing how useless Abstinence Attack is to someone like me was far greater. I cannot believe that for a moment I was hoping that this Skill might actually be something helpful, something that maybe could have allowed me to finish the enemies on the sixth floor off with one strike instead of two, but no, of course my hopes had to be brutally crushed before they were even allowed to blossom! Or maybe there is something that I am not seeing here? Some kind of hidden condition that has to be met in order for this Skill to work the way it should be working? Maybe I have to sacrifice something in addition to expending MP and chanting the Skills name? Or perhaps it is a Skill meant for capturing the monsters while they are still alive?
Anyway, since here on the sixth floor the enemies start to be so tough that I need two strikes from Durandal instead of one in order to finish them off, then I think it is safe to assume that Abstinence Attack is a useless dud of a Skill that is not worth using in the slightest, so let me just forget that I have ever tried to use it and let us proceed forward. We have already wasted enough of our precious time with this stupid experiment. . . . . . . . . . after I try testing it out on the other monsters on this floor, just to be absolutely sure.
The next opponent was a lone Needlewood, so I tried to use four consecutive Abstinence Attacks to see if it was going to make an difference, but the result was exactly the same as before, ore perhaps even worse, because I do not know if it was just my imagination playing tricks on me or what, but I could have sworn that these four attacks that I have performed just now were even more pathetic than the ones I tried to use against the Cheap Sheep? Welp, I guess that settles it then. If neither Abstinence Attack nor the Enhanced END Skills are going to make the slaying of the monsters easier for me, then I really have no choice but to go and seal that joke of a Job away due to how wasteful and useless it is. Even if it has some hidden effects, like maybe. . . . . . . well, I do not know, maybe increase in the amount of EXP obtained at the cost of the reduced attack power, it is far too late for me to be thinking about such what ifs and possibilities. That Job had its chance with me, and it ended up wasting that chance spectacularly.
We are going to be staying here on the sixth floor for a while longer. When Sherry gets used to fighting the enemies here to such a degree that she will not be hit by them anymore, only then we are going to move on to the seventh floor, okay?
Okay.
Understood!
Getting sherry accustomed to fighting the enemies of the sixth floor without getting hit by each and every one of their attacks too about an hour or so of our time, during which she slowly but surely improved both her dodges and the ability to predict what the enemy was going to do next. I guess that in the end, this is what really matters: the knowledge of the attacks patterns of the enemies and the readiness that it gives you, which makes all the difference between being attacked because you were not expecting the attack what suddenly came your way and being able to dodge it in time because you read all the telegraphed signs properly. Now, if only sherry could learn to do that a little quicker or after a fewer number of encounters, that would be pretty great, but I should probably not get my hopes up in regards to her being the same kind of dodging expert as Roxanne is. I have to accept that eventually some of the enemys attacks are going to reach Sherry no matter how ready she is going to be for them, and simply have the Medical Treatment Skill ready to mend her wounds when the battle is over. For the time being, however, she is as ready as she can be, so there is no point in dilly-dallying here any longer.