Danmachi- Hell’s Forge

{NORMAL POV}

It was funny how things turned out sometimes. I certainly hadn't expected to pick up a chick on the way back from my date. Can't say I regret it though as Ophelia is super fun to mess with. She was a small human girl with a cute face when not covered in grime and haphazardly cut hair that somehow worked for her. Perhaps her only real issue is that her mentality was one that left her paranoid and distrustful of everyone and everything around her. Frankly speaking she couldn't have gotten any luckier when I decided to try and get her to join the familia as everyone here was pretty honest and straight forward to understand on a personality basis.-

Dealing with Moloch and his scummy familia was equally satisfying as it couldn't be more obvious that that familia was not used to having to play nice even without soul gaze telling it to me. Nasty bunch that familia with even the god being stained with an abundance of sin. I contemplated sneaking back to their place and blowing them all sky fucking high but decided against it since it would be too close to my original visit to the familia.-

Not that I doubted that I could get away with it as so long as I designed the bombs to be consumed upon detonation there would be almost no evidence leading back to me. Even if a god got involved I could pass that whole lie detection thing by saying I was not responsible for the explosion. Obviously I wouldn't be because I'm not the one who'd set off the bomb so I wouldn't be responsible for it. That said that familia gets to live since I didn't want to deal with the hassle that came from being investigated.-

Unlike with Lili, Daphne and Cassandra, Ophelia was a new adventurer so she got my boot camp treatment. Something Bell spared her a pitying look for every morning at breakfast. Her distrustful nature came through HARD when she got her falna as both her skill and magic were illusion based with an emphasis on hiding. I already knew that her fighting style would be that of an assassin or rogue as a result and started her training with that in mind. Right now I was increasing her endurance stat with a focus on her legs since a rogue or assassin should specialize in powerful lunges and evasion.-

Contrary to what many think endurance didn't just have to do with how many hits you could take but also included your stamina as well though to a much lesser degree. Once her stamina reached an acceptable level I intended to move on to form and function training with a weapon. The idea there was that I taught her the form and function of using her weapon to the best of my ability before letting her grind it out a bit in a light bit of sparring.-

I was already working on crafting a few beginner weapons for her to test out to see what she preferred but I was fairly certain she'd choose a dagger or spear. By the end of her first week of boot camp training Ophelia gave me the most loathing of glares but I ignored it. Still her endurance stat had gone from 10(I) to 48(I) which wasn't too bad at all if I do say so myself. With her endurance no longer being terrible I moved her on to form and function training though she surprised me with her choice of weapon.-

She chose neither dagger or spear but scythe instead. To be honest I had only thrown the thing into the options for shits and giggles and hadn't ACTUALLY thought it would be chosen. Fighting with a scythe was also not a very easy thing to do as the weapon came with serious downsides. For starters blocking attacks with it was very hard if you enjoyed having fingers. There was no guard on the staff portion of a scythe due to how much of the handle you needed to use to fully utilize the weapon.-

To put it simply a scythe was a purely offensive weapon with no defense which was a big flaw. A second issue was that you couldn't really slash at things with a traditional scythe. It was more of a grab and pull type weapon though a modified design fixed this to a degree. The modification was simply turning the blade from one sided two two sided with an edge on both the inside and outside of the blade. Slashing was still really fucking awkward to do even with the modification though. To improve the offensive capabilities of the weapon I further added a small square of metal on the opposite side of tip of the handle for blunt attacks.-

Nothing as pronounced as my own weapon but it gave the weapon a sort of bec de corbin vibe though obviously with the bladed part being considerably larger. It came as no surprise but despite her clear affinity with the weapon Ophelia couldn't use it very well. I myself had a similar issue with my weapon at first as affinity was not enough to just pick up a weapon and use it masterfully. Instead it just meant that you'd get good at it quickly which she did. It took her another week of form and function training to have a basic grasp of how to use her weapon.-

Once that was done I had Bell take her into the dungeon to get her first kill as well as live combat experience. Naturally she hesitated when it came to killing and had a panic attack after she was forced to anyways. It came down to her or the goblin she was fighting and she chose her, simple as that. Naturally Bell would have stepped in before she actually got killed but she only learned that after the fact.-

Still with only I rank in her stats she struggled heavily against the goblins even on the first floor that typically had stats at about the high H to low G ranks. The only reason they weren't more dangerous for newbies like Ophelia was that they were uncoordinated and savage things that didn't know how to fight with skill at all.