The Berserker of My Fantasy Online

Chapter 7: Tanking 101

After we fully recovered, Aegis motioned me to follow him and the two of us walked out of the guild hall to begin my training. As we exited the kingdom and entered the forest, I decided to ask him a couple of questions. The first one was about the frontiers. How many frontiers were there and how do we make advancements through them for humanity? Aegis told me that there were ten frontiers in total. Each one had a different climate or different topography compared to other ones. There's a frontier with a never ending blizzard, one with ravines that go down to the center of the planet, and even one with mountains that reach the planet's outer spheres. The first frontier, The forest of beginnings, was the easiest one. Monsters from level one to ten could be found here. The next frontier however, is called the scorching desert. It has monsters from level ten to twenty. Each subsequent zone follows this pattern.

"And what about advancing humanity? How do we do that?" I asked.

"Each frontier has a Demon General in it. Normally, the game would want any six people to find the demon general in each frontier and kill them, but once you enter combat with one, you can't escape no matter what. And to add onto that, the demon generals never have the same attack pattern. So to make it easier on everyone, Lucia handpicks an expedition squad to go into an unconquered frontier and conquer it. Just this morning she set off for the scorching desert."

I'm a little bummed out that I couldn't join her for that, but maybe I'll be able to for the next expedition.

Once we got deep into the forest, we started to see level five enemies a bit ways from the main road. I'm surprised that Aegis brought me this far since I'm only level three. He must've heard about Potenshia.

"Okay so the goal of a tank is to be the shield. You have to be an impenetrable shield between the enemy and the rest of your team. By level three, you are given essential tools that help you in your mission to do so. You are given a stun skill, an aggro skill, and an aoe skill. Depending on your class, you'll get these things in a different order. Look at your hot bar and tell me what your skills are."

"Hot bar? Aggro? Aoe? What are you even talking about?"

"We really have to start that far back?" Aegis facepalmed.

The paladin then explained the terms he was using to me. A hotbar is the small line of boxes at the bottom of my vision that allows me to use skills. Aggro is short for "aggression." If someone is given a skill based on aggro, it'll mostly be used to get the attention of one or more enemies. Lastly, aoe. Aoe is short for "area of effect." It's an attack that hits multiple enemies at once. For tanks, it could be used to instantly aggro multiple enemies onto you.

"Now that you know the LITERAL bare bone basics, let's try this again: What skills do you have? If you want to know the details of a skill, focus your eyes on a specific skill and a window explaining it should pop up."

As I looked at my hotbar, I noticed that there wasn't just one skill, but two more. The first one was the one I have been using, diverging claw. It's an area of effect skill that does damage to the enemy and also knocks them back. I specifically remember using this one against the wolves.

The second had a picture of someone yelling. This skill was called "undead's beckon." It immediately makes whoever is in a cone in front of me aggro towards me. It doesn't do any damage, but it's good for shifting the enemy's attention to me.

Then there's the third skill "vital puncture." This skill stuns a single enemy for 3 seconds. It does damage, but barely any. Now that I look at it, it does even less damage than the other two abilities.

After I read them out to Aegis, he asked me to use the abilities on him. Normally, I would hold back a bit, but I noticed while we were fighting that he's way more leveled than me. He's level 12!