For the rest of his days, he would live in irreversible condemnation: a lost wretch. He would become a discarded piece of garbage that eventually became a fast-rolling ball of trash, that'd grow into a globe of debris that blotted out the sun itself - assuming the world failed to clean him up before that could even happen.
....
He discarded the curiosity and instead, accepted the idea that he was locking off the possibility of no longer being a social outcast.
Kazuma is perhaps overestimating the social awfulness of the Brand, but still, this is pretty sad. I talked at length in the initial reaction about how important it would be for him personally to be able to develop functional relationships, and seeing that vanish....I guess he's prepared to bear the burden, though. And developing the pragmatic determination necessary to make such a decision is a boon in itself for any Cursebearer. Maybe the pain of losing all those possibilities for genuine connection with others will help him properly appreciate the connections that he manages to develop. At the very least, Aqua is liable to be around for a long, long time if he doesn't fuck things up early on, and I'm sure that she can be made into a good friend through a combination of bursts of luck and the long drudgery of effort.
One curse slithered in like it owned the place and settled around his shoulders like a contented pet, a laughing snake whispering bad advice; two more peeked their heads in curiously and with a smirk offered towards each other, became chains binding his wrists; and the last one, sinuous and long, enveloped his entire aura like a constrictor boa and compressed like a spring, then shed its skin on top of him like a permanent stain meant to never go away.
Ugh, you really captured the viscerally disgusting aspect of the Curses that we weren't exposed to with people as unbothered/stoic as our AST protagonists. I bet Cursebearers who have curse-sensitive supernatural capabilities before their offer have to miserably lay down and spend a day or two vomiting after they complete their Transaction.
He snapped the infobook from her hand, then started flipping through.
"Hey! You can't do that, you useless hikki-NEET!" Aqua cried in wrathful affront, but he strained to ignore her.
Good man! There's those +20 Wis, Wits, Int, and Agi kicking in. Actually, I bet that +20 Will should go a long way towards solidifying his newly-found resolve.
Aw, man. I just realized that, even with the bonus mental stats and personal development, Wretched is still going to make sure that his general social situation is weird over the long-term.
This enflamed her more, as he noticed a lashing hand coming from his peripheral vision. In a tenth of a second or less, Kazuma reacted.
He looked up, seeing that Aqua was in a heap on the floor, the wooden chair lying on top of her.
That's what happens when you dump all your stat points into APP, useless goddess. A little bit of classic Konosuba levity slipping in to Konomena. I guess Kazuma can use it.
This is more stat elevation than I thought he would be getting, given the description, but it feels vaguely appropriate? He's still only pretty great in most stat categories, but is by no means superhuman enough to handle even a few people with pistols while himself unarmed. It's a good base to start from, though, and honestly the mental stat pluses are more valuable than the physical ones, since the primary factor of survival for a Progression-Type is rooted in their judgement, and the earlier that gets cranked up, the better.
The goddess' unthinking double strike and subsequent defeat were chillingly shocking to her because she didn't expect him to be actually able to dodge or meaningfully counter her. She wasn't terrified of him, but reasonably concerned that if she chose to continue fighting, she'd feel pain and, as a result, be subjected to the 'horrors' of an unpleasant experience; a path that she desperately wanted to avoid, but framed as divine mercy in order to retain her pride as a deity.
Aqua isn't scared because she doesn't really understand what happened, but if it were someone more competent they'd probably have browned their pants from noticing the Lathe of Heaven appear out of nowhere right after they mocked someone's death. I mean, Kazuma isn't a Combat-Type, so it wouldn't make that much of a difference, but it's still not the kind of power anyone wants to be given to one of their enemies.
In order to avoid a repeat performance in the future, he marked her for Geas of Incompetence and felt the curse transfer into a fate-link between them as if sharply drawn and magnetized towards her, like there was no more perfect target for it anywhere within the local cluster of a billion universes.
The Accursed drops in to give Kazuma an offer, takes a look at the situation, paging through his Curses to see which to offer, then notices Aqua's sterling compatibility and thinks, "yeah, why not?"
Choose a single Cheat Power:
Charity has really high utility, even if they took out the low-hanging fruit of being able to portal cut with it, so I'm surprised that they offered it to him. This could become something really, really valuable with not so much effort, since loot never stops being relevant to an Adventurer. I'm not sold on it, though.
Blue Magic is also really good. I admit I didn't like it on the first pass because it seemed too rigid, and lacking initially power, but...Kazuma has Progression. I've noticed that Abilities that allow power stealing in some form (a la Accretion) seem to have good synergy when it comes to developing Advancements, and the Adventurer Card gives EXP for monster flesh, so eating monsters is already encouraged and won't be seen as weird. The myriad abilities that can be picked up using this method can only be a good thing, considering Kazuma's munchkin competence, even if they take a while to solidify. And the magic itself is also something that Progression can go to work on, perhaps allowing other kinds of power acquisition. Finally, the hour of someone who can totally use Gardener's Hallow is nigh!
Also, I think that this pick synergizes the best with the plan of popping Fortune's Smile right away, as well as having Subaru, since Kazuma can probably very efficiently rake in some great consumables in that time. Normally I would be skeptical of his ability to do so, given his starting location and the time limit (in which he has to solidify a safe position in the town overall). But +1 ISH Luck on top of a natural +.5 ISH luck? That's a different story. I wouldn't be surprised if a freshly dead dragon fell out of the sky in front of him, or an eccentric noble decided to give away some of their most valuable monster parts on a whim to a hateful passerby simply to prove to their traveling companion that even the worst pleb in the kingdom appreciates fine dining, or a barrel of special monster bits travelling through Axel falls off a wagon, etc. etc.
Eyes of Petrification isn't a good pick. It only works once per day, doesn't work as well on targets above our level, and doesn't work well with Progression? No thanks.
Blessed Luck
blows. It's literally just immediate free mitigation of a Curse that's easier to mitigate than all of our others. That is not what Kazuma needs at all from this choice, are you kidding me? Blessed Might or Agility would be the way to go with stat buffs. Hell, even Blessed Intelligence would be amazing! Literally any other Blessed stat is better here than taking the one stat which simply vanishes into mitigation, and isn't relevant for Fortune's Smile given the magnitude of its effect. Why people would pick this is actually beyond me.
Gun: no, lol. Somehow this is almost as bad as Blessed Luck.
For a write in, I would probably go with Blessed Might (half value Con, half value Strength) if we wanted immediate safety. But I think that's not necessary with how safe his start should be; Wretched would normally pose a risk, but if we're popping Fortune's Smile then I'm less worried. So Blue Magic it is!
What else is there along the axis of high utility cheats? I think it's right to rule out Cheat Items, since they don't work as well with Progression. Ocular series could probably also give heat vision and some different special kinds of perception, which are all likely to be of little worth given that the powerful ones aren't going to be offered to us. Magic series...we could be offered Green Magic, which I imagine to either be nature magic or buffing/debuffing, and there's also White and Black magic for Support and Offensive effects. Non-colored magics might let a pick highly specialized things like Enchanting or Alchemy, but the really good ones are also likely to be locked up. The Virtue series are the best bet for good utility-type Cheats, since the one we got offered indicates that they don't balance abilities with complex mechanics very well beyond the basic pitfalls. I don't have a solid idea of what the other effects might be, though, and the more powerful ones are likely also something we're locked out of.
Kazuma is a reasonably competent person, despite his outside appearance and frequent school truancy. In fact, when it comes to strategy and tactics he is a savant. In his homeland, he was often called, 'Kazuma-san who forces patch updates.' What a fearsome opponent to face!
Imagine being such a little fucker that whole fanbases know your specific name because of how often it appears in the patch notes....
Actually, I'm sure that would be an amazing meme. "Congratulations to Kazuma-san for his specialty item infinite damage spell-loop that our playtests didn't notice. That makes a solid 10/14 showing on this year's patch notes!" People go hog-wild for that sort of thing
Anyways, there's really no contest here. In my mind it's much, much better to use Fortune's Smile to safely establish ourselves in Axel, friendly with our Companions, since having Aqua on-side is extremely valuable. The best possible time to invoke Kazuma's world-shattering power is when the greatest difference can be made, and there's no time when that's more true than his arrival. I wouldn't jump for Retinue just yet, since Kazuma needs to drag himself upwards a bit to be reasonably safe, but once he's decently powerful I would add Subaru on, since he needs it a lot more than Aqua.
If we don't immediately use Fortune's Smile, then we have to pick a Cheat Power with more immediate safety and less potential, which is probably a Blessed Series physical stat boost. I'd much rather have the long-term potential of Blue Magic than some generic punching power that Kazuma can acquire from sufficient Adventuring anyways.
