Chapter 8

When they approached the main group. Mike walked forward to greet them.

“I am sorry.”

“But?” Jules challenged.

The two of them could see the battle on the other man’s features. “No But. I gave bad instructions. My fault, sorry.”

Jules hesitated, indecision in her eyes and then she glanced at the red-headed tank and the fight went out of her. “Me too. Charlotte almost died. I should have clarified whether I could use that spell.”

Across from him, Adrian saw Charlotte breathe out relief. She looked completely fixed up. The signs of losing her arm had vanished. Even the blood had been washed away.

“You need to do better, Mike,” Jules continued.

Charlotte tensed.

“Yes,” Mike agreed. “The knowledge bit is easy. It’s communication that’s the problem. I had a chat with Parker and he had a few suggestions, mainly spend more time planning and talking about risks and opportunities. First thing, what you just did was good, but you will be safer with our previous plan. Second, you could safely push twenty metres closer in, but,” Mike said quickly, seeing Adrian preparing to interject. “I would leave a large error buffer. Let’s say ten metres. Twenty metres to their perimeter is very safe, but will let us clear the place thirty percent faster.”

“Why not go closer?” Adrian asked not really caring about the answer. He just wanted to see what Mike had learnt.

“We could, but I’m not sure it is worth it. We will walk twenty metres from the active edge. Providing Jules doesn’t unleash a moving lightning storm, or you decide to see if you can kill a meerkat a hundred metres away with your bow we are only going to aggro meerkats in a little over five hundred squares metres. That means, in a one in a ten thousand event, you will have seven, maybe eight meerkats suiciding at once. You can easily handle that. If you get ten metres closer, then the extreme event has eleven kamikazeing. That’s when they become problematic. If you walk right on their perimeter, then they become even more aggressive. You might end up with twenty targeting you. Even a one in hundred event, we will have fifteen attacking, which is too much.”

Mike stopped, clearly thinking the problem through. “You can definitely push closer than twenty maybe as close as ten.”

“Why not just say ten to start with?”

“I was going to suggest we start at twenty metres, then once you have adjusted to that, move in to eighteen and then steadily reduce the distance. That will give us more data. Till then it is all theoretical and the extra risk is not worth the time savings. But be on guard if their behaviour changes, then we run.”

“That’s a good plan,” Adrian said approvingly.

“I’ve had time to think it through. I believe we’ll settle at somewhere between eight and twelve metres, but we don’t need to rush to the final position. Better to go slow and ensure we can handle it.”

“Thoughts?” he asked Jules.

“Time to do some bashing.”

“Jules, hit nothing further than from you to that bush.” Mike threw a rock at a bush away from where the meerkats were.

“That is further than what I was just doing.”

“Yep. That’s the hard distance. Don’t go beyond that.”

Jules nodded seriously. “I promise my magic will not go that far.”

“Same for everyone,” Mike said.

Adrian nodded along with everyone else. “Hug and makeup,” Adrian ordered. Then, to try and be a leader he stepped forward and gave Mike a hug that was more like mutual back slapping. Jules gave Mike one that was more traditional.

Charlotte joined in and then they were ready to go.

Flanked by Jules and Charlotte, they moved into position. They followed the instructions and Adrian shut his eyes and used his sensory domain to make sure there was no impending burst of suiciding meerkats. The meerkats under the ground he killed, and suicide ones, unless there were more than three. He left those for the spear and occasionally for the girls to deal with. Though they complained every time, they had to block one with their weapons. Under Mike’s direction, they got closer and closer and it was pretty clear that their sweet spot was only seven metres from the meerkat territory. Mike had underestimated the spear’s efficiency.

“Mana?”

“Eighty percent,” Adrian called out.

“Drop back to fifteen metres,” Mike shouted suddenly.

“Why?” Jules asked, even as they complied. From their time in the training facility, they had learnt to react instantly to his commands.

“Extra activity so we need to increase our error margin.”

They retreated slightly to the new position and kept their attacks going.

“Full retreat. Now,” Mike ordered.

None of the three of them hesitated. They turned tail and ran. The sun, while not yet setting was low in the sky. If they kept going, they could finish this today. “Everyone retreat,” Mike was yelling even while sprinting directly away from the meerkat territory. They all matched him.

Step.

With the extra distance he gained, Adrian seized the opportunity to look back at the meerkats, and they had all vanished from sight. What would make meerkats retreat into their burrows like that?

Almost instinctively, he looked up, searching the sky for the predator that must have scared them.

His passive scanning kicked in. A meerkat in the underground burrows had just entered his scanning range. He almost jumped at that revelation. They had been steadily compacting the animals into a smaller area and that meerkat’s presence in a burrow fifty metres from their nominal territory was terrifying.

For monsters that could hit you as hard as a cannonball fired at close range, any change in behaviour was terrifying.

Step, step.

Catching up to the others. “Run harder. They’re underground.” There were still burrows under their feet. They were not saved yet.

His words spurred them on.

Praveen tripped, his foot catching in a meerkat burrow, and Adrian’s domain let him hear the crack of bone.

Step.

Lay of hand.

Dragging the tank up.

“My ankle.” Praveen’s face was a caricature of pain.

It is only a broken bone. Then Adrian suppressed the thought. It didn’t matter, very few if anyone had his and Jules’s level of pain tolerance. He dragged Praveen up, looping one of the tank’s arms around his shoulder while using his other arm to support the other man around the waist.

With a grunt, Adrian pulled them both up, almost lifting Praveen up unaided. Then he ran forward, forcing the whimpering man to hop next to him. Every jolt Adrian knew would be agonising.

On the edges of his awareness, he sensed a meerkat rapidly catching them. It was almost under his feet.

Danger!

From just a couple metres away, he wasn’t sure he could intercept a meerkat, and he did not want to use Flame Sprout because there were too many. If he started attacking he was worried about aggroing all of them and from this close, he wasn’t sure he could save Praveen.

Battle Wraith.

He hoisted Praveen up so the man’s entire weight rested on Adrian’s shoulder and right arm.

Step.

It was awkward as hell, balancing well enough for the agility penalty not to disable the skill.

Step. It failed. Repositioning Praveen slightly and using both arms.

Step.

He felt the precarious drop in his shadow step allowance, but he was ahead of the meerkats and there were no more burrows under him.

Step, step, step.

Available steps had almost reduced itself to zero. Even with the battle wraith form, actively carrying Praveen burnt through his capacity. Breath heaving, but not fully incapacitated, he kept hold of Praveen and continued to stumble forward. Behind him, he could hear the larger group catching up.

Then Jules was next to him, snatching the weight off him. Adrian kept running, one foot in front of the other powering through the debuff. Every breath was painful and he could feel sweat breaking out across his face and under his arms

“That’s far enough,” Mike called out.

Adrian collapsed to his knees then bum, trying to drag in enough breaths to speak. “Is this?”

“It’s expected,” Mike informed him. “Apart from Praveen falling.”

Adrian was looking back at the meerkat territory. Everything was still. Not a single one of the animals was to be seen. It looked peaceful.

“Wait for it,” Mike told him. His hand was counting down.

Two.

One.

Then Mike put his two fists together and opened them up to show a bomb going off. “Boom.” Meerkats boiled out of their tunnels, creating a perimeter around their previously controlled fields. “Come on.”

There were abrupt flashes as meerkats unleashed their fast movements. They seemed to target random spots diving into the ground. Clumps of earth exploded from the spots they targeted, but no meerkats.

“What?” Adrian asked in surprise.

“Yes.” Mike did a fist pump.

“What are they attacking?”

“Decoys,” Mike explained happily. “Old Man Parker helped me set it up.”

The meerkats kept flashing and then exploding when they hit random patches of ground. Adrian used Magic Focus and he could see an image flickering and three meerkats flashed toward it. The ground exploded.

“Is this normal behaviour?”

“Yes,” Mike told him. “You compress them and place down decoys on their previous area and then when they expand, you retreat in front of them and you can get them suiciding against the decoys.” He waved his hands. “Damn.”

“What?” Adrian asked surprised at the disappointment in Mike’s face. The decoys had done a great job of reducing the meerkat numbers.

“We only killed fifty percent. That is right at the lower level of success. Sometimes you get ninety percent kill rate.” Another shake of Mike’s head. “Oh well, nothing we can do now. Let’s fight, but only twenty metres. They are enraged and more aggressive now.”

The meerkats did not stay at the edge instead they retreated inwards and cautiously the group followed them. When Mike was happy, they completed another loop.

“Guys, stop,” Mike yelled out. “It’s getting too dark.”

“Are we coming back in the morning?” Adrian asked slightly disappointed. He had been hoping to finish the fight before the morning.

Mike shook his head. “Nope, they’re broken. The town can finish it. Should only take a couple of days.”

Old Man Parker was waiting under the same tree as previously. He nodded at them. “Someone will meet you in town.”

“Aren’t you coming?” Adrian asked in surprise.

“Need to monitor them till an hour after dark. Don’t want a colony splitting off that we are not aware of.”

Adrian shrugged. “Okay,”

“Good jobs guys,” Old Man Parker called out. Adrian turned to respond, but the other battle strategist’s attention was already conspicuously focused on the meerkats. Adrian smiled. It was pretend busy to avoid conversation. Grumpy Parker might have been the better moniker.

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