Rush nanites.

He’d played several hundred games at this point, and he’d never, in a million years, have thought he’d be using Rush nanites.

They increased his physical toughness, no doubt about that, but their focus on increasing his speed and toughness primarily and strength only as necessary to keep up was nearly antithetical to his usual plan.

Not that he could deny the effectiveness.

Cheaper than the more generalized version he usually used, that direction had allowed him to move his power scaling earlier, but it also meant he wasn’t getting all that much help on the purely damage side of things.

Not that that had held him back too much, but his lane opponent had started to actually respect his position in lane instead of constantly getting closer to harass.

It also helped that his kills had set him way further ahead than anyone else in the game. Everyone had one item, with the outer bases under attack, but being ahead and the lower-cost items he was using this game had allowed him to pick up the Frost Fair Blade.

It had a Chinese name, but he wasn’t going to try to make those sounds even with the game whispering the right pronunciations in his ear.

While it was usually used by banner builds, its support bonuses applied just as well to healing and self-buffs.

He managed to bring down the base just two waves after coming back.

Jade popped in over comms, clarifying everyone on the plan she’d been discussing with her brother and the diver. “Jeremy, meet Quince at the Dragon. I’ve got mid while Emma goes over to Aeris, then Jeremy meets her there and Quince covers North.”

That was strange. It was extremely early to grab map bosses, and Worm wasn’t exactly the most useful to them…

Whatever.

Jeremy tossed a ward behind him on the way, tucked slightly behind a twist in the path. It wouldn’t hide it from anyone truly looking for it, but it would hopefully buy a few seconds’ advanced knowledge if his laner followed him.

Quince got there about the same time as him and started growing one of his crystals from the ground.

“Can your crystal take a breath?”

Quince’s face scrunched up slightly. “One, yes. Maybe two, but I’d rather not chance it this early.”

“Let me start it then,” Jeremy said, then ran in

The Dragon was a lot smaller than it could have been. That didn’t make it small.

The fight, as all of his fights, was a balancing act.

He hit it once with a running stab, then jumped backwards with all of his Rush-infused speed to land just in front of Quince and the crystal tower, allowing the fire breath to wash over the three of them immediately before he activated Challenge, then dove forward. Rolling under the Dragon dodged the two claw slashes it followed up with, then, from underneath, he stabbed upwards– boosted by Driven Spear, his passive, and Rallying Strike, it brought his shield up just enough that it was able to block the bite aimed at him.

Quince did something from the other side of the Dragon, drawing its ire, while Jeremy continued to stab it as quickly as he could, dodging out of the way of the tail violently swinging around and occasionally glancing off the two crystal towers he now saw.

Each time it made contact, he felt his strikes powering up just a bit and followed with a Rallying Strike to fix them up.

From his ward, a bit of motion caught his eye, but she was far too late– Quince rushed in, his laser gun temporarily turning into something that looked a bit like a plasma whip and cutting into the Dragon’s neck, killing it.

She backed off with a single possession throw, tossing out turbulence and redirecting him, though he passed close enough to a ladder that he didn’t even bother landing.

Not the most comfortable of landings, but it worked just fine.

Quince’s cover while he was climbing prevented her from harassing him too much, luckily, and he met up with Emma.

“Can you explain to me why you guys hate this plan? Nobody’s talking about it.” he asked, not over party chat but directly to Emma as they started attacking Aeris. Unlike Quince, she didn’t provide extra targets for his passive to work off of, but she did sacrifice all of her shields, providing and even larger boost to his abilities at the expense of needing to directly take the Air Spirit’s hits for the half-second before he was able to follow up with a Rallying Strike.

“Ow. Uh, a bunch of bridges on south side get lost for this, and we’re guaranteeing that south base goes down. We may not be able to pick up Worm if Nathaniel and Jess can’t hold for long enough, and we’re only going to pick up the one mid base if we do get Worm.”

He kept stabbing at the Air Spirit, only activating Rallying Strike twice more before it went down, almost simultaneous with the notification that South base went down.

Emma looked at him, grimacing. “So um. Worm. Run. Then meet up.”