While Peter was providing tips Jason had continued to lay the beat down on the cats. While the monsters climbed on him, the buff on him continued to do its job. Ignoring them, Jason stomps around, bursts of Energy going off as he kills the ones not on him yet. Off to the side Rosha has stopped firing, now knowing that her arrows are less than useful.

Jason continues to take a steady stream of damage over this time but Courtney lays down an overtime heal on him. Better used as an efficient after fight healing, the swarm is dealing so little at such a constant pace she is able to match it no problem.

Then something happens as Jason kills about four-fifths of the swarm. All the swarm cats that have clung onto him scatter as well as the few still at his feet. Off in all the direction they flee, any semblance of order or cooperation gone.

At the back, Peter claps for them. “Congratulations on defeating your first swarm! A little small, but we are on the edge of their territory after all. Don’t mind the ones that have escaped. This is part of why the quest only wants you to defeat three fourths of every swarm. Once you kill enough of a swarm it loses cohesion. Those cats might end up joining another swarm but are more likely to become prey for something else.”

Courtney nods, “I thought animals from a disbanded swarm just end up dying? As this place was a goal of mine, I did a little research and that seems to be the case with stuff like a bee swarm and similar.”

Peter shrugs, “different types of animals. It bases an insect swarm around being controlled by a queen, even if she isn’t there with it. Once such a swarm disbands, they lose that connection and each individual insect becomes like a puppet with its strings cut. Swarm cats? Those are just normal animals that have developed a special form of communication. Over time they have become more dependent on having others around, but in the end they are still cats. Leave a cat alone and it isn’t going to just die.”

Courtney pauses as she thinks about Peter’s answer. It makes sense to her but then she realizes that during the fight he had said something else about swarms and hadn’t explained. “I just remembered. You said that the kitsune developed their illusion variant because of the swarms. What’s up with that?”

With a laugh Peter congratulates her, “good on you for catching that. I sort of got sidetracked there with the other stuff. Swarms are hard to effect with illusions because each individual monster has a chance to see through it and once one does it passes it on. What the kitsune did was focus on making their illusions as real as possible in response. Sure, there were other forces at play, but the swarms are a politically correct excuse for it.”

“Anyway, what creating a more realistic illusion does is make it so the swarms have a harder time realizing what has happened. As my husband explained it, normal illusions are great single target spells. You cast an illusion on one guy, and it is easy to make it seem real from his point of view. Swarms on the other hand have so many members looking at so many points at once they notice the irregularities.”

“As an example, take a brick wall. You make an illusion of one in front of someone and the farther above or below their line of sight the less real it has to be. So what if the shadows that should be cast by the bricks sticking out that little bit aren’t there under a certain height. Unless the person gets down on the ground to check, they won’t even see it, and if they do, you can just shift your focus there and fix it.”

“Swarms, especially any of the flying ones? They get to look at your illusions from every angle. If you make the illusion authentic enough the difficulty of affecting them actually goes down! It isn’t like swarms can be made of any animal with too much intelligence of their own. Those swarm cats? Compared to regular cats they are dumb as a sack or rocks and half as clever. If it wasn’t for being able to see so much of a normal illusion, they wouldn’t even get a save unless they touched it. The only reason the kitsune’s variant illusions aren’t 100 percent effective against swarms is because at low level there are still some errors.”

Jason off to the side looks gobsmacked, “huh, that would explain the difficulty in fooling swarms.” Then shaking his head he thinks to himself, ‘that would also explain why insects always managed to get into places they shouldn’t in my last life. Too bad I can’t tell them. It would be hilarious to see those high and mighty experts realize why insects keep beating them.’

Back with Courtney, a radiant smile has spread over her face. “Well, even more reason I have to get their illusion variant. Not only will it fix a traveller’s problem with casting illusions, but it has even more uses besides.”

Peter raises his eyebrow at her, “what? You thought they developed it just because they could or something?”

She shrugs, “well I knew some of the other uses but most of what I could find just talks about making it harder to see through. A useful thing and I suspect the only reason the variant hasn’t become the main form is because of System based suppression.”

Peter nods his head and sighs, “you aren’t wrong there. The System isn’t too keen on the variant spreading, though of course there are political reasons as well.”

Courtney scoffs, “as if that would stop the spread of something like this. Like seriously? Oh no, they won’t teach us, so we totally can’t learn it some other way! Get real. It just takes one corrupt trainer, one well-placed spy, one slip in your security and the secret gets out. The only way for a variant like this to stay so limited is either through the System or because it isn’t as applicable as the main form of the ability. A variant where the only difference is it is more realistic? Fat chance of it being anything but the System.”

Peter just shrugs.