4.17

“Strategy is simple. If you have more than one soldier on the field to the enemy’s zero then you have won.” - Madelyn the Skull Rain, the Great, the Conqueror, the Extremely Beautiful and Eligible Bachelorette and the please don’t execute this scribe for not appropriately listing all your titles.

“Noam,” Dustin said. “Be annoying.”

“Finally, my time has come,” Noam replied with a grave face.

Stepping forward, Noam brought his twin hook swords out to bare and loudly said, “Aren’t you an ugly lot?”

The tiefling almost staggered when the mana left his body.

“Did Frankenstein have a field day fucking the zoo or something?”

The second cast, the headache was almost a palpable force, yet he stood. Half of communication was body language, and his was cocksure, languid and lazy. One blade rested on his shoulder, the other held low as if he didn’t see the enemy as a threat.

Vicious Mockery was not a costly spell, its effect was weaker than Biting Words and it didn’t actually do damage, but there was a wonderful benefit to it. As dozens, hundreds of stitched together monsters shifted their eyes to him demonstrated, they didn’t have to understand him to feel the sharp feeling of irritation to the speaker.

“Think I got all of them?” he asked aloud.

“Two hundred and eleven out of two hundred and eight-four,” he answered without pausing in his scanning gaze. “It is good enough.”

Disappointment briefly flickered across his face, but his smile soon returned, as he lowered his weapons.

“Now Catch These Hands,” he quietly said.

Finally, Matt was somewhat serious.

Despite his best attempts to smother his smile, I could practically feel the eagerness as he raised his strange blades. I still thought those things weren’t real weapons, but when he rushed forward at a speed I could barely see, blood sprayed, none of it his.

“He doesn’t have any strength buffs so he must be cleaving them purely through the momentum of his buffed agility.”

“Focus,” I chided. I didn’t need to bother with him for a few moments, he knew me enough to know the plan.

I raised a hand, stopping a few that wanted to go with him. He wouldn’t appreciate people stealing his show.

“Naukoth, play Ilneval’s Edge, Utoqa, catch the stragglers Noam isn’t taking, Yellow will direct you.”

Both quickly complied, Utoqa silent as Yellow got on his shoulder and Naukoth grumbling something about scratches.

My mind quickly sped up. A few extra seconds to consider variables. Invaluable.

“Attrition,” Declan assessed.

“Agreed.”

I began growing a bunch of sporages in my hand. “Celine, do you have any stamina and energy restoring potions?”

“I do!” she quickly answered, hurriedly fumbling them out. She wasn’t used to thinking faster. Her hands weren’t as fast as she expected them to be.

“Pass them around and get used to this speed of thought,” I said aloud. “I’ll get you up to speed.”

“Heh.”

Assume authority, and people assume you have it.

“I require a general overview of your abilities. As quick and as concise as possible.”

I already had an idea of a few of them just from Yellow observing. The brown-haired priest of war could heal with a touch, but I saw him raising a hand a few times and attacks that would’ve missed suddenly connected.

The dragonborn, Torrin something, used a lot of wide AOE fire-based spells. She pretty much singlehandedly held off hordes of enemies for a while, but I have to assume she would be OOM for now. Her two allies, the gnome and human appeared to both be melee fighters who still seemed relatively topped up. The human was also the first to notice us coming. Something to remember.

The girl who wanted to run away used daggers and a crossbow. Evoking the idea of a rogue. Just based on classical weapon conventions she wouldn’t be very useful. The last was a red-haired spear user armoured in decent mail and I didn’t catch much other than that.

The replies given between sips of stamina potions quickly confirmed what I observed. Torrin had a trick that could Prime a spell to gradually grow in power and hit a lot harder, but out of her three prepared she had already used two.

The brown-haired healer could offset tiredness and fatigue for only himself when in battle but will get them all dealt back to him later. That was how he managed to keep up until now. He would collapse once the battle was done, though I wanted to ask what constituted a ‘battle’ ending we didn’t have the time. For now, he’s just a heal bot with a gimmick.

The others had a variety of useful mid-close combat abilities. The human with the dragonborn, Mehens, had sensory passives, a scout. The rogue was a hit and runner who can double herself for a short time but was better in taking down singular targets. The spear user Gohod could make his spear disappear from sight.

Ultimately minor in this sort of encounter, but something to keep track of.

“Stave em off until the dragon recharges?”

“We’ll need to keep a constant rotation.”

“Just need to grind it down,” we said at once.

“Rogue girl,” I pointed at a vantage point. A large trunk-like stalagmite with a broken-off tip about twenty metres from us. “Go there, don’t bother with the riff-raff, aim for any that look particularly strong with your bow.”

“My name is Rivita!” she yelled, “and isn’t that a bit far off?!”

That spot was indeed a bit far from the main group, but ultimately, “We will be taking the main aggro of the enemies, you should be able to fight any stragglers that head your way.”

She still looked unconvinced, time was running out. My main focus was still on Noam as he used the head of an ape-like chimera as a foothold to jump into a perfect somersault before landing like a spinning top, decapitating and wounding several chimeras.

“Show off.”

“Stupidly effective though.”

But he was slowly but surely slowing. Every marked enemy he killed decreased his buff, and he’ll eventually reach the point where he can’t style on them with superior stats. He was already five percent slower than when he had his full buff. Not to mention how he still had a limited pool of stamina, and judging by how his mouth was constantly moving, he was still spewing insults as he did so, adding another strain to his stamina.

“Simply speaking, I wouldn’t bet he’ll last the next two minutes, let alone the day needed to finish his cooldown.”

“If he played fully defensively, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

I smiled, “But it wouldn’t be the same.”

Focusing back on the rogue girl, “Worst comes to worst and we die, they will spend a few minutes eating us, from that vantage point you will be able to get a headstart on running,” I drily replied.

Surprisingly that didn’t seem to fill her with great confidence, but she did move eventually.

“Torrin, keep back, recover your mana and be prepared to use your last Primed spell, I’ll tell you when to.” The dragonborn nodded, likely too regening mana to formulate a proper answer.

“Utoqa, head back or get caught in the AOE!” I yelled. “Mehens, Gohod, gnome, form a perimeter behind me and Utoqa, with the piano behind you.”

“What’s AOE?” the gnome asked.

“Shorthand for area of effect,” I replied, glancing at the slowly growing cluster grenade in my hand. The edges of my vision were slightly darkening, I was straining my mana. “Naukoth, prepare to swap to strength song. Utoqa, prepare to extract Noam.”

In the distance, Noam was practically buried in the number of enemies. But for the briefest moment, he jumped, head poking out of the horde that was almost a singular writhing mass.

We exchanged glances.

“Naukoth, switch to your strength song now.”

He did, and as he did so, three things happened. Noam threw out one of his blades, hooking unto the shoulder of a tall chimera, using it as leverage to throw himself over. I yelled for Utoqa to grab Noam and threw the bundle of sporages I grew towards the airborne tiefling.

In midair, Noam swung the blunt side of his blade, batting it into the mass of enemies, before crashing into a group of peripheral chimeras.

Utoqa, the moment he saw Noam leap over, rushed forward, bone axe swinging out with deadly efficiency, carving his way to the fallen tiefling.

In front of them, the cluster sporage grenade began to detonate as it banged into dozens of chimeras. Over the sound of dozens of creatures screaming in pain, there was the faint sound of Noam’s laughter.

Here, the enormity of the cave worked against us, though the enemies were many they were spread out. The dragonborn was no slouch in terms of pure AOE dps, at least four times better than me, but the efficacy of her usage was suboptimal. Often times she had wasted an entire AOE spell on only one or two enemies.

It was a simple problem to fix. One of the first things a raiding party learned.

Noam gathered the crowd, and I killed it.

How many did I get? “One-twenty? One-thirty?”

Now to repeat a few more dozen times.

The ensuing conflict was not a fight, Elucidatium Swindoobly Vulgopopopot, called ‘Lucy’ by her friends, decided.

It wasn’t a massacre either, for when the strange myconid called her forward, she could see that it was tiring as well.

There was a pattern, alternating between Torrin and the myconid. The melee moved to hold the front, but also to herd the monsters into a single spot for the mages to destroy. When one tired, they swapped to regain mana.

The myconid was not as good as Torrin at destroying masses, it left creatures alive for a few moments to suffer the poison, so the more durable melees had been on his rotation, the savage lizardfolk and Gohod.

On the other hand, the tiefling was on the rotation Torrin, Mehens and herself were on. Clearly more used to this form of combat. Yelling magical insults to draw them around him and uncaring of getting singed by Torrin’s runoff.

All the while, Rivita sniped tough-looking creatures that survived magical attacks, Lehems the cleric and the alchemist girl curing all manners of minor wounds and the large orc who was comically hunched over the relatively small grand piano kept everyone stronger during the battle.

Elucidatium Swindoobly Vulgopopopot frowned, this still wasn’t a battle. It wasn’t the desperate fight within the inch of her life she had just experienced. The myconid’s constant call for rotations even allowed for everyone to take short rests! As the bodies piled, it even started to become easier as the creatures had fewer angles to attack from.

This wasn’t a fight at all. It was as if… as if… they were farmers harvesting crops.

Harvesting wasn’t easy, it was tiring backbreaking work and there was still the chance of injury.

Yet…

If one kept a regular, almost casual pace, there was no chance of failure or death.

The myconid continued on his orders, speaking in an almost bored yet firm tone like he’s done this hundreds of times. Making minute adjustments to everyone's position and ability usage. Pacing everyone with a calm she could not hope to muster even at her best.

Though Lucy tired as she fought, her strength sapping even when with regular rest. She slowly started to see it, through the constant grind and battle.

She could see the entire field harvested.

And soon enough.

It was.

Though it was fun at first, it slowly turned into the same grind all fights involving Decs had.

Dustin gave Noam the first initial hurrah to get everything started off, but by the time everyone started to collapse in relief and exhaustion, Noam’s enthusiasm had dimmed completely as he and Utoqa finished off the last few stragglers. Strange one, that lizard, he did everything with unerring efficiency and followed orders to the letter. He felt blank in the same way Declan used to be.

Oh well.

When Dustin took command, victory was assured in a way Noam never could’ve had. There needed to be a lot more than mere numbers to be any real difficulty for him. This was the same madman who calculated the exact amount of DPS, time, character builds and items it would take to kill several dozen Mythic tier raid bosses, each with unique abilities and phases that could wipe an unprepared party.

Declan believed these weren’t that big a deal because anyone could make the same calculations and reach the same conclusions, but the problem was just that. Plenty of people could, but Declan was the one who did.

Noam could’ve kept the creatures off them for a long while, but not kill them. He’s been around Declan’s rambling long enough that he could figure out how his build is supposed to work. Even when it was really more of a joke build.

“We need to hurry up and get out,” Dustin said, barely standing as he leaned on his staff. “We can’t stay here for long.”

Noam frowned, Dustin looked worried, more than usual. “What’s wrong?”

Dustin glanced at him before his eyes darted back to the entrance. Hundreds of bodies practically buried the way, yet his eyes jumped around as if expecting something more.

“Greenie died halfway through the encounter,” he quietly answered. “He has yet to come back.”

“Ah.” Of course that freaked him out more than hundreds of enemies could have. The thing Declan could never get over was the fear of not knowing.

Almost on cue, a huge creature burst through the entrance, throwing back hundreds of limp bodies.

“Finally,” Noam smiled. There was the raid boss.