A New Star Chapter 80 (Patreon)

Xera

These kids were awful. There really wasn’t any nicer way I could put it other than to say; all form, no function. Obviously, they were here to to gain real world experience, so I was trying to not be overly harsh, even in my mind, but they had so little combat experience. I don’t know what they went through at the academy, and I wasn’t going to find out, not any time soon, as I didn’t care to attend a place that produced this…level of talent, let alone one that was promising to make me nearly as strong as I already was. I suppose I was being a bit harsh; centuries of battle had hardened me and developed the armies I led to the point that even the new recruits were steeped in the lessons of war. Judging these dilettantes by the same standards wasn’t fair of me, and I would just have to observe, and coach, as they progressed through the rest of the dungeon.

I had not been all that impressed with how they handled the first couple encounters, but the big boy at the front, Gorge, at least had a good head on his shoulders. He would make a solid squad captain or team leader, and he was already doing more to direct the team as he realized his position was crucial. Jhan tried to throw his weight around a bit, but it was pretty clear to me, even if the kids hadn’t realized it, that this whole thing was a test. Sure, it was couched in terms that made it seem like a first delve that was for experience and understanding, and it would be good for them to get some, as we would say, ‘real world’ experience of the things they were doing here, but it was also very clearly a training exercise. I had put on enough of these myself over the years that I could recognize the setup from a mile away, even if delving dungeons was something rather new for me.

The kids were clearly being tested in several ways; would they work together efficiently, would they listen to their assigned leader, would they complete the dungeon without the ‘adults’ having to step in and rescue them? Part of the test was very clearly Jhan’s leadership, or lack of it, depending on one’s perspective on the whole situation. He was very clearly not leadership material, not at this time; sometimes, people need some time to develop, to shake off some of their immaturity and grow as a person, before they were ready for a leadership role. Jhan could possibly be one of those types, and he could also very possibly be a spoiled brat that wouldn’t even mature and grow and would be stuck doing small, shit job’s for his father’s, and eventually brother’s, business and noble interest the rest of his life. If I was a betting person, and I was a bit of a betting person, if the insane risks I took almost daily didn’t give that away, I would put some money on the second instance, not the first, but we would just have to see.

For now, I think the other kids were slowly realizing that this delve was more of a test than they had been led to believe, and that was starting with Gorge taking more control of the team, despite Jhan’s angry, huffing protests. We treated just as he deserved, ignoring the spoiled brat other than to issue him orders, though I was still standing back and mostly observing. Jhan could take orders, even if he did it grudgingly, and he would make the proper moves to tackle whatever problem they were up against, though they were still struggling. I didn’t want to be too heavy-handed right from the start, so I had observed a couple more combats, having to step in another time before they managed to finish a fight without even a little assistance from me.

“Move back,” I said to Gorge.

“What?” he asked.

“Did I stutter?” I replied. “You need to move back. Your positioning is too aggressive for the strength of the team. You need to let the whole front line blunt the edge of an attack, not try to handle it by yourself.”

He looked at me for a long moment before nodding, having just finished the seventh fight of the dungeon, which had gone about as one would expect: poorly. He followed my advice as they moved forward, and more of the front line fighters engaged in unison in the next fight, which yielded a bit better results than they had seen so far. Gorge gave me a bit of a different look after that and a nod, which I acknowledged with a slight tilt of my chin, watching the team members do something that could, if one were being extremely charitable, be called butchering. I had a feeling the team they had brought to do that job and transport the corpses out of the dungeon wasn’t going to be thrilled at their work, but I understood the purpose of this exercise. Even if these kids rarely or never had to do a dungeon run after this without the presence of support staff, they would still have a better idea of the jobs and what to do. Firsthand experience was valuable all on its own, and by forcing them to do some of the dirty jobs, I was forcing them to get some of that.

I wasn’t making them do it all, of course, as there actually needed to be some kind of profit margin from this venture. I had them switch to cleaning up every other corpse or group of corpses after the tenth fight was concluded. Just the adjustments I had suggested had them fighting better and handling the large, powerful beasts this dungeon seemed to specialize in much better, and the kids weren’t idiots, either, apart from Jhan, who I was holding out on my final opinion until the very end. The rest had already made a few adjustments to positioning and attack timing based on what I had done with the front line, and I was pleased to see that they weren’t so set in their ways, which could sometimes by the product of overly strict training regimes applied before the trainees had any real world experience, that they couldn’t adapt to what was happening in situ. The mages were the best of them all, likely because they spent a lot of time studying and researching and, even though that wasn’t applied to tactics and battlefield movement, they still had a better idea of how to combine their efforts than the others.

Training was supposed to lay a foundation, and I had to grudgingly give the academy instructors some credit, in that once they started to adapt, the kids were really doing alright. Why, it had been a whole three fights since I had had to interfere, once the mages had gotten themselves sorted and the two snipers, or rangers, I suppose, had a better idea of how to work together with the casters. I was a little upset that they seemed to be following such clearly defined roles; the way affinities worked, they really didn’t have to limit themselves nearly as much in what they did and how they did it. I was a perfect example of this, or nearly so, as I didn’t really use a ranged weapon at all. In my fighting, I would still mix in ranged attacks with my affinities, casting spells or just channeling the power of the affinity to attack at range, while also dashing and teleporting to attack in close, always mixing it up, though I was in melee more often than not. The kids stuck a lot more to their assigned roles, which was better for this sort of squad fighting they were doing, but my worry was it would breed a certain rigidity in their minds in terms of what was possible. To that end, I decided that a small demonstration was in order.

“Do not become too rigid in your combat positions and tactics,” I said, getting some questioning looks. I elaborated, “you all have powerful affinities, ones that can be used in a variety of ways; don’t restrict yourselves so closely to your assigned position. Front line fighters can release large bursts of mana to disable or damage opponents. Rangers, you can get in close and use your blades. Mages, not only should you also practice a martial weapon, you can be more varied in your attack patterns. Watch. I will demonstrate.”

I proceed to do just that, moving forward in front of the group and leading them down the tunnel we were in to the next cavern; the dungeon didn’t necessarily put enemies only in rooms, as the first beast we had encountered was certainly proof for the theory that they roamed anywhere. This room did have several beasts within, and I walked forward, signaling the rest of the group to stand back and observe. I don’t know that they got the message entirely, but they fell into formation and stopped just inside the large room. That was good enough for me, and I mostly put them out of my mind, though I was always observing everything in my surroundings. I wasn’t really worried about the kids attacking me; they would be absolute fools to try anything, fools with a very short end to their promising careers, and lives, at my hands. I was more worried about something sneaking up on or attacking the kids while I was occupied, and I did note they hadn’t put anybody directly facing the way we came. Well, there were all kinds of teaching moments present here, and I’m sure that would be another one.

I didn’t want to do anything too crazy, though we might have already crossed that bridge at this point, but I wanted to demonstrate what I had just explained, a so-called practice what your preach kind of moment. I flowed forward at the nearest beast, lashing out with one of my blades as I passed, scoring a deep but not fatal injury to its side. I slid past and charged the second beast, slashing its neck partially open with a well-timed strike before dancing back around the first beast as it swiped at me, hamstringing it in the process. I continued my movement, throwing out a powerful blast of lightning into the third beast in the room before leaping far back and hurling both fire at ice at all the enemies. Before all the attacks had even launched, I burst forward with lightning, lashing out in a blur at every beast in the center of the room, all of them confused and battered from my earlier ranged attack.

I danced around the enemies, leaping back out of combat twice more to deal out devastating damage from range before dashing or teleporting back in, slashing the large opponents to ribbons. My skill with a weapon was clearly much higher than the kids’, but even they could mimic these tactics to a certain extent, and, if they practiced and put effort into it, they would eventually have an easier time of it as a group than as an individual. A thousand years of combat experience made me more the exception rather than the rule, but I wasn’t hoping the kids would do what I was doing, just that they would have their awareness of the possibilities expanded a little and pick up a few tricks.

I also tried to demonstrate the combination of affinity and blade, making sure my motions were broad and slow enough that they could understand what I was doing. I would have lightning course through a blade before punching out a spike of ice with my off-hand and then have a bolt of lightning descend from the ceiling of the cavern to catch the rhok that was trying to be clever and bite my back unaware and send it staggering back. The way the kids had been using their affinities had been…fine, at best, but I wasn’t satisfied with fine, and that label was being a bit generous. They could do so much more, and that was what I was trying to demonstrate as I finished off all the beasts, making the kills slow but clean, not letting even these bastards suffer any more than they had to.

I had continued keeping an eye on the kids, and the exact thing I had thought might happen at some did. Luckily, they were a bit more cognizant than I had first given them credit for, not getting caught totally by surprise when a beast that looked like an wooden crab scuttled up the tunnel we had come from and attacked them. We had tried to clear everything we had passed, taking our time to map the dungeon out and proceed carefully, which I hadn’t even had to suggest to them. Still, they were taken a bit by surprise by an enemy approaching from what they had considered a safe angle, though I had just finished the last of my opponents when the attack happened. I didn’t dash over right away, either, but simply strolled towards the kids, keeping my eye both on them and on the room we were in; I wasn’t concerned so much about there being anything still in the room, but there were two more exits that could produce enemies just as easily as our back trail had.

The kids were struggling a bit; we hadn’t fought this particular type of beast yet, either the overall type or one made of that wooden substance, and they were having some difficulty in dealing with it. I called it a wooden substance because it seemed somewhat resistant to fire; one of the girls that occupied a mage role tried burning it but she wasn’t having much success. Curious, I flicked a finger and hit it with a blast of lightning when I got close, not all that surprised when the beast staggered and nearly went down. Pretty much everything I fought on this world had some kind of weakness, which was usually true at the lower ranks, and if fire didn’t really do it on the wooden-looking enemy, than maybe its crab nature made it susceptible to a little electrical blasting, or so had my logic proceeded. I didn’t even need to step in more than a single other blast at an opportune moment for the kids to deal with the beast, though it made a most unpleasant smell once it was dead, and we hadn’t even blasted it with that much mana. The kids had mostly killed the weird thing with their martial weapons and combat prowess, which did slightly impress me, considering how they had been doing just a handful of minutes prior to this fight. Maybe a little of what I had done had actually sunk into their slightly thick skulls?

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