A New Star Chapter 82 (Patreon)

Xera

Some of the kids weren’t that bad, though I had to be a little careful in thinking about them as kids. If I wasn’t careful, I might slip up a bit and call them kids, and with myself being the youngest here, including the staff and support, that wouldn’t exactly go over well. They would think me unbecomingly arrogant or mad or both, which wasn’t necessarily the end of the world, but I could do better than that. It also appeared that some of the team was much more enthusiastic about the little training, and had put in a lot more effort than what I had expected. Jhan had just fucked off, barely pretending to go through a few motions, but I didn’t expect anything less, and the rest of the group had all had that realization by now as well. Even the second worst of them was miles ahead of Jhan, and a few really got a lot of food for thought and shored up their stances and were starting to understand using affinities in battle better. It was an area I had less experience with than one might think, as external arts weren’t common in my previous life, though the faint memories of the life before that spoke of something different, but we did have many weapons that modified performance on the battlefield. Much of the knowledge of incorporating their use could help the kids with their understanding of dynamic combat.

"Good job,” I said, running my eyes over the team.

“Anything else we need to do?” Gorge asked.

“Not as such,” I said, resting my hands on the pommels of my swords. “Take a break.”

“However,” I continued, looking at Gorge and the woman next to him, “the two of you step over here.”

“Yes?” asked the woman, her tone a bit hesitant.

“What I demonstrated earlier is fine, but it’s not going to work for your team,” I explained. “You do not, I hate to say, have the experience or skill in battle to perform how I demonstrated. Keeping that in mind, it’s important that you work as a group and move and fight as a unit. The core of that, for the remainder of this dungeon, will be the two of you. Your positions as the center of the front are important, and I want to briefly show you a few things you can do that can help the team.

“Gorge, it won’t help you right now, but you should focus more on your body cultivation. I don’t know that anyone has emphasized that with you, but with you using that heavy armor and tower shield, strength and endurance are going to be very important. I know it’s tedious, but you need to reinforce your body more. There are plenty of ways to do it, I can tell you that, and I can offer help, as I am already a G-grade alchemist, but the decision to commit to it is important. As for what you can do right now, let me give you a few movements you can do with the tower shield to help hold the line.”

I had, of course, underplayed my alchemy, but these kids didn’t need to know my exact ranks, and I had no doubt they would be reporting everything that happened in here not just to their heads of house, but to anyone with ears. I didn’t need even more information about me spreading around, so I was going to downplay certain things to the best of my ability, and lying about some of my grades was part of that. I took Gorge further aside for two minutes and walked him through some movements that could help with the shield, showing him how to incorporate use of his affinities to help hold the beasts’ attention. At the same time, I showed how some movements could help him stay in place without taking as many hits, holding the line while not taking as much damage. Finally, I turned to the woman.

Unlike Gorge, this woman used a smaller shield, more like a buckler, and went for a single-edged blade in her right hand. A bit unusual, but I had seen such blades before, and the styles that they all but forced were interesting and difficult for many to counter, though that was fighting against people. I doubt beasts predicted sword paths and thought up counters quite so much, but perhaps that changed at the higher ranks. This woman, on the other hand, was still new to using the blade, though all these kids were rather young; I doubt any of them had been working with weapons for even a full decade at this point. Still, I pulled her aside after Gorge went back to get some water and refresh himself.

“How can I help?” was her first question.

“First, by reminding me of your name. We haven’t been properly introduced, have we?” I said.

“Ah, apologies, I’m Miriam, Your Grace,” she said.

“None of that nonsense,” I dismissed with a wave, not wanting to be reminded of my parents’ standing any further. “Now, I pulled you aside as well as I want to go over a few things with you. You’re going to have to fight differently than Gorge, obviously, but there are methods you can use to take and control space and hold it, even with your smaller shield. You shouldn’t rely on blocking at all with a shield like that, and you should parry only when necessary. There are forms you can use with your sword, though I am not the best with them, to control the space and redirect your opponents. Come, let me show you.”

I then demonstrated a few techniques as we briefly sparred. I had not been lying when I said that I was not particularly proficient with her chosen equipment, but I was able to teach her a few things. First, I went over a technique for pushing a foe back and moving them around, using just one of my blades and mimicking her shield with my closed left fist. I struck the same place from different angles with different speeds, forcing her to move or reposition even when she blocked, and overwhelming her defenses after a number of strikes and punches. I could see she already had a lot to think on, but I also demonstrated some advanced footwork and dodging to maintain position without even having to parry with the shield in all but the worst cases. Miriam was a quick study, at least in a controlled environment, but then again most of these kids had finished near the top of the class, other than Jhan, I suspected. How well she could apply what she learned in real fighting remained to be seen, but we would have plenty of opportunities coming up.

With the demonstrations over and the team refreshed, we moved on, still having plenty of time before we were going to camp for the night. I resumed my place at the back, watching their progress and how they subtly adjusted their formation based on my demonstration and comments. It still wasn’t perfect, by any means, but it was a lot better than it had been and I approved of their efforts. They moved through a few rooms and several tunnels like this, though I was a bit disappointed in one aspect; they didn’t focus on the rear enough. I suppose they assumed I had it covered, which I did, but at the very least, the squad leader, which was increasingly becoming Gorge, should check with the rear element periodically. Still, they were trying and I wouldn’t hold it against them, and I did what I needed in warning them of a group of beasts moving up just as we were moving into a cavern with several of the weird bears in it.

Gorge was quick on the uptake, splitting the group, though it was a bit unnecessary. Again, green commanders made mistakes, but he had seen my demonstration earlier; if their was something coming up the tunnel behind us that I couldn’t handle alone, the rest of the group was better off running away while screaming for help. He was operating under the assumption of us all still being roughly equal in skill and experience, and that was the right way to go for the purposes of this exercise; if I were grading him on this, I wouldn’t have deducted points for splitting the squad, just noted that his anchor position, me, was a lot stronger than he assumed and he would have to work around that. He had Jhan and Anastasia move back to help me, and, despite his gross attitude, Jhan was at least mildly competent, though I think that was about as far as he was ever getting in life: mildly competent.

I took the center, a position I was well familiar with, reminiscing on hundreds of years of battle where I was the vanguard; not in the vanguard, understand, but the vanguard itself, pushing out in front of all others and leading the way into the heart of the battlefield. Even in my hazy reminisce, I still paid close attention to the fight and to the two with me. Jhan at least knew how to give the center the space it needed to perform, with him being a right-handed swordsman and staying far to my right. Being ambidextrous and very skilled, I was able to adapt much better than someone like Gorge would, but it was still good to see that Jhan at least respected the basics. Anastasia did what she did well, as well, focusing on areas where the enemy might get around us or where she saw an opening that wouldn’t put us in the line of fire. She was a bit hesitant with some opportunities, but that would come with time and experience. Otherwise, she didn’t use enough spells or put the punch into some of them that she should be, given her rank, but I think that was also something from her training. Training was good, very good, but when the rubber met the road, people found they had to adapt on the real battlefield.

I tried not to do everything, but I was only able to hold back so much, and we had the rear ambush very quickly cleared, the five beasts neatly dispatched. I took a moment as the other two rushed into the cavern to push the corpses to the side; wouldn’t do to have our one mostly safe egress blocked off and have people tripping if we needed to come back this way in a hurry. I also made a note of how quickly the other two charged into the cavern; at the rank they were, and with the low body cultivation they had, I doubt they gave themselves enough time to properly scan an analyze the situation. Sure, we hadn’t been attacked, and we could hear the fighting, but one never knew if an opponent had snuck around another squad and was in what would be an awkward position for elements of the squad that were spaced out. Nothing like that had happened here, but it was more things that could be corrected with some explanations and a little real world experience.

The main fight was already going in the team’s favor, so I didn’t bother to step in, instead taking up a position by the entrance we had come in from, one where I could scan the cavern and the tunnel without leaving myself too exposed. Then again, some things I needed to adapt to were that very few beasts had any kind of ranged attacks; I was still in the habit of thinking of fields of fire and lines of sight for some very advanced weaponry, beyond even the chemical-fueled rifles that my world had still used at the start of my previous life. Keeping such things in mind wasn’t wrong, of course, but in a couple hours in this dungeon, we hadn’t encountered one beast that used any kind of ranged attack, even the ones with one or more fully realized affinities. It just seemed it wasn’t at all common for beasts, at least at lower ranks, to attack in any way other than a direct melee. I had seen some beasts in the Untamed Wilds stalking and using stealth or ambush to try to catch prey unaware, but I hadn’t seen many ranged attacks even there, where competition was much fiercer.

This world did, of course, have wars and conflicts between sapient beings, so I also didn’t want to lose my edge in that regard. Not that I planned on brewing up or jumping in any wars; not any time soon, certainly, and hopefully not for a long time. Much as I fell into dreams of my former life and former battles, that war and those hellish battlefields were not something I truly missed. I had lost too many people, too many brothers and sisters, men and women that I had trained, raised, fought side-by-side with, bled with, protected worlds with, only to hold them in my arms as they gasped out their last few breaths. I felt it sometimes, like an impossible river of blood washing down my arms and torso, the blood of all those soldiers, all those companions, all those friends I had held as they gasped out their last statements. Their fears, their sorrows, their unrequited loves, their regrets; everything they couldn’t or wouldn’t say in life, now flowing forth in the presence of death, right alongside the last of their life’s blood.

I shook myself from the maudlin memories as Gorge called the room clear, double-checking his claim to make sure we were safe. I wasn’t some expert in the way these kids might be thinking, not yet, or maybe not again, I should say, but I had a few tricks of my own. One of the great advantages I had was that my tier seven body, already at H-grade, had impressive senses. I could hear heartbeats and the movement of blood in the bodies of those near me; something I was well used to from my last life, and something that I had adapted to easily. It was something Alex had exclaimed on at some point in our adventures, and I was glad to be able to pass on my years of knowledge and experience of being so powerful to someone who, thanks in part to me, was at an extremely elevated level from a young age. I could use my enhanced senses and my ability to very precisely control what I was focused on to detect living beings nearby, as well as to detect anomalies; one would be shocked by how often an ambush or something similar was given away because there was too little noise. For someone with centuries of experience, a lack of noise was just as much of a danger signal as too much noise or certain sounds.

None of that was true here, though, as the team had done a good job of cleaning up. I walked around as they took a short rest, moving a few of the bodies out of the way again; I doubted we’d have to flee at any point, unless something genuinely crazy happened, but it was something that took me a few seconds with my great strength. Better to do a handful of extra minutes of work in total than have the kids tripping over bodies and debris as they tried to maneuver, though there I went calling them kids again. Maybe I was already going senile at fourteen? Bah, just the weight of twelve remembered centuries sitting heavy on my mind this day in particular.

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