The next day proved Jack’s prophetic assertion to be true. Upon arriving in the room for Team Tactics, the instructor directed them to form into teams no smaller than three or larger than ten, but with a preference around six. A quick glance around the room showed Dix that everyone but him had been aware of this before class had ever begun. Other than himself and Jack’s group, there were twelve other students in two groups of six. Even if he had not met Jack and his group the day before, he still would have likely ended up with them for the class. Their instructor was some sort of bear lizard humanoid hybrid. The man made Riot look small and weak, but his words showed him to be of a more thoughtful demeanor than expected from someone of his size. In a surprisingly higher pitch, the man directed them to their group seating areas before starting up class.
The first portion of class was mostly a discussion of the differences between the major roles, as well as how they mainly functioned in a group. According to the Guild, the major roles were tank, melee physical damage, ranged physical damage, ranged magical damage, support, and healing. Included were a number of anecdotes highlighting how various classes performed their given role. Or failed to do so in some cases. Dix was most intrigued by the wide variety of classes and skills that fit into the support role. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand, it was just that he had only really figured on three actual activities for the support classes, those being healing, buffs, and crowd control. He was a little disappointed in himself for forgetting that debuffing should also be included, particularly in light of him actually remembering buffers in the first place. The Guild considered specialists in communications, leadership, stealth, scouting, and engineering to be support roles as well. With a little mental juggling, Dix managed to separate those class types out of his preassigned categories, despite his mental protests.
With the description debacle passed without debate, they moved right into role play. Meaning they headed out to the dungeon, where each member of their group was assigned a role. They would each start with the role they originally wanted to fill, but after each completed combat their roles were to be passed to someone else until they had all tried each of them. Dix understood that it was a team building exercise, but he foresaw some serious problems with it, particularly in the roles of healers and tanks. He fully intended to learn, or relearn, a few healing spells, but he hadn’t done so as of yet. He also doubted that Jack had any ability to heal, to say nothing of Riot.
The solution to this complex problem was apparently really simple, consumable items. Those taking the role of healer without actually having any healing abilities would be given a wand with a few charges of healing spells contained within. People with the tank roles would receive gems that conjured shields and melee weapons. Ranged and melee physical damage roles would also receive conjured weapons, while magic damage would be provided by more wands. Support roles would get to choose two wands from a group with no identifying marks or labels. Supposedly this would help them to adapt to different forms of support classes as a group and as individuals.
All in all it was a fairly well thought out method to get everyone in the class used to the differences in team composition, as well as all of the different roles. This way, if anyone was unsure what role they actually wanted to work towards, they would get a chance to try them all out. Perhaps more importantly, each of them would have a better understanding of the things each of the other roles in a party had to go through. Tanks gained a better understanding of how hard it was to shoot an enemy when some big lug with a shield was in the way. Healers learned that shields were way better than they had thought at keeping tanks from getting chewed on. Damage dealers learned that they needed to avoid taking damage because healers didn’t have time or mana to heal them when they got in trouble. Everyone learned that supports of all kinds were very useful to have, but truly needed a full group to really bring out their strengths.
Dix learned something very important as well. The reason he was still level 0 was that the first floor of the dungeon gave no experience whatsoever. None of the monsters were natural creations of the dungeon, and instead were bred and raised by Tamers to be used as training tools. The “dungeon” he’d been in with Thunk and Error, and that class had been held in, was actually built above the real training dungeon. The boss that the guard had warned him about on his first trip inside was just a higher level Tamer raised monster, followed by another guard team that would prevent anyone below level 3 from entering the real dungeon without supervision. If he wanted to gain levels, he would need to get one of his trainers to follow him through the dungeon, or he would have to go outside of the city.
He was uncertain how to feel about the situation. On the one hand, he wanted to be furious with his two trainers for perpetuating his belief that he would gain anything in the “dungeon”. But, on the other hand, he was still gaining skill levels, skills, actual fighting experience, stats, and knowledge that would all do him a lot more good at level 0 than to be ignored. The being lied to was the most frustrating portion of it, but he would give them the benefit of the doubt. Even Thunk, who was a transfer himself, may have honestly just forgotten that it wasn’t something Dix knew, or perhaps he didn’t know either. If they had been lying about it, then maybe he could use that as a way to get some of his debt dropped, an extremely unlikely ending.
There were two other things of great importance that he learned during the hours of practice with his fellow students. One, the spell for a weak version of Lesser Healing. Unlike his favored healing spells, Regeneration and Rejuvenation, the spell he learned was a direct heal on the simple and weak end of the spectrum. Not a great acquisition, but better than nothing. Secondly, and even better, he learned most of the runes for Conjure Weapon. Specifically, he could now conjure up a bow, arrows, a short sword, a dagger, and a mace. He also got Conjure Shield: Round Shield, which was more useful than the mixed up versions of Conjure Weapon that he had learned, although still not the full version of the spell. Dix had spent a fair amount of time studying the gems that they were given when they weren’t equipped for a particular role, even borrowing his team mates at times. Unlike the real versions of both spells, these ones were locked into certain weapon and shield forms. Only the Shield spell had any of the adjustment runes with it, but they were only for size. If he wanted the spells that adapted to whatever he imagined, he would have to find them somewhere else. In the meantime, he could at least call up a useful shield, and a few different weapons, the most useful of which were the bow and arrows he hadn’t been able to find in the church’s armory.
Jack and his friends learned something too. Dix was frighteningly competent for his apparent age and level. He was the best of the damage dealers, and almost as good at the other roles as the people planning to take them on. When they learned that he planned to adventure as a hybrid they were shocked, but soon came to grips with it. His display of efficacy was sufficient for them to realize that he would be quite capable no matter what he chose to do.
More importantly for Dix, it also helped him realize what role he would most often end up filling when in a group. Despite his intent to spread out his skills and stats to cover all possibilities, the majority of what he planned to have would be damage based, or at least applicable to those roles. He would fit in well as any form of damage dealer, but felt that he would be best as a high mobility ranged damage dealer with the ability to handle himself in melee range if he drew aggro, or needed to peel an enemy away from someone unable to deal with the attention. Essentially a high grade floater. There was obviously still a possibility of things changing as he filled up more of his skill slots, and particularly when he finally got a class, but it did seem to fit his plans fairly well.
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Dix was almost more excited to be fighting something other than rats than he was to be fighting with a team. He’d not really been looking forward to the Team Tactics class, but didn’t hold anything against the group he was working with. The instructor, likely in the interest of safety, or laughter at people getting slapped with goo, had taken them through the section of the training dungeon that was filled with slimes. It wasn’t hard, or dangerous, to fight such low leveled slimes, but it was messy, and more difficult than the other creatures of the floor would be. All of which made it the perfect location to teach the difficulties of all roles to a bunch of teenagers.
One role cycle left Dix as the healer for the group. While it allowed him time to study the wand with the healing spell enough to learn it for himself during the turns of the other groups, it also left him a little on the worried side. No one should have a Gnome for a tank. Dwarves? Hell yeah. They’re loud, burly, and short, perfect for a tank. All of your ranged attackers can shoot over them for almost all monsters, they cuss like drunken sailors in a bar fight, and they rarely get knocked back. But Gnomes? They aren’t strong enough to hold the line, and are almost too short to be noticed by most monsters. And they’re yelling mostly inspires laughter, not anger.
When Pyro, as the first member of the team assigned a different role that round, was chosen as the tank, everyone winced. It was a good sign for how the entire episode would go. Jack, the normal tank, was given her role, magical ranged damage. The poor boy had never used a ranged attack in his life. Even during his childhood, if someone threw a rock at him his counter was to charge them. Perfect tank mentality; reduced to a mage. Lydia, the healer, was changed to physical melee damage and given a mace. While this would normally be a terrible idea, in Lydia’s case it worked almost too well. She had been dreaming of being a housewife and mother for most of her life, and idolized her own mother. Lydia’s mother ruled most of their tribe from behind her stove, mostly by beating the men into obedience with a wooden spoon. The normally friendly and cheerful teen girl suddenly took on a violent air reminiscent of Riot, had the Orc girl not been assigned to Support. In Riot’s case, she was strangely happy about being the support, but it had more to do with the spells she had been given. Riot had a stun focused lightning spell, and a short duration haste. It made her feel helpful, but, more importantly, she would still be able to attack. Ramsey got the best choice, physical ranged damage, as hunting was actually something he enjoyed, but had chosen otherwise for his class. He actually had an Archery general skill, which meant he might actually hit what he was aiming at.
The group only had four things going right for them by the time it was their turn. Riot was excited about, and expected to spam the hell out of, her lightning spell. Ramsey actually knew how to use a bow. Dix had already learned the healing spell, increasing his efficiency with the spell and reducing its mana cost. And finally, slimes move slowly. Everything else went wrong.
The plan they had discussed went out the window almost immediately. Pyro charged, but with her short legs she wasn’t moving very fast. Since she’d never had to charge with a large object strapped to her arm she managed to smash it into her legs within three steps, sending her crashing to the floor. The shield did help protect her face somewhat when she went down, but it also caught its edge on her forehead right as it hit the ground, knocking her unconscious.
All of which was completely missed by Lydia who was supposed to be running at her side, but whose longer legs had her outpacing Pyro with her first step. Blunt weapons can be great against slimes if the person using them has the muscle mass and idea to slam a hammer straight down and crush the core between the face and the floor. None of which Lydia had. She swung her mace like her mother did a wooden spoon, sharp and fast with little to no follow through. It wasn’t a weapon of death her mother wielded, it was a tool of discipline. Sadly, slimes don’t take well to discipline, and she had a slime climbing her legs shortly after her first strike.
Jack, well… Jack was trying. He’d never used a wand before, and had woefully tiny mana reserves. Three fire bolts were all he managed to get off before he ran out of mana. None of them hit anything. Dix was fairly certain his aim was so bad the bolts managed to miss the ground, walls, and ceiling of a rather small cave. Impossible or not, if they survived the class he would be swearing it was the truth over drinks.
Ramsey was glorious. Unlike Jack he had a fair sized mana pool, and could thus summon arrows for his bow pretty much all day long. Arrows lashed out from the young canine like spears, falling upon the vile slimes like a monsoon. None of which did a damn thing, because you can’t hurt a slime with arrows that don’t penetrate far enough to hit the core, something a skill-less arrow just isn’t going to do.
Riot, unsurprisingly, did all of the damage. Slimes don’t like magic in the first place, but normal unaspected slimes really dislike lightning, as their bodies conduct it quite well. The major problem she ran into, after killing the first four slimes, was the last one was attached to Lydia. A quick glance at Dix, who had already healed Pyro before moving onto Lydia, and a feral smile later, the two were blasting their spells into the poor canine girl and her unwanted suitor.
A short time later, after they had all turned in their spell gems, Dix had to rethink his insulting the group he had seen fighting in the dungeon the other day. There was a chance, a very small chance, that maybe they had been a group of people trying to understand the roles of the rest of their team. IF that was the case, he would owe them an apology, one given in the privacy of his own mind at least. That being said, they were still idiots if that was them trying to understand something. Not that his group had done much better.
Further role changes proved that, other than Dix, none of them did too well if they had to take on a role too far removed from what they normally do. Jack and Riot could both handle tanking and physical melee damage. Ramsey, Lydia, and Pyro could all handle magical ranged damage, support, and healing for the most part. Dix, with at least some practice in most of the roles, handled them all fairly well. He could use a little practice, but he was better than everyone except the person normally in each of those roles. Exactly like he wanted to be.
His fairly impressive showing brought him an invitation to the group for the entirety of their class duration, as well as a possibility of making it a permanent position. He hadn’t made up his mind on joining them on a more long term basis, but he knew it wouldn’t be forever. As much as he wanted to just get out and adventure, he knew he had at least one task ahead of him that he would have to do solo, the Trials. The possibility of learning more of the basics through the early, pre-class levels within the safety of a group was something he needed to consider. It didn’t take a lot of thought to know that he would get himself in a ton of trouble alone. He would most certainly bite off more than he could chew at some point, but if that happened while he was working with a group, they could handle it together, allowing him to learn from the mistake. Solo he would likely die, or at least suffer an injury he couldn’t easily recover from.
There were other things to consider as well, however. He had skills that generally didn’t sit well with the locals, namely his Necromancy, and he would either need to tell the group about them, or stop using the skills. Additionally, he had made an enemy, one that they had actually warned him about. He hadn’t yet spoken to Error and Thunk about the problem he had caused, but if it was something he was getting warnings about, he really needed too. Furthermore, they already had their own issues with Charles, but they hadn’t yet escalated to the level of lethal. A level he was feeling more and more certain his own encounter would lead to. The final vote against them was that they were just kids. Yes, his own age had been reset, but that was just his physical age. Mentally he still felt like he was in his late twenties, a very different thing from his teenage years.
Undecided, but concerned, Dix agreed to continue working with them throughout the class, but held back on any further commitments for the time being. He would talk it over with his trainers the next day. He didn’t always take their advice, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t listen to it.