Chapter 17 Anting
Today the mood of the squad mates is a lot different from the mood they had on their first delve. Then each of them just worked on their own. Today they have to work together, and they can’t even attack the monsters on the first floors. Their ranged fighters felt pretty useless, as they had no way to participate in the running battle.
Only halfway through to the entrance to the second floor, there were almost twenty slugs headbutting into the shields of the fighters. Luckily their shield wall held, but it was apparent that they were having trouble. Some, like Sam just didn’t have the stats yet, while others didn’t have the shield skill to help out with technique.
Even though they were struggling a bit, the only hurt they got were a few bruises from shields that slammed into their wielders. When they took time in the entrance cave of the second floor to take stock of their injuries, there were almost no shins from the fighters that didn’t have bruises, and quite a few heads that were turning blue and black.
“Well, that sucked. Luckily we’re done with those sluggies. You guys have five minutes to heal up, then we’re moving again.”
“Fuck you too, Jasper! You weren’t the one getting hit by the slugs. Those creatures hit hard! Especially for their low level.”
“Well then you shouldn’t get hit, like me.”
“…”
“You are aware that we need to stay in formation, right? We can’t dodge, and even if we were allowed to, then you guys would be the ones to get hit.”
The discussion between Jasper and Lufir continued for almost ten minutes before Xanthe had had enough.
“You two are idiots. Let’s just get going, before the rest of us run out of supplies.”
“What do you mean you run out of supplies! Didn’t you take enough food to feed us as well?!”
“Hell no, that’s your own responsibility. Most of us just took enough to have a snack.”
“But I didn’t take anything! I thought someone else would get us supplies!”
“Shut it Jasper, let’s move. You can get food at the mess hall like everyone else.”
The second floor started out a bit better than the first floor. Even though the toads were faster with their tongues, those had a lot less weight to them. When the tongues managed to get past the shields, they only left some burn marks behind on the helmets and armor of the fighters. Only Erik was unlucky enough to have a tongue hit his face instead of his helmet.
After about twenty minutes, and dozens upon dozens of burn marks later, the first of the toads started to use their other tactics. When the first of them hopped, the only one who expected it was Sam.
“Watch out!”
Unfortunately her warning was too late. With a huge crash the toad hit George and Leophon, who only managed to angle their shields to take the weight of the toad together. Both men went down to their knees, but managed to push the toad back.
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Their moment of distraction did cost them though, as several toads used the moment to hit them with their tongues. With a lot of cursing the two men managed to take their places in the shield wall again.
“How did you know Sam?! I haven’t seen those things do that before.”
“I’ve practiced a lot against them the last week, so I know when they attack.”
“So how do we defend against them?”
“Well I just dodged them, but I’m not sure how to do that with the whole squad.”
“Me neither. George, Leophon, how hard was that to defend against?”
“Hard Jasper, very hard. Those things weigh a lot more than you’d think.”
“What if there were more of us catching them?”
“We’d need at least four to hold them back, Jasper. Maybe even five.”
“Lucky us that we have six backliners with shields. Here’s what we do, Steve, Zach and I will help the fighters to catch them. The fighters will go low, so we can form a small testudo. Tia you’re the lookout. If you see them attacking, yell. If there’s more than one attacking, you and the mages help catch the other one.”
This new tactic was a lot easier on the fighters, but still worse than just dodging. With their order to hold their formation though, it was the best they could do.
It took them almost another hour to finally exit the second floor. Due to the frequent hopping attacks, the squad had to stop to defend themselves quite often. This delayed them immensely.
Finally they were in the entrance cave of the third floor, taking some time to recover from the experience. Every one of them was exhausted from the second floor. In the end they had to defend against more than a dozen toads, and they sometimes had three or even four toads hopping at the same time. Every time there were more than two toads attacking at once, they had to split the load even more than they had planned.
Now though, they were on the third floor, and they had permission to take out the enemies.
After taking half an hour to get their breath back and taking care of their injuries, the squad was once more ready for action.
“Okay guys,..”
“And girls!”
“Sigh, yes Xanthe, and girls. If we’re all ready, it’s time to fight hordes of fire ants. How about we think about how we’re actually going to do this?”
“How about like we always do?”
“Yes Deon, that worked well last time. Haven’t you learned anything since then?”
“…”
“How about we just follow our training? We look for a good boulder to protect our flank, that’s near the exit so we have a way to retreat. Then we form a shield wall to hold them back while you guys pepper them with arrows and spells?” Sam was getting tired of all the arguing. When she was fighting in the dungeon on her own she didn’t need to argue before settling on a plan, and this was working on her nerve.
“Right, lets just do that. Squad, you have your orders!” Jasper really wanted to look like he was in charge.
Cautiously the squad advanced, while the archers looked for a good place to make a stand. Soon they found the right place, with a boulder that had a natural curve. It protected them from the north, and curved a bit towards the east and west.
Immediately the fighters took their positions, waiting for the ants to come.
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Trainer Quincy was following the squad he was training from a distance. He wasn’t impressed by the way they handled the first floor. Even though they only got bruises, if they had worked together a bit better, then it should have been a breeze. Noting their faults and points on which he had to train them, he only flickered his eyes to a fire slug that came a bit too close, and within a moment the slug had been decapitated.
On the second floor, the squad did better. He was impressed by the way recruit Jasper had them working together on the problem, and even more by the way recruit Sam figured out a solution. In the end the solution wasn’t quite good enough, but that wasn’t important. With a few levels it would be easy enough to work with that solution, and it was a good lesson for them. He may need to have them work out a few formations with which they could actually dodge while staying in their formation.
The toads were battering the squad quite a lot. There were more toads than he had thought, but the reason why eluded him. That is until he saw one of the archers toss away some trash. With his sharp eyes he saw he managed to have a look, right before one of the toads snagged it away with its tongue.
“That idiot, they should know better than taking out snacks while not being in a secure spot. Didn’t anyone tell them that rule? I know that at least one of them should know it.”
He decided that it would be something to address later. Right now he needed to make his way down to the third floor, to make sure there would be enough fire ants to be a real challenge. It wouldn’t do to have these new recruits have too easy an time on the third floor. They needed some good motivation to learn to work together.