We waved at the guards in passing, but once in the private zone again, I led my little group on a five-minute hike further into the zone and away from the gate. We pointed out the semi-circle of boundary markers to Nona, and slaughtered any rat that got too close along our trek. Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any Matriarchs just yet.
“Okay. Here, I think. Ace, you’ll be key today, if your little golems will work the way I think they can. Do they have a range? How far away can you control them?”
My little sibling frowned. “I haven’t tried anything too much yet. I don’t know, maybe I need to see them? You want me to pull?”
Trust Ace to catch on. They were probably the best of all us at gaming, at least the sort of games we all played – somehow I doubted they’d be too into any of those modern duty call of warfare shooters, but MMOs, RPGs, and board games? Jojo had been excelling since they were eight.
“If you need line-of-sight, try riding Daybreak Gleaming again? But we are on a little hill here.” Then I turned to the rest of the group. “Mikachu? Your totem sticks around until defeated or unsummoned, right? If we set up here…?”
My friend nodded. “Yeah. It might not work in a crowded zone where someone could kill-steal our pulls, but I think I see what your plan is. Yeah, the totem should be able to pull aggro off Ace’s golems.”
“Good. Okay, Ette, can you be on bodyguard duty? Stick close to Nona. Let her get her hits in, but don’t let the rats hit back.”
Our crystalline friend nodded. “Crafter solidarity.”
“Jazmyn,” I fluttered closer to my older sister. “Try and pace yourself. It’s gonna be boring, with just Silver Shot, but try and stay above half mana, maybe two-thirds. That way, if things go all south for some reason, you still have mana in the banks to let loose and go wild.”
“Got it.” She flashed me a thumb’s up, and I turned toward our two support characters.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Noa, Ka’Moni? Can you keep your good buffs going? If this works the way I hope, we’ll be fighting constantly. Ace is going to be pulling a lot of aggro with their golems. If glitches happen, they’re the most in danger. Buff priorities are … um … Ace, then Nona, then Jazmyn, then the rest of us as you see fit. I’mma try to keep thorns up on the totem, and keep y’all alive if things glitch badly.”
Centaur tactician and orc cheerleader both nodded.
“Get your hits in though, as you can. Ka’Moni, you’ll probably have to juggle your cheers and kicks, especially if we get a multi-pull. Everybody ready?”
There was a chorus of “aye” and “yeah” and one “um, what did you want me to do?”
“Oh, sorry, Nona. You might not have much in the way of attack abilities, but those knitting needles look plenty wicked. Maybe it’s just ‘cuz I’m a little smaller right now, but I could see them being unpleasant to be poked with.” I flashed her a quick smile. “Stab the rats as they come in. I think people all get group experience if they’re close enough, but just in case it does require some actual contribution, you and Ette both need to hit things.”
She frowned and I continued, my tone more reassuring. “You don’t need to do much. The basic rats and even flappy rats should melt under the attention of a group this size, but if you need to fight to get strong enough to shift completely to crafting, then here we are.”
“I wish there was another way, but okay.” Nona nodded decisively and twirled her knitting needles, one in each hand, stopping them with the point downward like a pair of knives in a street-fighter’s hands rather than a pair of swords for a duelist.
“You got this, Chels!” Ka’Moni said. “We’re here with you!”
And then the slaughter of rats began. Ace, as it turned out, could only control one golem outside of line-of-sight, but our little hilltop camp gave us a good view of a wide swath of the grassy wilderness outside the city walls.
Ace kept a pair of golems near, patrolling near the base of the rise, ensuring that any nearby spawns would be picked up, another pair further out, ranging in a wide search pattern, a fifth golem ranging back and forth to fill the gaps when one of the others picked a spawn and brought it back, and the final golem searching in the distance, pulling rats back and handing them off to others before rushing off to search for more.
Between thorns and kicks and stabs and thwacks and punches and magic silver bullets, we were probably averaging a rat every minute, minute and a half, pausing only to allow one or another of us to level up.
Certainly faster than we had managed in smaller groups.