The plan comes together after huddling close for some quick whispered words, slight disagreements, and vigorous pointing and it plays out like this; Kayla is going to try hypnotizing, or whatever it is she does, a boar to make it super very peaceful. This is already a big if. Then… August takes another one and just plays tag with it.

That’s it.

He has a real sword on him this time and considerably more Endurance than me, which is a pretty low standard. Still, it should be enough for him to survive a hit in case he fucks up. Lastly, Victor and I are in charge of the remaining one. We’ll prepare some of those nasty lightning traps I hate with all my being and hopefully lead the boar into it. It gets incapacitated and we take it down.

As simple as that. It’s a… I’m not going to say a solid plan since there were a lot of ifs and maybes, even so, I like it. Even Victor’s Blessing thinks we have a pretty solid chance of beating the three boars.

“Okay, okay. I got it.” Kayla encourages herself and sneaks towards the boars.

“WAIT!” The other three of us silently yell after her.

“What?” She tilts her head in confusion.

“Traps first…” Victor facepalms.

This just proves my suspicion about her having the attention span of a dead moth. She’s a sweet and likable person, when asleep or just silent, and I really think she deserves recognition and happiness, but please for the Gods make her less of an airhead.

I grab hold of Kayla, just in case she were to get bored and wander off. August keeps an eye on the boars and Victor sets up the traps.

Preparations done.

“Now off you go Kayla!” I wink at her and let go of her shoulder.

“Hihi, right.” She giggles and disappears into the underbrush.

To my relief, she goes in the right direction and towards the slightly more isolated boar. In just a few seconds I see her head pop out of a bush and she starts grunting at the boar. She crawls out on all fours, communicates with the creature a little more, and then they both walk out of sight. Maybe she isn’t a lost cause after all.

“August, it’s your turn. Try to draw it away a bit further just in case and return in about two minutes.” Victor repeats the plan just in case after having to deal with Kayla.

We repeat words of uncertainty way too often when it comes to the plan.

August nods without any snarky remarks and goes off.

I’m surprised that narcissistic brat didn’t retort anything. He usually insults and looks down… on me. Man, I hope he breaks his leg. After we’re finished our task of course.

“Will you do the honors?” Victor asks me.

“Aren’t you faster?” I don’t wanna be bait, fighting is only fun as long as don’t get hurt.

“Rock-paper-scissors?” He proposes.

Now that, I can accept.

Mom taught me people usually go rock first as that's the easiest to show. Victor is likely smart enough to guess that so I’ll go scissors.

“Go!”

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Compared to the original tension, they came together pretty well; even despite the wedge I tried to put between them. Ahh, blissful youth, so easy to forgive.

Martha really did attempt to hamper the team's effort, despite the four having no prior experience as a team and mediocre relations at best. They are clever and with those cheat-like Blessings, even this task might be doable. Although the lesson is to improve their teamwork and not run amok and kill whatever they can, Elyssia proved last time how that goes.

Victor calls the shots, as expected, what’s actually surprising is how compliant the others prove to be. Martha observes the younglings. Kayla I can understand, however, both Elyssia and August are as proud as a wild griffon. This might turn out good.

The kids have been ridiculously loud all along and somehow none of the four boars noticed their presence. Maybe a gift by Kyra to counteract their poor scouting skills.

Both Kayla and Victor broke off and are heading for separate targets.

Should I still consider this teamwork? Fighting individually just close to each other… Well, let’s just see how it goes first, they seem to be in position.

----------------------------------------

I’m never doing rock-paper-scissors against Victor ever again. Losing once is understandable, losing twice is already pretty bad but even after I changed the rules to ‘three is the holy number, one must win thrice’, the fucker still won.

I have to exercise all my self-control to stop myself from stomping and growling at how unfair it is to send the Mage to be the bait.

That stupid Blessing of his. How broken is that now; knowing even what to show? I can only do some fancy magic… Not fair.

Kayla and August are waiting for my signal which we haven’t really discussed.

Eh, me being loud and acting like bait should suffice.

“Huh, let’s get this over with.” I crack my neck and shake off my shoulders. “The worst thing that can happen is breaking a few bones… I would really hate that actually.”

Somehow all my self-encouraging efforts backfire, or at least fail to help even a bit. It’s just such a fairytale idealist hero thing, Yeah I hyped myself up, and now the situation is way less bad!

I'm not sour, just realistic, hard not to with the knowledge about how the world actually works crammed into my head. Not that I'm complaining.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Anyways…

“Hey you stinky fat, hairy pigs, are you done with the afternoon naps?” I shout to get their attention.

Just a moment later I catch August bolting out of a thick bush sword first towards one of the bigger boars and Kayla crouching down in front of another one lazing around. That relaxed approach concerns me a little, still, I’ll just trust her methods for now.

The moment the last boar hops up and looks the slightest bit ready to run me over, I turn on my heels and get the hell out of there.

The first phase is complete.

I peek backward, and yep, my grunting pursuer is already hot on my heels.

“That trap better work, you hear me, Victor?” I yell at the top of my lungs while pumping my small legs as fast as I can.

We knew the boar would be faster, more legs and more Speed do give a substantial advantage so the trap was set up quite close to the clearing yet still far enough not to get detected.

“Be ready!” I shout, approaching the marked spot.

There’s no need to look behind anymore, I can hear the beast breathing down my neck, only steps away. I could try to jump over the trap but that would risk me getting caught up in its effect, so I hurl myself sideways, just two steps in front of the crossed sticks marking the spot.

The boar is slightly faster than me and significantly heavier, which means more momentum and inertia.

I dodge the trap, but the boar does not. The spell activates and electricity discharges, turning the boar into a big fat furry ragdoll. I quickly get back up on my feet and Victor climbs down a nearby tree to finish the incapacitated beast off.

I wanna be pissed at him for making me be the bait, at the same time his plan worked so he deserves a shoulder pat. He pulls his bow back and releases an arrow into the boar's side.

“Too shallow. It would take like ten of those to kill the thing.” He inspects the damage. “Any ideas, Lady Destruction?” He turns to me.

“Don’t call me that, it sounds cringy! And aim for the eyes and neck, obviously, or just plunge a knife into it, I’ll try something.”

I don’t know when killing things became my area of expertise, but there’s no denying that whenever it comes to unaliving things, Mages are the go-to option.

I want to avoid using fire, it would be a form of torture, burning the thing alive, and the smell would be horrendous. So~ ice or earth, anything else would just scratch it.

I conjure an ice spear and shoot it into the boar's neck while another arrow sinks into one of its eyes, making the boar squeal in pain yet continue breathing. The creature is extremely tough, as even with blood pouring from its neck and the arrow sinking deep into its skull it doesn’t look even close to dying.

That’s when I hear something approaching. Something heavy. Something grunting.

“Victor?” I ask with rising angst.

Things are not supposed to move around here. Big things even less so.

“Yeah.” I can tell he is no more confident than me.

I quickly activate Mana Vision and scan the area where the noise is coming from. A boar, stomping right towards us.

“Another boar, prepare.” I relay the information, just in case it isn’t obvious.

[Boar lvl 26]

“I’ll keep this one busy, you finish-” I try to come up with a solution to our predicament, however seemingly Victor has other worries.

“Isn’t that… Kayla!” He shouts and sprints off in the elf girl’s general direction.

“Wait Victor, I can’t-”

A~nd he’s gone. It’s just me with a furious boar.

Just to make me truly regret waking up this morning something else begins to move, yet again from behind my back. The electrocuted boar seems to have regained control over its body a bit earlier than I had hoped, although this didn’t matter in the planning phase since it was supposed to be dead by now.

So now it’s me against one and a half boars. Fuck you, Victor.

“Let’s dance!” I smile nervously and taunt the boars, knowing well they can’t understand a word I say.

Right now survival is the top priority, even if Martha could theoretically just teleport me out if things get serious. Waiting for someone to return so we can finish these two off is my best and safest option without risking a sacrificial blow.

I coat myself in a thin layer of earth armor to both protect and help with maneuvering since I can just pull myself aside with the same earth on my body whenever all other options fail. There’s only one glaring problem with my impromptu armor; it takes most of my control to keep it together so retaliating isn’t really an option.

With that being said, I don’t have any more reservations about using fire. Either I lose here and take a nasty bruise or they burn. It will be cruel, they will scream… tough luck. I’d rather be mean than let a pig three times my size pulverize the bones in my leg, thank you very much.

And so the dance is on. They charge, I dodge, I get a window of opportunity, a small maybe a second or two long window, and retaliate. It’s easy to know when to jump, even a deaf person could hear them stomping and squealing before an assault, and they have the turn rate of a falling tree.

I hurl sparks of lightning at them, vicious blades of wind, and fist-sized fireballs. Let’s just say, slapping them would have similar effects; making them even more pissed.

The beasts turn out to be smarter than I gave them credit for. They time their charges to leave me almost no breathing room while also relying less and less on charging, instead using their horns and tusks to impale me.

After about a minute my job gets much easier as the grievously injured boar slows and sways, likely having lost too much blood. This is exactly when I decide to just drop the armor and rely on Premonition together with my instincts and elven blood to aid in staying out of harm's way.

Why protect myself if I don’t plan on getting hit right? Also, the thing was chewing through my mana like crazy so time to retaliate.

I use the most basic form of fire magic to just torch the boars wherever they get too close but abandon even that when my mana hits the halfway mark and I give up on inflicting any kind of damage whatsoever. Hitting weak points turned out to be a lot more difficult against something sprinting and thrashing about, with their thick skin and fur weathering my attacks.

‘Be conservative with mana!’ One of the holy rules of mages. Not actually holy as in decreed by a God, just beyond super important.

The boars do manage to nick me a few times when they miraculously slow their charge and bite, not just mindlessly run forward. When they get so close, that’s when things turn bad. They are still faster and are way better equipped to deal damage in melee, courtesy of their forearm-long horn, tusks, teeth, and just chonk.

Thankfully their stamina isn’t bottomless and I can already see them begin to tire. The thing is, mine is no better, I already am tired. Then I hear footfalls again, this time a person if my ears don’t deceive me, approaching us with haste.

“Elyssia, where’s Victor? And why are the boars-” August bursts through a bush, panting and looking like someone who rolled around in the mud.

“Anyone but you! Why you? I hope you got rid of that boar!” I point a finger at him accusingly after another close call.

He leans forward and tries catching his breath, looking properly exhausted, yet even then he has the strength to shake his head.

“Get the fuck out of here! Don’t you see I have enough problems as it is?” I snap at him.

If he’s here and the boar he distracted isn’t dead…

Yep, here it is, another one. Brilliant.

“Get yourself together, you prick, or we'll lose this bet before even taking down a single beast!” I basically order him as this is a do or… well not die, a moment where he has to step up or we fail. “Can you distract two while I try to take down one?” I ask hopefully.

“I’ll try.” He huffs and lifts his sword, jumping away from the seriously pissed-looking boar that followed him all the way back here. Not that I can read their facial expressions.

The beast has a few scratches and even a nasty gash on its side, although it still seems lively enough to kill me with no problem. Then there’s the second one with a few burn marks on its side, but other than that healthy and kicking. Lastly, the pig we ambushed with Victor is on its last leg, yet still refuses to just fall over and die, resolutely charging and fighting to take me down with it.

I have to take out that one first. An important lesson dad told me is 'Those are the most dangerous who have nothing to lose.' This boar will die, it knows and acts accordingly.

“Where the fuck are you Victor?” I murmur and prepare to risk it.