I met up with the team as planned. It was pretty much like clockwork, but the steady pace of the sloths made the timing predictable. Again, they weren’t slow, but they also weren’t sprinters. They were in the smooth and steady wins the race camp, which they had made their own. I could see why they were considered elite mounts, even before watching one of them fight. They were also very popular with the team. Queakers was perched atop Reginald and my other party members were walking along together with the sloths. I saw Delirin first, as she was scouting ahead. She gave me a little wave and I fell in beside her and she gave me an update as we walked.
“Any trouble?” I asked.
“Nothing on the way here, Harris,” Delirin replied. “I am concerned about how we’ll move through duck country.” Your friends don’t fight well, despite having solid classes and some skills. Queakers is the standout, but even she can only do so much at her level.” I had made sure that each party member had a solid energy armor device. They were certainly more capable than what I had when I started out into the wilds to hunt hell antelope. They also each had a training device to provide them with feedback in the form of the pain that the energy armor spared them. Those tools had helped me a great deal, but I wasn’t sure how the team would respond to them.
Delirin continued, “We’ll begin to run into ducks tomorrow afternoon at this pace and we will require a strategy to maintain our pace, keep them safe and get them what experience we can. You should talk with them about this tonight.” The rest of the team caught up shortly, including Deldes who had been covering the rear of the group. We marched until twilight and made “camp” as the stars came out. This involved circling the sloths in a small hollow between two heavily treed hills.
This location kept the group out of sight and allowed us to keep watch from the hills above. Deldes, Delirin and I each took a watch this first night and let everyone else get some rest. To help conceal our presence, we didn’t have a fire or anything that would generate light. After a quick dinner of trail rations, I met with the team to discuss how they wanted to proceed as we entered duck territory.
The way I figured it out, we had a few options. Delirin and I could thin out the ducks and the rest of the team could fight their way through while Deldes protected the mounts. We could move through with the team mounted and they could snipe what they could hit while Deldes and Delirin went nuts or we could do something in between. We didn’t have enough stealth devices to conceal everyone or all of the mounts and those were only so effective anyway, so we were going to have to manage the conflict somehow. Since several party members were melee fighters, I thought that it would be best to have them fight their way through now and get the gains as early as possible in the journey. After some debate, they all agreed.
My party members looked ragged in the morning, which I gather was the result of their not being used to the modest comfort level afforded by the taiga with no fire. Kelly always looked put together, so when she popped up with bags under her eyes and a few pine twigs in her hair I knew we were going to be in for a rough one. Only Queakers looked well rested, no doubt because she spent most of the night snuggled up with Sarah or one of the elves. After a quick breakfast of trail mix we got to it and we reached duck territory right around noon, as Delirin had predicted.
Kelly and I both stealthed, though I didn’t use my full skill. The elves did the same and set out to clear most of the path while we advanced with the mounts. The ducks were plentiful and varied, but mostly they weren’t going to tangle with the giant sloths, that went double for anything that Deldes and Delirin let through. With the mounts at our back and Reginald bringing up the rear, we could focus forward. I was in the back of our formation. Jim and Karen were our front line, backed up by Kelly. Sarah and Queakers stayed between me and our front line and focused on dealing damage.
After the first few encounters we started to get the hang of working together, though I suspected that most of the team switched off their training devices until we made some additional improvements. Delirin was right, the team wasn’t packing much of a punch right now, but they also didn’t have any kind of teamwork. I held myself back from much of the fighting to let the others maximize their experience, but I still got in plenty of shots with my magic particle pistol. In fact, I killed so many ducks with that gun that first day that Jim started calling it the Zapper.
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We continued with the same basic game plan the second day in duck country as well. We had about hundred more miles to go to make the falls and then we had to circle around the aline lake to arrive at Eastern Tear. At our current pace that would take us six more days to make the whole trip. I checked my magic compass occasionally, but I didn’t find anything all that interesting in the area, so we just kept plodding along.
Queakers was the first to break off from the party. She was a natural with her skills and continued to learn very quickly, so with just a few days of practical experience, she was able to turn what she had learned in previous training to impressive effect in the wild. Queakers had extremely high agility and a small profile, so she was able to avoid many attacks. Queakers also had high discipline and high enough charisma that if these had been animals rather than monsters, with her magic she would have probably been leading a small platoon of ducks.
Where she really shined was in her high intelligence and wisdom, which for her casting type made her a killing machine with vines and her plant minions. It was weird that a dog had such high intelligence, but the Unified System and awakening were largely still mysteries to me. She split off to work as a scout with one of the elves, which kept things in balance, allowing both Queakers and the rest of the party to continue to progress at a good pace.
The next to break off was actually Kelly. Her stealth skill was well paired with the environment of the dense forest and her natural grace and precision in her movements allowed her to make kills cleanly and efficiently. She was potentially better suited to targeting people than beasts with her skills, but she bridged the gap relatively quickly and she rotated out to work with whichever elf wasn’t working with Queakers. Our dynamics as a six person party were pretty solid despite the lack of a true tank type party member. However, if we didn’t have a couple of elven escorts blocking for us and a comically ridiculous escort of five giant armored sloths covering our rear, it would have been tough if I continued to hold back. We were OK because of our high DPS, but if we encountered something that could really soak up the damage we were in trouble as a party of six.
As a party of four, Jim, Karen, Sarah and I were well balanced, but if I operated at the combat level of the team we were in trouble and the lack of a tank started to really show. In the current group, we decided to try something new. I mean I was a Tactician, right? It was clearly time for some new tactics. Jim rotated back to cover the situational DPS role using his high mobility instead of range. Sarah was in the middle putting out as much damage as she could and Karen stuck just in front of her, guarding and providing support. I was the new front line and I was trying out some of my newly purchased knives rather than guns. I was also using seven of an upgraded version of my shield discs to block attacks and some truly excellent energy armor that I had modified myself. I made sure my training feedback device was running as we pushed into the fray in our new formation.
***
It seemed like they were letting everything through at this point. It felt like something that we should have discussed ahead of time, but I hadn’t seen Deldes or Delirin since breakfast. We weren’t going to die or anything, but it was getting pretty crazy. One of the roughly human sized velociraptor-like ducks lunged for Sarah just as she fired off a magical bolt of electrical energy at the one behind it. She knew that Karen was already in motion to crush the skull of the attacking duck as Jim rotated to the other side of Sarah and laid into another pair of the monsters with some open palm strikes that seemed to transfer energy through the organs of his targets for impressive damage.
It was good that they were holding their own. I was more punching bag than combatant at this point. There were five ducks and three plant monsters wailing on me right now. The plant monsters looked suspiciously like some of Queakers’ summons and when I heard Delirin’s cackling laughter softly on the breeze I knew that was exactly what they were. The two wouldn’t admit to anything, but ever since we changed tactics I was beset by all manner of plant monsters, a foe I hadn’t noticed once on my previous passes through this area. When I brought it up, Delirin and Queakers acted hurt, but I could hear them chuckling and plotting to themselves at night in camp.
Anyhow, I was trying to block what I could with the discs, which was great practice and a fruitful source of ideas for improvements, but with the training device on I was also getting more than my fair share of “feedback” on my current performance. Was it weird that I was nostalgic for that feeling? It was definitely worth considering along with a number of my other life choices, but there was plenty of time for that after we reached the falls. Right then I was focused on something else. I could feel another skill developing and it felt good.