The battle clock had just hit fourteen minutes. Elzio had spent most of that time positioning two low-level doppels in the northern and Southern Road, to kill enemy minions and gain experience. They’d settled into a rhythm consisting of Nance farming minions by the southern tower, still unaware that Echo’s minions and structure down there were specialized against her.

Bereth prowled the forest area, unaware of Elzio's invisibility spell. At one point, the two had gotten close enough that Elzio could read his stats, his buffs and debuffs, his items and consumables. But with Elzio standing still and the spell in full cast, Bereth passed him by.

Kia and Peter stayed close to each other, in the Northern Road. The team’s armorsmith stayed off the path by quite a bit, working on her gear and otherwise tuning the world out, as she was prone to do. Peter hadn’t seemed to have communicated the lack of enemy minions to her. Elzio couldn’t tell for sure, but no one had gone looking for the massive swell of enemy minions thus far. The newcomer seemed content to crash his own minions into Echo’s northern tower, occasionally exchanging some blows with a Bereth doppel that Elzio had stationed up there.

Things were going rather well, all things considered. Yes the enemy team certainly had the advantage if you looked at tower health. Between Nance’s slow push in the south and Peter’s uncontested shoves in the north, Echo’s towers had dwindled to 80% and 70% health respectively.

But Elzio had been growing more powerful than any of them, absorbing all experience from the minions, while his foes split half the experience four ways. His magical force and mana regen had grown over the course of the battle. The doppelgangers saw only a mediocre increase in power—the ratios for in-battle experience to doppel strength weren’t particularly good—but their abilities had grown more powerful as Elzio did. Add that to the mana growth, which let him cast more powerful doppels more frequently, and he was slowly growing capable of summoning a small army.

His next step would be to draw Peter away from the Northern Road so that the large wave of minions would be able to swell forward and take down the enemy tower.

And Elzio already knew how to do this.

At fifteen minutes, Elzio summoned a level 4 doppel of himself and teleported it just beyond where Peter was fighting.

The doppel hurried towards where Elzio was pretty sure Kia would be hiding. It took him about thirty seconds to find her, and half a second for her to notice him.

“Peter!” she screamed. “Peter he got past you!” Her voice cracked in fear, and an uncomfortable twist of guilt snarled in his stomach. Kia would be fine. She would be more than fine. Because of Elzio’s “treachery” she would be forced out of the nexus battle lifestyle early, before Sir Thomas had a chance to get her and the others killed.

Still, it hurt to hear her so scared. It hurt more than he expected or wanted it to.

Peter showed up moments later, eyes wide with fear, but he hadn’t shown up soon enough to prevent the doppel from slipping an unseen ward near Kia’s station. Neither Peter nor Kia noticed as they turned to combat. The Elzio doppel had barely fired off a few basic attacks before Kia’s knight in shining armor sprung to her defense. The game of keep away lasted long enough for Peter to fire and miss all but one of his skills. Elzio’s doppel, now damaged, turned tail and ran.

“Peter, no!” Kia’s voice grew even more distraught as Peter turned to chase, the young man’s face brimming with determination. “Peter, you have to—”

“You soak the minions. Leave him to me.” Without sparing his far-more-experienced teammate another thought, Peter charged after Elzio’s clone.

Kia’s eyes bugged as he ran. Then they fell to her half-completed staff. The staff, for Nance, would add a decent amount of power to her spells, but more importantly, it would reduce the cooldown of her Lava Cracks enough to let her triple stack the Melting Magma. Once completed, Nance would hit a significant power spike, letting her spells chain in a devastating fashion.

Elzio wasn’t an armorsmith but he’d seen Kia’s work in the past. She took her time but her weapons never fizzled. If she left the staff now, abandoning it in favor of experience soak, it would lose progress until she basically had to start over, delaying Nance’s power spike by another ten minutes. No, there was no way Kia was leaving her station now.

“Damn you,” she whispered to the empty spot Peter had vanished to. “Damn you, damn you, damn you.” With this, she shakily picked up her staff and began working on it. “Next time I see that bastard, I’m gonna shove all of his hit points in a god damned belt and give them to Bereth.”

She wasn’t going anywhere.

The slowing field is wearing off. Is everything in position? Echo asked

Almost. Elzio took a deep breath, slowly retreating from the Northern Road, moving carefully back up towards his own tower.

As he moved, he checked on his other doppelgangers. They were rather expensive wards, leaching an appreciable amount of mana every minute, but they were effective at keeping vision of the enemy heroes. The Elzio doppel was still leading Peter on. In the Southern Road, Nance pushed wave after wave into the southern tower, while Elzio’s Nance doppel put up relatively little fight. The doppel mostly just passively soaked experience, which was by design. If it fought the real Nance, Nance would fight and destroy it. Instead, Nance focused on shoving the minions into the tower, which was now well under 50%. It would fall soon, but Elzio expected that.

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It wouldn’t save them.

His eyes fell to his shimmering display of the map, where over seventy minions who’d been frozen in place finally emerged from behind their allied tower. Freed from their slowing field, they marched straight towards the enemy structure.

At this point in the battle, it took three shots for a tower to kill a minion. Each shot took two seconds to power up and fire. Six seconds per minion. It’d take the tower about seven minutes to blast through all of them, by which point three more waves would join the fray. With all of their fists and swords pounding against the structure, it wouldn’t last long enough to get through them all.

Elzio would have loved to stay and watch the torrent of minions smash against the turret, empowered fists tearing it down, but he had to move south. Nance would be called up to handle the minion wave once they realized how enormous it was, and Elzio needed to be ready to take on her abandoned lane as soon as possible.

As he ran, he dissolved all of his doppels. His regen had grown stronger, and he’d picked up a Greater Mana Charm to supplement it, meaning once all his spells were down, he’d regenerate his mana quickly.

It took him two minutes to reach the Southern Road, meaning Nance—who was about as fast as he was—had probably just reached the Northern Road. She’d have her work cut out for her, being the only person with any kind of significant wave clear.

Fortunately for Elzio, her significant wave clear was now his to use. He threw all of his newly regenerated mana into a level 6 Nance doppel. It began grinding through the minions, less effectively than the real Nance. The hit to its stats was increasingly notable at this point in the battle. Nance had her staff and battle experience. The doppel only had a minor increase in its own stats at this level, so it was struggling to actually take down the minions quickly.

We’ve pretty much reached the point in the battle where I have no kill pressure, Elzio told Echo. Enemy minions aren’t a threat, but it’s taking time to kill them. Even caught by surprise, I don’t think my most powerful doppel could take out any of them, even Peter.

I would hope that this was not your plan. Echo didn’t sound remotely alarmed at Elzio’s admission. She sounded a little annoyed at his caginess but mostly just intrigued.

He grinned. Of course not. Just making note of it.

His eyes flitted back to his display. The minion wave was still crushing through the tower defenses. It would fall soon, even with Nance’s, Bereth’s, and Peter’s best efforts.

Echo? How much can you control minions? I know you can’t tell them to veer off their path or any other kind of movement order, but can you control what they’re attacking?

Echo was quiet for a moment, perhaps thinking, perhaps testing. They are configured for standard combat. Attack what is most directly attacking them. I cannot tell them directly what they may and may not attack, nor can I change their priority. They will tend towards attacking heroes first, then minions, then towers. I can only change their focus within that strict rule.

Elzio rubbed his hands together. Good. See if you can stop them from attacking Peter.

He could feel her displeasure before she even responded. He is the only of the targets I have a chance at killing.

And a low chance. Trust me. We want them to be suspicious of him.

I will do what I can.

Elzio grinned before turning his gaze back to the southern tower, where the Nance doppel had finally crashed a minion wave into the tower. His mana had regenerated quite a bit over the past minute or so, enough for him to create another mid-level Nance doppel. Casting almost 150 mana refreshes every 45 seconds was taxing. He barely had the mana regen to keep it up, and would be in trouble if anyone in the group were to come down.

Still, the risk was paying off. With two Nance doppels, the minions’ aggros were split, and the clones were able to polish them off significantly quicker, stacking their Melting Magma spell with delightful efficiency.

To make matters better, just as Elzio was checking his display again, a red shimmer outlined the enemy tower before melting it away, marking their first concrete victory.

They’d taken the first tower.

Elzio, if I may be so bold as to make a suggestion? The magma spell doubles in efficiency when targets are hit by other fire spells.

I am way ahead of you, Echo. Elzio grinned, watching the two doppels syncing up their skills, burning through minions, flooding him with spending points and experience.

I have noticed, she said, and Elzio’s smile faded to a pensive look, already taking note of her tone. However, consider the merit of, instead of one high leveled and one medium leveled doppelganger, summon three mid level doppelgangers. The stat dropoff will be notable, but the potential for Magma stacking is more than significant.

Elzio’s brow furrowed as he calculated her claim in his head. That won’t be very helpful, even if you’re right, he said. We need wave clear to burn through the minions, focus on Firechain, not Melting Magma.

Firechain can still clear the minions, she said. The doppels should use their Melting Magmas and Lava Cracks on the tower.

The tower. She was right. Each level 4 doppel could cast Melting Magma at level 2, and then double it with Lava Cracks, reducing its resistances, a crucial stat for towers. They would use their basic attacks and Firechains on the minions, while chaining Melting Magmas and Lava Cracks on the tower as soon as the spells were off cooldown.

So that’s what Elzio did. He dropped the higher leveled Nance doppel and let his mana recharge a bit, before summoning another mid-tier one, and then a minute or so later, summoned a third.

“My god.” The words, almost silent, slipped from his lips after just a minute of watching the doppels attack. They worked through the minions with middling efficiency, but within a dozen casts on the tower, it was taking hundreds of hit points per second. The magical resistance fluctuated as the doppels hit it with their respective Lava Cracks, but the Melting Magma just kept doubling and resetting.

The southern tower fell in minutes.