Rufus had always framed this as a universal bad, as they were wasting elements of their kit and leaving potential synergies on the table. Watching the military-style tactics of the team, though, Jason recognised that his own team would never be able to fight in that manner if they wanted to advance their abilities. The core users could ignore this restriction to develop an incredibly focused approach.
Jason would never go for this technique himself, since it would be hampering his own advancement, but he couldn’t help admitting that it was effective. Jason had been expecting a bunch of second-rate core users, but was forced to acknowledge that they had made the most of their advantages.
Jason also suspected that the uniformity of their approach would make it much easier to swap personnel between teams. The more individualistic nature of an adventurer team made it hard to accommodate new or temporary members, and losing a member could be crippling. The Network, he imagined, would find this much less of a problem.
One thing that stood out was Nigel. Jason had originally thought it was the lack of proper training techniques alone that was slowing Nigel down, but it became clear that fighting like a core user was also impeding his progress. Nigel would need to fight more like an adventurer and less like a soldier if he was going to advance his abilities more quickly.
While he came to admire the tactics of the core-users, Jason also spotted a critical weakness. If that weakness came into play on this expedition, he might not remain an observer after all.
41
WHAT YOU CALL OBSERVING
Jason saw flashes of what Nigel’s team could bring to the table if they fought more like adventurers. While the general approach was for focus-fire tactics, they each had specialties that were pulled out against various creatures.
The scouts rarely used their firearms full of expensive ammunition. Instead, they used their powers to support the team in combat when they weren’t ranging ahead in search of threats. Jason was surprised to find that two of them were affliction specialists. Green was a wide-area type, using various word-of-power abilities to impede enemies.
Orange was more focused on singular targets, like Jason. His evil-eye power set did little damage, though, but set his team up to enhance their focus-fire strategies by making enemies more susceptible to damage and impeding defensive abilities.
The last scout, Woolzy, was a fast-moving melee striker with the swift foot and knife essences combining to form the master confluence. Of all the team, he was the most adventurer-like in his tactics, using bursts of staccato movement to set up assassination-style special attacks. He would only conjure his twin knives right before striking, leaving them buried in the victim.
Woolzy’s role was to beat fast and agile monsters at their own game before they used their mobility to outmanoeuvre the team. He guarded their flanks, leaving them free to rapidly focus-fire through the primary enemies.
His speed was very different from Sophie’s flowing, uncatchable grace. While Jason knew that Sophie would envy Woolzy’s powerful attacks, Jason much preferred her ability set. He did admit to himself, though, that he possibly had his own case of burst damage envy.
Other members had their own times to shine. The shield-wielding Higgy would also erupt into bursts of speed, but to intercept attacks, rather than deliver them. Like Woolzy, his job was to let the team do their job unfettered, intervening to absorb the attacks into his shield. Every hit seemed to charge it up and, every so often, he would unleash an overwhelming counterattack in the form of a conical wave of force.
Darce had the most exotic power of the team, summoning a brass steam golem to give them more frontline presence. Her summon had a number of differences from observations Jason had made of other summons. The steam golem was cheaper to summon, mana-wise, but had a limited power supply. That supply was rapidly consumed, and all the faster if the golem used its special attacks like firing scalding steam.
The golem’s weak longevity was paired with a much shorter cooldown, though, of half an hour compared to the usual six, and Darce didn’t need a summoning circle to call it out. All this, plus the need to give it more direction than a normal summon, led Jason to believe it wasn’t an actual summon. He suspected it was an ability he had heard of but never seen before, known as a puppet power. Rather than summoning an independent creature, it created a very sophisticated conjured object.
The meat and potatoes of Nigel’s section was the hitter team consisting of Cobbo, Digit and Nigel himself. Cobbo used conjured spears, mostly throwing them with almost bullet-like speed. He would occasionally make devastating charging attacks or conjure a pike when monsters charged the team in turn.
Digit used a conjured bow, making flashy special attacks, while Nigel was quite conventional with his conjured rifle. With his black paramilitary gear and assault weapon, he would fit right into an autocratic dictator’s extrajudicial death squad.
Nigel showed more of his capabilities when the team was attacked on all sides by a wave of small and weak, but multitudinous monsters. His rifle vanished as he tossed it aside and conjured a pistol in each hand. He moved forward slowly while continuously turning around, pistols blazing in every direction as he shot the leaping stoat monsters right out of the air.
Nigel wasn’t aiming. He fired to either side and even backwards, yet every shot landed on target. Bullets even whizzed past his own team on their path to dropping one monster after another. Jason did not participate in that encounter, although he did call up Gordon, who used pinpoint beams to strike down any of the diminutive monsters that drew too close.
Jonno also used a conjured assault rifle for most tasks, and likewise had other gun forms available at need. Unlike Nigel’s pistol configuration, Jonno's other weapon was a rotary-barrelled machine gun, which he slung from his hip like he was in an eighties action movie.
“Bit of a mana hog,” Jonno explained, “so I only pull it out for the big stuff.”
That gun was outshone when the group encountered a trio of silver-rank jungle trolls, half the height again of a human. Jonno conjured up a third gun, so large that, even hip-slung, it seemed like he should be toppling over. The rotary machine gun was already an image of excess, while this was a full-blown rotary cannon.
Jonno didn’t fire immediately, instead letting his team go to work. Darce called up her golem, which launched into one of the trolls but was quickly overpowered. Higgy used his charged shield to send one troll stumbling back while Nigel conjured a grenade launcher to blast the third. A grenade to the face rang the troll’s bell, but it was far from a kill shot. They could visibly see it start to heal.
The stalling tactics were to give Orange time to cast a curse spell three times over, chanting the same words for each.
“Let the scales of power sway.”