“They all landed,” he said, surprised that none of the spells were resisted. He didn’t know that Jason’s aura had already lowered the resistances of the trolls. “You’re good to go.”
The barrels on Jonno’s ridiculous weapon spun up with a whir before erupting with thunder. A terrifying storm of bullets chewed into the trolls. Jason realised that Orange’s curse must have temporarily negated the damage reduction from rank disparity.
The silver-rank monsters weren’t especially tough examples of their rank, but they still had silver-rank physical fortitude. This was the only reason they weren’t instantly turned to chum by the ludicrous weapon. Jonno’s endless stream of bullets cut through them like a saw through a tree.
Jonno’s mana was depleting at an absurd rate. Before that moment, Jason didn’t realise someone could blow through mana so fast, he could pick it up with his magical senses. From the look of Jonno, it was doing a similar job with his stamina.
Jason grabbed a silver-rank recovery potion he had taken from the archbishop of Purity and held it up to Jonno’s mouth.
“Drink,” he ordered.
Even the over-ranked potion bought Jonno only seconds more uptime with his crazy gun, but seconds were critical as the trolls finally collapsed under the barrage. Jonno’s gun vanished and he collapsed. Jason helped him stay upright. As Jason pulled a camp chair from his inventory for Jonno to rest, the remainder of the team swarmed the trolls, pouring flasks of liquid over them that combusted shortly after exposure to air.
“You have to torch them,” Nigel explained as they watched the trolls burn. “Otherwise, you can kill them and they’ll still heal up.”
“D&D rules,” Jason said. “Burn the trolls.”
Jason recognised that Jonno’s huge gun filled the same role as Farrah’s lava cannon: a showstopping power that devoured mana like pigs with a fresh corpse.
“We need to make sure the bodies are properly burned up or they won’t stay dead,” Nigel reiterated. “Jungle trolls are one of the physically weakest varieties, but their recovery strength is incredible. Fire, fortunately, shuts down the regeneration of just about anything you can get to burn. This bronze-rank everburn oil can be made fairly cheaply, so we all carry it for regenerators.”
Jason suspected that the alchemists of Earth were on the same path as Jory of making the most of lesser ingredients. His magic senses were sharp enough to differentiate Jory’s bargain potions from the good stuff, and he got a similar feeling from most of the alchemical items he had seen in the Network’s possession.
“Are you alright, Jonno?” Jason asked. “You look like you’ve run a marathon.”
“I’ll be alright,” he said. “Thanks for that potion.”
“No worries,” Jason said. “Don’t go taking another one any time soon, though. That was a category-three recovery potion.”
“Yeah, I can feel it,” Jonno said. “Good thing mana recovers so much faster here.”
“You should see Mr Asano’s houseboat,” Nigel said. “It has the same mana recovery effect.”
“Seriously?” Jonno asked. “How do I get one of those?”
“Go to an alternate reality and then enter a contest to go to a pocket dimension where you compete against the most skilled young essence users in the world to pass a series of trials laid down centuries earlier by an ancient order of assassins that worship the lord of the afterlife.”
“No one’s selling them online?” Jonno asked.
“I haven’t checked,” Jason said with a laugh. “Maybe one of those companies that makes custom super yachts can help you out. In the meantime, wait until that potion is out of your system and then eat this.”
Jason handed over a bronze spirit coin, which Jonno held up to examine.
“Is that you?” he asked.
“Yep,” Jason said.
Jonno turned the coin over and read the text embossed onto the back.
PRODUCT OF JASON.
G’DAY MATE.
“You are a weird bloke,” Jonno told Jason. “And that’s coming from a guy who just killed a bunch of trolls with his magic airplane gun.”
Nigel checked in on Green, who was the team signaller. As the signaller, it was Green’s job to pay attention to the ADE tracking, even when hunting it wasn’t their job. He did so with a computer tablet that seemed to merge magic and technology, which Jason was fascinated to explore later.
“Those category threes weren’t one of the ADE groups, were they?” Nigel asked.
“No, boss.” Green said. “All three ADE signals are well clear of us. These were definitely ordinary roamers.”
Nigel bowed his head unhappily.
“Problem?” Jason asked.
“Only the ADE should be at the category cap for the incursion space,” Digit explained. “We’re seeing more and more roamers breaking that rule, though. Word is that it’s a sign that we’re going to start to see category-four incursions. They had one in the UK a couple of years ago.”
“That kind of speculation is above our pay grade,” Nigel said firmly.
“All due respect, boss,” Cobbo said, “but since we’re the ones standing at the front, we’re the first people who get to speculate. If that’s above our pay grade, then they’re free to pay us more.”
The rest of the section, on the lookout for more monsters, nodded.
“We have more immediate concerns,” Nigel said, opening the voice channel to Koen. “Waters, we just ran into some category-three jungle troll roamers. The ADE will probably be something with more grunt.”
After reporting in, the section was back on the move.
“Those category-three monsters mean that the anchor monsters will be stronger?” Jason asked.
“That’s been the experience so far,” Nigel said. “We won’t be dealing with category fours, but it’ll be from the more dangerous end of category three. It may not be so bad individually, seeing as there’s more than one ADE, but the rules went out the window once a category-three roamer showed up. Mr Asano, I’d advise you let us escort you back to the camp.”
“I’d rather stay,” Jason said. “It sounds like you might have need of me.”
Nigel let out a reluctant sigh.
“Mr Asano, I don’t doubt you’re a capable combatant. I’ve seen the footage of you fighting the category three from France. But I have orders and you don’t have the coordination with our units. I don’t doubt you can tear up some monsters, but I am not going to lose people because you wandered into their field of fire and they held back.”
“That’s fair,” Jason said. “I’ll stay out of the fray, but I’m not going back to camp.”
While the silver-ranker led teams continued to track the anchor monsters, Nigel’s section became more aggressive in their sweep of the extended perimeter, bringing their patrol range closer the camp. If a category three reached the camp, iron-rank bullets were not going to stop it. There were bronze-rankers amongst the Network’s harvest teams who were trained enough that they could step up if needed, but probably not without casualties.
Given the situation, Koen had ordered the harvest teams back to camp.