Godfather's System

030. Crucible - 7

I quickly realized that moving as a part of a large group had its own challenges. Speed was one of them. Alone, using the river as a highway, I could compete with a car, and even without cheating, I was moving at a speed that would kill a thoroughbred horse from overexertion.

However, the moment the first great beast, some kind of mutated tiger, overgrown to match an elephant in the size appeared, rushing forward at a speed I could never match, I was reassured by my choices.

The people with ranged abilities, from all three groups, held the beast under the rain of arrows, easily hitting the tiger despite its size. Even Karak stepped forward, using his precious arrows while Jertann and Silas guarded him.

Halfway through, I could already see the beast slowing down due to its wounds, its vitality not enough to prop it up when its skin was filled with arrows.

While they continued to deal with it, I turned back and looked at the horizon, toward the forest I had left behind, wondering if the distraction effect of the forest was finally over. I didn't see the cursed fire as I looked, though, to be fair, I didn't even see the forest itself. We were already too far away to see unless I found an elevated spot of observation.

However, in the sky, I could see two flying castles peeking down from the clouds, showing that, whatever was going on, they still needed reinforcements.

But then, if it was a small problem, I doubted that they would have triggered such a comprehensive evacuation.

I turned my attention to the tiger, still rushing toward the center held by the Blacks, who pulled back slightly, pulling the tiger into an envelopment. Interestingly, even the other groups used their ranged attacks recklessly. For a moment, I was surprised by their support, as I hadn't expected it givenh the obvious tension.

Then, the situation revealed itself as the tiger collapsed, and a celebration exploded in one of the greens. "You didn't get it?" Jertann asked as he turned toward Karak, who just shook his head.

They were talking about the last hit. "How much experience it grant for you to care about it that much?" I asked, looking at their expressions like they had just lost the lottery.

"Well, probably about ten thousand," Jertann guessed.

"A bit lower," Silas spoke. "It went down too fast to actually grant that much."

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Karak nodded, agreeing with the conclusion.

I frowned as I calculated just how much experience that could be gained from other sources, and realized that something was wrong. There were almost a hundred archers in three groups which meant an expected experience payoff of about a hundred points.

Which could easily be gained by simply killing two or three larger beasts with their arrows rather than wasting their arrows against that large beast.

I would have assumed it was the mindset of a gambler as I had seen many ruining their lives in a misunderstanding of their chances of victory but that hardly explained their passion. It wasn't unlikely, but I didn't want to neglect another possibility.

"That's a lot of experience," I muttered as I raised my hand, making a show of counting my fingers like I was struggling to count. "Almost" I muttered, my face scrunched to further give a mathematically challenged expression. "A thousand ordinary beasts, like this," I counted as I pointed to one that I just killed.

"Try ten thousand, old man," Terma connected, hurried in his answer to show his superior math abilities. "Unless you're a pathetic loser that yet to get his first Promotion, of course," he delivered, pushing his chest out proudly, showing off his early achievement.

"My mistake," I answered with a chuckle, happy with the trade-off of an incompetent insult and pointless bragging from an overenthusiastic teenager in exchange for another important piece of information.

The experience they received after Promotion dropped significantly, and if I read their explanation correctly, that was only true for the weaker monsters.

Mine didn't. I wondered if I would receive a hundred thousand points for killing that huge monster. Or it was just a constant drop?

"Ignore my brother, Euon, he's picking up some bad habits," Jertann said with an apologetic expression.

"Don't worry, it's not the first time I dealt with teenagers," I said even as I swung my dagger, taking down another flying beast, wondering if my unusual Promotion or my class as a hero was responsible for it.

[+14 Experience]

A question for the future, I decided as I followed the movement of my little group and the rest of the line, ignoring the argument that was between Greens and Blacks about how they should share the credit, their argument loud enough to make main lines clear. Blacks wanted it since it was them that was in danger, while Greens argued that dealing the last hit meant the beast belonged to them.

As the sun slowly rose, the fighting slowly turned into a relaxing routine, one that was much easier to do than my underwater adventure.

The biggest disadvantage was the amount of experience that I collected as I defended from the rear. Instead of gathering about a hundred thousand in about a day, I barely managed to gather more than a thousand every hour and that was with the danger increasing as we moved further away.

However I doubted it was fair for me to complain after Terma had explained how much they were gaining from each kill.

And, the leisurely nature of our movement had other benefits. First, but watching such a large group of combatants closely, without fearing that I might get caught, I started to get an even better sense of how they were fighting, which helped to better disguise myself.

I could see that the coordination Jertann's team was showing was not unique, it was certainly rare. Most groups, especially the larger ones, usually blocked each other, even occasionally suffering some friendly injuries.

The advantage of growing together and learning to fight as a team, I supposed.

As we moved, four other large beasts attacked, though none of them were strong enough to breach the arrows enough to take them down before they could reach the defensive line. As the damage they received started to accumulate, some of the people in the line either moved back or abandoned the line completely.

Sometimes they were replaced by other fighters, and sometimes they let the groups get smaller, once again underlining the lack of organization across the camp. That young noble was the nominal leader, but I hadn't seen him or any of his knights trying to do anything other than interrogate me.

The camp was one big disaster away from total collapse.

I ignored the strategic implications of it and instead started examining my group members. They were doing better than I expected, especially since the distance with the closest Red group was considerably more than the others. Despite the number of creatures they had to deal with, Jertann and Silas made a good team, pacing themselves as they took down the attackers, with Karak taking down any that slipped their attention.

They had received a few hits, but none of them was more than glancing touches, and I doubted they took more than one point to recover from.

The only exception was Terma, who was already gasping for breath as he danced around the formation, using his speed to the limit, even when it was unnecessary, often looking at his brother whenever he killed a particularly large beast to see if it impressed him.

Jertann seemed to be unaware of that detail, too lost in his task, which only made Terma act faster and faster, even if it occasionally forced him to take bigger blows, exhaustion taking hold as he was gasping for a breath.

He was not in bad shape, but constantly pushing himself to the limit was clearly exerting a cost. He didn't use his Health to cure his exhaustion, which didn't imply nice things about the state of his Health reserves.

I caught Karak's gaze more than once, confirming that I wasn't the only one watching him. He nodded, implying that he would handle it.

I decided to leave the glorious task of convincing a teenager not to push himself past his limits to Karak, and focused on my job to handle the rear, though I started to move from side to side a bit more to lighten the load.

Not entirely altruistic, as it also allowed me to hoard the experience I collected.

I was hoping to have a calm mission until we could return to the camp as far as it could be under the constant attacks of rabid monsters when we hit a little snag.

A beast, this time a rat, overgrown enough to rival a hippo, rushing forward with great speed. The problem, they were charging right at our group. I tightened my dagger and moved forward, while Karak and other ranged warriors started to petter it with arrows.

I wasn't exactly scared of the beast itself, but what would follow, especially since I had seen the Red group that was closest to us pull back slightly, and along with them, another group attacked the beast with much less frequency.

Their trick was not hard to guess, but the way the members of the nearest Red group smiled once a cheer from the Blacks revealed their success.

"Such horrible luck," Jertann cursed. "Another miss."

Silas didn't say anything, but the way she shook her head confirmed that she shared his opinion.

While Jertann and Silas cursed about missing such an opportunity, Karak glanced around the distance between the nearest group of the Reds and the Blacks. His eyes widened as the realization hit, showing that they were set up.

"Terma, would you go and get me a new quiver," he said as he unhooked it immediately, and pushed it to his hand before he could react, using some of his very rare words as he faced the emergency. He looked a little unconvinced, and Karak also looked helpless, his gaze jumping between two groups of Blacks, approaching toward the corpse, and the Reds, who were decidedly not approaching.

I decided to help a bit. "You don't want Karak to lose his next opportunity because you're feeling lazy, right?" I goaded him.

"What, I don't feel lazy. I just don't understand why I need to go."

"I thought you were the fastest, but maybe Karak should go. After all, you look very exhausted."

"I'm not exhausted," he growled and immediately started to run. Karak nodded in appreciation, and I sent a quick one back before I turned toward the Blacks.

Though, as I watched them approach, I couldn't help but feel rather amused. It felt like I was a teenager all along, accidentally finding myself in the middle of a gang skirmish that escalated into a war that enveloped the whole city, irrevocably forcing me into my unique career path.

"Let's see this time I could handle it better," I muttered