“Alright then, good luck. I’ll be looking forward to the war stories,” Jen said.

  “I’ll be sure to add some spectacle, no explosions though. Had enough of those for a while”

  “Good, they clearly don’t suit you. Just come back in one piece this time, yeah?”

  “Don’t you worry, even if I die I’ll come back to haunt you.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about. Well… See you in a month or two then.”

  “Have a safe trip, make sure to shove your nose into everyone’s business! And don’t forget to tell Breathless about the awakened enchantment thing. Oh, and Cleo sends her regards.”

  “Thanks, I will! Give her mine too.” The two hadn’t spoken in a couple of days because Cleo had sped off to grab some free levels. Some of the nearby vinesnap traps had been killed by our camp-followers, but she ranged further out, entranced by her ability to trivialize them. From her perspective, they were essentially harmless and just a free 50 energy.

  I waited on the fortress side of the second river near the former Farm while Jen’s caravan tidied up. She was returning to HQ, having only come along to see the early stages of Mel’s campaign and test out her telepathy shenanigans. Some of our number joined her on the trip home. From now on the rest of us would be traveling ‘light’ across the mountain slope with only minimal permanent support personnel, which left Slayer Squad, a few others, and a secondary group, although the nerds would catch up with us at some point.

  And off they were. Unlike most mages, her chosen endurance afforded her the same liberties as a hybrid. Leather looked good on her, although she resisted my attempts to get her to dye it black like mine. She preferred the brown-green instead. Since we wouldn’t see each other for a while, I burned her slightly swaying image into my memory, until she was but a speck on the horizon.

  A quick float brought me over to the other side, where Jeb waved me over.

  “Got your armor all fixed up. ‘Least ya kept the damage minimal this time. How ya managed to spread the hurt so evenly?”

  “Walked into a door, sort of. Thanks man, I keep owing you.”

  “Ah, ain’t so bad. Jill roughed hers up way worse. If ya wanna pay me back, tell me ‘bout it over drinks sometime.”

  Jeb had undergone his own subtle changes. Ostensibly, he’d been rather optimistic about the new world. No wonder, considering how progressive nerve disease ruined him in the old one. After his own bout in the games, he wasn’t so sure anymore though. Nonetheless, he refused to turn his eyes away from reality, a trait we all shared.

  “Will do, but later. We have team review now that everyone’s back and I’m already late.”

  “Have at it then, and give this to Noah.” He threw me a flask embellished with all kinds of Norse stuff like axes, ravens, and a serpent coiling around. Its open mouth made the opening – much fancier than the drinking accessory he made for me. Can’t say I’m not a little jealous. What should mine have? Windmills and wooden shoes? Piles of money? 17th century ships, maybe? A lion would be nice.

  Our encampment reminded me an awful lot of my first arrival at the Farm, before there were real buildings involved. Although we carried a lot more stuff these days. I’d gotten my wish of logistical System support in the end since enchanting functioned like a budget dimensional space. Camping in the woods with just tents and bedrolls was a bit of a drag and added difficulty to all the support stuff, like brewing potion replacements, repairing gear, maintaining a food supply and so on. Because this was our inaugural campaign, all long term energy consumption came down to a wild guess.

  The rest of my squad circled the usual central bonfire. It was mostly tradition at this point. No one felt the cold and even the light had been relegated to a nicety. As usual, the System failed to elaborate on the finer points of stat control. Consciously thinking about it in a specific way, force haven, enabled the same limited dark vision which automatically activated underground. It infuriated me, I knew for a fact lives had been lost because of that. It wasn’t my usual kind of contemplation, but the fortress assault put everyone slightly on edge.

  Hence, we’d taken it easy the past week or so. Jill also needed to recover from her astonishing injuries. She’d taken an absolutely abhorrent beating against the reflection and earned the reputation of being by far the hardest of us. Her folk lore kept expanding, foundations for a legend in the making, perhaps. Who am I kidding? It’s definitely happening. The joke rang that the entire fight had been transcribed word for word on her bones and it probably wasn’t far from the truth. Her health had improved much since, even if her disposition had been set to permanently pissed off.

  “Glad you could make it,” she said.

  “Yeah, yeah, you got your ass kicked, join the club. We have weekly meetings where we discuss the nightmares and rehabilitation strategies,” I turned to Cleo, “Jen says hi by the way and regrets the poor timing.” She nodded. “Noah, think fast.” He snatched his brand new fancy flask out of the air, turned it around while mouthing ‘Nice, very nice.’

  Kim also had to say something. “Are you done making seven people wait for one?”

  “It’s okay, someday you’ll know the touch of a woman, although it might take a while, at least until you grow out of the edgy phase.”

  “The last time I saw her touch you, you ended up bleeding in the dirt. But I guess something is better than nothing for you, eh?”

  “If you’re jealous of the experience then we can certainly remedy that.” I motioned to get up.

  “Enough,” Elias said, “You have all had time to review, think and reach the same conclusions. While we were victorious, the battle proceeded far from optimal fashion. The goal here is to improve our teamwork, not exchange petty insults.”

  Noah stopped enchanting his newest project, a bundle of metal darts. “We let the reflections overconfidence lull us into security. It was obviously an ice creature, in a fortress of ice, full of ice monsters. We should have expected variable terrain. We failed to prepare for when it left the circle and played its game.”

  Kwame added on to him, “Our approach was too reactive, too much chasing after objectives. With a disciplined effort, we could have destroyed all the statues quickly instead of going after them one by one until the obvious happened. I also rely too much on my high-magic while my base ability would have likely sufficed. Conserving energy made no sense when we are so amply supplied.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “It should have been me and Gabriel going after the statues,” Jill said, “while you and Carlos supported the middle. Both of us are better against hard targets, and fighting against the reflection’s martial arts should’ve been a last resort.”

  “Hold on, we figured they’d be weak against magic, right? My own part I get, but where do you come in?”

  “Speeding up the process, instead of waiting for your swords to degrade them, I could have ripped them through, maybe even wielded them.”

  Noah looked up from his filing again, “Fuck, Gabriel toss me a sword,” he caught it elegantly despite the spinning, “Kim, mixed barriers,” he demolished both easily before returning the blade. “Amateur mistakes…”

  “To be fair, that’s my fault. I’m too used to only having a limited supply, so sharing never crossed my mind when everyone has their own weapons.”

  …

  Elias broke the silence, “That is why we are doing this. Again, our performance was acceptable and we lived to learn about it. In my opinion, this campaign is too hasty regardless. We have not had time to train properly even if the timing with Freeport necessitates it. Cleo?”

  Oh boy. She sucked in a deep breath, “First of all, saving the potions makes no sense. We should bring a double set of boosters from now on, maybe even a triple. Second, we lack utility tools - nets, bolas, distractions, cover, caltrops, and etcetera. Third, we have general tactics and strategies for situations, but few proper combination attacks. There are six stats and we should have responses for excessive amounts of each to begin with.”

  I butted in, “On that note, our pairings were off. Putting slow with slow means both drop out of the fight against fast opponents. Sending Carlos and Kwame after melee type enemies is a mistake. We’re optimizing too heavily for offense and expecting the plan will stick when it never does. Corner camping doesn’t count, those Errant were weak.”

  “I reluctantly agree,” Kim said, “we need more defensive options, especially layered ones. What defense we had was used poorly. Noah and I did almost nothing for the first half of the fight. In my case it was unavoidable, but there was no reason for him to be on standby. I’m… afraid of the darkness. Already was before the Godstrike, and now… It’s worse, but foolish. We can afford controlled exposure.” Not an easy thing to admit, admirable even… yet something feels off. Eh, what isn’t weird about a grown man afraid of the dark?

  Carlos followed up, “I’ve become arrogant while deviating from the root cause of my confidence. If I prepared the field properly, things would have gone differently. Pairing with Noah or Gabriel, control of the terrain would have been ours, not the reflections.”

  “Dude, it controlled fucking ice. Pretty sure we were screwed no matter what.”

  “At the least, the balance would have been more equitable.”

  “We succeeded in the hallway battles because we exploited the terrain,” Elias said, finally adding his two cents. “Traditionally an open field disallows such tactics, yet System powers alter the equation. Our strength as a group is the variety we have access to. Straying from this is a fools’ errand.”

  “In general,” Kwame said, “our individual combat prowess is above the norm, but like Elias said before, we are unused to working as a team. I’ll be honest - I think we only survived thanks to luck. Some of us have natural chemistry together, but overall it would be better if we rotated duos, trios and eventually quads to build more familiarity.”

  “Definitely, since we’re admitting stuff, I tunnel vision when the rush hits. It’s not out of control anymore, but everything still happens quickly. I hesitated a couple of times simply because those split second decisions didn’t mesh with the team combat style. We need answers for that kind of stuff which play to our strengths, something everyone can exploit rather than defaulting to solo-mode.”

  Even Jill admonished herself, “I shouldn’t have kept fighting it alone. It was… stubborn, trying to prove to myself that I can, against anything. But there was no plan to work towards and we need better communication styles which don’t rely on talking. Everything happens too quickly to speak.”

  It seemed we reached processing capacity, punctuated by a thoughtful stillness. Elias called off the review shortly after, promising to remember everything and create solutions to the many identified problems. I decided to get some proper sleep afterwards since we’d be moving out at dawn. The next day, we packed everything up and headed up the mountain slope.

  It would have been a major pain in the ass during the old circumstances. Fortunately, the perpetual blizzard was gone. Instead a snowy field greeted us, still filled with mounds of magisteel. Cresting the peaks tempted me, but ultimately they were surprisingly far off. I also had to help carry things, since we were close to overburdened, although the load would lessen over time as supplies dwindled.

  We planned to follow the unexplored hillside to the north. Essentially, we assumed the snow-covered expanse to continue until at least the tree house. But first, we made a temporary stop at the northern edge of the growthstone crags. Calling it temporary might have been a slight understatement, as we expected to spend the better part of a week here. The reasons were manifold.

  For one, it was a good leveling opportunity. Our crystal supply hadn’t been seriously dented by the Fortress assault – in fact we turned a decent profit there, or would have if not for the final fight. Even so, our gains outnumbered our losses to an extent and Jill’s initial rampage against the patrols helped a ton in that regard. The growthstones themselves were also a vital component of our future strategy, so Mel claimed. Elias had sent me to extract the details from her before she returned to HQ, too busy refining our team-play to do his own dirty work.

  “You want the rocks?”

  “Did I stutter?” Mel said.

  “I don’t know. Feels a bit dumb. How are we supposed to lug around a giant pile of stone on a month-something long trip?”

  “You’re not bringing them along. They’re going back home with us.”

  “I just don’t get why you’d bother. It’s not like we’re short on food. It’s just going to take a long ass time, a ton of effort and annoy the shit out of everyone.”

  She sighed, “It’s for when we annex Freeport. If we’re going to decapitate the power structure there, then we need to provide a meaningful replacement. Keeping the people happy is the most important step of long-term governance, and we’re going to feed them. The ripple effects will be enormous. Besides, there’s going to be a variant there which needs to be cleared out if we’re going to rebuild the Farm. Don’t you want to fight it?”

  And the last reason… “Make sure ya pick the material. I want it. I need it.” Barry said, all giddy and excited.

  “Christ Barry, you’ve told me like three times already. Don’t worry man, I’ll get you the blue stones.”

  “Make damn sure ya pick it!” he said one last time before wandering off in smug satisfaction.

  “So there you have it, happy now?” Mel said.

  “Fucking fine, whatever her majesty demands.”

  After receiving my report, Elias paused his scribbling and delivered the worst news of all, his words cut right through the hazy smoke of my satisfied exhale.

  “You and Kim go together, for the exercise and you can both fly.”

  “Sucks eh, mage boy? Looks like you’re on backpacking duty-”

  Elias interrupted my gloating, “You will share the burden equally.”

  Kim didn’t seem to care, but I did. “Hold on, I’ve been training almost every day for months.”

  “You also smoke constantly and drink at every opportunity. Carlos and Kwame have been hitting the gym for years, Noah practiced martial arts all his life, Jill has bulked up thanks to her armor and weapon,” You would know, wouldn’t you? “This leaves the two of you with the most to gain from it. Go.”

  Kim found his voice once we walked off some distance, “Bad habits catching up to you, eh?”

  “Dude, screw you, and screw Elias.”

  “I heard that,” Elias yelled.

  “Hey, can you like suppress his eavesdropping bullshit?”

  Kim rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “Maybe? I don’t see why not. The underlying principles should be the same.” We stood in place and I felt his aura thingy expand. “I had to think of him as an enemy but I feel the particles and have them isolated now. Do you want to say something to test it?”

  “Nah, I believe you buddy.”

  He raised his eyebrows, retracted the aura but said nothing and we continued down the hillside.

  Well, it’s supposed to be a teambuilding exercise, isn’t it?