Chapter 110: Formations
“All right. Shift!” White screamed over the battle. Somehow, maybe by virtue of his class skills, it became like a command that was supposed to be obeyed.
As one, the entire group of attackers fell back behind the sturdier blocking group. Only a few of them, like Necia, were truly tank classes with blocking as a primary role of their class. As the robed studier-of-things Potter had put it, they were more aptly called survival classes or endurance classes, people who focused on outlasting their opponents and putting the finishing touches when others were finally exhausted.
In any case, there were only a few adventurers who were worried about facing off against a single Earthen Warrior, but there were more than a single warrior for each of them. To keep the shield fighters from getting swarmed, everyone was doing their best from the back to destroy as many of the system generated warriors as they could. The sturdier fighters left gaps to their sides big enough to allow strikes through, and the two layers fought together to destroy the hundreds of tiny men attacking them.
“It’s going well! White, keep it up!” Potter yelled. “Wait. What’s happening?”
Suddenly, without any warning, every remaining dirt man disengaged. It was so sudden and so much like a retreat at first that a few fighters cheered. The stop to cheering came quickly when it became apparent that what was happening was less of a retreat than a reorganization. While earth-men were still getting shot down left and right, their remnants organized into a single block at the center of the line, with a few of the warriors acting as point on what amounted to a giant wedge formation.
As much as Potter and White had drilled them on their basic tactics, nothing could have prepared the group to move to counter the wedge in an organized way.
“Licht! Dull the point!” White yelled. Licht nodded, pulled a particularly nasty looking chunk of bone from his quiver, and launched the bolt at the tip of the formation. The resulting explosion of bone chunks took out several of the Earthen Warriors, but others simply moved forward to take their place, still sprinting towards the line.
“Throw anything you can at them. And get ready to run, if you have to.” With hundreds of the little dirt men still in play, it wasn’t hard to imagine the group getting swarmed by their numbers if their formation was shattered. “Fight until you can’t, then run.”
Tulland watched as all this went on, then realized that there was one thing he could do that likely nobody else could. He was terrible at dealing widespread damage, and almost worse at taking down a single target. But what he was good at, despite his weaponry lagging behind in that respect, was creating confusion and irritation. He was facing a big cluster of enemies, each of which seemed to be cheaply built. They were literally and figuratively not very fleshed out. Even if they had any poison defenses, they weren’t built around it like other monsters Tulland had encountered.