Azure: Gunner

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Thompson was not receptive to Tara’s pleas. She told her she could leave our team only if she convinced one of the tanks from Squad Excel to take her place. Neither of them had any interest, and I assumed it was because their team was pretty close. Or maybe they could smell the drama and wanted no part of it. Either way, Tara was stuck with us – and with Thompson’s plans to send us back into the dungeon.

Interestingly, I found myself without strong feelings on the latest Defender drama. She was still gorgeous of course, that hadn’t changed. What did seem to have been turning were my opinions on well, everything else about her.

She’s… kinda a whiner, isn’t she? Whenever she doesn’t get her way, she gets all hissy. And I don’t know if she’s really, truly tough enough for this job. I mean, mentally tough. Physically she’s strong and resilient and she’s good in a fight. But then she’ll complain about how unfair it was the moment it’s over.

That’s unproductive and actually ignorant. Unfair is Earth’s middle name – at least for those of us that weren’t born on a pile of eagles.

Wolf at least seemed relieved to find out we were all staying. We did a light day of training, while Wolf and Zenia took turns pulling us aside one by one to rewatch the recording of the dungeon again, analyzing our individual roles in each fight in more detail. The Lightning Mage handled Zaire and Jayce, and Wolf did the rest of us.

He saved me for last, and I wasn’t really looking forward to another rehashing of what I’d done wrong. I was surprised when he didn’t want to talk about my decision-making at all.

“We said enough about that yesterday, Az. Today we’re going to focus on your individual contributions to each fight. Of course, since the camera followed you, we have a lot more to watch than the others had. Let’s get started.”

He began the recording right at the beginning. There wasn’t much to say about the first few horrors I’d shot, they’d gone down easily enough. Things got much more interesting when I pulled out my cutlass. I watched the fight with the eight horrors in fascination, as if seeing it for the first time. It was still all a blur in my mind.

Yesterday, everyone had been teasing me about how long it took me to figure out what was going on, so I hadn’t been able to focus on the fight itself. It was eerie to see myself fighting in determined silence. I mean, it was weird to see myself from the outside in the first place, but at least the rest of the fights in the dungeon I could remember.

The tight space made it difficult for more than two monsters to attack at once, or I would have been quickly overwhelmed. I watched in fascination as I parried away fanged snouts, slashing and cutting and – as I’d been taught – rarely thrusting. Using a thrust when fighting multiple opponents was a great way to leave yourself open or to get your blade stuck in a monster’s body. Plus, my cutlass was primarily designed for cutting.

I was able to confirm that I had been using Intimidation in bursts throughout the fight, as my eyes occasionally flashed bright blue. Azure, I supposed. Incredibly, my Skill seemed to make the horrors flinch slightly, though as far as I could tell only once per monster. Considering they didn’t even have eyes, I had no idea how it worked at all.

The fight went on for quite a while. When it was finally over, I insisted we watch it from the start again. Wolf had pointed out a number of times when I could have done something better, but none of them were really mistakes. Some of them were things I already knew I needed to work on, like that tendency I had to over-rotate my hips on a diagonal slash.

During the second viewing, he showed me a number of places where I failed to anticipate something that seemed obvious in retrospect. With the monsters coming at me two at a time, if I cut one down, there was only so much time before another slithered over its friend’s corpse and attacked. The logical approach would have been to let myself focus on the remaining monster for only a few moments, before resetting so that I was prepared to defend on two fronts again.

I never would have noticed on my own that I hadn’t prepared for the next monster’s attack until I saw it coming, but Wolf pointed out that time and time again you could see me look first and reposition second.

“It’s a well-known issue with Battle Focus,” Wolf told me. “I’ve heard people say it should be called Battle Trance instead. Read me the Skill description.”

“It says it ‘enhances your ability to ignore distractions during combat.’ Wait, are you telling me that it made me think the further-away monsters were a distraction?”

Wolf nodded, and I considered that for a moment. I supposed it made some sense. If I was fighting one monster and there was another one a hundred yards away, then it might actually be a distraction. Assuming it didn’t have any long-range attacks, of course. But ignoring a threat that was only a few seconds away seemed like a pretty dangerous drawback…

To make things even better, Wolf continued.

“It’s not confirmed, but some people believe that their other Skills – like Short Blades, for example, Level more slowly when under the effects of Battle Focus.”

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“Shit, really? Why do the orcs think this is such a good Skill, then?”

“It helps you perform to your maximum potential for an extended period of time, and it is great for fighting through pain and injuries. Notice that you never had a lapse in concentration once throughout the fight.”

“But…”

“Your attention wasn’t always in the optimal place, but you acted to the best of your abilities on everything that you did see. Watch here,” he told me, then advanced the fight to the moment where I’d been injured.

I’d slashed at one of the monsters, which had tried to pull back. It had failed, because one of its buddies was trying to climb over it to get to me. Then he went further back, and I saw myself making the same cut against one of the first pair of monsters.

“You used this move successfully here – the monster drew back long enough for you to pivot and strike the other. So it was reasonable for you to repeat the maneuver. But when you tried it the second time, you probably didn’t notice that it had no space to draw back. You were only focusing on the two monsters right in front of you, which probably wasn’t the Skill’s fault. Watching more than two opponents at once is very difficult.

“So, you made a good move, and it didn’t work out. That happens, but when your blade stuck it opened you up for the other to attack. It got you good too, right in the meat of the arm.”

I shuddered when he stopped the projection with the monster’s fangs sinking deep into my flesh, but I saw exactly what he meant. The natural reaction would have been to pull my arm away, which would have only brought the horror even closer, too close to easily attack with my sword.

Instead, I’d shoved my arm forward and up, pushing the creature back just enough to give my room for a wicked right-to-left slash. My short, heavy blade had whipped across my body below my raised left arm and sliced a deep gash into the snake-like torso. The monster had released my arm as it bled out all over the floor.

“Yeah… I didn’t hesitate at all when I got hurt. OK, I see your point, can we skip this part now please?”

Watching myself getting bitten made me queasy. I was suddenly very grateful that I didn’t have to rewatch any of my fights with Trite like this. I had enough trouble thinking about those as it was, even with my memories fuzzy from Battle Focus.

“I hope you learned something from this Az. It’s time for dinner, but before you leave I want you to think about one more thing. If you’d entered Battle Focus with your shotgun out, say when the group of four horrors attacked, what would have happened?”

I thought about it for a moment and shivered.

“I don’t think I would have made the connection between the noise and more monsters appearing,” I admitted, and he nodded. It was a sobering realization. I’d actually nearly killed my way through one full room of horrors, but what if the rooms had been bigger, with a larger force of monsters waiting to be triggered?

I would have just kept shooting, attracting more and more monsters. Each shot might have been a kill, but I’d eventually run out of ammo or mana and be overwhelmed.

Shit, Battle Focus really is scary… I’ll need to be careful, try to avoid using it at the wrong times… if I can.

[Well done, Gunner! You have increased your Level in Battle Focus!]

Hah! Is that the first time I’ve gotten a Skill Level just from better understanding it? I’m not sure, but I’ll take it!

We discussed our growth over dinner. The dungeon had been brutal, but good for Essence. Every one of us had Leveled – Jayce, H’ruk, and G’hala all reached 6 and Tara 5 when we’d completed the dungeon. I’d been worried that H’ruk wouldn’t get the Essence, but the main Quest had said only ‘locate the exit portal’, and he’d been the one to spot it first. It seemed like that had counted.

Tara picked Shield Bash for her new Skill. It worked exactly like it sounded, enabling her to land an extra-powerful strike with her shield. I wasn’t convinced it was the best choice, but she didn’t share the other options she’d had. At least I understood wanting to have a solid offensive Skill, especially if we got separated again.

She’d also reached Level 5 in her Heavy Armor Skill, which should help her manage its weight and heat better. And of course she got the extra Stat points that came with that Level. Now that everyone was at least 5, I felt we were much stronger as a team. Arlo, Tara, and I had new Skills, and we all had more Stats and new gear.

My ‘new’ helmet had gotten appreciative comments from my team, but it was hardly the only new equipment. Between the Level-up rewards and ‘regular’ item rewards, everyone had picked up at least a couple things, though not all of them were useful.

Among the useful and interesting additions was Tara’s own new helmet, which was a biform item like my gauntlet. It wasn’t as ornate as the rest of her armor, but it was Level 5. It could go from covering her full face with only narrow slits for her eyes to an open-face design. That would give her both more comfort and much better peripheral vision when she wasn’t in the middle of a fight. I figured it would help with spotting traps and sneaky monsters.

Raylan had gotten a new cloak, which didn’t seem to do anything interesting. Arlo had picked up a new sword, which I hinted was a sign he should practice more with it. G’hala and H’ruk had come away with more mods, including a basic camouflage for G’hala that she was quite pleased with.

Meanwhile, Zaire definitely won the prize for the strangest item. He’d gotten a pair of gauntlets with spring-loaded mechanical blades that flicked out and locked into place like a pair of daggers extending past his fists. I think H’ruk almost died again, he was laughing so hard when the Earth Mage demonstrated the utterly impractical items.

The best part was that Zaire was going to wear them, partly because they were Level 6 and his current armor only Level 4. He figured the blades, which ran along the top of the gauntlets when not in use, would effectively work like the strips of metal in my vambraces and enable him to deflect stronger blows.

We all smiled and nodded, pretending that we hadn’t seen the slight disappointment in his eyes when we teased him about the blades. Afterwards, I felt slightly bad. But then again, I’d been on the receiving end of the teasing with the bayonet mod, and I’d definitely been a good sport about it.

Once we were finished eating, I ordered everyone to do a Sprint before heading back to the dorms. The melee fighters broke off to the training hall, while the rest of us headed for the range. I got a chance to see Arlo’s new ammunition from Variable Load. His ‘standard’ rounds were what he called FMJ – full metal jacket. That meant the heavy lead was encased in a thin layer of copper.

Now, he could also conjure brass solids, similar to the pistol rounds we’d gotten from his parents. They were heavier and much sturdier, better at penetrating armor but not as effective against soft targets. Much like my upgraded ammunition, they also cost him more mana.

After we’d finished up blowing through our mana we headed back to the dorm. We met up with the melee fighters on the way, and as we all trooped into the common room I put a hand on Tara’s arm.

“Tara, can we talk for a sec?” I asked.

She turned and gave me an irritated look, which I could see clearly thanks to her helm being in the open-face shape.

“What do you want now?” she asked bluntly.

“Look, I’m sorry about what happened in the dungeon. I said it this morning, and I meant it. And I’m sorry that Thompson isn’t giving you the flexibility to choose what you want. I just… I can’t do anything about either of those things right now. The only thing I can do is promise to do better next time,” I said in a rush.

“What’s your point?” she shot back.

“Fuck, Tara, my point is that you’re still part of the team. An important part of the team. We need you to be sharp for the next dungeon run. Are you going to be able to put this behind you and focus?”

“I don’t have a Wasted choice, do I?” she retorted bitterly, and stormed off up the stairs.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just watched silently as she walked away.