“Philip! Wait!” Anika cried. But it was too late. He was already swinging his trident at the nearest squirrel, hitting it backwards into a tree like a golfer hitting a ball out of a sand trap. As he did so, every squirrel in the clearing turned to stare at the small man in full armor wildly swinging a giant trident.

  Epona immediately charged into the fray after Philip and, with no time to contemplate a better plan, Anika ran in after them, her dagger at the ready.

  “Lily, try to stand in the middle of us and use your Calming Presence. We will try to circle around you!” Anika positioned herself to the right and behind Philip, who had stopped about a third of the way into the clearing where the closest squirrels were.

  “Philip, stay there and fight off any that come from the front. Epona, guard the back with me. Let Lily stay in the middle, she doesn’t have any protection!”

  Epona turned to form a wall of pegasus and metal to Philip’s left as they created a triangle around Lily. Philip could easily one shot the squirrels with his higher level, they rarely required a second hit, but he could only hit so many at once. The rest of the squirrels started to surround the small party. A pair of squirrels ran at Anika from the trees, avoiding Philip’s trident and leaping towards her chest. She blocked one with her heavily armored left arm and haphazardly swung at the second with her dagger. She failed to make any decent contact with the dagger against the moving target, but she did manage to deflect the squirrel enough so that it landed with a thud at her feet rather than clawing at her neck, where it had been aiming.

  The first squirrel, however, had latched onto her arm, perfectly happy to land on the perch Anika had so nicely held up and steady like a tree branch in her attempt to block her face. Realizing her mistake in giving the squirrel a stationary target, she shoved the dagger in her right hand into the squirrel’s face and, not sure what would happen if she simultaneously cast a spell, decided to find out. She cast Splash while stabbing with the dagger, thinking of the water splashing out of the side of her hand into the squirrel’s eyes. It mostly worked, and between the water attack and the dagger landing squarely in its face, it immediately lost grip on Anika’s arm and fell to the ground… taking her dagger with it as she lost her grip on the blade now firmly stuck in the monster.

  Her attention turning back to the second squirrel that had landed on the ground in front of her, Anika unleashed her best soccer ball kick on its body, managing to send him flying back about ten feet. It didn’t look dead, unfortunately, but it was damaged and moving slower than before. She looked around at the clearing, her encounter with the squirrels taking mere moments, and saw that the bulk of the squirrels, around 15, were feet from dogpiling on Philip in the world’s most uncomfortable cuddle puddle. She heard Epona rearing up to stomp with her hooves while Lily huddled behind Anika. She had no idea how they were going to handle the swarm that was about to overtake them.

  Suddenly, the earth in front of Philip changed, becoming pitted and, in some areas, hard to look at, like the ground was flashing in and out of existence while being stirred with a giant hoe. The squirrels that had previously been rushing at high speed toward him were caught in the roiling earth. Some started moving slower, while others stopped altogether. A few were sucked into the earth to disappear into the quaking ground. Three piles of dirt shot out from Philip’s left hand like frisbees while he swatted away a squirrel that hadn’t been caught in his earthly death trap. The discs of dirt hit three separate squirrels that were approaching Epona on Philip’s left side.

  Just two spells from Philip, and the swarm of squirrels had been greatly reduced to a trickle. Of the 15 squirrels that had been in front of him, 3 squirrels were trapped, unmoving, in his giant pit, which took up about a quarter of the 20-foot-long clearing. Another 5 squirrels were moving slowly towards Philip, reduced to a crawl. He’d already killed 4 or 5 before summoning the pit, and another 4 died to a combo of dancing dirt and trident attacks.. Anika glanced around and saw that Epona had stomped two squirrels. Only 3 remained outside of Philip’s trap, and two of them were closer to Epona.

  Anika turned her attention back to the squirrel she had kicked, the last of three outside of Philip’s trap. It had shaken itself off and was turning to charge back at her. Based on Philip’s display, he could easily handle the 8 that he had secured in front of him, leaving Anika to handle the enraged rodent in front of her. Thinking about her character sheet, she remembered she had another spell she could try, but she didn’t remember the range. She’d have to wait for it to get close in case the range was as small as her Splash ability.

  She readied herself to punch down on the rodent when it tried to jump on her again, deciding she would cast the spell right as she punched it. It was a Light spell, so she hoped it would daze the critter enough for her to finish the kill. Maybe she could even stoop down and get her dagger from where it was stuck in the other squirrel – she was pretty sure the dagger did more damage than Splash at her level.

  The squirrel jumped and flew towards her neck, but Anika was ready for it. She raised her left hand and, when it got within arm’s reach, started to slam her fist down on it. At the same time, she cast her Light spell, Flash, once again focusing her intention on the critter’s eyes. Her fist made contact with the body of the squirrel, smashing it into the ground as a flare of light flashed around her in a much larger radius than she had expected, momentarily blinding not only her squirrel, but the two squirrels near Epona as well. Philip had moved further away from them as he worked to finish off the squirrels in his trap.

  She scrambled to kneel and try to pull the small dagger out of the first squirrel, and managed to rip it out just as the blinded squirrel regained its sight and rolled back onto its feet. It was looking a bit mangled, to Anika’s satisfaction, and wasn’t moving very quickly. She managed to stab at it with the dagger, catching it on its neck, and it collapsed to the ground. Anika quickly stood and whirled to check on Lily, who was safely making herself small and innocuous in the center, her Calming Presence causing the squirrels to ignore her in favor of the bigger, more dangerous looking foes.

  Epona was smashing down on the last of the now four squirrels she had killed. Philip had taken out four more with his trident in that time, and was going after the fifth. As he stabbed the trident down, this time with his left hand, he shot out three more discs of dirt with his right hand, which flew into each of the last three squirrels. Silence filled the clearing.

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  “Holy shit Philip, you wiped out 22 of those things yourself! That’s crazy. But we need to have a chat about group strategy. You can’t just YOLO your way into a pack of angry critters without thinking about the rest of the group! You have lots of armor and are level 15, but Lily and Epona are only level 3! The squirrels could have killed them.”

  Philip turned to face Anika, who was torn between a feeling of exhilaration at the fast paced battle and anger at Philip for charging without considering the rest of them. She had chosen anger, as she was seriously concerned Philip would get them killed if his idea of strategy was to run haphazardly into any group of mobs.

  “Sorry Anika,” Philip said, looking crestfallen. “They looked like what I fought back home, so I thought I should just kill them.” He paused, thinking about what else she had said.

  “Um… what’s… ‘yolo’ mean?” he asked.

  Anika sighed. “It means you ran in without a plan and could have gotten yourself or us killed! Promise me you will never run into a big area full of monsters like that without checking with us first! We need to be smart about fighting monsters, especially while the rest of us catch up to you.”

  “Yeah…Epona says you are right and I was bad to run in like that. She says I scared Lily.”

  Lily had crawled to Anika and was curled up next to her legs, clearly shaken and needing a bit more of her own Calming Presence.

  “I was a little scared,” Lily spoke in a softer, more subdued voice than normal. “I don’t have armor like Epona and I don’t have any weapons, or attack spells, or even defensive spells yet! I couldn’t do anything but hope they didn’t attack me and that didn’t feel very good.”

  Anika knelt down to scoop Lily up into a hug.

  “It’s okay Lily, you’ll have more spells soon and your Calming Presence did a good job of keeping the monsters away from you. It’s kind of like a stealth spell! If you stay still and small, they won’t notice you if we are being big and scary, and you’ll be safe. I won’t let anything hurt you!”

  “I’m sorry Lily,” Philip looked like he was about to cry, “I don’t want you to get hurt. I won’t run in like that again!”

  “It’s part of learning to work together,” Anika said, “it’s okay. We just need to learn what we can do and we have to learn how to keep everyone safe. I thought we were going to get swarmed because I didn’t know you had that crazy spell.” She gestured to the large area of pitted and mangled earth behind Philip.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s my Warp Earth spell. I get it because I have Space as my other magic, and so it lets me make that big trap in the ground. It is really good against a lot of monsters. I had to be careful using it on the farm though. If I was in a field, I couldn’t cast it or it would ruin the plants and everyone would get mad at me.”

  “That seems like a really good crowd control,” Anika said, as she pet Lily to calm her down. “What other spells do you have?”

  “I can make my hand rough and it increases my damage when I hit stuff. It works with a weapon too! Uh… I can cast Fortify, which increases Vitality. Oh, I guess I could have put that on Lily to help keep her safe.”

  “You can cast Fortify on other people? Does it have a cooldown?” Anika asked.

  “What’s a ‘cool down’?” Philip looked confused, and Anika guessed her video game terminology did not translate in this instance.

  “It’s like… the time you have to wait before casting the spell again. Like Splash I have to wait around 5 seconds before I can cast it a second time.” Anika explained.

  “Oh, yeah, I can’t cast it immediately, but I don’t really know how long I have to wait. Normally I just have to cast it on me. So a few minutes. But it lasts a pretty long time now that I am level 15. But I can cast it on other people.”

  “Maybe we can time it later, or ask Leka about it. But it seems like a good idea to keep it on yourself and Epona for now. Lily’s Calming Presence seemed to work pretty well for now to keep her safe, and Epona is low level too, but more likely to get attacked since she is so big.”

  Epona whiffed in agreement with Anika.

  “What else can you cast?” Anika prodded Philip to continue.

  “I used the Dirt Discs. I can cast 3 of them now that I am level 15. They hit pretty hard. And I can increase my Potency by a lot, but it only lasts 15 seconds. Then I have to wait for the… what did you call it? Calm down?”

  “The cooldown.”

  “Yeah, it has to cool down.” Philip nodded before continuing, “Then I have the Space spells. I can find spatial traps, like I made with the Warp Earth spell, and get rid of them. Then… I can make pockets that catch things that fly at me, like when an ogre throws a rock at me. And I can use Distortion, and that makes things hurt if they move in it.”

  “Does that one cover a big area like Warp Earth?” Anika inquired, thinking of the possibilities of two large crowd control spells.

  “Well, it’s not as big as Warp Earth. Maybe… half the size?” Philip scrunched up his face thinking about it, but ultimately nodded again, “Yeah, about half the size.”

  “That seems pretty powerful,” Anika thought about how much area they could cover with his two spells alone, “It could help us funnel monsters if we ever get in another situation like this where there is a swarm or 20 or 30 critters.”

  “Yeah, it worked good here.” Philip nodded enthusiastically.

  “We will have to figure out some tactics, especially once the rest of us gain some levels. Right now, ‘Philip kills everything’ seems to be our only viable strategy,” Anika laughed ruefully at her awkward fumbling to kill just two squirrels.

  “Ok, back to exploring. Lily, do you see any other monsters nearby? I really wish I had your ability.” Anika gave Lily a final pat and stood up.

  “No, I don’t see anything else nearby.” Lily paused briefly, then squealed with delight. “Guess what Anika, I got to level 4!”

  Anika hadn’t even thought about checking to see how much experience she’d earned during that fight. Glancing at her character sheet, she noticed she was up to almost 2,000 experience earned today. That fight had given her over 1,500 experience, which was a hefty chunk for the short time it took Philip to wipe out the mobs. Power leveling had its perks. But she didn’t really enjoy the feeling of terror that had come with the experience. Maybe if they could get some better coordination or deal with less monsters at a time , she would feel more comfortable about things.

  “Epona says she is level 4 too.” Philip added before Anika could speak.

  “That’s great! Soon Epona and Lily will have new abilities that will help a lot when we are fighting.” Anika assumed that since she had two abilities at level 5 that their companions would likely gain skills when they reached that level.

  “For now, we should probably keep moving and find some more monsters to kill. But maybe a slightly smaller pack next time.”

  LitRPG Books