Anika left her bow leaning against the tree and darted over to the branch she had spied. She hefted it, deciding it had enough weight to make an effective club, but wasn’t heavy enough that she couldn’t lift it up to help protect her head. To her relief, she felt the languid slow effect starting to dissipate from her body and knew that would make this plan much more feasible. She began to run to Epona around the back of the wolf, not wanting to enter its sight lines.

  Once at Epona’s side, she quickly touched the Pegasus’ backside and pushed her Soothing Waters into the wound. She had repaired Epona’s last injury much faster than she had worked last week, and she just wanted to get the injury repaired enough that it wouldn’t keep bleeding or get worse if Epona entered battle again, as well as make sure no muscle was injured.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Philip had managed to refind his footing now that the slow debuff had worn off, but without a weapon, he looked lost. She wondered why he didn’t try to use other magic in battle. If she could do more than Splash, she would absolutely use her magic to, at the very least, provide additional distractions to the enemy.

  Philip could manipulate the very ground around them - why did he only use his spells? She imagined that manipulation of elements could do anything, like she’d seen in lots of movies and media on Earth. Then again, she remembered that Philip had said that his family sent him to work on the farm at a young age - no one had ever trained him to use his magic in battle. The trainers here, surely, had told him to use his magic in other ways… was it too new for him to think that way? He took a bit longer than most to learn things but he responded to direction well.

  She whispered to Epona as she finished the healing, “Can you tell Philiip to try using his earth magic to distract or attack the wolf? Maybe like the whirlwind he made to play with Lily, but a little bigger, and run it around the wolf’s head. Or maybe throw dirt and sand into the air around it like a cloud? Anything? I will try to get his trident to him, but we need more distraction.”

  Epona whiffed, her head jerking upwards in a nod of agreement.

  Anika turned to look for where Philip’s trident had landed. The trident had flown away from the tree she hid behind, so it should be somewhere on the side of the wolf with Epona. She started walking away from Epona, keeping her distance from the wolf as she scanned the area in a circle. Anika saw the remaining members of the capy pack responding to her directions through Lily, and they ran haphazardly around the wolf, occasionally running at its feet. As she watched, one got kicked away. Luckily, it had no visible injuries and it rolled up onto its feet again to continue its ‘assault’.

  She caught sight of the trident further from Philip than she expected. It had landed near the cave leading to the Packmother’s lair. She sprinted over to it, grudgingly mumbling to herself about Leka’s endurance training being more useful than she liked. As she grabbed it, she noticed a wave of earth rising around Philip and the Packmother, which shook its head repeatedly, trying to clear its vision from the bombardment of sand from Lily and now the haze of dirt and sand from Philip.

  Running back over to Philip, she decided that, with everything going on, the monster would likely ignore her if she got close to Philip. She warily approached, closing in on Philip from the side, hoping the wolf's vision remained obscured. When only a few feet away, she grabbed the trident close to the business end and yelled at Philip to catch, tossing the weapon before sprinting away like a startled cat who had just turned to find a surprise zucchini.

  The wolf hadn’t noticed her approach, and she wondered if she should stay close to try to attack it with her Improved Splash or play it safe and go back to her bow. She had no statistics to determine which type of attack did more damage. They didn’t exactly have health percentages that allowed her to just calculate how much damage the wolf took per attack.

  The monster snapped down at one of the transformed capybaras, its teeth catching the creature’s backside and sending it sprawling, but alive, to the side. Seeing the creature swapped away like a bug decided Anika - melee was not the correct choice - and she sprinted back to the safety of her tree with Lily. Grabbing her bow, she turned to assess the situation.

  Philip had already managed to create another gash in the creature’s neck. Epona, back in position at the Packmother’s side, landed another of her powerful kicks as Anika drew an arrow from her quiver. Lily continued to throw small amounts of sand and rock at the wolf’s eyes, but had also started trying to throw rocks down its mouth whenever it opened its jaws to attack. Clearly a more difficult target, most of her rocks managed to ping off the creature’s jaw or teeth. This, at least, agitated the wolf, leading to it snapping randomly at the air.

  The wolf’s jerking movements made it hard to predict where it would be, so Anika gave up on trying to aim well. She fired the arrow and quickly grabbed another. She decided she would try for quantity over quality, hoping that enough of the arrows would land in critical locations to contribute to the Packmother’s downfall. She quickly pulled another arrow and fired.

  The beast had already used all its tricks, its powerful Time-based spells having the downside of significant cooldowns, and though the group encountered a few more close calls, they managed to avoid any additional damage as they stabbed, shot, and kicked their way to victory. Unfortunately, having lost one of Lily’s Capy pack, the Capy Cultivation experience buff was reduced to 40%. Anika couldn’t be too sad about that, however, as the single kill of the level 16 miniboss netted her over 17,000 experience. Power leveling had its perks.

  Even Philip got a decent chunk of experience, though hearing that his 8,131 experience was only a drop in the bucket compared to the over 750,000 experience he needed to level made Anika dread the increasing experience curve. She knew they just had to keep pushing through. Already this morning she had made significant progress towards level 9. If they kept pushing, she and Lily could even level up today. Surely they had time to kill another 50 or so monsters.

  Leka, however, did not allow them to rush straight into the next combat. Though she hadn’t needed to step in to save them during the Packmother fight, she provided significant feedback on what they could improve… including Philip’s use of magic - or lack thereof - in combat.

  Anika felt somewhat pleased with herself that she had told Philip to use his magic to distract the enemy, but also felt bad that Leka spoke critically about how he should have done it without being asked. He didn’t have much experience in structured combat, and she doubted fighting off some wild animals on the farm provided a need to develop advanced tactics.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Leka pivoted in her lecture to ream Anika on relying on Philip to do all the damage, not coming up with the idea of blinding the wolf earlier, and using the capy pack as useless sacrifices for half the battle before using them to add to the chaos. Anika cringed inwardly, knowing she should have considered more options going into the battle, she couldn’t fault Leka’s assessment of the tactics.

  This didn’t just work like a video game, and she had to get herself to stop thinking in terms of pre-programmed interactions. She hadn’t thought of blinding the wolf initially because in MMOs, you needed a specific spell to blind something. Similarly, she hadn’t thought to use the capy pack to trip and interfere with the wolf’s movement because in a game, objects frequently had no collision capabilities and even if they did, interfering with a creature’s movement had to be an effect of pre-programmed combat actions and outcomes.

  She knew she could strategize effectively, but she needed to break out of the confines of limited spells and mechanics. Maybe when she could manipulate water better and started using it in fights, she would break out of her rigid mentality and discover something more inspired, more natural. Truthfully, thinking outside the box had never exactly been her strong suit… perhaps she needed to find a way to redefine the box.

  Even Epona and Lily had not escaped Leka’s guidance. Leka lectured both of them about not utilizing their magic more effectively in the battle and relying on the same tactics throughout the fight, or relying on Anika to tell them what to do. Lily started crying, so Anika spent the rest of the lecture cuddling and consoling her companion. The gods had clearly forgotten to imbue their gifts with advanced tactical knowledge, even if they had imbued them with excellent magic capabilities.

  Many people, however, had excellent capabilities with no tactical or strategic knowledge. Philip clearly knew how to use his magic well, at least when he used spells, or wanted to use his magic for entertainment. But thinking tactically in battle and creatively applying their skills to a given encounter would require more work and diligence from all of them. Anika didn’t necessarily fully understand the capabilities of the other magic elements yet, so she found it more difficult to come up with ideas and thus give direction. That reminded her of a question she had during the battle, however.

  “Leka,” Anika interrupted when the instructor paused to breathe, “how does Aether magic work? Lily can lift a pretty large rock, but when I had her switch to sand, it seemed like she couldn’t control nearly as much with her magic. Why is that?”

  “Ah, good question. Aether magic works differently than the other four magics because it is an application of the body’s Anima rather than a manipulation of a physical element. Aether has limitations, because if not, there would be no need for any of the other magics! It can effectively manipulate any physical element through anima projection. But that projection of anima is like a web on the surroundings. It works well when used on large, single objects. But trying to grasp the other elements is like catching water in a sieve. The magic has to push into a smaller weave to contain the smaller molecules of power. Thus, while Lily can manipulate a large rock, when she tries to apply that power to the same amount of sand, it all falls through the web of power. She has to try to pick up every individual grain of sand. Whereas Philip, using Earth magic, controls the element as a whole.”

  Anika considered Leka’s response and knew she would need to do a lot more research on Aether and Anima projection to really understand, but the basic explanation made sense. Then she thought about Vok’s demonstration of power, levitating a whirlwind of arrows in complex patterns.

  “If the magic is a web, how was Vok able to manipulate a dozen arrows at once and move them in different directions?”

  “Yeah.” Lily chimed in from Anika’s arms, “How can he do that? I want to do that! I don’t want to do a bad job and let Anika down.”

  Anika scratched Lily’s head, whispering that Lily would never let her down as Leka burst into laughter.

  Leka’s shoulder shook as she tried to take a deep breath to continue the conversation as the group stared at her. “Don’t go comparing yourself to Vok. He is a master of Aether unlike any other. Very few learn to manipulate objects with his level of skill and discipline. If Lily becomes half as skilled as Vok, she will be a more successful Aether mage than most on the planet.”

  “I will be better than Vok!” Lily cried defensively, finally seeming to recover from the lecture and regaining some of her normal cheerleader-like spunk.

  “I know you will, Lily.” Anika smiled, though she wondered if her chaotic and easily distracted companion would have the focus to achieve his level of skill.

  “Yeah, you can do it Lily.” Philip reached over to pat Lily on the head cheerfully.

  “But we won’t do it if we don’t keep practicing. I think we need to go kill more wolves.” Anika put Lily down at her feet and then looked at Philip, “Are you ready for more?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think maybe we can try the lizards next time, right Leka?” Anika decided that getting the trainer’s opinion, and potentially, permission seemed wiser than charging off into battle.

  “Whatever you want! Usually there is only one Packmother at a time, so you are unlikely to run into anything other than normal wolves with other packs still in the dungeon, even if there are other potential lairs further up the path.” The trainer still chuckled softly from Anika’s earlier question of the Weaponmaster’s magical skill, but motioned the party to continue up the trail.

  Philip and Epona took the lead, and Anika fell into step behind them, Lily at her side and the capy pack assuming their positions on the front line, deciding to stay in the dungeon and clear out more wolves without risking another battle with a strong elite.

  —-----

  “Hah! I told you the trainer wouldn’t have to interfere with the Packmother fight!” Water’s self-satisfied voice rang out in the control room.

  Fire groaned, “I had to sit through Time’s last briefing! It lasted three hours! I was so bored, it felt like it dragged on for twice as long!”

  Air laughed, “That’s because it did.”

  “WHAT?!” Fire roared

  “Oh yeah, he totally slowed time, we saw him talking super fast.” Water laughed in delight.

  “Ohh…” Earth sounded like he’d been hit with the stick of revelation, “The clock was outside the bubble…that’s why the minutes went by so slowly….”

  “WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THIS?!” Fire raged.

  “Not my fault you aren’t more observant.” Water smiled sweetly, pleased at successfully getting out of her turn hearing Time’s lengthy report for the third time.

  “I quite like when he slows time. It’s much more efficient.” Aether added.

  “THIS WAGER WAS MADE UNDER FALSE PRETENSES!” She bellowed, slamming her fists on her chair.

  “A bet’s a bet!” Water and Air chorused together, for once in agreement.