Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
Today was a testing day. A time to measure the capabilities of the new recruits in controlled live-fire scenarios. The brats would have overwatch from him, direct support from Scrappy, and fight small groups of targets without ranged or tactical capacity. They had armor advantage, reach advantage, better killing potential, and constant observation. By every metric that could be considered, they had the advantage.
The results were not particularly promising.
"Kyah! Get him!"
"He's chewing on my arm!"
"I got it!"
Currently, they were struggling with a single frog. They had managed to handle the kids, dogs, and lizards. Their default strategy was one he told them to use, open with a volley of crossbow bolts, hook crossbow on belt and adjust grip on spear, step forwards to stab, step backwards to ready another stab, repeat until targets were dead.
It was almost impossible to fuck up using a spear.
"Jab him more!"
"He's drooling on me!"
"Stop moving!"
Their accuracy with the bolts hovered around five shots landing out of every ten, three of those shots being from Pipsqueak, the other two being lucky hits from the barnyard brats. Sometimes they hit the same targets anyway and just wasted firepower. After the shot was fired, they would fumble to put the weapon away and ready their other weapon, often wasting several more seconds than they needed to. Once that was done, they would jab and hit non-lethal zones, often get the spear stuck, and then devolve into a brawl.
A brawl like what he was currently watching.
"My spear is stuck!"
"Punch him in the eye!"
"Ragh!"
Scrappy was standing next to him, the corpses of other monsters rapidly disappearing under the steady work of the Supporter Squad, and the rest of the hallway kept clear by his constant vigilance. Scrappy had something of an embarrassed look on his face, watching the new recruits struggle to bring down a frog, scratching at his cheek with a single finger. Adam made a note to make the kid buy some proper armor eventually, something that covered him correctly.
Idly, he raised his heavy crossbow and fired a bolt. A shade at the end of the hall was flung back as the bolt hit center-mass. That would've snuck up and killed at least one of them if he wasn't here. He turned his attention back towards the girl trio, who had finally managed to bring down the frog with pipsqueak cleaving into it with the axehead of her weapon, and extracted foxbrat's arm from its mouth.
Said arm was protected by the gambeson, utterly unharmed, and soaked in drool, which she was shaking vigorously with a look of despair on her face. Bunnybrat was struggling to yank her spear out of the corpse again, a foot on the corpse and a strained expression. Pipsqueak, half his height and clad in child-sized plate, was shuffling with embarrassment, clutching her poleaxe and helm turned away.
He was watching a fucking comedy routine here.
"R-ready to move on!" Bunnybrat attempted a salute after finally yanking out the spear and pulling herself up from the ground. A shakily confident smile on her face and head held high. Foxbrat attempted to do the same, as did Pipsqueak.
Slowly they collapsed under the weight of his stare, features completely concealed behind his visor but expression reading through with perfect clarity.
"...We uhh… We still have a ways to go, huh?" Bunnybrat muttered, turning her gaze to the side and shuffling awkwardly.
"I was better when I was ten." Adam rumbled out as an answer, causing all three girls to slump over in defeat. He shook his head, moving over to the frog corpse and slamming a hand through it, twisting twice, and yanking out the core. The corpse dissolved into a pile of ash immediately after, leaving behind a tooth and the core in his hands. Tossing the core over to Halflead and putting the tooth into the drops bag on his back, he continued. "You came across three frogs. You killed one by wasting all three bolts on it, you killed the second by flailing at it randomly, and killed the third after nearly a minute of shenanigans."
"I-it grabbed my spear and reeled me in!" Foxbrat attempted to defend herself.
"Then let go. You have a crossbow." Adam pointed out with a rumble, waving at the Supporter Squad to signal getting a move on, and the party naturally reforming from there. Freckles had already retrieved all his bolts and had a spare case ready for reloading. He swapped cases out, filling up his 'magazine' again and letting her get to work on reloading the partially spent case. "Everything else was dead and you had two allies. You had time to load another shot."
"...Oh." Foxbrat's ears folded forwards and she looked off to the side.
Adam turned his critiques over to the next brat in the line. "Bunnybrat, you overcompensated with your thrust, got the spear into a joint, which seized up and pinched the head. This can be avoided by not aiming at the fucking joints."
"He-hey! Gramps taught me to aim for the tendons, to slow them down!" Bunnybrat also attempted to defend.
"It's a big frog." Adam growled out. "Why would you need to slow it down?"
"...Oh." Bunnybrat mimicked the tone and pose of her friend with impressive accuracy.
"Don't overcomplicate this shit brat, wasting time on fancy strategies is pointless against something that dies in one good hit anyways." He grumbled. "Just stab it and move on."
He turned his critique on to the last target, Pipsqueak walking with a tense and nervous posture. Fortunately for her, she had been doing competently compared to the barnyard duo. "Pipsqueak, you have a spike on the top for a reason, use it when you need to be careful with your aim. Don't waste time lining up for a swing."
"L-lili understands!"
Adam rumbled for a moment as they continued on, every now and then he or scrappy would shoot a shade from a distance, the corpse of which wouild be rapidly partitioned and harvested by the support squad, and they would continue without actually needing to ever pause their walking. Adam had dictated as they entered this floor that the brats weren't going to be fighting shademeats yet.
Putting newbies up against newbiekillers sounded like a fantastic idea.
"Foxgirl, how long does that luck spell last?" Adam grumbled out in consideration. He needed to check again, just in case his memory was off.
"All day!" Foxbrat eagerly chirped. Long duration probably meant low overall effect, that's usually how these things were balanced. If it was something that made you more lucky, and the brat was already proven to be lucky from all the drops he got, then it would probably best go on him. The rich get richer, the lucky get luckier, and if the brat is luckier then he gets richer.
"Use it on Scrappy." Adam commanded. "Use it on the brat every day before we head down. Might increase how many drops we get."
Foxbrat fumbled over her words for a moment as Scrappy replied. "Oh yeah, that's a great idea Senpai!"
Bunnybrat started giggling into her hands, staring maliciously at her friend. Foxbrat's face had gone red and her tail waved to and fro as she tried to get out sentences but couldn't manage each time. "O-oh well th-the thing, well w-when you w-watch a-art, se-see it's n-not som-something, if's ok-okay if-"
Adam used his height and reach advantage tactically, reaching over and grabbing the fox by the back of her jacket and swinging her around, depositing her next to Scrappy and growling. "You're burning daylight, brat. Do it already."
Scrappy looked at her with a smile and a thumbs up. "Don't worry Momiji-san! I trust you."
Foxbrat's stuttering got worse briefly, before she forced herself to go quiet, tail flickering desperately.
"...t-take off your helmet an-and close your eyes." She ordered, looking anywhere except Scrappy, who nodded happily, removing his helmet and blinding himself. Tactical fuckup right there brat, you could be ambushed right now. He knew for a fact that Scrappy hadn't trained his hearing nearly as much as he should have.
Bunnybrat snickered with glee, hands over her mouth. Pipsqueak's face was hidden behind her helmet. The Support Squad was looking professionally, but the hints of smiles on their faces. Foxbrat closed her own eyes, face red, and began to chant.
"Gain.
The grain and that granary.
Breadth of wealth and breadth of wishes.
Until the sun sets, bring forth fortune and famine.
Gain.
Confine mortal offerings within this temple.
This golden light bestowed from around.
Into the plow and into the ground, may it bestow good fortune on you.
Gain.
Omamori-Chuu."
She leaned forwards and kissed Scrappy on the cheek, his face scrunching up in slight confusion at the sensation. His cheek glowed for a moment, before a mark of golden lipstick formed on his face and lingered. Ten whole-ass lines and a visual indication of the spell being active was pretty fucking hefty, but assuming it lasted all day, that wasn't too bad he supposed.
Setup, not in combat utility. He still needed to test the other spells she had.
"You done brat?" He asked after a moment, shooting another bolt and sending a distant shadow to the ground. Took her a whole twenty five fucking seconds to get that done. If all spells were going to be that annoying, their utility was going to be real damn niche compared to just throwing explosives.
"I-I'm done!" Foxbrat got out, turning away and deliberately not looking at anyone.
Scrappy opened his eyes, checking himself over again and not finding anything. "Huh, I thought there would be some kinda… mark I guess."
Bunnybrat's snickering intensified as Foxbrat started shaking with embarrassment.
Adam didn't waste any time on the comedy of him saying that with lipstick staining his face. "We're going to be hitting the pantry next. Girls are on crossbow duty and nothing else. Focus on the poison moths above everything else. Scrappy, you and I are using tide tactics again, but alternating every twenty shots the girls make. Pipsqueak, Freckles, you're pulling double duty as rearguard if something tries sneaking up. Everyone got it?"
"Got it!" or some variation of the same affirmative answer came from all parties.
Seeing no complaints, he nodded and began heading that direction, idly tearing the core and his bolt from the corpse as he passed by. Their finances would be mostly secured on these upper levels, even with the brats slowing them down. He had already purchased the most important things, so everything else he got was going to be nice to have but mostly superfluous.
Important to start accumulating hard and fast, yes, but not vital to maintaining an acceptable level of murdering efficiency any more. They had corporate rivals out there who were making more than them, he needed to keep getting stronger and keep diving deeper for more.
He had the basic gear, he had ordered specialty gear already, the next major upgrade to focus on would be things like stims, and he was still waiting on that potions catalouge to be finished. That might prove to be as useful as the healing potions had been, or it might not be.
The next major bottleneck would likely be drops for the specialty equipment that apparently existed but he had seen little evidence of thus far. If brat's rabbit foot charm turned out to actually work, as did the luck spell, then it might be worth making the other brats carry little charms around. More drops for more specialty equipment…
…Hm. "Scrappy."
"Yeah?"
"You say that rabbit necklace you ordered is going to make you luckier, right?"
"That's what gramps always told me at least. 'Rabbit feet make you lucky!', or something like that."
"What about an entire set made from rabbit bits?"
"...I don't know. Maybe? You think it might help?"
"It might, we'll start saving those, commission a set for you once we have enough."
"Sounds good to me!"
—
"Foxbrat, that lightning sword of yours, how long does it take for you to cast it?" Adam grumbled, standing at the lip of the tunnel that led into the upper section of the pantry, glaring down at the several hundred monsters milling about around the immense pillar of sweating quartz. There was probably a dirty joke he could make with that, but it wasn't worth the effort.
"Um… Maybe about a minute?" Foxbrat replied, shuffling to herself.
"A minute?" He asked for confirmation, turning his head to stare at her briefly. She nodded, which deepened the frown on his face. Not that she could see it through his visor, of course. A minute in combat was a fucking eternity, wasting a whole ass minute on something meant it needed to win you the entire fight outright. Typically this was the providence of netrunners or artillery, but those were still not usually worth it.
As it turns out, a DaiOni with speedware was capable of murdering an entire corporate military forward camp and leaving in less than the minute it took for the allied artillery to come down and destroy the place after the borg spotted for it. He made something of a sport of it during the Metal Wars, seeing if he could outrun Arasaka artillery to static defenses and get everything before it hit.
His current record was two-hundred and sixty kills, but that was neither here nor now. What was here and now was that that spell needed to be on par with fucking artillery to be useful.
"What's your range with it?" He grumbled, staring at the monsters roaming about again.
"Um… Fifty shaku? It's like a whoosh that gets bigger at the end." She answered uncertainly, with an accompanying wave of her hand to emphasize the onomatopoeia.
Adam grunted, a shaku was about equal to a foot, thirty centimeters long, so that meant about fifty feet of range. A fifty foot cone from the sounds of it, less than half the range of a flamethrower. A one-shot, half-range flamethrower that took a minute to fire. Any way you look at it, that was pretty awful.
He took measure of the hallway they had depleted again. About two hundred feet long, gently curving as it went. Monsters sprinting down it would reach the foxbrat in time, so he'd need to kite them for a bit as he moved back…
"Go back about fifty shaku and start casting when you hear me tell you to. I'll slow down the wave long enough for you to cast. Scrappy, after she casts it, grab her collar and throw her back towards the SS. Everyone else be ready in standard formation. Got it?"
"W-what if I hit you?!" Foxbrat protested.
"I'll be fine." He grunted, standing up and waving a hand like a broom to indicate that they should fuck off. "I'll dodge." Worst comes to worst he drops and lets his armor do its job.
Eventually they stopped complaining long enough to go down the hallway and get into formation, he gave them about a minute to do so, before turning to face the immense room.
It was fairly featureless overall, a single missile-silo structure dominated by a small skyscraper sized chunk of some kind of crystal that secreted something that looked an awful lot like glistening sweat. There were a few tunnels in, some about halfway up and leading into a slope that went along the walls and eventually connected to the ground below. Tunnels on the 'ground floor' of the chamber were more common, and led into floor seven from their current position.
The drop was maybe two hundred and fifty feet from his current position to the floor. Overall chamber was maybe about five hundred feet tall.
Currently, it was not filled with nearly as many monsters as it could be. The loss of potential profits wasn't too important, because he had already figured out how to get ants to swarm him. If he just needed money, murdering them all day was the best thing he could do.
…Ants were bugs, right? Frog teeth could make a weapon that does better against bugs, allegedly. Might be worth getting one of those for all of the brats to facilitate killing swarms.
"OI MEATBAGS!" He roared out, voice echoing loudly in the massive stone chamber and bringing the heads of dozens of monsters towards him. He pounded his fist against his chest three times before continuing. "STOP WASTING MY TIME AND COME DIE ALREADY!"
That was enough to get their attention. He kept his crossbow on his belt, not wasting bolts when they might be destroyed. Instead, he bent down, and smashed a shaking fist into the stone floor. The stone shattered, providing ample ammunition to swat moths out of the sky as they approached. He was waiting for a proper swarm, not the fuckers who floated around.
He took note of how fast they moved, and ran some mental calculations. It was one of those useful skills he picked up at some point, mentally tracking where things should be at their current pace given a certain amount of time, projecting or whatever it was called. From his current guess…
Now. "Foxgirl! Start chanting!" He called out down the hall, hearing the brief affirmative call in the distance before turning back and focusing on swatting moths again. His rocks smashed down all the closest poison fucks, but left the butterflies alone for a moment, they didn't really matter.
Fifteen seconds, the first of the monsters reached him, Ants could crawl up the sides, until the rest which needed to travel up the slopes. He maintained his ground, fists smashing into them as they reached him, mandibles doing little against his well-armored form. The moths in the farther reaches were now able to approach with impunity.
Twenty seconds, the rabbits were starting to be within pouncing range. He began to move back down the hall, carefully smacking rabbits with backhands and counter-blows, knocking them out of the air and often killing outright. Rabbits and ants were on him, and he kept his gradual pace backwards to keep them delayed.
Twenty five seconds, the shades were starting to slip in as well, the butterflies overhead sprinkling down fairy dust that tried to heal corpses and did nothing. Shades and ants and rabbits. Shades and rabbits had functionally identical methods of attack, leaping forwards in spear-like thrusts against vital areas.
Forty five seconds, the frogs were starting to leap into sight at the end of the hallway, hard to spot through the thronging masses of other, faster monsters. They were unimportant for now. He could hear foxbrat chanting behind him, currently projected distance twelve and a half feet.
He did a spinkick to check behind him, smashing a rabbit out of the air and into the path of an ant, killing both. Thirteen feet, meats in position, fox chanting. He was off by a few inches.
Fucking meatframe, he used to have a sub-processor to time things for him.
"-advancing lord of thunder! Impetuous winds that sunder wicked serpents! A pestilence of haygrass and root-venoms is upon the world, send forth your blade and annihilate with eight sundering storms! Gathering clouds, reap these fields!"
Fifty eight seconds. He kicked off the ground, up and to the side. An ant attempted to lunge as he moved. A wave of monsters following with it. He'd kick off and forwards again to halt their advance, if needed.
"Hachi-Bai Arashi!" Fox finished her chant.
Sixty seconds.
A roar of winds like the turbine of a jet filled the tunnel. Waves of crackling winds screamed down the hall in a slanted hatching fashion, arcs visible from the lightning that trailed along their edges.
The hallway full of monsters turned into a hallway of gore and charred meat, a messy soup of flesh and blood exploding out and covering the walls, ceiling, and floor with dead monster. The winds, trapped by the hallway, popped their ears as it exploded out.
In the distance, moths hesitated at the mouth of the hallway, many painted red and starting to droop under the weight of the gore on them. Frogs likewise paused, croaking and covered in blood.
Front torso now thoroughly covered in red and chunks of meat, Adam raised a hand and held his chin through his helmet. This kinda spell had real niche utility aside from getting rid of lots of weaker things in an enclosed region like this, but it was certainly a timesaver if they needed something like this. Shame about that dogshit time to fire, it was certainly no artillery.
Kids operated off pet rules, right? You're supposed to pet them when they do a decent job or something. This a pretty mediocre spell, but the gore was impressive enough that he could appreciate it.
He reached over and placed a hand on the Foxbrats head. "Good enough."
Foxbrat, thoroughly covered in gore, looked conflicted about her current situation.
"I got it in my mouth again!" Scrappy complained.
"Breath through your nose brat." Adam responded.