Unfortunately, he had no objective way to prove it, and he understood that Alan was simply making a judgment call based on what he knew from personal experience. The stronger someone was, the more likely they were to do that. In fact, the two guys in the party had been ignoring Sol’s commands in battle practically all the time as of late. It was only the two girls who still did as he asked. Black Tiger was somehow making it work as a party, but they were walking a very tight rope.
Even so, Sol could not dismiss Alan’s judgment call out of hand. After all, Alan wasn’t disagreeing with him because he didn’t trust him—Alan trusted Sol but was making different calls because he believed he knew better. This disparity could be ultimately chalked up to the fact that Sol had never told his party members about Player, so Sol understood that it was really his own fault.
In a general sense, it was true that a party’s ability to effectively convert its total MP pool into damage could be the difference between life and death, especially in fights that ended up being very close. When the party had things in hand, placing a little more focus than usual on dealing damage could indeed help the tank—and the rest of the group by extension—to come out the other side a little less spent.
At the moment, Sol had determined that they had a little leeway in how they were handling the fight as long as he used Player’s abilities without slipping up. All adventurers knew to leave themselves a safety margin in all situations, as someone who bet all or nothing would lose their life before making it big. It was after considering everything that he decided to give Alan room to do what he thought best.
“Rending Burst!”
Joining in a beat slower than Alan on account of being a close-quarters melee fighter, Mark unleashed a massive attack that he had been building up at the basilisk’s flank. The same number of attacks that Mark had landed while charging the move were delivered once more in a split second, doubling the amount of damage that he had dealt in the time frame. Thanks to the Penetrating Strike buff that Sol had cast on Mark earlier, Mark’s blows had the added benefit of bypassing the monster’s physical defenses.
Mark “Supreme Fist” Ros, who had mastered every martial art school, was the party’s top attacker. The son of Ros Village’s chief had handsome features and, like most people in this world, brown hair and eyes. On account of his role as a melee fighter, his body displayed the result of much more training than the others’ did, boasting a degree of perfection superior to not only his peers but most other active adventurers. Mark was the leader of Black Tiger, and he had significantly more monster kills under his belt than anyone in his age group. These two facts had earned him so much esteem in Garlaige that he was considered among the five strongest adventurers in the city.
When Black Tiger had first started, there was a rule that Mark was supposed to wait for Sol’s signal before unleashing the finisher that he would later call Rending Burst. Lately, however, it was becoming common for him to launch it as soon as it was charged up. The way Mark saw it, the more Rending Bursts he could pull off, the sooner the fights would end.
Unfortunately, monster battles were not always such straightforward affairs. There were any number of ways to maintain control of a fight, such as managing the opponent’s aggro and either interrupting big moves or making the monster use those big moves once the party was totally ready to deal with them. As long as one had complete understanding of a monster’s moves and could afford for a fight to last slightly longer, one could seize victory without ever losing the initiative. This was the essence of fighting monsters through the intelligent use of the talents and skills at one’s command as opposed to relying on brute force.
Unfortunately, the only person who truly understood this was Sol, thanks to the Player talent. He had shared only bits and pieces of what he was capable of with his party, but never the full extent, which was why he couldn’t demand that they follow his orders to a T, and he understood that.
The worst part was that he was undoubtedly the weakest member of Black Tiger in terms of individual fighting power. In fact, there was practically nothing that he could directly do to monsters, which was why he had relegated himself to the role of holding the party together even when the front line was ignoring his commands and doing whatever they wanted.
“Reen, use Intimidate again, please.”
“Okay!”
Thanks to the burst of damage that Mark had just dealt, he now had the basilisk’s aggro. If the monster cast Evil Eye, Mark would be the target. To prevent that, Sol, who could tell exactly how much time they had until the next casting of Evil Eye, wanted Reen to redirect the monster’s aggro before then.
Normally, Intimidate would still be on cooldown. Without it, Reen wouldn’t be able to cancel Evil Eye with Cleave. And when the opponent’s aggro wasn’t directed her way, Cleave was just a normal attack. Hence, Sol used Cancel Cooldown, one of the limited number of spells in his repertoire, to enable Reen to use Intimidate again right away.
Although Reen knew she’d normally have to wait more than five minutes before Intimidate was available again, she activated it immediately without hesitation. Not once had Sol ever given her an instruction that she couldn’t carry out, so there was no reason to doubt him now.
After confirming that the monster’s aggro was now directed back at Reen, Sol ordered, “Julia, Greater Restoration on Mark.”
“Sure thing.” Just like Reen, Julia did what he asked right away, fully restoring Mark’s HP.
“I didn’t need that healing!”
Right after seizing the Great Demonic Basilisk’s aggro, Mark had taken a slap from the monster’s long tail. He had protected himself with a cross-handed guard, but that hadn’t been enough to stop him from being thrown a great distance. Even so, his protest hadn’t been mere bravado. He simply didn’t know that his toughness was being sustained by HP. Therefore, he was under the misconception that he hadn’t taken any damage.
No, actually, you did.
Sol knew better. What he had asked Julia to cast wasn’t Heal, which would have indeed been needed if Mark had gotten hurt. Instead, he had asked for Greater Restoration, because it was Mark’s HP that had needed attention. But for a few small exceptions, as long as someone had HP remaining, they wouldn’t get hurt. They would feel shocks and impacts but wouldn’t be wounded. In fact, they wouldn’t even feel pain. Because of this, Mark thought he had managed to defend against the basilisk’s attack unscathed. As long as an attack did not surpass his HP, he could actually just take it standing still; he wouldn’t even need to cross his arms. The only thing that would happen was that he would be tossed around, seemingly without repercussions.
Conversely, if one of the basilisk’s attacks exceeded his HP by even one point, he would be squished exactly as one would imagine of a mere human standing up to a giant monster. It wouldn’t matter if he had a shield or if he was even wearing full-body armor. This was especially true of Mark, who was specced for DPS and not defense.
The ability to grant others the protection of HP, which was normally an advantage possessed only by monsters, was one of Player’s overpowered strengths. At the same time, this was also a crutch that led to companions overestimating their toughness.
Mark had actually lost two-thirds of his HP after being hit by the basilisk’s tail, but only Sol knew that. If Julia hadn’t topped him up right away, the next attack would have shattered Mark’s body. In other words, he would have died. Unfortunately, Julia did not yet have access to resurrection magic, and Sol did not want to continue the battle with Mark’s life hanging in the balance, so he had told Julia to expend a significant portion of her MP to cast Greater Restoration on him even though he’d wanted to save it for Reen.
Okay, I can still use MP Recovery and Cancel Cooldown a few more times. If we can keep this up, we can win, no problem.
Comparing the Great Demonic Basilisk’s current state against the cards that he still had left, Sol determined that his party had the fight well in hand. Even so, he reminded himself to be even more careful than before. When territory bosses were brought to the brink of death, they commonly became much more powerful in a phenomenon called “rampage.”
“Reen, hit it with Cleave within the next thirty seconds!”
“Got it!”
The party could not afford to get hit by Evil Eye this early in the fight. There was no guarantee that Julia had a spell that could dispel Evil Eye, so the safest strategy was to ensure that the basilisk never got to use that skill. Hence, Sol waited for the monster to charge up its attack halfway, then ordered Reen to interrupt it with Cleave.
A normal adventurer who was spectating would have seen a first-rate party one-sidedly whaling on the giant territory boss and foiling its every move. In a way, that would have been right. As long as Player used the party’s HP, MP, skills, and other battle-related resources intelligently, the basilisk would die without being able to do a single thing. If Player made a mistake, however, the party could be wiped out in a matter of seconds, no matter how well they had been doing so far.