I watched as Niedz, Lukas, and Gahedd battled the lesser sahagin. As monsters went, lesser sahagin were a little stronger than goblins, and five of them would definitely give most Bronze-classers trouble. If I’d run into that many before I’d become undead, I probably would’ve elected to run.
But if you had two other Bronze-classers with you? That was a different story. All the more so if you were fighting in a narrow hallway like this one.
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Although lesser sahagin were, as the name implied, smaller than their standard sahagin brethren, they would give any goblin a run for its money. Despite that, even if five of them came after you at once, it was more than possible to avoid letting all of them get a shot at you simultaneously. You’d still have to fend off a couple at a time, but with three Bronze-classers? Niedz and his friends had more than the numbers to avoid being overwhelmed.
That meant it only came down to whether they had the decision-making skills to figure all that out, the strength to put up a fight, and the stamina to outlast five monsters. After all, lesser sahagin bodies were covered in a tough layer of scales that could repel bladed weapons. You needed to land a strong enough blow to cut all the way through, or you would get nowhere—and I wasn’t sure if Niedz and the others knew that.
“Lukas’s battlefield awareness is decent,” Capitan muttered as he watched.
I agreed with him. The trio had almost seemed like they were going to freeze up before Lukas had assessed the situation and barked out orders to get them moving.
From the way they were positioning themselves, I could get a vague sense of their strategy. It was pretty textbook—they were trying to use the narrowness of the hallway to reduce the number of monsters they had to fight at any given time.
“Gahedd’s not bad either,” Diego remarked. “He kept the lesser sahagin at bay with his spear until the others regained their composure.”
Since Diego used a spear as well, he probably had greater insight into Gahedd’s movements. There was a significant difference in their ability, but maybe he felt a sort of kinship with a fellow spearman.
“Compared to them, Niedz might be a bit too impulsive,” I contributed. “He probably would’ve charged straight in if Lukas hadn’t said anything.”
Capitan and Diego nodded in agreement, but it seemed Capitan had something to add. “You could also say he’s the bravest of the three, depending upon how you look at it,” he said. “Sure, he froze up for a second, but he’s quick to shake it off. That’s something Gahedd and Lukas can’t seem to manage. The former’s too focused on safety and hesitates to take the initiative, while the latter’s... Well, he’s just plain scared.”
“In that sense, Niedz is a real adventurer,” Diego said. “Though often that’s what leads those types to an early grave. Still, his impulsiveness is the reason you two crossed paths, isn’t it, Rentt?”
I couldn’t argue there. Niedz was lucky that he’d jumped an exceedingly nice adventurer. He probably wouldn’t be with us right now otherwise—or at least not all of him. Who knows how he would’ve ended up if I were more easily offended?
Adventurers in general were rough around the edges and quick to anger—saying so wasn’t prejudice so much as it was the simple truth. After all, you had to be a certain kind of person to take up this career. Not everyone was capable of risking their lives for a chance to strike it rich.
“So what do you two think?” I asked Capitan and Diego as I observed the ongoing fight. “Have they got a chance?” From what I could see, their strategy consisted of having Niedz focus on a single sahagin while Gahedd and Lukas drew the attention of the others. It wasn’t a bad plan, but...
“This is probably the best they can manage, given their current skill level,” Diego said contemplatively. “And it’s not as if their strategy is wrong, per se. It’s just... Well...”
Although he trailed off, I was pretty sure I knew what he’d been about to say.
“I think you’ve got the right of it,” Capitan agreed. “They need to work on their decision-making. I guess that’s where their lack of experience really shows. Oh, look—they got one.”
Indeed, Niedz had just managed to slay one of the lesser sahagin. He looked surprised for a second, as if he hadn’t expected his blade to actually cut through its hardy scales, but the moment quickly passed as he readied his weapon and turned to face his next foe.
I suspected that, ordinarily, Niedz wasn’t strong enough to pierce a lesser sahagin’s natural armor. But with the pressure of us watching and preventing his escape, he must’ve tapped into that extra bit of subconscious strength that all people could draw from in times of crisis. It was a common occurrence in combat.
The thing about that, though, was that it wasn’t an unlimited resource. Sure enough, as he was exchanging strikes with the second lesser sahagin, the monster immediately began to gain the upper hand.
“He must’ve run out of mana...” I muttered.
Generally speaking, humans could only get a vague sense of another person’s mana levels. You could do more if you had magic eyes like Lorraine, but few people were born with those, and even fewer developed enough skill to get truly precise readings.
I, however, was a monster—an entity with a deep connection to mana. Gauging another’s mana levels was second nature to me, hence my muttered comment.
Having made it to Bronze-class, it was a given that Niedz had a certain amount of mana at his disposal. And as a matter of fact, his reserves were several times larger than my past self’s—enough that if he used them wisely, he’d easily be able to keep his weapon and body strong enough to slay a handful of lesser sahagin. Nevertheless...
“He wastes too much mana,” Capitan observed. “Works out well for me, though. I was hoping to see him run out of mana.”
“Why’s that?” Diego asked. “That won’t do anything but get him killed, right?”
“I’m hoping to teach them how to use spirit,” Capitan explained. “Which means any mana in their bodies would just get in the way. It wouldn’t make it impossible for them to learn, but it’d take more time for them to get a feel for it.”
Diego looked surprised. “Really? I once tried to learn how to use spirit myself, but the priest of the war god I went to never told me anything like that.”
“Is that right? Did you manage it, then?”
“No... In the end, it was determined I had no talent for it.”
“Looks like you had a bad teacher, then. Because as far as I can see, you do.”