As the leader of Nachtlibelle, keeping track of my personnel was part of the job. There were constant, endless disputes between parties, and plenty of necessary negotiations. Whether you would turn out to be friends or foes, the first thing you needed was intel.
Filburn was the center of these disputes, and the support caster Wim Strauss of Drachenflügel had already grown quite famous. The party had climbed its way to B-rank in just a few years with only four members, the first—and probably last—in all of history. Now that they had defeated a boss, their names were known to all, and many were interested in seeing their skills.
Considering that there had been an inner dispute that led to one of their members being fired right after they accomplished the great honor of defeating a boss, they had become the center of much gossip. The man in question also just happened to be a friend of Heidemarie’s, one of our candidates to serve in our next generation of top brass. It had been an odd stroke of luck.
I was shocked. I had heard about him from Heidemarie, but Wim Strauss was even more useful than I thought he would be.
First, his surveillance skills were incredibly polished. While his range didn’t match Nachtlibelle’s head enemy tracker, he could cast his web both on the ground and in the air, filling a gap in our skills.
‹Um, do you have a moment, Camilla?›
Someone had sent me a personal message using transmission magic.
‹What is it, Wim?›
‹We haven’t quite come up on it yet, but there may be a falling trap up on our left about forty-five paces ahead. It’s just a possibility, but given the position of the phantom dog Simon picked up on, I think that the odds are high.›
‹You’re certain?›
‹Yes. Almost.›
His keen eyes and intellect were particularly worthy of note. He must have been at the forefront of multiple fields of labyrinth research. I had never even heard of anyone predicting the positions of traps before, but he was sniffing them out with shocking accuracy.
‹If I happen to be wrong, I’ll be slowing down the whole team.›
‹At times like this, you can send your transmissions to everybody. You’ve already diverted us from five similar traps. You’re so accurate, it’s scary. Being wrong once would probably help put them at ease.›
‹I see. I’m sorry about that.›
His only flaw was that he lacked initiative. No, maybe that was just his nature. He kept failing to assert himself to a shocking degree. He observed his surroundings almost too prudently, filling in any gaps in our defenses and supplementing what we lacked to minimize risk. In most cases, he was so precise it was astonishing.
Not to mention, he understood and memorized Nachtlibelle’s manual—which we had written over long years of experience—after reading it just once. He even seemed impressed with it, though fully grasping its contents should have required experience in the commander’s seat. Just what role had he served in Drachenflügel?
‹There’s likely a falling trap forty-three paces up on our left. It should weigh almost three hundred and fifty pounds. It’s pillar-shaped, and I believe Abel should be able to defend against it with his shield.›
‹This is Abel. Copy that. I’ll take care of it.›
That trap turned out to really exist, and his continuous accomplishments further backed my appraisal. He was deeply knowledgeable about the labyrinth and had skills far exceeding his age. I could catch glimpses of how he focused on safety. He carefully picked out what information to share—he most certainly gathered information several times, carefully mulled it over, and then made his own conjectures. There was something about his demeanor that seemed suspicious, but that was maybe just because he was always paying too much attention to his surroundings.
What would happen if we snag him for our party? He did have some fame, but people looked at him more out of curiosity than because of his skills. Had Heidemarie not introduced him, I wouldn’t have allowed him to accompany us or consider him to potentially join our ranks.
Joining Nachtlibelle was supposed to be tough, yet I had already begun to calculate how we could best put him to use.
‹Camilla? Um, it’s Wim.›
‹What is it?›
‹I’m sorry that I keep contacting you so much.›
‹Don’t sweat it. Did you find something?›
‹The humidity here is rising, and we haven’t seen any low-flying bugs for a while.›
‹And what does that mean?›
‹Right… I think we’ve entered the territory of a larger monster, likely a slow-footed reptile like a zaratan. This one should be C-class, typically requiring a party of twenty men. It’s probably hostile, but we should be able to avoid it by taking a detour. Oh, and by likely, I mean quite likely. Around a 90 percent chance.›
‹Roger. Send a transmission to the whole team. And whenever you discover something of that high a possibility, you don’t need to check with me first. Go ahead and alert the whole crew.›
‹Right.›
‹Decisions will be made by our leaders and—›
An idea suddenly occurred to me. According to the rumors—particularly, those spread by Heidemarie—Wim could use high-level granting magic. In fact, his main role was that of a support caster.
This all deserved special mention. Support casters were known to be particularly tricky to actually utilize. The fact that they cast buffs to raise innate abilities, strengthen offensive magic, and aid in healing made them sound quite appealing, but doing all that was harder than it sounded. Sloppy buffs would mess with your senses.
For example, let’s take a buff that raises your strength. It would be nice having muscles that worked better than usual, but that didn’t necessarily improve your capabilities in battle. In most cases, you would have a hard time reigning in that strength, and your body wouldn’t move the way you wanted it to. Reconciling that difference in perception and reality required training. Even if you managed all that, it didn’t necessarily mean you performed better than when you didn’t have any buffs cast on you at all.
It was a similar case with buffs that affected magic. While it could increase your innate magic and strengthen the Great Five Elements, a mage would lose the ability to control that magic if it exceeded what they could handle. While the power of their spells would increase, you could hardly consider the buffs useful if it meant they couldn’t land a shot.
In other words, granting magic was particularly difficult to master, and even if someone did become an expert enough to put it to use, their buffs had little effect. Nachtlibelle had employed a support caster in the past, but they had barely managed to pull their weight, even if they had high proficiency with granting magic and a wide range of knowledge. I was curious to see Wim’s skills, considering he had chosen the occupation of support caster himself.
‹Wim.›
‹What is it?›
‹I did say you were just our guest, but could I ask a favor? You can leave the enemy detection to Simon. I want you to move toward the front.›
‹Sure, but, um…›
‹I want you to aid us in combat.›