19
1092 Words
She jerked slightly before looking at him. “You give that much mana? Hot damn!”
Matt laughed at the reaction. His Concept currently gave around 40 MPS to anyone he chose, as long as he wasn’t low on willpower or trying to feed more than six people.
Queen, as a melee fighter at Tier 11, if she followed the normal distribution, would have around 4000 mana. In other words, he’d be able to bring her to full in about one and a half minutes. It used to take him ten plus minutes to fill Liz, but his increasing proficiency had made his Concept’s ability much stronger.
“It’s quite handy.” Matt tried to be modest, but the look Liz shot him told him that he had failed.
Aster wiggled out of Liz’s arms and jumped into Matt’s before congratulating him. “That was so impressive! But didn’t Luna say that you shouldn’t rely on that skill?”
Matt blew air into her face in retaliation.
He could feel the mischievous feeling in her spirit as she tried to get him in trouble, but he allowed it. It would probably make Queen feel better about her loss, if she was feeling bitter about it.
Thankfully, Susanne just laughed. “A win is a win. Rematch, though?”
Luna appeared next to them and gave Queen a narrow look. “Do you know why you lost?”
Susanne seemed unphased by the other manager. “Shouldn’t have dragged the fight out so long. If I had gone all out from the start, I might have won by taking him off guard.”
Luna nodded. “That could have worked, but maybe not. What you need is to finish modifying your skills and get used to casting them. I also need you to integrate with the team, so we will start you on training scenarios.”
She looked to the side and Kurt appeared with his blade at the ready. “The four of you will start fighting Kurt. Do your best to kill him.”
Kurt must have seen something on Susanne’s face as he wrote, “Worry not. I’m Tier 35.”
Susanne hopped to her feet, and her sword sprang to her hand.
She didn’t rush into the fight, though, and instead looked at Matt and Liz, asking, “Battle plan?”
Matt smiled.
This was going to work well.
Luna watched as the children threw themselves at the wall that was Kurt.
They had been fighting for two hours now and had still not managed to land a single attack on the Trainer’s form.
In the beginning, she could see Susanne starting to get frustrated at their inability to touch him, but the girl had quickly discarded that useless emotion, and focused on finding her place in a team battle.
Aster kept to the backline and near one of the others, usually Liz when she was acting as a mid-range mage, or Matt when he took his turn as spell support.
Those three had long learned to read each other and react immediately, and while Susanne was a new addition, she was a good one who thrived in a fully offensive role.
Luna found it interesting how quickly the girl adapted to Matt and his Concept, as it had only taken her a few rounds of Kurt knocking her around until she started using all of her skills as fast as she could, several hesitancies and bad habits already shaved away.
They finally were able to see some more of her skills, like [Sword Gale], which sent dozens of small wind blades out from her attacks. It wasn’t a particularly strong skill, but it could do serious damage to weaker enemies, or otherwise serve as a distraction.
Kurt’s skill blocked or dodged all of the attacks, but it was good to see Susanne had more in her arsenal than she showed. The girl had most of the skills she would have expected, and a few that she didn’t, which was good. Well-rounded kits were always important, even beyond Minkalla. They were the defining feature of Ascenders, and doubly so for solo ones.
After fighting Kurt, Susanne took turns fighting each of her proteges, and while she still lost most of the time, struggling to keep up with the group’s incredible array of skills and powerful items, still managed to eke out wins more and more regularly as she caught onto their tricks and favored tactics. In one particularly notable instance, she’d learned to cut through Matt’s [Cracked Mana Spear] beam.
At first, it was only for a fraction of a second, but a week later, she was going for nearly ten whole seconds. Two weeks after that, it was twenty. A month later, she wasn’t quite able to go for thirty seconds, but with dedicated practice, she was getting better and better at resisting the beam with her Concept and parting the attack around her until her sword outright broke under the strain. It was the only time Luna ever saw the girl without her Manifestation, but it never seemed worse for wear whenever she re-summoned it afterwards, which meant that she had an impressive level of control and abundant willpower.
Because of their bet, Carol was taking a back seat. But as the days passed, Luna let the other manager give a few Concept lessons to Matt, Liz, and Aster.
They were learning well under her tutelage, as sometimes an outside perspective could have unexpected benefits, and Carol was good at figuring out how each Concept worked and how to improve them. Matt’s flight had already sped up by three point two percent, and his whitelist ability was stronger. Liz’s blood was six percent stronger when empowered, and Aster’s ice was a full four percent colder than before. Furthermore, their essence conversion had sped up by a full nine point three percent, which was in many ways the greatest benefit. The next few weeks, she spent time drilling the kids for fighting other cultivators before switching to simulated monsters that had appeared in Minkalla in the past.
For all that most people died to the other humans inside the Forge, the monsters and traps were still quite dangerous.
Changing up the lessons ensured that they had no obvious weaknesses, and Luna was more and more confident as the time to enter Minkalla closed in.
During the first two weeks, she pushed them hard before easing up and then forcing them to take some down time as a collective.
- Writer
