“You know, archers aren’t meant to be the front line,” Lance panted as he finished tying off the long scratch along his arm. He grimaced at the sloppy job, but Yanesh’s Companion’s Boon was doing its job, healing him and the rest of the team.

“Sure. I’ll just tell them to stop teleporting behind us,” Sarah said as she cleaned her spear. As always, the Valkyrie was on watch duty while the rest of the team healed up, her sped-up healing system giving her greater stamina and recovery speeds.

She probably benefited heavily from Yanesh’s aura too, Lance thought grumpily.

“We have to figure this out, or else we’re going to be in trouble if they hit us with even more monsters at once,” Lance said.

“You’re going to suggest more upgrades, aren’t you?” Matt said.

“Actually, no.” Lance shook his head. “I’d prefer we actually work out a plan.”

“Tactic,” Yanesh said. “We’re looking to create a battlefield tactic.”

“Right… sure…” Lance waved away the pedant. “But we can’t just keep buying upgrades just to deal with situational problems. We need to make our powers work for us. Getting deep rather than broad. Especially since we know broad has limits.”

“That’s not a nice way to talk about Sarah,” Neil piped up. When the group just stared at Neil, confused, he explained. “You know, because Sarah’s a broad? A girl?” More silence, growing uncomfortable. “Philistines!”

“Right. Moving on before Neil dies of embarrassment. Or old age,” Lance said while the other man fumed, grumbling about the lack of culture and how noir was important… “we know the shadow gnolls only come up if there’s enough space. If we keep tight enough spacing, we should be able to keep them from popping up.”

“That’s way too tight,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “Some of us actually have to fight.”

“Instead of an upgrade, how about we buy something? Like moving traps or something?” Matt said, rubbing his chin.

“What kind of traps?” Lance asked, curiously.

“Bear traps.” Matt made the snapping motion of his hands, a rather evil grin on his face. “If they pop-up, snap, crackle and pop! If they don’t, we just pick it up and move on.”

“That’s… evil,” Lance replied, then grinned. “I like it.”

“I’m going to buy an upgrade too,” Keeley piped up suddenly. When Matt glanced over, she raised her chin. “I’m the support girl, right? Crowd control comes under that heading. The tear gas is great, but useless here. I need to be able to deny space and movement, and that means another upgrade.”

“We could use a better buff too,” Neil spoke up.

“I already use Second Wind mostly on you!” Keeley protested. “It’s not really that useful for fights. Need to fix that…” She shook her head. “I think it was a wasted slot really. We just so tired…”

“Don’t run yourself down,” Lance said, cutting her off. “We’re all still tired. If you hadn’t been using that on us in-between the fights, giving us the equivalent of a half-dozen shots of espresso, we’d probably find this dungeon a lot harder.”

Keeley offered Lance a half-smile, before she shrugged. “Anyway, I saw something rather good. It’s expensive, but I think it’s pretty good. Temporal Trap.”

“Cool name,” Yanesh said. His eyes glazed over a second, then he nodded aggressively. “Oooh, yeah. That looks good. Get that. I bet you could create a whole build around that, maybe even healing…”

“Orihime?” Lance muttered, then shook his head. “Alright, so Matt gets bear traps for use or something and Keeley a castable time trap. We try to keep close enough not to fall in each other’s way otherwise. And Matt?”

“Yeah?” The man snatched what looked like a palm-sized octagonal box from the air before looking at Lance.

“Wait, that’s the trap?” Neil said, frowning.

“Reusable. Upgraded magical bear trap, pretty much.” Matt said. “What’d you want?” he asked Lance.

“I know you go to do the entire scout thing, but try to stay within bow range, will you?” Lance said. “If you’re in the shadows too, we can’t help you, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll play nice,” Matt replied.

“We good to move?” Sarah asked, bouncing on her feet a little. “Or we going to keep talking till the night falls. Because while I’m good to keep running, it looks like even the Super Coffee buff is losing its effectiveness.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Neil said, around a large yawn.

“Uh huh.”

“I’m good,” Keeley spoke up before the rest of the team could break into the conversation. “Let’s go find some bad guys.”

“Your girlfriend’s gotten pretty damn bloodthirsty,” Yanesh leaned in to whisper to Matt.

“Yeah…”

***

Another two dozen damn gnolls. The group had the attacks down to a science now. Lance and Matt opened fire first, loosing arrows into the crowd. The majority of their attacks missed, but the use of Splitting Arrows helped to ensure at least some of the monsters were injured.

Once the gnolls found their optimal shadow stepping spot, they disappeared. However, this time around, not only had Keeley adjusted where the shadows would be cast among the group, the central spot among the group was trapped.

The first shadow gnoll to emerge came out right in the center pretty much, only to find itself slowed. It was not frozen in space entirely, but it’s movement speed had decreased. Before the duration of the trap could end, an icicle the size of Yanesh’s arm struck it in the throat, ending its life.

Two others popped up, both of them doing so right next to the shadows cast by the bear traps. The first managed to emerge without hurting itself, only to be engaged by Keeley as she fired her own Fire Bolt at it. The other stuck a hand on the trap, falling over on its side and crying piteously as the bear trap snapped shut, glowing mouth heads holding it down.

At that point, the two melee fighters and Lance in his impromptu role were engaged, wielding sword and bow. The snarling archer found himself kicking and beating the monsters away, even as he debated what the hell he was doing up front like this.

He really, really needed a combat upgrade. One that let him fight in close combat. Sure, the movies made it look easy to do that with a bow; but there’s a reason why archers in the medieval era carried a secondary weapon.

It was because bows sucked at that job. As it was, he was sure his precious composite was going to break at some point. Having to occasionally bat away swinging claws had a tendency to weaken plastic that was never meant to take that kind of beating.

Ducking under another clawed attack, he stepped forward and head butted the monster. He watched it reel back, clutching at its sensitive nose and then he ran it through, before looking around. A gnoll looking to jump him found a Lightning Bolt catching it right in its face, shocking it long enough for Lance to extract his sword and run it through again.

On the other side, Entangling Roots kept a pair of gnolls busy. Yanesh had put a couple of arrows in them, hit them with fist-sized dense Earthen Bolts such that they were bruised and bleeding and distracted from getting out. Keeley, busy with the healing and watching others, her only direct offense upgrade kept as a reserve in case someone needed it. Didn’t matter anyway, since the Blood Thorns were ripping the monsters apart, piece by piece.

Of them all, Matt and Sarah had the least to worry about, neither having bothered to change their tactics. One fired from the shadows, the other just tore into the gnolls whenever they popped up, their weapons doing quick work.

Now that they team wasn’t forced to fight individually, the entire battle was over fast. Even if Lance was upset and injured and annoyed at being forced to fight on the frontlines, he had to admit – this worked.

All they had to do now was kill the rest of the monsters coming their way and get to the big, glowing Mana light Lance could see in the distance.

Hopefully, it was the boss and not some random DLC.