LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 303: Greetings
I'm honestly a bit shocked at how little Seraphiel cares for her own kind, but it's not like she sold them out. I'm guessing that she is almost certain I won't betray them unless given a reason to. Also, she was conscripted by the Elven High Council to fight in a war she didn't care about, so her slight distaste might stem from that.
"Great. Nice to have you on our side. Our teams together will make a great mini-alliance." I said while nodding the tanker's way, who was obviously their leader and Phenom candidate. Compared to her, the rest were just background characters.
"If you say so…" She replied hesitantly, clearly failing to trust us to any serious degree. That's a smart thing to do. A leader shouldn't believe what strangers say, even if those words are honeyed and paint a very tantalizing picture.
"I'm Devil, this is…" I then introduced my teammates one by one.
The tanker nodded her helmet slowly. "I'm Ambition. They're my Heralds."
So not even a proper introduction for the poor elves? At least her criminal alias is pretty cool.
"Devil, my armor is done for." Lucille said wryly while examining the remains of her heavy gear that still clung to her alluring frame. Most of the armor had been trashed due to her wild antics.
"Here, change into this." I said while pulling a light armor out of my ring. I've prepared some extra stuff in case one of my ladies lost their stuff, which was more than possible in such a brutal test as the Trial was said to be.
Ayame spoke up next; "let's flank Scourge so she can change without spying eyes. The less information the Consortium has about us, the better."
We all agreed with her assessment and helped the berserk hide her body from the insect helmets.
Once she was done, I put the gear away into my ring. Maybe the place we bought it from could repair it.
"Oh! This feels so liberating after the stuffy heavy armor." Lucille whistled cheerily.
"But you're easier to one-shot kill too. I'm not happy with you going melee range with your relatively low level, so please watch out."
"I know… But I'm already level 12! This place is amazing."
Three levels in the span of a few dozen minutes? That's truly great. "Let's aim to level up even more." I added.
"About half of them are left, Ghost thinks." Blossom commented. "Master, Ghost's nose is becoming ineffective due to all the blood present in the cave. It's very stinky, her head hurts…"
"Who is she talking about?" Ambition asked curiously.
"She has a quirky speech pattern. Talks in third person for whatever reason." Seraphiel revealed.
"Oh. She's cute." The tanker's thoughts made my dog-girl's tail swing from left to right happily.
"Say that after you see her maul high-level Phenom candidates to death in a matter of a single second. I spent so much time of my life getting to where I am, and this 'cutie' could erase my existence at any moment she wishes to, and I wouldn't even have the time to realize that I'm dead." My rude healer's comment made any tail movements halt immediately.
I couldn't let this blasphemy continue. "Don't badmouth my Ghost. She is the most adorable person in the world."
"Master!" Ghost shouted and gave me an energetic hug. Both of our clothes were adorned with dried blood, so it wasn't overly homely, but I still appreciated the gesture.
With all that out of the way, our hunt for XP resumed. Now our frontline vs backline numbers were messed up to a great degree since we had 8 in the backline with me included, and only 3 on the front holding it down with Ayame on the left, Ambition in the middle, and Lucille on the right. Blossom was no longer part of the formation since it was better to let her do her own things. Assassins weren't meant to stick close to their party, but to disrupt the enemies before her team and theirs even clashed.
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The archer elves immediately became a hundred times more effective with them not having to rely on Ambition to safeguard them, because, for the first time since the start of the Trials their team was on the offensive and not desperately fighting for their continued survival. They released volley after volley of arrows upon our enemies, and the best part of it was that they often only injured our enemies, which allowed my girls- and me of course- to steal the easy kills under the guise of teamwork.
The biggest winner of our team-up was however Ambition herself. No longer needing to rush from elf archer to elf archer to keep them alive, she could remain in the position she was meant to be as she squashed her enemies to death with her mean warhammer, taunted them with her skills, and if that wasn't enough, with Aurora's buffs and Seraphiel's healing she became a true iron wall keeping her group safe from harm's way.
With this formation, we bulldozed our way through multiple teams, and even some smaller alliances. My primordial eyes have spied two giant alliances with about 500 members in each, and sadly they weren't fighting each other yet. However, it was only a matter of time, after all, those numbers meant that they each had 100 or so Phenoms in their ranks, the amount the Consortium wanted to pass the first test.
Their strategy was to simply kill everyone other than their allies.
For now, they were busy ganging up on poor stragglers and simply overwhelming them with their unfair numerical advantage but their clash would soon begin.
No matter how individually talented me and my group are, we would get run down like dogs by any of these two alliances, so we had to steer clear of them. It wasn't too hard to do since we were coordinated and their large numbers meant that they were slower to react since they had to work in tandem with hundreds of people.
I couldn't think of any other explanation for their rapid formation amidst such mayhem than that they were 'premade'. They likely knew each other from before the Trials started and devised a plan in which they would stick together should the situation allow.