Bonus Combat Test

I was equal parts impressed and surprised that I had pulled off the test scheme. Over a relatively short period, Sharzin had managed to steal the test questions and answers without issue. We then worked together to slip them casually into the study session, which Rionriv failed to notice. And the best part of it all? Not only had everyone passed their tests, but I was almost certain I had successfully flirted and bribed my way into my team's hearts without bursting the dam of emotions locked away in my mind.

Good job, me. I thought as I metaphorically patted myself on the back. Now, let’s do this combat test to see if we’ve learnt to really work as a team. If we can take down these monsters today, then I think we’ll be in a good position for a dungeon dive over the Solstice break. And I’ve got just the one…

“Pst—Hey,” Sharzin drew my attention from a nearby cart. “Oracle.”

Giving my head a shake, I pulled myself back from the daydream and slipped into position beside the shadows.

“Okay,” She began to inform me. “It looks like the two trolls and massive suit of armour are about to enter the kill box from the south. Blue wristbands confirmed.”

With a bit of cautious probing of my companions, I’d discovered that three levels of wristbands determined the difficulty of a LARPing encounter. Red wristbands belonged to students from the Third Year pool, whereas blue wristbands were Fourth Year students and roughly three times tougher than the aforementioned reds.

Then came the gold wristbands. These were teachers, and unlike students, who we've learned could be malicious and vengeful, these monsters were always fair in their fights. It was also said that they were somewhere around ten times as hard as blue band monsters. So, currently, a bit outside our weight class.

Today, we were batting only slightly beyond our combat range, but to compensate, our combat training was getting tactical.

“Good, I’ll get into position—unless,” I replied with a nod. “We can still try the flying rogue approach? Get some practice in of me throwing you? You know, in case of lava one day?”

“You just want an excuse to touch me.” She replied plainly as she disappeared into the shadows, leaving only a parting jab. “Never going to happen, perv.”

I laughed softly before separating towards my predetermined spot.

With seconds to spare, I was in position just before the monsters rounded the distant street corner. Kneeling in the centre of the road, I pretended to have dropped my schoolbooks and notes. This was all part of the trap because, today, being equally helpless and clueless was the name of the game.

Even from a distance, I could hear the scraping of metal on cobblestone from shuffling armoured feet and the claymores that both beasts dragged along the road. Not wanting to alert them to the ploy, I kept my head down, playing the role of blissfully unaware. Though as I focused on my newest career in acting, I was tracking them from the corner of my eye.

Then came the second alarm. Rionriv channelled a warm gust of wind, alerting me that the threats were within a hundred feet.

I knew it. This was the perfect effect!

Caught in her gentle breeze, the pages blew away from me and became stuck under the monsters' feet. Leaves were carried from the nearby trees, raining gently down between us in a cinematic treat.

Cue doves. Lens flare. Dutch angle. Dutch angle. Tracking shot. Over-the-shoulder shot.

A loud crack of something in the distance broke the standoff, and the two trolls raced towards me with a furious roar. I stepped forward into a defensive position, ready to absorb their wild strikes. And strike they did.

Four heavy slashes from gruesome blades cut through the air. With relative ease, I deflected three before the fourth sent a splash of my blood across the cobbled street

It wasn’t a flawless performance, but deflecting enemy attacks was better than simply taking the strikes. And I never would have learned this new ability had it not been for Aesandoral. She had taught me how she liked to channel magic into my hands and into the arrows she fired. Using that technique, I practiced and learned that I could more easily reach out to move strikes away from me without them ever touching my skin.

Fug yeah! I thought, deflecting the first three. That's some real crouching tiger shit!

But deflection wasn’t the only thing I had learned since joining this group. Using the same channelling technique, I delivered a trio of magic-enhanced fisty-cuffs to the monster’s bulbous nose. Before the bully-LARPers knew what was happening, the first troll that had charged was down to its knees. Punch drunk and barely hanging on to consciousness, it swayed as I pivoted, swinging to meet my second opponent, who stared at me with wide, bulging eyes.

“You’ll pay for that.” It growled deeply. “Rathnoth, get over—Rathnoth?!”

The troll turned, suddenly realizing that its heavily armoured ally wouldn’t be joining it. Still near where the charge had begun, the hulking body stood paralyzed with six arrows sticking from the vulnerable joints and electricity arcing across them.

The triop had done their half of the job flawlessly. Having hidden until combat began, they used the cover of chaos to attack the most dangerous target with a well-coordinated strike. The unsuspecting bully had no idea what had hit it. Within seconds, the juggernaut was down, which was all well and good. But I wasn’t out of danger yet. 

In a furious rage, the remaining troll returned its attention to me. It quickly delivered two heavy slashes across my chest as I was distracted, admiring my companions' work.

“Ahg!—Not this way!” I yelled out, pleading as I fell to my knees, a pool of blood forming beneath me.

With a flourish of its sword, the beast hoisted the gruesome blade into the air, readying to strike a final blow.

But as I prepared my hands to deflect the killing blow, the attack never came. Instead, the troll began to cough blood before toppling over its barely functional ally. Rolling away from me, a trio of arrows and a smouldering scorch mark became visible on the creature's back. Less than thirty seconds after starting, the fight was done.

“And scene!” I cried out, hopping to my feet.

With a hand to my chest, a radiant glow pulsed beneath my palm, and the wound healed. Thanks to the book Rionriv had graciously gifted me, I had also managed to learn a few divine spells to help out the party in a pinch. Healing wounds, curing basic ailments, and even a divine buckler of sorts that turned my forearms into a holy shield. I had begun to feel like a real cleric, even though my resume would still note me as a pugilist meatshield.

“Great job, everyone, truly masterclass! That’s a wrap—” I continued before coughing up a splattering of blood and a chunk of metal that had been lodged in my chest.

Oh no, the tuberculosis is back! I instinctively thought. No, no, I’m fine. It’s just the metal. Hmm, maybe a cure ailment just to be sure.

“Don’t pretend you weren’t horribly wounded,” Rionriv spoke as she landed beside me and looked over the two writhing trolls. “I could see that you were nervous there.”

Without hesitation, she pointed a finger gun at the barely conscious beasts and fired a bolt of fire through their eyes. The tense bodies instantly relaxed, and, with a flash of light, the bodies disappeared, officially ending the combat experience.

“You couldn’t see crap, Ri.” I shot back, glancing at my torn shirt and then up at the sorceress as I continued.

“You were too busy being a total badass. It's only been, what, a week and change since you got the keys to the oooh-whee kingdom, and suddenly, you can silently cast any-and-all spells? That’s wild. You’re so awesome!”

Rionriv’s face scrunched up as she turned away from me. “Shut up! No one calls it that! Plus, you complimenting me is weird.”

I smirked as Aesandoral and Sharzin made their presence known. Descending from the roof, Aesandoral pulled down the terracotta cloak draped over her head and shoulders, which she had used to improve her camouflage. Sharzin, on the other hand, had stuck to the shadowed alleys and was now blatantly apparent as her black cloak scurried along the midday street.

“Yay, we did it!” Aesandoral squealed with excitement. “I was really nervous at first, but then I remembered you were cheering me on.”

I blushed as my heart raced at her comment. Oddly enough, of all the girls, Aesandoral was the one who flustered me the most. It was something about her bubbly personality that really acted as chicken noodle soup for my traumatized soul. So, rubbing at the back of my neck, I met the archer’s joy with my own nervous agreement.

“Yeah, go us! See, I told you we’d be D-Rank by Solstice.”

Sharzin approached my side and gave me a gentle punch to the hip.

“It appears you have once again proven yourself to be telling the truth.” She spoke up. “I shall continue to trust you.”

“Wow, thanks, Sharzin. Love the vote of confidence. I still think operation flying rogue would have worked—“

She weakly punched my hip again, causing me to laugh at the soft strike.

After regrouping and having a quick discussion over the trap’s strengths and weaknesses, we moved on to continue our extracurricular training. This involved baiting and defeating a few more groups of upperclassmen with varying degrees of honeypot traps.

By the time we were done a few hours later, the number of actively roaming ‘monsters’ across the central campus had been severely diminished. But, just getting into the swing of things, our group wasn’t done yet. And, being me, I still had one more rock to bleed for experience points.

“And here we are,” I muttered, opening the secret doorway down to the sewers beneath campus. “Plenty of creepy crawlies to kill in here.”

“Ewugh—“ Rionriv remarked, waving a hand before her face as she turned away. “Uh, no thanks.”

“What do you mean no thanks?” I replied quickly.

“It smells awful!”

“You did fine with the rotting corpses in our first mission.”

“Yeah, rotting corpses are fine.”

I stared at the sorceress with an unimpressed glare. Placing a hand on my hips, I waved the other before my face.

“Practice some air purifying magic or something. We’re going to be doing a lot of diving into dank, dark, underground places over the next few years. We need to practice close-quarters combat as a team.”

“Or we could—“

“Ri, come on,” Aesandoral remarked as she pushed past her sister and into the opening. “You're the one who says practice makes perfect.”

“And darkness is perfect practice,” Sharzin added as she followed. "For me, that is."

With a roll of her eyes, Rionriv huffed and looked at me. I matched her glare with a smile, motioning gently to her to lead the way.

“No way, perv.” She replied with crossed arms, nodding me forward. “Like hells I’m leaving you in the back with your wandering eyes.”

“Fine, fine…” I sighed, pushing through the threshold with a final mutter. “So much for being a gentleman.”

Moving into the sewers under campus, we worked on our close-quarter combat strategies. I led the group through tactical hand signals, using Rionriv’s magic to breach weaker doors and went so far as to test room-clearing tactics. Finally, after years of fantasizing about the West’s industrial military complex, it was coming into play. That and the many shows about military and police special forces that I binged over the years.

By the time we had hit the fifth of a dozen dead ends and cleared out the vermin inhabiting them, we were already sliding into our tactical groove. The unfortunate ratdogs and corgsquitos had no chance against our formations, after all, these creatures were meant to antagonize First Years. And, by my estimates, we were currently ranked closer to Third Years in raw abilities and coordination alone.

“This is getting repetitive.” Sharzin groaned from a dark corner after another successful slaying. “It’s too easy when everything is in darkness.”

“I know, I’m not even breaking a sweat, Zin.” Aesandoral nodded to the nearby shadow.

“I’m over here.” The rogue replied, emerging from a different, obscured corner with a handful of arrows. 

Handing some of the ammunition to Aesandoral, Sharzin stuffed the rest into her quiver with a meaningful shove.

“I want to try hiding in harder places.” She pouted. “I thought darkness would be fun, but it’s sooo boring.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, looking at the bored and tired faces of the triop before me. “I think that’ll be enough for today, then. Why don’t we grab something to eat?”

“Mimic café!” Sharzin and Aesandoral cheered.

“Yeah? Mimic café again?” I sighed, beginning to grow tired of our regular haunt. “You two sure you don’t want to try something different? There are plenty of other restaurants, cafes, bars, bistros, and niche, delicious things on this campus. You know?”

They shook their heads in tandem in a resounding no.

“Okay, fine, let’s go to the mimic café.”