"I still can't believe they thought this was a smart idea," Deacon chuckled under his breath.
He and Sam stood side by side on a thick branch high in the treeline, their bodies hidden behind a wall of pine needles and broad leaves as they held binoculars to their eyes. Below them, in the camp a couple of hundred meters away from them, a Party of seven cadets was locked in a chaotic skirmish with a kobold camp that housed sixty-five kobolds.
They hacked through the mass of scaled bodies with decent form and decent coordination, managing their rotations well enough, and slowly reducing the kobold numbers one cluster at a time. But even from their vantage point, it was obvious the cadets were burning too much stamina and mana in the early phases of their raid — pushing too hard, too fast, without accounting for what was still ahead of them; the seven elites that dwelled within the camp.
The camp held three Elite Kobold Sorcerers and four Elite Kobold Warriors, and even though those elites were already showing signs of damage, they were still far from out of the fight.
And all the while, the cadets and the kobolds had no idea they were also drawing the attention of the nearby camp that consisted of twenty-seven satyrs, only a few hundred meters east of the kobold camp.
Twenty minutes earlier, when he and Sam had initially come across the cadets raiding the kobolds, their plan had been simple: wait and observe, let the party of seven do the exhausting work, and then swoop in once the elites were exhausted and near dead, where they would go and kill-steal them.
But spotting those two satyr scouts watching from a ridge changed everything. The scouts ran back to their camp, and Deacon and Sam followed, hidden, watching the satyr scouts explain animatedly about what was happening in the kobold camp, which led the satyrs to rush to prepare themselves to stage their own raid on the kobold camp.
As such, the two of them returned to their concealed perch above the kobold camp, opting to watch the collision unfold rather than interfere too early.
Now that the kobold numbers were reduced to a little over two-thirds of their original size, the elite kobolds weren't looking as confident as before, and the cadets, while still mostly uninjured, were definitely below half of their stamina and mana reserves.
"If not for the incoming attack of satyrs, they should be able to pull out a win," Deacon muttered, adjusting the focus on his binoculars.
"Here they come," Sam said, excitement creeping into his voice as he shifted his binoculars toward the ridge.
Deacon activated Blood Sense, and as Sam said it, he saw the twenty-seven satyr silhouettes, red outlines scaling the rocky incline with incredible speed and grace before landing on the flat mountain plateau.
"Oh shit," Deacon smirked as he watched the satyrs waste no time and vault cleanly over the eastern wall of the kobold camp, where they rushed both the seven cadets and the remaining kobolds, catching both sides by surprise and plunging the raid into chaos.
The kobolds and cadets, who a moment ago had been locked together in close combat, recoiled from each other and regrouped into their own clusters once they realized a third party had entered the fray.
The satyrs wasted no time; the four kobold archers and two of the elite kobold sorcerers positioned near the east wall were torn apart before they could react, and two of the elite satyr warriors carved through them before they could even erect a shield to protect themselves.
The cadets pulled into a tight circle formation where the mages and the healer were in the middle and surrounded by the warriors. Their shouts overlapped each other as panic spread while they tried to process that they were now sandwiched between two enemy forces, while they were gassed out
"You think they can live through this?" Sam asked as he tracked the frantic group below, watching the cadets finally begin to calm down as they realized they needed to disengage before they lost someone. "It looks like they don't have any egoists in their lineup, so they should be fine if they keep their heads straight and retreat properly."
"They should be fine," Deacon agreed, watching the cadets begin a controlled retreat, their formation adjusting into a conical-shaped defensive line that allowed them to pull away from the kobolds and satyrs while still being able to collect their spoils. "But this is exactly why I never run our Party into camps like this without prep."
In the camp, the exhausted kobolds tried to defend against the fully energized satyrs; however, they were swamped by the satyrs' nature magic as spells flared across the clearing; roots, thorns, and vines ensnared around the scaled limbs of the kobolds and tethered them in place.
Within minutes, only one Elite Kobold Warrior and two Elite Sorcerers remained, along with five regular kobolds barely standing, while out of the twenty-seven satyrs, seven regulars had fallen, and the three elites bore only superficial wounds.
"Fighting multiple enemy groups is always messy," Deacon continued, leaning forward slightly on the branch. "Even if you're stronger, even if you've prepped for the fight, you have to finish with enough left in the tank in case something else shows up. Like the Floor Boss on Floor 8; If you guys and Gael didn't protect me and if the healers didn't heal me in time, I would have died."
"If we took that camp head-on without setup?" He continued. "All five of us would come out completely gassed, and that's with our Party being the best in our Generation for cohesion and, not to pat our own backs, actual skill. We were the best in our own respective classes and skillsets, and if it weren't for the bullshit allowance on using Artifacts, I firmly believe that we all would have been in the top ten."
They watched in silence for a few breaths before Deacon spoke again.
"What would you say would be a good plan for our Party to take out the kobold camp if you were leader?" he asked, passing the question over without looking away from the battlefield.
"Me?" Sam asked, sounding genuinely thrown, lowering his binoculars and staring at Deacon like he hadn't expected the question at all. Meanwhile, Deacon kept his eyes on the scene in front of them, watching the satyrs and kobolds tear into each other while the seven cadets finally broke away from the camp, retreating in tight formation and pushing farther into the treeline.
They didn't even stop to patch themselves up, something he identified as a smart play, since bleeding or exhausted cadets sitting in a clearing made for easy track-and-snatch targets for satyrs and vindictive kobolds, especially with how good satyrs were at following scent trails and sound vibrations.
Deacon hummed, confirming the question was serious.
Sam took a breath, licked his lips, and spoke. "I– I would have us survey the area before starting any raid against a camp like this."
"Who's scouting?" Deacon asked, still scanning below. He watched a bleating satyr drive a horned shoulder into the sternum of a kobold, pinning it to a tree before stabbing straight through the ribs with a hooked spear.
Efficient, clean, and skilled, Deacon mused as he watched the satyrs take out the kobolds. Those cadets had been lucky to leave when they did, because the satyrs are much more skilled than those kobolds.
"…You?" Sam said at first, uncertain, but then shook his head and committed to the answer. "You and Esme. You're the best at stealth and ambushing in our group, and Esme can detect life signatures from a ridiculous distance with that ability of hers. Together, you give us the best surveying information with the lowest risk."
Deacon said nothing, neither approving nor rejecting the answer Sam gave, and Sam took the silence as his cue to continue.
"After surveying and figuring out the camp layout, the threats nearby, and the number of elites, we would plan our attack based on timing and terrain."
"And let's say for the sake of simplicity the satyrs weren't a factor," Deacon interjected.
"For kobolds specifically, I'd have us wait until right before or after their feast. Then we'd hit them with a barrage of bombs, both poisonous and explosive ones, to cripple their numbers and sow confusion. Once they're staggering out of their entrance, which doubles as their exit door, we bottleneck them there and clean them up as they come out while setting fire to their tents inside," Sam finished.
Down below, the satyrs began to force the last elite kobolds out of the camp. The kobolds were panicking now, abandoning formation completely and running for their lives, while the satyrs didn't even look the slightest bit winded.
Deacon nodded once. "I'd give that plan a solid B rating," he said. "But did you consider the wind direction? And what poisons you'd actually use?"
Sam blinked, stopped, then slowly nodded. "I'd use concentrated miasma bombs or cyanide-heavy gas bombs. The miasma wouldn't affect us as long as we wore our Bandana of the Undead, and with our filtering masks, we should be unaffected by the gas."
"And the wind?" Deacon pressed.
Sam paused again before letting out a slow breath. "Unless they had a rogue-type elite kobold or a hunter elite variant, they shouldn't pick up our scent before we throw the bombs."
"How sure are you that we'd even get close enough to throw them before being detected by sound or smell?" Deacon asked, finally lowering his binoculars to look Sam in the eye. "Even tossing them from a distance would make noise on impact – despite their appearances, kobolds have very sensitive senses."
Sam deflated a bit, his expression tightening.
"It's a good plan," Deacon continued, before Sam could retreat into frustration. "Honestly, it's the same plan I would use. My only change is simple: I'd be the distraction after we finished surveying and delegating the tasks. I'd go first, draw attention, and throw Skunk Bombs or Dung Bombs around the perimeter to screw with their sense of smell."
"Then, when they send the weaker kobolds to investigate me, as the elites wouldn't give a shit about a lone humanoid on the same level as them that uses shit bombs, you guys would throw in the miasma and gas bombs, then after a couple of minutes, you would toss in the explosive bombs or set flame to the inside of their camp and funnel the kobolds out. From that point, everything lines up with what you already said."
Sam stayed quiet, still visibly annoyed at himself, staring down at the clearing as the last of the kobolds disappeared beneath satyr blades.
Deacon reached over and patted his shoulder once. "Everything else about your plan is solid; it had a high chance of working."
Sam huffed and looked away. "I still have a lot to learn… It's ridiculous how wide the gap feels between our planning ability when we took the same leadership courses. I even took private strategy tutoring on top of that."
Deacon snorted. "Fuck tutors, they don't actually want you to improve because then they lose work. They string you along just enough to justify more sessions."
Sam glanced back at him. "So how did you get good at it then?"
"Books," Deacon said simply. "I've read a shit ton about monster behavior, environment advantages, counter-classes – you name any book going on those topics and I've read them and could recite them to you right here right now from front to back."
"And along with that, when Uncle Bjorn still taught at the Academy, on the weekends I would head out to his house and he would teach me a lot about strategy and the advantages and disadvantages of the creatures he encountered... Though it is weird how he didn't mention the specters like Banshees."
He shook his head, then jerked his chin toward the satyrs as they chased the fleeing elites out of sight. "Anyway, we have our own shit to finish. We still need hags and nixies, and I'm not wasting daylight on someone else's mess."