The group pressed through the cloying field of undeath. They already knew which way to go. Aiden burned away the weakest of them as Smolder grabbed the copious supplies left behind. Sandra's training was showing dividends, those subdued by her spirit power becoming just what she needed about twice as often, and that was reaping immediate dividends.
To say nothing of Smolder's new spices bulging from her belt. "Speed salt!" She dashed the food as they went. "For every occasion, a spice to match." She was grinning with new confidence, in control of the hectic situation.
Garble sped past, his rhymes and his footsteps forming a beat he cut to. It wasn’t an unbroken flow, but it was clearly doing something, as he cut down enemies with flashier blasts more often.
Spike, however, for his part, licked his lips and concentrated his best. A fiery bolt of magic came blasting at him, and he brought up his staff, swinging at it. He missed and the fire bolt hit him harmlessly. Spike swore under his breath. Tabitha had warned him that deflecting magic with his staff would be tougher, and indeed it would be much tougher to deflect magic in “the field” than in a sparring match. But every chance to fight a monster was a chance to get better.
At least, that’s how Tabitha saw it, and Spike saw the wisdom in that attitude.
He glanced at Sandra out of the corner of his eye, as he thought about Tabitha. He had intended, perhaps, to mend their friendship, but he felt like talking to Sandra about it before he knew any more would be… bad. It was too early, probably.
He shook his head to put it out of his mind. Fighting! Tower! He could do friendship problems later.
They burst past the waves of undead, breathing firmly, but none of them looking as worn as they had the past two times they had tried. Garble slapped Spike hard enough to send him staggering. "That's what I'm talking about!"
Sandra and Smolder met with a mutual high five and Spike shot a thumbs up, morale high with the fruits of their efforts. "Hey," noted Spike as they walked. "You seemed to be kinda overflowing with food. Not complaining, just noticing."
Smolder thrust a thumb at Sandra. "She learned how to support me better with that, and I learned how to cook better. Put the two together and we're a mean team!"
Sandra giggled softly, a big smile on her face and her steps light. "It made such a difference… We can do this."
"We can do this," echoed Garble. "Keep that attitude. Nowhere but the top!"
They rode up the elevator and Spike crossed his arms. "Alright, now we have to get past other actual people."
Smolder sat down suddenly, putting her eyes even with Spike. "About that. I have an idea, and I bet you do too."
"They aren't real?" Spike posited.
"In one." Smolder nodded softly. "Too convenient. If they had to get real people in here, we'd have to wait all the time until there were enough people. These aren't people, they're just…"
"Magic," finished Sandra suddenly. "Like summons, er, normal summons, not you summons." She laughed nervously. "Summons don't usually work that way, you know that."
Garble looked back and forth to the two of them. “So… what does that actually mean?”
“Well, for one thing, we don’t need to feel bad or try not to actually kill them,” Sandra said.
Garble blinked at her. “Was I supposed to?”
“Garble!” Smolder hit him lightly.
“What?! I’m not feeling bad for some guy preventing me from winning, especially if he is trying to kill me.”
Spike sighed. “If they’re just magic things they’re probably nowhere near as actually tough as an actual adventurer. They probably don’t have fifty abilities like an adventurer, and they’re probably not as sneaky as an adventurer.”
“That’s right,” Smolder said, back to ignoring her brother. “It means they’re probably dumb.”
The announcer began to give the play by play, eerily similar to the first time they had arrived. Spike pumped a fist. "They're just monsters that are shaped like people. Learn the patterns, take them down, that's it."
Garble nodded as if that had been obvious the entire time. "Stick together, use what you learned, let's show those morons what's what."
"That doesn't mean be careless," added Sandra. "Even monsters can be bad if we let them."
"'Let' having a lot of options," chuckled out Spike, staff and shield ready. "Let's do this."
"Here comes team three." The door slid open, allowing them to see the two teams clashing down below the slope of the hill. In an eerie replay of the first time, the two teams shifted attention towards them as they arrived. Just as the time before, they struck at one another when given good opportunity to do so.
Spike caught an incoming sword, glancing off his staff in a moment of perfect imperfection, the blow sent wide. "Yeah," he congratulated himself, thrusting the glowing staff forward to crash both physically and magically with the chest of his combatant.
Garble roughly shoved the nimble rogue towards his sister. "Catch!"
She was happy to do so, with the ends of her cooking knives puncturing the fake-human. She belched out a great plume of fire, cooking them in a non-culinarian approved way as she wrenched the blades free, leaving them to collapse in a miserable pile. "We got this."
A heavily armored combatant closed with Sandra. "Your positioning is sloppy," she mocked, blade raised in ready position.
"You thought I was the weak spot? Summoner's Union!" She twirled her staff horizontal to the ground as Crystal flowed into her, her form rapidly becoming craggy, eyes shining with the crystal lustre of her golem. "Face me."
Sharp blade met unyielding stone with a loud ring, sparks flying even as her hand came down with all the unstoppability of an avalanche. She grabbed the sword, but her hand kept going, wrenching it free of the warrior and slamming it into the ground.
Garble came down on the surprised warrior, his blade slicing with the flow of gravity and his ready strength on their exposed back, as prone as they were from the abruptly yanked blade. She went down with a great clatter of metal armor. "You have no rhyme, you're out of time, prepare to be beaten to a pulp."
"Team #4, charging in!" came the excited announcement, but no fourth team was in immediate sight.
Spike looked around worriedly before craning his head back just in time to squeak and charge ahead, greenish magic exploding free of him in all directions. An instant later, team four arrived, landing in the middle of the fracas from above.
The others were thrown back roughly, but their injuries were superficial, absorbed by the quick action of Spike. That didn't stop them from being tossed, though the other two teams suffered similarly. The fourth team was on them without a pause, blades and spells filling the void created by their arrival.
The new team came at our heroes aggressively, another wave of green magic washing over them, blasting them back until they were over a ridge in the strange rolling stone hills inside the tower.
The magus didn’t just run at them, but floated above them, green smoke trails streaming from his fists as he grinned madly. “We will be making it up the tower now!”
He sent a blast of magic, which Spike moved to intercept, swinging his staff too early to deflect. It slammed into his chest, and he grimaced. “Plan B!” He grabbed the magic that struck him, as other blasts did, and sent it back at the mage, knocking him down a few feet.
Garble hopped forward, putting himself between Spike and the twin swordsmen that were there, both in banded mail armor with single swords, like mirror images of each other, and pressed at Garble, cutting him one by one.
From behind them, a single archer was in the back, and like a machine was letting arrows fly one by one at any target that presented itself.
The party, the fake party, pressed at the real party with coordinated teamwork, the two swordsmen working as one, with the magus blasting and disrupting from above, and the archer laying down as many arrows as he could.
With a shuddering slam of stone against stone, Sandra brought her heavy hands together so forcefully, she ceased to be unified, the shards flying out with the wave of force, peppering her enemies even as she brought back at hand that gathered burning flames, calling Aiden back from the void. "We're not giving up!"
Despite her bold words, her sudden lack of amoring proved swiftly painful as arrows pierced her and sent her backpedaling, though her spirit screeched, spreading flames eagerly from its spread wings.
Spike thrust his entire body between the swordsmen and Sandra. Their cocky looks faltered as his deceptively small beam of energy began to hungrily devour at their essence, sending it out to his needing team. "Don't give them a second!"
"Didn't plan on it." Garble caught an incoming sword meant for Spike on his heavy blade, the two sparking with a loud ring of steel on steel as he twirled it towards the enemy and brought it across in a wicked slice across the warrior's front. "Your music's off key. Your footwork's a mess. You wouldn't agree, but I'll make you confess!"
"Team four's momentum is being slowed. What's this? Team one's suddenly rejoining the action. No, wait, they aren't fighting, they're taking everyone with them!"
One of the magicians, forgotten for defeated, was glowing powerfully, their hands raised to the sky.
Sandra's eyes went wide. "Self destruct!"
Smolder hissed. Could people do that? Apparently they could. The way the glow was increasing, it would hit its apex all too quickly. They had to move fast, and she was the fastest they had. "On it."
She pushed off with her legs, slipping underneath the swords of the twins and sidestepping the archer’s counterattack, who didn’t even try to turn his attacks to the self-destructing wizard behind him. As she ran, the words of Pella, just a few days ago, came to her.
“There’s more than one, or even two cooking support classes, you know. The Wonder Waiter serves up horderves from a distance, the Sorcerous Saucier spends lots of time preparing and simmering and puts it to work like a healer might in the back line, but Combat Culinarians?” She chopped lightning quick, mincing the already cooked meat and wrapping it in hot dough to hit the grill again. “We cook up quick dishes that are made to order. I couldn’t be anywhere but here, out on the street, preparing the meals directly.”
Smolder looked on in awe as Pella rapidly assembled her meal, the one she knew only had to hit the super hot heat just long enough to cook through.
She gestured with her knife. “In combat it’s the same. You aren’t hitting your potential if you just cook for others. You get in there, and it’s speed attacks are custom built just for that. And sometimes… you gotta really put the speed on. Something is happening and you gotta be there. And there’s a technique for just that kind of occasion...”
Smolder pumped her legs as she darted across the field, building up speed, and building up heat. She could feel the heat from her weapons, as ripples of hot air trailed behind her, and she finally made it to her destination.
“Searing Strike!” She called out, a rarity for her, bringing her knives, now red hot up, slashing directly across the self-destructing wizard, huge hot waves of air and magic criss crossing his torso. He cried out, limply falling down, his magic dispersing harmlessly.