The two groups began to converge, and Karl could see the fear in the other group leader’s face as he saw the Spider Golems putting in work to shred their way through the Ogres who had come from the other side of the anomaly to try to remove the threat.
The Golems weren’t interested in the humans, though. Once the two groups got close enough that Team One was becoming concerned about how controlled that carnage actually was, the Golems turned to fight off in a different direction, leaving the last few dozen Ogres between Karl’s group and theirs alone.
Karl noticed Hawk diving into the field of bodies, and assumed he must have seen something that looked tasty, or possibly a survivor that was hidden from his explosions, but the bird came back up with a sword clutched in its claws, and made a large loop before dive-bombing the Ogres, using the blade as a projectile.
[Unsatisfying.] Hawk informed him with great sadness as he followed the blade with a barrage of fireballs across the heads of the Ogres.
[Very unsatisfying fight. Everything is too big to eat again.] Remi agreed with great sadness.
Hawk laughed and threw a Rend attack at the ground, then dipped beneath the tall grass to pick something up.
[Here, try this, it might be tasty.] He suggested.
The bird tossed a large Common Grade ferret monster over the heads of the defenders, and Remi instinctively struck at it, dosing it with venom before giving it a squeeze to make sure it was finished.
[Oh, not bad. It’s got a good texture. We should go out and do this more often.]
Karl sighed as the two beasts got distracted.
[If you’re done with your mid-battle snack, we’ve still got work to do.] He reminded the wayward pair.
Remi shrugged off his concern. A large part of her damage output was her totems and Blizzard spell, and both of those were still active. She had even given Lotus and Doug one of her Healing Totems to hold on to until they expired.
She wanted to test them, and it looked like the targeting runes worked, since they were not healing the Ogres, but nobody was injured, so she couldn’t be certain that they were properly healing anyone at all.
Maybe once the other group got here. They didn’t have [Refreshing Lightning] so they might be taking some damage for the totems to heal.
The two groups reached each other, and Remi immediately rushed over to put her healing totems in the middle of the other group.
They also hadn’t taken much damage, but one warrior had a scrape on his arm, which healed on the first pulse of the Totems.
[Victory! I have proof that the healing totems work.] Remi declared.
Closing a scratch wasn’t exactly a high standard of healing, but it was what they had to work with, and the healers in the other group didn’t specialize in long duration healing like Lotus did. They would do an area heal at the end of the fight for all those little scratches and scrapes, as they didn’t affect the combat abilities of the group.
“Did the snake just cast a healing totem in the middle of our group?” The other team’s Royal Rank warrior asked.
“Yeah, she just learned the spell, but we’ve all got a Lightning Barrier on us, so nobody took any damage to test it. One of your guys had a scrape, so she put out the totems to prove that they worked properly.” Karl explained.
The team leader took a moment to make sure that he didn’t hear Karl incorrectly. It was rare that anyone just learned a new skill without extensive training or some sort of special resource.
Most of them had only learned a few since they started their second year at the Academy, so to hear that a snake had just learned to make healing totems was mind-boggling.
“We will circle the anomaly back in the direction we arrived from, and we will meet you in the middle. It looks like most of the threat is cleared, but we will need to do a full sweep to ensure none of them fled.” He responded instead of getting side tracked by the shaman snake.
“I have a Royal Rank Dragonhawk hunting deserters and ensuring that nothing fled the area already, I will update you if we find anything.” Karl agreed, then led his team toward the trail of carnage that the Spider Golems had left.
There wasn’t going to be much left to kill by the time that they double-checked all the Ogres to ensure they were dead and didn’t have any magical items on them. But it was important that they did not leave survivors, and Rae had discovered that many of them had new types of rocks and magical plants.
The plants could go to Thor, for a bit of variety in his diet, but these special rocks didn’t shine or glow, so Rae was collecting all that she could.
As magical resources, many of them had purposes beyond simply decoration, including a few Fire Elemental stones that Karl saw could be used to make concoctions to help Hawk, and a Water Element Stone to help Remi.
He really had to put more work into finding all the ingredients that went into these concoctions. There was a very real chance that he might be able to bring the team to the peak of Royal Rank in record time if he could find the identified ingredients.
The problem was that none of the names it gave were the common ones in use for the items that he needed, so when he asked about them, there was only a slim chance that a Librarian of the Blue Dragon, or some other researcher might recognize the ancient name for the resource.
None of the stones or resources in the spaces could make a resource that he hadn’t tried yet. There was a chance that some of them could be used twice, but from what he knew of growth resources, they usually didn’t have the same level of effect the second time.
The others were picking up random items as they progressed, mostly stuffing them into the silk bags on Thor’s sides, so they could donate them to the armoury for credits.
The Spider Golems made their way to the other team, then doubled back, looting what they could understand from the instructions Rae gave them.
Mostly it was larger magic items that the Ogres had, which baffled the other team.
“Where are you even going to put all that? You can’t possibly need a load of Awakened and Ascended Rank weapons and jewellery.” He asked.
“We put it in bags on Thor, and then we load it in the helicopter when we leave. It keeps the main lines stocked with random stuff, and sometimes there is an actual treasure.”
The team leader looked around at the mess, and then at the anomaly.
“Should we check that? It might still be allowing monsters out.” He asked.
“Rae, send a golem in and see what happens.” Karl instructed.
The Golems jumped into the anomaly, spiked forelimbs first, and the group anxiously waited for a few seconds until Rae gave her update.
[It’s empty, no treats.]
