Mage Among Superheroes

Though Energy Ward was great for protecting against lasers, it wasn’t limitless. All of us also made use of the various cover while trying to keep our enemies pinned down. Fortunately, we’d taken down a few of the enemy which gave us a decent numerical advantage. That allowed some of us to flank them while they focused on the rest of us.

Of course, Fluffy charged forward with little regard for the lasers. Even if they could have predicted how Energy Ward would work, his particular abilities were a surprise for them. And Fluffy was not shy about taking down his surprised target, leaping at their chest and forcing them to block their face with their arms as his teeth snapped at them. It hardly mattered if said teeth weren’t meant for biting humanoids in particular, he still tore into their thin armor. It was good for mobility and provided reasonable protection, but he still drew blood.

Our various melee inclined combatants moved in with the animals to try to take out more enemies, though most were less successful than Fluffy. Honey Badger made good use of his shield as he charged the mage I’d first targeted, a horrifying bolt of blackness being absorbed by the material. Maybe the magical sensing tests had helped, because he reacted slightly before the visual effects appeared. Or maybe it was some sort of barbarian instinctive fighting thing.

He made use of Rage to improve the strength of his blows. It was his most fundamental skill, so it would have been strange if he didn’t. However, it seemed the woman was relatively familiar with melee weapons, and used her rifle to parry the blow. She didn’t block the hit directly, or she would have easily been overpowered, but instead slipped the blow.

Twirl got into a back and forth exchange with a dagger wielding foe. Our opponents weren’t expecting guns, even if they had lasers of their own, but melee combat was familiar to them. It was a good thing Twirl was fast, as even as he was he barely managed to avoid any serious damage as two blades worked together to harry him while also keeping his own rapier away.

Lyklor’s bat Flower was harassing one of the enemy casters, screeching in their face and otherwise being a tremendous nuisance. Fortunately the little bat was also quite adept at avoiding their attempts to take her out, either by swiping at her or blasting magic around almost randomly. Flower was also quite good at not drawing any incidental damage towards allies.

Miss Flutter was basically just a standard dire bat who had come into Zeb’s service literally earlier in the day. But that didn’t make her not a huge bat, and her wings knocked her opponent over before she chomped at them with her teeth.

But our side wasn’t completely dominating, even with our numerical advantage. A few people seemed to have chosen me as their primary target for some reason. Maybe they didn’t like orcs or it could have been the Blizzard I had blasted into their group.

I took cover from most of them as their lasers blasted at me, but one of them managed to circle around at alarming speed. It only took a short blast to cut through my remaining Energy Ward, and it even began to burn through my jacket into my chest. I should have had plenty of defenses remaining- and my suit was more durable than that too. Did they have some kind of skill to enhance lasers?

No, something that specific would be odd. Just generic weapon improvement, most likely. Given the way they moved, a scout? Midnight had opened the battle with Haste on the two of us so I was at least able to cross my arm over my chest to keep them from hitting my now-vulnerable side, and tried to predict a path of movement.

Since they’d gone behind a stalagmite, they kind of had to appear either to the left or the right. And I could expect them to actually move out instead of leaning around cover, if I was right about them being a scout.

I would have liked to refresh my Energy Ward, but instead I cast Grease- predicting they would continue moving to come out beyond the opposite side of their cover. At the same time, I felt Midnight attacking the others shooting at my cover. Shocking Grasp was limited by requiring physical touch, but it was relatively strong for its cost and bypassed most non-magical protection. As Midnight usually rushed between enemy legs as he did so, even if enemies merely experienced muscle spasms or weren’t hit at all but had to dodge him, he was quite effective.

I inched slightly further around my cover to try to influence the way the scout moved, and I saw the man slip on my Grease- but keep his footing. Oh right, Scouts were also good at that kind of stuff. He was also hard to hit, but I still shot him in the side as he got a short burst with the laser again. Francois was going to be so upset about the necessary repairs. Though maybe magic could do that here?

My Grease wasn’t entirely useless as it caused my enemy to stagger, and along with a couple bullets grazing his side I also threw out a spray of Light. One of the balls of light caught him in the shoulder, making him easy to spot as he moved around and hopefully at least partially blinding him. I realized that there were indeed five instead of four, but put that thought aside for later.

The fight didn’t last much longer, with Lyklor catching the scout from behind- I had literally no idea when or how he got there, but he had their arms behind their back and an arm around their throat from behind. Teamwork also took down the remaining enemies.

Looking at the results… we’d taken down ten opponents, but most of us had injuries on some level. Sir Kalman’s were particularly minor, but even Malaliel had some signs of laser damage. Then again, I didn’t believe most of her job was battle. She just happened to be competent in that field, and some supernatural abilities helped her. Lyklor was the only one I could say was completely unscathed, the old elf having been lurking on the edges of the battle- but clearly participating effectively. Oh, and Zeb. But she hadn’t really been participating in the combat, instead sheltering away from everything.

I realized without both a numerical advantage and the element of surprise, we might have been in a fairly dire situation. It was a good thing we had an oversized squad- and some more experienced people like Sir Kalman and Lyklor.

People looked pretty haggard, even after healing began. They also didn’t look happy. “Did anyone level up?”

“Yeah,” Honey Badger confirmed. In fact, most of them confirmed a level up. But they still weren’t happy.

Maybe I shouldn’t be a leader at all. I sidled over to Sir Kalman, whispering. “What am I supposed to say here?”

“Tell people they did a good job against tough opponents.”

“Right.” I cleared my throat. “Everyone fought well. Don’t be discouraged, those were tough opponents.” It was a good thing the Power Brigade provided everyone good defensive gear. Which was also the thing that made Zeb most vulnerable, as she barely had anything. The Brigade was still working on fully integrating her and her unusual shape and size made Francois’ job more difficult. Plus, she hadn’t been part of the initial plans for this excursion. “We’re going to return to base with our new knowledge and our prisoners.”

-----

All of my instincts had told us to fight, but I also realized that I should have paid more attention to Miss Flutter’s warning. While I had enough levels to fight most opponents, that didn’t mean the Portal Squad did. Even with training providing ranks and skills without points, they weren’t as much as they should have been. Not yet. The Power Brigade had good training regimens, but these enemies were also trained for battle.

A war- even though we were acting as scouts and not frontline soldiers- was a very different environment from anything in New Bay. And people here expected class powers. Yes, things could have gone very wrong.

But they hadn’t. So that was good at least. Unlike what the games said, my world didn’t have convenient resurrection magic.

At Sir Kalman’s advice, I gave everyone a few days off back in Entheas. That meant no training, either. Well, no mandatory training. I was still going to train, and Zeb was happy to take advantage of Lyklor’s teachings. Everyone else trained at least some, but they certainly took things lighter. Even with magic healing injuries, people still got fatigued after serious battles.

I did too. It just so happened I was also invigorated, and anything that didn’t nearly kill me was as big of a deal in my opinion. But I also realized that not everyone was this way.

“Do you think I screwed up, Midnight?”

He shook his head. “It was a reasonable enough choice at the time. Levels aren’t everything, and experience and numbers matter too. But these guys are still new recruits, even with months of training. Though at least everyone had some practical experience back in New Bay.”

“Except with a lower probability of death,” I pointed out. Both the nature of many superpowers and the way that everything was handled tended towards a less lethal atmosphere in New Bay. Though any sort of battle was dangerous. “Honestly, I think the biggest issue is mana, not skill. And though everyone has been training to improve mana capacity properly, level is the biggest factor.”

“I don’t think that’s entirely bad,” Midnight said. “Our early experience with that made us more conscious of how we use our mana, and improved our drive for efficiency. Them experiencing the same thing isn’t bad… though it’s certainly hard.”

“Yeah. I don’t think I should be a leader, though.”

“Maybe a tactical officer,” Midnight commented. “If we’re in battle, you make good decisions.”

“But we shouldn’t always be in battle,” I nodded. “I think that’s about enough of that for now, though. I noticed something. What do you think of this?” I said. I cast Light, specifically using Multicasting. Five orbs appeared, not particularly bright in the sun but still visible enough.

“Well, that looks like light magic.”

“Notice anything odd?” I asked.

“... Not really,” Midnight admitted.

“Count them.”

“There are five,” Midnight said. “What about that- oh.”

“Yeah. You know that feeling I’d been telling you about? I think we hit it. And I checked. We’re at Multicasting rank 5.”

Midnight thought for a few moments. “It used to be four targets for the cost of three. Now…?”

“Five, for the same cost. Though I guess I should test with targeted things. Though this is already weird. Like, can it even do this?”

“Why not?” Midnight asked.

“Well, I thought it was just for support magic. I don’t know if I can literally ever use Multicasting on something like Chain Lightning but… if this works for Sonic Lance or other things it seems extremely strong.”

“So does it?” Midnight asked.

A good point. So I used the least destructive option, Water Blast. I just sprayed it into the sky, so the worst option would be accidentally splashing some people. I didn’t exactly want to set stuff on fire.

And spray it did. I had kind of imagined it like a shotgun, but it was not nearly so compact. The five shots spread like the fingers on a hand stretched wide. The same was sort of true when I had been spraying Light before, but my intention had been to hit different targets. “Let me try again,” I said. Each Multicast cost a bit more than 5 mana- about what a full power Sonic Lance would be. And while I slightly narrowed the width of the spells, when I tried to have them all target the same point I just cast a single normal spell. “It seems pretty strict about having ‘different targets’.”

“Good against crowds,” Midnight said. “Or large enemies. Is each limb and a torso a different target?”

“... I’m going to need Sir Kalman for that,” I commented. Even a handful of Water Blasts to his unarmored body probably wouldn’t cause him much trouble.

He was quite accommodating, and we were able to learn. One hit him directly in the chest… and the others sort of brushed past him. Unless I was standing literally right in front of him- closer than fifteen feet- they spread out too broadly to do anything more. Though at somewhere around thirty to fifty, I could vaguely hit one shoulder, a foot, and a shield sticking out to the opposite side. Which was all well and good, if people stood stock still and let me hit them.

“Targeting is hard,” I complained.

Buff spells were good. They didn’t have projectiles, and just sort of attached themselves to people. Targeting a wide area was easy enough. But targeting multiple specific points was difficult. And while I might eventually be able to narrow in the scope, I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. A Sonic Lance to the torso would be better than what I was trying.

Speaking of Sonic Lance, a particular empty field had a bunch of dirt fly everywhere. Multicasting Sonic Lance was slightly more expensive as Chain Lightning and Blizzard. Similar in total power.

I’d learned a lot. But I didn’t really need ways to spend more mana on offense. Targeting 5 people with Haste was great, though. Or more, if I included people with any sort of linked companions.