The party stopped outside the boss’s longhouse to plan. The dossier already explained the finer details of this encounter, but it was still Julia’s first boss fight. Caution would be her friend here.

  “Alright, why don’t we go over what we know before anything else? Julia, will you summarize this encounter for us?” Braden prompted.

  “The encounter begins as soon as we step into the longhouse. There are two hobgoblins led by a shaman. The hobgoblins are the damage dealers—they rush you as soon as you enter, while the shaman remains in the back and focuses on crowd control.

  “They use two-handed clubs and are each armored with a rusty iron breastplate. I don’t recall reading about any other armor, so I’m guessing it’s just their torsos that are protected. They are deceptively quick due to being stronger than goblins, and getting hit by one would be a bad idea.

  “The shaman wears rags but carries a staff with a nature focus. It will use the focus to boost the strength of its spells, such as Constricting Roots. There is a bit of a trap in this longhouse due to the roots hidden underneath. They can’t be seen above ground, so they can catch unwary or unprepared adventurers by surprise,” Julia finished.

  Braden and Ravina both nodded. “Aye, I been tellin’ ya to watch your feet. This’ll be a good test,” Ravina said with more gusto than Julia was comfortable with.

  “Right, I’d like you to do some of the planning for this encounter, Julia, but I am acting as the party leader, so I’ll give us a heading: we should definitely take out the shaman first,” Braden declared.

  “Yeah, standard procedure, that. Mages are a pain in th’ ass for everyone. Whether it’s fireballs, tornadoes, or roots tryin’ ta trip ya up, you're always better guttin’ ‘em first. Healers, too. Can’t make no progress in a fight if ya can’t make no wounds,” Ravina said while spitting to the side of the path. Gross.

  “Ok, then…um…we need Ravina to hold the hobgoblins' attention. Since you’re the healer, Braden, I guess I have to take the shaman out…I think I can maybe interfere with spells targeting roots beneath our feet.

  “If I use Density to compact the ground directly around us, and then use Temperature to freeze the compacted ground, the roots should have a pretty tough time getting through. Then I just need to either close in on it while the hobs are distracted and dispatch it with my sword, or use a long range spell.

  “Maybe Spire? If it’s unarmored, a spike of earth shooting up from right below it could at least do some damage, if not kill it,” Julia thought out loud.

  “That sounds like a good plan,” Braden nodded. “We have a saying where I’m from, ‘No plan survives contact with the enemy.’ It means that it’s completely impossible to make a foolproof plan, even with all the information in the world. To that end, simple plans tend to work best because they’re more adaptable.

  “The more complicated the plan, the more that can go wrong and, thus, the easier it is to fall apart. So, what I’m getting at is that if I were you, I would compartmentalize those things you just said. Keep the overall plan simple and in one compartment in your mind, and keep the methods you could use to implement the plan in another, separate compartment.

  “The plan is to draw in the melee combatants, and disrupt and dispatch the mage while their attention is held. That’s your compartment for the plan. The compartment for disrupting the mage is that you could use the compacted and frozen ground to prevent the shaman’s area of effect spells, and your compartment for dispatching is potentially a sword strike or long-range spell.

  “This way, you can shift compartments around as needed while still keeping to the simple plan of taking the shaman out first.

  “Everyone ok with what we’ve got?” Braden asked. Ravina and Julia nodded. The party lined up behind Ravina, who pushed the door to the longhouse open and charged in. Julia was right behind her, with Braden bringing up the rear.

  She jerked her head back and stumbled in her first step when a root shot out of the ground. It almost took her eye out! Ravina stepped back and parried it away from her at the last second, but that thing almost killed her!

  So much for just crowd control; that shaman’s magic was dangerous. They had just entered the building! She knew it was going to start once they walked in, but this was still—“Focus!” Ravina shouted.

  The shout jolted Julia out of her daze, and she dashed after Ravina. She extended her Water Shield to function more like a kite shield than a buckler and then focused on the earth below them. She pushed mana into the dirt and was surprised by how easy it was.

  The dirt was so loose it was almost sand. The shaman must have messed with it in advance to make it easier to move its roots around in. Julia grabbed as much as she was comfortable with spending mana on and began compressing it beneath the party.

  At the same time, she began siphoning the heat out of the ground she was compressing and sent it into the air above her. This had the unexpected benefit of making a thick fog lift from the ground around them. They were concealed from anyone more than a stride away.

  This didn’t do much for Ravina—apparently—as Julia heard the clash of weapons in front of her, followed by a howl of pain and rage. Ravina seemed to have decided against the verbal taunts in favor of physical provocations this time. She must have kicked one of the hobs from the sounds Julia heard.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Her attention was drawn once again to the ground below her. She felt the roots writhing beneath. They were like worms trying to dig in and squirm around the compacted, frozen dirt beneath their feet. The shaman didn’t require sight to impede them, clearly.

  Julia realized suddenly that she was on a timer. She had to actively use mana to keep the dirt compacted and frozen against the root strikes. Every hit drained just a bit more from her. She activated her Truesight, and the fog around her cleared as if it were never there. Instead, she could see a faint haze of mana mixed into the air around them, which she assumed was the fog itself.

  Through the mana haze, she saw two hulking figures swinging their clubs wildly at Ravina. They were about the size of tall men, with thick, corded muscles lining their frames. Their coloring was closer to orange than the green of standard goblins, and their beady eyes held a madness that was difficult to quantify. Julia wondered if this was what a berserker’s rage looked like.

  Ravina was having no trouble. In fact, she had her eyes closed, to Julia’s astonishment. It didn’t seem to be due to the fog, either. Julia had no doubt she had some way to see through it if she wanted, but she seemed to be closing her eyes as a taunt.

  She was also engaging in more physical provocation. She would parry a strike and tap a hob on its forehead before retreating out of its guard, or she’d step on its foot when it overextended. Julia decided she shouldn’t be so surprised. She knew firsthand how good Ravina was at pissing people off.

  Past the melee was a goblin that looked like any other except for the staff it clutched. Clearly a weapon obtained from one of its victims, it was a gnarled branch clutching a green gem at the end like twisted fingers. The goblin had the butt of the staff firmly planted into the ground and seemed to be concentrating on it intently.

  Seeing that it was focused on the ground it was trying to send its roots through, Julia had a burst of inspiration. She let her focus shift slightly away from maintaining the compacted ground—she needed all the attention she could spare—and created three icicles out of her shield.

  Her shifted focus meant that the roots burrowed deeper into the safe zone she had created, but that had the additional effect of further drawing the shaman’s attention from the cloud of fog. Julia launched her icicles just as she felt the roots break through the surface of the ground around them. They were within a stride-or-two and advancing fast.

  The shaman looked up just in time to fall back on its rear. The icicles passed harmlessly above its head. It glared at the cloud of fog, and a sinister grin crossed its face as it realized it had just dodged its enemy’s trump card. It made to slam its staff back into the ground in victory just as a spear of earth shot out of that same ground.

  The earth spear pierced through the bottom of the shaman’s jaw and continued with little resistance. It wasn’t strong enough to pierce all the way through the shaman’s head and out the top, but Julia had no doubt it had made it to the brain. The shaman’s legs collapsed, its staff clattering to the ground beside it. Its head was still punctured by the earth spear, though, so its body hung there limply like a grisly trophy.

  Julia took a breath and released her mana from the ground around her. It was a tremendous relief to let go. She didn’t realize how much that spell combination was taxing her mentally. The work was not yet complete, however.

  She focused on two final spells. First, she sank the hobgoblins’ feet into the ground down to the ankle. She made sure to time it right when they were about to strike. They seemed to be attempting a coordinated strike against Ravina, which Julia thought was impressive planning considering their berserk state.

  They stumbled as their feet stopped dead, but their momentum carried the rest of them forward. Ravina took a step back, likely sensing that things were wrapping up. The hobs looked around, seeing Julia looking in their direction now that the fog was dissipating. It was too late, though.

  Just as their heads turned Julia’s direction, she released both the icicles that were hovering over her own head. They only had a couple strides to travel, so they arrived almost instantly and pierced into one of each hobs’ eyes. Their heads were flung back with the momentum of the icicles, and their bodies crumpled backwards, their knees bent at an angle due to their feet still being locked into the ground.

  Julia collapsed as well. She sat on the ground, huffing. She hadn’t used all of her mana—just over 50% of it. However, the mental toll of maintaining several concurrent spells had completely drained her. She could feel a headache brewing. Fortunately, it seemed to be a simple headache rather than the terrible mana exhaustion migraine.

  “Excellent work, Jules. Truly. Well done. That was some inspired spell casting. I especially liked drawing the shaman’s attention away from the ground.

  “Not only did this distract it from potentially seeing your mana taking over the ground it was just working on, you lured it into a false sense of security by making it think the icicles were your only move. Once it had dropped its guard, you hit it with the very earth it had been manipulating. That was wonderful work,” Braden praised.

  “Aye, that was some nice castin,’ girly. Part of me wants to say ya should’a charged the little shit and cut its throat, but I’d be a poor teacher to criticize ya for using all the tools in your belt. Killin’ it at range was the right move. Good job.

  “I’ll take cold steel over wispy magic anyday, myself though,” Ravina…praised? Julia thought it was praise. Somehow, Ravina managed to make even praise sound questionable.

  “Thanks. I’m exhausted. I’ve never cast and maintained so many spells at once. At one point, I had both the compression and freezing active—while also building the icicles and laying the foundation for the earth spear. I didn’t realize how hard it was until it was over,” Julia explained.

  “Yes, that was some wonderful multitasking. Shifting a bit of your focus away from defending against the roots also worked very well for your gambit. The shaman suddenly gaining ground probably subconsciously tipped it off that it was either about to win, or something was wrong. That was probably what enabled it to—clumsily—dodge the ice, further reinforcing the idea that it had just dodged your final move.

  “And shifting the heat from the ground into the air to create fog, that was great. I don’t know if you can tell, but I have a lot to say about this encounter. I want to go over it step-by-step so you can nail down all the things you did right and learn from the things you did wrong. However, why don’t we get out of here first?

  “Unfortunately, despite you doing all the damage, Ravina and I are way too high-Level for this place. The dungeon is certainly not going to reward us for clearing it. How about we stop by the market on the way back? We can get our own rewards for a successful clear and a bite to eat before heading home. Trixy’s probably torn the house in two by now,” Braden chuckled.

  Julia smiled, nodded, and they headed home. That’s one party run down, a few more—and one solo run—to go.