Saving the Party
Monitoring had more benefits than simply measuring stats.
When the inside of a Gate could be watched in real time from the outside in a dozen different ways, people naturally got a lot less comfortable pulling stupid stunts once they were in there.
Before this kind of monitoring became standard, all sorts of things supposedly happened. People would bring in beginners and use them as sacrificial bait. They’d lure monsters into a chase, get them killed, and walk out with the gear stripped clean off the bodies.
Of course, sticking a dashcam in a car doesn’t magically eliminate every asshole on the road, but at least it makes responsibility clear. That meant people couldn’t get away with blatant nonsense quite so easily anymore.
That shift had changed other things, too. In the past, it was rare to recruit party members on the spot and then go challenge a Gate together. It was bad enough that even people you knew might stab you in the back, so trusting total strangers was obviously out of the question.
But after monitoring became commonplace, it got a lot more normal to gather a pickup party and try an expedition that way. Naturally, it was rare for everyone to be complete strangers. Most of the time, a few fixed members would come together and fill the remaining slots with recruits on the spot. Then, as those fixed members kept growing in number, they’d eventually take shape as a guild.
“Thank you for your help today as well.”
“We’re the ones who should be thanking you.”
The people heading out on today’s Gate expedition were gathered around one such small, fixed party.
“I’ll help you with your equipment.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
The person assigned to me was a petite female healer, and when I approached her, she flinched and looked startled.
“Is something wrong?”
“N-no, not at all.”
Her frantic head-shaking was kind of cute. If I had to guess, she was probably very popular with men.
Remembering how other people had handled this when I was out as an Awakened, I carefully attached the gear piece by piece. As expected, anything you observed well would pay off later somehow.
“Equipment’s all set.”
“Thank you. You’ve worked hard.”
“Not at all.”
Watching her scamper back to the rest of the party made me feel a little proud. I couldn’t fight as an Awakened, but at least I was doing my part as a human being.
Once the Awakened members had finished getting suited up, they checked a few last things and headed straight into the Gate.
“All right, let’s begin monitoring. Those who are free, please clear the surrounding area.”
“Yes!”
We tidied up the loose equipment and supplies so everything would be ready to pack away quickly once the expedition was over. After the rough work was done, the supervisor came over and handed me a drink.
“Thanks to you, things went a lot smoother, Seha. You were a huge help.”
“Not at all.”
“Just looking at you, I’d have thought you’d never even gotten your hands dirty before.”
“Is that so? I’ve actually done just about everything there is to do.”
“Really? No wonder you looked surprisingly used to hard labor. Ha ha ha.”
I took a sip of the drink the supervisor had given me and wandered over toward the people doing the monitoring.
It wasn’t a brutally difficult Gate anyway. As long as nothing major went wrong, it was perfectly manageable, so the people on monitoring duty didn’t seem especially tense.
About an hour after monitoring began, one of them suddenly frowned and said, “This isn’t good.”
“What is it?”
“The healer looks exhausted.”
“What?”
That was one of the small but nasty problems with a pickup party.
Usually, a pickup party tended to revolve around important roles like tanks and healers. The problem was the outside members. Since they were only likely to see one another once, a lot of them would try to save their own consumables by assuming, “Well, the healer’s there, isn’t she?”
Of course, that kind of problem had to be addressed either by the tank in charge of the party or by the healer herself. But if the party leader was still green and clumsy at managing a team, and the healer also happened to be the sort of person who couldn’t easily tell others off, then there were always people who’d try to exploit that.
And that was exactly what was happening now.
The biggest issue was that a healer’s mana wasn’t infinite. If they got worn out first because of this kind of abuse, there could come a moment when they were unable to act precisely when action was needed most.
On top of that, healers often had low offensive power, so if the party ever collapsed, they were the ones most likely to take the heaviest damage.
“This is bad. Try contacting the party leader.”
“Yes, sir.”
But for some reason, the communication wasn’t working properly. It looked like there was a problem with the communication module.
“Talk about bad timing. Who do we have on standby at the Association?”
“Well... a lot of people have been dispatched elsewhere today.”
That was how bad it was. They’d even dragged out me, an intern on my second day of work.
After watching for a moment, I cautiously said to the supervisor, “Um, if it’s all right, could I go in there?”
“Huh? You, Seha?”
“Yes. I’m actually aiming to be a tank.”
“Seriously?”
“I’m working as an intern for now because of my dual class, but if I’m just relaying the situation rather than doing the fighting myself, I should be fine.”
“Oh. In that case.”
When I showed him my registration card to confirm it, the supervisor’s face brightened. If they called for an Awakened from the Association now, the problem might already have gotten far worse by the time anyone arrived.
Even for an Awakened, going in alone was dangerous. But if I was aiming to be a tank, the situation changed a bit. After all, even if I got hit by an unexpected attack, I should be able to hold out long enough.
“All right, everyone, gather up!”
The people who had been taking a break rushed over and hurriedly helped me get my equipment on. Meanwhile, the staff on monitoring duty sketched a rough map and showed me the route the party had taken so far.
“First, check the communication module. If you can get in touch with the party leader, we might not need to go all the way in there.”
“Yes. Understood.”
The moment I’d memorized the supervisor’s instructions, I dashed into the Gate.
As soon as I stepped inside, the dense mana of the Gate washed over my skin, something I hadn’t experienced for over a week.
It felt strangely nostalgic. But this was no time to savor feelings like that.
Following the supervisor’s orders, I checked the communication module installed deeper inside first. Nothing seemed wrong at a glance. It looked like there was some kind of radio interference inside the Gate.
Of all things, why would the interference only hit the communication module?
“The communication module looks fine. I’m heading deeper in now.”
After speaking into the mic so the people on monitoring duty could hear me, I checked the direction of the party’s path by following the footprints left behind and immediately broke into a run.
The people ahead of me would have cleared out the monsters inside, but if things went badly, the beasts could get tangled up in the middle and make the whole situation much worse.
That was exactly why I had to watch my surroundings even more carefully. I’d come in to help, not to commit some nuisance-level crime by dragging monsters from every direction and hurling them straight at the party.
In any case, all I could do was hope nothing had gone wrong before I arrived.
If nothing had, then this would simply amount to me getting dragged around like a dog on a training run for a while.
But there was no way things in this world ever ended that cleanly.
“Fuck, this is exactly why I said I didn’t want to do pickup parties!”
Holy shit. If I could already hear that before even arriving, then things had clearly gone off the rails.
Sure enough, bloodshot wolves were pressing the party hard.
The party leader had been injured badly enough that his upper body was a mess of blood, and he was only barely holding on. The healer I’d equipped earlier had gone completely pale and was slumped on the ground, panting shallowly.
“Who the hell brings some useless idiot like that as a healer and makes this happen?”
“Shut up already! We’ve got enough going on without you adding to it!”
“What, now? This is my fault? You’re saying it’s my fault?”
On top of that, there was even someone stirring up trouble in the middle of it all. It was a lucky break that this was a Gate with relatively weak monsters. If not, there would have been dead bodies already.
Without another thought, I sprinted straight into the party. Then I grabbed the crossbody bag I’d been carrying and shoved it into the hands of the healer who was crouched on the ground.
“Huh?”
Even while sweating cold from mana depletion, she recognized me and looked stunned.
“It’s a mana potion. Recover your mana first.”
“T-thank you.”
After giving the exhausted girl a gentle pat on the head, I turned to the party leader.
“Party leader! Tank rotation!” I called. “Fall back and recover first!”
“What?”
Before he could even react, still straining to fend off the wolves, I stepped forward.
At that moment, the wolves that had been surrounding the party and pressuring them from all sides instantly fixed their eyes on me.
See that? That’s the majesty of a Threat Attraction Factor (TAF) of 94.8 percent.
Threat Attraction Factor (TAF) was a unique stat that forcibly drew enemy attention the moment combat began.
In other words, even without any other factor at play, 94.8 percent of the monsters in my field of vision would lock onto me. And that was without me even using a taunt skill!
The average trainee TAF was something like 21 percent. They didn’t call my number miraculous for nothing.
“Huh?”
“Who’s that?”
The others were thrown off by my sudden entrance, but I didn’t have time to answer each of them individually. Two wolves immediately bared their teeth and lunged at me.
If this had been before, I would’ve parried with a punch or a kick and redirected their momentum. But with my class combination all tangled up now, I couldn’t even use basic techniques like that.
Still, that didn’t mean I was out of options.
So what if my classes were a mess? I wasn’t just going to stand there and let them hit me. I’d studied my situation and found a few methods that worked.
The biggest problem was overlapping commands. In that case, why not use a finisher that didn’t overlap with anything else?
“Hōenbu!”
As I twisted my body in a spinning motion, as if sweeping out with a tail, a massive burst of fire instantly whipped around me.
The two wolves caught in the radius were swallowed at once by the explosion and blaze and collapsed.
“Huh?”
I heard the idiot who’d been stirring up trouble until just now gasp in disbelief.
Good. Shut your damn mouth for once.
Another wolf leaped high into the air and came plunging down for my head.
“Damn it. I haven’t tested this one yet.”
If I could use basic techniques, a single back kick would’ve been enough. But once again, I had no choice but to use a finisher. On top of that, it was one I hadn’t even tested yet.
“Shadow Edge!”
Shouting the skill name felt a little cringe, but I had no choice. If it were a skill I was already used to, maybe I could’ve done without it, but this wasn’t one of those situations.
As I leaped and threw an upward motion like an uppercut, blade-shaped wings made of shadow appeared and sliced through the exact path of my fist.
My fist smashed the wolf’s jaw in one blow, and then the blades split the monster’s body clean in half.
The spectacular two-hit combination detonated, and the blood spraying out of the wolf’s body burst everywhere like a fountain.
Actually, that was a problem too.
Finishers were great, but humans still had a clear limit on mana. If I mindlessly spammed nothing but finishers, I’d eventually end up with mana depletion, just like the healer slumped over there.
“...”
Maybe they were shocked that I’d wiped out three wolves, all of which had been giving them so much trouble, in the blink of an eye. The others had frozen in place, dumbfounded.
“What are you standing around for? Hurry up and clear them out!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Just like that, as if the danger from a moment ago had been a lie, the wolves were swept away in an instant.
Well, I was completely drawing the wolves’ aggro. All they had to do was beat on them. If they couldn’t even manage that much, they might as well hand in their Awakened registration cards.