Why Are You Staring So Blankly

I had been watching from the side the entire time, and the conclusion was unavoidable. Taken as a whole, this team was hopeless.

They're not a pro team. Just a bunch of Level 20s I met five minutes ago. What was I even expecting?

Even so, this was too much. Not a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠single order he had given since we entered the fourth room had been even halfway competent. At this rate we would be wiped out before we ever reached the fifth room—the midpoint of the bet.

"Mage, rest! Swordsman, fall back and get treated by the Supporter!"

"Uh... huh? Then this ghoul..."

"You're not the only Warrior on this team."

I loosened my body and set the mana inside me moving. The stat had climbed to 7, and the mana I could handle had increased by only a little—but for someone who used every drop as efficiently as I did, that little was an enormous gain. A low thrum gathered, and then I kicked off the ground, both hands locked around the club with everything I had.

"Lucky they're ghouls. Their attack's decent enough, but—"

Crack!

"—their defense is garbage!"

The club came down, and the rotten torso caved in and burst apart. I dropped several of them in a blink, and new heads were already shoving into the gap. Overwhelming numbers: one of the most irritating things about ghouls. But even that was no problem for me now.

Not when the enemy was undead, dragging rotting bodies around.

They were the best matchup I could ask for.

Rrrrumble! A purple barrier unfurled, and the gravity around me surged. The pressure bore down on my own body as well, grinding hard into my shoulders.

"Krrrrk...! Kekek!"

"Kaaaaah!"

But for corpses—muscle and joints rotted through, bones riddled with holes—this gravity was far more lethal. Unable to bear the weight, the ghouls collapsed one after another and were ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠crushed flat. Once I confirmed that every ghoul near me had been neutralized, I released the skill. The club whipped through the air again, and I went back to beating them down.

Swing, generated at just the right moment. I could feel the force behind each blow of the club tick upward, if only slightly.

"Whoa... whoa..."

"Focus. This isn't over."

"Y-yes, sir!"

One word to the streamer, who had been gawking at me, and he snapped back to himself and threw his attention into the hunt again. For several minutes after that, we beat ghouls in silence.

"Whew."

I crushed the last ghoul's head, and with that, the fourth room was clear.

Only after I confirmed the count had properly gone up did I let the tension leave my body.

"H-how is this even..."

"You're really Level 6...?"

Color had returned to the Mage's face thanks to the Supporter's efforts, and the swordsman's wounds had closed. Both of them were staring this way with their mouths hanging open. The air said they simply could not believe I had cut down that many ghouls with no Mage, no Supporter, and not even covering fire from an Archer.

Well. If they hadn't been ghouls, it might have been harder than this. You can't ignore a raw gap in stats. Even so, I wouldn't have gone down. My mana stat was only 7 right now, but factor in efficiency and output, and it didn't fall short of 20.

"Whoa... Jaeha hyung-nim. I seriously see you differently now. Where on earth were you hiding power like that?"

Taeya sauntered over, laying the bluster on thick and loose on purpose.

"Haha! If you're that strong, you should've stepped up sooner. We were this close to getting wiped, you know."

"I was only following the leader's orders. Wasn't my role to do nothing and stay in the back?"

"Ah, no... that's..."

I answered on purpose, flat and dry, and his lips trembled faintly.

"That's because I didn't know you were that strong, hyung-nim!"

"I said it plainly. The reason I was matched here is that my ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠level fits yours. And from the way I caught the rat that ambushed us in the third room, you should have known I wasn't deliberately hiding what I could do."

I stared steadily into the eyes buried under his bangs.

"So why didn't you reassign positions when our combat strength changed?"

"That's..."

"Worse, the moment we entered the fourth room, you switched yourself from Archer to Warrior like you were simply announcing it. The advantage of a multi-position is that flexibility, yes. But a sudden change no one agreed to only multiplies the chaos. That's why the swordsman was badly hurt."

"......"

And that was not the end of what needed saying. I walked over to the swordsman and the mage.

"The way the front line was handled was a mess, too. A Normal Sword User is closer to a damage dealer than a tank. Plant him too far forward and use him as a monster wall, and his efficiency falls off a cliff."

"Th... yeah. That's right."

At my words, the swordsman nodded as if spellbound.

"And what appalled me most of all was the Mage."

The moment I named her, the woman flinched, shoulders jumping. She seemed to think the rebuke was aimed at her, and her head dropped.

"You did notice that her cast times kept getting longer from the middle onward, didn't you?"

"...Yes."

"And yet you never once checked on the Mage's condition."

I stepped closer to her and held out a hand.

"Excuse me. May I see your hand for a moment?"

"Huh? Ah... yes."

I took her hand, carefully.

"Eek...!"

The Mage startled softly, a flush climbing the nape of her neck, but I went on without minding it.

"Cold. And trembling, just a little. Mana depletion."

Mages who depend on their mana stat suffer depletion the moment that mana runs low. It was one of the reasons the Mana Capsule was invented, in the world before my regression.

"A Level 20 Mage is not at a level where she can chain large-scale spells like that. And yet the leader didn't consider it in the slightest. He forced the clear without giving her any time to recover mana."

"That's...!"

"Yes. You're right. The Mage clearly bears responsibility as well, for not reporting her own condition to the leader. However."

I swallowed the irritation rising in me, and the sheer patheticness of it, and kept going.

"Reading your teammates' conditions ahead of time is also part of what makes a leader. The Mage had already shown, several times over, that she was at her limit. The one who paid that no attention at all was you."

The problem, from the start, was using a One Mage Strategy—the sort of thing you would only see at Silver—in a level range like this. The rest of the team buys time while the Mage prepares an enormous spell, and then she sweeps the monsters away in a single cast. It only becomes efficient after a Mage has at least obtained a second-advancement class.

A Novice Mage bottoms out after two or three big spells.

The streamer in front of me was the classic case of eyes that had outgrown his hands. High-level league matches, high-rank games—he had watched them, and then tried to lean on the skill he saw there. Nothing but hot air.

"You should have given the Supporter precise orders for the buffs, too. At least in the final stretch, it would have been better to concentrate them on either the Mage or the swordsman."

"......"

I could have kept talking until tomorrow. I had picked out only the largest problems.

"Heh... You don't pull your punches, hyung-nim."

"I told you. I want this dungeon cleared. What I just said is only the minimum required to clear the Underground Prison."

"Okay! I'll own it. That was my misread."

I had expected anger, or at least a sneer. Instead Taeya admitted it, clean as anything.

...No. Not quite.

I knew this kind of person. Confident in their own skill, and proud of it. On the surface they played the relaxed, unshaken genius, but—

"Then how about you take the leader from here, Jaeha hyung-nim?"

—inside, they burned with a fiercer will to win than anyone. He was doing it even now. His mouth was smiling, and he moved as lightly as a kid pulling a prank, but—

The eyes barely showing through his bangs.

His pupils glinted with anger. Still, the fact that he could force those feelings down at all was worth some credit.

"It was supposed to be five rooms each, but since I cleared four, you only have to clear four too, hyung-nim. After that, how about we vote on who's more fit to lead?"

"Fine by me, but..."

I narrowed my eyes slightly, and he lifted both hands, palms open.

"I'm not planning to troll or get in the way on purpose. You haven't forgotten, right? I'm live. Troll on a broadcast and you're finished, you know."

"If that's the case, I'll trust you."

And with that, leadership finally passed to me. At last, the chance to take this rabble of a team apart and put it back together had come into my hands.

"First."

The very first thing I did was change the positions.

"I'll be reassigning them."

I turned first to the mage who, until a moment ago, had been our Mage.

"From now on, your position is not Mage. It's Archer."

"Wh... what?! Archer?!"

"And I'll be moving Taeya from Archer to Warrior."

Everyone else would stay locked where they were. The strategy I meant to use had a name.

"Three Knight Strategy."

A formation that left the Mage out and fielded three Warriors.

"Three Warriors and that's it? You really think that'll work?"

The swordsman voiced his doubt, but the reasoning was solid.

"The Underground Prison tends to throw a lot of monsters at you. The sewer rats were like that, and so were the ghouls. So committing fully to a strong front line will raise our stability."

"R-right... But is there a reason you're switching the young lady to Archer? You could just leave her as Mage..."

"A Mage is a cannon. You prepare high-firepower magic and detonate it all at once. Right now, we don't have the spare attention to look after a Mage's safety."

An Archer, by contrast, is a position that can act on its own, without help from the team.

"Mage. When you advanced to Novice Mage, you gained the skill Magic Arrow, correct?"

"Ah... yes. I have it."

"Unlike the spells you've been using, the cast time is much shorter, and it costs far less mana."

"That's right."

"From now on, use only that skill. Harass with it, give us covering fire, and keep your own watch on anything that comes near you. You'll need to look after your own survival as well."

"...Yes!"

The mage's eyes lit, and she nodded hard.

"Supporter, focus your buffs on us Warriors. Three Knight Strategy has the Warriors handling both attack and defense, so we'll need all the support you can give. Priority is me, then the swordsman, and Taeya last."

"Understood."

After that, I laid out how we would fight, keeping it light.

Whew.

Once the whole process was finished, I let out a breath. This much ought to be far more usable than what we'd had.

"Everyone understand?"

"......"

"......"

"...Hello?"

I called to the swordsman and the mage, who weren't answering.

"I-it's not that..."

"How are you this sharp on the theory? And you're only Level 6! I thought you were Gold rank or something."

"He's right! Some of it didn't even seem like something you could get from studying or analysis alone. It felt like... experience, I suppose."

The remark struck close enough to the mark that all I could do was smile, bitter.

"All right. Let's go."

A new captain, and the first voyage out. The result—

Clear time cut by seventy percent—and a continued push with not a single one of us hurt.