Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash Vol. 2

7. Leave It To Sensei

Elder talismans were nice.

They were earrings, nose rings, and occasionally necklaces, too. Regardless of which type they were, they almost always had a jewel in them worth more than 5 silver. There was even a time when a single gem sold for 40 silver.

The second level of the Cyrene Mines was home to the low workers, but the third level was home to a slightly higher class known as kobold workers.

The elders on the third level seemed to be their supervisors, and so they were called foremen. Foremen traveled with two to three followers in tow, and while these followers were built like the workers, they were properly armed. Haruhiro and the party were targeting these foremen and their followers.

How strong these groups were depended on the foreman. The foreman's strength was an important factor, but how capable it was at commanding its followers could affect the feel of the battle greatly.

When the foreman came right up front, things would be surprisingly easy. However, when the foreman drew back, siccing its followers on them, things could get pretty hard.

Like humans, they generally focused on doing something about the enemies in front of them. It wasn't that this was a trait of theirs, or anything complicated like that. If you have an enemy in front of you, but you look around for other enemies, what happens? Well, you get killed. That's why they had no other choice but to do things that way. For reasons of practicality, they had no choice but to focus on defeating the enemies in front of them.

That said, sometimes their priorities could change.

For instance, if an ally was in trouble, it was possible they would choose to expose themselves to the enemy they were facing to go save them.

Also, they could be ordered to do so.

Haruhiro couldn't give unreasonable orders to his comrades, but a foreman could. Even if a follower was fighting Moguzo or Ranta, the foreman might gesture and bark for them to go after Shihoru or Merry instead.

When that happened, whether it was out of bravery, obedience, or even a dog-like adherence to the pack hierarchy, they would follow the foreman's orders at great risk to their own lives.

If they got past Moguzo and Ranta, the others would be in real trouble. In particular, Shihoru, as the party mage, couldn't fight in melee combat, so everyone had to cover her. Whenever that happened, they broke formation, and the battle bogged down.

However, if they could just eliminate the foreman, its followers were no match for them. As far as Haruhiro was concerned, all they needed to do was focus their strategy on taking down or otherwise neutralizing the foreman as quickly as possible.

At the moment, there was always one foreman and two or three followers. The fact that there was no variation in their enemies' composition was working in their favor.

The hunting here was simple, but good.

It felt good that they had the fourth and fifth levels to look forward to, as well. When the appropriate time came, they would naturally start to consider taking the next step up, a thought which gave their morale a boost.

After ten days of coming to the third level of the Cyrene Mines, they had built up some money, so they decided they would each learn some new skills or magic. They wanted to broaden their options in battle, and being able to do more things gave them a firm sense that they were growing.

Haruhiro decided to pay 40 silver coins to Barbara-sensei and learn the Spider technique under her.

"Okay, let's do this right away, Old Cat," she said.