Lilia's Tale: Freyja's Endeavor

Chapter 60: Party

The rest of lunch was oddly silent. Father seemed thoughtful and Sayuri was still as confused as she was at the start of the conversation. We ended up just finishing eating and then separating. Father went to answer students as he had promised while the two of us went to patrol.

It had felt like an eternity since I last did this duty of mine. It was almost refreshing, having an activity that did not stress me out in importance or urgency. I even tried to find Julle but he was nowhere. Maybe he was just patrolling elsewhere?

The bell eventually rang and we headed towards the arena for our afternoon class. Nothing was out of the ordinary as Koko-sensei and Father came over and started explaining this week's activities.

"Now, let me show you what exactly we will be working on," Father eventually said. "Lilia, can you come over please?"

I was surprised but simply walked up as requested. Father summoned his famous Holy Knight and continued talking:

"Now, please summon a few goblins and try to fight with them against my own summon."

I was starting to be a bit cautious, such request reeks of underlying expectations. However, I did not have any way to refuse, so I did as he asked. I made seven goblins and sent them ahead to fight with his creature as I took a step back to assess the situation for now.

To my expectation, they all got thrown away easily. They could not even come close to hitting him, but I did not expect them to. I did notice that they weren't killed so I recalled them over to me. I had noticed something interesting however, so I started making plans to use the Holy Knight's large range against him.

"Now, as you could see," Father suddenly said, cutting my train of thought, "simply charging at your opponent isn't always effective. However, what if Lilia and her summons were to work together to force my Holy Knight to be in a position where he can't simply sweep everyone away?"

I knew very well that he was suggesting what I should be doing, thought I wasn't sure what exactly he wanted me to do. It took me a second or two to realise his thoughts were far off from mine.

The Holy Knight's movement was very wide with a large reach, but it felt oddly sluggish. At first I simply wanted to take the blunt myself to stop him from wiping my summons away, then having them come from behind.

However, sending in a bait goblin to tank the hit and using the downtime to get in even further would definitely improve our fighting chance. I could also send out a spell to distract even further after his first attack to prevent him from recovering and simply hitting the next ones.

I decided to try that. I designated a goblin to be the hit taker and I started preparing a small fire spell to annoy the enemy. The goblins rushed ahead with the designated one out in front. As expected, the Holy Knight waited for the goblins to be closer to attack.

Smart as they are, they stopped just outside of his range while the bait went further in, forcing the enemy's hand. He attacked and swiped him away. Right at that moment, I fired my spell as the goblins rushed in. Its goal wasn't to deal damage, so I made it explode in a large puff of smoke rather than a fireball. It still had kickback, but only that.

Shortly after, Father used a wind spell to dissipate the smoke. My creatures had successfully grappled onto the knight's limbs, heavily hindering his movement.

"As you can see, as soon as Lilia assigned roles to her summons, she easily found a way to overpower her opponent. This os what Kaze-san and I will be teaching you this week, the importance of roles in a party. Thank you Lilia for the great demonstration."

I was a bit confused as to what to do next, but since Father unsummoned his fighter, so did I. The class started applauding like I had won a match, which was oddly embarrassing. I returned to sit with everyone else, next to Sayuri, as Koko-sensei and Father explained different positions in a party.