As Jason stomps around in the middle of the two swarms, Courtney doesn’t slow down either. Nipping along the edge with her claws with Rosha going in the opposite direction to her. While Rosha’s sweeping attacks are able to deal more damage, Courtney’s healing lets them keep it up against the swarms unending damage. Her claws slashing through cat after cat with the drained life transferring to where it was needed.

With the three working together, the two swarms scattered quicker even than when Jason and Rosha had been fighting just a single swarm. They even manage to beat out Lily, though only by a hair. Seeing the results, Peter claps while walking over to them.

“Wonderful! Excellent teamwork there.” Turning towards Rosha, Peter nods, “Rosha, your ability to restrain the swarm into a tighter area has improved. Both boosting your ability to tank as well as manipulating them so each swing does the most damage. After all, why only hit three enemies when you can hit five for just as much damage to each? Still, you need to work on your control. You threw a few cats behind you on your backswing. Not much of a problem here, but there will be some smaller monsters you don’t want to show your back to.”

“Jason, take some lessons from your rabbit. Hop around a bit or something. Your clad feet are nifty, but you don’t move around in the swarm enough to make best use of it. Especially with whatever the strings are. They destroy any of the cats that get hit so you can afford to spread the love. You have a decent movement skill so make use of it.”

Then Peter turns to Courtney with an eyebrow raised. “Courtney, Courtney, Courtney. Do you know what you did wrong?”

Courtney grimaces, “Eh, I should have probably stayed back and focused on healing. That is my role after all.”

Peter shakes his head, “No, the problem is you kept back all the previous times.”

Courtney frowns, “I’ve always been taught to keep to the back. If I can’t be on top of healing, it could doom the party!”

Peter sighs and shakes his head again. “In a larger group, you wouldn’t be wrong. If there were enough party members that you could all have a defined role then I would agree with staying back. Problem is that instead of the classic six-member team, there are three of you. Jason there is doing a valiant job of being a dodge tank while also laying down the dps. Rosha makes a good off tank and is developing her skills at crowd control. Though honestly she would be better at ranged dps in any other situation.”

“Not really a possibility with just the three of you, but the same is true for you. Which brings us back to your combat abilities. You need to use that! Do you know the best way to keep up with your teammates’ health is? Make sure they don’t get hurt in the first place. It’s like that saying about offense being the best defense. Of courses the opposite is also said but in this case we will go with this version.”

“Not only that but you’ve got a siphon going on there. Your attacks can heal doing double duty. That means you can already fill two roles. Why hide that? Until now I’ve let you just sit there in the back. Just buffing and healing away while the other two do the fighting. No longer. You get to go in there and fight along with them. It would have been fine if buffing and healing were all you can do, but that isn’t true. Get in there and duke it out with your friends.”

Peter claps, “Anyway! Let’s move on. There are more swarms to fight and I expect you all to get through more of them now with Courtney’s help. With that in mind you guys can start following the road. I have to skip ahead to juggle the next encounter. I was gonna keep you guys split up, but it seems I need all of you working together.”

“If you’re keeping this hidden, it seems I need to be more specific. Sure, keep your secrets hidden. But I want you all to put your best foot forward. I don’t need you to use finishing moves or the use of limited resources, but don’t hold back with your normal moves. Time after time you three have pulled some nonsense move out of nowhere. If it was to defeat some powerful enemy and you brought out some ancestral skill or a scroll of ultimate power, fine. This is not the case here. Now, do you all agree with this?”

Jason shrugs, “Nothing more from me at the moment.”

Rosha laughs, “You’ve taught me all my new stuff so nothing hidden here!”

Courtney sighs, “I’m not really supposed to yet.”

Peter glares at Courtney, “Not supposed to? Why aren’t you supposed to? You’re all friends.”

Courtney shakes her head, “Where we come from, I work for her parents. I’m actually her maid, and that puts some shackles on what I can do.”

Peter groans, “You travellers always claim to have no royalty so let me guess, old money right?”

Courtney and Rosha nod in agreement.

Peter sighs, “What am I going to do with you guys? One thing after another! The System got a good one over on me here.” He shakes his head, “Way not worth the rewards. Though I do now understand why there were a couple stingers in the failure penalty. Lets just go onto the next encounter. So frustrating to be used as a troubleshooter. I don’t even leave the kingdom all that often because of this.”

“Seriously, would you leave your country if every time you ended up in some hair raising adventure? Cause that is what happens! I used to love to travel around and now I just wander the borders. Even then people like you crop up way too often. I just want the System to give me a break! No way this kind of thing can happen so much like clockwork.” He shakes his head and walks down the road.

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters are free on my Patreon ( 225 and 226 ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).