Chapter 356: Training Montage Round Two

The next day Joshua stuck to his plans and got up early to head to the job center to meet up with Henry. When he got there he could already see a small group of people gathering together around the outside of the job center and out of the way of anyone that was trying to pass through the area. He could see Henry at the lead of the group getting them all to gather together before heading into the place together. When Joshua arrived they all headed inside and started registering so that they would officially be a part of the guild.

Natsumi, Katsumi, and Brook were also all there to get registered. Joshua made sure that Brook was able to meet the Asawa sisters and spend some time talking with them since they would all be joining the main group of the guild for dungeon dives and town subjugations in the future. For the most part most of the conversation was being carried by Katsumi who was the more charismatic girl of the bunch while the other two tried their best to keep up with the conversation.

After getting everyone registered they all headed to James Town for the next step of the initiation process of joining the guild. Joshua broke up the new recruits into groups and spent the morning taking them through the town dungeon group by group. It took most of the morning just to get through all of the groups of around twenty-five people, but since the groups were so large each trip through didn't take very long. By the afternoon the rest of the guild member had arrived at James Town for their own training.

Throughout the day the main group members focused on training up all of the new recruits and Henry focused on creating new formation to help defend the town during territory wars. After all the next territory war would be in two weeks and it would be against a mid-sized guild this time around. If it happened to be against a mid-sized guild that was at full capacity then they'd be up against a group of near five hundred people when they only had two hundred people on their side.

Luckily for Joshua and the rest of his guild members the moment they had upgraded to a mid-sized guild the amount of defenses they could put up around their territory had grown. They didn't need to add any new turrets since they were spread out evenly along the walls and were far more than enough to defend the town, but they were able to add to the amount of robot soldiers that they could have defending the town. As a small guild before they were only allowed to have a hundred soldiers out at a time and a hundred beast out from the stables to defend the town. After upgrading to a mid-sized guild that number had doubled on both fronts greatly improving the defenses of the town, not to mention the fact that all of the robots and beast linked to the town in some way were all level seventy now.

The only portion of the town defenses that hadn't grown in amount was the town guardian. They were still only allowed to have one town guardian per a territory, but it was now level seventy instead of fifty which would make it far more troublesome to deal with. With the amount of times they were clearing the town dungeon lately Joshua was certain that they'd probably be able to level up to a level seventy-five town before the next territory war which would make it impossible for any mid-sized guilds to be considered a threat anymore.

After they had finished training up all of the new recruits Joshua and the main group moved onto their own training as they dived into the highest level possible of the town dungeon at the time, so they could get to know how all of their new recruits would handle themselves in the dungeon. As they dived into the dungeon Joshua stepped back from the lead role and allowed Ivan and Jayce to be the two main tanks for the dungeon run. He planned on spinning most of his time observing how well the new recruits were integrating into the combat.

Through the early part of the dungeon Joshua placed his focus on Natsumi since she was involved in the close range combat which was easy to observe against the random enemy fodder they came across as they made their way through the dungeon. Right away he noticed that Natsumi had a way of seamlessly flowing in and out of combat depending on the positioning of the two tanks that was only outdone by Adrian in the group. Her sense of timing was amazing as she always seemed to dash in right when Ivan had an enemy pinned with his large sword or Jayce was holding off a powerful attack by one of the shadow creatures. With the lightning effect on her blade she was able to cause massive damage while stunning the enemy long enough for the mages to finish it off quickly.

Even with the benefits Joshua could see Natsumi bringing to the group he could also see the weaknesses she had at the moment. The only reason she could be fluid with the group so quickly was because of how telegraphed things were. The talismans she currently had were limited in their ability and couldn't cover too many different situations. Luckily that was only the case because they hadn't been able to take down to many different strong monsters working with only each other in the past. As Joshua took Natsumi to different dungeons and put her up against more powerful beast she would grow more versatile with the new talismans she would gain.

It was a bit of a different situation when it came to the younger sister in Katsumi. Katsumi wasn't a front line fighter like her sister and was more of the support type so it was easier to see her capabilities by observing how well her talismans helped everyone else out. The shields one of her talismans were able to put around Ivan and Jayce were extremely beneficial against surprise attacks while her skill as an archer proved second to only Natalie from what Joshua could see. Even when the shadow creatures hid in the wall her arrows would lock on to them and hit the spot they were located allowing the mages to target them.

Katsumi's greatest weakness was the fact that at the moment she didn't have a bigger variety of support talismans. It showed with how often she was relegated to being just an archer in the group. All in all both of the sisters showed a lot of promise even when being limited to the amount of talismans they had for combat. Joshua was interested in seeing what power a talisman gained from the shadow creatures and the boss of the dungeon would give the two sisters afterwards.

The last person that Joshua was focused on through the trip through the dungeon was Brook. As a mage she was set up at the back of the group ready to provide support through all of the fights. She didn't really get to show off much of her capabilities until they came across the bosses of the dungeon. With the first shadow creature boss Brook helped out by creating water mines and bubbles traps along the walls and floor in the room. They didn't go off when any members of the group touched them, but if a shadow creature even came close to one of them they would explode and deal damage to them. The water mines would create geysers that knocked the shadow creatures up into the air where they could no longer hide from the rest of the group.

One combination that Joshua noticed working well for the group was Robin and Brook working together. All of Brook's spells would drench the targets making Robin's chain lightning do significantly more damage to their enemies while also making it more likely for the target to be paralyzed. It was a combination that would be extremely useful against large groups of enemies at a time.

One thing Joshua noticed throughout the fight was that all of Brooks water spells seemed to have this extra effect to them that would slow down her opponents to an extent. It looked as if they were moving through water after being hit by multiple water mines or bubble traps. He later found out this was an effect of her soul beast and one of the reasons Brook focused on water magic in the first place. Her soul beast was actually a water elemental which was a bit different from the normal animals that most people had. She was in a similar situation as Lilly when it came to soul beast.

Brook's soul beast made her water spells more fluid with each other and faster to cast which was a big plus and allowed her to take control of battles from the start. The second thing her soul beast did was something a bit different. Unlike most soul beast which powered up a person's stats or capabilities when using certain weapons or spells, Brook's soul beast actually granted an extra effect to all water based spells she used. If one of her spells dealt any type of damage to an enemy then they would be slowed down as well. The only reason Joshua hadn't realized this during the fight between Brook and Adrian was because he had avoided taking any actual damage during the fight and blocked or dodged all of her spells.

As Joshua spent more time studying up on how aura and mana worked with the body now that they had become an integral part to human health, he learned that having the mana or aura damaged inside your body could have dangerous consequences. This was what Brook's soul beast affected to slow people down. It created an unbalance in a person's aura or mana making them far more sluggish and slow moving. The same could be said for Robin who created a paralysis effect by effecting her opponents in a similar way.

All of these abilities made Brook extremely effective in combat, but she still had some obvious weaknesses as well. Her main weakness was the fact that she didn't have very much fire power. All of her spells dealt damage and had lingering effects, but none of her spells were extremely powerful. The strongest spell she had was the pressurized waterblast which could hurt an enemy, but against boss level monsters it wouldn't do much more than knock them away so that she could set up more traps. On her own Brook would have a hard time putting down opponents, but in a group she could easily thrive as long as she learned how to work well with others.

After they had finished their first run through the dungeon Joshua talked to his new recruits about their strengths and weaknesses before diving in one more time and calling it a day. For the next five days the Fenrir Guild was busy training all of its new recruits in James Town to prepare for the next territory war, but with a little over a week left to go Joshua decided it was time for a change of pace for the main group. The town dungeons wasn't enough of a challenge for them and he didn't want to wait around for the territory war for more than a week. In the end Joshua decided it was time to go find a new dungeon to put all of the new members of his group through a serious test.