Chapter 142 Wood elementals 2

Entering the field, they could find no real terrain advantage – the land was all flat.

Jay questioned the strategy of the association and the formation of the adventurers. It all seemed quite makeshift and not very well thought-out.

Technically it was, but surely they could come up with something better than this – plotting 10 fresh adventurers in each field with one guard. Zero other instructions given – they weren’t even sorted into teams.

Of course, it couldn’t be helped. There simply aren’t enough people, Losla was too small and the guards were mostly there to run the association, along with a secondary security role.

The two guards didn’t seem to worry too much as they stood idly behind them.

“Dammit. Well, since they won’t organise us, it seems I will have to.”

Perhaps it was Jay’s necromancer class, or basic common sense that made his negative critique of everything grow larger – but a negative critique would not fix anything; he had to step up and command them himself. What good was pointing out a problem without an intention to fix it?

Standing amidst the clueless-looking adventurers, he clenched his fist to get any stage-fright away and spoke.

“Alright, there’s ten of us so this shouldn’t be too hard. I want melee classes on my left and ranged classes on my right.”

They all stood there silently and simply looked at him for a moment, some wondering if they should follow his orders or not..

Jay felt the awkwardness rising as they stared at him as if they were zombies, so with a sigh he pointed at one.

“You, what’s your class?” Jay spoke with a slight sense of urgency.

“..uh, I’m a shield-sword.” he held up his ultra-wide sword.

“Ok, you’re melee, stand here.” Jay pointed to his left.

“You?” he pointed at another.

“Ranged.”

With an eye roll, Jay pointed to his right side.

Jay then only had to stare at another one and they moved to Jay’s left. Soon enough, the whole group was diving into two.

“Okay, six melee, three ranged. Another melee including myself. Gather around.”

Next, Jay crouched down and began to write something in the dirt with his gauntlet. It was a simple symbol, causing some to exchange confused glances.

The symbol looked like a V with two dots on either side.

.V.

Next, he drew an arrow which pointed into the V from the top – this would be where the enemies will be attacking from.

Taking into account the high level mobs that would be coming, along with this assortment of troops, Jay formed this basic formation in his head.

It wasn’t some hyper-intelligent battle strategy, but it would be better than nothing.

“Okay, the dots will be where the rangers will stand, while the V will be melee. Just focus on trying to keep the mobs off the rangers and that will be good enough.”

“When a powerful enemy comes, we will funnel it into the middle of the V and then let it through for the guards to finish it off. I will be at the bottom of the V. Using a spell I will damage any high levels that come through so they aggro on me, running past all of you.”

“After the guards slay it I will rejoin the formation. Simple right?”

Jay then looked at the guards, “and hopefully they can finish off anything that gets past us.”

They nodded in response, accepting his plan.

“Alright, let’s get into formation.”

The adventurers quickly got into a V shape with Jay at the centre. On his left and right were the ranged units, including Anya.

Each of them were spaced about four meters from one another – enough to back each other up, but far enough to freely swing their weapons.

Jay’s assortment of human troops was quite varied. One had a two handed glaive, another carried a mace and shield, one guy just had a big axe, and a girl carried a sabre with a buckler.

Jay was glad that at least one of them had a standard sword and shield combo, similar to himself; being different was fine and everything, but it made for a shitty battle formation.

Thankfully they were up against wood-based creatures, so the axe guy would have an advantage.

Jay had to look out for the dagger wielding girl, guessing that she would not do so well when slashing against wood.

He had the dagger-girl come to his left side so he could take some of the burden off her during the fight if need be.

Anya rolled her eyes seeing Jay do this, but he simply ignored it.

“There’s nothing wrong with my battle tactics,” he thought, guessing that’s what the eye roll was about. On the other side was the sabre girl; thankfully both of the girls by Jay’s side didn’t seem to notice Anya’s disapproval.

Next, Jay had the highest level melee classes at the two top points of the V-shape formation; they would be taking the brunt of the attack after all, so they should be the strongest.

The two at the top weren’t in too much danger though, as they also had the advantage of the rangers firing from either side, stopping them from being flanked.

Speaking of rangers, it consisted of Anya with her crossbow, a tall lanky guy with a bow, and another girl with a composite bow.

“Ahh, that’s better” Jay smiled, feeling like an itch had been scratched as his troop formation plan came together nicely. There was an odd satisfaction about it.

A part of him wanted them to line up perfectly, but he decided not to push them too hard; this wasn’t their job, and they were human after all.

“They probably won’t be as good as my skeletons, but maybe they’ll have some decent abilities to make up for it.” Jay silently thought.

“Hm.” he frowned as he looked over at another field.

Most adventurers were in groups of two or three; some were solo and not even talking to each other, completely excluded. It seemed like there was no cooperation at all. It was plain to see that their defence would not work very well.

Tactically, it would be like they were getting ambushed – despite knowing enemies were coming. There was no organisation at all.

In fact, even a troop of new soldiers would have a better formation while being ambushed than these young adventurers did.

“Damn…” Jay pitied them. “Why don’t people ever step up and take some responsibility? Even if people don’t listen to you, at least you tried; at least you had put in some effort.” he thought while looking at them.

Some even seemed to have bitter expressions, it was like they were wondering why no one would step up and lead them – however they themselves still did nothing about it. They would only hurt themselves in the long run.

Jay wanted to go over and help – if not to organise them, then to at least get them talking to one another; it would be better than nothing.

They seemed to look like a group of hypno-goats, ignoring each other and wandering aimlessly as they pointlessly looked around at the dirt in the field.

“Hmm, I can only hope they don’t die. Perhaps this will be a lesson to them.” he shrugged.

Next, he checked the other field and a slight smile came on Jay’s face.

“Nice.” he thought, checking out their formation, “At least some others are stepping up.”