Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

81 Cunning

Debauchery has cleared the first part of their mission and were ready to move forward to the next region and and keep working on dismantling the cult that chose to target them for a misdirection. But first, two events were needed to be taken care of.

First early graduation for the kids, since they were officially level 1 and they would need to travel with Debauchery, to complete their training outside of the academy as well as take them away from the public eye. It was already known that Debauchery had found the Black Fate and it was most likely with one of their students, in addition to the fact that Drogon the only dragon in this world had chosen a kid as his master and bonded with him.

The second event was the meeting of the hearts, although Debauchery had not made anything public the event was already taken care of and the level of secrecy is unprecedented. According to the plan the heart of the mountain hatched, the Dwarven masters will invite the young dragon to help with the forging of some items while the hearts will be waiting for the Black Fate in the lonely mountain hinterlands hidden from all the dangers and spying eyes.

The kids did not even know about what was planned for them since a risk was always a factor. According to the plan Debauchery came up with for the upcoming week, Yunan, Reina , Leol and Lili are to focus on the level 2 goblin nest and fight the boss before friday, they can fight without pause if they feel like it, but if the boss is not dead before Friday morning there was a punishment to be dealt.

Since the cult was fully cleared in the region around the lonely mountain, Debauchery had the opportunity to guide their students along their fight into the nest and the first lesson on Monday morning was traps and kiting.

The idea of fighting with traps and tricks was always present at the minds of Yunan and his friends but Debauchery had refused that battle style because it would not grant them the challenge they needed to grow, but now it was time to learn the way of the hurried and the cunning. "Leaving traps behind you is an act of buying time when chased and an act of idiocy when not, there is only one wrong way to fight and that is to fight straightforwardly. that kind of fight is for the entertainment of nobles and kings, true warriors only know the art of killing and not showmanship" introduced Bai.

"Cunning is not a detriment nor is it a bad trait, but the sign of those who cast the thoughts of right and wrong when the need to live rises. Anyone who uses his cunning for anything but survival is a pretending idiot trying to outsmart those who are, by nature, dumber than him"

"Cunning is not the ability to create a strategy or a plan, it is to mend both when all goes wrong, and cunning is the most useful skill you will learn from me. So perk you ears and listen well i will only say this once, how much you understand from this is up to you."

"The first rule of cunning, never show it off. Second rule of cunning, never get caught. Third rule of cunning, as long as you live long enough for another thought, there is still hope for survival. Those rules are the only ones and they are the rules you will break most of the time so at least keep them in mind and do not break them too hard. Next is critical thinking, only think about your objective, any spare thoughts may be the death of you. Focus and knowledge, learn how man thinks, learn how beasts behave and learn how plants grow"

"Knowledge is the mother of cunning and traps are its father, traps have only one rule, never step in your own trap, that is all. Now onto the reason you are learning this, how do you make goblins fall into your traps? You think about how to lure them before you make a trap that works best with your luring method, it is a mistake to build a trap and then build a strategy for it, so based on the intelligence of the goblins and the environment, what is the best way to draw as many goblins as possible without risking the failure of the plan"

"We can reliably draw the attention of at least one patrol of 6 per person, any more and they only watch from a distance while one group handled the threat, if they deem the threat is too big or they are enraged they would send all the nearest patrols to eliminate the target with utmost brutality" answered Leol "the safest way to draw as many as possible without risking the failure of the trap is getting them angry by sniping off their patrols and driving them into making bigger patrols, that way we can increase the number of pursuing goblins while reducing the number of enemies. Two birds with one stone."

"The problem is not making the bigger patrols follow us into a trap, but something that will kill all of them instantly or near enough, also the trap must be enough for twice the amount of monsters we are targeting just for safety, also we must be able to run away from the location if things went wrong" Lili pointed out her point of view.

"Maybe we can use the forest and the valley to our advantage, that way we have better options for our trap" Reina added a new point the other two missed. "We are thinking too much" said Yunan "why do we have to make a trap when a strategy is all we need? Strategy is trapping the opposite side in our own machinations and controlling their actions so why do we need all of this planning, if we want to fight numerous foed there are so many bottlenecks we can draw the goblins to where only 2 or 3 goblins can pass at once, 2 of us can keep them busy while the other two shoot as many arrows at the troops trying to push their way into the bottleneck. That way we only fight with numbers we can deal with, and have two rested members to switch with in when we get tired, we also need something a goblin to keep calling for help to attract as many as possible"