"Ready?" I asked Harren who nodded.
We carefully advanced into the first tunnel for the 11th layer. It was large enough to fit the war mech, barely.
Sam was just behind us as we constantly scanned for any traps.
Sensing something, I held up a hand. I wasn't sure what, and I was cycling through my sensing skills.
"I see it," Sam whispered. "A null wire and then pressure plates. They seem to link up with a crush mechanism." His trap experience was proving its worth. "Ten minutes to take it apart."
Harren and I said nothing but stood on guard.
Stormy and the war mech were behind us and still.
The problem was the fumes from the war mech.
While April had moved it to low-power mode while moving through the passages, the Mana exhaust still attracted monsters.
"Humanoid Crawlers, watch the ceiling," I said.
"Fall back. We will fight and then deal with the trap," Harren said.
We all retreated and left the front of the warmech clear.
"Lightning things up," Sam said as several Light Orbs flew down the tunnel.
"FAB firing," April said as a jet of white flame shot down the tunnel.
The flame instantly turned the monsters into charred corpses.
After a couple of seconds, she cut off the flames as a wave of heat washed over us.
"Trap hasn't triggered," Sam said.
"Give it a minute, see if anything else crawls out. No need to waste Mana cooling things down," Harren said. We waited for a minute, and nothing came down the tunnel. Harren, Sam, and I all advanced once more to the trap.
My Danger Sense stopped giving me a low-level warning after seven minutes, and Sam stood up.
"Disabled for at least half an hour. After that, it will come back online."
"Let's move," I said, and we advanced forward.
The tunnel opened into a large chamber. Humanoid Crawlers of various colors turned towards us. The war mech emerged from the tunnel.
"RLC firing," April said as she switched weapons.
She couldn't switch weapons in the tunnel and kept her fire weapon out while we moved through it.
"Clumping up monsters," Sam said.
That was a tactic we had come up with during our descent.
Sam would create illusions to clump the monsters up together while The Indomitable obliterated the groups. The Ranged Lightning Cannon was fairly accurate, but it had collateral and piercing damage. Having the monsters clump together made it more effective.
The nearby monsters rushed at us as I made sure not to look at the firing arc of the war mech's weapon.
That was a good way to get distracted.
Ozy flew up into the air behind me and began layer the ground in front of our team with ice.
I handled the right flank while Harren handled the left flank.
Stormy was acting as support to help either of us out if we were at risk of being passed or overwhelmed. There were over 300 monsters of various types.
"Ward," I blocked a beam attack of some kind and cut down a crawler.
They looked like malformed humans with colored scales and red eyes.
"Slice!" Harren roared over the constant bangs of the RLC, bisecting three monsters at once.
Ozy unleashed more attacks to slow down the monsters rather than trying to kill them.
Slowing them down was enough for me to cut down the approaching monsters quickly.
After a minute, the war mech stopped firing. The RLC gave me a slight headache with the pulses of Mana, flashes of light, and sonic booms. Looking around, we cleared the entire chamber.
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"Anyone hurt?" Harren called out.
No one said anything, which was good.
"Well, time to get to harvesting. Ozy, you are on patrol."
He flew up and flew around the chamber, watching out for other monsters.
April moved towards the center of the chamber to keep watch as well, while the rest of us got to work harvesting monster cores.
That had been an argument with April, as her leaving her war mech to harvest cores was risky.
If there were a sudden attack, she couldn't respond.
But harvesting monster cores was tedious.
The war mech worked out but excusing her from such work displeased everyone.
Another issue with the war mech made it unsuitable for adventuring in the dungeon.
While it was minor, it was just another black mark against its performance.
We each got one monster core out of her share for always doing the collection after a fight, which was quite fair.
"Orange cores, now we are going to make some real money," Sam said with a grin after we were done.
I glanced at April. "We are going to circle around a bit. The first use of The Indomitable went well. How is your fuel?"
"No issues. I should be slightly net positive after processing all the cores I am getting."
"Your pet did a good job with crowd control. But it should leave a larger gap and act further out," Harren said.
"The Mana cost would increase too much," I replied.
"I see. Just have to deal with it for now. Better than nothing," he said.
"I could switch from passive support to active support," Stormy said, and I shook my head.
"We need someone with passive support. Sam's focus is on lessening the number of monsters at once and clumping them up. That leaves only you as passive support. While Ozy is good, he is only a pet. We should be able to handle the pressure without his assistance," I replied while glancing at Harren.
"Just wanted to make things easier, but I get it."
"The biggest issue I have is that when The Indomitable starts firing, it is impossible to see the whole battlefield clearly. Also, the amount of Mana and noise draws everything. There is no good way to work around such a thing," Sam said.
"Learn to work around it. Other people will use flashy and loud skills as well. The war mech just uses more than most."
Many of these minor issues were difficult to fix.
Ozy couldn't suddenly get more Mana and the war mech couldn't change how it operated at a fundamental level.
"It could use its fire weapon instead," Harren pointed out.
"We went over that. The problem is that it would bring monsters into the flanks, which is us. In a tunnel it is fine, or at close range on its own. But in a large chamber with a horde, it isn't good," I said.
"We could move the war mech to a flank and have it use fire there or go free for all?" Stormy suggested, and I shook my head.
"Alright, we can try rotating positions around with The Indomitable. That's why we are staying in these layers anyway, to work out any issues with our fighting ability and coordination as a team. As for free for all, we don't have the skill to do that safely."
"Then I get the center?" Harren asked me.
"Next chamber, then we can switch. Sam, you can focus on distracting targets more and luring them into the war mech's firing arc," I said.
"Got it," he replied.
"I am on passive support?" Stormy asked.
"Yes. If anyone can turn around a situation, it would be you with your range of elemental spell skills."
My teammates weren't idiots, but none of them had the skill Combat Tactics.
They were great individual combatants mostly.
That was part of the problem.
Each knew what they wanted their role to be, but that would disrupt everyone else to a great extent.
That was the problem with most adventurers; they were highly specialized and focused on skills that were most suitable for their build.
The problem was that it left them highly incapable of handling things outside of their normal experience.
They could adapt, but it was a struggle.
I had too many skills and support skills. That was the advantage I held over the others. That was why I oversaw after-combat assessment and team formation.
I couldn't order anyone, but I had to keep things organized.
If Harren and I rushed out, The Indomitable could easily cause trouble with its rapid-fire weapons.
April didn't have the combat experience to understand which groups she needed to prioritize. While our current formation wasn't the best, it eliminated the major risks.
Changing things up after one battle was fine, if those risks didn't become too large.
That was what I was trying to manage as everyone felt a bit frustrated with their roles.
They did not direct that frustration at me and understood what was happening logically. But it never felt good when you were stifled.
Stormy was a perfect example. She was a powerful caster, but putting her on the front line would be an enormous risk.
But I suppose we could rotate her to the front line after a couple more battles.
Team dynamics were exhausting, but critically important.
I could only imagine the seamless teamwork between my mother and the other supreme legends that had teamed up together for their final descent.
That much combat experience meant there was no need to hand-hold everyone through everything. If Stormy got overwhelmed, someone could easily kill her.
While Ozy could heal, it was better to avoid his healing if possible.
There was too great a risk of minor mistakes that would compound.
I knew my body and could mentally communicate that with Ozy when he healed me.
The other team members couldn't do that.
As for healing the war mech, that was an especially bad idea. While it might fix things, it could easily cause immense complications for something built of metal.
Even the craftspeople who had worked on it didn't want to subject it to healing just yet either.
Their thought process was that it was better to repair the war mech rather than heal it. Less chance of something going catastrophically wrong in such a situation.
That was the other big headache.
The war mech was not someone with a standard build. Its melee range was too big and slow. It couldn't properly hold an area. And for its ranged attacks, they were like bricks to the head for anyone nearby.
The minor issues kept adding more black marks to the war mech. A good idea, but ultimately impractical in the dungeon.
We were committed to a year here before we could return to the surface and reevaluate. Breaking things up early would require a really good explanation, or it would be a black mark on my record with other adventurers.
It wasn't fun, but it wasn't completely miserable either.
At least I got to see and experience a range of skills used by other individuals and get used to the idea of team fighting.
But I would probably prefer adventuring solo in the future.
As for what I would do after a year, I would have to think about that. The degradation of the cursed skill made having a team less urgent in my mind.