Valera remembered a specific hunt. From before her time with Aldrich when she was a young trainee within the Nightshield Order that trained knights from the Midnight-Alliance consisting of vampires, certain demon tribes, and some night-dwelling demihumans.
There had been a time when Valera and her class had been sent into dark mountains to hunt an enormous rampaging boar. There, her instructor had drilled into her the fundamentals for taking down a beast with enough size and strength that no single knight could reliably deal with.
First, isolate the beast. The larger a monster was, the harder it was to deal with lesser enemies distracting you.
Then, if possible, disable the beast. Limit its mobility. Its sheer size would prevent it from easily dealing with attacks from multiple angles once it lost its movement.
Finally, execute.
Once disabled, attempt to dispatch the beast as quickly as possible, for the longer a battle went with larger monsters, the easier it was for an accident to occur and for a team member to perish under trampling hooves.
Valera was not as forward thinking of a planner as her master was, especially in things that did not involve battle, but here, in war, these things, these procedures, were engraved into her very being. It made her who she was.
She immediately thought about how to execute this plan against the crab monster.
Isolating the beast would be easy. Its battle with the zombie giant caused enough collateral damage that there were no lesser forces to deal with, and even if there were, the zombie giant could use its roar again to scatter the weaklings.
Disabling the monster would be done with the Antlion entrapping the creature's footing.
Then, that left the execution.
That was the most difficult part.
The monster had to die quickly, beyond what it could regenerate.
Or, if that was impossible, its brain had to be targeted to shut down its ability to function. But the monster's shell was tough and, even more annoyingly, it possessed the capacity to sense any movement nearing it within a sizable radius through the twitching of its antennae.
On top of that, the beast could direct some of the red spots of energy it gathered around its shell and detonate them, generating concussive shockwaves of force that blew back anyone that tried to sneak attack it.
The shockwaves were not accurate, but they made it difficult for anyone to sneak attack the creature.
Already, the Deathwheel and Ace, one of the strong humans known as 'Alters' who possessed flight and great strength had fallen victim to these shockwaves.
If the monster was to be felled, it needed to be done so with a tremendous amount of power applied before it could even react.
The only that possessed that level of raw strength here other than the zombie giant was Valera.
"Drop me towards those humans," said Valera as she pointed to the black uniformed strong humans. "You, distract the beast with your explosions, but do not near it lest you risk attack from its shockwaves."
"I get to see some big boy action? Hell yeah!" Stella sped forward, and after several seconds, dropped Valera down to Damien's green floating platform where the black uniformed strong humans regrouped to take breaks away from the chaos of fishmen below.
Alexis floated at the top of the green ring, creating her storm barrier around it to prevent blue fishmen from targeting it with their pressurized water bolts. Meanwhile, bolts of lightning rocked out from the storm shield, frying groups of fishmen.
When Valera landed inside of the storm shield, the Alters nodded to her respectfully in recognition of their second in command.
"Need something, miss?" said Damien as he flashed Valera a confident, pearly white smile. He flipped back his curly, lengthy hair with a poise that made it very evident that he had often rehearsed this hair flip to try and appeal to women so much that it had become a habitual part of him.
Valera almost cringed in disgust but held it down. "Bring me, what was his name, yes, Gerald."
Valera did not have all the names of these strong humans known as Alters down in her memory, but she did keep in mind the notably useful or strong ones.
The most powerful among them was a man called Ace who possessed great strength, durability, and flight. A man that the Alters had called their rank three and treated with respect.
But Valera did not need someone like that. If she wanted pure brute force damage, then she was superior.
"One Gerald coming right up~" said Damien as he spun his finger around, creating a green ring that he flicked to the ground. There, a larger, pudgier boy leaped on. His skin was entirely a shade of dark pink and rubbery in texture.
Valera had a rough idea of what these strong humans could do. She was still getting used to how their many unique powers worked, but she basically found it easy to understand when she treated them all as being humans that could use a single spell or set of spells.
In the case of Gerald, his body was incredibly unique. Its texture and physical traits mimicked that of rubber and on top of this, could absorb and store mass amounts of force, particularly the force of physical blows. This force could then be unleashed all at once later, making Gerald a nightmare for brute force brawlers to fight.
The stronger the force that hit him, the more power he had to return later.
"Look, Gerald, someone important actually wants to see you," said Damien.
Gerald rolled his eyes at Damien before addressing Valera.
"What can I do?" said Gerald, rank 14 among the Blackwater students, as he saluted Valera. He gave her an eager smile, ready to impress. He had always been one of the harder workers with a people pleasing personality and a happy go lucky attitude that truly did not suit the rest of Blackwater's criminal background or family students.
"I'm going to hit you now," said Valera flatly as she cocked back her fist.
