I began to examine the room to see if there were any clues about what I would be facing before I entered. It was a large square shaped room from what I could tell. This room contained a light source, unlike the prior rooms. The light source was a glowing stone in the center of the ceiling that illuminated the center of the room while leaving the edges bathed in shadows. Since I did not see anything in the lit portion of the room, I peered at the shadowed recesses, looking for any sign of movement, or anything that stood out from the walls.

I thought I saw many shadowy forms moving against the walls. However, I could not tell if I was actually seeing figures or if the lighting and room were causing a visual trick. ‘Theres only one way to find out’ I took a single step into the room, shotgun at the ready.

When nothing happened, I moved towards the center of the room, expecting something to jump out of the shadows at me. For a moment, there was a false sense of calm before an eruption of activity threatened to overwhelm me. Many creatures left the shadows and ran across the room at speeds I was not expecting, given the slow shuffles of the previous creatures. From what I could see through the shadows, they look like the ones with the pistols, but between the movement and the shadows I could not be sure.

It seemed that they could not enter the brightest part of the room where I was, so I took a minute to observe their patterns of movement. ‘Well fuck, I’m stuck here, surrounded by these things. What are their weaknesses?’ While there was no set direction that they all were running, it seemed that they formed layers and all the creatures in a single layer ran in the same direction. It was chaotic, yet also organized. There are so many of them that I am guaranteed to hit one if I fire randomly, but that will take too long and I don’t yet know how they will react to me firing. I decided that there was no way to know unless I bite the bullet, figuratively speaking, and start shooting.

Following the movement of the layer closest to me, I estimated the movement and speed of the shell before aiming and firing. ‘Shit, too fast, wait a bit longer, now! Damn it, too slow.’ While I was clipping the creatures, I was not hitting center mass and thus was not doing maximum damage. I continued to adjust my timing and started getting closer to center mass. It really helped that each creature was running at the exact same speed, so I did not have to wait for a single creature to circle back around to me. By the time I finally hit center mass on three consecutive shots, all of the creatures in the layer had a few wounds from me.

There was no difference in their movement once I began firing on the creatures. Taking that as a good sign, I decided to focus on killing some of the creatures to see if that changed anything. When the first creature went down, it instantly dissolved, so there was no change to the pace of the other creatures. One of the creatures from the second layer somehow turned around and shifted into the empty spot in the first layer. Other than that, I did not see any differences in the room or the creatures.

I made the assumption that there will not be any changes to the room until a layer has been eliminated based on the information I currently have. Using this to my advantage, I checked the XP log in my status to see that these ones were called dodging grunts worth 35 XP each. ‘I’m never saying any of these names aloud that would way too embarrassing.’ Shifting my focus back to the dodging creatures, I focused on hitting center mass of each cone that passed.

Two shots later, another dodging creature dissolved into dust and another took its place. Again and again I fired at center mass, injuring the two new creatures in this layer and further inflicting damage on the other creatures. In less than a minute, another four creatures had been taken out, but the outermost ring still had a few creatures in it. It was slightly unnerving how easy it was to fall into the repetitive motion of counting and firing. Soon another two were killed and I received a level up notification for the shotgun.

Level 3 Shotgun

Abilities: infinite basic ammo

Rate of fire: 1 per 0.8 seconds

Damage range: 1-12

Critical hit rate: 12%

Critical hit Damage: 24

Thankfully, this time the notification did nothing more than knock me out of the repetitive pattern I had fallen into with counting and shooting. I watched the creatures for a minute to get the pattern back into my head and began firing again. Within five shots, I killed another creature.

As if by some unseen signal, all the remaining creatures rushed towards me, coming about another five feet closer to the center of the room, and the light started to flicker and dim. There was only another fifteen feet before they would be able to reach me. ‘Shit, the more I kill, the closer they come. I need to get them all on death’s door before killing any more.’ The creatures reformed running circles around me, with one fewer layer than before. I don’t want to find out what would happen if I continue to remove layers, other than the obvious continuing to move closer to me.

Observing the pattern of movement between the first and second layer, I found that there is a roughly half second opening to hit one of the second layer runners. Carefully lining up my shot, I timed it and fired.

“Fuck.”

I hit one of the creatures in the first layer. Thankfully, it did not kill it. Watching for the gap again, I adjusted my timing and fired. This time I somehow missed both the first and second layers and hit a creature in the third layer. I had no idea how I did it, but the creature stumbled for an instant at the force of the shot with blood pouring out of its chest. I continued to adjust my aim and fire. This was more difficult than firing at the creatures in the first layer and took several minutes, and killing four of the first layer, to start hitting the creatures in the second layer consistently.

I made sure to shoot each of the creatures in the second layer twice to make sure that they were as close to death as possible without actually killing them. I must have hit one of them more than I thought since I killed one while doing this.

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Once I finished with the second layer, I studied the small gaps that appear to reach the third and final layer. I know that it is possible to hit the third layer since I already managed to do so, but that was more luck than skill. After watching the gaps and timing for several minutes, I thought I had the pattern and timing down. I fired and missed, sending the shot through all three layers and into the wall. ‘WTF, I completely missed! I haven’t missed that badly in years. Fuck this, and fuck these creatures!’ Determined not to miss again, I lined up and adjusted my timing, fired, and hit one of the first layer creatures, killing it. There were now only one or two creatures in the final layer so I couldn’t afford to miss. Before focusing on the last layer again, I put a round into the new creature in the second layer. I did not dare try to hit it with a second round for fear of getting the wrong one and removing the last layer.

I studied the last layer again, adjusting my timing and counting through several mock shots. ‘two, three, four, five, shoot…… two, three, four, five, shoot.’ Regulating my breathing, aim, count, fire, and miss. Shit, this was getting really fucking annoying. I continued to slowly aim at the last layer, but missed almost every shot. The ones that did connect ended up hitting one of the inner layers. I wish I had a height advantage, then I wouldn’t have to worry about shooting through these tiny-ass gaps. My next shot killed another creature, and I was expecting them to charge, but luckily, there must have still been one in the outer layer.

I was within seconds of saying fuck it and just shooting whatever I could when I landed a solid hit on the creature in the last layer. The urge to fist pump and shout in joy swept over me, but logic and situational awareness prevailed and I simply smirked.

Based on my estimates, there were anywhere between 10 and 25 creatures remaining. As soon as I killed one more, they would swarm closer and may change their patterns. I would take advantage of this and shoot as many as possible when they swarmed. Waiting for the least injured creature in the first layer, I aimed, fired, and scored a direct hit, killing the creature. Instantly all the other creatures swarmed closer and I simultaneously rapidly fired into the swarm, getting in several direct and indirect hits in the five or so seconds it took them to reform into their layers. The light again flickered and dimmed.

They were now only about ten feet from me and their movement pattern had completely changed. It looked like two snakes twining around each other as they fluidly moved between the first and second layers. I could hear a soft snarling noise over the pounding of feet and anytime a creature was in the inner layer, they swiped at me with their arms. When their arms passed into the light, I could see their hands tipped with long claws about three inches in length. Those could probably do some damage if I got hit with them.

It looked like I would have to aim for the least injured creatures and hope that by the time they swarmed again, it would only take one shot per creature to kill them. Observing the creatures, I picked out the one with the least blood on it, aimed, and fired, landing a slid hit. This did not kill the creature, so I continued doing this until, after a minute, I killed a creature. They instantly tightened their movement and drew closer to me by about a foot. Lining up a shot and killing another creature, this repeated.

‘Well shit, they are going to close in with every kill now, aren’t they? Wish they would just take an arrow to the knee and drop out… that’s it! I can shoot out their legs making them incapable of movement, then take them out at my leisure.’ Mentally chastising myself for not thinking of this sooner, I adjusted my aim and fired towards where the knees should be. The smaller target proved to be more challenging to hit, but I was able to get a glancing blow with almost every shot.

Finally I landed a direct hit to a knee, causing the creature to stumble into another one. Since they were running so closely together, this caused a pileup of the creatures, and I took advantage of it. Firing rapidly into the center of the pile, I was able to kill six creatures before they began to right themselves. I could clearly see for the first time that there were only three creatures remaining. They began to charge straight at me.

I took out the one on the right before they reached me and spun to the side to avoid the remaining two. I managed to avoid the one on the left, but the center one was able to snag a feather from the edge of my wing and my movement yanked it out.

“Mother-Fucking Shit!” I bellowed at the pain.

With no time to recover, I kicked the creature’s chest, sending it reeling back away from me. At practically point blank range, there was no way I could miss. A single shot finished off the creature, and a second killed the last creature in the room. The instant the last creature died, the light in the room flared brighter than it had when I first entered and illuminated the entire room, including what was initially in shadows. Seeing that this did not reveal any more creatures, I ignored it for the moment. Checking my status, I saw that my health was now at 94%. I leaned over and picked up the feather that had been dropped when the creature dissolved and saw a single shotgun shell next to it.

I ignored the round for the moment, focused on inserting the feather back into my wing. Again the pain was crippling for a minute, I could easily see this being a breaking point for some people. I’ve seen people take a bullet and not even flinch, and others that would act like they were dying from a paper cut. Personally I like to think I’m somewhere in the middle, and thus was not overacting in the slightest when I said the pain was crippling.

Once the pain faded to a dull throb and I could function again, I grabbed the shell from the floor and received a notification from the system. I was informed that it was a onetime use tracking round that would score a critical hit on a designated target, even if they dodged. ‘This is actually potentially useful, now how do I store and use it?’ As if responding to my thoughts, I received a notification asking me if I wanted to store the round for later use or load it for immediate use. Electing to store it for later use, the round shimmered as it disappeared and a bronze tic mark appeared on the buttstock of my shotgun. I was unsure if there would be more rounds like this in the room, so took the time to search the room and found two more tracker rounds. Afterwards, I checked my status, I saw that putting the feather back in had increased my health to 95%, the overheat stat was at 13%, and in my XP log I could see that I had killed 30 of the dodging grunts. ‘It was only 30, I thought it was more than that.’

Shifting my focus to the rest of the room, I saw that it was almost a perfect square as far as I could tell. The walls were a smooth, speckled stone in tones of dark gray and black that had probably contributed to deepening the shadows previously. There were two paths out of the room and I decided to examine both since I was unsure which one I came from due to the disorienting effect of the room. One was in the center of a wall and the other was closer to the corner. I headed towards the centered one first, at the edge of the room I could see into the hall and it looked like the path I had already taken. With that, I went to the other side and saw that the path did not narrow, indicating that this was the correct way. It took a minute to adjust my sight to the dim corridor again.

Once I could see clearly, I saw that the walls were looking even rougher, somewhere in between a rough-hewn stone and the natural formations of a cave. I caught my heel on something that made me stumble. I looked down and saw that the floor was no longer packed earth, but pitted with rocks and holes that could easily catch my heels and cause issues if I’m not careful. ‘Damn it, stupid heels, stupid fucking sadistic dungeon, I’m going to relish defeating you.’ Carefully picking my way along the path, watching my feet as much as I was watching the way ahead, I saw that it curved to the right after about another hundred feet or so.