I peered at the cavern, it seemed to disappear behind a formation of rocks on the right side while the left side continued further back. The rocks obstruct the visibility, which would make it difficult for me to see where enemies may come from. While I did not see any enemies from the previous room, there was a high probability that any enemies would approach me as soon as I stepped into the room. As I stepped into the cavern, I fell into a ready stance, prepared for any creatures to attack. When nothing came for me after a few minutes, I reassessed and determined the most probable reason was there is a different requirement for initiating an attack in this cavern. I crept forward, keeping my body against the left wall, since that had the clearest visibility of the majority of the room. As I moved towards the corner of the cavern, I completed my mental map of the room. It was an L-shape in the loosest sense that the room took a 90-degree turn to the right around a massive pile of rocks that stretched almost to the roof. In this portion of the room, I spotted several new creatures.
These creatures appeared to be a variant of the basic grunts I had previously faced. They had the same yellow eyes and emancipated form with gray skin. There were two differences, first was that these creatures had a few scraggly, black feathers hanging from their skeletal wings. The second was that they each carried a single pistol that appeared to be one of the small self-defense ones I had seen some women carrying around. They looked positively tiny in the creature’s hands.
Knowing that the actual range of pistols and the range of shotguns would not necessarily matter in the dungeon, I took preemptive action. I began to shoot at the creature closest to me. They began to move toward me slowly. I had fired three shots at center mass, killing the creature, when I received a notification that the shotgun had leveled up.
Level 2 Shotgun
Abilities: infinite basic ammo
Rate of fire: 1 per 0.9 seconds
Damage range: 1-11
Critical hit rate: 11%
Critical hit Damage: 22
‘Shit, I hate getting notifications during battle. They are always perfectly fucking timed to put me at a disadvantage.’
These creatures seemed smarter than the previous ones. They distanced themselves from each other, thus preventing me from being able to hit multiple targets with a single shot. By the time one of the creatures was in range to begin shooting at me, I had killed another three in rapid succession. I used the rapid aim skill to minimize the time to switch targets. Once again, I noticed they were not targeting my body where they could inflict maximum damage, but were targeting my wings. ‘What the fuck…. do they actually think they can shoot feathers off my wings?’
I decided to see if these creatures would follow if I retreated. As I slowly backed up along the wall, I continued to fire. This soon moved me out of range of the creature’s fire. Once I was out of sight from the creatures, they stopped firing and I heard shuffling steps, so assumed that they were returning to their previous positions.
‘Shit, couldn’t be as easy as creating a choke point again, could it. What else can I do to gain an advantage?’ My eyes swept over the surrounding area and lingered on the pile of rocks. I decided to climb the pile of rocks if they were stable enough. I hoped that the gap I could see at the top went all the way to the other side. Since there was a gap on the other side as well, I figured that my chances were pretty good. Now how to climb with the shotgun. The shotgun does not have a strap to carry it, or any place to attach a strap.
I looked around and found a sharp rock that could be used as a primitive knife. I sat down and untucked the tied portion of my boots laces, then examined them. If I adjusted the laces and tied them with a knot instead of a bow, I could probably get two feet of lace from each boot. That would not be quite enough, so I unlaced the top two holes and estimated again. This would be enough. I tied a knot at one end of the lace to prevent it from falling out of the hole, then started the arduous process of adjusting the laces. It was such a pain to spend that long working the lace down, then back up to get the maximum length of lace available. But once I had the length available, I used the sharp rock to cut it off, then repeated the whole process with the other lace. I tied the two pieces together, then tied one end around the buttstock and the other around the barrel to create a makeshift sling.
I started to carefully climb the rock wall, with the rifle slung on my back. ‘Fuck this shit… damn, don’t fall, find another foothold…. Shit, that was close….. I really need to get into freestyle rock climbing if this is going to become a habit…. Fuck, finally, almost there.’ I arrived at the top of the pile of rocks, no thanks to the stupid heels and lack of good grip points, and saw that there was no gap in the wall, it was simply recessed before joining with the ceiling.
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“Fuck-fuck-fuckity-fuck. You stupid piece of shit, I wasted all that time to climb up here and you couldn’t have the decency to have a hole to fire through.”
I slid back down the wall, less careful than I should have been. A rock gave my left arm a scratch from elbow to wrist that immediately started stinging. Ignoring it, I unslung the shotgun and removed the makeshift sling. With no pockets to put it in, I looped it several times around my waist and secured it, just in case I needed it later.
Once I had the shotgun at the ready again, I followed along the right side of the cavern, and treated it like firing around a corner. I rounded the corner with just my upper body and the shotgun while standing sideways to minimize my profile. This had the added benefit of keeping my wings protected. I began to fire at the closest creature within sight, ignoring the return fire. Every few seconds when the creatures started to hone in on my exact position, I would either adjust my firing height by crouching down, laying down, or standing back up. While this reduced my rate of fire when I was moving, it also reduced the probability of being hit.
Most of the creatures were still taking three shots to kill, but occasionally I found that I was able to kill a creature with only two shots. I must have landed a critical hit and inflicted double damage on those creatures. After a minute, I had killed another eight creatures, leaving 13 still alive.
These creatures were obviously not very intelligent, since they never aimed for my exposed head. I continued my alternating height tactics until there were only five creatures remaining. The instant that the shot connected, leaving only five creatures, they began to advance and their firing patterns changed. They began aiming to hit my arms in what I can only assume was an attempt to incapacitate me and make it easier to get to my wings. My stance protected me, for the most part. I took out another two creatures with only four shots, focused on the next target, and fired. I was hyperaware of the remaining creatures. With each creature I took down, the remaining creature’s aim drifted closer to center mass. The last three creatures were almost to my position when I began to retreat while hugging the wall, hoping to either draw them into the open or get a minute to readjust my firing position. The creatures advanced until they were peaking around the corner trying to see me. Taking advantage of that, I crouched behind one of the boulders at the base of the wall, aimed, and fired. The creature’s head snapped back with an audible crack when my shot got it dead center of the face where a nose should have been.
‘Daymn, that has got to hurt. Hope it did extra damage to the fucker.’ It must have killed the creature since the remaining two began to charge my position while firing. Before I could duck behind my cover, one clipped me on my left shoulder.
“Son of a bitch! That fucking hurts!” I snarled.
I am a firm believer that swearing is a viable pain mitigation tactic. Disregarding cover, I stood and rapidly fired on the remaining creatures, taking them out with five shots in less than two seconds. ‘I thought I could only fire one shot every 0.9 seconds… the fuck! Are the weapon stats a lie?’
Listening for any other signs of movement, I stayed ready to fire. When I heard nothing for a minute, I focused on my shoulder and saw that it was only a shallow graze sluggishly bleeding down my arm. Checking my status before treating the wound, I saw that the graze cost me 4% of my total health. Since I did not have any basic supplies, I grabbed the sharp rock again and cut a section out of my pants to make an improvised bandage out of. Untying the shoe laces from my waist, I used them to secure the bandage and apply pressure to stop the bleeding.
Once done with my treatment, I checked my status again and saw that my health had recovered by 1% leaving me at 96% health. With that question answered, I checked the shotgun’s level since I was not really paying attention to it during the firefight. The improved damage and rate of fire are nice, however, I noticed a new stat for the shotgun, overheat. This stat was at 3% and I can only assume that it came from the rapid fire I did at the end. ‘Well, fuck. The stats are not a lie… when a gun overheats there is warping and in the worst cases the barrel can break… so I need to prevent the overheat stat from getting to 100%, fuck now I have to be careful to time my shots as well, this just keeps getting better and better.’
Making a mental note that I need to control my rate of fire, I looked at my XP log and saw that I was now at 19 basic grunts, and 25 return fire grunts who were each worth 30 XP. ‘That is a really dumb name, is this dungeon core a five-year-old… sorry that is insulting to kindergartners.’
I began examining the room, looking for an exit. This was made more difficult by the numerous cracks and crevices in the second part of the room. While going around the wall, there were a few crevices that looked like passageways and extended anywhere from 50 feet to about 200 feet before I would hit a dead end. After the fifth time, I began to get annoyed. Mumbling to myself about stupid dungeons and stupid false trails, I continued to look for an actual passage. Another three dead ends, then I finally found a crevice that continued further than the others.
This crevice widened from about two feet wide to roughly ten feet wide after the initial 50 feet, turning into a passageway. I was expecting it to be a long winding passage after the last one, but was surprised to find that after less than five minutes I was at another room. This put me on guard, nothing is ever easy in a dungeon. If I’m not being worn out by long corridors in ridiculous heels, then there will probably be something worse for me to face in this room.