---Richard---

Richard found a weapons shop.

Not the same one he was in last time – no matter how much brand loyalty he had towards the shopkeeper with a mechanical arm – but one closer to his current location.

The shop was in a less reputable district than his first one. The signs and quality of the offerings were more suspect…but who wouldn’t want to find some black market weapons!

Walking past the shopkeeper – an incredibly gaunt man with hollow cheeks and a mechanical monocle – Richard nodded and began browsing the wares.

What did he want? Well…he wanted a gun if he was being honest. Not because of some dumb reason like thinking it was the strongest weapon or not wanting to get his hands dirty – no Richard wanted a gun because of how satisfying they were to shoot.

He didn’t want some sniper’s clinical weapon or some pea shooter no.

He wanted a ‘big ass gun’.

A shotgun if he could find it – maybe a bazooka if he was lucky.

Passing over all sizes of pistols and rifles Richard paused when he saw something even more exciting.

An invisibility cloak!

Reaching out in slight awe, Richard grabbed the cloak and found himself linking to it almost subconsciously. Wrapping it around his frame he looked down. His legs were gone.

…okay there was a seam and he kept dragging it making a faint blur of a ruffle appear near the ground but even that faded with time and if he held it just so…there. He was completely gone!

This…this was amazing. Imagine how much easier sneaking into places or surprising people would be with this? Everyone should have an invisibility cloak!

Stepping out of the back shelves, Richard walked across the room before suddenly a cough sounded out.

Turning he saw the shop keeper looking at him.

Stepping to the side the shop keeper’s eyes followed.

If you bind or break an item you buy it.

The shopkeeper spoke his voice rasping slightly a frown accompanying his stare.

...whatever his translator was it didn't seem to be masking his actual voice - Richard heart the rasp loud and clear every time he talked the translated panel appearing delayed a moment later.

Pulling the hood down Richard stared at him.

“How come you can see me? Is the item defective?”

The shopkeeper snorted and tapped his eyepiece.

Thermal imaging. That item only gives optic cloaking…you’ll need a heat shield as well to block proper glances. You buying that?

Richard would take it! Even if it was only part invisibility this was singlehandedly the most useful thing he had ever seen.

Brining the cloak towards the shopkeeper and handing it over reluctantly – it broke its connection as soon as it left his hands with a slight jolt. The thick invisible sheet flickered into sad translucent view again.

I want it.

That will be one million chips, will you be paying in installments, a line through the bank, or cash?

Shifting the cloak over his scanner the shopkeeper glanced up at him bored.

“I have this” Richard dropped his bag of funny money on the counter and watched the shopkeeper scan it.

And the rest of it?

The shopkeeper spoke up after glancing at some invisible screen.

“…how much am I missing?" Richard said slightly worried.

You have just under 6 thousand chips here… you need a mill. So most of it.

The shopkeeper rasped slowly as if Richard was slow.

…fuck.

“Okay” Richard said taking back his bag and staring longingly at the cloak. One day.

…he could just take it, but he wasn’t a thief. Richard would not rob an honest man just trying to make his sketchy living – maybe if this was a massive department store of guns instead of a mom and pop style shop. Maybe then.

Heading back and now better able to look at the price tags Richard found himself trailed by the shop keeper who hung the cloak up once more and stood just behind him as he looked at things.

“Why are all these pistols shooting random globs and Lazers? Where are the solid chucker’s? The lead.” Richard spoke up – might as well ask the staff on hand.

Delvers who use firearms tend to shoot a lot. They don’t like carrying around ammo – and would hate to run out in the dungeon.

The shopkeeper rasped – sliding into view beside Richard their hands behind their back.

“So, the rest of these make their own ammo? Why can’t they just create their own physical bullets? Why all these fancy effects?” Richard asked curious. Probably some bullshit reason to pump up the sci-fi factor.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Pointing up to a rifle near the ceiling the shopkeeper spoke.

Materialization is expensive – do you know how much energy it takes to create matter? Even create fake matter like most materialization powers do? Something like that takes ten minutes to create a single bullet and twenty for one that’s stable and won’t disappear in a bit. 24 something odd shots a working day – if its bound and constantly on you might get 72 in a 24 hour period .

Compare

Pointing to a sci-fi looking pistol the shopkeeper continued.

With the same Aether flow rate and slot count, a lazer pistol can shoot once every half minute or so.

Of course you can carry ammo – there’s some options here for that – and many of the higher end kinetic rifles let you grow a shot in case of emergencies…

But they are unpopular for a reason – materialization’s even worse because dissolution ends up being cheaper than materialization for non bruisers. When you are converting matter to energy you can sometimes chain it – loop energy around and use the energy to fuel the strike.

Course they are expensive for a reason. Everyone and their mum wants a dissolution weapon.

..come over here.

Most delvers prefer a melee weapon – a solid baton can usually be powered indefinitely. It's much cheaper to keep the energy by you then toss it around.

Eyeing Richards build the man brought him towards a second isle.

This shop had fucking lightsabers.

Richard stared at the wall of disabled lightsabers pulling one down and connecting his slot to it. Slowly ever so slowly a brilliant purple mass began to extend out of it. Like a…deodorant? No like a lip balm or something being twisted out of its case.

Pushing it back on the shelf quickly – not wanting to slice through anything – Richard stared at the shopkeeper.

“What else do you have?”

…

After making nearly a full circuit of the shop – there were so many toys – Richard finally found something different. The shelf of ‘experimental’ – read more exciting – equipment near the back.

The ‘meta’ for weapons was currently elemental weapons for the poor – swords or axes that burst into flames or similar. Lasor pistols as a cheap side arm.

…and then light sabers and dissolution guns for the well off. All sounded fun but lost some novelty knowing they were the most popular choices. Did Richard really want to roll up to a dungeon delving party wearing the same getup as half the people there?

Nah Richard rolled back around to wanting a gun with some kick. That’s why he was excitedly looking at the DIY ammo scooper.

It looked like a mechanical ice cream scoop on RGB and gears. How one used it was to hold one side against stone – or similar material although it was only really rated for dungeon walls – and channel the stockpile option.

Through some magic mumbo jumbo Richard didn’t understand, it bit into and sucked stone up. That raw material was moulded into into hollow canisters that extruded out the top and was sliced off into perfect sizes…

Like those plastic snowball makers you could use to create a mound of perfect snowballs, as long as you were using the correct type of gun you could make infinite ammo from the surroundings. Infinite ammo that, more importantly, didn’t take forever to make.

Then depending in part on if you filled its ‘jelly filled’ setting – a side section that would pipe trace amounts of explosives or similar into each round – or went for shrapnel rounds – a specific process that would break the stone in such a way it exploded on firing…

From the explanation Richard could tell he could have both his ‘big ass cannon’ and ‘shotgun’ dreams all in one tiny package.

Okay it wasn’t that tiny – it took up a lot of space on his belt – but it was different and he liked how it felt on the test slab.

Experimental Ammunition scooper. 2999c.

The General purpose cannon he bought was 800c – probably a good price for it – and then Richard bought a dozen bags of ‘effects’ he could add to the weapon each for 20c. Supposedly the effect bags should be able to last him a hundred shots each so that felt like a good trade? Hard to value money when you weren’t really sure how much it was worth and had taken it from muggers in the first place.

Richard's estimate for the dollar value was something like a third. That meant he had spent nearly 1000 dollars on the pooper scooper and 270ish on the gun.

…pricy? Maybe? It seemed pricy but he didn’t really know how much delvers made.

It was all fake money in the end.

Taking his bounty happily out the door Richard walked along. Really what made the most sense for him to do was to head to the dungeon. Become a proper player and grind a bit – try and get another slot or two using his single one to switch between his two items would be annoying when he could just use a single one.

All it should require was beating a boss right? Could he get a skill for continuing his crusade?

That was the problem. The longer he spent without continuing down his path of vengeance, the less he cared about following through with it.

No he’d continue. The next target was the police.

Sorry the ‘private police’ if that wasn’t a red flag if he’d ever seen one.

Making his way through the city, Richard learned more and more about them.

They were mostly a regular police force, but the majority of their work was done through corporations. The city itself hired them as well to be more traditional police but they paid so little the ‘official’ police seemed to be nothing more than a marketing ploy – no one he talked to mentioned ever seeing them stop a burglary or similar.

Basically the mafia as far as Richard could tell.

Finding their bases was incredibly easy – finding the specific cop who sold him into test subject status was not.

What Richard did find was a central office right by the blimp docking station.

The blimps were interesting. More involved than Richard had first thought. It turned out they were filled with helium – those hoses that attached to them would top them up every time they landed – and a majority of the reason they moved so well was due to K-Powder.

Everything came back to that damned magic dust. Turns out if you removed some of the drag caused by massive balloons they could move much faster through the air – who would have thought?

…nah it was a cool material, Richard was just salty it was controlled by crooks and poisoning the populace.

It did give him an idea however.

Richard waited till night – still salty he didn’t have an invisibility cloak – then went to work.

Using his newfound scooper on the cement base of the building it slowly but surely dug down into the foundation.

The process was kind of long – it wasn’t meant as a digging device – but Richard had time.

Suck in cement like material. Poop it out into canister. Suck in more.

A faint buzzing sound rang out but it was even less noticeable than Richard was imagining.

He could have done this in the day.

Richard at least was getting plenty of practice with the device. Always a bright side. The machine worked in a series of steps. First it seemed to pulse backwards into the stone adjacent mix softening it somehow. Then it stabbed into the material with spinning scoops to pull it up through the back. Inside the stone was compressed in a single step and then pulsed with a second wave of something to solidify it.

Scoop. Scoop. Scoop.

Once Richard had dug a hole about the width of his arm he was ready.

Rushing towards the blimp docking station he snaked one of the feeds around the side and through its back area – crossing the back ally to his dug hole. He had estimated it would fit, but it was with great relief that he found the tube snaked its way over no problem.

Inserting it down and under he then tried to activate his stone tunneller to cover over the hole.

…this was not its intended use at all. The “stone” was not nearly as soft as the machine made it look – less playdough and more stone.

…

Finally sealing off the edges Richard made his way back to the ally and took a small nap.

Dawn was the sign to start his plan. Workers would notice the snaking hose soon – every half hour he waited discovery became more likely.

Sneaking into the building Richard found a round wheel to spin and release the gas.

Heh…release the gas.

A faint hissing sound was a sign it was working, and he snuck back around to watch the building from the front.

…it wasn’t immediate. Slowly but surely however there were signs of confusion. Someone suddenly yelled in an incredibly falsetto tone and Richard knew it had taken effect.

…there. Complicated distraction made.