Level 1 Fallen

Chapter 184: Bullet Time

Diane’s body shifted into her draconic form, and she held one clawed hand forward. A field of darkness rose up around the car, swallowing the rampaging bullet monsters as they approached. Immediately, I felt the pressure on the barrier lessening long enough for us to get out of the car and stow it away.

Beyond the field of darkness, thanks to my True Sight, I could see that there were still dozens of little bullet creatures waiting for their chance to strike. “They’re level eighty-three, so it shouldn’t be too hard for the two of you to kill them if you can land a hit…”

I glanced at Bella as I spoke, who seemed to be thinking about how she could do just that. Shooting a bullet out of the air was not exactly a feasible plan. However, she leveled her rifle at the distance, pointing through the cloud of darkness. “Am I aiming the right way?” she asked, and I confirmed. After all, we were in a target rich environment, and I was curious what she would do.

Bella took a deep breath, and shot out a pitch black bullet, typical of her Chaos Firearms skill. I made sure to open a small gap in the barrier for her to shoot through. Then, beyond the field of darkness, the black bullet crashed into the ground, and erupted with an explosion of dark energy.

Seeing my surprise, Bella looked over with a smile. “One of my rewards from that dungeon, Burst Bullet. It creates a small explosion wherever I shoot. I haven’t really had the chance to test it out yet, so it’s on the list of things for me to train.”

I gave a small nod of my head, looking at the damage. Thankfully, even if it was a brand new skill, the level difference between Bella and these bullets was enough that she could eliminate them just with this one shot.

Since both Bella and Diane had a method to attack the enemies, I felt more at easy. We began moving forward, occasionally stopping to thin the herd around us while I guided the way. It didn’t take long for us to find the first chest of the dungeon, though the contents were… somewhat disappointing. 

Whether it was Bella, Diane, or myself, we all received various bits of leather armor, parts of a ‘gunman’ set, with Diane receiving a rusted, six-shot pistol. When she offered the gun to Bella, even Bella had no interest in the gun due to its poor appearance and low abilities.

Moving on, we entered the second stage of the dungeon, wherein the bullets suddenly stopped their assault on my and Diane’s barriers. Instead, there was the sound of a loud explosion, and a metal ball the size of my head crashed through the field of darkness and into my barrier. I was surprised by its force, focusing on it with Observe.

However, unlike the previous monsters, this cannonball was not an enemy. Instead, I traced its path back to a creature that looked like a rhinoceros with rusted skin and a cannon mounted on its head. “Over there, level eighty-nine.” I pointed towards the monster, and Diane briefly opened her barrier to get a proper look.

“Let’s just clear out this dungeon and try to get some loot,” Diane muttered in exasperation, and Bella readily agreed with her. “We can train our skills in another dungeon. Maybe back at the Sunset Isles?”

Seeing that neither of them were interested in clearing the dungeon the normal way anymore, I looked at Diane. “In that case, do you want to try using a ritual to create a wide-area attack?”

Diane blinked, thinking it over with one scaled claw tapping on her chin. “Give me a minute to come up with something. Can you hold off the attacks while I focus?” she asked, and I confirmed without hesitation. Although the cannonballs hit considerably harder than the bullets from before, they were only able to slightly crack one barrier, and their rate of fire was unable to keep up with the speed that I could repair the barriers.

Diane sat on the rusted ground, crossing her legs as if meditating. Her barrier of darkness dissolved, slipping along the ground to return to her. There, the shadows condensed into a number of daggers. I couldn’t make out the meaning behind the runes inscribed on the daggers, but I saw her making more and more of them.

Soon, there were dozens of daggers, each with one of five runes etched onto their blades. “Done,” she said as she stood up, lifting a hand to cause the dagger swarm to rise. “Once I plant these around the target location, the ritual should activate.”

After saying that, Diane activated her stealth skill, slipping out of my barrier to run around and plant the daggers. Between the time to create them and the time to deploy them, it took roughly five minutes to finish her preparations, at which point she returned to the barrier. “Okay… time to see if this worked.”

Diane closed her eyes in focus, and I spotted one of the daggers seeming to sink into the ground, its rune becoming a black mark on the spot where it was planted. Soon, the crackling skies above the area turned even darker, black rain pouring down. “You might want to brace yourself,” Diane said with a small smile.

The moment a black raindrop hit the ground, it exploded like a grenade, sending an eruption of black energy echoing around. Hundreds, thousands of explosions began ringing out almost simultaneously, drowning out the nearby monsters.

Even my own barrier was violently trembling beneath the attack. Each raindrop wasn’t all that powerful, but the fact that it was a constant assault meant that my defenses were struggling to keep up.

Needless to say, all of the monsters in this region of the dungeon were utterly decimated… as were the treasure chests. Extending my vision further, I found that this rain covered almost the entirety of the dungeon, stopping just shy of the boss platform at the end.

After nearly a solid minute of explosive rain, Diane let out a sigh of relief, ending her ritual. Bella stared at her in shock, her jaw hanging open. “I thought that was a crafting skill?” she asked, and Diane gave a sheepish smile.

“I mean… it technically is?” she responded.

“Is it too late to change my mind and take up a craft?” When Bella asked this, both Diane and I let out a light laugh. In fairness, the skill was remarkably powerful for what started as a crafting skill. It even made me curious what would happen when my Scavenging Mastery skill ascended to its final form.

Either way, with the mobs taken care of, the three of us made our way to the boss platform. I had seen it from afar before, but Bella and Diane seemed… rather unimpressed with the boss’s appearance.

The boss itself took the form of a rusted revolver with legs, wearing a wide-rimmed leather hat, and holding two additional revolvers in its hands. “Drake… that thing’s existence offends me,” Diane said, pointing at it. Even as she spoke, it was firing both large and small bullets at my barrier in rapid succession.

I let out a small sigh, nodding my head and preparing to crush it with a giant projected pestle when a black bullet shot from its main body. Before I could react, all of my barriers had been shattered, causing my eyes to widen. Even the pestle that I had been creating dissolved before it could be fully formed.

Startled, I hastily erected a crystal barrier instead, watching the bullets once more bouncing off of it. “Okay, what just happened?” I asked in alarm. I tried to create another projected shield with my Martial King skill, but found the skill unusable. “How did it just shut off my skill?”

My answer came not too long later, when another black bullet emerged from its main body, striking at my crystal barrier. Immediately, that too broke apart. “Six shots!” Bella shouted. “Every six shots fired from its main body launches that special bullet.”

I grunted, more prepared this time. I wasn’t going to let him seal another one of my skills. Focusing, I activated my Dark Intent to skewer it with a rain of black spears while shielding us with a wall of ice. 

Once the boss was dead, I checked my status, finding that both Martial King and Crystal Bastian-X had been sealed for five minutes. “That… is a horrifying skill,” I muttered, looking at Bella. “If that drops, this whole dungeon might just have been worth it.”

Bella readily agreed, and so we made our way to the boss chest. I opened it first, receiving nothing new, just more of the gunman equipment. Diane received a skill book, which got our hopes up at first. However, the skill’s name was Magnetic Shot. Definitely not the same skill that we were looking for, but Bella learned it anyways.

Once she read the description of the skill, however, she shook her head. “It increases the attack power and speed of my bullets, but it only works if I’m shooting metal bullets.”

“Sounds like the beginning of a railgun skill,” Diane commented. “We might need to buy some ammunition for you, just to have the skill ready in reserve. Though, training that skill to a high level is going to be expensive.”

With a nod, Bella went to open the chest herself. This time, another skill book appeared, this one labeled Final Bullet. Hopeful, Bella learned the skill, and then began reading off its description. “After shooting your weapon’s maximum ammunition, your next shot will temporarily seal any skill effect it hits.”

That was definitely what we were looking for. However, I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Do you want to leave it at its current level, or demote it to get the evolution advantages? There’s no way that a skill like that is its basic form.”

I would not be surprised if that was a master skill, or even a grandmaster one, since it was able to seal my own grandmaster-level Martial King for five minutes. Bella pursed her lips, but soon agreed, holding her hands out for the demotion books. “It’s better to spend a little extra time training now, and get the long-term benefits of an evolved skill.”

I handed over three skill demotion books, unsure how many she would need to use. Two of the books activated successfully, and she then returned the last one. “It’s now called Dispel Shot. If I shoot an active skill effect with this skill, I can weaken or dispel the skill on hit.”

“That’s still a really useful skill,” Diane praised. “Being able to destroy a boss monster’s defenses would give the rest of the team an opening to use their biggest attacks. Maybe if you evolve the skill from the beginning, you won’t need to go through a bunch of ammo before you can ues your ‘Final Bullet’.”

Bella smiled slightly when she heard that, clearly looking forward to it. Though, that did sound like it could be true. After all, my own Glancing Steps was only meant to teleport a few meters, but because it had been trained from scratch, it could go anywhere that I could see. Removing that limitation of Final Bullet didn’t seem unreasonable by comparison.