Level 1 Fallen

Chapter 205: A Long Shot

After parting ways with Roku, the three of us made our way to the local Dungeon Management Office. As we arrived, we were unsurprised to find that the office was staffed entirely by puppets. “Welcome to the DMO, Lord Advent,” one puppet greeted warmly as we approached the counter. “My name is Juuni, and Roku has already sent word of your reservation. Our earliest convenient timeslot is seven hours from now. If that is a problem for your companions, we can reschedule you for another time.”

I looked over at Bella and Diane for their opinions. Bella simply smiled, shaking her head. “I can ‘log out’ early to get on later,” she said, knowing that it was not good to let others know of her far more… flexible schedule.

As for Diane, she nodded her agreement with Bella, before turning to look at Juuni. “I’m just curious. Is there a puppet in this city called Ichi?”

Juuni didn’t hesitate to answer. “That is correct. The first puppet created by the lord was Ichi, who now serves as the general goods vendor.”

Diane seemed satisfied with this answer. “In that case, we’ll be at the dungeon in seven hours.” After saying that, the three of us left, not having any particularly pressing business left at the office.

“What was that about?” I asked, confused by Diane’s random question at the end there.

“Roku and Juuni are both numbers in a Player language,” Diane explained. “Specifically, six and twelve. I thought that there might be some other link between the names, so I asked if anyone had the number ‘one’ as their name.”

“So?” Bella asked in confusion. “That just means that the Questing King is from that country, doesn’t it?”

“Possibly,” Diane agreed. “Or he’s just a fan of the language’s culture. My chosen last name, Kagemura, comes from the same language. If he is from that country, it will be rather difficult for us to meet him, though…”

“Why’s that?” I asked, furrowing my brow. “Is that country isolationist or arrogant or something and refuses to associate with outsiders?”

Diane blinked at that, looking up at me. “Huh? No, no. Well, they used to be fairly isolationist, a long time ago, but that’s in the past. It’ll be difficult because of time zones. Our normal activity period is probably when he’s asleep. We might have the chance to meet him early in the morning, before he goes to bed, but otherwise it will be unlikely for us to meet the Player directly, unless he plays in sleep mode.”

I thought back to what Diane called ‘sleep mode’. I knew that she preferred not to use that particular mode, because it dulls the Player’s senses and reaction speed. In exchange, it allowed them to log in while they were asleep in their world. “What do you think are the odds of that?”

Diane pursed her lips, unsure. “I’d say… maybe fifty-fifty? If he has an office job or something that he has to attend to during the day, then when he’s sleeping might be his only chance to log in. However, if he’s like your friend Ella, and arranged a deal where he can log in during the day, or like myself where my only income comes from the game, he would have no reason not to log on while awake.”

“If that’s the case, we’ll likely only be meeting with the steward for now, and finalize our deal with the Questing King when he is able to find time while we are all available.”

Listening to this made me realize just how vast the world was. Naturally, I was aware of the concept of time zones. However, I rarely traveled far enough for the difference to be noticeable. Even now, we primarily went south from Athua to reach this land, so the time difference was not very severe.

“I see. We’ll just have to see what happens, then,” I shrugged, not feeling too bothered by the whole thing. Since I hadn’t yet had the chance to get Diane to research this figure, I was naturally not worried about whether or not we would be able to meet him yet.

With that in mind, I sent Diane a private message, telling her of my plan to have her investigate the Questing King while she was offline. She looked over at me, giving a firm nod of agreement before logging off. Seeing her brand dim, I began looking around for an inn to stay at. Given that we would not be facing the dungeon for quite a while yet, it was important to secure lodging for the day. Not to mention the fact that we might need multiple attempts in order to get the skill that we were after.

Thankfully, finding an inn was not hard at all, as there was a steady stream of players going in and out of one particular building with a sign depicting a large bed. I went in and secured us three rooms for now, taking care of our lodging problem.

Sure, I could just place my house down outside of the city, but we weren’t in ownerless lands anymore. To put a house down without consulting the local lord first could very well be a crime.

As I left the inn with the keys to our rooms, I noticed that Bella had also dimmed her own brand, the two girls looking on with distaste as they were approached by a pair of players. “You two seem pretty familiar, though I haven’t seen you around town before. This must be what they call love at first sight, right?” one of the duo, a foxfolk with blonde hair and green eyes, said with a small grin on his face.

“No, it is not,” Diane responded flatly. Even if this wasn’t her Player, I couldn’t see her responding in a friendly manner to someone talking to her like that.

“Oh, come on, little girl. We can show you a good time--” his words were abruptly cut off by his friend, a human brunette who placed his hand over the foxfolk’s mouth with a pale face, recognizing the glare that Diane was shooting them.

“Shut it, Phil. That’s the Shadow Dragon!” he hissed, causing the foxfolk’s eyes to widen slightly. “Do you really want to piss her off?”

It seemed that Diane had garnered her own reputation after the recent war. The sponsored clips had no doubt been released, showcasing to everyone Diane’s full shadow dragon form. Either that, or there were clips of her killing a grandmaster by herself in the war dungeon. Regardless, her reputation was enough to stop people from committing what could be a very big mistake.

“Is everything alright?” I asked as I approached, startling the duo that had been attempting to flirt with Diane and Bella. For her part, Bella just looked annoyed, while Diane looked downright disgusted.

The two Players, however, hastily backed away. “Everything’s fine. We were just leaving,” the human said, dragging his friend away.

I chuckled, turning to face the duo. “I can’t leave you two alone for five minutes before people start swarming around you, it seems.”

Bella’s cheeks flushed slightly at that, while Diane gave a disgruntled sigh, crossing her arms. “I’m sorely tempted to practice the stealth skills my Player mastered. At least that way, I won’t have to worry about people like that.”

Deciding that it would be a good time to change the subject, I looked at the duo. “So, what do you two want to do? We’ve got a while yet before we can go to the dungeon.”

Surprisingly, it was Bella that spoke up first. “If it’s alright with the two of you, I’d like to take the time to train my firearm skills. There was that training method that I read about in the Sage’s Sanctum, and I’d like to give it a go before we get into the dungeon.”

“I don’t mind,” Diane answered simply, looking over at Bella in curiosity. “What sort of stuff do you need for your training?”

“Just something to shoot at,” Bella answered with a smile. “The further away the target, the better, even if it is outside my normal range.”

Diane and I looked at one another before shrugging. Since she just needed targets, I teleported us to a large hill that we had passed while flying to No Strings Attached. I picked this area because it was fairly scarce in monsters, but I remembered seeing a herd of them not too far away while flying over. “Is this good?” I asked, looking at Bella.

Bella, for her part, pulled her rifle out of her inventory and looked through her scope at the monsters in the distance. “This should be fine. I won’t be firing directly at the monsters for now, though, so I’d appreciate it if you two could take care of any that approached us.”

This only confused Diane and I even further. Still, we agreed, so Bella lowered herself to lie prone on the ground, propping her rifle up and staring down the scope with one eye closed. She took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.

Inwardly, I braced myself for the loud bang that naturally came with firing a gun. Although they were certainly more powerful than bows, with longer ranges and a lower skill threshold, their main demerit was the noise that came with their use. Many archers were known for their ability to hide, eliminating their target without ever being seen or heard. Once you swapped out your bow for a gun, though… you were definitely going to be heard.

If not for the black projectile I saw flying out of the gun’s barrel, I wouldn’t have even believed that Bella had fired a shot, and had just pulled the trigger without using her skills. Seeing that a shot had, indeed, been fired, it took me a moment to process. “You used a stealth skill on your rifle?” I asked, and Bella smiled.

“That’s right. This is Silent Sniping, one of the training methods I read about. Thankfully, I already had the stealth skill, since you’re always having me fight from within your stealth bubble. Same with Sneak Attack. As long as I channel both of those into my rifle at the moment I fire, I can cancel out the noise it produces. And since I’m only using those skills for a brief instant, the cooldown time is only a couple of seconds.”

With that said, she fired another silent shot, her bullet rocketing into the distance. Turning to face her target, I saw that she was shooting at a distant tree. Curious, I created a sentry to go and check it out, making the display visible for both of the others. This tree was more than a kilometer away, so it took a few seconds before the sentry reached it.

When it did, however, we were treated to the sight of two bullet holes, spaced more than a foot apart from one another. Seeing this, Bella pursed her lips. “Now I just need to work on my accuracy. The other training method I read about was Distance Shooting. It talked about how to measure the wind and other environmental factors, combining them with skills to fire accurate shots at long ranges.”

“Ideally, I should be able to shoot a single leaf off of that tree, though it will be harder to hit a target that is moving in a constant battle. That’s why this method is considered best for an opening move, before either relying on allies or switching to secondary weapons as the enemies approach.”

“Well, you’ve got some time to figure it out,” Diane said, sounding interested in the training. “Between you with your long range and silent shooting, my Player with her ninja obsession, and Drake’s Beyond the Veil skill, we might as well call our party the Traveling Ghosts. If we really wanted to, we could probably raid an entire dungeon without being seen.”