The Rifleman - Bk1 - Ch.10 (Patreon)

Chapter Ten

Easy Mode.

Wesley Lancaster grinned as he leaned around the corner and fired off a Healing Flare. Okay, so maybe it didn’t have a tattoo, but he considered it a separate skill, so he named it.

Ducking back into the corridor again, he waited for the sound of explosions. Six rattling explosions sounded out, followed by hollow groans as the two elites burned and finally a rattling and clanking as they fell apart. 

A quick check showed the room was clear, and he stepped in to start looting. The skeletal casters were more dust than corpses, but it still somehow worked. He had gotten at least something from them this time. Two copies of their robes, which would fit him more like hooded shirts than robes… but it was something. His own gear was unlikely to last forever after all. 

This was his second room cleared this way. It almost felt like a cheat code as he trotted down the ramp to the next Safe Room without even glancing at the exit portal option. 

This one got another quick round of kicks and pokes to ensure everything was what it pretended to be before he filled his canteen and sat on the bed while waiting for the charges on his spells to top off. Pulling off his helmet for the first time in two days, he ruffled his hair and wondered how many floors this place had. Given the number of enemies he had encountered so far, he was willing to bet it was designed for groups. Those first few rooms had only been possible thanks to his skills being deadly to the undead, while the later ones were so easy thanks to his combining two skills into one.

What he really wanted was access to more knowledge and skills. Flare was apparently a skill almost everyone ignored. At the same time, Emergency Heal and its predecessor were considered valuable if Keller’s reaction to him being able to heal was any indicator of rarity in general. Theoretically, any healer could decimate any undead they tried to heal, but would anyone try? He was sure there must be people who experimented with these things… it was all just new to him. If that was the case, though, why did anyone fear undead in the first place? 

Ultimately, he would have to find someone to ask, but for now…

Wes grabbed his gear and continued down the next corridor.

Wesley saw the big bastard and blinked. He was nearly eight feet tall and almost as large around. A rotund tub of rotten flesh with a massive mouth whose bottom jaw almost touched his distended belly.

“Gross,” Wesley muttered as he fired the Healing Flare and ducked back into the hallway. It was big, but it would un–

A massive fist reached into the hall and grabbed him, throwing him hard against the far wall. The two elites in the room were burning and already falling apart, while the chunker was merely blistering. 

“Oh, tough guy, are ya?” Wesley grinned and cast the spells again, this time into his rifle. The bullet hit the massive zombie in the arm when it raised it to protect its head, resulting in the arm blowing off. It started at the jagged bit of bone that was all that remained of its forearm and grinned at him.

“Fuck this,” Wesley tried to run for the corridor again, but it stepped in the way and blocked his escape. 

A healing bullet to the brain had to kill it, right? 

Wes tried that next, seeing the skin blacken and peel around the hole in the forehead before a section of the skull blew clean off. The zombie turned away, grabbing a chest plate from the fallen elites and jamming it over the top of its head before resuming the chase.

The speed was a shock, matching his own or even faster. Something that big should be slow. That was how it fucking worked. 

Wesley was down to two Emergency Heals and didn’t dare use either of them. He did make liberal use of the Improved Flare for all the good it did him. There was simply too much flesh to burn through. 

More and more, Wesley was forced to engage the creature on its own terms. Slapping the last Reload clip into place as he rolled under another attempt to turn him into a kebab didn’t get him any closer to getting away. It would make no difference even if he made it to the corridor and into the Safe Room. The way out was blocked. It was take this bastard or stay here until he died of starvation. 

He did have one skill he had never dared try before and wasn’t keen on trying even now. Were-wisp was his Totem ability, and he still had no idea what it did. 

The fear he felt toward the wisp that chased him was still there, and the idea of using an ability tied to it was horrifying. 

Would it release it?

Finding no other option, Wesley swallowed hard and finally activated the ability. 

A cold shiver seemed to pass over his body, and he watched as his entire body, M1 included, seemed to turn slightly transparent. It was weird, leaving him feeling as if he was floating almost.

It was also distracting, which is a lousy idea mid-battle. A backhand blow caught him, sending him flying backward… floating across the room like gravity had been halved.

Wesley laughed, hearing the weird echo-y sound of his voice. It was creepy as hell, but now was not the time to analyze it. The blow he took had been nasty, but it felt as if he was wrapped in pillows. The impact dulled and robbed of most of its power. Wesley kicked off from the wall, swearing as he shot across the room like a comet. Arriving behind the thing in a split second gave him an opening to attack, so he raised his rifle and fired. 

Nothing happened. 

“Shit! Fuck!” Wesley kicked off gently, playing keep away from the zombie as he tried to come up with a plan. With no working gun, Wesley fired a Healing Flare instead. Or that was the plan.

Instead of the energy launching from his hand, as usual, it seemed to coat him.

“Uh, okay,” Wesley looked at his hands in confusion. His whole body was glowing the same red as the Healing Flare.

Wesley kicked off again as the thing roared and charged. He was a bit slow this time, and the chunker was too close. He punched reflexively, seeing the fist burn and pass into the undead flesh before that entire area exploded.

Wesley was blasted backward but was too excited to care. 

He kicked off again, shooting at the mammoth undead before unleashing a flurry of hits, before kicking off before the areas exploded.

Wesley canceled the Were-Wisp as the big bastard finally fell. The fight had only lasted a few minutes, and he could feel a bit of tiredness from using the spell, but in the end, it was not much more than he would expect from fighting normally.

The massive undead was a mess. Exposed bone and burned flesh were all that remained in a vaguely humanoid shape. He would have had no chance to beat the thing without his totem. It was almost as if it had been designed exclusively to fight him. An undead to counter his strengths. 

He tried looting it, but nothing happened, which was no longer a surprise at this point. 

Still, it was enough.

He was done. The next exit portal he saw, Wesley was leaving. As always, he tried to loot the elites to no effect before sitting down and waiting for the charges on his spells to fill. A quick check showed the Were-wisp tattoo was utterly unchanged. There was no sign of any sort of charge being used or a cooldown incurred. He could apparently change back and forth as often as he liked, which was kind of cool.

This strange place was nothing like the dungeons he imagined when he played games, giving no loot at all he could find. While it might just be designed to provide necromancers like Gem with a ready source of bones and such, he still thought it sucked. Going forward, Wes decided to skip any dungeons he saw, at least until someone could clear the mystery up for him.

For now, he had to concentrate on making it to the next exit portal or Safe Room alive. 

Two rooms later, Wesley was once again cursing Todd with every cell in his body. Each room had been occupied by at least one of those big bastard abominations of undead flesh, and each one had gone down hard. The last room had just been two of them, and this time, they had been armed with whips. Whips. 

He had been reduced to ping-ponging around the room like a pinball, taking swipes as he passed. It was not a fun experience. The only positive thing was learning that any damage he took was healed quickly by the energy his body was turned into. Still, after using all the energy to heal himself, he had to recast the Healing Flare twice before the fight ended.  

Spoiler alert: Whips hurt like fuck.

Despite being sure this room would give him an exit portal, Wesley saw only a single exit, so he once again sat down to recharge his skills while taking a drink or two of water. Once he was done, he only had a couple of sips left, so he was really hoping to get a fountain or something up in the exit portal room. 

Hoofing it through the swamp with no water would not be fun, even if he felt a little better about his chances. He could, at least in theory, beat the shit out of any wisps that came his way from now on.

If nothing else, he was fast enough to run away properly. 

The biggest worry he had at the moment was how long this dungeon would even exist. The thought had only occurred to him while he was resting after the room before this one, but what would happen to him if he was in here when the zone status changed? 

Would the dungeon open somewhere else, or would he vanish in a flash if he was in here when the zone changed? To put it mildly, he was more interested in getting out than getting loot at this point. 

Trotting down the next corridor with his rifle slung over his shoulder–he hadn’t needed it for the last three rooms– Wesley had his fingers crossed for an exit portal. 

What he got was the largest room so far. 

A single undead occupied it. If it could count as a single undead. To be fair, it was big enough to be a crowd all by itself. Nearly twice the size of the previous room’s occupants, with four arms, heavily armored, and a bone staff in one meaty paw that was almost three meters long. Wesley simply stared until he felt a gentle pressure behind him, pushing him forward. Looking behind him, the corridor was still there, but something was slowly but surely pushing him into what had to be the boss's room.

He pushed back against the force behind him with everything he had but was slowly and surely deposited in the room anyway. The corridor naturally immediately vanished.

“Fuck you, Todd,” Wesley growled as he activated Were-wisp and cast a quick Healing Flare before launching himself into the air and to one side of the large bone spike already spinning his way.

His first strike revealed the biggest problem. His fist didn’t penetrate the armor in the slightest, unable to affect the undead flesh beneath the thick metal. The boss laughed and swept the bone staff at him, forcing him back. Attack after attack failed, and Wes lost the first healing charge to a bone spike through his leg. A change of strategy was called for. 

Instead of recasting the Healing Flare, Wes launched himself up to a ledge that ran around the top of the room and lay flat, switching off Were-wisp while he used the cover it offered to fire a pair of burning bullets straight through the gaps in the armor. It was not that effective, but it did distract the boss enough for him to fire a third bullet infused with Improved Flare through the left eye. 

By that point, the ledge was done, and he rolled off, activating Were-wisp and kicking away just in time as a massive spike cut the air where he had been a second before.  

The blindness gave him a fighting chance, letting him get a couple of punches in from the blind spot to gaps in the armor. It was more attrition than anything, as Wes was forced to go for the least armored areas behind the knees. Slowly, the damage built up until the left knee finally gave. 

The boss roared in pain as it dropped to one knee, pounding the earth with all four arms at the same time. Cracks burst out, and zombies poured from them. 

Wes moved into them quickly, kicking and punching with abandon, setting off explosion after explosion. Soon enough, the energy was spent, and he was forced to retreat again to the remains of the ledge, giving up his wisp form to empty his rifle into the remaining zombies. 

His last charge of Healing Flare would simply not make much of a difference at this point. His attacks just weren’t doing much damage. He had an idea, but it was beyond crazy.

Out of time, Wesley saw the boss starting to rise, pulling one hand at a time out of the ground while starting to belch some kind of smoke into the room. There was just no way that was a good thing. 

He had at least ten minutes to go before he would have another Emergency Heal available. It was this one or nothing. 

Acting before common sense could get in the way, Wesley launched himself over to directly above the boss and kicked off, shooting towards the boss as he drew his bayonet and turned of wisp form, all while casting his last Emergency Flare into the blade. 

The impact broke his arm like a toothpick, but the blade slid through the flesh and bone and deep into the skull, delivering all that healing energy directly into the brain.

The massive creature thrashed, sending Wesley flying, unable to focus enough with his shattered arm to cast Were-wisp meant he crashed into the wall on the far side of the room and slid down it, barely managing to stay on his feet as blood poured from where the bone had punctured through the skin in several places. 

While the boss thrashed and spasmed, Wesley was busy, finally using his medical bag to put a tourniquet on his badly mangled arm and prevent himself from bleeding out before Emergency Heal came off cooldown. 

Of course, it did nothing for the pain, but he was hardly expecting it to. 

Then he sat and watched as the boss slowly stilled and waited to see which one of them would die first.

Emergency Heal closed the worst of the wounds, but his arm was still broken, the bones slowly knitting back together as he kept it cradled in a sling. The boss had finally died, and he was psyching himself up to go and get his knife back. Approaching with light steps, Wesley grabbed the handle and ripped the bayonet free, expecting to get flattened at any moment.

When the boss’ body disappeared, he nearly shit himself. 

Two items were left behind. 

Upgrade Token:

Apply to a piece of gear or equipment to repair and upgrade it.

Gorger Leather Vest:

Made from the skin of the Great Gorger of the Lich, this stylish vest will block most bladed attacks up to Tier 5

Despite claiming to be made from a Gorger, which he assumed was the boss he had just killed, the vest looked like a regular leather vest, complete with a silk lining. He tried it on over his uniform tunic, and it even fit pretty well. All in all, it wasn’t too bad, especially with the memory of being stabbed in both the chest and shoulder in the last two days fresh in his mind. 

The token was not a coin, as he somehow expected, but rather a small metal cube. He was tempted to keep it and see if he could get someone to tell him the best thing to use it on, but he was too practical to do that.

He was a Rifleman, so he pushed it against his rifle immediately. Upgraded meant less likely to break, and he had no idea if it was even possible for him to get another one. Sure, he had a way to fight the undead without it, but fighting anything else would be impossible. 

In short, the M1 was going to be his priority until he learned otherwise. 

Secretly, he was hoping it would change into a machine gun, but he was out of luck at that point. Still, there was a change as the cube melted into the rifle.

The wood darkened, becoming a rich, deep mahogany color. The metal smoothed, and bright veins appeared in it until it looked like it was wrapped in silver filigree. He could feel how much heavier it was when he picked it up. Solid and reliable in a way it hadn’t felt since he had gone up a Tier. 

For the first time in this dungeon, he felt like he had actually gotten something worth all the trouble.

He took one step toward the exit portal in the far wall, and stopped as chalky writing appeared on the floor.

Tier 2 (125%)

Tempering threshold reached…

“Fuck right off!” Wesley tried to run for the portal.

Tempering…

Pain exploded inside him as he crashed to the floor in agony, inches from the archway.

Body Tempered x4

Vitality increased by 35%

Toughness increased by 25%

Continue Tempering to increase benefits.

Tier Three Attained!

Influence: 5 460

Please Choose One Skill:

Armored Hide - Passive

Increase the toughness of your skin and resistance to all forms of damage.

Undead Bane - Passive

All damage inflicted on the undead is increased.

Splitting Ammo - 

The next shot fired will split into three.

Charges: 3

Focusing through the pain was not exactly easy, but making the decision at least provided a distraction from feeling something akin to his body and soul being slowly fed through a mangle.

Armored Hide, he already knew. He had rejected it before, but being bounced off a wall, not to mention being stabbed twice and having an arm shattered, was more than enough to make him reconsider it. Even small things could add up, and who knew where it could lead?

Undead Bane was certainly not up for consideration. His skills already made him deadly to the undead; even the massive dungeon boss had fallen. In short, no point in the passive buff unless hunting undead was his plan for the future. 

That left him with Splitting Ammo, which would make absolute sense from a certain point of view. He could fire three bullets at once. Except… bullets don’t spread as easily as arrows do, and he tended to actually aim at things. Bullets that would just go somewhere near what he aimed at would be nearly pointless. 

If he was honest, he had been hoping to see something like an ice bolt or an electric jolt. Something to experiment with.

The selection was so poor it basically left him no choice at all.

Still, armor was armor, right?

He selected the skill and felt a dim pain on his shoulder. It seemed he would get a new tattoo to balance out the red cross on his other shoulder.

The pain finally faded, and Wesley got to his feet and took a couple of deep breaths. How the hell had the tempering even triggered? Also new to him was the idea of advancing Tiers not being automatic. 

No one had mentioned how it was done or even needing to do it manually. In the future, he would have to be more careful if he wanted to avoid tempering in the middle of a fight or something like that. 

If that could even happen.

More and more, Wesley was figuring out just how much he needed someone to explain the basics to him. Gem might have done it if she hadn’t abandoned him to be eaten by a wisp. The fact that the woman who left him to die in a swamp was his best source of knowledge about this world was extremely sad. 

Deciding that standing here feeling sorry for himself was not going to change matters, Wesley instead looked around to find some kind of fountain to get some water before he left.

There was, of course, nothing at all.

Whoever designed this place was not exactly a friend to people. They seemed to go out of their way to be a dick or was it another thing he was missing. Maybe people had a spell to cover the basics?

“Yeah, or maybe they are just too smart to wander around without any,” Wesley chuckled to himself and stepped into the portal.