Daily Short: Sara 07

Guns are a Divine gift. Sara thought as she shot another Green Oakensoul Dungeon creature. The runic bullet sliced through the mana shielding punching a bucket-sized hole in the target’s head. The mantis dropped to the ground in a heap of lifeless chitin. As anyone with the sense to buy a dungeon guide knew, the upper levels of the massive Dungeon were insect and plant biomes.

Sara was currently shooting her way through the fourth floor without mercy. Mantis, the size of carts, fell one after the other as she left a trail of corpses on her path. Reaching the Floor Boss’s room, she kicked open the door with extreme prejudice. As ambush predators, the mantis was quite annoying. Per her standard procedure, all the pent-up frustration would be spent on the Floor Boss.

Pulling a set of flares from within her pouches, Sara threw the devices into the room. A bright flash of light accompanied a massive screech as the bursts revealed a gigantic mantis clinging to the stalactites above. Sara grinned a crazy devil’s smile, instantly kneeling to let the rifle’s laser sight center on the Floor Boss. Four bullets later, the Boss monster attempted to crawl away from her on the floor.

She didn’t take the bait of a weakened enemy and continued to snipe from outside the room. Eventually, the Floor Boss shuddered and died. Sara waited patiently, knowing exactly how this would go. The Green Oakensoul Dungeon wasn’t a mindless beast. It had rules that were well understood, and among those was the one dealing with killing a Floor Boss from outside the room.

There were four flashes of light in the room as the Floor Boss vanished at the same time. Where space had existed were now four copies of the giant mantis. They looked around, immediately focusing on the Rune Elf kneeling outside the Boss’s room.

As the four giant mantises moved towards Sara, she grinned as sweat trickled across her brow. With practiced motions, she reloaded special rounds into the rifle. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes to trigger the Skill of her namesake.

Snapshot. Sara thought as her eyes flickered open, unseeing orbs without focus. Like a precise turret of destruction, she fired so fast a single loud crack of sound washed over the area. The four giant mantises turned into nothing more than mush as the specialized bullets struck them.

Sara rose from her kneeling position to enter the Floor Boss room with a devilish smile. The Green Oakensoul Dungeon knew better than to try the same trick twice with her. Sara had snapped the last time it summoned the third set of monsters. Rune bullets were manageable, but runic explosives were a whole different nightmare. Dungeon stone was burdensome to break but not that tough with enough force applied. It had taken weeks to repair the damage on the lower levels.

After that incident, Sara had been informed by a polite dungeon-bound humanoid of a truce. In exchange for only taking one shot at her, she wouldn’t use rune explosives except in cases of extreme self-defense.

It was a deal that favored me quite handily. Sara thought as she moved towards the drop chest that had appeared with the four mantises’ death. Still, I guess my dreams of laughing insanely while all the tunnels collapse isn’t going to happen now.

Pulling a strange contraption out of her pouches, Sara knelt behind the portable half-pillbox. A single shot later, the traps on the chest had been disarmed. Moving towards the chest, she glanced at acid dripping off her defensive item. It was pretty clear the Dungeon was pissed, but it stood by the binding agreement.

Chest traps were the easiest way to display anger for the living crystalline entity.

Rolling her eyes, Sara kicked open the chest to eye the sparkly treasures within!