The site of my current assignment was an empty city lot full of construction supplies and foundation materials with a large and rounded portal that was partially formed in the ground to give it an archway appearance.
The consistency of the portal was very dark and slow moving, a testament to how long it had taken to form a voluntary party for the assignment. If I had not changed my acceptances to 'open' and 'E Only' on the government site, I would probably not be here. However, here I was with a team of seven.
The team leader was a lady only a little younger than Lucinda by the name of Gwyn. She was wearing a set of bleached white robes made from what looked like animal hair fibers over her form-fitted proto-suit and wielding a 'wand' of sorts. The wand was three feet in length, made out of some alien black wood, and tipped with a sharply pointed flower of what looked like opaque agate but glowed with a deep reddish orange from within. The bottom of the wand also ended in a short steel blade.
Not only her equipment but also the gear of several other spoke of their seniority because much of it could be acquired through contribution points. Even though we all got paid per assignment, where a private organization would profit from the resources and monster bodies inside a portal we gave ours to the government in exchange for points or credits. The leader's wand alone cost a few thousand and I was currently saving up to a thousand.
I was already over eight hundred thanks to the slime cores of my previous assignment and the greater share of contribution points so I anticipated overachieving my goal in this mission.
We were all gathered around and geared up at the dark portal and the leader was currently going over plans and positions. Besides her at the front there was a second young man in matching robes who was also a healer and would work from the rear guard.
Manning the front alongside the leader who used equipment to double as a fire mage were two tall and husky individuals wearing thick leather armor augmented by metals bands and flattened rings. Both of them carried on one arm apiece a large round wooden shield trimmed in darkly shiny steel with large rounded plates on the fronts. Calmly waiting in their other hands were short but stout flanged maces with large heads.
Besides the four of them were two swordsman like myself and another young lady who carried only firearms. The swordsmen, though, carried long and thin blades at either hip and short but insanely broad swords on their backs without the standard issue sidearms.
If I had to give myself a class, it was probably some kind of all-rounder or front-liner.
Even though I was almost half of the way through F grade the only thing mana seemed to do with my body was increase its strength, stamina, and reflexes a little. At sixteen years old I am capable of bench-pressing two-hundred-and-fifty pounds and could read sprinting speeds of about eighteen miles per hour for a little more than five minutes. Despite this, though, my kinetic vision and reflexes were high enough that I could follow rubber rounds and shift my body to minimize damage.
By the time I aged out of the academy into active duty I could dodge two out of five shots from three simple rifles while minimizing damage to only my arms, legs, and abs from the other nine bullets. If those were live rounds and I was not at least wearing a proto-suit my only options would still be to play dead and pray.
However, if it happened today while my body had a higher MP level I might be able to dodge more bullets and retain the use of an arm or leg.
"What position do you want?" Ms. Gwyn asks while I was busy studying the others while she planned out basic formations. "You can shoot, stab, and in that armor you might survive a hit or two. Emile and Carlos are going the be paired with my tankers while my husband and Emilia handle the ranged combat. What do you want to do?"
"Farm contribution points and go home," I reply flatly. "Put me wherever you want me and I'll do my best to make sure nobody gets hurt. If you want me to pick, let me lead the way in the beginning and then rest through the middle before helping tank the boss."
"If im right about this place, its a simply and short cave system with mostly medium sized critters, so that just might be possible," she replies briefly. "The middle will be the trickiest part if the scouting report is to be believed so it would be better to keep the upper ranks rested. We'll probably have to divide the party so we'll just leave Emilia with you."
"How far did they manage to scout?" I ask incredulously as I briefly check the fastens of my armor and weapons.
Smiling brightly, she informs me, "Using a sonar device from inside the entrance, they managed to map the entire system and give a rough estimate of their numbers. Three slimes were killed in order to do that, so there will likely be even more slimes and spiders than that waiting on the other side. Think you're ready? I'll give you a five-second head start before we rush in to support."
I was actually terrified at the idea of doing something so completely foolish as going into an alarmed dungeon by myself for any amount of time, but I had already opened my mouth and put my foot in it. The only thing I could do was swallow back any complaints and draw my Protector Revolver before simply starting into the portal.
For a brief moment, Ms. Gwyn actually laughed and started to reach out and grab me but I was already stepping into the portal. There was only enough time for me to hear the words, "Oh shit," before I found myself in a fairly well lit cavern of dark blue metamorphic rock. Thanks to two bright LED lanterns on the ground near the middle of the cavern, I could make out multiple large and small bodies traveling around edges of the bright light.
The skittering of legs on rock were already faintly resounding in the cavern as man-sized spiders with spindly spear-like legs started making their way toward the sudden disturbance. There were very obviously some large slimes of opaque blue and white 'skins' but they were much slower than the spider. I could ignore them as I raised my revolver and stepped forward.
I used the shifting of my weight forward and down to reduce some of the recoil that followed pulling the trigger while flexing my arm tightly to steady my aim and grip. Twenty yards away passing through the lantern light, a bulbous black and navy blue spider's small round head exploded inward from three large handgun rounds punching through its chitin face. The next shot was fired only a second later at a much closer target off to the side in the dark, shearing away a large portion of its head with the passage of magic metal and kinetic energy.
Sadly, to both control my recoil as well as make room for the others at the entrance I had to choice but to continue walking forward.
My third shot into the dark at the other side of the cavern also missed, punching into the side of the ten-legged arachnid's big round body. Luckily, the force of the blow was still enough to stagger them out of the dark and into the right after losing their balance. Shot number four finished the job as I finally left the dim lighting of the entrance portal and entered the lantern light.
The first slime to come within reach of me was briefly rolled forward with my heel like a soccer ball and then scooped up with the toe of my boot to kick it up into the air before simply punching my free hand into its center of mass. The canine teeth augmenting my gauntlets easily punctured and ruptured the slime's body before sending it flying. Thanks to dealing with the slime, one of the few remaining spiders in the cavern was less than ten yards away.
Bullets thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen covered the distance in a split second, blasting apart the lower face and mouth of the spider so that everything in its head splattered downward. Sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen dropped the second-to-last spider entering the light from the side in similar fashion.
Only now were the other appearing on the other side of the portal and stumbling through as if they were pushing each other. Despite having rushed in out of fear and worry they surprisingly found themselves in a large area with large dead bodies and a handful of slimes. In the middle of the cavern, though, the young man named Malcolm that they had hired for the assignment was wielding an empty three-barreled revolver by its barrels alongside a standard issue saber.
Facing off against Malcolm was was a spider with a body the size of a VW and a head like a watermelon that was currently being thrashed with the butt of the gun while the saber swished left and right and block and parry the spider's frontal legs. After several consecutive strikes the spider's movements began to slow as its face started caving in until, finally, Malcolm was able to chop his saber straight down through the middle of the spider's face.
Ms. Gwyn could not help but turn to look at her husband as Malcolm began practicing soccer kicks to smash slimes against the walls or swat them out of the air with his saber. "His points were only forty-three on the paperwork, right?"
"Yeah, and all of his stats are up-to-date because of his last mission's hiccup," her husband replied while the others started making their way into the cavern with a surprising calmness. "His class type would be some kind of warrior like a swordsman or the tanks because of his strength-to-weight ratios but even in our E rank his reflexes would be considered in the next grade. In the country's academy, he was one of a handful of F ranks actually capable of dodging bullets so that alone speaks to the kind of training those kids get put through."
Shaking her head while watching Malcolm curiously reload his gun with great haste, Ms. Gwyn says, "And here I only looked at the numbers on the front page."
At the opposite end of the cavern from the portal where a large tunnel lead deeper into the underground, I was just finishing reloading my revolver while listening to the sounds multiple sets of skittering legs. I would not have time to collect the cores from the slimes I had 'carefully' drained but I still had plenty of time to cock the gun and aim down the tunnel while backing up toward the middle of the cavern.
As the skittering became louder and louder I could soon make out the forms of large bodies further down the tunnel making their way forward. Just from the amount of time they had spent traveling I was certain that the rough dozen bodies heading toward me were all spiders because slimes would have long since been left in the dust. All I could do for right now was aim at one shadowy mass and pull the trigger.
Then do it again, again, again, again, and again before using my last speed loader to refill my gun. Several of the bodies down the tunnel had fallen away and became obstacles for the others, buying time for my reload before the first of the oncoming spiders entered the cavern. The others were all ready now and taking up ranks just behind me, leaving enough space between the tankers for my retreat while Ms. Gwyn, her husband, and Emilia had firearms at the ready.
With this surprisingly capable and supporting team at my back, I was able to relax a little and better aim my shots with a steady hand. Four spiders were killed by my last round of shots, leaving only three more for the healers and Emilia to quickly put down with only one or two shots apiece. Compared to what I expected of the supposedly swift spiders, we were actually making great time in clearing the portal.
However, these were all the early enemies of this portal which meant they were prone to being the weakest underlings. After these guys that came from deeper in, the spiders were likely to become larger and more dangerous. Not only would their reach increase but so, too, would the density of their carapaces which would lessen the impact of our firearms.
In an upper end E grade portal like this one, most of the spiders probably had MP ratings comparable to the alpha wolf of my first exposure. Even though the bullets came three at a time and were not soft lead hollow points like in the past, the insides of the spiders were still dense with fluids and tissues to reduce the depth of penetration after breaching the carapace. I was certain as I reloaded my revolver and my speed loaders from an inner pocket of my coat that I would eventually need to shoot a spider two or three times in the head before it was truly dead.
On the plus side, my contribution points were sure to be over a thousand after preserving over a dozen slime cores all by myself. Unlike most monsters which had similar cores of an inorganic material that did not match their bodies, slime had organic cores which stored and used mana to maintain its life functions. Why pretty much everything on the inside of portals had mana cores, though, was entirely up to speculation at this point.
Once the last of the slimes had been repeatedly kicked into a nearby wall and lost at least two thirds of its mass on the side of the tunnel, I went around with my saber chopping free the mostly preserved cores of the slimes. The cores were the same opaque tissue as the outside of their bodies but somehow they absorbed MP from food and surroundings to continue producing the gelatinous mass which protects their cores.
Compared to ballistic gel used for firing tests on bullets, slimes were almost twice as strong. Which meant they were roughly the same density as a normal athlete's muscles with the addition of an even denser cell wall membrane for skin. Considering their average sizes, three 9mm bullets was usually what it took to reach and destroy the cores in a 'single' shot.
A Protector Revolver, though, fired 10mm AP rounds for the extra stopping power on larger slimes and armored bodies.
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