Dungeon Sniper

I gave in eventually. The hunger won me over. A battle was coming up, and I needed to eat.

"I'll never let you kiss me with that mouth again."

Elysia sat as far away from Rafaqa and me, busy chomping down the roasted bats.

I once ate raw rabbits. At least these bats were cooked. And Rafaqa was right. The roasted bats were not half bad.

I ended up with a pile of bat bones next to me by the fire. Elysia did not wipe off the look of disgust on her face. But a full belly made me care not a thing in the world.

Except for the battle coming up ahead. The morning seemed the same as the past couple of days: barren, deserted, lifeless. But it felt different, mainly because there was a definite tension that pervaded and gripped the air around us.

I might have overeaten the bats due to nervousness. A stress eating, per se.

Rafaqa had been oddly silent ever since last night we had come back from the stream. I figured that was his way of preparing himself for the battle, the one he had been fighting the past fifty years, alone, at a prolonged stalemate, without hope.

But he had us now.

The battle today would be different, the old Orc's grave expression seemed to say out loud.

I had been sitting absentmindedly, fiddling the Omega rifle that had grown used to my hands the past two days, watching Rafaqa grinding and honing the blade of his giant greatsword with a whetstone that had dwindled in size due to decades of using.

"I have a question."

I blurted out haphazardly.

"Why don't we attack the worm at night? It's a plant, right? And the biggest problem with it is that it keeps regenerating. But if we go at it when the sun is down—"

"We will be blind as bats and end up just like them," Rafaqa cut me off and nodded to the pile of bat bones on the ground.

"But we can all see in the dark," I said persistently.

"And so can the worm and its minions. The disadvantage of limited sight affects us more than it does our foes. Eyesight is just one sense. In battle, one must use all of his senses if he wants to be the one standing at the end, alive."

"Are you referring to Synesthesia?" I asked dubiously. I was not new to mixing different senses during battle. I was not an expert at it either.

Rafaqa blinked at me with a mild surprise.

"For a trained warrior who already knows such an arcane art of battle, you sure sound like a coward."

"I'm not—I'm just saying that there should be a better strategy—"

"So we should all sit down and think over our agreed plan? Are you hearing yourself, child? Afraid of the coming battle and stalling at the last minute, pitifully so."

I closed my mouth. Was that it? Was I afraid? Was the image of the mountain of the Dragon Tree still lingering in my heart, possessing with fear?

"... The night is not the time for the living. The rightfully living, like us, need the warmth of the sun. We are weaker without it."

"Weaker than Dragon Tree, a plant, that photosynthesizes off it?" I scoffed weakly.

"Photo-what?" frowned Rafaqa.

"... But I think I get what you're saying. The night makes us weak just as it weakens the worm. Disadvantages hit us harder."

Rafaqa nodded and began to hone his already sharp blade again, more out of habit than necessity.

"Besides, you will see once we face the worm under daylight that it is not fear with which we should face it, but contempt."

And at that precise moment, the thin stone snapped and broke.

Rafaqa calmly stared down at the broken stone and threw it away casually.

"That was the last whetstone I had brought with me."

Rafaqa stood up and stared at the sky, at the movement of the sun.

"And I had just honed my sword for the last time, on this Level."

The Orc hero picked up his average-Human-sized greatsword as if picking up a cloth off the ground. He then pointed it toward the western sky and muttered the next words with closed eyes.

"Today, I head home."

Whether it was a warrior's prayer or ritual, the one thing that was clear was that Rafaqa was zoned in, ready for battle more than ever.

Then I saw them too. The noon had approached, and the Drakans were coming for their scheduled attack.

Elysia too got up, fully geared with the oversized metallic bow, damaged quiver, and plain bastard sword.

I raised the Omega rifle but Rafaqa stepped forward, pushing away muzzle gently.

"Orcs always stand at the vanguard. Let me take care of this."

Rafaqa walked on ahead and stopped at about ten yards from Elysia and me. He swung his prized greatsword left and right as if stretching his body. The wind shrieked with every light swing, and in the midst of those sounds, I almost thought that I heard a lion roar or, in fact, three lions roaring just as the namesake of the legendary sword.

An energy effused off Rafaqa's body. A bestial, belligerent aura.

The Drakans flew toward us, silent and deadly, an army of mindless, senseless minions not unlike the Goblin Ants at Level Two, but bigger and stronger, with wings and weapons.

It took a nuclear bomb to wipe out the Goblin Ants. And we did not have the bomb with us right now.

But we had Rafaqa.

"Bring me home, worms."

The gigantic Orc muttered before inhaling deeply, and his body seemed to grow twice as big as he filled his lungs with air, supplying blood to the muscles that were about to explode any time with both hands held in a backward stance, the brutish Trilion locked and loaded.

Orcs always stood in the vanguard, and for a good reason.

A tornado formed as the greatsword swung and ripped the air between the Drakan army and us, and a roar from an old warrior pierced through the deafening blast of the wind that turned everything on its way into bloody dust.

"SEND ME HOME, SWORD!"

The ground of Level Four shook at the fiercest, the most determined, battle cry it had ever heard.

.

.

.

Rafaqa ran and leaped ahead, leaving Elysia and me far in the back as he rushed headfirst to the Dragon Tree.

By the time we arrived at the mile mark away from the target, the battle had already escalated to the point that Rafaqa was a blur swinging at the trunk of the tree as well as any newly hatched Drakan daring to come near him.

As formidable and incredible it was to see Rafaqa taking on two enemies at once, it was clear that a stalemate would be inevitable if the battle kept on the way it did. The Dragon Tree regenerated fast and at every opportunity Trilion swung in the other direction and left the scar on the thick bark to heal. The rate at which the Drakan 'fruits' formed and ripened was surreal to behold and looked as if they were being popped off the branches almost instantly.

I lay on the ground, belly down, and adjusted Omega to the sniper-rifle mode. Elysia kept at my side, nocking an arrow in preparation for any approaching Drakan.

With the Falcon Eye activated, I aimed at one of the branches and fired. Fully magically-powered, there was no recoil or noise as a sharpened-seed fired off the muzzle and spiraled toward the target.

The seed-bullet left a giant hole on the branch, but not big enough to snap it off the trunk. The Drakan production on the branch, however, was halted.

The plan worked, and now I just had to keep firing until I could stop or delay hundreds of the worm's branches to pump out any more dragon soldiers.

The hole on the shot branch was already beginning to fill up per regenerative ability of the tree. I fired a couple more shots, with the similar effects of not completely halting the fruition process but merely delaying it for a few seconds.

But those few seconds were crucial for Rafaqa. Between the brief breaks from the Drakan attacks, the Orc hero was able to land additional inch-deep cuts into the trunk.

The trunk with a fifty-yard diameter, but I had a feeling that Rafaqa would be able to fell it. Two nights ago, I did not find it possible. But as the old Orc said, under the broad daylight, the worm no longer appeared as a mountain. It still looked huge, gruesome, and unnatural, but it was an abomination, a stolen nature rather than the grand nature itself.

"Incoming," said Elysia hastily as she fired multiple arrows over my head. A group of Drakans had spotted us and dove at us, but not before Elysia hit them first.

"Keep shooting at the tree. And fast. I'm afraid Rafaqa is slowing down."

I did not want to believe it, but Elysia was right. Rafaqa did not seem fatigued, let alone break a sweat, but ten minutes into the battle, he had slowed down his movements for the first time. And visibly so. The Drakans still did not dare touch him or get inside the death dome of lightning-quick blade-storm, but Rafaqa had to extort his body to dodge a spear-thrust once every ten slashes he swung.

"It's time," panted Elysia as she threw away the bow. She had run out of arrows already.

A battalion of Drakan soldiers were flocking toward us. The Dragon Tree had enough and decided to send a special force on our way.

Elysia was about to turn when she must have seen the worried look on my face.

"Don't worry about me. Keep firing. Don't think. Now, go hide."

And she ran. This was the part of the plan, and the part I hated the most to see come true.

Elysia was the decoy distracting the Drakans while I hid on the sand using Stealth Specialist - Desert Ant Skill.

The Drakans flew over me, seeing nothing, much to my angst. I half-wished they found me and chased me instead, but Elysia insisted that the faster, more evasive she be the decoy.

'Elves can run for miles without stopping. Can you?' Elysia had smiled bravely.

'I still think you should learn how to shoot the Omega rifle and let me be the one being chased.'

'I can run for miles until my lungs explode. But I can't sit idly while you're in danger. I know it's hard for you too. That's why I'm asking you to do the harder job. At least I can think less while I'm running.'

'You two are worse than Alpha and Velonis. They were never this... cloying, you know," Rafaqa had retched exaggeratedly.

It hurt me to lie on the ground knowing that my beloved was running while weapons rained on her, and I had the tougher job just as Elysia had said, but that did not mean I got to complain about it while not just one but two lives depended on my mission.

I was on a race of my own, my shooting down of branches against the Dragon Tree's regeneration.

A branch fell while another grew. A hole widened and filled back and forth as the stillborn Drakan fruits broke prem.a.t.u.r.ely and crumbled in agonized wails.

Elysia rolled and jumped with scars all over her beautiful skin.

Rafaqa punched a Drakan's skull inward as the two other grabbed on his greatsword with their entire bodies, blade deep within.

Ten minutes. Rafaqa had asked for ten minutes of uninterrupted chopping at the tree. Twenty minutes had passed since the battle had begun, and the tree still stood, its trunk cut only one-third in and fast regenerating even now.

My hand did not stop. The lack of recoil and noise helped reduce the fatigue, but the stamina drain with both Falcon Eye and Stealth Specialist Skills in use began to take its toll. The sweat got into my eyes, but I did not dare stop shooting and wipe it off. I felt like a grilled sandwich between the scorching sun above and the broiling sand beneath.

It was amidst this dizzy, dehydrated state that my Premonition Perk kicked in.

I turned sharply and caught that Elysia was on the ground, her leg bloody and grazed by an arrow.

I got up without thinking, and instantly all the Drakans in the air took notice and faced me, the sneaky sniper they had been looking all this time.

"Beta, no!"

I thought I heard a cry from Elysia. I was not sure. I acted on the impulse, even somewhat glad that I had drawn the attention of nearby fifty or so Drakans.

I switched the Omega rifle to the fourth-mode and waited, with a fraction of second feeling like a full minute, timing the trigger patiently.

When the Drakans formed a concentrated arc above me, with arrows falling at my feet and spears flying over my head, I raised the sinewy, wooden rifle in my head.

The rifle that had stored hours of sunlight since this morning.

"Eat sun, you dirt of bitches!"

Right. I said that. Lying on the sand under the sun too long could do that to one's brain.

The blinding solar laser flooded out of the muzzle, and I sprayed it from left to right, evenly and viciously, until the Drakans were soaked thoroughly in the light and burned without a trace.

The after flash left me blind for a moment, but I could not help but grinning, what with the adrenaline pumping and feeling relieved that I was able to save Elysia.

I turned to Elysia in the distance and checked up on her to see how much damage she had taken on her leg.

It took me a second that Elysia, pale and aghast, was staring somewhere else, farther off, at the Dragon Tree.

... The more days I spent in this world, the Dungeon, the more I got to think about choices, consequences, and exchanges. My original world was pretty much the same. Choices were available, if one could withstand the consequences. There were always consequences, however big or small.

And contrary to popular belief, life was more fair than unfair. It was fair that it was unfair to everyone, equally and universally.

It was also fair in that an action always took its toll. One good thing exchanged with one other bad thing.

Elysia and I watched with horror as the great Rafaqa, the infallible and indomitable, swarmed by suicidal Drakans, Trilion lost from his hand, probably for the first time since the greatsword had been forged.

Rafaqa had never stayed this long, against this many enemies before.

He had trusted us. Trusted me. Perhaps too much, and I failed him.

Held firm by countless Drakans, Rafaqa let out a disgruntled howl, annoyed and stymied, and unaware of what was coming for him.

Elysia and I could not even scream as the Dragon Tree, wrongly presumed as immobile, shook and shuddered as it raised one of its bigger branches, gigantic, sharp... and transformed, in the blink of an eye, into the shape of an axe.

The axe-branch dropped with a dry, heavy groan, hacking a dozen crowded Drakans under it, along with the right arm of the struggling Orc hero.