Sendicard
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Chapter 15
🕑 Added 2024-03-05 03:21:18 +0000 UTCSo because Patreon gives away the content for free if I don't have a boilerplate, because intelligent design is intelligent and nothing I say will change that.
Here you go, keystrokes, keystrokes, keystrokes.
Chapter 15, I'm quite proud of this one.
Dungeons kinda suck to write, I'm taking notes and growing a lot.
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Bright and powerful, Sasuke’s flames bathe the room and force the remaining three enemies into a corner. The screams of their fellow nameless mook echo in everyone’s ears, but no one’s taking a moment of pause. It’s just another hint that they’re not real, and another reason she doesn’t have to worry about it. Naruto engages two while Sasuke immediately gives ranged support, which means it’s her time to take some aggro away from the duo. She wastes no time darting in at top speed, unsheathing her sword with a thick grin. It feels good to hold, to give into it just a little, but she’s not dumb.
Something is wrong with this sword, and there’s no point to giving it blood here, so she refrains and asserts dominance over it for a moment. She can use it without giving it a reward, and it’ll just have to deal with that. It’s not like wasting blood this early in the dungeon would be a good idea, and she doesn’t just get her health back if she wastes it willy nilly. She can’t afford a six hour nap in the middle of the dungeon floor anymore than she can afford to let it have her.
Once in Konoha, she’ll have it checked, or maybe she’ll corner Kakashi and ask him what the fuck. Whatever the case, she’s quick on the offense because they have to clear this five times and that’s gonna suck if they rush, if they take forever with each one it’ll become their new day job.
She’s pleased to see that instead of instantly spamming shadow clones against the two trying to skewer him, Naruto’s dodging and getting a few hits off every quick round. Shadow clones are expensive, and having it as a trump card instead of a first technique is so much more valuable. Talking caution into him was difficult, but games helped her do it.
For every slash they make towards him, he’s got a kick in one’s face and a kunai embedded in another’s arm or leg. It’s the third trying to sneak up on him that she intercepts, arriving like hell is on her heels. With an intense flicker of her chakra, her sword glows a little with lightning, while Sasuke’s flames continue to burn corpses and fill the air with the putrid smell of death.
She can’t charge it much yet, proto-affinity is nowhere near as strong as she’d like, but like hell she’s missing a chance to grind it in combat. Just as she’d expected, when she gets close he slashes out at her like he doesn’t even see the sparks flying off her evil blade. A part of her wonders if it’s because this is a dungeon and he’s not supposed to adapt, but the sound of his screams rapidly inform her that he at least recognizes the effects of potent lightning chakra flowing down his weapon and shooting into his flesh through his grip. His body clenches, holding it all the harder and allowing her to channel more of her chakra into him like a river of poison. “That’s enough.” She grunts, releasing him from his newfound agony prison by spin kicking his weapon away from him with enough force to shatter his hands in the process.
“Better put you out of your misery, huh.” She follows up by slashing her sword horizontally using her momentum to rend flesh, armor, and bone alike.
She doesn’t even look at him as he falls in two pieces, quickly observing the other boys and their battle.
She’s happy to see they’re already successful. Naruto eventually did decide on using a couple clones, who are currently poking and prodding their unconscious enemies. Unconscious, not dead, Naruto’s such a softie. It makes her smile even as her opponent’s blood bathes her from his still spewing body..
She’s less happy to see their disturbed, judging stares. “What? I wanted to try it. He’s not real damn-it!”
“Uh-huh.” Sasuke grunts.
“He’s not!”
“Let’s just move on.” Naruto gulps, looking away and heading towards the door.
“There’s gotta be loot here though!” She points out. “Let’s look for a chest or something.”
“Nope, I’m out, this room smells like burning flesh,” Naruto does as he says and leaves without regard for her loot desires.
“Dobe’s right,” is all Sasuke says before walking away from her himself, exiting out the worn down door quickly enough, abandoning her to do the scavenging herself. Jerky teammates… You try one technique. She’s not even the one burning people to death! That was Sasuke!
“So unfair!”
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As they skipped out, she got all the treasure to herself. Which means she left empty handed because there was no loot. The only guy who looked like he had anything valuable on him was the guy Sasuke hit with a fireball, and even she wasn’t poking through charred, sizzly flesh for a trinket.
Going back to the center and taking the right path instead of the left leads to a similar situation as the left had. Instead of a mine room, they discover a treasury, but its contents - beyond armed guards - are, well, peculiar.
“Why would they guard a room of blow up toys?” Naruto questions, smacking an inflatable hammer against his arm. It makes loud boppy noises every time it lands, making her smile quite brightly. “This is like the most random thing I have ever seen.”
“It’s completely useless.” Sasuke sighs, eying a pile of inflatable shuriken. “Why?”
“Not necessarily.” Sakura says, lifting a golden sword - well a balloon but it’s gold trimmed and looking sweet - and waving it around. “I bet Inari would love this.”
“You get he’s not actually related to you, right?” Sasuke asks. “Are you going to get attached to every child we do a mission near?”
“Yes.” She answers without even the smallest bit of shame. She’s got a balloon, she’s got a dungeon, she’s happy. All she needs to complete the set is an energy drink, some cocoa, a bag of chips and a keyboard. “Besides, it’s not just him, there’s tons of bored kids in Wave with nothing to do. Just because something’s not treasure to you doesn’t mean it’s not treasure. We could probably raise the average morale of Wave an entire percentile with this, maybe several. Adults might enjoy this stuff too.”
“Sakura… How do we even get the toys out of here?” Sasuke drawls, “and please remember we had to take people down to get here, people who might wake up if we take too long.” It’s true, everyone that was taken down here is just unconscious. She stayed back and let them do it this time, since they were too busy being the judgment squad and turning their gazes towards her to do a dungeon properly. She just really wanted to use her techniques more and apparently using techniques is ‘brutal’ and ‘intense’ and ‘maybe a little excessive.’ No one cared when Sasuke shot a fireball… She doesn’t understand, and maybe she will in time, maybe it’s a low charm thing. She’s working on it, she wants to get to Genin charm before the chunin exams, just in case their crazy teacher wants to shove them into it.
She sincerely doubts it, but Kakashi is Kakashi, and that guy is nuts.
It’s gonna be a sore spot for a while, she’s sure of it, these boys are just too moral. They’ve never done a full night binge grinding adorable creatures for special loot or burnt something cute and listened to it scream for an achievement.
Gaming is hell, and they just aren’t ready for it.
“What are the odds there’s a real sword underneath it all?” Naruto asks. “Like a mask for if anyone took out the guards?”
“Are you really going to make me search through childrens’ inflatable bonking weaponry?” Sasuke already knows they are before he says it, so their expectant gazes only make him rub his face. “Fine.”
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“Told ya.” Sakura gloats, skipping along happily while examining her new bright and shiny hand crossbow. It’s got metal plates all over it, and the bolts are gem tipped like some kind of special game bolts. They’re beautiful, but she’s far more concerned with what kind of crazy nonsense they’re gonna do when they shatter. They remind her of the old Runescape bolts, and those did not play around.
“This is awesome.” Naruto’s more than happy to spin his new nunchucks. She’s not exactly sure if those are a good idea for him to have, but she trusts him not to knock himself out with them at least. Besides, hers is far more impractical, and she’s pretty sure the loot was altered by her new skill. The odds just don’t make a lot of sense otherwise, crossbows aren’t exactly common. Hand crossbows even less so, though she does have to wonder why it’s not more common among genin. Crossbows can ignore personal strength, and they’re more than enough for an agile and determined genin to take down a bandit or two. They wouldn’t even be that expensive to have made, so D ranks would pay for it quickly enough even if you had to use your entire stipend on living expenses.
“I hate you both.” Sasuke managed to find a pair of goggles that have the strongest glass she’s ever seen. Sasuke called dibs immediately, citing that an Uchiha’s eyes are more valuable than their legs. She somehow doubts that’s actually true, but the conviction he said it with was more than enough for her. If she’d known Sasuke wanted goggles, she would have bought him goggles. Or, maybe learned to make them? They can’t be that hard, and she has been wanting to get into crafting. Once she gets home, she’s checking on the sword, getting a hug from her mom, and buying crafting supplies to see if she can get a skill.
Besides, folding to his desire for goggles let them go ahead and grab what they wanted. She even managed to bargain with him until he was willing to carry around all the inflatables for her cooperation in ensuring Naruto didn’t argue too much. He used to wear goggles and was quite attached to them, so it wasn’t surprising to see him kinda want invincible glass.
The inflatables, much to Sasuke’s ire, are stored in sealing scrolls they found underneath it all. They found two, and after using them to steal all the inflatable toys, they were only mostly filled up. The children of Wave are going to be so excited, and she gets to rub it in Sasuke’s face!
Who’s a good big sister? Not her, because she’s not related to any of them, but they’ll be calling her big sister after she’s done with this haul! It’s gonna be amazing. Her eyes sparkle just thinking about all that innocent fun. She’s already planning on coming back to Wave sometime to check in on Inari and bring real gaming equipment, now she’ll be the girl who also gave him and his friends a hundred toys.
“It is pretty stupid,” she agrees, humming a little to herself as they hit the intersection once again, “so who’s activating the trap so we can finally move forward?”
“Me.” Sasuke’s already halfway through the hand signs before she can say another word.
Flame leaves his mouth, the air itself ignites, and Sakura has just enough time to use her Genin Agility to full sprint tackle Naruto to the ground. The air burns above them, flames spreading like a toxin and coating the room with enough heat she can feel her clothes charing a bit above her. Tsunami is gonna be so mad about her top.
“I’m okay.” Sakura shouts, after she finally feels the heat above dissipate and let her be.
“I’m under Sakura!” Naruto decides to inform them.
“It’s just fire,” Sasuke says, “I’ve been protecting myself from fire with my chakra since I was ten.”
He really is standing valiantly like nothing happened, even as the walls, the floor, and the two of them are covered in soot. “Bastard.” Sakura and Naruto manage to speak at the same time.
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Their steps take them down a long hallway, and then another, and then another. It’s long, it’s awkward, but none of them are any stranger to walking. Especially recently, Sakura feels like she’s taken more steps since coming to Wave than in the entire rest of her life combined.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound catches her ears instantly, something slotting into something else, and then with little to no warning, soaring through the air. She can hear the force tearing through the path on its way towards them, and without thinking she draws her sword.
She doesn’t have to look to her right to slash thrice, and send three now in half arrows cut right down the middle to the floor behind her. Her gaze is instead focused on the left side, where she can see a dead end and several more arrows flying towards her. With a flourish they’re dealt with too, her hands moving her blade like one might a gentle conducting pointer through the air during a musical. Then before her ears even pick up on it, she’s dealing with a volley from the right side again - then the left side - then the right - like an automation, a neverending current of projectiles is dealt with and wood litters the ground in such a way that every step of her footwork makes a crunch beneath her feet.
“Sakura-jeez-” It’s Sasuke’s voice that breaks her out of her sudden stupor, and his hand that grabs Tsunami’s burnt shirt and drags her across the intersection and out of the way of the arrows.
“That was cool.” Naruto praises her.
“And completely needless.” Sasuke chuffs. “It was a narrow path, we just walked across.”
“Sorry, I don’t know what happened there,” she looks back, where arrows are still flying through a hallway she hadn’t even fully looked at.
The funny thing is she does know what happened there. She got trapped in a loop of instant successes from Genin Dexterity. Surely she would have gotten herself out eventually, once she realized, but what if that had been more dangerous?
Could an enemy abuse a mental loop like that to trap her in place while they set up something scarier? “I’m just glad I have teammates that’ll look out for me,” she decides to say, “thanks, Sasuke, Naruto.”
“Mnn..” Sasuke looks away from her, but Naruto.
Naruto gives her a big thumbs up and a grin that could make the gods smile.
Did the game system pick her teammates as well? If it did, she’ll have to thank whoever gave her this ability. She wouldn’t trade them away for anything, and they were just bonus! Well, maybe she’d change a few small traits here and there, but not the people.
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“This is it.” Sakura says, staring at a giant door at the end of the tunnel. It’s silver, and shiny, and about as imposing as any door can be. It’s the simplicity that gets to her. Between the traps, the spiders, the mine and the random toy room, she expected something equally ludicrous here. If the dungeon isn’t seeking to make a lot of sense or be consistent, why is it trying to lull them into a sense of normalcy here at the end?
This is what a dungeon room’s door should look like. Wide enough for all three of them to slip in at once, weighty enough to require more than one of them to open it, tall enough for them to stand on each-others’ heads and still not touch the top.
“The boss room?” Naruto asks.
“No, the pre-boss room, room.” Sakura says. “This’ll hold Gato’s elite, and likely the key required to access Gato.”
“That’s stupid.” Sasuke hasn’t been taking to all this very well. She gives him an apologetic smile, and wishes him luck internally. It’s not his fault he’s using real world logic. Why would they hide the key right in front of the door, with a horde of enemies? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but here, this is her domain.
It makes sense to her, and that’s all that matters. “Get ready.” She says, grabbing a handle on the massive door. “This fight is going to be a lot harder than the other two, and there might even be a trap or two in there.”
It’s Naruto who takes the other door, while Sasuke starts intertwining ninja wire with the loops in some shuriken. He’s got an idea, and she’s sure it’ll be great, so she doesn’t question him. Well, she doesn’t question him until he pulls out a kunai she recognizes. “No.” She asserts.
“Huh?” Sasuke looks up from his work to gaze into her demanding eyes.
“Do not use the friendly fire kunai in a dungeon semi-final room.” She taps her foot on the stone floor to show she’s serious, like a mother scolding her child for trying to wash the dishes with grease.
“Sakura, that's dumb.” He glares at her.
“Different, Kunai.” She points, and much to her relief, he does in fact put it away and grab another one. She lets out a sigh to say as much, before bringing her attention back to the door, and finding she left it at some point to scold Sasuke. It’s still open though, “Naruto…” It turns out even his shadow clones are as strong if not stronger than her, as a single one was all that was needed to do her part. “I get you’re a one man army, but you need to conserve your chakra.”
“I don’t think I do, Sakura.” Naruto rubs the back of his head, and unlike with Sasuke she relents. She has no evidence Naruto doesn’t have infinite chakra. She’s never seen him run out, in any circumstance, ever. It raises a lot of questions, and his trait name is odd too, but she needs to research in Konoha before she comes to any strange conclusions like a crazy person.
“Let’s go.”
The only mandatory dungeon room is expansive. It’s a stone floor just like the rest of them, but while every other room and pathway in this dungeon was a stone floor because they didn’t make a floor and the cave happened to have a stone bottom, this one has inlaid stones and many of them. The stones glimmer with an odd light second to second, telling her there’s some kind of enchantment on them, and the walls do much the same. The ceiling is the same as the rest of the cave, but that doesn’t surprise her, which surprises her.
Most of the dungeon so far has worked off game logic, that normal logic she could instantly logic out applies to this room is a terrifying prospect. It’d be very difficult to replace the ceiling, and might result in cave-ins, it’d be better to just leave it. Which is why it should be different, because games like spectacle and flexing on that kind of thing is exactly what they’d do.
She gulps at that, slapping herself a little so her red stinging cheeks can bring her back to reality. This isn’t a game. It’s real life with game mechanics, she needs to get her head on straight.
There’s several tables littered throughout, a few beds in a corner, what appears to be a research station and gold threaded green carpet overtaking about half the room right in the center. At the end of the carpet, she can see an even bigger, more imposing door than the one they just opened. That’s the boss door, surely, which raises a question as to where everyone is here.
There’s pillars around the room, seemingly randomly, holding up the ceiling while obscuring vision. It’s possible the enemies are behind the pillars, but she can’t see anyone. “Naruto, can you check?” She looks at him, and he nods without a word. He already made a shadow clone, so that entity runs out to the center of the room. He steps on the carpet, and walks over it while she watches eagerly, awaiting whatever madness is about to happen.
When nothing does happen, the odd tension building up inside her like a tidal wave refuses to leave. “Am I wrong?” She can’t help but ask. The eerie silence doesn’t answer her, and with more than a little trepidation she starts her walk towards the center of the room to meet her teammate’s physical illusion. She grabs Naruto’s hand as she passes him, dragging him along, and looks back to Sasuke to ensure he’s following. “Be careful, this is probably a trap.” She commands, squeezing Naruto’s palm a little before bringing her attention back to the room. Every corner, every glinting tile, the curves of the pillars, the door, it’s all terrifying. Something should have happened by now, and games didn’t prepare her for the tension that a lack of release might bring.
It’s not till she steps into the very center of the room and meets with the clone that she hears a click, followed by the sliding sound, that she finally gets to turn a little of that apprehension into jittery energy. “Be prepared.” She asserts, eyes still scanning every which corner.
“Sakura, can you let me go?” Naruto asks, using his free hand to point towards the door, “it’s the door, it’s opening.”
“You’ll react to a trap better than I will.” Sakura defends herself, while inwardly hitting herself for trying to use him to calm her nerves. Of course it’d be weird for him, they’re siblings now, he has two reasons to misconstrue her intentions instead of just one. “It could be really bad if I get caught up in another loop like earlier.”
“You were fine, we just needed to go.” Sasuke scoffs. “Let him go or he can’t react at all if something happens.”
It’s with no small amount of reluctance that she opens her hand and lets Naruto jump a few feet away with a red face. He doesn’t have a long time to be awkward though, because he was right.
The imposing door makes another click, a clack, and begins to open towards them. She steels her stance, waiting for something like a giant snake to slip through. There were spiders at the entrance, and they’ve seen none since, it’s a bit odd and she’s not about to let her guard down and be surprised by more random nonsense.
Balloon weapons, spiders, men stationed to guard almost nothing?
This isn’t even following game logic, it’s just absurd. It’s the eccentricity of a madman with too much money, twisted by an illogical system into a dungeon that’s more mocking than difficult.
Anything could come through that door, and she’s ready for it. So when what comes through is a short, well kept man in a business suit, a cane, and a mustache that frankly hurts her… It points out in both directions, less a mustache and more a whisker, and not a whisker in the same way Naruto’s facial whiskers are. His hair reminds her of a mad scientist, bushy and wild in all directions.
She’s unsure, nervous, and frankly a bit annoyed.
He looks out at them, well, she thinks he does. He has small circular sunglasses over his eyes so she can’t see what he’s doing with his gaze. “You have invaded my lands, killed my men, and now you’re breaking into my tower.” The man scolds with a stern voice that makes the jittery energy inside Sakura explode.
“It’s the boss, it’s Gato!” She cheers, vibrating in place while one hand rubs her still stinging cheek from earlier, and the other lands on her evil sword.
“Silence girl, silence all of you. Or better yet, talk all you want, it’ll be the last words you ever speak.” The man raises his canned hand to point at them with it, “get them.”
“Minion boss!” She realizes, drawing her sword just in time for armored goons to come running out from the dark room behind him. They’ll have to make this quick, or be overrun.
Comments
Dopplerdee
Neat loot.
