Chapter 267: Bullet Rush

Over the next several days, I focused on recovering my ability to fight properly while Diane was busying herself with creating new skills. After the first night, I had joined her in the basement, using my simulated training to practice while sharing my experience buff from King of All Trades as well as further boosting her through Ancient Legend.

During the six days of downtime, only three of my skills proved ready to evolve. The first of these skills was Observe, which I had only been casually training off and on for a long time. It evolved into Search, which allowed me to designate a target to scan for in the area around myself. For this skill, I was somewhat disappointed, as I could already achieve essentially the same effect with True Sight.

Next was Killing Stare, which I trained in my simulations. I didn’t often get the chance to make use of this skill for more than just an intimidation tactic, but I thought it would evolve into something better. Its master-ranked skill, Death Gaze, allowed me to inflict direct injuries with my gaze, and possibly even kill a target if their stats are far enough below mine. 

Of course, targets that much weaker than me would be easy to kill regardless. I could only really see this skill being useful for mowing down armies of lesser foes. Though, if the skill is activated rapidly in succession, perhaps even a powerful foe could take severe injuries.

As for the last skill, it was none other than Hawkeye, which finally evolved to its grandmaster form. This new skill, Beyond Horizons, allowed me to project my sight to any location that I was familiar with, regardless of distance. This made it comparable to World Walker, so I was quite pleased with the upgrade.

After I received Beyond Horizons, I had been using it to check on Bella’s progress within Stormforge. Most of her training did not actually occur around the house, so there was little that I could actually see, but it was still a relief whenever I saw her return to the house safely, even if she was drenched from the rain.

Next was Diane’s growth. Thanks to the Fire Aura skill, she had created multiple different skills by combining fire and darkness. Each of these skills had a very narrow focus, but also a low mana burden. And because of the experience buffs, she was able to quickly evolve each of them to their intermediate stage, making them at least somewhat practical for real combat.

When she wasn’t logged on, she was working on her dungeon, expanding it to include the lightning ninjas. According to Diane, she still needed a few more dungeon raids in order to afford the fire ninjas and the loot that they would drop.

Speaking of which, Hammerhead had finished his initial read of the Big Book of Runes, so I once again gave him access to the runic cannon hidden underground outside the city. He was now hard at work trying to study this giant weapon in the hopes of making a breakthrough in his own runic creations.

As I was mentally going over the gains of this last week, a notification appeared in front of me. After reading it, I pulled myself up to my feet and called out to Diane, who was punching and kicking at the air with trails of black flames lingering behind her movements. “Bella just called. She said she’s ready to be picked up.”

Diane looked over with wide eyes, halting her training. “It’s been a week already?” she asked, walking over towards me. Her gaze lingered on my shoulders for a few seconds. “How is it?”

“I’m fine,” I answered with a grin. “You know that it’ll take more than that to keep me down. Now, let’s go pick up our friend.”

Diane gave a firm nod, grabbing my hand before I teleported the two of us to the mansion where we had left Bella. It looked like the elven marksman had taken the time to make herself presentable, as she was currently dry, not showing any signs of the constant storms outside.

“There you are!” Bella sighed in relief, fidgeting slightly. “I thought that you might have been busy.”

Diane blinked at Bella, before silently walking over and giving the elven girl a hug. Bella’s body stiffened for a long moment, her eyes going wide. Afterwards, she seemed to melt into the embrace. “Sorry,” Diane muttered. “It must have been lonely.”

Bella cleared her throat in embarrassment, looking off to the side. “It wasn’t that bad. Besides, thanks to that, I learned a few new tricks. Want to see?”

Diane took a step back, silently agreeing with a nod. Bella led us to the basement of the mansion, where I could make out a faint smoky aroma. “Honestly, I thought you guys were going to be coming back for meals. I know I asked for the raw materials to cook for myself, and said that it’d be a survival challenge for me, but you could have stopped by at least once or twice…”

Seeing Bella’s pouting expression made me apologize awkwardly. “Sorry, I thought that you wanted to do this on your own.”

Bella let out a huff, pulling a chunk of meat from her inventory and throwing it onto the floor, on a large tray that she had placed at some point over the week. The chunk was larger than Bella’s own head, but she didn’t seem to mind. She pulled one of her pistols out, firing a red bullet at the meat.

In an instant, a red aura wrapped around the chunk of meat, wrapping it with burning energy from the inside out. At a pace visible to the naked eye, the meat was rapidly cooked, the energy only dissipating after the red meat had turned a dark brown. “You made a bullet to cook?” Diane asked in surprise.

“Yeah. Once I managed to recreate the original fire bullet skill, I tried to use it to cook, but it kept burning the exterior. It took me more than a day just to get a bullet skill that would cook the meat from the inside. In combat, it does burning damage over time and is difficult to extinguish, but its biggest utility is for cooking.”

At the mention of burning damage, Diane’s gaze instinctively went to my shoulders again. A detail that Bella didn’t miss, her sharp gaze immediately latching onto me. “What happened?” she asked, her voice dropping to a cold mutter.

Diane briefly explained what we had discovered about the intelligent dungeon monsters, and the damage that I had taken in the fire dungeon. Bella grit her teeth, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Sorry… if I had been there…”

“It wouldn’t have changed much,” Diane stopped her before she could blame herself further. “None of us expected the dungeon’s monsters would grow so intelligent, even to the point of developing their own skills. And that monster moved too fast, so your bullets probably wouldn’t have been able to catch him regardless.”

Bella let out a sigh, raising her pistol again. This time, however, she pointed it at my shoulder. Before Diane could stop her, she pulled the trigger. A green bullet shot out, striking my shoulder, though I felt no force from the impact. Instead, there was a soothing warmth that spread over my arm. “I managed to make a healing bullet yesterday. The biggest advantage of my Chaos Firearms skill tree seems to be that I can channel it to theoretically any kind of special effect. Though, skills that weren’t part of the group that made the Chaos Firearms skill in the first place are more difficult.”

Diane blinked at this. “So, we now have a proper healer?” she asked, before turning to look at me. “No offense. Forest Titan can speed up recovery, but it’s not a dedicated healing ability.”

“Trust me, I understand,” I chuckled, shrugging it off. “The only one that I can reliably heal is myself, and I know that better than anyone.”

After saying that, I turned to look at Bella again. “So, you have a burning bullet and a healing bullet. What else have you made?”

Bella’s cheeks flushed at the direct question, seeming happy that I had asked. “Well, I kept thinking about what Wisteria said. About the different types of skills that I’d need as an assassin type, I mean. The ones that I was really missing were mobility and defense, so I prioritized training those two.”

Bella pointed one of her guns at the ground next to her own feet, and then lumped back as she pulled the trigger. As the bullet hit the ground, an invisible force propelled Bella dozens of meters away in an instant, landing her near the far end of the basement.

Then, she shot the ground again. This time, the bullet did not release any force to move her. Instead, it erected a black wall that rose up and spread from where the bullet struck. With True Sight, I could see the chaotic elements within the wall, and had the distinct feeling that touching it would be very bad for my personal health.

Once the wall vanished, she used another bullet to leap back towards us, a bright smile on her face. “With this, I should have met all of Wisteria’s conditions,” she said proudly.

Diane thought about what she had seen, slowly nodding her head. “That’s right. I think the only thing left is an area attack to deal with waves of monsters, right?”

Bella blinked, her eyes widening. “Oh, right, I forgot to show you that one. Well, I can’t really show it here. Let’s head outside for a minute.”

Bella eagerly led the two of us outside, swapping her pistols for her rifle. Once we had gotten to the front porch, still protected from the rain by the awning, Bella took a shooting stance. “I wanted something that would take advantage of my long range. Besides, I don’t want to use an area attack right in front of myself, so it’s primarily for my rifle. The area of the attack gets bigger the further the bullet flies.”

As she explained, she took aim at a distant mountaintop, calming her breath. She waited patiently, pulling the trigger as soon as lightning illuminated the mountain. A crackling red bullet shot out, and I did my best to track it with my True Sight and Beyond Horizons.

In my vision, the bullet seemed to become larger and larger the further it went. By the time it reached the mountaintop more than three kilometers away, it had grown as thick as my thigh.

And once that bullet crashed into the mountaintop, a great explosion scattered the clouds above. A red sphere lit up the peak, before slowly rising as a mushroom cloud. The storm clouds quickly reclaimed their territory, but the top of the mountain had crumbled under the weight of her strike.

“The damage isn’t really that great unless I’m at least a kilometer away from the target,” Bella explained as she stood up, putting the rifle back in her inventory. “But, I figure that if I’m using a bullet bomb like that, we’re clearing out a group from far away. Otherwise, we have Drake’s skills to clear out an area. Besides, this skill can still level up, so I’m looking forward to what it becomes later.”

Diane and I stared at the distant peak, the halfling eventually prying her eyes away to look at Bella. “Out of curiosity… what does the skill look like when fired at a closer target?”

Bella blinked, but shrugged her shoulders and pulled out one of her pistols. She aimed at a spot just outside the mansion’s stealth field and pulled the trigger. The crackling bullet shot out again, striking the ground and releasing a loud bang. An orb of light roughly half a meter in diameter appeared as the ensuing blast. Once that orb had faded, there was no mushroom cloud, only a small crack in the ground where the bullet had struck.

“Like I said, it’s mostly useful at really long distances. If it’s not at least fifty meters, I probably won’t be able to get more than just one enemy in the blast, and at that range the attack won’t have much lethality. After I evolve it, it might get better, though!”