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Chapter 68 - Arc 4 - Brawling in the Streets: Walking Over The Discarded
🕑 Added 2024-08-06 01:11:18 +0000 UTCThis chapter kinda fought me, but luckily I write the next chapter for Friday so I have a few days to get my bearings before I launch back into things.
Small note, the Shotgun and Rifle Tenten loots in the Mansion come up.
This is important because I haven't actually changed the earlier chapters to include her getting them. That will likely be over the next couple of days. I've also changed it, canonically, that she used this rifle in the earlier chapter where that does come up. I will edit that detail in sometime over the next few days.
Sorry if that causes an awkward moment.
Have fun with the chapter. Next chapter is CH 69, and it's going to be Nice.
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Lots of high quality gear is gathered from their fallen foes. Some goes into her bag, some gets sealed, most of it’s just armors and kunai and such but she’ll go through it when she gets home and possibly sell some of it for some money. She’ll also need to hand some over to Tenten, after she goes through it. Tenten already got the best loot of this dungeon, no reason to not be discerning, but she still deserves a portion. Neji’s rich and has no use for weapons and armor, he can get screwed on loot rolls. Poor girls gotta stick together.
Haku is probably doing fine so maybe she should treat herself with the money she gets. She does want to pick up a training set of cookware so that if she destroys it her parents aren’t super mad at her. She also wants to get a little into blacksmithing, which will probably let her bond with Tenten. She wants to learn better stealth skills and trapping and possibly shooting with Tenten. If nothing else, it’ll give them something to bond over. She has to have a way to practice, and the marksman skill will probably help her at least translucently in several other skills. She sincerely doubts being able to get an amazing shot with a rifle wouldn’t help her with her crossbow. Maybe she’s wrong but like, marksmanship is marksmanship, right?
She’s going to need money, so yes, she does totally loot all their money and daydream about bathing in the riches. She allows herself a little cackle while letting coins fall through her fingers.
“I’d love to just set up an ambush down here and lead them into their own trap, but unfortunately, no one but you can see in the dark,” Sakura mumbles, looking over at Neji, “we’d be in the same situation they were, and well, see how well that worked for them.”
Badly, it worked badly. There’s evidence all around, discarded and forever lost bodies making more of a display with their deaths than they did anything of consequence with their lives.
Seven enemies plus Fierro left, they made more progress in the mission objective in two minutes than the entire rest of this several day dungeon. This was just a bad idea, the enemy shouldn’t have done this, their tactical mastermind is a dumbass.
“This was probably Fierro’s work,” Neji says, “she can see in the dark and wouldn’t think about it.”
“She what?” Sakura moves on her heel, pocketing the last wallet while giving him a wayward glance.
“She talks about it in her notes, she can see in the dark, and so can all her summons,” Neji explains, “she likely didn’t even think of what would happen if they were engaged here, since she could see, her summons could see, and they weren’t supposed to engage here.”
“That would imply she’s a terrible commander.” Sakura points out, leading the way out of this deathtrap and up the walkway back to where they came from. They still need to set up a trap of any sort for the coming group.
“Command skills are frequently not a part of the criteria that puts one in command.” Neji says.
“Correct, sometimes people do leadership on rotation,” Tenten teases him, smirking up a storm.
“Grim it up you two, we’re about to kill people.” Sakura says, coming to a stop in front of a long narrow pathway the enemy will have to come through. “Tenten, set up with your rifle, I’ll cover you this time.”
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On one hand, the forward group isn’t very intimidating. Three Chunin - not even all four - without a single Genin to fill the ranks. That means the final fight will likely have Fierro, a Chunin, and three Genin, unless she decides to send another force after them and lose the rest too.
On the other hand, Sakura just spent a ton of chakra on the first fight, and she’s feeling pretty lacking. She would even use the word dazed. Standing near Tenten with two water clones to guard her other sides, she is at the ready in a triangle trying to intercept more stealth units while Tenten lines up a potential shot with her new-fangled rifle. The rifle worked well on the Genin during the first ambush, but is it strong enough to even scare proper Chunin? She doesn’t know, and she won’t know after this fight either unless one of the enemies really shows off his stuff. The game system can tell her they’re Chunin all it wants, if they were real Chunin, they wouldn’t be able to go toe to toe with them like they have been.
Sakura’s sure she’s not that strong.
Neji is standing up front, quite a distance away, trusting Tenten not to hit him while drawing attention to himself with flashy movements and just generally being a Hyuuga. Tenten can see him through the scope, so she has a firm grasp on the situation through him, and Sakura gets to take a breather.
“How is that, anyway?” Sakura asks, “I don’t know a lot about weaponry like that, just stuff from games.”
“Well, proper rifling is hard to integrate into a gun by hand - not impossible just, hard - so most of the prototypes I’ve made have been nowhere near this effective at long range, making it far better than anything but my most recent builds on that matter alone. The scope is straight up sci-fi tech at the moment, and these numbers on the glass generally do not operate meaningfully in real life, which puts this years ahead of anything I intended to build. By the time I would have made this, I would have been strong enough that I didn't need it. There’s also the ammunition situation, and how most of my stuff uses significantly less advanced rounds, these are very different and I can’t wait to take a look at them back home. Then there’s the marking enemies thing, it remembers who I’ve tagged and allows me to look back at them with the triangle tags still over their heads, even through surfaces.”
“Well that’s just straight-up game logic.” Sakura laughs a little, shaking her head at the fact that she brought magic into reality and handed it to Tenten, “So it didn’t like, redirect your world or anything but it’s a huge improvement.”
“It changed everything, at least for today. I have a shot, but Neji’s too close,” Tenten says, “I haven’t fired this off enough to feel comfortable shooting over his shoulder.”
“I guess I’ll go tell him to move.” She sends one of her low power water clones to do just that. Well, they can’t talk so they’re just gonna drag him aside but, same thing. Being low on chakra is so exhausting, she finds herself having to struggle not to doze off. She needs to control her usage a lot better, even if it did work very well for that ambush.
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[9/10 Chunin Killed]
They died. It turns out that drop is bullshit, and she’s salty. Tenten lined up one shot after another, and turned the ground into a graveyard. Watching the kill counter raise without doing anything makes her a little introspective. It’s a little sick, if she’s honest, turning people’s lives into a game.
At one point turning life into a game is basically all she wished for, but here, now, months after receiving her gift, she’s not sure she should have wished for this. Without her powers she would have been dead several times over by now, so she doesn’t regret having the powers, and she also doesn’t regret killing these foes, but something is to be said for gamifying conquest. Instead of just not feeling bad about putting down the enemy, she feels good about gaining rewards. It’s insidious, and it’s probably far more harmful to her mental state than Hunger’s ever been. She’s not okay with it, and it goes into the list of things to figure out once she’s back home.
“It’s another mansion.” She finds their path after the looting and discarding of this latest batch brings them to another building much like the first. This one looks much smaller, but they can see zombies wandering around outside it, and it has that old haunted vibe that is even reflected in the spooky nighttime foggy weather behind it. Sakura can’t help but scratch her head while looking at it, unsure if she wants to go in or not. “It’s probably got lots of zombies, the three Genin, the remaining Chunin, and Fierro. Can you locate the targets, Neji?”
“No,” Neji’s immediate answer catches her off guard, causing her to take a step to the side, and give him a sideways glance, “something about this area is stopping my Byakugan from activating.”
“... I’m sorry, did you just say Fierro has Bloodline cancellation technology?” She looks at her hands, having lost one of them so recently, would her powers even work inside a field like that? Can she heal from wounds she gains here? She checks on the quest and finds it’s still tracking, she checks her stats and they seem accurate- “wow I am really low on chakra. Maybe we should leave the cancellation field so we can rest?”
“That is probably advisable, it would be foolish to charge in without an understanding of what we are up against, there is also no guarantee that the field will stop me from seeing in, should I activate it outside and still have the range to peer inside.” Neji helpfully agrees with her.
Somehow, she feels like she just got verbally head pat, and she has to resist a Haruno Wiggle at the kind words that were only kinda sorta meant for her. Neji is not generous with praise, it’s very meaningful. The Hyuga continues a moment later, interrupting her introspection, “If my Byakugan does not work, neither does Gentle Fist. I will be a lot less effective in the coming battles.”
That’s not something she had thought of, but is very good to know. It’ll be up to her and Tenten for the most part, they’ll have to take active care to protect him from the machinations of their enemy.
Her major concern is, can she protect him? Can she take up the slack? She is going to learn real soon whether or not her powers are a bloodline. It could be up to Tenten almost entirely. What if the effect gets stronger as they get closer, and she finds herself brought back to before she even got the system? Could she handle that type of weakness?
The break to rest couldn’t be more welcomed, she’d like to put this off forever if she can.
She takes a shaky breath, and readies herself to go head back-
- that is until her hearing rings and she stumbles mid step. Her eyes dart over just in time to see a zombie's head explode quite gruesomely all over the doorway of the mansion. A look to her side reveals Tenten pumping her new toy, specifically the shotgun, reminding her in as friendly a way as possible that Tenten’s shotgun has classic pump action and slugs the size of her fist. “Tenten, could you like, warn me?”
“It’s fun though!” The girl thought to put earmuffs on herself, but they can get fucked.
Guuuh, she shoulda really thought things through before giving her a shotgun.
With a rub of her eyes, and a middle finger raised, Sakura heads back to go set up camp where Neji can use his powers and she can get a five hour nap.
Comments
Christopher Cummins
I'd give it a listen.
Mest450
Tenten with a gun sounds like a song. 🎵
Dopplerdee
Well that makes sense. Like I said I'm not great at constructive criticism and was just throwing things out. What you've been doing is great, I just have a knee jerk reaction to stand alone Says and Said. Honestly it's probably a me issue.
Christopher Cummins
It's basically impossible to have an action or something else after every speech. I've tried, it ends up looking far worse. And with our chapters being so small, trying to do so would end up bloating the content. That being said, I can try to take a look at moments where I could improve it. I'm not going to claim I have the perfect ratio.
Dopplerdee
I love that they've built up a rapport. That said I will note that while you're speaking indecators have improved (not that they where ever bad) you still have a tendency to use Says or Said a bit often, its not bad but they look a bit weird stand alone. Maybe add body language when using them? I don't know I'm honestly not great at constructive criticism, I either end up feeling dumb or like a monster. Whatever the case great work as always.
