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Chapter 14
🕑 Added 2024-02-23 22:10:25 +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.
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Stepping foot into the dungeon, Sakura can’t help but take in how different it is than she thought it would look from outside. It’s oddly structured, almost cave like but not quite. The walls are a lot more straight than a cave should be, and even the ceiling is barely a circle at all. The ridged rocky ceiling is more of a pattern than an actual random cave, and it’s much better lit than a cave should be. She’s not sure where all the light is coming from, but it’s here and she can’t help but take notice of it.
It doesn’t feel like the manor it should be, that’s for sure, it’s more insidious and weird. “If I didn’t believe you before, I do now.” Sasuke says.
“You didn’t believe me.” Sakura points out.
“I do now.”
Despite the apprehension built upon entering, they’re met with silence for quite some time. Too alert to talk, too quiet to not talk, they’re stuck in an awkward place where they won’t even look at each-other. At least the rocks get a little more like chiseled stone and a bit more clearly not a cave as they go on. Eventually they’re met with torches, and that gets rid of the old question of where the light is coming from. Well, it doesn’t for that part of the dungeon, but she doesn’t have to think about it anymore which is basically the same thing.
There’s a crack that echoes behind them, then a rumble, and she looks behind her just in time to see a cave in. Rocks fall and slam into the rocks below, seemingly endlessly dropping until the space is taken up and it has reached the ceiling. There has to be several thousand rocks there, each blocking the way quite firmly.
She nods to herself, having fully expected this. Naruto and Sasuke, not so much, she can hear them arguing behind her about ways to get out should it come to it. Naruto brings up her new ability to manipulate earth, which makes her feel nice and tingly inside at the recognition, but most of the conversation is about their respective skills.
She lets them argue for some time while walking over to test her ability. Grabbing a stone in her hand, she can convert it to dirt, which means she could probably tunnel their way out of here. There’s no saying it wouldn’t just refill itself while she was at it, but it’s an option to test in an emergency.
It’s while she’s testing this that Sasuke suddenly speaks up, ending their pragmatic argument very suddenly. “Incoming.” It’s all he has to say, before they’re both alert and the sound has started. Skittering, scratching, stones being dug into and passed by rapidly. Creatures are coming from deeper in the cave towards them. “That doesn’t sound human.” Naruto gulps.
“Didn’t say they were.” Sasuke grunts, while she draws her shuriken, already applying fire chakra to some to make them hot to the touch. It’s a relatively cheap technique, not very effective either but for a prolonged dungeon it’s optimal.
That is until horrifying abominations appear from the walls. “Spiders?” She asks, not sure what the hell those are. They’re like spiders, but they ooze black goop everywhere they step. They climb on the ceiling, on the walls, skitter across the floor towards them. They’re huge, with dozens of eyes and pincers. They’re covered in gray fur, and have so many legs she feels her whole body shiver instinctively. It’s like if spiders also managed to cause an uncanny valley.
Sasuke prepares a fireball jutsu, and Sakura gets beside him instinctively, ready to throw at a moment’s notice-
When spikes erupt from all sides, massive gluttonous blades jutting out and impaling dozens of creatures ahead of them. A wall of steel is erected, screeches and terrified screaming fills their ears as hundreds of monsters are torn to bits.
“Hey guys.” Sakura clears her throat.
“I think there might be traps in this dungeon.”
“Uh-huh…” Naruto says with a half breath.
Sasuke takes a moment to grunt, before dropping his hands and staring. The blades slowly draw back, disappearing and taking the corpses with them. Leaving only money littered throughout the ground, like drops in a game.
“I’m not picking that up.” Sakura says. “Naruto, clones?”
“Hell no!” Naruto shakes his head furiously. “I remember all that stuff, remember? I don’t want to die a thousand times for some money.”
“That’s fair…” She says. “I don’t have a trap detection skill. Do either of you?”
“Not at that level.” Sasuke says, hands dropping into his pockets as he realizes this might take a while.
“I do.” Naruto says, heading ahead cautiously. “You two just stay back, I’ll find the trigger and deactivate it for us, or at least figure out how to get past.”
“Go Naruto!” She says. “But use clones.”
“Right, right, forgot in the moment.” He’s clearly shaken, she can’t imagine Naruto ever forgetting about his clones, but he quickly returns to her side and spawns a hundred physical entities to go do all that. Naruto’s clones are interesting. The Shadow Clone technique, unlike the normal clone technique, creates physical clones which suffer none of the weaknesses of the normal clones. They can’t be seen through as a genjutsu, they can’t be ignored because they’re not there, and they possess an actual ability to do damage to you so they’re a force multiplier instead of taking from your chakra pool for very little effect.
If she could do the Shadow clone jutsu, the goblins wouldn’t have even been a question. She could have beaten them all down bare handed, and gotten some cool taijutsu skill instead.
The issue is that the time she tried to learn it from Naruto, she woke up in Kakashi’s apartment, being scolded by the man for being an idiot. It turns out just one shadow clone possesses more chakra than she has total, and Naruto just sent out twenty of them like it was nothing to go check for traps.
Stamina nut doesn’t begin to cover it, and she is sure as hell looking into the Uzumaki when she gets home to find out what kind of crazy bloodline they possess to let him do that. She has a lot of stuff to look into at home, like the demon twins. She doesn’t feel bad about killing them, even if they were real people, their bios really were so cartoonishly evil that it was natural to assume they weren’t real, but she can’t move on until she treats their deaths with some respect.
As for the trap and the money, he can have it he can deactivate the traps to grab it, because she’s sure as hell not going anywhere near that while it’s active, and if it’s deactivate it’s his spoil anyway.
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It’s remarkable how good Naruto is at that kind of thing. Sitting back with Sasuke while watching Naruto work is easy. She’s never been good at spotting traps and the like in games, and puzzles have always bothered her despite her high intelligence. She’s very good at thinking inside a box, and puzzles tend to try and push the boundary. If she had to guess, after a certain point, her intelligence stopped making her smarter and started making her faster. It’s probably why she doesn’t have jonin mind despite being incredibly smart, some of it is clearly personal aptitude, but on a stat level, it’s about speed. She’s just not as fast as Kakashi, and she’s not sure she ever will be.
That’s okay though, being as fast mentally as an average Jonin would be fine with her.
Naruto’s hands blur along the ground, then the wall, eventually he walks up it and starts checking there too. He’s looking for something, but what, she has no idea. It’s not important, only one of them needs that particular skill. She’s happy to let Naruto be useful, it’d be far better for her to focus on his weaknesses than getting jealous and trying to match him everywhere.
“The Dobe’s checking for pressure plates.” Sasuke explains after a moment, seeing something she’s not. “That’s far too elaborate a trap for it to only be intended to go off once, so it has to be a plate or something spring loaded, it can’t be wires because wires have to be replaced.”
“Where’d you get that from?” Sakura asks.
“He’s played quite a few pranks on me over the years.” Sasuke admits, “avoiding traps means learning a bit about them.”
“So you’re both trap masters?” Sakura asks.
“No. I just learned how to not get covered in paint. I never learned anything special because Naruto never did anything special. Traps can only go so far before they become dangerous, and he doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body.” Hearing that from Sasuke of all people leaves her with a lot to think about. He’s not normally so verbose, but then, why complain?
Still, “that’s rather wordy for you,” Sakura points out, “I rather like the soft boy broody Sasuke.”
“Right.” Sasuke drawls, calling her on it the moment it leaves her mouth. Unfortunately for her, she doesn’t know how to stop a blush, that skill just never came up before. “Complimenting my teammates is something I’ve been working on with a guy I talk to, back in Konoha.” He explains. “He says that admitting competency in others helps you see it in yourself.”
“And that’s a problem for the great last Uchiha?” Sakura asks. “I thought you had an ego.”
“Oftentimes, it’s those who assert themselves the most, who have the least confidence.” Sasuke lets that sit wordlessly, just as Naruto pressing something on the ceiling, and the spikes jut out again.
“Found it!” Naruto says.
“You can have the loot then!” Sakura calls out, waving at him. “To the victor go the spoils!”
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Naruto is quick to pocket it all and put it into specially designated bags. He’s got a marker he uses and a brown sack is officially labeled ‘spider money’. She figured he’d add it to his wallet, a ‘Gama-chan’ if she recalls, but he doesn’t.
Maybe he’s worried the dungeon money will be different? It’s not important, what is important is their feet soon take them to a four way intersection. Behind them is the entrance, so she knows that’s not the way forward. Forward could be the way, but that could also be way too obvious, if the dungeon is designed like a real game dungeon it could be left or right.
She could use the maze method, which is following either the left or right wall until she reaches her destination. If she never changes her direction she can’t get lost, it’s not physically possible. The dungeon would have to be infinitely generated for her to not eventually reach where she needs to go, and she’s pretty sure her power hasn’t figured out the answer to entropy. Something that figured out entropy wouldn’t have opened up giving her traits like ‘disappointment,’ it would be too far above it.
Smart people don’t insult others, dumb people who think they’re smart do.
She’s just about to open her mouth and bring the maze method up, when Naruto speaks up, “it’s forward.”
“It is?” She asks.
“Look,” Naruto points up towards the ceiling, at one very particular part. It’s a little smooth, straight, well angled, and after a good look it turns out to be metallic. She would never have spotted that given a million years, and she kind of has to wonder whether there is a perception skill, trait, or hidden stat she needs to get a hold of. Naruto has it, she doesn’t, Sasuke’s not even pretending to look so clearly he doesn’t have it either. “I don’t see the activator, but that panel moves when triggered to release something dangerous. It likely goes off when we start moving forward, to try and stop us from going that way.”
“Meaning someone doesn’t want us going that way.” Sakura concludes. “How do we get past it then?”
“We find the trigger,” Sasuke says, “or we shoot it with a fireball and hope that sets it off.”
“We could shoot it with a fireball,” Sakura agrees.
“I say we shoot it with a fireball,” Naruto repeats.
“Good idea, Naruto,” Sakura reaches over and pats his shoulder, causing Sasuke to scoff and roll his eyes.
“So, left or right?” Sakura asks, after a moment to stare at the plate and hope it gives them its secrets. The reality is that she wouldn’t have thought of that. She has a higher mind than Naruto but that’s clearly not how cognitive function works, or at least not the only variable. Traits, skills, and some hidden stats have a huge impact on their thought processes and not just in that personalities are unique and experiences are a huge part of them.
Naruto is better than her in moment to moment thinking, that is obvious, but does that actually convert into stats or is it just his impulsiveness given form from a trait having a secondary benefit? Can she get better at that without a trait, or does she have to train it as a skill? As much as she’s grateful to have Naruto there to advise her, it’d be nice to not totally suck when he’s not there. There’s always the possibility one of them gets promoted before the other, or she gets recruited into ANBU for her powers once Kakashi reports them. She sure hopes not, but it was always a risk when she revealed herself, she knew that.
“He said forward.” Sasuke points out stiffly, showing the awkwardness on his face as both Naruto and her stare at him like he’s an idiot. “Is it not forward?”
“The way forward is forward,” Sakura explains patiently, slowly, deliberately, “but we want the loot.”
“You want to purposely have a harder time with this because you might find spoils?” Sasuke asks, “that seems a little… crazy.”
“It’s not just that,” she admits, rubbing her arm a little at the call out, “we don’t have a lot of opportunities to get live combat training. The next clear of this dungeon will probably be more difficult, and I don’t want to have to go through our oh so fun training arc again because we skipped out on combat right now.”
“So… right or left?” Naruto asks, repeating her earlier conversation.
“Left.” Sasuke says, after a moment, to ponder it as if it’s a serious question with all the weight of the world on it. Without any further deliberation, Sakura shrugs and starts walking down the left path, smiling brightly when the two of them take their place behind her.
If she’s the tank, Naruto’s the rogue, and Sasuke’s some kind of cross between a mage and a ranger. Rangers technically have magic in most settings, so maybe he’s just a ranger? His clan techniques give him a lot of advantages with kunai and the like, so it’s not an absurd concept.
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After a rather long walk, the left side leads to a wooden door that’s barely held together. It’s as easy to open as it is to break, as Sakura finds out when she puts pressure on it to pull it open and hears the snaps. She’s careful about it, trying not to alert whatever’s on the other side, and she’s relieved to see no one noticed when she has it open enough for them to peer through.
Armed men are walking around what appears to be a small campsite in the middle of a mining area. Veins are glittering and glinting in all directions, and she kicks herself internally for not thinking to invest in a pickaxe for her travel gear just in case. Despite being a mine, no one has any gear for it, and she can only think that’s typical and unhelpful.
Instead of mining gear, they’re in higher quality armor and have shiny swords and axes at their side that must have been polished and sharpened recently. “Gato outfitted them nicely, this must really be his cave dungeon leading to his tower.” She mumbles, observing them a bit closer with a tilt of her head. They have red sight lines drawn on the floor, as well as circles around them to notify of their direct ability to sense someone entering their space. They’re not very big, and no one seems to have great sight with the helmets they have on, but that doesn’t stop her from noticing something interesting. “They’re automated,” Sakura says, “not people.”
“Sakura…” Sasuke sighs.
“Not delusional, I’m serious this time, this is not a repeat of the demon twins.” Sakura says, not liking the way her stomach churns at the thought. “They’re moving in perfect patterns without any variation.”
“Boy, I hope some action turns up soon.” One of the bandits says.
“No kidding, I’m bored out of my mind, I can’t wait to violate someone at the slightest provocation.” Another says.
“Dude, have standards.” A third says, before the entire group laughs.
“See? No one has a conversation like that.” Sakura says. “It’s a genre specific mocking of bandits, they’re not real. We can kill them all we want.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Naruto asks.
“Then we kill some bandits and someone doesn’t get violated at the slightest provocation.” Sakura deadpans.
“Works for me.” Sasuke is already making hand seals for one of his fireball jutsu before they finish talking.
“Wait, I have a stealth skill,” Sakura interrupts him, placing a hand on his hands to stop his seals, “and I’m willing to bet Naruto does too.”
Naruto nods.
“We can probably take two out before the fighting even starts. There’s only six of them, so if you blow someone up the moment we’re caught we’re down to three only, whereas if you shoot now we have to fight five.” Sakura holds his hand steady, seeing Sasuke contemplate it for a long moment, before he lowers his seals and takes a deep breath.
“I thought the whole point was combat experience.” Sasuke says, while she can’t fault him there, Naruto apparently can.
“Sneaking up on people is combat experience, it could save our lives at some point.” Naruto says. “Besides, it’s fun.”
“Fine, go ahead.” Sasuke leans against the wall with a click of his teeth, and they’re through the door and trying to creep up on someone well before he can change his mind and get started with the fire apocalypse. Six men, four wandering around in a giant square around the room, two lazing about at the center camp laughing while having a quick drink. It’s not complicated, and it doesn’t have to be, they just need to get in and do it.
She has to put a bit of effort in to avoid overlapping sight lines and circles, but she uses that extra time she’s navigating to pull a kunai and superheat it. While it’s not as effective as if she had gotten an actual fire affinity, and she’s still working on mastering the jutsu, it’s still more than hot enough to steam if applied to water and she’s pretty sure that’s good enough to add some power. The moment she gets into the circle of her target, she sees it start to change color from red to yellow, then to green, implying that her stealth skill can allow her to circumvent it if she’s careful and deliberate.
It’s nice to see how mechanics work instead of having them explained to her in a wall of text, it makes her grin a bit, makes her feel a bit more like she’s in a game and not in some dangerous situation. She sneaks up just a little closer, wraps her left arm around his neck from behind, pulls up and back to draw his head into the right position, and inserts her burning kunai where she’s created an opening. The steam is first, the gurgle is second. His clunking to the ground is a bit loud, and it’s only then that she realizes she should have coordinated that with Naruto.
Looking over to him, she finds his target is already on the ground, and he’s got a hand on his forehead, as if questioning why she would let him drop. That was dumb, she now realizes that was really dumb. Dropping an enemy in a game has never caused a problem for her, and she really needs to get her head out of the game and into real life.
Of course the system would be different in real life, if games were completely realistic they wouldn’t be fun. Naruto’s adjusting better than her because his predispositions aren’t nearly as strong, and that’s something she needs to learn from him.
Sure enough, before she can make a move, she hears weapons leaving sheaths and sees the sight lines shoot towards her, just before Sasuke’s voice cries out and flames bathe the area in hellish fashion.
“Time for a fight.” She draws her own sword, and charges.
