NOVEL NEXT Chapter 66: Ranged Targets
<Alex, Real - Endure, Understreet Tunnel>
Alex grumbled a bit as John led him out from the school basement and into the long tunnel that ran under the street beside the school.
The man's reasoning was sound. John would be shooting, and nothing at the school should be trusted as a perfect backstop for magically empowered shots.
It would be rather clownlike for us to kill one of those we'd rescued while trying to train…
Thus, they were down here, various bags of rubbish already in place from John's practice with Natasha to help with the sound. She was apparently working on altering the structure of her Force Shield to better defend against various attack types.
At that moment, while Alex and John were getting into position, Natasha would likely be working with Pilar to counter elemental attacks like fire.
Alex was interested in what she learned.
But that was her. Alex needed to focus on his own training. "How, precisely, can you shoot?"
John gave him a look. "I can group my shots just fine, but I think that isn't what you're asking."
"Ahh, no, I worded that poorly. Can you time your shots pretty well?"
"If I need to. What are you getting at?"
"I think… I want to try to push my defense to act sooner than every five seconds."
John raised an eyebrow. "And you want to do that against a firearm? Why didn't you have James help you with that?"
Alex winced. "That would have been wise, yeah, but I had other priorities." He shrugged. "My thinking is it would be good to test with you, so long as you aren't aiming for headshots."
John huffed a laugh. "Headshots look good in the movies, but they are too easy to miss in practice. There's a reason that most marksmen aim for center mass."
Alex nodded. "Yeah, okay. I can deal with that." He patted his coat. "Between this coat, and my own increased fortitude resisting the hits, I should be able to heal any damage you do." He hesitated. "Maybe just fire more 'normal' bullets? Nothing that's specifically trying to destroy what you hit?"
John chuckled again. "Sure thing, Alex. I don't want to take out our walking cure-all."
Alex glowered briefly at the teasing, then shook his head. "Yeah, yeah. So, what did you want to train?"
"Honestly? I'd love it if you tried to dodge."
"Really?"
"Yeah. You have massively high stats, and I'm not used to tracking inhumanly quick targets." He hesitated at that. "To be clear, I'm not used to tracking human ones either, but I did often practice against moving targets. Most of what we're fighting right now is pretty slow, or it's at least big, but if we have anything really fast—especially if it's smart enough to not just move in straight lines—I'm going to have a really difficult time adjusting on the fly."
Alex nodded once. "So, you want me to stand there or walk slowly in straight lines."
John gave him a flat look, and Alex chuckled.
"Fine, fine. Yeah, I get you. So, that's another reason for the hallway?"
"Yup. You start at one end, and I at the other." He glanced behind himself. "Make sure the passages around you are clear first, then charge me. I'll shoot every five seconds or so, biasing less, and you try to dodge. We stop if you touch me, or if I get an actual wound on you. After the first time, we can adjust. How does that sound?"
Alex nodded. "Like something only insane people would do… before the System."
"Insane? Alex, that would have been murder on my part. I think you mean sociopathic."
"Are you saying that sociopaths are sane?"
John grimaced. "Some are far more sane and logical than any good person should wish."
That got a grunt of understanding. "Fair enough. Yeah, that sounds good."
"Well, alright then."
They each turned and started walking, and Alex felt like he was in some sort of old-fashioned duel. Though, I'm taking way more than ten steps, and I'm unarmed…
He thought about pulling out his dadao, but it wouldn't be helpful in this instance…
Except to practice moving around with it in my hand.
He sighed and pulled it from his inventory, settling his grip before nodding in satisfaction. It felt even more comfortable since his skills advanced. It belonged in his hand, and his hand just fit the hilt so well.
Honestly, his whole body felt better. He knew he was moving differently than he had pre-System, and his muscles, joints, and all the rest seemed to greatly prefer the change.
The two men were in an offshoot of the main tunnel in the hopes that no one would be wandering around to potentially get hurt. Because of that, John was staying on the side closer to the school, so if someone did wander in, it would most likely be behind him.
Alex on the other hand, was somewhat exposed to the rest of the city. They had yet to see any undead—or animals or creatures of any kind save spiders—in these tunnels, but there was still something nerveracking about putting his back to a dark tunnel, because despite the widely spaced magical lights giving emergency illumination, there wasn't even a sewer grate to let daylight down in.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
He went a block's distance, grateful that this connecting passage didn't have any offshoots connecting to the nearby buildings. That meant that he only had to check the 'cross street' tunnels, shining his light down each before turning to face John in the distance.
John was standing under one of the lights, as was Alex.
Alex couldn't help the itch he felt with three dark passages at his back and to his sides, but he pulsed Detect Life and Detect Unlife in quick succession, and found them empty save a few vermin of various kinds.
As usual, he dismissed them as unimportant. They only came to his awareness at all, this time, because of the conversation with the other Initiates about setting up the 'vermin farming zone' in their base.
But he was distracting himself. No one and nothing was nearby.
Nothing that I can sense. And just like that, he again felt like something was standing right behind him. Come on, Alex. Why do you do this to yourself?
John's voice carried to him. "Ready?"
Alex crouched and gratefully called back. "Ready!"
"Go!"
Alex sprinted straight ahead, his left hand coming up to catch the first bullet. The sound reached him an instant later, echoing through the tunnel. I'm surprised I didn't hear this at the school when he and Natasha were practicing earlier.
He supposed the space was more isolated and insulated than he'd assumed.
But he was getting distracted. When his own internal count reached four seconds, he began jumping side to side by angling his forward leaps, thankfully dodging John's next shot.
In all honesty, it was ridiculously impressive that John had gotten the first shot on target. Alex had been nearly six hundred feet away at the time, and it had still come at him, center mass.
From a pistol? There has to be some System assistance involved…
Now, if he were a pre-System person—and John was only shooting every five seconds—the man should have been able to get off four to eight shots before Alex reached him, and that's if Alex was able to go at a dead sprint.
Instead, Alex blocked the third short with Life's Active Defense before sliding to a stop and putting his hand on John's shoulder.
The other man was slowly shaking his head. "You are unreasonably fast, Alex."
Alex shrugged. "My stats are all well more than five times the pre-System maximum for humanity. If anything, I feel like I'm slower than I should be."
John grunted. "I can see that, yeah. I think we should try to find a scale to step onto, or someone to ask, because I think advancing to E tier, or whatever it's called, made us denser. That means our strength counts for less when moving our own bodies, but is still quite potent when directed outward."
Alex nodded. "Yeah, I think it increased our needs to, both caloric and with regard to rest. Based on what my Create Ration spell says, I feel like I'm pulling mana from the environment for some of my caloric needs, but clearly not all."
"Yeah, hunger is the best spice, and food has been extra good of late The cooks here are good, but they aren't that good." The marksman was nodding. "Regardless, well done. You 'won' our first little training set."
Alex eyed him suspiciously. "What do you suggest that we change?"
John grinned. "I think you should walk instead of run. Only moving faster when you need to try to dodge my shots."
Alex sighed. It made sense, even if he didn't like it on principle. "Fair enough… Will that still be a good training tool for you?"
The other man shrugged. "In one sense. We'll change it up later, for now? Yeah. It will be good to try to shoot at a target that could and might move inhumanly quickly to get out of the way."
With another nod, Alex turned and called over his shoulder before running back to his starting point. "Sounds like a plan!"
<Jefferson, Real - Settle In, Cliff-top Base>
Jefferson was quite happy both with his chosen weapon, a sling, and his chosen enemy, large beetles.
Sure, it wasn't great that he seemingly should have died when this whole 'System' thing came into effect, and he hated that his roommates were who-knew where, but he'd get back to them.
He was a bit suspicious of foul-play given that other types of large insects had begun to show up, but he'd had plenty of time to get to a defensible position, completely cocooned by solid rock as he overlooked the ground below.
There won't be anything burrowing in here. And he had essentially infinite ammunition in the form of the gravel that lay atop the solid rock of the small mouthed cave he'd found.
Every so often, a bug would fly by, or skitter into view, and he'd whip a stone at it, cracking the exoskeleton and bringing about its death.
Even though such large things shouldn't be able to survive with exoskeletons, magic or some such was involved to make it tenable. Regardless, the breaking of the outside in any meaningful way seemed to throw off the delicate balance of the creatures' bodies.
Therefore, so long as he got solid hits, he got a kill every time, even if it took up to half an hour for the notification to come in.
Though, those were usually after it was out of sight, so maybe something else killed it, and I just got some experience. Those instances did seem to give less.
Jefferson didn't really care, though. He had large to-be-jerky patties of bug meat spread on the ledges beside his cave, so he wouldn't be going hungry soon, and there was a nice little rivulet of water that ran down just within reach on the other side of the opening.
He wouldn't be fat when this was all said and done, but if he only had to survive for a month here? He was going to be just fine.
<Thomas, Real - Endure, No-Longer-Safe Base>
Thomas could do nothing but try to keep himself quiet as he hid between two large boulders.
He'd thought the rock-field was the perfect place to hide, just like he'd assumed that 'cows' were the perfect enemies to choose in the fever-dream of a selection space.
He'd not known that he was actually choosing to fight cow-people—not minatours, no, that was apparently something else—and he'd ignored the fact that the cow was shown to him standing on two hooves.
Who cares if it's a funny cow. It's a cow. Rednecks tip them over for a laugh.
He should have cared…
He'd barely made it through that crazy hallway challenge.
Now, the massive, nine-foot-tall bipedal monsters were rampaging through the little grotto, tossing boulders aside that weighed more than Thomas's first car.
Nowhere was safe, and his chosen means of combat, water magic, wasn't powerful enough to kill even a single creature directly. The only bovine that he'd managed to kill had taken all his mana to drown it, and that hadn't netted him enough experience to level.
Sure, he could probably kill more in the same manner, but that would require getting close enough to see them, and if he could see them, they could see him.
The lowing and vibrating crunches of cows and thrown boulders was steadily drawing closer, and all Thomas felt capable of doing was silently cursing at the heavens for this stupid 'Apology Tutorial.'