The System Seas

They arrived at the Palmar village quickly. The distorted island was bigger than the real-life deserted island they were temporary tenants of, but they still moved fast once they weren’t looking around every corner for contingents of small island warriors.

There were a solid eleven of the Palmars in the village, doing nothing much at all. Of those, about six of them looked to be the grunts.

“We still haven’t seen any of those snipers,” Marco commented.

“We probably won’t, Marco. It’s likely a higher-level variant, higher than the level ten cap of this dungeon. I’m sure we’ll see one eventually on some other deserted island.” Elisa shielded her eyes from the light and looked at the enemy force. “How many can you get before they get to us?” This update ıs available on novelꞁire.net

“Depends on what we want.” Marco frowned at his gun. “The gun doesn’t fire quickly. The skill only helps with that a little. It hits harder now, but not always hard enough to take down a brute. It always gets the grunts though.”

“Go for the brutes then.” Elisa’s lightning element now snaked out almost a foot from her arm, like a short club made out of electricity. She had been shocking the little guys and finishing them off by freezing their heads solid, something that looked impressive, but she claimed that she wouldn’t be able to do that on anything tougher. “Riv and I can get the others. We’ll keep one alive so that the system doesn’t kick us out of the dungeon.”

The plan went skill-raisingingly well. Marco was able to drop three of the five brutes with his gun before they got to him and skewered another before almost missing the last, clipping it on the ribs. He rushed in, put that one down, and then turned to find his friends with their hands completely full. Elisa or Riv had dropped two of them, but the other four grunts were circling them, looking for openings. Both already had a few shallow cuts and were only kept back by the threat of Elisa’s lightning whip.

He rushed back, knocking one down with a shot from his pistol before disrupting the rest of their plans with well-aimed sword blows and general fury.

“Okay. I’ve got the last,” Riv said as he bear-hugged the grunt. “Though it’s not in great shape. Hurry before the system marks this dungeon as complete.”

“I can be fast.” Marco ran back towards the village proper, kicking one of the grass huts over entirely as he got to it. That had been his realization earlier. They had searched almost the entire island for food before they even got to the village the first time. If Garrick and Tatric were right, then there was food in the dungeon, somewhere. The huts were the only part of the village they hadn’t really searched, having opted to set them on fire the first time instead.

As the grass hut toppled backwards, it revealed a few bucket-sized baskets of some sort of brown meat. Marco reached down and grabbed one. The system liked that.