A New Kind Of Grind

"...This is a Level Five Dungeon Gate," Nicky pointed out as we approached our destination.

"All the Level Threes in Dornhelm are booked solid for the next month," I said. "Besides, delving here will bring us to Level 5 in like two weeks."

"Yes, but, delving up two levels is... shall we say... generally discouraged?" Nicky said.

"You have maxed out Base Stats, a full set of heavily-enchanted orichalcum gear, and a Level 5 delver who loves you," I said. "I assure you, this is going to go much better than my first delve as a Guilder."

"What I'm curious about is where you even got all this orichalcum," Nel said, looking down at her new armor set, smithed by me and enchanted by herself. Despite the Ranger's only melee-focused Role being Thief, Nel went for armor that was actually even heavier than what the paladins in the group were wearing; a Ranger, in Nel's eyes, was best as a ranged fighter, funnily enough, and so her preferred combat style was 'hunkered down in the back, taking over-skilled potshots at the enemy.'

To hear her tell it, the biggest challenge with the armor I'd given her was enchanting the helmet to not pinch her long-ass ears against her head.

"Doesn't your weird pseudovillage only make iron?" she continued.

"It did, until Cecilia Ironborn got bored and decided to improve on my process," I said. "Now we have a bunch of auto-miners that feed directly into advanced, specialized smelters that directly spit out steel, orichalcum, mythril, and adamantine, plus whatever other metals she felt like making a bunch more of before she got bored."

"And then you found out that trying to use adamantine gear as a Level 4 is a really bad idea?" Akane asked, smirking a little.

"Where I'm from, swords were precision instruments that were made to be as light as possible while still being sturdy enough to carve a man like a turkey," I grumbled. "There is no good reason for an adamantine dagger to weigh two hundred fucking pounds." As someone who once played Dwarf Fortress, adamantine being heavier than cotton candy was jarring enough, but it being something like five hundred times denser than steel was insulting on a spiritual level.

"That's because where you're from, the strongest person in the world just wasn't all that strong," Akane said. "Where we're from, people get really strong, and heavier weapons have more momentum, therefore imparting more force into an impact, and so make better use of all that strength. Hell, I've seen the weapons that Level 15s make out of adamantine- they are just absolutely massive slabs of metal, compared to a normal sword."

I grunted.

"At any rate," I continued. "If the peanut gallery is done heckling me, I would like to get on with the delve."

"Should we really be jumping straight into a Level 5 Delve?" Nicky asked. "This is our first time delving together as a group, and we have no idea how we'll mesh together."

"Roxy delves like a sledgehammer, so we'll be fine," Nel said. "Just stay in formation, point your weapon at the enemy, and pull the trigger."

Naturally, I had in fact given everyone present their own firearms. Nel had the only rifle of the group, with a scope that had taken me far more work to develop than the rifle itself, and which I only realized after making it would be useless in a Dungeon due to the short ranges involved, and Akane had been given a magazine-fed pistol. Nicky and I, meanwhile, were the front-line fighters, and in the interest of not having to make a third kind of bullet (a sniper rifle really wanted big bullets, of the sort that would be less-than-practical in a man-portable automatic weapon), I'd made for the two of us a pair of pistol-caliber submachine guns, which in fact used the same magazines as Akane's pistol.

If it weren't for the fact that all of our magazines were enchanted to hold an absolutely insane number of bullets, then this would be a lot harder; a big part of the effective military use of automatic firearms was being able to reload under stress, and knowing when to reload. This way, we just had to worry about aiming.

"Sounds workable to me," Akane said. "We can worry about getting fancy later, once guns stop being so effective."

"We'll see if that ever happens," I said, putting my hands on the Dungeon Gate. "Let's go."

---

Imagine an ordinary human person. You may even know one of them. That person is, for the purposes of this exercise, Level 1. Now imagine a once-in-a-generation talent who very well could go down in the history of their field. Albert Einstein. Usain Bolt. Red Sonja. They are Level 5.

This dungeon was for a group of Level 5 small-unit fighters, each as fearsome and skilled as the greatest swordsmen our world had ever seen...

Funnily enough, a battle that was intended to challenge a group of swordsmen was downright trivial for a group of assholes with semi-modern firearms.

"I almost feel bad about this," Nicky murmured, as dead monsters evaporated into piles of loot.

"I, for one, am quite happy to change the paradigm of firearms to the point they're hideously overpowered," I said. "As fun as it is to fight with a sword in hand, right now I am utterly disinterested in having fun. I came here to win."

Nicky snorted, and Nel got back up, grunting. "Alright, time to check the loot chest." The visor of her helmet popped out and up, carried out of the way by a linkage of four arms, and she stowed her gauntlets in her inventory. At some point, we'd develop gauntlets that were so lightweight and dextrous that Nel could pick locks with them on, but until then, she'd stick to taking them off before doing any non-combat thievery.

The boss of this particular Dungeon was the first time we felt the need to change up our tactics.

It was a boss in two parts: one part was a big horde of trash mobs with spears, shields, and not much in the way of armor, while the other part was a woman on horseback with a great big polearm in hand- a long spear point at the tip, a warhammer on one face, and a war pick on the other.

Her armor was black, but I saw red.

"Alright," I said, as the mob approached from the other side of the oversized arena. "Automatic fire is gonna chew through those grunts, but... I don't think anything besides Nel's rifle is going to get through the big girl's armor. Someone's going to have to pull out a sword and actually tangle with the knight, pin them down so Nel can get a few shots off, while the other two mow down those grunts."

"I understand," Nicky said, sword in hand.

"I'm a higher-level Paladin than you," I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Akane, trade guns with me." I handed her my SMG, and accepted her pistol in return, before stowing it in my inventory and pulling out my sword. "Everyone know what they're doing?"

"Should I take a shot now?" Nel asked.

"Bullets are cheap," I said. "Go right ahead."

Nel had outfitted all of our guns with silencing enchantments, but I was most grateful for that with her own big-ass rifle; even with the magical silencer paired with the mechanical silencer, it was obnoxiously loud, but at least it wasn't deafeningly loud.

With her Thief role, Nel was a damn good shot, being able to spend Stamina and Resolve to enhance her existing skills, which themselves were by no means lacking. And so when the Black Knight lazily leaned to one side in the saddle, we were all unpleasantly surprised to see her miss for the first time.

"...You're definitely going to have to fight her in melee," Nel muttered. "No way I'm hitting that without help."

"Alright, well," I muttered, stepping forward and squaring my shoulders. "Let's do this."

Nicky and Akane opened fire as one, and almost immediately, foot soldiers erupted into chunky salsa and dropped where they stood. If I didn't have a nominal rematch with a Black Knight, I'd be way more excited about how automatic firearms were gonna change the delving meta, but right now, I was slightly more worried about fighting an above-level version of a foe who'd absolutely bodied me when I'd fought an under-level version.

"[Minefield]," I cast, just ahead of the horse.

It was a custom spell I'd developed, creating a cluster of small magical fields that, when stepped on, would unleash a storm of sharp, cutting force into whatever stepped on it, kind of, but not exactly, like a real landmine, and in fact, more like Akane's old [Slimebane] spell, which I had in fact adapted.

Nonetheless, the spell worked like a charm, turning the Black Knight's armored horse into uncased sausage; it seemed that she had, in her naivete, only armored the parts of the horse that faced the enemy. The spell's blades may have bounced off the Black Knight's armor, only barely managing to scratch the paint, but that wasn't the goal; the goal was to deprive the horseman of her horse, and in that, I succeeded beautifully.

Still, now I had to actually fight the damn knight, and that was gonna suck.

Her first attack was a quick jab with the spear, which I stepped past, grabbing the haft of the polearm, and then I yanked. She stumbled forward a few steps, before letting go of her weapon; her next move was to draw a new weapon, but my next move was to slam her full-force in the visor with the crossguard of my sword, sending her stumbling backwards.

Another shot from Nel's rifle rang out, and the Black Knight stumbled further, but did not fall.

"That only dented the helmet!" I called out. "Leave her to me; help the others!"

A third shot, and this time, it hit something besides the Black Knight.

"No more guns, nobody else," I said, raising my sword into a ready position. "Just us and our swords."

The Black Knight raised her own sword into a mirror of my own ready position, before, as one, we lunged at each other, sword meeting sword in the middle.

The clash of metal on metal rang out, as I pressed aggressively against my foe. She was a higher level than me, but that mattered less than it should have, considering all the enchantments I was loaded up with. I was stronger, faster, and better than any Level 4 Paladin had any right to be.

But then, I overextended; a lunge not merely missed, but completely whiffed, hitting nothing but air, and before I could withdraw my sword, she caught the flats between her arm and her side, and turned on the spot to yank the sword from my grasp, leaving me unarmed. Turning your back on your opponent with a fancy spin was the height of foolishness, but she'd just disarmed me, and had me dead to rights...

"Eat lead," I said.

...except, of course, for the fact I had a second weapon.

With Warrior abilities I mostly had been saving until now, I empowered the shit out of my bullets, and squeezed half a dozen shots off into her breastplate until it finally gave in, and a nine millimeter slug of lead pierced through her heart.

I let my arm drop a few seconds after the Black Knight dropped, and looked around.

Mangled bodies, viscera, and blood littered the floor of the arena. Weapons we would leave where they laid because they weren't worth the effort of picking up, scattered like twigs in a forest. It made a slaughterhouse look like a hospital.

"...Well, looks like we won," I said. "Go us."