Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
"A new weapon already?" Outsword asked as they made their way down the spiral staircase and into the murderpit once more. He had apparently wisened up a tad, this time dressed in somewhat tighter-fitting robes and moving with slightly heavier steps. Next to him Scrappy walked down, fiddling and getting used to his new sling, a new bag of sling-stones secured to his belt. Behind those two, in the very back, the SS was in marching formation.
At the front of the line was himself, as was natural, and he was carrying his new purchases down. Most prominently, the great steel-reinforced crossbow with a hard oak frame, a lever-action reload, and a gravity-fed box-frame magazine of twenty new bolts. One of the side-bags on the duffle bag now full of forty additional bolts, and his arm-crossbow traded in and replaced with a sorta sling-shot.
Only instead of using rubber, this was still a crossbow, it simply had been modified to have a cradle instead of a more conventional flat string. The idea had come to him while shopping at 'Barry's Ballistas and Bolts' or whatever it had been called, and looking at what the kid was buying. If he was already going to upgrade his crossbow, and later on buy clay-pot bombs, it would make sense to replace his old crossbow with one that could acceptably fire said bombs.
Functions just like the old one, but instead of firing bolts, it fired spheres of various sizes. If he completely ran out of ammo, he could just shoot cores at things. If he ran out of cores, he could smash a wall and fire rocks.
Apparently these were pretty popular with Halfmeats, he still wasn't sure why.
"I had the money for it, so I got an upgrade." Adam rumbled out in explanation, helmet currently tucked under one of his arms. He needed to buy a belt-hook for the thing.
"How long did you have the old crossbow for? And doesn't the ammo costs add up? It might be smarter to invest in a melee weapon first." Outsword asked seemingly reasonable questions, ignorant to the fact that Adam Smasher knew what the fuck he was doing and questioning his actions was stupid.
"Three things swordmeat." He began glaring at a scrawny fuck that walked by them with twitchy hands. "I had the old crossbow for less than a week. That doesn't matter, because getting a better crossbow helps me murder more and I don't need two crossbows."
"What about the one on your… Oh that's a different one. You bought two new crossbows?"
"This is a sling-thrower." Adam explained, holding it up to show off. "It doesn't fire bolts. It fires whatever crap of about the right size I need it to fire. That gives it versatility. More options means more tools means better murdering."
"Second thing." Adam continued, lowering the arm once more. "The average bolt for a crossbow, one-hundred and twenty valis. These bolts last for quite a few shots before breaking. The cost of an antidote? Five hundred valis."
"Ah! Yeah that's a good point." Outsword nodded to himself. "I suppose it would save a lot if you only use them on the poison moths. But what about everything else? Using bolts on the killer ants can't be a good idea. They'd just bounce off the shells."
"Why would I use bolts on the ants?" Adam growled out. "They don't fly and aren't poisonous. Just wait for them to approach and kick."
"Oh, yeah I suppose you wouldn't need a melee weapon as much, with your unarmed fighting style. Still, a crossbow of that size is going to be far less effective against the middle floor monsters, and practically useless against the deeper floors."
"I don't need it to be useful then. I need it to be useful now. I can just buy a better weapon later."
There was silence for a few seconds. A soft 'ow' as Scrappy smacked himself in the face with the twirling of his sling. Scrappy then coughed, ignoring the chuckles from the halfmeats in the back.
"I don't think I've ever met an adventurer like you, Adam. Normally people save up to buy one good weapon that lasts a long while, and when they get replacements, they order a copy of their old weapon again." Outsword eventually stated.
Adam scoffed, of course he had never met an adventurer like him. He was Adam fucking Smasher. "How much do you have in your guild account? How big was that number when you entered today?"
"Uh… It's usually a pretty bad idea to talk about that sort-"
"More than a few thousand, right?" Adam cut off. "More than ten thousand, more than a hundred thousand. More than change, right?"
"One of those is correct, yeah." Outsword replied noncommittally.
"I entered today with one-thousand five-hundred valis left in my account." Adam declared. "One-thousand to buy an emergency healing potion, five hundred to buy food, and both to get me back into the Dungeon for another delve the next day. Having a big number on some paper? Completely pointless. A big number in some account isn't going to help me win. A new weapon will. More ammo will. More potions will."
"If it makes me better at murder, it's worth buying. More murder means my income goes up. Income goes up and I can buy more to help me murder. You can't make money by hoarding money. You make money by spending money."
"What if you can't find anything within your price range that would be better?" Scrappy asked curiously.
"Then you start investing it in other things." Adam rumbled. "If you can't upgrade yourself? Then expand your operation. Get another murderer to join your operation, get them armed and armored, and get them earning vails for you. Get a plot of land, get a warehouse built, then employ a few brewers or smiths to make your supplies in-house."
"Oh, yeah it would be great to have a bigger familia!" Scrappy chirped, gently swinging his sling around again. "It'd be really helpful to them if someone got good gear for them from the beginning, I know it would've helped us a lot!"
"Hmm." Adam rumbled. "Remind me to write a primer for new recruits, make sure they know how to swing a metal stick." He growled out, knowing that they were probably going to get a host of incompetents when they started properly expanding their operation. They'd probably also need training sessions, ready equipment, tactical primers…
They needed a lot to make a proper military operation. More room than the little church could support on its own. He made a note to check on the prices of the nearby buildings, see if that mostly-abandoned district was up for sale. No megacorp worth a damn was without a privately owned city district, that was like going without a militarized security force.
"You might want to invest in a combat-supporter." Halflead spoke out from the back of the group, catching his attention. "Someone to load a spare ammo box and hand it off to you while fighting, things of that nature. There's a few in our familia that specialize in it, if you want me to ask around."
"That would require a renegotiation of shares." Adam rumbled out the reminder.
"Each delve down with you is worth weeks with other adventurers, Mister Smasher. I think we'll be just fine with a small pay cut if it means your operation gets a little more efficient." Halflead proved that he had a good head on his shoulders with his polite reasoning.
Adam nodded. "Ask around then. That sounds useful."
"You know my daughter is a combat supporter." Halfred spoke up. "It'll be nice to work with my girl again."
"Little Rosie? How old is she nowadays?" Halfchain asked, the shifting of metal over metal indicating a tilted head. "Last I saw her she was riding stray dogs around."
"She turns sixteen soon, she's a woman grown by this point. I keep telling her she needs to find a husband already, but she doesn't want to listen to mama no more."
Adam tuned out that part of the conversation, no longer relevant to him and he no longer cared. Outsword spoke up, apparently having similar thoughts. "I should probably invest in a ranged weapon too, for the moths if nothing else… I've never made one before, and it'd be a good experience regardless."
"You ever used one before?" Scrappy asked. "A ranged weapon that is. I've only ever used a sling, myself." Scrappy almost sounded sheepish at admitting that, Adam wasn't sure why.
"Yeah, back home most boys got trained in a few. Throwing spears and bows mostly. I'm not sure I should use either though, with my sword being a two-hander. It'll take a bit too long to pull either out to fire, and I'd have to set my sword aside during it."
"Why do you use a greatsword anyways?" Scrappy asked in curiosity.
"Level Eleven. Silverbacks, Hard Armoreds, and Infant Dragons. A normal weapon just doesn't cut it against those, you need a good amount of weight to cut through them, they're just too tough." Outsword spoke with resigned familiarity, as if this had been a problem for him for a while now.
"Aren't you a smith?" Adam growled out with a slightly confused tone.
Outsword blinked. "...Yes? Why?"
"You don't use a sword against heavy armor." Adam grunted. "You use a hammer."
Outsword didn't react for a few moments, before an expression of great revelation came over him.
-
"How do you do that?" Outsword asked, cleaving through two ants with a wide swipe of his oversized kitchen knife. He stomped back once, avoiding the gouging horn of a rabbit long enough to upper cut it with a normal punch. Said rabbit spun once in the air, practically hovering in place, before twirling off to the side from the force of the blow. Slightly superhuman, low borg tier.
"Do what?" He rumbled, kicking to cave in the skull of an ant while aiming his new crossbow. He was still getting used to the slight delay in firing and bolt travel time, but it wasn't anything worse than calculating missile trajectories while under accelerated perception of time. Tricky but not hard. His finger pulled the trigger, the bolt soared through the air.
Eighteen meters away, a moth fell out of the sky, midsection and part of one wing impaled by a powerful bolt. Overall damage was equivalent to a lower power rifle, most of its killing potential limited by the manual action required to ready another shot.
He kicked again as he cranked the lever back, loading another shot with a click as his shaking boot ruined the torso of a war shadow. Another shadow was coming for him, too little time to avoid. He took his hand off the crossbow, angled himself to let the claws scrape off armor, and punched.
His shaking fist turned the white mask into a shattered plate, and the head behind it into a shower of tar. The armor slightly limited his mobility, but not much more than most borg frames did. The meatframe was flexible in many mostly-useless ways. The real handicap was the inability to fully rotate his joints like most borg frames would allow.
"That blurring when you attack." Outsword clarified, bringing his big knife around in another wide sweep that these monsters barely even tried to avoid, cutting through another batch.
"Oh! That's Panzerfaust!" Scrappy chirped, cutting a frog-tongue in half with his sword, stepping back to briefly disengage, and swinging that new sling around twice. The third swing ended in an almost-tossing motion. Eight meters away, a mask caved inwards and the shadow collapsed, landing on a rabbit and pinning it underneath. "He tried teaching me, but I wasn't able to do it."
His upgrading to a better crossbow, and Scrappy's addition of a rock-tosser, meant that quite a few monsters died well before reaching them. More monsters died before reaching them, the frontline was more relaxed as a result, giving them time to chat somewhat calmly as the hall before them filled with an abundance of corpses.
"Panzerfaust…? That sounds, Elven. Is that the name of that fighting style?" Outsword asked, having taken a position with him at the front, and Scrappy between and slightly behind the two of them, ready to go protect the supporters again if needed. A reversed triangle formation facing towards the enemy.
"It's German, meatbag." Adam corrected, performing another hard kick that crashed into a pouncing rabbit and sent it careening off to crash against the wall. There was a fairly satisfying crunch that accompanied each blow against those. "Means 'armor-fist'." He fired again, sending another moth flying back and down some fifteen meters away. Twenty shots, he needed to refill the ammo box.
It wouldn't surprise him if they just used another language but mangled for their stupid fairy tale races. That sounded about on par for everything else here so far.
Hisshaking fist turned another leaping rabbit into a corpse.
"Oh! It does kinda sound like an Elf-word!" Scrappy commented, stabbing down to pin an ant to the floor, then ripping the sword out and back, using the pulling to flow into a kick that knocked the corpse back and tripped a shadow. "Did you learn it from an Elf, Senpai?
Adam grunted out a negative as he hurried to secure his crossbow to his waist, freeing up his arms. He was pretty sure 'Elf' was slang for something sex related back where he was from. "I learned it from an old ninja named Kagekaze. He gave me a few pointers in between missions, back in my merc days."
Two shaking fists turned two monsters into gore. He stopped moving slowly backwards, and instead started moving slowly forwards. The swarm of monsters had thinned out enough, it was time to start reclaiming lost ground and give the SS time to carve the corpses apart. More economical with their time this way.
They had hit the monster pantry again today, same tactics, moving down the most optimal route and clearing the path in their way before luring the horde and performing a fighting retreat to bleed them out. There was little point in staying on these floors after clearing the pantry, they weren't going to find a larger group except as a fluke.
He had checked the prices again. Floor ten had orcs, bats, and imps. Bats stayed out of range for most melee, and were known as a huge hassle to leave alone. They were, however, worth nearly four-thousand valis each. Only issue is the monsters they hung out with could potentially cause some real issues.
He needed to make sure the kid was up to snuff before heading down, both in practice and gear, which meant sticking with their gradual pace. They'd clear out the pantry, then go down to map out floor seven with their normal pace. Slow and steady with how they cleared these things out, no need to take risks this early on.
Another stomp forwards, another set of shaking blows, two more corpses. "Scrappy, moth duty." He growled out, pointing out the target in the distance and setting a command simultaneously. He was out of easy reload territory, so he delegated the murder.
Said moth lived for about another five seconds before something smashed into it, sending the thing tumbling down. A few seconds later, another moth died, a rock whistling over their heads as they advanced. Scrappy was managing about one shot every six seconds or so when not being interrupted, from what he had seen. He'd need to set up something for the kid to practice on back at homebase.
"That's definitely a Far Eastern name, if I've ever heard one." Outsword commented, swinging and slaying another pair of monsters. "Did you ever visit? I heard they're pretty famous for their flowers."
"Visit! He's a countryman!" A voice called out from a side passage. Adam growled, recognizing the voice and taking out his immediate spike of frustration by grabbing a frog-tongue and pulling himself forwards to crash against its skull. This brought him forwards slightly, letting him turn his gaze over to see three familiar meatbags.
A fox, a rabbit, and what he now recognized as an adolescent halfmeat. His black armored figure was painted in a fine coat of frog gore, which similarly splashed the three brats who stood at the entrance of a tunnel that led to an alternative path to the stairs up.
The fox was pointing cockily, expression slowly shifting into one of dread as she realized that her front was painted a fresh red. The other two were similarly distressed as they realized they had stumbled across a killing field.
How the hell didn't you realize that earlier, meatbags? You practically walked into this hallway already and the floors were covered in gore and corpses. You overheard Outsword talking to him, and knew he was there…
…They knew that he was there. His eyes narrowed behind his visor.
"Stay out of my way." He snarled out through his helmet, immediately leaping forwards again to smash fists against a pair of ants. Now he had to worry about another potential flank, which introduced a level of variability that he didn't like. No question on decision making though, if they tried poaching his profits, he'd kill them and move on. Right now he had a slaughter to get back to enjoying.
Once again, the answer was delegation. "Crozzo! Watch these meatbags!" He ordered, being met by an affirmative grunt and immediate repositioning. In front of him, another moth died as Scrappy's stone smashed into it. That one wasn't as accurate as it could've been, hitting the base of a wing segment and not the central body.
"Don't call me Crozzo! Call me Welf!" Outsword attempted to demand as he moved in front of the three interlopers to make sure they didn't try ambushing the SS.
Pft, not even Scrappy has earned a name yet. He'll call you whatever the fuck he feels like. Hot gore painted his front again as his fists crashed into another set of monsters. "Support Squad! Status!"
"All clear! Pace maintained!" Halflead called back. The tone indicated steady breathing and relative proximity. They were keeping up with his advancing pace, carving corpses as they went. Operation was still running smoothly.
Good.
He had some pointed questions for the Japmeats after he was done with this group.