Chapter 19 - Leaving 1

With the outdated means of writing aside, the process went pretty smoothly. Skye moved as she copied what she saw in the crafting menu with great precision and accuracy. Meanwhile, Rynold was simply staring at her, watching her work like it was her job to do so.

Elle, on the other hand, was trying to fend off advances from Jack who was just plain annoying her to an absurd amount. The more she tried to resist, the more Jack pushed harder.

Oliver was still looking around the room, trying to match doohickeys with whatever it is that the pieces would fit. Rynold could occasionally hear a random clanging sound ever so often.

Within a few minutes of drawing the magic array, the metal cooled therefore needing to melt again. Rynold and Skye kept on going until the final product managed to turn out alright. Without much delay, Rynold thanked Skye for the help and immediately attached the component to the rifle, thus completing the weapon.

With a smile on his face, Rynold pulled the weapon up and readied to fire.

[Weapon Information Updated!]

A window appeared suddenly and it's a welcoming message at that.

[Poisonous Mana Rifle]

Ranged Weapon (Firearm)

Durability: 500/500

Attack Power +125~300

A weapon from ancient times that was once the standard of any soldier. A craftsman dedicated his time to improve on the design but failed to finish it, rendering the item unable to fire. Reassembled by a new craftsman, the weapon now has been modified with the essence of poison.

Active Skill: Mana Shot

Shoots out a bullet made from the user's Mana.

Cost: 2 Mana per shot

Additional Passive Skill: Poison Essence

With the essence of poison, some shots have a small percentage of shooting a bullet enfused with Poison, dealing continuous damage to the target enemy based on the target's health.

The weapon, thankfully, turned out to be alright. The damage output was relatively high, considering the somewhat cost that each shot would take. For now, though, Rynold thought who could use the rifle since the only good shot was somewhat untrustworthy.

Regardless, Rynold put back the weapon to his inventory, satisfied with how it turned out while avoiding the gaze of the enthusiastic Jack. He went to where Oliver was and just saw that he was goofing around with random things. So, Rynold tried to salvage what was left of the workstations that Oliver managed to "handle" only to come up with broken pieces and random junk.

Rynold tossed the junk aside and sat down at an unoccupied part of the room, relaxing after the few hours of building the weapon back up. His stomach grumbled. He hadn't had anything sustainable to eat all day.

He pulled bread out again and tried to eat silently but even that was cut short because Jack suddenly came up to him.

"Hey, so about my cut in the loot."

This time, Jack was rather blunt in his approach. He asked as if he deserved to get something out of the Spider Queen but, considering what he actually did, Rynold was appalled.

"Seriously?" Rynold asked in response, surprised. Not only did Jack not doing anything to help with defeating the Spider Queen but also he shot at Rynold! "I'm not gonna give you anything, man. You haven't done anything to deserve it. I have half the mind to end you right now."

His voice was low but that didn't diminish the intimidation that he let out. Jack was silent in response, he didn't know what to say. He just stood back up, silent and unmoving like a tree.

Rynold continued to eat in silence, the awkward atmosphere continued to rise. Until Jack suddenly spoke.

"I... I wanted to tell you that you could trust me. Although, my actions proved otherwise, I can still be useful to you guys. As much as I want to leave you guys alone, I have no other place to go so I've got nothing to lose. The question is, do you have anything to lose?"

"I'll think about it. We might have nothing to lose but letting you in might only make you a bigger liability to us. For now, just sit still," Rynold didn't even look at the young soldier and looked down on the ground, avoiding Jack's gaze.

As soon as Jack left, Rynold let out a low sigh. He didn't know what to do now, especially if he could trust the guy or not or what else he could see that would make him trust the guy.

Oliver saw Jack leave and Rynold deep in thought. Maybe the best way to move forward is to just see what Jack could do.

With that, Oliver was sitting next to Skye and acted like nothing happened. But, in truth, Oliver was deep in thought, thinking of ways on how to deal with the young soldier if ever worse comes to worst.

"Guys."

Rynold suddenly called everyone's attention as he stood up. "It might be time to leave."

He headed to the door while the rest of the group was surprised.

"Why now?" Oliver asked.

"I dunno, just kind of wanting to get some action," Rynold smiled cheekily.

He opened the door and rushed out, leaving the rest of the group alone. Adrenaline shot up his head and moved at full speed to the spider den.

As much as he wanted to sit the room and wait for a few minutes or a few hours, moving out was a lot better than sitting around and doing nothing. Rynold switched back his gauntlets into Strength-form and readied his skills. As soon as some light came from the end of the tunnel, Rynold summoned X.

Spider Drones pounced towards X, hissing at the new enemies. Rynold slammed his gauntlets around, spinning and hitting everything that he could see. The numbers were overwhelming, but the tunnel made it so that it was managable to fight against the spider cluster.

Rynold managed to level up once since he started grinding the spider drones and almost got bitten by one of them.

Bang!

A shot managed to knick the spider at the last minute, effectively killing it.

Jack was the first one that followed Rynold out, hoping that he could prove his loyalty to the group. Meanwhile, Oliver and the rest came up shortly.

The group went to full combat. Rynold kept swinging and hitting while activating Charging Fist here and there. Oliver was stealthily and swiftly attacking the spider drones, every single movement killed a spider drone. Meanwhile, Jack was putting out shots to the enemies effectively sparing no expense and expelled every bullet he had. Skye and Elle were also casting spells here and there, the combination of wind and fire spread to the spiders, causing continuous damage until they died.

"Wrahh!" Rynold struck out and killed two spiders by crushing them and switching back to Speed-form to block a hit from an incoming spider.

"Hey! I'm almost out of bullets here!" Jack was still in a constant firing spree but ditched his sniper rifle and picked out his pistol and standard military knife instead, charging into the spider cluster.

"Here!" Rynold tossed the Poisonous Mana Rifle at Jack.

Jack emptied out his handgun and threw it to an incoming spider. He then caught the rifle that Rynold threw and kneeled down to take a shot. Jack didn't even have the time to acknowledge that he finally managed to unlock his status window and just kneeled down.

For the first time in his life, Jack pulled mana from his body and infused it onto the mana rifle.

Instead of a loud bang, the rifle hummed when mana was put into it. The bullet that was shot out was a clean light, too fast for the eye to see.

With how it turned out, Jack smiled at the exhilirating experience that he felt. He kept firing at the spiders, not knowing if his mana would bottom out at the absurd amount of shots he's fired. On ocassion the bullets even turned green, indicating that the poisonous attribute of the weapon was activated.

With every attack from the team, spiders were killed. Although the strength of the spiders weren't that strong, at the very least the experience from each of them wasn't a small amount. The whole team managed to level up once or twice with the exception of Rynold who's experience needed to level up was higher than everyone else's.

After thirty or so minutes, the group finally managed to clear all the spiders. Rynold though that the waves of spiders were endless, thankfully the tunnel served as a chokepoint for the team.

Loot was littered on the ground and the whole group was tired with Jack being the most exhausted. He had no experience with the whole New World system but his very first battle was worthwhile. Rynold took to himself to secure the loot and collected them while the others rested up.

Jack grabbed a piece of loot from the ground, making Oliver shoot him a threatening glance.