Chapter 55 - First Monsters

"So it's actually true," Claudia muttered under her nose as she looked around the place. 

"It looks exactly the same. While that reason alone isn't sufficient proof, there is a simple way to find out whether I'm right or not," Tom shrugged his shoulders before taking his backpack off. 

Soon, the reason for why it was nearly as high as the man himself was revealed as Tom pulled out two pulse rifles from it. 

"Here, take it," he passed one of the weapons to the girl, who lost all of her equipment outside of the gloves she requested before. In fact, if she didn't wear them in advance, she would lose them as well. 

"Seriously? A gun?" Claudia looked up at Tom's face. "Aren't we supposed to fight in the same way we did while playing?" she asked while inspecting the rifle with confusion. 

'She never had a gun in her hands before,' Tom thought as he noticed how awkward she was while holding the modern piece of equipment. 

"Here, this is safety. This is the mag release. You aim by coordinating the three dots in sights into a straight line," he explained the basics of handling the weapon before taking a few moments to inspect his own.

When compared to the last-age mechanical guns, pulse rifles were far simpler. Rather than using the primitive technology of propelling the projectile with gunpowder, they worked on the basis of rail-gun. 

Each magazine came with a set of a hundred pellets and a battery lasting just long enough to shoot them all. Thanks to this arrangement, one's shoots could be far more accurate and powerful.

'But that also means obtaining ammunition will be nigh impossible once we run out of it,' Tom thought as he pulled the special belt out of the back of the gun. He then hooked it at the special hold on the front before hanging the entire thing on his neck. 

"Now that I think about it," Claudia started while following Tom's example and putting the gun's belt over her head, "where did Cleo go?" 

"Oh, so you don't know?" Tom shrugged, surprised by the question. 'I thought it was common knowledge already,' he thought to himself before looking around and making his first step forward. "Basically, you can imagine the entire dungeon as a pyramid. Starting from the bottom, you are thrown randomly into one of its tiles or channels. That's why you never encounter other players when you go solo for the early floors," Tom explained. 

"What about parties then?" Claudia asked, clearly intent on digging the topic a bit deeper. "Not only can we see each other right away, but we can also... Wait, what happened to the lobby?" Claudia suddenly changed her question where she realized what was missing in the process of entering the dungeon. 

"I believe it's one of the parts that was actually created by the Online Hub," Tom explained his guesses. "Sadly, everything I believe to know is nothing more but conjunction based on what I observed and experienced. We are here to find out at least some truths in the first place," he said as he continued to push deeper into the dungeon. 

When compared to exploring it through the avatar's senses, the real dungeon appears to be far darker than Tom expected. But while he had some night-vision goggles packed at the bottom of his backpack, he opted not to pull them out so soon. 

After all, he had no idea what awaited them at deeper floors. 'Given how I aim to go as deep as I can before we run out of supplies, it wouldn't be wise to use the batteries so lightly,' he thought while gripping the handle of his sword a bit harder. 

"Going back to the topic, how can you know those things?" Claudia asked, not satisfied with what Tom explained so far. 

"Do you remember anything from the day when my main avatar died?" Tom said before releasing a deep sigh. "The hole that we fell into was made by the boss of the very last floor of the dungeon. Before falling into it, I saw her fight with some other player," Tom summarised the entire event while keeping silent about everything else that transpired that day. 

"So you concluded that the lower we go, the greater chance we will meet with her?" Claudia asked before leaning her head over to her shoulder and smiling sweetly. "Tell me, do you even think Cleo can go deep enough for that? Keep in mind that she will be all on her own!" she said, clearly not convinced by Tom's plan. 

"First off, I could reach level fifty solo without much trouble. As such, Cleo could do it even faster than me," Tom said and shrugged his shoulders in response. 

'Well, it's no wonder she will doubt Cleo's abilities... But amongst the three of us, she always came out on top in sparrings,' Tom recalled the memories from before he went to the city. While there was a slight tone of sourness in remembering his multiple losses, at least it reassured him about Cleo's chances of fulfilling her own end of the plan. 

"Hey, can you hear that?" Tom suddenly stood in place while allowing the momentum of his walk to swing his rifle forward. He caught it as soon as it neared his hand before activating the weapon and taking aim at the direction the sound came from. 

"A monster?" Claudia asked, grabbing and lowering her own rifle. 

"Activate it!" Tom said with a tiny dose of annoyance when he saw the girl trying to aim with an offline weapon. Without the closed circuit to pass the energy to the railing of the gun, the entire thing was just as good as one's average metal club. "But yeah, I believe we finally found some monsters," Tom admitted once the girl pushed the switch. 

'Judging from the sound and how low we are, those monsters should be...' Tom thought, only for the monsters to come out of the corner, saving him the trouble of guessing. 

"Slimes!"