The cannon cost too much mana to build in one piece, so I made it in several pieces and screwed them together. Then I made the carriage in pieces as well. I took a couple mana potions during the process to keep me fueled until the job was done.

  Valda helped with the screwing and assembling process. I supposed I could have used my Assemble skill to assemble it, but I liked to do things by hand when I could. I made a few cannon balls and a few fuses.

  With everything complete, I made the outer shelter wall into a hinged door that swung open. I spent more mana to reinforce the ledge, hoping it would hold. I did everything I could to reinforce the thing.

  If it didn't hold, then at least I did my best. Which would be a great consolation if I fell, and the cannon landed on top of me, killing me. You couldn't take a health potion if you died from a single blow.

  I made sure to load the cannon before bringing it out onto the ledge. I wanted to move as little as possible to reduce my chances of the ledge collapsing. When I wheeled it out onto the ledge, it creaked and groaned, but it held. I crawled out onto the ledge myself and it groaned some more, but still, it held.

  I looked around to see that Elise was apparently sleeping to the far right of the hole. I turned the cannon to face her and took aim. I carefully lit the fuse. I began to crawl back inside the hole. I didn't want to be there when the cannon went off. Even if the ledge didn't break from the weight, it would certainly break from the explosion.

  But as I crawled back inside, the ledge dropped half a foot. I scrambled to get back inside the hole, knowing the ledge was going to collapse, but I wasn't fast enough. The ledge collapsed under me and brought me down with it.

  It wasn't that far of a drop. It was only about twenty feet, since that's the highest Valda could jam the stake into the wall. I landed on top of the cannon, luckily, rather than the other way around. My health dropped a small amount. I didn't feel good, but nothing was broken.

  I got up off the cannon to assess the damage. The carriage was shattered, and the cannon had fallen out of it. The fuse was still going. I had a little more than a few seconds before it went off and it was laying flat on the ground. It wouldn't hit anything that way, and the shot would be wasted.

  I looked over at Elise, who had stirred from the commotion. She took one look at me and realized I was vulnerable. She started skittering towards me. Shit. I realized what I had to do. It was the only thing I could do. I had to manually aim the cannon and hope it didn't rip my arms off when it went off.

  I grabbed the cannon and started to lift it, but it was too heavy. I couldn't get it aimed more than a couple inches up. Valda landed next to me and saw what I was doing. She didn't even need to ask for context.

  She grabbed the cannon and helped me lift it. Elise was barreling down on us and we were only half-way to where we needed to be. With a burst of strength, Valda used Impact Strike to swing the cannon up just before it went off.

  The world shook, and there was a ringing in my ears. The cannon went flying from Valda's use of Impact Strike, and we both collapsed to the ground. I couldn't feel my arms. And then I could.

  They hurt more than I could imagine anything hurting. I tried to take a health potion, but I couldn't move my arms. As the feeling came back into my arms, I became hyperaware that my arms were broken in several places.

  However, I was able to get a health potion out, pop the cork and put it to my lips, only to be unable to lift my head high enough to drink it. I turned over onto my back and drank the potion. I felt my bones set themselves and knit back together. It was deeply uncomfortable, but I was soon able to get up and check to see if Valda was alright.

  I quickly checked to see if Elise was still after us, but I figured by the lack of commotion, she wasn't. When I looked over, her health bar was empty, and she was dead. The cannon had worked, after all. Not that I was particularly joyful about it, but I was happy she wasn't trying to kill us anymore.

  Valda was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.

  "You alright?" I asked. I put my hand out.

  "Yeah," she said. "Nothing serious. I just feel disoriented."

  "That'll pass with a health potion," I said. "It did for me."

  I helped lift her up off the ground and handed her one, which she immediately drank.

  "Yeah, that's much better," she said.

  The system informed me I had leveled up to level 8. The same level as the Culling Party. Nice! We might've actually stood a chance of defeating them when they showed their faces again.

  Looking at Valda, she had leveled up too. Her constitution stat went up by one to 8, and she gained a new skill. Upon analyzing it, it said:

  Break Guard: The ability to weaken or destroy an enemy's defensive capabilities. This includes shields, armor, and defensive stances.

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  Wow! That would be amazing to see in battle. That shored up what I saw as her one weakness. The difficulty of getting through armor with a weapon that didn't have points or sharp edges.

  Getting back to my own level upgrades, I put a stat point in intelligence, bringing it up to 12 and getting another perk.

  Faster Crafting: Increase crafting speed by 100%.

  Efficient Crafting: Reduce material cost by 40%.

  Brilliant Inventor (2): Additionally, reduce the proficiency level requirement to invent something new by 2 on one skill, or by 1 on two skills. Does not affect the level requirements to manufacture known materials or items, unless it is a previous invention. Previous inventions require 2 less proficiency levels to produce.

  Accelerated Comprehension: Increase learning speed by 100%.

  Arcane Infusion: Add general magic damage to your attacks. The additional damage is 40% of your total damage count. (General magic damage gets through non-magic defense, but it doesn't activate weaknesses like elemental magic damage)

  This time I felt it necessary to choose Arcane Infusion. A big drawback I had was armor piercing and lack of spells. Even with the flintlocks, I probably couldn't get through heavy armor or shields, and compared to other ranged classes like rangers or pure archers, my reload speed was pathetic.

  Rangers and archers could reload and fire their bows once every half a second to 3 seconds depending on level and skill proficiency. Riley, the ranger in the Culling Party at level 8, could likely fire her bow once every two seconds. If she was holding multiple arrows in one hand, she could fire each of those once per second.

  My flintlocks took 5 whole seconds to reload each. Sure, I got two shots out of it, but level 8 rangers and level 5 archers had double shot, so that wasn't special. On top of that, they had accuracy and damage bonuses that I didn't get.

  The point I'm trying to make is that my abilities may seem good in a vacuum, but compared to other classes of the same level, I was dramatically outclassed.

  And that's just comparing mundane ranged attackers against me. If you compared me to actual spellcasters, my weaknesses ballooned out of proportion.

  Mages and wizards, which are basically the same thing, but they'd disagree, learn the fireball spell at level 6 and by level 8 can cast it three to four times without having to recharge their mana, depending on whether most or all of their stat upgrades went to intelligence.

  No one ever told me how that worked for them, because no one ever had to be told. They just learned it intuitively, but since I had a different system interface, I still didn't know how they did that. Again, I would need to ask Valda about that. Regardless, they could choose it somehow without having system controls.

  That's not the point. The point is that a single fireball spell is at least four times more powerful than one of my bullets, and they didn't even have to reload. They could just fire them all once per second or less.

  No one did that because they needed to conserve mana, because mana potions were expensive, but they could if they wanted to. All this is to say, I'm really weak and spell damage would do just a little bit towards getting me stronger. And that's why I chose the Arcane Infusion ability.

  Next was my new skill, called Excavate.

  Excavate: The ability to move earth and stone at the cost of mana. The more earth you move, the more mana it costs. Stone costs more to move than earth.

  Great. Exactly what I needed 8 hours ago. Well, I shouldn't be ungrateful. At least I had it now.

  As I was finishing up looking at my level upgrades, the sound of clapping could be heard through the cave as the Culling Party walked out of the tunnel into the large room.

  "Very good!" Cul said. "You two are far more resourceful than I gave you credit for. Thank you for defeating the boss for us. Now we can kill you and claim the reward."

  "You really think you can kill us?" I said. "After we killed the boss? Come on, Cul. You need to bluff better than that. You think we're just going to walk away? I don't think so."

  "What?" he said. "Why are you so confident? What do you have up your sleeves?"

  "Several things," I said. "Which you won't have to find out about if you turn yourselves in for killing countless adventurers in this dungeon."

  "Oh so you know about that do you?" he said. "Well, why don't I just call your bluff then?"

  "Are you sure you want to do this?" I asked.

  "Yes, I'm sure!" he said. "Willow, kill them!"

  Willow raised her staff, and it started to glow. That was enough for me to consider her a combatant. I raised my flintlocks and shot her two times in the chest. She fell to the ground. I reloaded and aimed my pistols at the Culling Party.

  "What did you do?" Riley, the ranger asked. Riley, kneeled down and pulled out a health potion. She put it to Willow's lips. "Willow, drink."

  Willow coughed up blood, put her lips to the potion vial, and then her head sagged and went limp.

  "I killed her is what I did," I said. "I'm sorry, but all I knew was she was trying to kill us. Not to give away our secrets, but we don't have a shield spell. It was either her or us. So don't go blaming me for her death. That's on you."

  "Ahhh!!!" Riley screamed. "You bastard!"

  She pulled out a bow and began firing arrows at me. I was about to get hit, but Valda jumped in front of me and deflected the arrow with her mace. Valda Rushed Riley as she was nocking another arrow. Valda got to her first.

  She smashed her mace into Riley's chin, sending her sailing backwards. She landed on the ground on her back. Riley was still conscious somehow. She nocked her arrow and fired it at Valda, who used Evasive Maneuvers to dodge out of the way. Then Valda performed an Impact Strike on Riley, smashing her head.

  "Agh!!!" Bartok said. He burst into a barbarian rage and rushed at Valda, pulling out a massive axe.

  Valda barely blocked in time, her Evasive Maneuvers still on cooldown. I ran up to them and shot Bartok twice, but it didn't do anything. He was in a rage. When in a rage, barbarians received only half the damage of attacks against them.

  Then Roger stabbed Valda from behind with a sneak attack. Having reloaded, I blasted him twice, one in the leg and one in the head. He fell over dead from the critical hit. Bartok might have survived that, but not Roger. He was squishy.

  Bartok and Valda were in a contest of strength, and Valda was losing. I ran over to Valda while she was pushing with her mace against Bartok's axe and poured a stamina potion into her mouth. She drank it and used Rush to get away from Bartok. He gave chase, but she was faster than him.

  As they did that, Cul came at me. Shit. I was screwed. I may seem strong because of my guns, but I was as squishy as a level 1 fighter. Squishier even. I tried to block his sword with my guns, but he chopped my right hand off.

  Looking at where my right hand had just been to see a bloody stump caused me to scream. And it wasn't a cool scream. It was an ugly, wimpy scream.