"Just like before," Claudia muttered under her nose as she kneeled on one knee, right at the doorstep of the boss room.

This was one of the particulars of Dungeons Online that proved to be useful in real life as well. As long as one didn't step into the open area where the boss resided, it wouldn't be able to notice it nor retaliate to any of its attacks.

This kind of limitation would prove useless once the monsters turned strong enough, given how no attack capable of hurting them could fit through the doorway. Once the bosses became a real threat, peashooters like Tom's rifles wouldn't even scratch them.

But that was still way further ahead.

Right now, Claudia rested the back of the rifle on her arm and leaned over the scope.

'She is going for a precise shot?' Tom thought, watching the girl's action. While it was by far the best choice, the domineering body of the monster would easily make anyone feel like a few bullets wouldn't be enough to down it.

"This is just a gamble," Claudia said when she caught Tom's glance. "Its skull is likely too thick for those pellets to penetrate it. I'm trying to aim for the eye," she explained her intentions before focusing on the scope once again.

'That makes sense,' Tom thought, moving his eyes on the monster ahead. It was massive... But that also meant its eyes were roughly four times as big as an eye of a human being.

Between the size of the target and the distance, Tom judged that the girl had a fair shot.

Click.

The silent sound of the magnetic boosters coming alive reached Tom's ears at the same time as a small twitch shook the massive goblin ahead.

For a moment, nothing happened. Still in her shooting position, Claudia breathed out. She then took the firing position once again... But didn't shoot.

"It's dead, isn't it?" she asked after a moment, raising her face from the rifle.

"Yeah," Tom replied with a small smile. "For how big it is, it's still a floor two monster," he said as he shook his shoulders. "I would be surprised if it took more than a single bullet to kill it," he added, putting Claudia's achievement of one-shot one-kill down.

Then, Tom rustled her hair. "Still, good job," he still praised the girl before taking his first step into the boss room.

Thump!

The sound of the goblin's massive body falling down made the entire room shake slightly.

'Only three stones, huh?' He thought, casting a glance towards the wall on the far end of the room. 'Well, it's not like we are going to pick them up,' he added in his thoughts before ultimately ignoring this meaningless lack of luck.

"Shall we get going?" Tom asked with a smile, casting a quick glance at the girl.

Even though he was more than satisfied already, his tongue licked his lips clean on its own when he saw just how lovely Claudia looked.

Still on her one knee, she kept her eyes on the boss' body. But for Tom, she could very well be posing for a lewd photoshoot with how sparsely Tom's shirt covered her body.

'Begone, lewd thoughts,' Tom scolded himself in his thoughts. He then shook his head to throw all the remaining dirty thoughts from his mind.

"Yeah," Claudia replied to Tom's suggestion after a long while. Her movements were strangely tense as if she carried a huge load on her back.

"Minding the kill?" Tom asked, recognizing the standard symptoms of what one would go through after their first scored kill. He had it happen to himself when he went out hunting with his father. He saw it happen to Cleo. Tom never have killed a human so far, but the stories of his uncles proved that it wasn't all that different.

"Ah, sorry." Claudia shrugged. Tom's remark clearly threw her off the loop, forcing her to suddenly resurface in reality. "I guess it's not that easy to take it off your head," she admitted, hanging her head low.

"It's kill or be killed," Tom said before placing his hand on Claudia's cheek and pushing her head to the side. "Look," he pointed at the body of the massive goblin that already started to melt through the stone floor of the dungeon. "It's not a human. It's not even an animal," he said, keeping the girl from moving her head away. "To a degree, I'm certain it's not even alive," he added before shaking his head. "Look, nothing that's alive would melt through stone, would it?" he asked before averting his eyes and letting go of Claudia's head.

"I'm sorry. Just give me a moment to think things through," Cleo asked, quickly moving her eyes away from the ever-growing pool of dark blood.

"Well, she got the rope, now it's up to her to climb it,' Tom thought as he turned around. But just as he made this move, he grabbed Claudia's hand and pulled her along.

"You can take as much time as you want to figure it out, but we need to keep moving," Tom said while cursing himself for doing so. As much as he wanted to just cuddle with Claudia and tell her that everything would be alright over and over again, there was a limit to his time.

A time limit that Tom couldn't just abandon for the sake of getting all cuddly with the girl.

'Everything is easy and dandy now, but I don't think we will be able to proceed as easily on the lower floors,' Tom worried, pulling the girl into a hug before stepping over the gate.

Once again, their vision wavered for a moment only to stabilize in the entry point of the third floor.

"I wonder what kind of monsters will we meet here," Tom said out loud before pushing forward. Mindful of Claudia's state of mind, he let go of her, allowing the girl to take the rear for a little longer.

"No!" Claudia screamed silently as she reached forward with her hand. Then, she froze as her eyes filled with hesitation. But while she turned still, she didn't retract her hand.

'I see.' Tom blinked before breathing out slowly. He then reached out and grabbed Claudia's extended hand. With no further words exchanged, they moved forward.

Soon, the residents of the floor turned out to be giant rats. Quite agile for the monsters of the third floor, they were still way too slow to match the speed of Tom's bullets.

Outside of a single slip of his finger, every pebble that he shot found its target. Even the single miss that he scored somehow managed to ricochet off the wall and land in another herd of those vile pests nearby.

Finding the correct path turned out to be the biggest hurdle on the floor. Even though Tom never had any problems recalling the correct path while exploring the dungeon through his avatar, it appeared like this kind of ability was strictly connected to those bio-robots, rather than steeming from Tom's ability.

The boss of the third room... Was just as disappointingly weak as were the monsters in the corridors of the floor. With how Claudia proved to hold the rodents in high hate, she was more than happy to riddle both the boss with half a magazine worth of pellets.

"Didn't I tell you to mind your ammunition?" Tom asked. His hands weakly fell to his sides, as if he couldn't believe the situation that just played out.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Claudia replied back in a voice that was as far from apologizing as one could imagine. It was obvious that the weight of the previous kill made her quite cranky.

"It's not about you being sorry or not," Tom shook his head, but rather than scolding the girl even further, he approached and hugged her.

At first, Claudia attempted to resist, but soon she mellowed down and hugged Tom herself.

"I understand why you did that, and I don't hold the grudge," Tom silently whispered into the girl's ear. "But I need you to understand that we cannot waste our shoots like that," he added before distancing himself at the length of an arm from the girl.

"We still need the ammunition to last for twelve to seventeen floors," Tom informed the girl, making the count in his mind. "That gives us roughly fifty shoots per floor if we don't waste too much of them," he added after coming up with the rough number.

"Fifty shoots? How is that a little?" Claudia still attempted to protest, although she didn't fly in rage this time. Contrary to how she was just a moment earlier, she was now looking for the answer to her questions, not something to just whine about.

"Count all the shots we will need to spare for the small fries. Count all the shots that we will need to the last few bosses," Tom said before shaking his head. "I took as much as I could carry, but it still won't be enough. And the sooner we ran out of the ammunition," he said before taking a short break. Tom raised his eyes at the girl before averting them and looking down. "The sooner we are out, the sooner we will have no other choice but to use the manual weapons," he said, unable to look the girl in the eyes.

For now, this entire dungeon trip was just that, a trip. With the power of rifles, they could overcome any and all danger that came their way.

But that wouldn't be the truth for the lower floors. Once the power of their rifle diminishes when compared to the relative power of the monsters, this fun trip would turn into a hellish adventure.