During the wait, stamina has fully recovered; breathing has steadied.

"AI."

"At your service."

"Can monsters in this world be intelligent?"

"Everything is possible in this world."

Dusk has fallen, with each new minute the light was becoming dimmer and dimmer. The monsters finally stopped the unrestrained entertainment and, together with their three-meter leader, turned towards the cliff where Ronnie was lying and plopped down on the ground, and began to watch the last red rays of the departing sun. They smiled and raised their little hands and waved as if seeing off a good friend on a long journey. Especially the plump henchmen drunk with fatigue fell on their backs and began to snore.

Ronnie did not hesitate. He took aim, looking into the eyepiece of the sight at a distance of three or four centimeters, removed the safety and took two deep breaths, exhaled, and held his breath. His index finger pulled the trigger. A bright fire and a bullet with a starting speed of 853 m/s burst out of the muzzle. At the same moment, a jet of smoke escaped from the four-chambered muzzle brake compensator, as if from the nose of an angry bull. Small pebbles on the sand rose half a centimeter and flew off to the side, along with the first sleeve. The butt bit into the shoulder with a slight delay. After about 1.4 seconds, everything will be resolved. He knew that the sound would travel two and a half times slower than the bullet, so the monsters would not react immediately. He kept his left eye open, the right one was aimed at the optical sight glass.

He saw how the bullet pierced through the boss's shoulder; 10 inches to the left of the place he was aiming initially, namely the head. The small henchmen suddenly stopped and after a couple of seconds rushed around in panic. Ronnie analyzed the error, adjusted the sight, and fired the next shot. This time, the bullet flew 30 inches to the right and punched through a henchmen’s head, another's torso, and a third one’s leg. The others noticed the loss of their brethren only when the sound of the second deafening shot reached them. The boss began to swing absurdly from side to side, like a penguin, and a magical dome of purple fluorescent color formed around him.

"What the hell is that? AI, where did the monsters get magic from?"

"From the name of the game."

"This is the first time I've seen this in a year of playing. However, I like your warped humor," he grinned.

Ronnie made corrections, fired a new shot. .50 BMG bullet crashed into the field, leaving a dent. Without wasting any precious seconds, he pulled the trigger again. The bullet landed in the same spot, a through-hole was formed, from which cracks appeared, similar to multiple paths of cloud-to-cloud lightning. The henchmen, who looked like mutated gnomes, covered their leader with their pot-bellied, clumsy bodies.

"Hmm, they act as if they are controlled by the big one."

The fifth bullet flew through the hole of the protective field and killed several henchmen on top of the house of cards they created. Ronnie cursed and raised his rifle and used the skill of the second dexterity modification "Furious Rhythm", which increases the speed of movement. He ran thirty meters to the east and hid in the shadow of a small baobab and placed the bipods on the dried flat surface of the ground and looked through the scope and saw how the protective field collapsed, and the boss took a small henchman in his hand and endowed him with purple magical energy so that now you could see every vein and artery on his body. In the next second, he threw the subordinate into the place where Ronnie was a minute ago. The henchman screamed like a madman, and when he touched the ground, he exploded, spreading sand, dust, pebbles, mixed with magical purple grains of sand, smoothly descending to the ground in the dark.

The creatures froze, they did not see whether the intruder was killed or not, and Ronnie, in turn, was in no hurry to make the next shot, he waited. A purple sphere rose from behind the boss and illuminated the mountain with the rays of a three-thousand-watt spotlight. Ronnie took his eyes off the eyepiece in time, he did not move. He understood that it was difficult to see a person 179 centimeters tall with the naked eye at such a distance, even on a clear sunny day. The boss roared something, and the henchmen mumbled in response. A small part of the monsters began to drag away the dead. Snakes crawled out of the ground and immediately disappeared, apparently with the help of some kind of camouflage magic. Things were getting worse.

Ronnie narrowed his eyes and pulled the trigger without looking at the sight. The sixth 12.7 x 99 mm caliber bullet flew out, and the seventh destroyed the artificially created sun. Another ten minutes and the mission will fail, because I won't see a thing, and in an hour the system will turn me off. A minute later, his vision was restored, and the glare disappeared. There are three cartridges left in the magazine. He used the third rank dexterity skill "Detection" and the sinuous bodies of snakes were highlighted in yellow in his eyes. They were crawling towards the mountainside. Ronnie exhaled, held his breath, and fired exactly three shots. None missed. He reloaded the clip in four seconds, pulled the tight bolt, placing the first cartridge in the chamber. He took aim and at the last moment saw the boss release a dark purple ray from his own palm, which shattered the stone peak behind his back in two. One piece, the size of a tennis ball, bounced off Ronnie's leg and broke his fibula. It hurt, but was not critical. His eyes lit up in red accompanied by a siren sound, a warning popped up: "The right fibula is fractured! Movement restricted."

"I felt it," he said and did not move from his place. "They haven't found me yet; they're shooting at random."

Some of the minions covered the boss's face, and the other part ran to the rocks. The AI's voice appeared in his head.

"I would advise you to retreat. In case of death, you…"

"Disable tips."

Ronnie guessed where the boss would be behind a living wall, then imagined his huge clumsy carcass of a beer miser and roughly determined where his head would be. The first bullet made a bloody mess of the henchman in the very center of the pyramid, their formation instantly crumbled, losing their balance. A purple-red stream of blood flowed from the boss's chest, he screamed and staggered back. His puppets hooted and released hundreds of magical purple spears into the dark sky. They fell in a deadly Starfall on the rock, plunging into the ground a meter or even closer from Ronnie's sniper position. The fact that their attack did not succeed is tantamount to a miracle. The foliage on the branches of the baobab caught fire.

As soon as Ronnie fired the second shot, the boss instantly noticed a small flash of fire on the mountain, turned his pelvis, grabbed his head with his hands, and opened his mouth and eyes to an unnatural size. The bullet went to the side.

"Something is clearly wrong."

"Please be more specific."

"When the boss used the protective dome, I hit the same spot three times, but when it comes to his head, the shots miss."