"Ahh!! Fuck!" Winston yelled in frustration.
He might as well be frustrated, because he blew his only chance to win an advantage over his enemies. He tossed a brand new, perfectly usable grenade towards his enemies, because he forgot to pull the pin on it! Now, he was on the ground, hoping to avoid the line of fire that was coming at him from two directions.
Luckily, his body was flat, so when he laid on the ground, he became very difficult to hit. Most of his enemies were at least half-an-meter away from him, and they'd have to be really good marksmen in order to hit him. He was mostly worried about the Captain of the guards, and that shotgun that he kept blasting. A shotgun shell was a lot more likely to hit him, no matter how hard he tried to avoid getting shot by it!
"They won't see the grenade… they won't." He spoke to himself.
Winston focused on the grenade, despite all the gunfire that was going on around him, because he was smart enough to understand that the only thing more dangerous than an enemy with a gun, was an enemy with a hand grenade! He didn't want to get blown up, so he waited for a couple more seconds to confirm that no one was going to toss the grenade back at him, and then, he got into a squatting position, and scoped the tunnel in front of him.
The first thing he noticed was that the enemies across the tunnel that connects the two floors, had stagnated in their advancement significantly. This could only mean that his enemies had seen the grenade, and were still waiting for it to explode!
This made sense, because for example, he could only see two or three guns blazing now and again, and the starfish who were shooting at him had terrible aim. They were amateurs, so he grabbed his 9mm pistol with both hands, and tried to pick off the guards who were hiding behind the lumps and edges of the tunnel.
Three shots later, he got one on the leg, but that wasn't enough to kill the guy. The guard only fell down, and was hollering in pain, right in the middle of the tunnel.
This wasn't a big problem. Winston then tried to kill the man for good, so he aimed at the target's back, and shot twice, but the first bullet flew above the target, while the second one merely caused a scratch. His aim kept getting worse, primarily because of all the stress that he was in!
"Bastard!" He grunted.
Winston was out of bullets, again, so he slapped the bottom of his pistol's magazine, to reload it with the use of mana. He only needed a couple of seconds to reload it, but unfortunately, the enemy that he had pinned to the ground was too angry to stay in one place!
The guard leaped towards that unused grenade, grabbed it, and did something that Winston couldn't do earlier on. He pulled the pin!
Winston reloaded his guns a blink of an eye after the guard tossed the grenade, so now he didn't have any time to shoot the guard down. Instead, he rolled away again, and distanced himself from the grenade by a few more inches!
[-8 mana points]
"Run-" He shouted, to warn his three remaining group members, but at this point it was too late.
The grenade went off, killing all three of them! He saw the pointy arms of his group members fly around as soon as the grenade exploded, and he felt absolutely terrible about it! Their deaths could've been prevented if he hadn't been clumsy enough to arm his enemies with that grenade.
However, some good came out of this disaster. The fiery explosion of the grenade was so strong, and its shockwave was so powerful, that a good portion of the ceiling across the first floor collapsed as a result!
The collapse sealed the tunnel that those ten or so guards were trying to barge out of, and furthermore, all the dust from the collapse gave him the perfect opportunity to escape. Although he felt horrible about leaving the first floor alone, considering that he came here with ten more people, he also understood that it was pointless to waste such a great opportunity to escape!
Winston stood up, and made his way towards the exit that was half-a-meter away, but he didn't want to leave without giving the captain, and the three remaining guards who had survived the gunfight, a decent parting gift. He got rid of his pistol, and summoned two baseball grenades on his pointy hands.
This time, he wasn't as clumsy. He pulled the pins out of the both of them using his tiny, pointy teeth, and tossed both grenades towards his enemies! He tossed a grenade in the sardine pile, and he tossed the other beyond the pile, where the guards were hiding.
[-80 system points]
Two seconds later, the grenades exploded, and pulled another portion of the ceiling down. It certainly tore through the remaining guards of the first floor. This place was a mess now, and paired with today's massacre, it was certain that this mine won't be functional for a while!
"The empire can roll this mine, and shove it up their ass!" He thought.
[+40 system points]
[Total points = 40]
With no one to stop him, he simply jogged his way out of the mines, and walked normally across the coral reef outside of the mine, as if nothing had happened. The walls of the mine were thick, so it was unlikely that anyone beyond the mine had heard all that gunfire. He had killed most of his eye-witnesses as well, and didn't care about the few surviving guards who saw him.
Starfish looked alike, for one thing, and the guards across that tunnel did not see him escape. Their view was blocked by the first collapse of the first floor's ceiling.
For all they knew, Winston would be mistaken as just another Worker Starfish, who 'embarrassingly' died in battle in the hands of the Captain of the guards. The Captain was in pieces now, so he will surely be decorated as a hero at some point during the week, one who fought up until his last breath to protect the mines, and his workers.
Winston didn't care. After all those years of forced labor, he was finally free, and he didn't have a bounty on his head either. Ideally he would've wished to escape with all of the workers who had followed him, and fought for him earlier on, but today's fight didn't pan out that way. The best he could do now was hide within the busiest parts of the reef, and pretend that he was a wealthy starfish, or something like that. He had to pretend that he didn't belong in one of the many mines across the province.