[ 25 ]
AFTER SNAGGING THE NEIGHBORHOOD MAP, I SPENT SOME TIME GRABBING ALL the weight equipment I could carry. There was a lot of it. Free weights and dumbbells littered the room. I took them all. I grabbed multiple weight benches, which weighed nothing once I removed the bars. I broke down a door I hadn’t noticed earlier, and within were several mats and heavy medicine balls and various pieces of broken gym equipment along with some wrenches and other tools. All into the inventory, including the broken door. I then took everything off the office counter on the receptionist’s desk, including a laptop computer with a dead battery, and a cabinet filled with paper files.
“Why are you even bothering?” Donut asked, having fully recovered. She frantically attempted to clean the blood off of herself. She was caked. She needed a shower and a brushing. The brushing part was going to be a problem.
“If we can lift it, then we take it,” I said. “It only takes a second. The system is really good about categorizing it all. For some things, like that cabinet, it’s faster to pick the whole thing up and add everything into the inventory than it is to search it. For example,” I held out my hand, and a half- full bottle of Johnny Walker Black appeared. “This was hidden in that cabinet somewhere. The inventory system lets me keep it all together, and it lets me take things out of it, too. It’s great once you figure out how to work it. We don’t know what will be useful and when, so if it’s not bolted to the ground, it’s going into the bag.”
Our next stop was a nearby training guild. Thanks to the boss being a
higher level than expected, we both hit level nine. The wide expanse of experience needed to hit level ten spread before us. We also both had piles of loot boxes to open.
“Three stars I see,” Mordecai said as we entered the training guild. He paused, his eyes going glossy for a moment. “You took out a level nine boss on your own? Most impressive!”
“Yeah, it was a dumb idea,” I said. “Not knowing what we’re going to face really sucks. It’s hard to prepare for fights when you’re going in blind.” I sat heavily in the chair while Donut leaped for the fireplace and paused her manic cleaning to open her boxes.
The rat creature nodded. “Let me examine the fight notes, and I can tell you what you can improve upon.”
He grunted after a moment. “Okay, a couple things are clear. First off, brilliant move killing the goblin boss. Those guys are tough, but they aren’t as hard as that thing you just fought. That’s a new one to me.” He shook his head. “The Juicer.”
“I think it was somebody from our world mixed up with one of those troglodytes,” I said. “He wasn’t as lucid as the Hoarder lady had been.
They’d done something to him to make him say all that dumb shit. The bosses are caricatures, exaggerated stereotypes. It’s like they’re being controlled by an AI, but their consciousness is still rattling around in there, too. It’s really bizarre.”
Mordecai nodded. “It’s what they do. Right now across the universe, every eye is focused on earth. Programs about your culture are reaching all the corners of the galaxy. The bosses are a part of that. It’s like this every season. Anyway, let’s look at your performance. When you hit it with that heavy weight, you did the same amount of damage as you would’ve with your fist. You need to understand how powerful your bare knuckle skill has become. It’s just as good right now as any unenchanted weapon you may find. I understand it’s not convenient sometimes, but I recommend sticking with the bare hand attack. Also, you wasted those Confusing Fog scrolls.
Next time, have the party member with the highest intelligence read any scrolls if you can. Your intelligence of three made it so the fog only lasted fifteen seconds. Princess Donut’s intelligence level would’ve resulted in the fog lasting for 120 seconds per scroll.”
“Damn,” I said. “Also, is that why she can’t take potions so often?
Because her constitution is low?”
“Yes,” Mordecai said. “That shred attack of hers is very powerful, but it’s useless until she gains more armor and more health. You’re lucky she hadn’t broken her neck. Picking a class or a race with a high base constitution will help, but not much. She’ll need to load up on items that enhance it, and those tend to be less common.”
I looked at Donut, who was hissing with rage at the piles of torches that kept appearing in front of her. She’d received yet another spell book in the Bronze Boss Box, but she hadn’t read it yet. Most everything else appeared to be the same old crap with a couple exceptions. She got a bracelet from a Silver Adventurer box she’d received for finally dealing melee damage. The bracelet added +2 to her dexterity stat, bringing it to 12. She equipped it, and it wrapped snuggly around her front leg.
She also received a dozen Heal scrolls from a Silver Survivor’s Box. That one was rewarded to her because she’d ended a boss battle with less than 5% of her health. The scrolls were good to have because there was no countdown between reading each one, and even better yet, we could use the scrolls on each other.
She looked up at us. “I am already one of god’s most perfect creatures, so I won’t be changing race when the opportunity arises. I was born a cat, and I will die a cat. In fact, I’m going to have to insist that Carl choose a cat race as well.”
“I am not going to change into a cat,” I said. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about it, and I decided I’m going to stick with human.”
Donut did her approximation of a shrug and glowed as she read the magical tome.
“Did you at least read the description first?” I asked. “What was it?”
Mordecai nodded. “That’s a good one. Puddle Jumper.”
“What does it do?” I asked.
“She can teleport herself and up to three others to somewhere else that is within her line of sight. It will be especially useful if you come across rivers of lava or other impassable locations. Higher levels of the spell allow her to go further. If she manages to hit level 15 with the spell, it works almost as well as Teleport, one of the most powerful, most important spells to have in this dungeon. It costs 20 mana to cast and has a ten second delay and a five hour cooldown. It’s not good as a combat spell with that long of a delay, but it’s still great to have.”
“What we really need is the ability to heal each other better,” I said.
“Yes. Yes, you do,” Mordecai said. “There are a lot of methods out there.
Those twelve Heal scrolls are good, and I suspect you’re about to get a few more. But for now, I would avoid letting Donut use her melee attacks unless it’s absolutely necessary. Her strength stat is phenomenal for this floor. But it’ll start to catch up to her later. She was at strength 18 during that fight. By way of comparison, the Juicer had a strength of 25. She’s in the wrong body to properly utilize that stat for hand-to-hand combat. Plus her health is simply too low. For now.” He nodded at the cat, who had resumed her hopeless self- grooming. “And you, little one. Your Dodge skill is level four. Keep working on it. Once it hits five, it’ll be much easier for you.”
“Look,” I said, “the real reason we’re here is because we’ve only found one set of stairs down, but there’s a problem.”
Mordecai’s eyes widened as I told him about the others and the borough boss.
“The solution is simple,” he said. “Skip the boss and keep searching for another set of stairs. They’re out there, and most aren’t guarded.”
“We drove for a day straight before we found this one,” I said. “I’m really worried this is our only chance. Do you know what type of monster that is?
Do you have any tips?”
“If I did know what it was, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you. I have a very specific, rigorous set of rules I must follow, especially when it comes to bosses. Come back here after the fight, and I’ll happily sit down with you and analyze the battle and tell you all the boss’s stats. But if I tell you about the boss ahead of time, it’s considered cheating. You don’t want to be caught cheating. I can tell you that it’s madness to face a borough boss with only six crawlers.”
I sighed. All of this talk about future levels and choosing a race and class was a waste of time. None of that was going to matter if we didn’t manage to
make it past the first damn floor.
“Is there anything you can tell me?”
Mordecai thought for a moment. “Tell me, what does that Juicer boss have in common with that bad llama mob you fought earlier?”
I shrugged. “They’re both drug addicts?”
“No, not that. How did you kill the llama?”
“I throat punched him, and it made his head melt off.”
Mordecai nodded. “And the Juicer? What attack, do you suppose, took him down?”
“It was a combination of several things, but probably when Donut bit his neck and tapped directly into his blood stream.” I laughed as Donut glowered at me. She still looked as if she’d tried to reenact that final scene from Carrie.
“That’s exactly right,” Mordecai said. “Most of these creatures have a weakness. The throat for the llamas, the high-pressure vein for the boss.
Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not. The Hoarder, for example. I can now tell you her weakness was the bugs coming out of her mouth. If you’d killed one before it had fully emerged, the next cockroach in line wouldn’t be able to get out. It would’ve choked and killed her.”
“I never really thought of it that way,” I said.
“Look for a vulnerability, and once you find it, exploit it. You haven’t yet walked into a boss battle completely blind like you say. There have been clues every time. There will always be clues. Look for them.”
There will always be clues. What did we know about this borough boss?
I thought about that as I sat down and examined my new achievements and boxes.
In addition to the boss box, it was mostly the standard stuff. My bare knuckle and other fighting skills all ticked up to six, including my Smush skill. My Iron Punch rose to five. I received random achievements for riding the chopper for more than five hours. Another for having killed more than a 100 wandering monsters in the maze. I’d received a Bronze Survivor’s Box for having less than 10% health when the boss died. I received five more of the Heal scrolls for that one, leaving us with 17 of them. Most of the other prizes were the standard bronze or silver adventurers boxes. Potions, bandages, biscuits. I did receive a random cowboy hat, which I tossed into my inventory.
I also was awarded an interesting achievement: New achievement! Two Chicks at the Same Time.
You killed two mobs at once using only their own bodies against each other. On a brutality scale of Bambi to Martyrs, that is a solid Seven.
Reward: You’ve received a Gold Brawler Box!
I also received another Gold Looter box for storing more than 10 tons worth of crap in my storage.
The boss box contained a pile of ninja stars.
Enchanted Shuriken of Bloodlust (x100) Small, low-damage throwing stars. These bad boys aren’t anything special upon first glance. They’re the same black stars you wannabe
ninjas purchased at the knife shop and the swap meet when you were kids. The same throwing stars you’d drill into the drywall of your room until your mom caught you and took them away. And while these shuriken don’t have the ability to turn you into a ninja, nor do they have the capacity to make your mom stop drinking, they are enchanted with a Bloodlust enhancement. For every monster you damage with a shuriken from this set, the damage against that monster type rises by 8%.
I looked at Mordecai. “When it says the damage increases by 8%, does it mean 8% from the original amount, or 8% compounded? That’s a big deal after a while.”
“Huh, I don’t know,” Mordecai said. “Hang on.” His eyes went glossy as he presumably entered some sort of tutorial-guide-only help menu.
“Good news. It’s compounded,” he said after a minute. “So each hit will be 8% higher than the previous amount. The bad news is, the stars are very fragile.”
That sounded pretty awesome at first, but I suspected it wasn’t that great of an enchantment. It’d take a long time to power them up. I’d have to do a ton of throwing to make them worthwhile. I only had 100 of them. I’d have to collect them back each time. And if they broke a lot, then I might only get one chance to really use them.
The gold Looter Box contained yet another skill potion. It was once again a Determine Value skill tonic. I drank it, leveling the skill up to two. I couldn’t see a difference in the menu. I suspected I’d need three more before it became really useful.
The brawler box contained the best item of the lot. After my shirt and cloak, it was easily the greatest loot I’d won so far in the dungeon. It was exactly the type of weapon I’d been hoping for.
Enchanted War Gauntlet of the Exalted Grull. (Right-Handed)
+3 Strength (In Fist Mode Only)
+1 Dexterity
+ 2 Skill Levels to Iron Punch. + 1 Skill Level to Powerful Strike.
2% chance to Stun enemy upon a successful hit.
Item is a wrist bracer that transforms into a spiked war gauntlet made of orcish steel when the hand is shaped into a fist or wields a hilted weapon for more than two seconds at a time. This item on its own does not negate the bare knuckle skill bonus.
Warning: if you use this weapon to strike adherents of the war god Grull, you have a 1.5% chance to transfigure your target into the deity himself. Trust me on this. You don’t want to do that.
A bigger, redder, WARNING. Remove this item before you jerk off.
“Hey, Mordecai,” I said as I removed the chain and slipped the charcoal- colored bracer over my wrist. “How can I tell if someone worships Grull?”
He grunted. “Equine-class creatures worship him. So if it’s a horse or a centaur, or a tikbalang, then he might worship Grull. Creatures like that bad llama might also pray to him, but not until after the third floor. The biggest tell is that they smear blue makeup all over themselves and won’t stop talking about wenches and dying gloriously in battle.” Mordecai paused. He looked up nervously, as if not sure he should say this next part. “And, just so you know, Grull isn’t a real god. There are no real gods in this game.”
“Does that really make a difference?” I asked.
Mordecai was suddenly solemn, and I didn’t know why. He looked at me, intense. “You said you worry that some of these bosses and mobs are like you, here against their will.” He pointed downward, indicating the lower levels. “That’s not always going to be the case. Especially later on.
Remember that. There are no gods here. Just those who pay for the privilege.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to make sense of what he was desperately attempting to tell me.
“What the goodness is a tikbalang?” Donut asked, pausing in her cleaning. “It sounds like some sort of disease a sailor would get.”
“Do you know what a horse is?” Mordecai asked, looking up. He seemed
relieved for the question.
“Of course.”
“They’re like that. But meaner.”
I closed my fist. Two seconds ticked by, I felt a haptic buzz all up my arm, and with a whoosh, my hand turned into a spiked hunk of metal. I had to clench my fist really tight to make it work, which was good. The last thing I needed was this thing appearing when I didn’t want it to. I examined the malevolent-looking gauntlet. There was nothing ornate about it. It was black, angular with multiple, gleaming spikes. A tool, nothing more. It felt heavy on my hand, but not too heavy. No more breaking fingers when I punched something. I felt the extra strength ripple through me. I released my fist, and the gauntlet vanished in a puff of smoke that smelled of burned hair.
“Awesome,” I said.
