Sewer Skewers, page 25
Nacho let a smile play across his lips as he surveyed the area. He could see a trail leading down the debris to a hotel’s courtyard, a Residence Inn, if he wasn’t mistaken. It would likely still have a grill area, rooms to sleep in, and there might still be snacks in the lobby. Half the structure was buried in stone, and Nacho was curious to see what some of those rooms looked like. Were they completely invaded with stone, or was the rock simply layered onto the roof? “Let’s head down there and take stock of things.”
“Glad I Tiered up.” Reuben jangled his new bracelets. “I want to see what kind of damage I can do with my new magic items.”
Brie pulled her husband close, giving him a compliment as well as something to think about. “My sweet love… I’m okay with you looking like a homeless warrior at Tier zero. Even Tier one. But by the time you hit Tier two, you’re going to get a complete makeover. You can’t be trusted to dress yourself.”
“Oh, come on! I don’t think-” He started, only for her to cut off the complaint with a kiss.
She smiled and tapped his Helm of Helming. “Just think of marketing yourself properly, so that your wife doesn’t need to go looking off-brand to find what she wants.”
With a wink, Brie turned and sauntered off, leaving Reuben actively reconsidering his current attire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Dinner Party portion of the Brunch Force raid group led the others down a trail of rubble that connected the entrance to the DKCU to the nearest street, which was as specific as they could be. Currently, it seemed that any street signs which had once stood in the area had now been intentionally ripped out. Luckily, the trio had spent so much time downtown that they had a good understanding of where they were at, even with the Patron’s alterations.
Walking through the underground city was surreal. Even though shadows were darting through alleys, howls came from the distance, and blood-curdling screams erupted from the sluiceway, none of the monsters attacked them as they covered the distance to the hotel that was their target. As the ambient sounds reached a crescendo, Nacho made a startling realization.
He couldn’t wait to explore this place.
The cook was unconsciously sharpening his knives on each other in preparation for finding new and improved ingredients to make extravagant meals with. Swiping his arm across his mouth, Nacho cleared away the accumulated drool and hoped that no one had seen his instinctive reaction. It wasn’t long before they were standing in front of the Residence Inn’s glass doors, and as expected, the lobby was dark.
Reuben walked forward and waved his hands in front of the sliding glass door. “I never thought I’d see a Marriott that looked so dungeon-y. No electricity, no happy skeleton behind the desk to buzz me in. You’d think the Marriott corporation would throw us a bone here. I mean, it’s just the end of the world; are you really gonna let that impact the bottom line?”
While everyone stood around being nervous, not sure if they should make a choice, Brie was more decisive. She strode forward and smashed in the glass of the door with Mr. Lacrosse Stick, then crunched across the glass with her weapon raised and ready to strike at any sharp teeth that appeared from the shadowy corners of the lobby. “No ‘welcome to the dungeon’ messages… hello? Anyone there? …Any thing there?”
A few of the Firefly Potstickers buzzed in with her at Nacho’s direction, showing proof positive that nothing was in the area to answer Brie’s call. Nacho was certain that he wasn't the only one that thought that was a good thing.
Light filtered in from the central courtyard through the elegant glass windows, granting the enhanced humans all of the visibility they needed in order to secure the area. Most of the Brunch Force was still cautious as they shuffled inside, though Reuben casually strolled into the little pantry area and tossed Nacho a granola bar. “Here. A treat from the before-fore times.”
Looking at the yellow and green packaging seemed surreal, but that didn’t bother the cook. “Reuben, we can’t even pretend that people aren’t going to be doing that in a few years for real, so let’s try and delay destroying the vocabulary of the human race until it decays on its own.”
Eduardo bashed open the cash register with the Splatter Mallet, and Scrubz pulled out the money and flung it into the room. “Paper money seems so pathetic now. It’s about as useful as the gold we find in dungeons. Only one currency that matters anymore, and that’s credits. I knew that having a centralized currency was going to be a sign that the world was getting destroyed.”
“See how they just started smashing things that are literally irreplaceable? That's exactly what I was just talking about. It's not going to take long at all before all traces of humanity are as gone as we originally thought they were.” Nacho shoved open a door and walked into the courtyard as Reuben chuckled and egged on the vandalism.
The cook took into account the grill, the counter space, and the outdoor living room furniture, and instantly knew this was going to be the base that they ran strike teams from. Even if the propane wouldn’t ignite for game logic reasons, he’d buy some cheap charcoal from the Store. “Wait, the cheap stuff will ruin the grill… oh well. Better than ruining my mobile kitchen. Best get to it.”
Nacho crossed to the grill and unpacked his gear. Once he had organized his workstation to his satisfaction, he purchased and lit the charcoal, then expanded his Pauldrons of Frying to their full fifteen inches, all while making his dinner plan in his head. It was important to have a standard operating procedure in place, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to quickly adapt to new and changing circumstances down here.
Once his pans were hot, he’d pull out the Kill Basa sausage and start on the gravy. In the meantime, he set up various stations in his kitchen but slowly ground to a halt and sat down on the mass-produced furniture before long. Nacho couldn’t focus on anything long enough to really get it finished.
His mind was racing; flipping between pondering his credit situation and what he needed to upgrade, and he was dying to take a long break to peruse his Stat Sheet and make the choices he had been putting off. He wanted to bring the entire Brunch Force up to Tier one so they could start looking for the Dragon Spear as a useful fighting force. “Now I’m thinking we should put guards at the entrance to warn us when some other humans or—celestials forbid—CrossHumans show up.”
He didn’t want another guild waltzing through the Barbecue Tunnels now that his Brunch Force had cleared it. To be fair, the monsters would eventually re-spawn, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the actual time it would take. In fact, he was almost certain that the more that he wanted the respawn to occur, the slower the Patrons would be to act on it.
Reuben walked over and surveyed Nacho’s kitchen chaos, noting the near-constipated expression on his friend's face. “You okay over there?”
“No. Yes.” Nacho grinned sheepishly, lifting his face from his clenched fists to meet Reuben’s eyes. “Trying to figure out what to start first. I’ve accidentally kind of started everything at once.”
“Pobody’s Nerfect.” Reuben set his gear down and dropped into a wicker chair at the table. “You know I’m better at all the metagaming, so why don’t you let me help you with whatever’s going on. Is it your build order that’s got you down? While you cook, we can do a little shopping. How about it?”
“I could go for a little retail therapy,” Brie enthused as she sat down next to her husband. “Also, I hate to say that I agree with Scrubz… but we all lost a thousand credits to the guild tax, and I think we should refund those credits back to the Brunch Force. We need all the help we can get down here. If we can use the credits, we can earn more, faster.”
“My sweet investor has finally seen the light of capitalism!” Reuben crowed, reaching for a hug only to be shoved to the ground. “Oof! It’s okay, there’s no need to be shy about it!”
Nacho did a quick check and winced at the idea of releasing the massive windfall.
Chips Guild Stat Sheet
Total Guild Credits: 57,375
Total Number of Members: 827
Guild Leader: Eli “Nacho” Naches
He was pleasantly taken aback to find they had gained eleven more members since the last time he had checked, but the real surprise was the number of credits that were still accumulating. As much as it pained him to say it, he finally forced the admission out of his mouth. “You’re right, Brie.”
Nacho grabbed the thousand credit tax he’d gotten from the Barbeque Tunnel bonus and sent all of it back to the members of the Brunch Force. He had some definite ideas on how he wanted to use his credits, but he wanted to get Reuben’s and Brie’s opinions first.
It was clear—at least to him—that the next step was raising the original Dinner Party to higher levels as fast as they could safely afford to do so. Even with how expensive it was getting to Tier one, the costs would only skyrocket from there. To get from level ten to eleven would be eleven thousand credits. Level twelve was seventeen thousand and eight hundred, and so on.
The insane cost was just another reason why people didn’t want to spend credits on things like food once they got to higher levels. In his test run, it had been proven that it was better to just kill someone, take their credits, and then literally eat them… instead of wasting credits on food. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world, but there’s no reason to strap meat to your chest and go for a jog.”
“What… does that even mean?” Reuben gripped the table and leaned in, entranced by the beautiful phrase he had never heard before.
“It’s… you know.” Nacho hadn’t even realized that he had said the words out loud. “If you’re buying food from the store, all you are doing is advertising the fact that you are carrying around a huge amount of credits in order to feed yourself. Someone can just attack you and loot everything you haven't spent. Yeah.”
“I think you may need a nap,” Brie announced firmly, taking a moment to inspect all of the half-set-up kitchen supplies.
“Oh! You know what I forgot to do? Test out these bad boys.” Reuben made a fist, and his casing clip bracelets glowed in the acid green light of the streetlights. He popped to his feet and jogged over to a wall. As he made a fist, his knuckles glowed silver under his skin, and he sent a straight punch through the wall. The rock crumbled, revealing an unhurt hand. “Not only will it let me turn something into ground meat, but it also protects my ‘casing’ perfectly. So long as I’m actively attacking, I can hit anything and it won’t hurt me. My hands are basically indestructible; again, only while attacking. No punching into lava, as that would burn me on the way out, I think. Also, I’m doing a base of fifteen points of damage with each punch.”
“That’s pretty excellent.” Nacho’s forehead furrowed as he attempted to do the math on what that attack would look like when it was fully buffed up. He gave up a moment later, silently agreeing with Brie that he might need to call it a day.
“Pretty abyssal-awesome if you ask me. Never thought I could give up my gauntlets, but this is a straight upgrade.” Reuben’s eyes went blank as he started reading something that only he could see. “Looks like I do fifty percent more damage against food-based monsters? You think that includes the Goat Cheeses? Even if it doesn’t, I’m coming for the Costco shelves…!”
“Hot dog!” Nacho loudly called, making both his friends jump. He couldn't hold in his chuckle even for a moment after he saw the shocked expressions on their faces.
“Have you been drinking? Seriously, you are ridiculous.” Brie shook her head, clearly embarrassed.
“Drinking isn't a thing for me. Like I would intentionally let my guard down and make it easy for the monsters to eat me? Hey, you know what I haven’t seen yet?” Nacho motioned for Reuben to sit back down. “Your updated Stat Sheet. You up for sharing?”
“Happy to do that. You want the whole thing? Here.” The big guy brushed some rubble off his shoulder as he walked back, and soon Nacho was witnessing the grandeur that was Reuben Colby and his upgraded class.
Reuben Colby
Class: Merchant of Soothing
Level: 10
Experience Points: 14,400 to Level 11!
Current Credits: 2100 (24,515 total Dinner Party pool)
Build Type: Balanced, Instant
Body:
Fitness: 18
Metabolic Efficiency: 18
Mind:
Mental Energy: 17
Circuit: 17
Satiation:
Hunger: 100
Thirst: 100
Total Health Points: 46
Bonus Physical Damage: 9%
Health Regen: 18% Health Regen/minute
Total Mana Pool: 35.5
Bonus Spell Damage: 8.5%
Mana Pool Regen: 17% Mana Regen/minute
Skill Slots (3/4)
Healing Hugs (Active) Level 8: 40 Health Points Restored Upon Hugging
Mana Cost = 10%
Hydration Cost = 5%
Metabolic Cost = 0%
Positive Vibes (Active) Level 9: Weapon blessing: (applies to entire party, lasts 5 minutes) Adds 18% physical damage
Mana Cost = 5%
Hydration Cost = 10%
Metabolic Cost = 0%
Marketing (Active) Level 9: Able to lure creatures to a location. Impacts up to Level:10
Mana Cost = 5%
Hydration Cost = 5%
Metabolic Cost = 5%
Open slot
Nacho made approving noises at Reuben’s new class name. “All hail the Merchant of Soothing! Please don't start charging to heal us in combat.”
“Never even crossed my mind.” Reuben shot him a wink. “Until now. Anywho, during my Tier-up, I got a System message about the Ring of Cheese. The Patrons said that I’m too stinky to stop. One of them—they didn’t say who—liked the smell of me being hurt.”
Brie shook her head. “That sounds so wrong.”
“And so!” Reuben brandished the ring. “It’s now a Tier one Ring of Cheese! I’m a champion of cheese! You could say I rank number one by being rank… like number two.”
“That is not something to brag about,” Brie groaned helplessly, knowing that it had been her own choice to say ‘I do’.
“That’s… your helm and your ring got a free upgrade? I thought it was getting counted as a Tierless accessory or something. I don’t know what to say.” Nacho was way more impressed than he felt was needed. “I guess the Patrons sometimes throw us a little gift, but you can’t count on that going forward.”
“Heathen!” Reuben wasn’t done grandstanding. “The good news doesn’t stop there. I still have over two thousand credits, and I’m going to upgrade my Healing Hug because at Tier one… I can heal at range! That’s right. I can hug from a distance. I will soon have inescapable hugs that follow wherever I can see you.”
“Terrible way to explain that, but okay…” Nacho had been considering their Skills, recognizing a major oversight. “Upgrading Skills isn’t that expensive, which gives us a break. It takes two thousand and nine hundred credits to take a Skill from level nine to level nineteen.”
“Not expensive, he says.” Reuben agreed with a scoff. “From the top of Tier zero, my Skill shoots up like a superhero! Boom; now that my healing is at the peak of Tier one, combat in the future is sure to be fun!”
“From puns to rhyming?” Brie shook her head. “Tiers. Levels. Upgrades. I really am living in one of your video games. Why couldn't we have gone to my fantasy world instead of yours?”
“Too much pointless exercise and team sports there,” Reuben obliquely stated, nodding along as if someone else had made the point.
Nacho could appreciate her frustration. Their lives were on the line, and the rules of physics had turned out to be more like guidelines. “Let’s try to get serious for a minute. We’ve going to have company down here, and that means I want us all at our most powerful. I’m going to dish out credits to people who need them, and I’m also going to use credits to boost my Cooking Magic to level nineteen. If the trend holds, it’ll let me use that from a distance as well. I’ll be able to boil pasta from across the room. Ya~ay. Not sure how that’s really going to help me, but it’s worth the gamble.”
“You never know when you’ll need to throw that Cooking Magic around!” Reuben set his Helm of Helming on his head with a grin. “What about your Ingredient Processing?”
“I’m already able to process level nineteen monsters. I’m going to wait until we can survive meeting something Tier two before I start to pretend like we could beat and cook one of ‘em.”
“Good plan,” Reuben admitted, though he brightened up immediately. “We can spend that cash on me instead! You know, juice up my Positive Vibes. I’ll be able to do it at… I don’t know, longer range? Whatever it does, we’ll have people dishing out more damage. All the people will love me forever and will unanimously vote me in as Guild Leader after you sneeze in their food.”
“You forget two things!” Nacho raised a finger and spoke like a villain in a cartoon. “First of all, they’ll love me more! My Cooking Magic feeds their bodies and their power! Myahaha! Second, I already tried to make you Guild Leader, and you said no.”
“I’m still happy about that.” Reuben shivered at the thought of needing to be serious and responsible.
Scrubz chose that moment to cross into the courtyard and sink down into a couch, killing further silly conversation by his mere presence. He’d bought a chain to carry around the gauntlets, and he had them thrown over a shoulder like they were boxing gloves. “I heard all that. Not sure anyone will love either of you. Eduardo and I are trying to like you, but Nacho… if you really are passing out credits, that’d go a long way to winning me over.”
“Depends. What’s your Stat Sheet look like? What are your Skills? Your class, for abyss’ sake?” Nacho felt that his demands were not unreasonable. If he was going to dole out money that was rightfully taxed by the Guild, he needed more information then he felt the other man had been willing to share.
