We watched as the hellspawn charged at a group of hyena-faced creatures and trampled them to death.
“Hellspawn are some of the best, most powerful pets in the game,” Mordecai said. He looked down at Mongo. “No offense. But if she can keep that thing alive, she’s gotten it early enough that it’ll level pretty high. It’ll eventually grow wings and will be the size of a damn dragon.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “Is it too late to get another one of those biscuits and give it to Donut?”
Mordecai laughed.
I watched in awe as the show aired a quick, fifteen-second montage of Mongo defending Donut. The dinosaur had killed dozens of the street urchin things.
“Good boy. Look, Mongo! You’re on TV!” Donut said. The pet jumped up and down. He no longer squeaked. Now he grunted. The amount of enthusiasm he showed was the same, but it no longer had the same effect as before. Having a kitten-sized dinosaur bouncing around you with enthusiasm was cute. Having a mastiff-sized one do the same was not.
I was shown, but only for a few seconds. The show didn’t really explain how I’d escaped.
“Don’t worry about that, lad,” Mordecai said. “Based on your numbers, everyone knows. The actual scene is the property of the Vengeance of the Daughter production, which is why they didn’t show much.”
“I was asleep the whole time.” Donut pouted. “They barely showed me at all.”
“Sometimes even the side characters need their own episodes,” I said. That seemed to mollify her.
While Donut still had many more followers than me, my view count had actually caught up with hers. I wasn’t sure which one of us hit one quadrillion first. I didn’t know if she’d noticed this or not. I hoped not.
The announcement wasn’t too exciting. Just more of the same old stuff. There seemed to be as many bugs on this floor as they had when the dungeon first opened.
“Just wait until you get to the themed floors,” Mordecai said. “It’s the equivalent of opening an entire theme park filled with rides and roller coasters without ever having tested a single one of them. Last Borant season, the entire fourth floor was inside of some unseen, living creature, so the crawlers were moving around intestines and whatnot. The floor was open for 20 days, and the creature they created for the level ended up with a fast-moving bacterial infection that spread over the entire dungeon. The walls started caving in on themselves and filling with gore, all unintentional. That didn’t play so well with the viewers, so they probably won’t do that again.”
The woman orc who’d been drinking alone approached our table. She was an older woman, and she swayed on her feet. She instantly reminded me of an orcish, well-muscled version of Agatha. Her medieval-style shirt was stained red with blood, making her look like a butcher who’d forgotten to wear her apron to work. She wasn’t the same skin tone as the Maestro. The tooltip simply called her a Level-5 Orc NPC. Her name was GumGum.
“I see you’re adventurers,” GumGum said, leaning in. “I really need your help.”
“No. Fuck off,” Mordecai said. “Not tonight.”
“You don’t have to be rude about it,” the woman said and she turned away. She staggered back toward her table.
“What was that?” I asked.
“A quest,” he said. “Pubs like these will always be filled with people giving garbage quests. And we’re not doing any more quests on this floor. If you look on your minimap, there’s probably a little star on top of her icon.”
“There’s not,” I said. “It’s just a white dot.”
“Well, not all quests show up on the map. Now we’re all going to go to bed.”
“Fine,” I said, watching the woman settle back into her chair. The orc hung her head low, put her face into her hands, and she began to weep.
At this point, one might expect that I waited for Mordecai to go to bed, and then I sneaked out of my room, went to GumGum the orc, and asked her what she needed help with.
One would be right. Almost.
The moment we went to our room, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It was stupid, especially after Mordecai had explicitly told us to just leave it, but I couldn’t get the sight of the woman crying out of my mind. I told Donut I needed to use the restroom, and I went back out there.
Mordecai sat at the bar, drinking and chatting with Fitz the barkeep. GumGum was gone.
“She left already,” Mordecai said after I returned from the restroom, having pretended I used it. “Look, kid. Let me give you some advice. I want this to sink deep into your thick skull. You can’t save them all. The people running this, they know who you are. They will always be baiting you. Worry about yourself first. If you truly want to help others, your best bet is to get as strong and as deep as possible.”
I didn’t respond. I returned to the room. Donut peered down at me from the top of the cat tree.
“Did you get the quest?” she asked.
“Holy shit, am I that predictable?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” she said. And we went to sleep.
The first thing we did the next day was—finally—start to check out some of the town’s shops.
“Here’s today’s plan,” Mordecai said. “You shop. Then you spend the day grinding. You find a neighborhood boss. You kill it. You get back here before dark. Afterward, if you’re not too tired, then we go to the club. You do not go to the Desperado Club without an escort.”
“Yay!” Donut said. “Today is going to be the best day ever. Shopping and clubbing! And then tomorrow we go on another interview.”
“One thing at a time, Donut,” I said as we opened the door of the shop. This place was called Lucky’s General Goods. A bell tinkled as I pushed the door. Dust swirled, and I sneezed.
Entering Shop.
Mostly-empty shelves spread along the walls. Behind the counter stood a skyfowl. The level-30’s name was Edge Dancer. He clicked his beak at us, blinking rapidly.
“Okay,” Mordecai said. “This is a general store and it’s the most common kind of shop you’ll find. The more specialized type shops, like the armorers and potion shops are usually only found in settlements. You will find random shops such as this one scattered around the dungeons from now on. Carl, your Charisma is pretty good, and you will usually get a good price. But you are no Donut. Always leave the negotiations to her. She will get you the best prices, and she will sell your items for the most.”
“That is because I am a master shopper,” Donut said, strolling into the shop. She looked about with disdain. “This place doesn’t have the greatest selection, does it?”
“You’ve never been in a store before in your life,” I said. I picked up a familiar item off the shelf. It was a coconut. A tooltip popped up, though it was shaped differently than usual.
Coconut.
21 Gold.
This is food. I think. Humans do something with it. Dunno, really.
“This is important,” Mordecai said. “As you can see, the descriptions of the items in the shops are not provided by the system AI. The shopkeepers are responsible for labeling everything. The rules state that they can’t lie, so they can’t sell you something labeled as a health potion when it’s really poison. But they are allowed to exaggerate. And they will. Luckily for you, Donut, you will usually be able to get an accurate description out of the shopkeeper as long as your Charisma is higher than their level. You’ll want to practice your haggling and negotiation skills each time you enter a shop. Once you train it enough, most items will give you a warning if the description is too overstated.”