Her health suddenly rocketed back up on its own. She’d taken one of her own health potions. I sighed, relieved.
“The light, I think I see the light,” she croaked as I sat back and crossed my arms. Her eyes were clenched shut in mock pain. “This mortal coil is shed.”
“Oh, get up,” I said, looking about the room. “Help me loot all this crap.”
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.”