Laminak Rev-Up Consultant Elite – Level 6
The second tier of the Rev-Up empire, these Laminak consultants don’t need to speak to a manager. They are the managers. They run their business with a brutal efficiency. It is said if one of their underlings falls behind on their sales quotas, they punish them by requiring them to take a sip of their own product. Those that survive are repurposed as workers for the filling room, or worse, as still engineers, working directly under Krakaren herself.
These mobs do not have any special abilities other than immunity to most health-seeping attacks. Having survived years drinking their own product, it is said their essence is especially valuable, prized as a shield against disease.
In a dusty corner of the room stood what appeared to be a pair of child-sized stationary bikes, the kind gyms used for their spinning classes. There was some sort of goblin-style pulley system attached to it, but I couldn’t tell what was going on from here. A banner hung from the ceiling in the same corner, but it was only attached by one end, and it dangled vertically, forgotten. The banner read, “Rev-Up Smoothies! Invigorating!”
“Okay,” I said. “We need to kill everyone in the room, but if we want to keep those jugs and that moonshine, we can’t blow them up or burn them out. Plus it sounds like we can get something good from the corpses of the laminak things.”
“Goodness me,” Donut said. “How can we do that?”
We peeked again around the corner, keeping low.
“Do you think you can jump over there?” I asked, pointing at the far wall with the two fairies. “Using your spell, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. Definitely.”
I nodded. “Good. Here’s the plan.”
33
The two biggest problems with Donut’s Puddle Jumper spell was the cooldown and the mana cost. Once cast, she couldn’t do it again for five hours, which meant once she was in that room, she couldn’t teleport out.
Secondly, it cost 20 mana points. She only had 26 mana, and while she had plenty of mana restoration potions, she still had that awful two-minute cooldown between potions. Her points were restoring themselves more and more quickly, but it was still too slow to count on it for combat. She was going to be woefully underpowered, so if something went wrong—and something always went wrong—the only thing she had going for herself was her speed.
We decided I would stay behind during this part of the assault. With my extra fairy aggro, we weren’t certain what would happen if we both showed ourselves. The plan was simple, but it made me nervous, mostly because I didn’t have any control. This was my idea, but the cat was doing all the heavy lifting.
“If you get in trouble, I’ll toss a smoke bomb,” I said. “Just jump and run, okay?”
Donut nodded. She was putting on a brave face, but I could tell she was also anxious.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she said.
We moved back to the corner, peering around the edge. Donut cast her spell, which had a ten-second countdown. She flashed, her form starting to fade until she disappeared with a loud, wet pop.
She reappeared at the far end of the room, right between the two laminak fairies. She started rapidly speaking with them as all the clurichauns in the room jumped to their feet and turned to attack.
The soccer mom fairies were winged, therefore Donut had the ability to turn their dots white, removing their hostility. The problem was that only two of them were the airborne-type fairies. The other 40 or so were not. We were hoping Donut could talk to the two fairies, using her charm like she did with the goblins. The fairies would then tell their subordinates not to attack Donut.
From my side of the room, I could see that the two fairies had, thankfully, fallen under Donut’s charm. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but like the goblins, they’d been turned right away.
One of the fairies yelled at the clurichauns, speaking in Syndicate Standard. “Get back to work!” she called. “This is a client, not an enemy.” The dozens of monsters looked at each other and reluctantly returned to their stations, but all of them kept their eyes on Donut, all grumbling and looking uneasy.
Donut: CARL THEIR DOTS AREN’T TURNING WHITE ONLY THE TWO FAIRIES.
Carclass="underline" Okay, we planned for this. Don’t wait. Go for plan B.
Donut: IT IS CALLED PLAN PIED PIPER NOT PLAN B.
Carclass="underline" Goddamnit, Donut. Just be careful.
Despite her charisma being an outstanding 43, we still didn’t know how well this whole charm thing worked. It was clear she wasn’t some sort of walking mind control goddess, at least not with monsters that were programmed to dislike her. As with everything else, there was more to it, a hidden balance I couldn’t see. It worked great with white dots, but getting the dots white was still a mystery.
But that was okay. We’d prepared for this contingency. Instead of talking them into giving us all the moonshine, we had plan B. Plan Pied Piper.
Donut confidently stepped into the room, walking in my direction. She kept a wide distance from the toxic clurichauns, but she headed toward me. The two fairies followed. Sparkles trailed in the air as they bobbed up and down.
“It’s just horrible,” Donut was saying. “It’s like someone came in and slaughtered them all. I, for one, was devastated. At first I thought it was one of those filthy crawlers, but then I saw one of those dogs with the painted faces. The dingoes.”
“The kobolds?” one of the fairies said, sounding perplexed. “Why would the kobolds attack us? We get along fine with the kobolds.”
“Come, come see,” Donut said. She looked about the room. “All of you should come.”
“They need to stay and work,” the fairy said. The pudgy fairy swept her hair out of her eyes. Both of them wore an inverted bob haircut. The one doing the speaking wore what looked like a pantsuit made out of leaves. The other was in a dress made of the same materials.
Donut stopped and looked directly at the fairy. “No, they should come, too. All of them.”
“Everybody come on! We’re taking a break!” the fairy said.
“A… a what?” one of the clurichauns asked.
“Just come, the princess wants to show us something.”
I pulled away from the corner and rushed down to the next chamber. In the center were three dead clurichauns. We hadn’t firebombed this room, though one of them had been zombiefied. I moved into the next hall down, just outside of the room. Like with most of these rooms, the entranceway was a small room of its own, like a foyer with a raised, rounded ceiling. A pair of brindle grubs were in the hall further down, inching their way toward the corpses. Jesus, I thought. These things were everywhere. I rushed over and stomped them both down and returned to the foyer. I waited for Donut to Pied Piper the group into the chamber.
Carclass="underline" Donut, I am in place.
Donut: WE ARE COMING.
“Look at this, just look,” Donut was saying a minute later as she strode into the room. She gave the dead monsters a wide berth, walking into the chamber. “Come, everybody, gather around. Take a look.”
I could hear them crowding into the room as I leaned against the wall, hidden behind the entrance to the next hallway down. I pulled two boom jugs from my inventory and held one in each hand.