“Let’s go up the stairs. Find the saferoom,” I said.
At the top of the short flight of stairs was a small, circular room. Two additional stairwells led down, one to the yellow line and the other to the Nightmare Express. There were three shops up here. A saferoom. A “Mace and bashing weapons guild.” And a small, general store called “Limp Richard’s Sundries.” The proprietor of the general store, Limp Richard, was a type of creature I’d never seen before. A Mole Man. He was a short, squat man that looked, well, like an anthropomorphized mole, complete with glasses. He sat in the open doorway to his shop reading a book. He looked up at our approach.
Limp Richard – Mole Man. Level 36.
This is a Non-Combatant NPC.
Mole men and mole women actually just call themselves “Men” and “Women,” and quite frankly, it’s exhausting. These losers spend most of their days and nights reading. What a bunch of nerds.
“Welcome to station 83,” Limp Richard said. He put his book down. “I have supplies for the weary travelers.”
“We are weary. We’ll be by later after we sleep,” I said, moving to the inn, which didn’t have a sign.
“Suit yourself,” he said, settling back into his spot.
“Hey, have you seen any other crawlers yet?” Katia asked.
“You’re the first,” he said.
We entered the inn, and upon opening the door, we discovered the saferooms had reverted to their previous style from the first two floors. This was a red and white themed fast food restaurant called Nirula’s. Behind the counter stood a shaggy, but female, Bopca Protector named “Wendita.”
Mordecai appeared a moment later, having been transferred here from his quarters.
“Holy shit,” I said, laughing. The last I’d seen Mordecai, he’d been a stunningly-handsome Incubus creature. He was now about five feet tall, and he’d been transformed into a mud-colored, warty, slimy toad-looking thing, complete with hanging jowls and a throat pouch under his wide face that looked as if it could fill with air. I examined his new properties.
Mordecai – Grulke Infantry. Level 50.
Manager of Crawler Princess Donut
This is a Non-Combatant NPC.
The rare Grulke were a militaristic race of toad warriors. Able to leap great distances and inflict devastating attacks with their tongues, it was said an army of Grulke could stand against any foe. Unfortunately, political intrigue and infighting has turned these once-proud people into a race of mostly mercenaries and vagrants. They are hunted ruthlessly by the tunnel trolls, who like to capture and lick them. Not because they impart any sort of hallucinogenic effect. It’s just that tunnel trolls are weird-ass fuckers.
“A frog, huh?” I said.
Mordecai grunted. “Don’t ever call a real Grulke a frog if you meet one. They’re mean bastards. They’re toads.”
“I need to tell you what happened with that last quest.”
“Oh, I already know all about it. As a manager, I no longer get the daily updates or a newsletter, but I do receive notifications of court decisions adversely affecting my client. You guys got screwed, but at least you’re alive.”
I moved to the counter and examined the familiar three screens.
“Shit,” I said, looking at the player counter. We had 389,441 remaining crawlers. That was several hundred thousand dead since the last time I’d looked.
“What happened?” I asked, horrified.
“I only know what I saw on the recap episode. There were several group quest events just like yours happening across the Over City during the last couple of days. Usually the third floor is relatively easy. They generally try to have six or seven hundred thousand make it to the fourth floor. The factions aren’t going to be happy if the crawlers are culled too much by the time the sixth floor opens. It’s also usually 20 days, and you only have ten. Expect the AI to push back with better gear and higher awards, especially after that veto. The fact you’re level 27 and Donut is 26 is both lucky and a miracle. That’s better than I could’ve hoped for, even with a regular timer. We’ll need to keep it up, but we can’t rely on luck-based power leveling.”
“Luck-based anything is not my intention,” I said. But I’d barely heard what he’d said. I felt sick. Jesus, I thought. You gotta keep your head. I took a deep breath.
The middle screen with the top ten list simply read, Leaderboard will populate at the end of the next recap episode.
I turned my attention to the final screen.
Welcome to the Safe Room. You are on the Fourth Level.
Rental Rooms currently available: 10
Rental Room price: 180 gold.
Personal locations available for purchase. See proprietor for details.
Food is available at this location.
“How much gold do you guys have between the three of you?” Mordecai asked.
“Just about four grand,” I said. “But we haven’t opened our boxes yet, and we have quite a few.”
“Okay. Open your boxes and see how much you have,” Mordecai said. “Donut, do your thing. Just like we talked about earlier.”
Donut cleared her throat and jumped to the counter. I knew she’d been looking forward to this.
“This is a lovely establishment you have here,” she said to Wendita the Bopca.
“Why thank you, your majesty,” the gnome said, perking up. “I’m just so excited to have royalty visit us. You don’t know what an honor it is.”
“I’m sure,” Donut said in her most imperious voice. “So I understand you have personal locations available to sell at this establishment.”
Wendita’s eyes got huge. “Yes, that’s right. Fifty thousand gold, and it’s yours.”
Mordecai and I both winced. He’d warned us that the price might’ve gone up. He said it usually started at forty grand.
Donut yawned and looked at her paw as if that price was but a pittance. “I always find talking about coins to be a low activity.” She sighed dramatically. “Surely there must be a discount for royalty?”
Wendita shook her head vigorously. “No ma’am. Your majesty, I mean. Personal spaces aren’t something we can negotiate on.”
Donut leaned in. “Oh, Sweetie. Let me tell you a secret. Everything is negotiable.”
Wendita swallowed.
According to Mordecai, the price for a personal saferoom would be “fixed.” Location managers would tell the Bopcas how much to sell them for. But the truth was there was usually about 25% wiggle room on the price. The system wouldn’t allow them to sell it for less than that. The proprietors were incentivized to sell the magical spaces with rewards, not money. The rewards being things such as earlier location selection for the next floor, a larger food budget, etcetera. So as far as the Bopcas were concerned, it didn’t matter how much they sold the spaces for.
Unfortunately, the gnomes had a miserly streak to them, and it went against their better nature to discount anything, even if they weren’t the ones reaping the benefit. It was something I’d never understand. But Mordecai was convinced that Donut would be able to talk them down, and if she succeeded, she’d surely train up her negotiation skills. Apparently one received extra skill experience if they could talk a Bopca down. Even if we didn’t have enough money to purchase right now, this was an important skill to train as much as possible.
“I might be able to let it go for 45,000.”
Donut scoffed. “I suppose we don’t really need a personal space today anyway.” She stood and turned her back to Wendita, showing her cat butt to the gnome.
“Forty-four thousand?” Wendita said.
“Is that a question?” Donut asked, looking over her shoulder.
I sighed and turned away from the negotiations. I had 24 stat points to distribute, but Mordecai had taught me to open my boxes and weigh any possible loot upgrades first. I had multiple boxes already, but I pulled up my unread achievements first to see if I had any more. I had ten achievements I hadn’t yet opened, most of them explosion-based. I was surprised to find a few additional ones.