[Cafe] 127 – EXPLORE, EXPAND, EXPLOIT, and EXTERMINATE ALL XENOS

[Zerref's POV]

Despite the store not even being open for more than three months, Zerref has found that business has increased exponentially. More and more people learned about the store and set out to travel to it, which has led to Zerref needing to open two more entrances and expand the Cafe threefold, to house nearly two thousand computers, several new facilities, such as a bathhouse, spa, pool, classic arcade, and a clothes store. 

Not to mention, I found myself splitting even more. There were now around two dozen Zerref instances running around the store. I've also begun hiring actual employees for the more mundane positions, such as being a food server/cashier. The rest of the positions were manageable, but it was more annoying how many bugs I had to dispose of every day.

Part of me was tempted to start blacklisting everyone who did it because of how annoying it was becoming, but then I realized I'd end up losing a few hundred customers if I did so. Speaking of black listing, I finally reopened the entrance into Wakanda, and every now and then, I'd see one of their disguised members enter and leave after a few hours. It was an eventuality that the Wakandans would either open up to the Cafe's existence or try to block it out from Wakanda completely, not that I minded, as three more entrances opened up across the Earth.

One in Mexico City, another in London, and the last in Paris, which has led to quite a few people entering the Cafe who could not speak english, not that it was a problem for me, the problem however, was that these same people began crossing to the US through the Cafe, which was undoubtedly going to get me into trouble. So, a week before Christmas, Zerref made an announcement across the Cafe that didn't disappear for a few days so that everyone would be notified of the change.

[From this moment onwards, the Cafe has disabled the gateway feature. From now on, you may only exit from the entrance you entered from.]

Sure, many people complained about the loss of such a convenient travel tool and smuggling tool, but a single glare was all it took to silence many of the complaints. Now and then, there were also troublemakers, people who started fights, people who attempted to kill those delving into the Virtual Worlds, even one who tried to release a deadly gaseous substance across the store, but each time I dealt with the problem before it could get worse, and usually dealt with the troublemakers in one of a few ways.

The first and simplest, yeeting them out of my store. The second, and usually reserved for more serious offenders, I dragged them through the void and dropped them in a nearby jail cell. Any potential issues with insanity and seeing beneath the veil were not my problem. The worst offenders? I personally dragged them into the void and left, leaving them to all the hungry eyes waiting on the other side of reality.

But enough about that horrid topic. It was time to discuss a new project, or several, really. 

Three games: Subnautica, SCP: Containment Breach, and Total War: Warhammer

Three games that had their own special attributes, Subnautica would introduce a vastly different experience than other games, with it primarily requiring the player to delve into the deeps of an alien ocean and try to escape the oceanic planet they found themselves on using items and technology they acquired from wrecks, alien structures, and more.

SCP: Containment Breach, on the other hand, was on another level, primarily being a classic horror/escape game where the player would have to navigate a massive facility undergoing a site-wide containment breach where 'SCPs' would either help the player escape, hunt him down, or prove as valuable tools to help them escape the facility, a perfect game for those looking for thrill.

Lastly, there was Total War: Warhammer, a 4x Strategy game that boasted nearly 300 separate factions in the 'Immortal Campaign' mode. The player could control races from Humans, Dwarves, Elves, Beastmen, Vampires, the Undead, the Tomb Kings, Skaven, Lizardmen, Ogres, and lastly, Chaos. There were also variants of the races, such as Chaos Dwarves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, and High Elves.

Each of these games was...complicated, in its own right. Not only was Total War: Warhammer significantly larger than the other two games, but it would also require quite a few changes to keep with the immersive experience the games were becoming known for.

Left with nothing to do but get started, I pulled myself into my personal workshop, an infinite white void of nothingness, a blank canvas I used to make the games. Of the three games, SCP: Containment Breach was up first on the list, as it would be the easiest to make, so it was the first I planned on creating.

 I first started by essentially pasting the Earth and the surrounding 'sky scape' around the planet. Keeping most of the standard infrastructure of civilization, I began adding some...deviations, adding a few thousand new structures, dimension realities, and more across the planet before panning over to the Alaskan wilderness, where the Site of the game would be based.

Humming in thought, I began manipulating the structure to essentially generate based on a set of designs that changed with each new playthrough and map 'seed.' From there, I got pretty hands-on, adding copious amounts of details along with creating each 'NPC' by hand. 

I hoped that if I made the 'generation' right, each playthrough wouldn't be the same, each run may have the same or entirely different people, scientists, and sometimes even SCPs, outside of the most common SCPs in the game, such as SCP 173, 106, 096, 049, 079, and 939.

Otherwise known as The Sculpture/Penut, Old Man, Shy Guy, Plague Doctor, the old AI, and the 'Hounds with many voices.' No matter what, in each playthrough, these specific SCPs would always generate and prove to be the most common roadblock for a player's escape, and after speding some points, I gained a databse of other SCPs whcih I began to add to the broader world as a whole, even going as far as to add new 'modes' that the player could activate if they wished, such as 'When Day Breaks,' 'Penut Gallary,' 'AI Uprising,' 'Heaven and Hell,' 'Mass Containment Breach,' and lastly, and my personal favorite, 'Scarlet King Awakens.'

I will admit some of the scenarios were a bit... ridiculous, such as 'Penut Gallery,' which would replace every hostile SCP in the Site with that of The Sculpture, leading to a player having to survive against a dozen or two weeping angels while simultaneously trying to escape. 

While the end goal was ultimately to escape, the player could continue and deal with the wider SCP world, though I wouldn't recommend it; there was some messed-up stuff in the database I obtained that I was adding into the 'template' of the world. As for the other scenarios I added, they were essentially end-of-the-world scenarios the player could try to survive through during and after their escape, such as 'When Day Breaks,' where the very sun becomes hostile to all life, turning them into flesh abominations.

I spent literal days focused on the creation of this game, play testing, and bug fixing. Still, while a few days passed in reality, I probably spent around a few decades testing everything possible, using multiple instances of myself to try everything possible. However, I felt that the players would find a way to circumvent the limits I was placing on reality, so I set the game into a sort of bubble to prevent them from leaving the planet and the dimension, with only a few other dimensions being accessible across the planet.

It was curious what would happen once the players, especially those with somewhat questionable organizations such as Shield or Hydra, maybe even the 'Light' if they existed here. Shaking my head from that stray thought, I focused on the next task at hand. What did I want to add from SCP to the Cafe? To be fair, many of the items were not exactly safe...or stable, and there were quite a few that would harm or cause more harm to whoever bought them.

It took a few hours of going over the catalog of SCP items, but eventually I narrowed down the list of items to a handful that I could sell.

SCP 500 is a pill that can cure you of all illnesses, injuries, and genetic conditions and restore a person to peak health.

SCP 1762, a restored box that had mythical creatures inside, which, upon exiting, would become paper figurines.

A miniature SCP 999 chibi that had a few of the benefits of SCP 999, as well as a few other SCPs that could be useful or downright helpful for specific organizations or occupations. 

With the completion of the game, I set out to publish it across the Cafe, before getting to work on the next project, Subnautica.