CWD: Sewer Skewers ~ One

Eli ‘Nacho’ Naches stood blinking, trying to figure out how to process the fact that he was standing in a Costco, deep under the crust of what he’d thought was another world. He held a bag of nacho cheese Doritos in his hand and was so tired from their travel to the Bove’s Lair that he had just daydreamed the first time he had met Crave… from the Guild Master’s point of view.

Back in the Probability Vision, Crave had made some joke about eating pork while they could and had promised to keep Nacho safe. Lies on all counts. The only pork they ate after that moment was long pork.

The strange, intrusive dream was so out of nowhere that it just had to be a vision from his Patron, Kronos. But why? On that note, he still couldn’t believe that he was standing in an actual Costco. When he had lived on campus, only two had been located in the Kansas City area, and this one wasn’t in the right place to line up with old Earth. Then again, there was no doubt that the Patrons could do whatever they wanted with the geography.

Nacho turned to discuss the strange vision with his friends, wincing as he came face to face with Reuben and his leather ‘Helm of Helming’. The big guy adored that helmet, and nothing they said would convince him otherwise. It didn’t remotely match the chainmail they’d looted from the Deep Buggy Darkness in the same delve. The man’s gear was a mess; he’d picked up some silver greaves that he’d strapped over his camo pants, and like Nacho, he still wore the same combat boots that had been packed for them.

Reuben chomped on the chips with gusto, one after another, popping open a new bag when he finished the first. “They’re so good! No Putrid Mana, no Store weirdness. Just the wonder, the majesty… of Doritos. Bless you, Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo.”

“What a beautiful prayer for a marketing major.” Brie stood nearby, resplendent in a matched set of silver sabatons, chainmail, and winged silver helmet. Her massive hammer, the Splatter Mallet, rested casually on her shoulder. Taye, their archer on loan from the guild, was waving around a burning Oilbark torch which he was using as a poor-quality light source. His friends’ presence helped Nacho shake off the last vestiges of the oddity that had passed through his mind, and he forced himself to take stock of their surroundings.

The entrance of the Costco was dimly lit by a couple of hooded lanterns they’d brought in. Two main aisles ran the length of the warehouse—one on the left, the other on the right. Through the shelves, the old food court and cash registers were visible on the left side. The low light was going to be an issue, but in his mind’s eye, Nacho could practically see the place bustling with people as though they’d never left the world behind. As strangely picturesque as it seemed, the vision quickly faded into the dark reality that he was living now.

“You okay, Nacho?” Taye was more than a little concerned. Their resident archer was a tall, lanky kid whose friendly demeanor tended to put strangers and friends alike at ease, though he kept glancing around the eerily undisturbed warehouse with visible apprehension. Previously, he had been a junior in high school, but he was now one of the most capable players in the Chips Guild. He held his torch high to increase visibility while he clutched his bow in his other hand.

The bow was new, something called the Pull-Smart Compound Bow. Taye could magically increase the tension, which resulted in his Fitness bonuses being added to some wickedly cool arrows he kept in his quiver. The kid had also upgraded his armor to magical leather and chainmail, which was good. They needed Taye to stay safe. He was the youngest person that they had located in the entire world thus far, and it was important to everyone involved that he outlived all of them.

“I’m good.” Nacho wasn’t even sure if he was lying or not. “Just got lost pondering what life used to be, and how I’ve been living a lie and didn’t know for years.”

“It only feels like that Nacho. It hasn’t been all that long.” Kristie wandered up just then, joining the conversation and drawing the Cook’s trained eyes with her approach and the light she was emitting. She’d picked up a magic item, Bracelets of Brightness, which she could focus like powerful flashlights or turn off completely.

Kristie was a Warlock who had an excellent ranged attack called Sorcery Strike. Like Taye, she could kill from a mid-range distance. Up close, another attack of hers was more complicated: Death Blossom. The Skill allowed her to erupt in an explosion of magical energy that wiped out everything in a fifteen-foot radius, flinging out a bunch of pink magic missiles in every direction.

The only real issue was that the spell hit friends and foes alike.

Like her hair, Kristie’s magic was pink. Being a Warlock, she got her powers directly from a Patron; in this case, Caelius Apicius, who seemed to have some kind of connection with Nacho’s cookbook grimoire. Kristie gaped around in wonder as she came closer. “I know you told us to expect this, but… an actual Costco? Tell me I’m not dreaming.”

“You’re not even close to asleep, dear.” Abby thundered into the open area in her new plate mail. The middle-aged woman carried a Staff of Iron Power in one hand, a sturdy length of wood with big iron rings embedded in either side. With her magical armor, she could move like a tank while bashing things to death with her big stick like a monk. Abby was the shield that complimented Taye’s and Kristie’s projectile talents. She was also just like her armor: loud and unbending. Her severe steel-gray hair matched her personality perfectly. “I think we cleared every monster up until this point. No more baby Boves. Sad, but delicious.”

The older woman went silent as something roared in challenge to her noisemaking, deeper within the Costco, which caused her to cock her head and gauge the area. “Quiet down; we’ll get to you later!” She jerked out a satisfied nod as silence greeted her retort, then turned to the mismatched group of adventurers with a maternal smile. “That’s back in the paper products, dearies.”

Reuben had tucked one gauntlet under each armpit to free up his hands for chip-munching, and he wiped them clean on his camo pants as he chuckled. “There’s a woman who knows her local wholesale club. Or… is it a warehouse club?”

Brie wasn’t in the mood to joke around, but she was ready to start fighting. She took a few eager steps forward, eagerly adjusting the hammer on her shoulder. “Whatever that monster is, it sounds big… do we have any idea of what we might be up against?”

Nacho was as mystified as the rest of them, his previous timeline self never even having come close to discovering this place. “Costco monsters? Let’s go over what they don’t have at Costco: rotten free samples, surly checkout clerks, someone selling hot dogs and soda for a dollar and fifty-one cents-”

“Yeah, this place was the best. Fun fact,” Reuben perked up and cheerfully threw in some random knowledge from his marketing education, “Costco hasn’t raised the price on that deal since they started their business back in nineteen eighty-four. The food court is actually a loss leader for their company. Or ‘was,’ I suppose. I think they’ll hold that record forever now.”

“That’s great information that doesn’t help us at all, thanks,” Brie grumbled at her husband as she stood in the middle of the aisle, gripping her hammer and clearly fighting to hold herself back from charging ahead of the others. “The store is crawling, so glove up.”

“‘Glove up’,” Reuben agreed instantly, trying to put a spin on her words. “While that’s nice, it can’t be my tagline. I’ve finally settled on ‘blood and cheese’. Just suits us all perfectly, you know?”

It was a blatant reference to the Ring of Cheese, which allowed him to absorb three times his Health Points in damage. Each time he got hit, the resulting odor was utterly pungent. Brie gave him a little smile, arching an eyebrow appreciatively. “I like it. If you have to have a battle cry, might as well confuse your enemies. Maybe it’ll make it easier to finish them off.”

“Hold on, let’s see if we can sketch out a plan.” Nacho paused to consider their options. It had taken a full day of jogging to reach the Costco from Armor Mountain, and Taye’s group had spent a good chunk of time exploring and killing monsters before progressing all the way down to their current location. The Costco definitely had to be explored, whatever was howling back there needed a good bashing, and they had some upgrading and stat work to do. Taking all of that into account, they were just asking to be ambushed if they strolled in without a specific plan of attack. “I’ve mixed up a new food gel I want you to try, to see if we can keep hunger up in combat.”

Brie grabbed a small container, downed it, checked her stats, then shook her head at the cook regretfully. “No dice. Might as well be drinking water, except it didn’t count toward Thirst either.”

“Abyss. Why can’t I get this to work?” The Juxtaposition was being finicky on what constituted an actual meal, versus a snack that did little to replenish their Hunger points.

“It would be better to wait until the morning, after we level up, to take on the Costco. This mission was solely to scout the entrance and verify that everything was still open and where it was supposed to be, so… mission accomplished.” Nacho closed the half-empty Doritos bag with an air of finality. “Let’s fall back to the barracks. We’ll come back after we do some leveling, and we’ll keep some volunteers here in the meantime to make sure no one swoops in on our territory. We definitely want to pillage this place. This is some quality gear, and I’m dying to know if the refrigerators and freezers kept anything fresh.”

“Unlikely.” Taye scoffed at the thought. “If there was any electricity here, the emergency lights would still probably be flickering.”

Reuben slipped on the gauntlets and threw an arm around Taye. “This is why I love this guy. What a smarty-pants!”

Nacho didn’t disagree with Reuben. Still, he figured if the Patrons had given them the same planet, only covered with an extra layer of rock and dirt, flora and fauna, they might have also put certain areas into deep freeze in a dungeony way—no electricity required.

Several members of the Chips Guild volunteered to stay and keep watch, but they agreed to remain at the top of the second spiral staircase. It was a perfectly adequate place to keep a lookout: if the unknown beast in the paper products section decided to emerge into the main area, the volunteers could send a runner to retrieve Nacho and the heavy hitters from the guild. Abby also offered to stay, since she was tank enough to keep the beasties at bay beyond backup being beckoned.

By sheer weight of numbers, the Chips Guild should be fine.

That strategy allowed Nacho, Reuben, Brie, Taye, and Kristie—the expanded Dinner Party—to fall back to the barracks. The cook got a fire started while the rest of them unpacked and laid out their sleeping bags on the bunk beds. The one-room building had clearly been designed for convenience rather than comfort, hence the nickname of ‘the barracks’. They’d built two log cabins for forays just like this. The first one, which they’d dubbed the ‘Barracks’, had been constructed on the banks of the Muddy River about a quarter mile from the entrance to the Bove’s Lair—officially called the ‘Bove’s Lair Costco and Scary Shelves Dungeon’.

As for the second cabin, it had been designated ‘Heartbreak Ridge’ and was located halfway back to Armor Mountain. While it wasn’t useful for their upcoming dungeon dive, it had turned out to be great for breaking up the long trip on their way out.

Seeing as it was break time and he was possibly the only surviving cook in the entire world, no one complained when Nacho decided to make dinner. He’d brought in leftover Oscreech meat—a cross between an ostrich and an eagle. In all reality, the thing was more emu than ostrich, and more monstrous than either. To add some weight to the concoction, he bought upgraded noodles and combined everything to make Oscreech noodle soup.

The perfect meal on a cold, snowy evening.

While he was engaged in Active cooking, Reuben passed around the chip bag. “Would you look at that? I’ve eaten a half-portion of chips. Interesting… the System says your fitness gel doesn’t count as enough ‘food’ to be a portion, but eating enough Doritos constitutes half a meal.”

“Game logic.” Brie threw her husband a grin as she used his most-beloved saying against him. The failed fitness gel had been her idea; she’d had to eat chicken and biscuits during combat, and the fact of the matter was that rapid breathing and biscuits didn’t go well together. Before the Juxtaposition, she’d run plenty of five-Ks and ten-Ks, and her go-to for rapid energy gain had been a fitness gel she could drink on the run; the viscous liquid was much easier to ingest during exercise than actually eating.

Too bad the Juxtaposition could care less about making things easy on people.

While Nacho cooked, everyone else chatted about the various goods they hoped to find in Costco. They were full of excitement, making some pretty big leaps of faith solely based on the Doritos. Nacho knew all too well that farther in, all of the products could have been turned into monsters. Demon refried beans bursting out of their cans. Undead rotisserie chickens that wanted to put them under warming lamps.

The cook had previously stored some plastic dishes in a cupboard, along with some of his other cooking supplies in preparation for excursions such as this. It was incredible to him how many variations on the same tool were required for him to do his job properly. As Nacho ladled his steaming soup into the bowls, he kept an eye on the newest tagalongs they had picked up. It was likely that Taye and Kristie needed to eat badly. They’d been fighting for hours, and surviving Active Combat meant using their Skills. Survival always came with a price.

Body Players—Fighters, Rangers, Berserkers, and the like—had Skills mainly based on their Hunger Points. It was a simple system: use a Skill, get hungry. Get too hungry, and a player’s health regeneration would go negative. For Mind Players—sorcerers of all kinds—Skills used Thirst Points as well as Mana. If anyone ran out of water, Mana regen went negative as well. They could regenerate Mana in the same fashion that they could regenerate Health Points, but if they hit zero Mana, they fell unconscious and were almost certain to die if their Thirst was also negative.

Hunger and Thirst Points had to be taken care of the old-fashioned way.

Most of the players hadn’t been in the game long enough to only eat when they used their Skills. They were still in the habit of eating multiple times a day—which just wasn’t something necessary in the Juxtaposition. A player was only required to eat once every twenty-four hours. If they missed a day, they’d earn the Starvation Debuff, their Health Regen would turn negative, and once they ran out of Health… they died.

Frankly, running out of almost any resource pool nearly guaranteed death, so it was better to keep them filled as much as possible.

For the first time, Nacho was able to hold out hope that there might be some way for a Satiation Player like himself to get nutrients into people that had fallen unconscious. He wasn’t sure, as the very existence of this type of class was new to him, despite his Probability Vision. He’d spent three years in the game, and while there had been rumors of cooks, brewers, and farmers… he’d never met a real one. He had chalked it up to wishful thinking by the end.

His thoughts turned to the Costco, and his mind nearly shut down from the sheer number of questions that streamed through. He’d never known anyone who’d found the fabled remnants of Earth, which the Patrons had evidently dubbed the UnderFun. Nacho couldn’t believe they were still on the same planet. Sure, adding an extra mile of crust would increase the mass and surface area of the planet, which would cause all kinds of destruction, but it was pretty clear the Patrons didn’t much care about the sciences. Biology, chemistry, and physics were all just toys to the Patrons. They’d given a billion people on the planet new bodies. What was a little tinkering with astrophysics compared to that?

After their meal, along with some boiled water, Nacho and the gang got down to business leveling and doing their stats work. Brie in particular wasn’t happy. “You know, Nacho, I have to say, I’m super surprised that you want us to increase our actual levels. You’ve been pushing Skill increases so much that I thought upgrading our character class was a pipe dream.”

“Let’s just do it before he changes his mind.” Reuben looked as though he was a flinch away from clapping a hand over his wife’s mouth. “Just rip the bandage off fast enough that he can’t stop us!”