CWD: GA ~ Twenty-Two

“Well isn’t that just great.” Reuben was still shaking his head as they walked down the trail toward the waterfall. Below were the crystalline blue pools beneath the falls. “Killing other people is directly incentivized. You get whatever credits they collected, as well as credits based on their level? That’s just… why would that be allowed? This whole thing is just asking to turn into a drama about betrayal. All we need now is a proper love triangle.”

“No love triangles.” Nacho and Brie looked at each other, both shuddering at nearly the same time. Internally, Nacho found himself trying to defend the future Guild Master. Sure, the guy might have made some mistakes early in the game, like getting involved with guys like Hogan and Whitney, but in the end… didn’t Crave do a lot of good, for a lot of people? Nacho kept those thoughts to himself, knowing that his friends didn’t have the moral flexibility they would need in order to accept that outlook.

Nacho and his friends gripped the roots of the trees while they navigated the path until they could reach the waterfall, which completely hid the cavern. If Crave had done more gaming, and less Vice Presidenting—he had been the vice president of sales for some sporting goods company—he might’ve known there was always stuff hidden behind waterfalls.

The cook filled his pack with the last of the food, then hid the other two packs behind tree roots. Grabbing a hanging root tendril, he swung over the open air, slamming through the cold water onto a ledge. Diffused light glimmered off the sparkling walls, where an engraved archway spanned the stone hallway farther down.

Noting the lack of light further in, Nacho sighed. He didn’t want to spend their credits, but he had no choice if they wanted to stay alive. Popping open the Store, he found a combo deal for a hooded lantern with four hours of fuel, costing only fifteen credits.

Brie swung through the waterfall and into the corridor, followed by Reuben. Both began shivering immediately. Reuben adjusted his leather Helm of Helming with hands covered by his Gauntlets of Monster Destruction. “Let me try out my new catchphrase. I’m ready to hit things! Is that a good one? What do you think? I could try to make something about love gloves.”

“No. No battle cries, no branding yourself. I don’t care if that’s your entire degree, just no.” Brie slammed her helmet onto her head, hammer at the ready. “We don’t need catchphrases. Let’s go kill things and collect credits.”

“Ugh, now that’s a great catchphrase, and you probably won't even use it!” Reuben lamented at his fiancée.

Nacho carried the bow with the quiver over his shoulder, planning on avoiding combat if he could; they needed every credit they could get. His current plan was to essentially be a squire for their resident Berserker: hold the light, swap out her weapons, and keep her fed while Reuben kept her healed. Lighting the hooded lantern, he called, “Good news? We can see. Bad news? We only have two credits left.”

“Well, let’s fix that problem!” Brie marched forward enthusiastically. That was the only holdover from their original battle order, as Nacho followed with the lantern raised, casting light on the dripping rock walls, and Reuben was their rear guard.

A squawk behind them made them all turn in confusion, just in time to see bright blue birds with black beaks and eye-growths that looked like large black sunglasses come soaring around the waterfall, streaking toward The Dinner Party.

Blues Birds

Effective Tier/Level:?

HP:?

Nacho had noticed holes near the ceiling and now understood that those black beaks were the cause. Then he realized what their actual name was: Blues Birds. He had vague memories of these monsters, mainly because of the sunglasses. If he remembered correctly, their song was considered one of the most beautiful to listen to at night. The problem was that they were some of the low-level monsters that morphed into bigger iterations. Some elites became Roc-Stars later on.

These Blues Birds came in all different sizes. The little ones were about the size of a chubby red-breasted robin, while on the bigger end were some the size of a small dog. A dozen of the things came flying in, but they weren’t headed toward the holes—they dove toward Reuben, who was the first and largest target.

Even though he was a Healer, Reuben wasn’t about to run from a fight. He pulled back his right fist and splattered the incoming bird with a giant metal glove. To everyone’s surprise, the creature exploded into a mist of blood, bone, and feathers. The problem was that the Healer was off-balance and there were eleven more of the birds. They began slamming into Reuben, trying to drive their beaks into the chainmail.

Hey, Player, welcome to Active Combat! You’re fighting the Blues Birds, and they’re looking for a good guitar peck. No Store or Regeneration during Active Combat. Good luck!

Nacho dropped the bow and set the lantern on the floor. He hurried forward with his knife drawn, hacking the knife into one of the birds and sending feathers exploding everywhere. These things simply weren’t tough. Even though he had two percent bonus damage, along with his current Fitness bonus of five percent, that should have been nowhere near enough to create instant death on this scale.

Dishing Out Damage Update! Die, bird, die.

Congratulations! You have killed a Blues Bird!

Level 01 Creature = 0 Credits

Incredible!

Reuben slammed himself into the wall, trying to squish or push off some of the monsters hooked onto him. Nacho dashed over, waving his arms and slashing at anything covered in feathers. For just a moment, Reuben was free of the birds. He flung out his hands. “Positive Vibes! Go, go, Dinner Party! You’ve got five minutes to slap some extra pain into these featherheads!”

Nacho felt the glow of Reuben’s magic fueling him, making him faster and stronger, just in time to deal with the birds that left Reuben and reached for him. He killed the first of them—eliciting a cut-off squawk— and once again gaining zero credits.

As for the damage he was dishing out… frankly, two percent increased damage didn’t help anyone much. At their levels, they just weren’t dealing with the high damage output values that a percentage increase required. Meanwhile, Brie leapt into action with her Splatter Mallet, her Combat Dash ability turning her into a blur as she raced past Nacho. Her mallet slammed into a bird, mashing it into avian paste.

“Haha! Yes! Speed and pain!” She was using a larger weapon with a base damage value of ten, had her Fitness plus-five, her Combat Dash for four percent, and Reuben’s two percent, meaning she was dishing out twelve points of damage with every hammer swing.

Another bird came winging in, only to be reduced to gooey gore even without her Combat Dash being active. Shouting ferociously, she rammed the shaft of her two-handed hammer into another monster bird, slapping it away from Reuben—who was actively bleeding from a number of small wounds.

The other birds swarmed back onto Reuben. Nacho had to help him, but losing credits on each kill frustrated him like nothing else. “Brie, batter up!”

He plucked a bird off Reuben’s unprotected thigh and sent it tumbling through the air like a feathery softball at the Berserker. She smacked it into the wall, where it impacted with a pulpy sound before sliding to the ground. “The Splatter Mallet is aptly named!”

“Help me, don’t make jokes!” Reuben was frantically trying to save himself by using the gauntlets to squeeze the gizzards out of the creatures. Over the next half minute, between his gauntlets and Nacho playing bird baseball with Brie, they finally took out the first threat of the dungeon.

Congratulations, Player! Active Combat is over! Ouch! One of you is at single digits Health Points. Have fun shopping, and enjoy your Health and Mana Regen! May your future be delicious!

Reuben staggered over to lean against the wall. He was bleeding from a dozen bad wounds, so he wrapped his arms around himself and let out a sigh. “Wow. I can hug and heal myself. This is never going to get old.”

His skin glowed gold once, twice, and the open wounds were taken care of. Brie hurried to her fiancé and rubbed his bloody arm. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. Give me a minute.” He had his eyes closed as he used his healing ability again. He groaned and slid down to the ground. “Too thirsty… I’ll let my Health Regen do the rest.”

Brie stood watch with her hammer as Nacho bent to look him over. “Let me get you something to eat. You’ll be down on Hunger, too.”

“More thirsty than hungry, but I could use a bite.” Reuben leaned his head back against the wall. “I’m down to eighty Thirst points. My Mana Regen is at eight percent per minute…? Not bad. I can already feel my mojo coming back. But dude, Positive Vibes isn’t doing much at this level. Only two percent… it’s not worth it.”

“Probably not,” Nacho agreed easily, handing Reuben a water bottle. The fluid was drained in an instant. Fighting back a grimace, Nacho accepted the empty container and packed up his bag. “I got nothing from my kills but blood on my hands. How much were these things worth?”

“Seven credits each.” Reuben slapped his gauntlets together to clear them of feathers and flesh. “Ahh, it got in my eye!”

Current Credits: 2 (72 total Dinner Party pool)

Most of the Blues Birds had been reduced to scraps—perfect for chicken nuggets—though a few of the bodies remained in pretty good shape. He could at least process them to get a few extra credits, even if he wasn’t planning to actually cook them. Nacho nodded at the archway at the end of the cave. “We should make sure things are clear down there, and then you two should eat. I’m not even going to try to cook up these birds, but I am going to abuse the system as hard as I can for credits.”

Reuben shrugged an arm that was almost completely healed. “I love that Health Regen is working overtime. Having a magical metabolism is the best!”

“Let’s get inside so that nothing sneaks up on us while we’re trying to recover.” Brie’s recommendation was met with grunts of approval, so the three of them walked down to the entrance; finding that steps had been cut into the cavern floor. With a silent glance of mutual agreement, they descended into darkness.

Carved above the entrance was the name of the dungeon: The MurderSong of The Croaking.

Nacho squinted at the inscription, muttering softly as he tried to order his memories. “The croaking? Myron said it was only called the MurderSong, but to be fair… he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.”

“Another friend?” Reuben questioned with a slight amount of concern in his voice.

“No… a competitor, a killer. He worked for a rival guild, and ended up killing a lot of people. Long story… actually, no, that’s the entire story.” Nacho shook his head and glanced away from his queasy-looking friend. “Maybe frogs? Frog monsters. Croaking, that’s a frog thing, right?”

“Does it matter?” Brie leaned on her hammer. “Whatever it is, we’re going to kill it real good.”

“It’s a good thing to try to plan for the future.” Reuben frowned at her blase attitude, but he couldn’t manage to figure out what he actually wanted to say to her. “Too bad we aren’t getting incentives or bonuses for dungeons yet. It would be cool if we got credits for figuring out the names of a dungeon. You know, cash for puns? We’d clean up.”

That put a smile back on Nacho's face. “If we could cash in on puns, you and I wouldn’t need to fight anything ever again. We’d just retire in style.”

Since nothing was charging up the steps, the cook led them back to the area where the defeated birds remained scattered around. He chose three of the most intact ones, each the size of a fat turkey, and gave one to each of his friends to pluck off blue feathers as fast as they could. Reuben rumbled with laughter. “You know, just thinking about these things cooking up is making me hungry.”

“You just want to take a bite out of them as retaliation for them biting you,” Brie snorted as she ripped out a handful of feathers. “You’re not hungry, you’re vengeful.”

“Okay, maybe we know each other too well,” Reuben admitted as Nacho looked at him for confirmation.

The cook, having the most experience with monsters, got the feathers off faster than the others by far—then cut off the head and feet in two smooth motions. He wasn’t about to lose credits to Putrid Mana, not this time. They’d already lost fourteen credits because he’d needed to kill two of these. He could only hope that the MurderSong Blades would allow him to harvest credits from kills. In the meantime, he was going to try to process the ingredients.

Once he gutted the bird and slopped the entrails onto the floor, he cut off the thigh and leg. He was ready for a System message to prompt him for cooking, but nothing happened. He frowned, had an ‘aha’ moment, and started purifying the meat.

Golden light washed out of him and into the flesh, and soon Putrid mana was dripping to the floor or evaporating into the air. Three credits hit his account, making his eyes bulge slightly. That was nearly half of what the kill itself was worth! He looked back at the now-ready meat, ready for a message to appear about cooking…

Still nothing.

By the time the small piece was clean, Reuben and Brie had finished plucking the feathers from their respective birds and Nacho was sweating. The Blues Birds weren’t liquifying yet, but they could at any minute. The rest of The Dinner Party gazed at Nacho in confusion, seeing his concern. Reuben eventually shook his head. “Wow. Here I am, at the entrance of a dungeon, but instead of doing cool stuff like slaying dragons… I’m plucking feathers off monster birds.”

“I have the carcass of the bird prepped, so why can I not cook this? Why am I not being prompted for…? Ingredients!” Nacho didn’t respond, too concentrated to join in on the joke. He whipped the yellow-and-red containers of salt and pepper out of his backpack and rubbed the spices across the carcass. “Yes!”

Greetings, Satiation Player! Trying to cook some more, Cookie? Well, welcome to Active Cooking. No Store access. No Mana or Health Regen. Are you gonna bake that Blues Bird? Or are you gonna pan-fry that bad boy? Either way, you have three ingredients. Wanna start cooking your meal?

Yes / No

“Now that I know for sure that this can be cooked…” Nacho wasn’t going to let those messages mess with his concentration. So what if he didn’t have Store access and Regen? At least nothing was currently trying to kill him. He lost five percent of his Mana, Hunger, and Thirst each time he worked to get the Putrid Mana out, but that was okay. He had plenty of food and water, even if they’d have to boil more at some point.

“I got three credits,” he tossed out to his friends, an idea forming in his mind. It wasn’t fully there yet, but… something about these credits was making him tingle. “but I’m going to keep on going. Don’t touch the meat.”

“That’s what they always told me.” Reuben patted his bird and ignored his fiance’s disgusted glance as he waited for Nacho to finish what he was doing. “These things are flesh and not fluid, so keep going as long as you can.”

Nacho felt his Small Blades skill activating each time he sliced and diced the Blues Birds, reducing them into eight piles of meat, each pile about a pound. Again and again, Nacho used the Ingredient Processing ability, switching over to Reuben’s bird when his was gone. When he finished the first one, he paused as he noticed a massive discrepancy: he was now only getting one credit per pound of processed meat. Nacho kept going, trying not to let the lessened value disturb him, powering through until another nine pounds of meat had been purified and was ready to cook.

He was starving, thirsty, and nearly out of Mana. Using his skill, back-to-back, eighteen times in a row had reduced his Thirst and Hunger all the way down to five points each, and he had a measly three points of Mana left. He’d gotten so caught up in getting the thirty-six credits that he’d forgotten to eat and drink: nearly a deadly mistake.

Current Credits: 38 (100 total Dinner Party pool)

Seeing he had personally added thirty-six credits to their account made Nacho feel better. He peered around the cavern to see if there was anything else for him to work on, noting that by the time he had finished with the first two monsters, Brie’s bird had turned into a puddle in front of her. He would be forever running a race to process Putrid Mana before the animals melted; this was expected, but in truth he had been hoping for more time. “I think I figured out the key to my class.”

Brie looked at him consideringly, before finally deciding to satisfy her curiosity. “What’s on your mind? I swear, if I hear a pun coming out of your face-”

“No. You know how I don’t get money for kills?” Nacho didn’t wait for the obligatory nodding, explaining what was going through his mind. “I get so many credits for processing the ingredients that the loss of the kill credits is practically non-existent. I also think that I am earning more credits when I process the ingredients from something that I personally kill. I need to test this more, but if I am correct... I finally have a good reason to join combat again. Let me tell you, if it is worthwhile for me to brush up on my killing skills, I think we are going to have an easier time going forward.”

“That’s cool and all, but you've literally only tested it once.” Reuben  Reminded him easily. At least, you've only noticed this once. Wait until you have a few more test samples before you take all of our kills, yeah?”

“Totally understood. Not to mention, you both need the experience. Not so much the leveling up, actual experience, but practice at combat.” He glanced at the glistening meat, marbled with trace amounts of fat and blood. Without the Putrid Mana, the piles of bird meat looked and smelled fine. They could try cooking them over a fire that night, even if Nacho didn’t think it would work. “It seems that I need to have recipes to successfully cook anything. An actual recipe from this world, something purchased from the Store. The scrap of information I’ve been able to find hinted that I could sell meals based on the recipe, not on the food itself.”

“Then, let’s make it happen.” Brie brushed off his concerns like only a child from a wealthy family could do. “It’s just money.”

“But… spending two hundred credits on a hunch could be a painful mistake.” Nacho wanted to take the chance, and he had great reasons for being willing to spend the panic-inducing amount of credit. For one, he could imbue his cooking with buffs. Second, the food he’d brought would eventually run out, and Store food sucked. “It’s not ‘just’ money. We are literally risking our lives every time we want to make a quick buck.”

With a grunt, he stopped working so Active Cooking would end. He gulped water and attacked the raisins and peanuts he’d brought. Before he started drinking, his Thirst was at ten points. “Whoops. Went too far. Nearly fell unconscious.”

“That’s not good.” Reuben considered that while munching for a bit, then sighed dramatically, gesturing at the food. “No M&Ms in the trail mix? I mean, it’s just raisins and peanuts… you have a lot to learn about cooking, but so much more about snacking.”

“Eating for pleasure is wasteful to the extreme. Food is fuel for our bodies, it’s not meant as a fuel for our desires.” Nacho grunted like a neanderthal between bites and gulps. “You’d think I would’ve worried more about taste when I was packing our food. I guess I got used to eating the bland Store food, and… other stuff.”

“What other stuff?” Brie perked up at his hesitation, remembering that this was something that he did not want to talk about. “I mean, if you are going to bring it up…”

Nacho wasn’t planning on going into his brief stint as a cannibal right then, so merely shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna be a cook. I just wanted us together, I wanted you both to do well in the Evaluation, and then I figured we’d figure things out once we got here. But hey, I remembered cream and sugar for your coffee, bud. Give me some credit.”

“One credit.” Reuben smiled as a credit jumped from his pool over to Nacho’s. “You might be able to buy some spices for that crappy Store food.”

“Maybe.” Nacho tore open a protein bar. “The hungrier you get, the better the Store food tastes, and that’s really saying something.”

“I don’t know about that.” Brie ate the last of her snack. “I don’t think it was all that bad; it's like discount buffet food.”

“Why do you think calling it discount buffet food makes it sound better?” Reuben struggled to come up with a way to make a better comparison. “Cafeteria food? That’s terrible.”

Nacho contemplatively chewed his Muscle Mania bar while packing up in the light of the lantern. “Tell me what you found out about your weapons. Did the Juxtaposition jokers give you anything useful?”

“The hammer’s enchantment doubles its base damage,” Brie explained as she idly hefted it. “That means that instead of ten points like the hammer should be dealing, I’m doing twenty a pop. With my Combat Dash, I’m doing twenty-three. We use normal rules of rounding, I guess, since two percent of twenty-three is point four-six.”

“You’re hitting well above your level, then. Excellent.” Nacho was practically vibrating with excitement, though he did not let that impact his knowledge gathering. “How about you, healer?”

“Ahh, what? Me? ‘Kay, so, the gauntlets hit like a better weapon than they are. That's the ‘Punch Me, I’m Dreaming’ bonus. I also have something else, a ‘Bad Case of the Clap’ special move? That gives me two extra points of damage for a base of twelve, when it activates. Even so, I’m not doing twenty plus like Hammer Girl over there. What about you, Nacho?”

“No comment.” Nacho shouldered on the pack and collected the bow and quiver. “Let’s just say I need to stick to cooking, when I figure that out. When I do, I’ll earn my keep. I hope.”

Brie gave him a friendly shove. “You’ve already earned your keep. We have thirty-six extra credits from you.”

Reuben was there to shove him from the other side, though Nacho nimbly avoided the foot trying to trip him at the same time. “After a hard day’s work in the dungeon, we’ll have bird meat for days! We’ll start a fire, cook some up, and it’ll be like happy hour in the poacher’s club.”

“Maybe.” Nacho didn’t think there would be anything edible coming out of his cooking for a while. He still had a lot to learn about being a Common Cook. Even still, he could be helpful. The first step was to consider all their options. “You know, Reuben is only at level one with his Positive Vibes… we could upgrade him to level three, since we have a hundred credits.”

Reuben brightened up at the idea of getting further empowered. “I think I’d give you guys an additional… six percent damage? That’s still not great, but it would be at least an extra point.”

“A point and then some for me, and five minutes per cast is great,” Brie encouraged him. “Taking my Combat Dash to level three would give me an additional six percent, but you can help the entire team. Let’s do it. Let’s buy two upgrades for my love.”

Reuben blushed and waved her off. “Your love. That’s me. She’s talking about me..”

“I’ll stab you. I know you’d survive it,” Nacho warned jokingly. Once they spent the hundred credits, it was time to put those new magic powers to use. “Okay, the credits are all gone. Again. Let’s fix that.”

“Abyss, yeah!” Brie led the way, with Nacho and Reuben following her into the first rooms of the MurderSong of the Croaking.