CWD: GA ~ Sixteen

Working together, The Dinner Party moved their barricade to cover the exit hole in the roots. Down below, the passageway was more rockslide than stone staircase, possibly infested with monsters—whatever was actually down there didn’t smell appetizing.

Nacho couldn’t remember what else they might run into in the Deep Buggy Darkness, but so far, they’d been lucky to only encounter Tier zero monsters. Everything about combat would change with Tier one creatures, and they weren’t ready for that level of action. Especially because Brie was the only one of them who had a skill that actually worked so far.

Once their barrier was secure, the blonde Berserker regarded the sacks of goo, the skeletons inside, and the little worms floating among the bones. “If there were already people on this world—adventurers, I guess you’d call them—what kind of civilization did they have? How long have the beetles and larvae been here? What about the fossil record?”

“I didn't even consider that!” Reuben mimed his head exploding. “Mind. Blown. What do you say, big cheese?”

“I've found that it is best not to think too much about the Juxtaposition or the Starter World. The bottom line is that we fought Tier zero monsters, there’s loot to be collected, and I better start learning how to cook. First of all, let's spend our windfall of credits sooner rather than later. We need to you two upgraded as fast as possible.”

Reuben rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. You must have some theory about all the fossil records.”

“I do, but now’s not the time. Short version: the Patrons, who created the world, have an interest in epic fantasy tropes and dungeon lore, so they whipped up a planet where they could observe us playing out various nerdy scenarios.” Nacho’s grim tone killed any frivolity that had been trying to catch among the group. “All the while they sit watching, maybe taking bets, or maybe just making themselves laugh over the deaths of innocent people. How’s that?”

“You should have just stuck with ‘I'd rather not say’.” Reuben wrinkled his nose. ‘Bleak, man. That’s super bleak.”

“We need to find a way to fight back against those things,” Brie declared with righteous anger.

“They are giving us our abilities, Brie.” The cook sighed as he was forced to delve into one of the biggest debates that would spark rage through the entirety of the Apocalypse. “Let's be realistic. Someone who is granting you power isn’t going to give you the tools you need to overthrow them. It's the same thing the government did back in our world; you can get a great education, but no one is going to give you the knowledge that you need to change their system.”

“Just like that, we’re back to super bleak,” Reuben calmly joined in. “Look, practice makes perfect. Let's just get so good that we surpass whatever limits they give us.”

“No. You’re wrong. Practice makes better. Perfection is beyond us here. With the resources of the Starter world, we will never be more than pawns. Welcome to the Juxtaposition.” Nacho held up a hand, stopping any further comments. “Treasure first, then we go shopping for skill levels, and then we make our way to the next dungeon. We don’t want to go too deep here; the deeper you go, the worse things become. We don't have the tools we need to go much further than we already have.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” Reuben regarded the foot-long worms in the glowing goo bags. His eyes flashed blue as he winked and used the System View. “What we have here are Gummy Grublings, and they’re Tier zero animals, but I’d imagine they wouldn’t be too tough to kill. Brie, would you do the honors?”

“I was going to say they kind of looked like gummy worms. Except, you know, with more teeth.” Brie used her dagger to cut open a goo sack, draining the fluid. The Grublings, three in all, screamed at her with round, teeth-filled mouths, but that was the extent of their defensive capabilities. She made short work of them with her hatchet.

“Exactly one credit each.” The Berserker shook the fluid off her hatchet. “Not bad; I suppose that we could buy a meal with that? I still feel hungry.”

Nacho thought about telling her to get used to the feeling, but he stopped and reminded himself that he did not have to be quite as cautious with food this time around… hopefully. The whole point of his class was that the people around him would no longer have to starve and only eat when necessary. Instead of saying all of that out loud, he reached inside the drained sack to remove the skeleton and laid it on the floor.

He was given a list of items when he scanned the sack:

• Simple chain shirt (non-magical and heavy)
• Rusted helm
• Leather belt
• Unremarkable boots that we shall not remark on
• Tier 0 Weapon: Splatter Mallet (Imbued with Mysterious Unknown Enchantments)

It was basic stuff, all except the ‘Splatter Mallet’, which looked like a pretty wicked weapon: a two-handed hammer with four dull knobs on each end of the chunky head. Brie picked up the weapon, undeterred by the grubling goop on its haft. Her eyes sparked with excitement as she took a practice swing. “Let me try this system view thing… it’s a Tier zero weapon, so I guess that’s good, right? Minor enchantment. Do I know what that is?”

Nacho noticed she was holding the weapon as naturally as if she’d been born with it. “Not unless you buy an info pack on hammers or purchase the Inspect Skill, which sometimes just doesn’t work. Once you use it in combat, you should be able to figure out what it does pretty quickly.”

Brie gave it a few more practice swings. “Pretty sweet. You know, it kind of feels like my old lacrosse stick. The handle does, at least, but the big hammer end, not so much. I’m surprised it doesn’t feel… heavier?”

Reuben had his knife out and was standing next to the other sack. “I would think that’s part of the enchantment. Do you want to give it a try on the next batch of worms? I’ll cut open the sack, and we can let the worms spill out. Nacho-cheesemeister, do we have to worry about anything undead?”

“Only if there are necromancers around. As far as I know, none naturally occur in the world.” Nacho lifted the helmet and pondered where the closest river was, so they could clean off the items. “Mostly, we’ll face monster animals, like Earth animals, only more grotesque.”

“Monster cows?” Reuben idly wondered, making Nacho freeze in place.

“Yeah… definitely monster cows.” He shuddered as he considered telling them about the first Calamity, but he didn’t want to ruin their moment of triumph. It was too early.

Brie held the maul, perfectly poised to practice mauling some poor bugger. Reuben sliced open the bag, and five of the Gummy Grublings sank to the bottom. He yanked out the skeleton, moving quickly to avoid the round, squealing mouths of the foot-long worms as they came slopping out.

Brie slammed her mallet down, crushing two worms with one blow. The others writhed about in confusion, but she took care of them in rapid succession. “They only have three health each, and I’m doing twenty-one points of damage with each swing. What does that tell us?”

Nacho pondered the implications for a second. “You have ten in Fitness, which is giving you an additional five percent of damage. I would think that hammer would have a base damage of ten, but if you’re doing twenty-one points, that means the hammer… doubles the damage? That is a great weapon.”

“Isn’t bad at all.” Grinning, Brie joined them in analyzing the skeleton’s items after finishing off the final squirmer.

• Simple chain shirt (non-magical but sparkly)
• Tier 0 Armor: Leather Helm of Helming
• Thin belt, big buckle
• Sandals that were fashionable at one point but now are embarrassing (do not wear with socks)
• Splatter Mallet (Tier 0 Weapon, same as the first)

“Hold on now, I like wearing socks with sandals.” Reuben lifted the footwear. “I know I don’t wear the look well, so… at this point, if these aren’t magical, I’ll stick with my boots.”

“At least if you die, your fashion sense will die with you.” Brie shook her head at her groom, wincing as she thought of their lives together.

“You…!”

“After seeing how great it worked for Brie, I want this bad boy.” Nacho enthusiastically interrupted as he picked up the second hammer, the twin of the one in the Berserker's hands. Sadly, the instant he lifted it, the entire weapon glowed with a golden light. It shrank, losing the pointed knobs as both ends became perfectly flat.

The System flashed in his eyes.

Item Update!

Tier 0 Weapon = Splatter Millet

Congratulations, Satiation Player!

You gain Bonus damage against grains and wheat products!

Nacho clenched his eyes shut in confusion, taking a calming breath as his friends began to chortle. “The Splatter Millet?”

Then it hit him. Since he was a Satiation Player, items would update to match his class. He’d heard rumors of items changing to correspond to different body or mind classes, but this was the first time he had actually experienced it.

Reuben kept snickering as he watched their seemingly-all-knowing friend stare at the hammer in his hand with shock. “It’s small now, perfect for your little baby hands!”

“Size doesn’t matter.” Nacho tried to play off his hesitation as he hefted the item, which had shrunk to the size of a meat tenderizer. “Besides, I’ll be facing demon millet, not monsters, right? It’s a cooking item now. It’s strange, granted, but… small grains beware?”

Brie scooped grub goop off her arm and slung it at him. “Enough with the jokes! The Patrons try to kill our bodies with monsters and our spirits with puns. Don’t help them.”

“We can defeat them by embracing puns and letting them nourish our hearts!” Reuben argued on behalf of all the terrible jokes remaining in the world. Nacho ignored the playfully bickering lovers and moved to the third grub sack, the last bag that held a body. Naturally, they would go through the others and wipe out the remaining Gummy Grublings just to get the credits, but this was likely the most important.

To his delight, the base sagged from the weight of a pile of gold coins, and Reuben abruptly broke off his debate with Brie as he happily scooted over to peer inside. “Treasure!”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” This time, Nacho was the one to cut open the sack and snatch out the skeleton. Four more Grublings were turned into paste on the floor, earning Brie four additional credits. They’d killed twelve of the overgrown gummy worms so far.

Reuben began enthusiastically scooping out the gold coins, despite their slimy state. Nacho was more interested in the skeleton because he knew the truth about the ‘treasure’.

• Seventy-six gold coins
• Rusted scalemail (non-magical, unwearable, and awkwardly worthless)
• Gold circlet of skull squeezing (non-magical and uncomfortable)
• Another belt that does nothing but hold your pants up
• Boots (Pretty good but probably not worth your time because they won’t heel you)
• Gauntlets of Monster Destruction (Magical? Yes! Punch me, I’m dreaming!)

Nacho noted all the exclamation points, then remembered that Reuben’s most favorite thing in the world was the berserk powerup in the Goom video game—not to be confused with his new Berserker girlfriend. Reuben was too caught up in the gold to notice the gauntlets. “Nacho, let me guess. One gold coin equals one System credit. We’re rich!”

“Ah, to be so naive.” Nacho picked up the gauntlets and patted his friend’s shoulder. “We all thought gold was going to be super important. We were wrong. You can melt it down to make things pretty, and we should take it for trade. It’ll act as a currency for a couple of months until the smarter people realize it’s just a soft metal. Basically worthless.”

Reuben sighed and tossed the coins into the air, catching them with a bright *clink*. “Let me guess. Only System credits make the world go ‘round.”

“You got it.” Nacho slammed the big metal gloves into his friend’s chest. “You wanna try these on? They might be right up your alley.”

The big guy finally checked the loot drop. “I kinda like the boot puns. Also… how do we know these gauntlets aren’t cursed? This is the kind of system that would have super cursed items. I don’t trust these Patron guys.”

“You’re not wrong, but we didn’t find many cursed items initially.” Nacho nodded his head, impressed by his friend's on-point paranoia. “That is a good thing to keep in mind, though. Things changed, the deeper we went. The Patrons started with providing relatively safe stuff. It took us a while to figure out that they were just lulling us into a false sense of security.”

Brie rested the hammer on her shoulder. “Try them on—I liked the ‘punch me, I’m dreaming’ joke.”

Reuben took the gauntlets and slipped on one, then the other, and made a fist. “Things are looking up. I have to get close, but this should be fun.”

His eyes turned blue as he tried to access more info on his Gauntlets of Monster Destruction. “I’m not getting anything other than a comment about ‘putting my dukes up’. Not helpful.”

A creepy chittering echoed from the tunnel down below, making the hair on the back of Nacho’s neck stand up. “That is our cue to get out of here. We can throw some of the better items into our Storage Slots until we can find a stream to wash them off, and then try them on.”

Reuben took the leather helm and the chainmail that was non-magical and heavy. Brie selected the rusted helm and the sparkly chainmail, which was lighter and prettier. They stashed the gold in their Storage Slots, where it stacked into a single space.

Nacho kept an eye on the barricade while Brie and Reuben made short work of the rest of the Gummy Grublings. There were an additional fourteen monster worms, which brought their total pool to two hundred and twenty-nine credits.

As they walked through the dead Candylicious Weta Beetles, Nacho sighed at the sight of the monsters turning into puddles. “Abyss it all.”

“Question: why do all our swear words come out differently? I noticed it earlier, but I thought it was just you being from the future and all.” Brie stood with the Splatter Mallet propped on her hip, and Nacho remembered seeing her a hundred times in that same pose with a lacrosse stick. “What’s wrong, Nacho?”

“It’s the Putrid Mana. I forgot how fast it corrupts the meat. I missed my chance to try out my Ingredient Processing ability. Again.” He toed one of the beetle pools and sighed. “As to the swearing, it is because we are not speaking the same language we were. Now everyone speaks a common language, Patronese. Not everything translates.”

“Someone has been messing with our heads? Don't like that.” Brie grimaced and eyed the melting bugs with disgust. “You missed your chance to eat bugs? I think you’ll live.”

“We won’t survive long-term if I don’t figure out this Common Cook class,” Nacho grumped at her, then took several calming inhalations and tried to stay positive. “We still have food, so I’m not too worried. At Tier zero, food is pretty easy to find. Even so, I don’t think we should spend our credits on meals when we have another option. Especially when we could spend that income on increasing our skills or levels. I can’t believe I’m not getting credits from combat, but… I think the MurderSong Blades might change that.”

Nacho remembered that Myron, the Gorged assassin, had bragged that his knives could do all sorts of things. Maybe they could even allow a Satiation Player to get credits from combat. The trio returned to the antechamber and found their gear exactly where they’d left it. While not surprising, it was always good to know that someone hadn't arrived and rifled through their belongings.

The cook dropped his backpack and began to gather up the supplies he’d left there. “Let’s pack up and start off for another dungeon. We’ll hide the entrance to the Deep Buggy Darkness a little better so we can come back when we’re more powerful. At this stage, just running the initial chambers is going to be our best bet on leveling without getting killed.”

Reuben *clicked* his new gauntlets together. “The anti-completionist strategy? Take what you can until you can take it all. I like it.”

Once they were packed, they left the antechamber and gathered more wood to toss over the roots of the Oilbark tree, Causing the ground to look like just another deadfall. Brie inspected the work critically before smiling at the two men in her life. “You’re getting pretty good at weaving logs.”

Reuben sniffed the air. “Campfires up above. I can smell someone cooking something, but for some reason, it doesn’t smell so good.”

Nacho had also caught the distinct scent of cooked Putrid Mana, a hint of sulfur like raw eggs, along with a slightly chemical tinge. Those random people up there would learn the rules of the world quickly, with or without his intervention. “That would be the Putrid Mana.”

“You keep saying those two words.” Brie reminded him once more that he hadn’t explained what was going on very clearly. “Is this some nerd culture thing? I need more than you’re giving.”

“We can talk while we walk.” Nacho abruptly turned and led them away, south of Armor Mountain.

“I hate that we’re not telling those people what’s in store for them,” Reuben grumbled as he gave Nacho a sidelong glance. “What’s our policy on dealing with other people? We’re sure to run into someone eventually, right?”

Nacho didn’t turn around, not wanting to reveal that he had been agonizing over that decision. “We keep to ourselves for right now. The initial Juxtaposition sucked for everyone, but it sucked more for some people than others. We have an opportunity to eventually help people, but we need to be smart about it. Before I talk with anyone, there’s a couple of artifacts I want to secure.”

“Fine,” Reuben reluctantly acquiesced. “We’ll keep to ourselves for now, and I’m guessing these artifacts are knives.”

That surprised Nacho, which caused him to involuntarily stop and turn. “How did you know?”

Reuben stopped as well, visibly perplexed by the fact that Nacho was surprised that he had worked it out. “You’ve spent the past six months as ‘Mister Knife Guy’. Kinda makes sense you would be searching for magic knives, but I thought we were going to do some shopping? We have a buttload of credits to spend. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you tell us that the terrible watermelon you found was the last on on the planet?”

Nacho followed his chin thrust with his eyes, finding a watermelon growing out of a thick mud hole. It looked a lot like the previous one, though this vine was far healthier and the melon looked less ripe. “Eh… it was all rind anyway. Maybe that’s something else? Not worth going into the mud to check.”

“What if we-”

Brie uncapped her water bottle and took a loud slurp to interrupt the jabbering. “Let’s discuss our options on the road? We’ll want to find a defensible position before nightfall.”

“Great point.” Nacho was relieved that she had jumped into the situation. Even with having her clothes shredded, and being thrust into hand-to-hand combat, she seemed to be handling things well.

“You’re sharp, Brie.” Reuben joined in on the compliments, the two men high-fiving as their Berserker rolled her eyes.