CHAPTER 8: Trapped
By the time I dragged my sorry ass through the door, I already looked fantastic. All the tears, the black blood, and unseemly amounts of saliva were no longer plaguing my awesome new clothes. It was by far, the best forty mana I had spent yet. Sure, my hair may have been slicked back with blood and spit, but you couldn’t have everything. Besides, Starbucks had perfectly functional bathrooms, including sinks, endless hand soap and paper towels. I headed straight for the bathrooms to get cleaned up, because no matter how much I could use a coffee right now, even I wasn’t going to sit down and enjoy anything the way I currently smelled. It wasn’t until I came back out, once again reasonably clean given the whole apocalypse thing, did I notice that this was a far different scene than the other Starbucks I had been to.
First and foremost, there were only two people in the store. Now I say “people”, but it could have been described as one person, and one ghoul, but as this particular ghoul happened to be standing behind the counter wearing a Starbucks apron, I went with “people”. The young ‘gentleman’ had the standard, plastered on smile… I think. He didn’t really have any skin on his face below the forehead except for a bit that stretched down that kind of formed an eye socket, so it was hard to be sure. He didn’t appear to be actively leaking, so I figured it was probably safe to grab a coffee. Did I mention that all the ghouls were naked? Because when I crouched and pressed my face against the glass display case to see if they had anything on offer other than cinnamon cakes slices, I discovered that this particular young man could have really used an apron that was quite a bit longer. Good for him I guess, but I would highly recommend you request one of the slices from the front of the display… in case you happen to find your way to Bismarck anytime soon. I sprang upright, looking at the ghoul for a few seconds, my eyes squinting, on the lookout for a knowing smirk. Nothing. It can be so hard to read expressions when your conversation companion only has a few bits of flesh hanging from their face.
I received my coffee, along with something along the lines of “Thawnk youuu foooooooooooor chossssine Atooomaaaated Muuul … Mullltives Sysssste Uuunc.” If this place ever got hopping, this dude was gonna have a hard time keeping up with the line… holy shit that was the longest “Thank you” in the history of ever. Perhaps I should make a little “Thank You” sign and put it on the counter for him to point at… doubtful he would use it though. He seemed pretty determined to get his lines out.
A quick check of my stats let me know that I still had a bit over four hours to my next level, so I took my coffee outside and grabbed a seat just outside the door. I had some serious thinking to do, which was not easy to do with a literal wall of naked and mutated bodies writhing in a giant pile everywhere I looked. I tried dialing back my perception to the point where I was nearly blind, but it refused to dip below my pre-system levels. I was sorely tempted to try shooting at them from this side of the barrier, but the message was pretty clear… “NO HOSTILE ACTIONS WILL BE TOLERATED”. Since there was no explicit exception to the rule for monsters, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Nora hadn’t even gotten a shot off before she got mulched. I channeled my inner Nora and heaved a giant sigh. Worst case, I could sit there and eat beef jerky and drink coffee until I got a few more levels, then just blast through them with vastly superior strength and speed. Hell, they were fast, but I could already run as fast as a car… sure, a stock Model T, but given enough time, I could easily outpace my shitty old civic, which these… things, couldn’t hope to catch. Of course I also had to be strong enough to break the fleshy blockade… perhaps fifty points in each stat would be sufficient? I went for a refill. I had never had a problem sleeping, no matter how much caffeine I ingested, so it was no surprise that I once again was awoken by:
“Ding … congratulations, you have reached level 4. You have twenty nine free stat points to allocate.”
I immediately turned off my mana allocation to leveling, as I could potentially use the mana to buy something that would get me out of this jam. I had come to a decision on how to allocate my stats each level… at least until I had a good reason to change it up… three to each physical stat, seven to intelligence, and ten to absorption, ending up at:
Strength: 28
Agility: 28
Vitality: 28
Perception: 28
Intelligence: 57 Mana:58/570
Absorption: 77
It would be another hour before I got my mana injection, so I decided that a bit of window shopping was a good way to kill the hour. I had thought about choosing another spell or two from my list of freebies, but I was pretty confident that radiation damage wasn’t going to have much effect on irradiated ghouls. Cancer was a slow-acting, single-target spell, and Fallout was an AOE, but it was less about killing and more about making a whole area miserable for an extended period. The ghouls seemed to be operating pretty well at maximum misery already. Meltdown would probably affect them more than the others, but it was still a single target ability, not to mention that it carried a hefty mana cost. I would be buried in two seconds flat. No, I think what I needed was good old fashioned fire. Or maybe acid? Oh. My. God. Napalme! Time to hit the Pillar.
Every time I visited the System shop, I hated my class just a little bit more. I could see a million different spells and abilities that I would love to have, but my damned class wouldn’t let me buy them. The healing spell list was a mile long, but all greyed out… didn’t meet class requirements. Same with the classics, like “Fireball”, or “Ice Blast”, but noooo … I could only choose from a list of shit that would make Buffalo Bill turn to Jesus. There were literally a hundred different abilities, every single one of them just being different ways to kill people in the most painful way possible. On the bright side, there were in fact things other than people to kill now. I just hoped that there were also things to kill that didn’t “used” to be people. I decided that for me at least, I would have to be reliant on my superior physical stats to win the day. With this new perspective, I changed gears and started browsing through literally millions of weapons and consumables. This turned out to be a headache of epic proportions. I started out searching for swords, because, swords are cool. What I quickly discovered is that item naming conventions were absolute shit. It was like the System had been primarily stocked by Reddit teens who were just bored and wanted to troll people. I was quickly coming to the conclusion that the System shop was a lot like Amazon. Sure, there were plenty of quality products from respected manufacturers, but it was mostly a marketplace for third party sellers hawking cheap knockoffs that look like the real thing, but are never quite what you thought you were paying for. At least in the System shop, the detailed descriptions told the truth… hopefully.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
I would see a cool sounding item like “Claymore of Doom”, only to read the description and see that it was just a normal sword, with one special effect. Anyone who touched it other than the rightful owner would someday suffer a tragic end. What the actual fuck? If I’m swinging a sword at somebody, I want them to suffer a tragic end immediately, not at some unspecified future date. I did however appreciate the "Shaft of the Unpaid Debt," a massive steel bar with an effect that forced anyone struck to experience years of relentless harassment from interstellar collection agencies. It was so stupid I almost bought it, visions of “accidentally” bumping into people who annoyed me playing in my head. I bookmarked it wondering if there'd be Black Friday deals in the apocalypse. Would I get a push notification at 3 a.m. letting me know that "Chaos Rifle of Postmodern Dread" was on sale? Of course I would.
Perhaps a sword wasn’t for me. I knew that eventually, old school earth weapons weren’t going to cut it, but I was currently both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. I suspect that I just don’t understand how to use the shop efficiently yet. I tried focusing on what I was after, but quickly realized that I had no clue what I was looking for. What was possible in a multiverse where the 11th most common species inhabited over 10,000 planets? My phantom headache was coming back.
While browsing, I was pleasantly surprised in one way at least. I had severely underestimated my buying power. I had very quickly acclimated to my relatively ridiculous mana absorption rate, never truly appreciating what an advantage that gave me.
I was like the billionaire hedge fund manager giving an interview, telling the camera with a completely straight face that “My father was insistent that I learn to make it on my own, so he only gave me five million dollars to start my company, but with hard work and many sacrifices, I have become who and what I am today.” While there might be a few people out there gaining more than two stats points per level, I was pretty confident that nobody else on the planet was getting anywhere near twenty nine. I was up to 770 mana per hour. The average human was probably below 100, and that advantage was only going to grow exponentially.
I was in my own head daydreaming a bit when I caught a flash of red.
A giant red “SALE” tag was slapped crosswise over the “Stat Points” tab. I focused on it to get a bit more information. Who doesn’t like a good sale? Apparently, because we did so well in the purge, killing 11% more people than required, the mana that had been System allocated for those extra people we killed was now on a fire sale in the form of stat points. Even “normal” people could buy stat points at very reasonable prices, and what was to me, a shockingly cheap price. The first ten stat points were only one mana each. The next ten were two mana each, the following ten were four mana each, and so on. Yes, eventually the doubling would get out of hand, but if you didn’t blow all your starter capital on strength, even the average Joe stood a chance. I just hoped that the right people noticed this and took advantage of it.
My last fifty eight points of mana spent on thirty seven stat points, I decided to exit the shop. I’d been browsing for what felt like days, so I should have gotten my hourly mana injection by now, maybe even two. And I really needed a coffee.
I blinked and was back in the Starbucks lobby, standing in front of the Pillar. A quick check of my stats confirmed what I had suspected. “Fuck” I muttered. You could spend a lifetime in the System shop and not gain any mana. Perhaps not only your body, but also your consciousness had to be in range of the planet’s mana core? I had no clue, but I did know that I now had zero mana, and it would be nearly an hour before I could get my caffeine fix.
Suddenly, the ladies bathroom door slammed open and a large black woman, covered in blood and wielding what looked like a tree branch came busting out, tripping over a chair leg and face planting onto the tile floor. The barista seemed unimpressed, never so much as flinching, but I will admit that I was a little shook by her unexpected arrival. I rushed forward to help her stand, but she looked up at me with crazy eyes, like she expected me to attack her. I quickly backed off, hands raised to show I had no weapons. I didn’t want either of us to get recycled over a panic induced misunderstanding. I had no idea where she had come from, other than the women’s restroom, but she had clearly seen some shit very recently. Had she actually made it through the wall of ghouls out there? That must be one hell of a tree branch.
“It’s OK!” I half shouted, trying to snap her out of her panic. “You’re in a Starbucks!” I continued to shout. It struck me that that has to be one of the strangest things you could possibly say to a person to try and calm them down. But in this brave new world, Starbucks meant safety. I started chuckling at the absurdity of it all, despite the situation, and somehow, that seemed to do the trick. She went to all fours and snapped her head from one side to the next, apparently trying to confirm her location. When she caught sight of the barista through the display case glass,(from a very unfortunate angle) she jumped to her feet with a choked “Sweet baby Jesus!” My chuckling turned into a full blown seizure, complete with wheezing, snot bubbles, the works. I tried to sit down, but only ended up on the floor, unable to breathe, convinced I was about to die from a busted gut.
