Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

Kate was adamant that she needed to eat before she could even discuss the business. Bagel will give her that point. After all, he'd just become a business cat recently himself. If she knew something, perhaps he could sell that. People wanted to run these dungeons, didn't they?

When she was halfway through her western omelette, she looked up at him, surprised. "I got a hit."

That could only mean one thing.

"Where is it?" Bagel focused on her.

"It feels like... it's very close." She pointed back toward the building next door.

It couldn't be. Could it?

She wouldn't joke about that. Bagel gave her the requisite amount of side eye, just in case. "You don't think it's the same place as the last time, do you?"

Kate shrugged. If they were going to do another dungeon run, he was going to want the other girl to join them or somebody else with more of a deck. He would need more help.

Janet was great, but she didn't do much damage and so did his cook. Compared to how much either of the girls did, he would need to figure out a way to deal more damage without taking more of a risk.

Kate got up and began pacing. She moved erratically. She took ten steps forward and then she took five steps away and then she took ten steps in a different direction and each time she was pointing through the counter as if pointing to the building behind it. Briefly she went into a half circle around the two displays.

When someone came into the bodega, the counter greeted them first on their left where Bagel had restocked the candy several times. Behind the counter was the wall that touched up against the building. They had gone through the dungeon there the day before.

"I'm perfectly okay with not doing another dungeon right now. I don't know that I feel ready for it myself. Especially not without some help."

Bagel thought about it. If this was going to be his life, selling cards and minding the shop, then he was going to need more cards.

People would only sell them so many cards and they were unlikely to sell the rarer cards. So far, they could only get these in the dungeon. It made sense for him to go through for his shop to be the place for people to buy cards.

But on the other paw, he'd only really been awakened for three days, so he didn't even know what he wanted. He was kind of in the moment. Planning for the future felt so foreign to him.

Kate shrugged. "I'm planning on doing a bunch of dungeons as fast as I can. And getting lots of cards and maybe upgrading my deck, though I don't think that's going to do much. Aside from the heal card, I haven't really wanted to swap anything in or out."

"Hey Janet, what happens if we don't go clear the dungeon?" Bagel asked his floating drone.

"The current understanding is that in time, the dungeon will overflow, and then you'll have to clear the things that came out of it first, before you can get into it."

In the brief silence that followed, several taxis honked. For all that had changed, some things never did.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Kate huffed. "So, if we don't clear dungeons, then they're going to pour out, eventually? Well, that changes my plans. So many are popping up as I pass by them I had to turn off the notifications."

Bagel was trying to test the limits of his knowledge and use all of Janet's knowledge. To the best of his understanding, she meant it when she said that she was there to help. Kate getting notifications was a useful skill for a card to have.

"You see, the thing about dungeons is that the way they've been before is like that, but as far as how the system implements this now, I am not entirely sure. But if they're popping up and you're finding them, then you should be the ones to reap the rewards of that, especially if you plan it currently. But also, I got this information from the system and that new website."

"What your AI is saying is that we have to get them while they're hot. Otherwise, we might miss them, or they might start victim reaction, is what I'm hearing?"

"That's about right."

For the short-term, he would have to clear the dungeons around his place. Maybe he would find a dungeon locating card.

He needed to figure out what was going on and make sure the store had enough money for all these contingencies.

Life hit him hard, but he was going to hit back now, starting today. Probably after a nice little nap because everyone needed a nice little nap, didn't they?

"How long do you think we have?" Bagel said. "Until they overflow?"

Janet beeped several times, softly. "Unknown."

It would have been great if they could tell him when the Middle Eastern place across the street was open so that he could go there and get his new favorite meal. In fact, he might ask Kate to do that.

"If you're going to do another dungeon, I want a favor. Do you think you could take care of something for me?"

She straightened up and gave him the look. People didn't really hang out at bodegas, so her being here for long enough to eat and then strategize was a little different from what he expected. Maybe he needs to expand his operations to have a little place for them to eat. There are places in the city where you could eat outdoors. He wasn't one of them.

He barely had enough room to have them all. Do some work out there. He would either have to lose some space or open up a place inside to have a sitting area for eating.

"It depends on the favor, but what is it?"

"There's a place across the street that sells something that tastes so delicious that it's been on my mind constantly since yesterday. I was hoping that you might help me by going over there and getting it for me. I would, of course, pay for this and pay for the thing. It's just that it's hard for me to leave the shop, but out of the reason."

Kate for her part, obliged. It was a quick turnaround from her getting money to her via his drone assistant and then her skipping across the street to get something and return it.

It was almost suspicious of how delicious those things were. He wanted to go himself, but a group of customers had decided that now was rush hour and he had to pull his second cook card out to help manage the rush.

"Boss, I think we worked it out now," Janet said. The drone was holding still in the air, rather than moving about. "We can buy the building directly from the system. The city is now integrated, and you can just…head to the terminal. We've worked it out. The building itself costs one thousand credits."

Bagel headed over to the terminal and he could see that he was going to need to do some reading. Of course. "How many credits do we have?"

"We have one thousand and five hundred."

The only way that he got anything was by other people buying his cards and killing other mobs. Then the ones that killed mobs and got credits could turn those into buying cards. He was going to need to make his shop a bit more attractive to guests.

"What if we want to buy the one next door?"

"That would probably be about the same. The exchange rate... well let's not worry about that right now."

There was only so many new things that his brain could handle at once. "Can we buy this building and see what happens? Let's do that."