Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

The inside dungeon was, of course, a parking garage, if not a different one.

Bagel was the third deck bearer to enter the dungeon. Of course, he would let McTavish and Partho go first. Humans were good meat shields. His mount didn't technically count as a human, though.

Everything looked just about the same, but the color was way off and there was no way to exit out onto the street level. Where there had been something previously in the real world, here in the dungeon was just a blank wall, approximating the exit.

They were halfway down on the first ramp, enough to still see where the exit would be. Bagel was wondering where the mobs would be hiding. If all dungeons were the same like this, then that meant that they adapted to it or vice versa. He couldn't predict it.

Ashley brought her swarm forward. She had to see that there was no other way to go. They needed to see if there was another exit.

There was no exit, but as the swarm got deeper into the parking garage dungeon, large mobs popped up.

Bagel advanced behind the two men. He felt like he was abandoning the girls, but Kate resolutely kept her turtle with them. Hopefully, the area of effect spell was going to affect mobs underneath them as well this time.

New mobs popped out from behind cars, because of course a parking lot would have a ton of cars. They looked like lizards, and only three of them spawned. The swarm nearly overcame them moments later.

Someone could drive down into the parking garage, then circle around to a second lower level, because of its design.

This gave a winding pathway where otherwise it would be just a straight line. Because they had to dig straight down and they only had the size of a building to work with, it had to be compact.

This also meant that mobs began coming from around the corner.

"Hey, do you know if there are different dungeons?" Partho said.

"I've only done one dungeon," Kate said, clearly trying to step back.

Ten concrete lizards stalked out from around the corner to join the two that had already started fighting. Several loud bangs rang out, the sound, unfortunately, echoing. Bagel's ears shrunk back.

*BANG BANG BANG*

Bagel urged his mount forward. Already, there was a mass of summons fighting dungeon mobs. Several lights blinked on and off about them. The con edison sign blared neon. The large chamber echoed in the dark, a reminder that the dungeon was something created and not human made. It still felt empty without people.

"Was that entirely necessary?" Ashley yelled.

Bagel yowled. In his haste to fire on the mobs, Partho had killed at least three of them and was sighting down another.

"Would you prefer they overrun us or something?" Partho yelled.

"That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying, warn a bitch!"

"I don't tend to agree with Ashley, but she's right," Kate yelled.

It seemed that the humans were still at odds despite having won a dungeon together, but Bagel wasn't one to comment. He simply took advantage of it when one more concrete lizard went down. One of his rats was attacking a concrete lizard, and it folded. Then he moved in, closing a gap that opened up.

In less than a minute, they dispatched the concrete lizards that had formed. Bagel checked his log and saw that he'd got three points for killing those lizards. That wasn't a bad haul for about 5 minutes of work. However, if he considered that, he could also get some cards depending on their distribution process... Then that math got a little more complicated.

The appearance of twelve concrete lizards, no less than a minute later while they sorted through the cards, didn't help. McTavish and Partho had already claimed one of each of the lizard cards and put them into their decks. Both were removing a pizza rat just for the variety. None of the concrete lizards had dropped anything useful that wasn't a concrete lizard summon card and they were all one energy card roughly equivalent to any of his worker cards.

Bagel hadn't grown attached to his deck of cards, but he did like the familiarity and the fact that the pizza rats started with 80 hit points versus the 50 that the concrete lizards started with. He mused they would only be useful with buffs or in a group. Otherwise, concrete lizards were not going to be a thing that worked long-term for him.

As soon as the concrete lizards marched back out, the group reformed the same way they had before. The summons were trying to encircle them or at least form a battle line that the lizards couldn't get past easily. Between the swarm, the many summons and his mount, they formed nearly a wall from one side to the other of the parking garage. They had an advantage in that they were up the ramp of the attackers but other than that, it wasn't like Bagel could go in and sneak attack someway. Unless he could. In the back of his mind he willed Janet to move up and encircle them and try to hit them with lasers and she complied.

Janet, in his mind could deal about ten damage every five seconds which meant that she could probably killed one on her own in half a minute.

To complicate things further, for those poor defenseless lizards. Ashley's version of Janet was now aloft and dealing roughly the same damage from a smaller, more compact version of the AI.

Bagel idly wondered if her AI had the same suite of tools that his did. It would only be appropriate, right? Otherwise, he felt like she was going to be getting this short end of the stick and he didn't like that. He liked it when people got what they deserved and, especially with dogs, sometimes they got what was coming to them.

Between the AI taking attacks of opportunity in the center and the area of effect turtle, this wave went down in about a minute as well.

Then another wave spawned. This was going to keep happening. He looked to the humans to see if they were feeling the same way that he was.

Bagel decided at that moment that he wasn't going to retreat. Even though there was an open doorway out of the dungeon, he put it out of his mind. He needed the points, he needed the cards and he damn sure needed these guys to not spill out onto the streets.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Then, one lizard dropped from above him, surprising him. He hadn't been paying attention. Humans never looked up, or, at least, only the new ones did when they were looking at the surrounding skyscrapers.

Bagel was always thinking in three dimensions about what a cool way it would be for him to get up some place or off to some place.

The lizard in question was deftly subdued, probably because of the tower turtle. He was definitely going to get one of those things as soon as he could. That was such a useful skill right there. If you didn't have. Janet, and then he realized with a bit of horror that Janet hadn't noticed the concrete lizard either. Bagel looked up and for the first time in a long time, he knew genuine fear. Dozens of concrete lizards were on the ceiling, still moving towards them upside down.

Bagel did what any rational cat would do and freaked the fuck out.

"They're on the ceiling!" There was not a subtle bone in his body at that exact moment. There were only a bunch of bones that were afraid of being crushed. While the lizards might be weak in comparison, they were all heavy.

The ranks were as they were, the tactics changed.

"Defense!" Mctavish yelled. They began a slow maneuver as each of the deck bearers, we organized their mobs to defend them from the assault.

Unfortunately, so far, they only had a handful of things that could defend from an aerial attack. Janet was one, the drifting balloon was another, and that was when a deep blue colored lizard appeared on the field. Partho had recalled one of his summons and replaced it with one of the brand new lizard cards.

"I knew this was going to come in handy," the police officer said. At the ceiling and Bagel would have bet that the man would have tried to boost the lizard up. If he could. Instead, the lizard just ran off and attempted to climb back where Janet was.

This movement invigorated their assault against both the ceiling lizards and a new group of floor lizards. Bagel cursed his luck, but as the notifications came in, he had slain quite a few lizards. And then, a group of at least 20 dropped from the ceiling as every lizard charged towards the totem turtle.

There had to be almost 2 ft of lizard as the 3 ft long and 1 ft high mobs piled up one after the other after being killed. Indeed, once the ones from the ceiling had dropped, the next wave from the floor was approaching them by climbing over the previous ones.

There was something about the dungeon rules that meant that the enemies stayed there for far longer than Bagel thought they would. Perhaps it was a little quirk of the system? Or perhaps it was the dungeon itself. Trying to have a little of fun with them. Bagel knew it was about to happen, in time, that lizards would get to that turtle totem and they would all be in trouble.

"We had to protect the turtle," Ashley yelled, having the same idea. Idea. It's the only thing that's keeping us from being overrun!

Bagel would have argued that Janet was also doing her part, as well as the tentacle balloon that was their last line of defense. Blue mob. Mob lizard had gone to the ceiling and was now doing its best to keep them all safe. It took a hit and Bagel pulled out a potion card, tossing the healing straight up to the mob. That was one that he needed to be alive.

It looked like lizards only did ten damage with each attack.

He would have checked one lizard, but he didn't. After that wave of about 20 more, there was a minute where nothing happened and the entire team just sat there. Panting.

Partho was reloading his sidearm when the next round arrived.

Bagel was not a fan of loud explosive noises right next to him. He didn't know how he could express this distaste constructively to the man who was literally saving his tail in front of him. Perhaps they might have a conversation later over some cat food. Or perhaps the bridge between them was too far for human cat diplomacy to gap.

Regardless, he would find himself on his feet. No matter what happened. He had all nine of his lives and he intended to use every single One to its fullest.

---

Ashley deployed her forge, using it to take all the materials from the dungeon spawn mobs. If nothing else, she will get some concrete mobs out of this. She already had a sense of how to turn that into a Gentrifier crab and unless the forge was misleading her. She would have a new swarm mob in two minutes.

"If you guys can just hold off for 2 minutes and I can create a swarm mob. That is going to be a higher tier. I have the material now."

The blonde woman swayed in behind Ashley. She laughed, and Ashley turned, catching the smallest, cutest hint of a dimple.

She was not focused on the cuteness of a party member at that exact moment. But all she could do was direct her swim around. She clearly was going to need to make some more aerial or flying mobs in her swarm, and she was guessing that she could use that same material to make another one.

To her surprise, Kate hadn't used her own tentacle balloon, even though she had clearly disturbed, put it in her deck.

She would have put a past her to have something crazy in reserve. After all, Kate kept spamming area of effect spells.

"The card I'm playing now is going to restore health to all the mobs and its circle. At least only our mobs. So if your mobs are low, rotate them through," Kate said.

Ashley briefly wondered if it would help her out, but she had suffered no hits yet. And then, she felt her knee giveaway behind her as a concrete lizard phase out of stealth mode.

"They're behind us!" Ashley screamed.

She found Kate in between her and the lizard. Kate tried to stab the concrete lizard with a knife that was definitely not street legal.

However, they were in good company, and she doubted the police officer would be mad at a girl with a bowie knife protecting his back.

The thrill of being saved by a strong, tall woman passed through her and she took a moment to appreciate it before she got back up.

"Save me mommy," she whispered.

Looking at her hand, she found that the Church of Fire crab had taken up elastic energy. It would always stay attached to it for a little before the swarm would absorb it and it would be part of their number.

The Gentrifier crab walked around Kate's left side and claw hammered into the previously stealthed lizard.

That part of her swarm dealt with. She turned back to face the wave.

Partho was low in ammunition or conserving the rest as he had stopped firing and just kept directing his mobs around.

She could easily see what he was doing because he was pointing his hands and issuing verbal commands to them as if they were little troops that he was deploying onto the battlefield, which they were.

She held her breath as the last group ended. Expecting that a group of stealth lizards would make their way back. But none did. For a long time, they sat there. She knew it had only been two minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

Every single second in this dungeon felt like a month of her life was being shaved off. Would it even be the same day when they got back out of here? She didn't know. And she was eyeing the aperture to the outside world with a lust that she usually reserved for Yuri manga.

Freedom was so close but yet they needed to finish this dungeon so it would be closed. And there were so many in this block and so many around the community that they were going to have to organize people to go through them.

It was impossible for them to do them all. It was impossible for them to ask, or at least unconscionable, for the girls to do this, even if they had a police escort

Even if they both had guns and training and it all seemed so impossible.

Why did the system come by and tell them they were there to cull their population? Everything about this situation just hurt her brain.