Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

The tunnel was long and almost a straight drop down. Kate was first, leading with her floating psychic type tentacle balloon. The summon could carry her, though it only lasted two minutes. The dungeon would take far longer to drop through. Summon time, not usually a factor kept the women together.

"I'm going to need some help here," Kate said. "How would they expect us to do this? This is like an endless tunnel downwards!"

"Maybe they're expecting experienced deck bearers?" Ashley was riding her gentrifier crab. The sides of the wall was not straight up and down.

A bus sized earthworm burst through a wall and then straight through the other side.

"Fuck this," Kate said.

Ashley could not agree more. The two women prepared to fight with the giant boss sized earthworms, slowly moving back towards the aperture there they come from.

"Yeah I think this is a fuck this moment. Let's head back through the portal and make our way to the bar," she said, spurring her gentrifier crab to motion along the dungeon wall.

Another earthworm passed close by but far enough that it wasn't really a question of whether they were going to be hit or not. It looked like up close. It really was a giant leathery reptile. Something about having so much skin so roughly pushed around. It made it just that much less official looking and more cartoonish.

That neither one of them had seen it before was probably a clue that it was powerful or new. It had been twelve days since the system arrived and this was the morning. Things could happen but this particular monster seemed a bit stronger than the average that they had met.

Ashley wondered idly if she would be able to get it with her gentrifier crab. Her version I was a little bit weaker than the regular one due to being salvaged mob using her card Forge but it was still a strong one. It just required extra energy to maintain in the mob form. She didn't have that much energy to spare, but she would definitely see if it could take the earthworm toe to toe. The main problem she was facing was that she was sitting on it and that was a interesting place to be when two giant beasts decided to want to fight.

So her real idea was to take the time and find a way to outsmart the potentially dumb creatures.

"They can't be that big and not be a little bit smart right? They could be dumb. So what does that mean?" Ashley found herself yelling to Kate.

"Do you want to bet on them being smart or do you want to bet on them being dumb? I would bet they're going to be smart and hope to be pleasantly surprised."

"God you sound so hot when you say things like that," Ashley said.

Kate dodged an earthworm. Thankfully it was only moving at a slow cross town speed. If the ground didn't slope more than a water park slide then she might be able to outrun it. "Stop sounding dumb. You can lust after me when we get out of here."

"Who do they think is going to do this type of dungeon and survive?" Ashley yelled.

"Probably some parkour fanatics? Or that falcon?" Kate yelled back.

"Guys this is making me very uncomfortable," Meatball said, atop Janet two. "Are dungeons always this argumentative?"

"This one is particularly rough," Kate said, dodging another earthworm.

"Just move out of it's lane," Ashley said.

Kate gritted her teeth. "I have tried that. They are making new holes and flying through."

"If they keep making holes... I worry about the structural integrity of this place," Meatball said. "What the heck is structural integrity?"

If I had to that moment to start rumbling also it was hungry for something. Better not having slowly moved back towards the entrance and was about ready to call it.

"Guys, I think that this one's going to run its own course. Let's step outside."

There was no argument from Kate or Meatball as they went back outside and waited for about two minutes.

"Well I thought that was a very interesting dungeon setup. It was definitely meant to kill people very handily," Kate said. "Now what I have like a flat Meadow full of puppies that I could pet and free candy. Yes of course everybody wants that. I just didn't get that because of course the system was going to mess up."

Ashley yawned. When dungeons were proven to be too hard for people to do or taking too long, they were being called in now to take care of them. This time, they were going to be doing it without vehicles health though they had requested Meatball. Meatball was the newest addition to the guild, having just gotten a membership early that morning.

In fact, it had been so early that it had actually been late the night before when Bagel rolled in with her. Bagel had opted out of this particular fact finding quest.

By now, the adventurers Guild had a standard operating procedure with a new dungeon. Scouts the first scout would send somebody in real quick to ascertain the approximate level of the dungeon and if it felt like hey anything could do it. Then they were report back. If it was a higher team then they would indicate that it what it would need and then if it wasn't extremely high theme then they would not even put it up for a Bounty. They would select people to do it.

In this way, Ashley, Kate and meatball were acting as scouts trying to give meatball her first experience with dungeon and doing a bit of a shakedown for her.

"Just destroying one of those earthworms give me so much experience, meatball said." I'm so ready for it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"To have it chopped off, Kate said."

"I know we promised we would give you some experience working this, but I just don't think that it's worth it to lose you the day after you are awakened. Especially since we want to get you some good cards."

Bagel have been nice and giving her a better deck lineup when she had decided to join the adventurers guilds. Eden So her deck was all over the place. They'd had her train against some of the pizza rats that spawned on the street. It wasn't perfect but it was the best they could do. Give him the circumstances. The city needed every single deck barrier. We could just to do the upkeep of not letting itself be overrun.

"So tell us about jellyside layer. I know Bagel said that it was something, but what's your impression?"

"Kate! She was freaking born yesterday."

Kate shrugged. "Look we are just trying to help you out. We definitely need a better way to fly about."

"Wings would be great," Meatball said. "Thumbs too, but I will survive."

Meatball floated in a lazy circle around Kate. Kate made her way to the wall where Ashley was.

"About to time out?" Ashley asked.

Kate nodded, pulling up her hand. Three cards floated there, all facing away from Ashley. She was pretty sure that Kate had not drawn her second flying card. That would have just made things easier.

Life in this dungeon would not be easy.

Two giant earthworms smashed into each other. They were on a collision course by the time they were leaving their respective sides of the shaft.

"Well that's fucked," Ashley said. "Can we leave please?"

The aperture was right there but...They were not moving fast enough. "Crab travel is really quite inconvenient, but I supposed you humans will ride anything."

"I want to not be in the dungeon at three o'clock."

It was an unspoken rule that things happened around 3:00 on certain days. This being the 12th day since the system arrived, everyone was expecting something big. That end, the turtle Bay adventurous Guild had asked all deck bearers to be on standby for whatever shenanigan is. The system was pushing out. Indeed, 2/3 of the 17th precinct was going to be on duty that time. A number that they shared with the Turtleback adventurers Guild just so that they understood the severity of the situation.

The city was going to go into a minor lockdown, so then it really hadn't happened since hurricane Sandy or their covid response. The 12 days between would have been normal and this new reality had shaking out so many things in society that actually wasn't even able to really put her finger on all of those things.

For her if she was working a job and then the job had ended and now she was that popped out onto 45th Street in between 1st and 2nd avenue and doing her best to keep upright on top of her Ginger fire crab.

" You know what I think. Let's just say long enough to get me a sample these earthworms so I can make my own and then let's get the heck out of here, " Ashley said.

" I have never liked you more than that particular sentence. Just talk charcuterie to me instead."

I suppose you humans are going to tell you what charcuterie means after this? Because I have no plans really.

The two humans in question gave the newly awakened cat a book that could only spell it out.

Ashley Side." Of course we're going to take care of you and meatball. And if you're not going to be working at the Bodega, you might as well work at the adventures Guild until you get on your feet... or is it paws?"

A giant earthworm craning through the walls interrupted them as it slammed and then stopped in the air right beneath them. Fairmont sent one of her scrap drones, a flying tentacle monster variant that looks like a balloon with arms down to take a sample up so that she could make her own.

Instantly, she had a sense for how much it was going to take 4 for a deck bearer to summon one.

"This is a four energy card, she said. It does 100 damage. Damage holy shit."

"Holy shit is right. Four energy? Some of the cards are fucking busted. Who the hell is going to spend all their leveling pips to get that much energy?"

Ashley had not seen another card that required that much energy.

It felt like a lot of work. I haven't put into that and she was thinking about the kind of person that would spend all of their energy on a single summon. Probably some crazy tourists would love it but it didn't seem practical even if it did a lot of damage getting to that point and summoning it and with how dumb they kind of looked?

It was ridiculous how much work they'd put into solving the cards and their problems with it relative to how much use it had.

Kate leapt off of her summon onto the gentrifier crab. "The deck wiki is going to love this one."

"You humans speak about this as if it's a thing that you should be proud about. And from what vehicle said it is a point of national pride or species pride or something..."

"That's because it is. And we all think that as well so might as well live up to the ideals that we espouse from time to time. You know the humans are a very social animal and not only that they evolved hunting together and..." Ashley said, spurring her mount onward.

" I think that we can set the history later lessons later. We've got some bigger worms board on the hook over here and all I keep seeing is them flying out And doing the damage to these walls-"

One of the earthworms flew past them and threw another wall. They hadn't seen more than three at once.

"-How is this place holding up to all this? Where is the structural integrity coming from or is it some more system fuckery?"

The unspoken note that it was his and f****** did not need to be said aloud. They just hope that dungeon is passable and in most cases they were easily passable. It was just the edge cases where they need to throw on a good team like their own to actually get through something. Getting meatball in on this as a training run was a idea that they had played around with for a bit as well.

They needed as many trained deck bearers as possible in order to combat the rising tide of mobs.

---

It took them several minutes to get out but Ashley knew who she was going to call to help clean up this mess. It was definitely going to be that peregrine falcon.

Once they got any bird on board then they could use that as it flew around in the air. And then possibly they might be able to find other falcons that they could recruit to help save the mission. The only question was how are they going to give the other falcons the cards that they needed to become deck bearers and that was one that they had left unsolved as of yet they all knew

A flying deck bearer was worth a lot, especially in the battle. It would have been incredible. They had been able to get a hummingbird as peregrine falcons tended to need to move around a lot in battle and need a lot of space, but that was a problem for somebody else. They couldn't manage the adventurers Guild and take care of recruiting.

That was another issue.

"We haven't had any sign ups today. And it was low yesterday," Khaleesi said from behind the counter. The teen looked up at her as if she was going to solve this issue. She wasn't. She wanted to but she couldn't. She had done all she could to bring in his many people from nearby as possible.

"We didn't get any police officers from any other precinct to come by? Any firefighters? Nurses?"

Khaleesi shook her head. "Every single officer in the 17th precinct has received a full deck of cards. Every single person that volunteered to become a deck bearer... under our rules has."

The Guild now had a small stock of cards decks. The only people that were waiting on cards were ones that were from other adventurous guilds. They were going to be sending groups of adventurers over to pick up decks but the girls had realized quickly that that was going to make them a Target, so they had requested that the deck bears was arrived directly.

There was now a street value for each of the cards that they had. This meant that somebody wanted to buy them. That wasn't Bagel. He would still buy every card that came his way if he had the credits.

It was now that he had to figure out if he was using his credits for buying up more blocks of land or buying up more cards. It was never going to be easy for him.