NOVEL NEXT 67. Clean Sweep
"There's absolutely no way that we're ever doing another clown dungeon," Bagel said, shuddering. With the amount of lipstick and makeup on the mobs far more than the mascot mobs from times square, the clown dungeon had really driven home one of his deep-seated internal fears that he'd never really realized. He didn't like clowns. As scary as humans were, thinking that they were the top predator in the world, clowns?
Clowns were scarier.
There was something about a predator that actually hunted for the meat. Clowns did not hunt from me. They hunted some other esoteric reasons that made Bagel cheddar every time they'd take one down. Because each time they took one down it had a mouse that was full of blood as if it had been gnawing on a fresh human corpse.
It was an affectation of the system giving it that he knew and he made a mental note to never actually use any of those cards in combat. In fact, he was pretty sure that he wouldn't find any buyers for those decks.
"All these clown cards are going to come into a deck that no one's going to want to buy and that's when we're going to have a real problem," Kate said.
"What do you mean a real problem?" Bagel said.
"When people stop taking decks just because of the aesthetics? That's one we are going to have to start mandating that that people become deck bearers. We live in a society," she said, pushing her mob forward under the big top.
Her floating mob knocked another acrobat down, the fall damage killing it instantly and a card spawned above it.
---
Ambi-acrobatNormal, one energy 60 HP
Slap- This mob has a 50% chance to deal 20 damage twice with each attack.
Weakness: Plant
---
It was taunting them before it got slapped down and bagel was quite all right with that. The large circular domed tent had more than enough room for several mobs. And this is one of the few times that they'd seen mobs along a theme running in the same area.
---ClownNormal, one energy60 HP
Pie 20 DamageWeakness: Electricity
---
And it wasn't even that the clowns themselves are particularly good. There were just so many of them that they'd had to cycle through their decks several times.
Without the swarm aspect of Ashley's forge power, they would not have been able to keep up with it, which is probably why they have been chosen for this mission and definitely why they'd ask bagel and Kate to come around. Kate's area of effects totem turtle was actually able to hit most of the mobs inside of the big tent at the same time.
In order to do that, it had to be in the center.
That meant that they had to be in the center. So they had a circle of spawned mobs covering them during the two minutes. It would take for the totem total to take every single one of the mobs out.
When it finally did, he got the notification he had been waiting for.
*Level Up. Perk available!*
"Yessss!" He said, as roughly forty mobs all crumpled into dust. He already had several ideas for what he wanted to pick.
He slammed down the option.
*Deep discounts. Items bought through the system are now half the listed price.*
Long term this was going to save him and he was all about it. He now has enough money that the ever increasing need was going to be...
He focused on the battle.
Another group of clowns barged in.
He didn't even have a chance to celebrate.
There might be time later.
He wanted an area of effect totem but knew that it was going to come with additional responsibilities. He was full up on those.
Bagel summoned another cook. It jumped right into the fray. "Knives out."
Janet was doing her damnedest to keep herself occupied by scanning the rest of the dungeon. Periodically she would show back up and then she would give them a report. She did so at that moment, flashing orange.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"Ten percent remain boss!" Janet beeped, the voice nearly a yell over everything.
He focused on his grip on the mount that he hadn't ordered into battle. It was still at full hit points. Now that she said it was 10% left. He was ready to call it. The humans kept emphasizing one point over and over again. It was when you thought that you could let that your guard down in a dungeon; that was the most dangerous moment.
And that was when it showed up. The clown car. Bail couldn't help but Chuck a little bit of the idea of a car full of clowns. Fortunately or unfortunately, the clown car was about the size of a taxi cab divided in two. Fortunately, Ashley's swarm mob had stopped it from opening up.
Unfortunately, the smell of dead clown was the same whether they were human before or not.
At least this will go away when they left. They just need to get out of there and with a concentrated firepower of the entire team, the only mob on the field, the clown car was done within two minutes.
So long as the smell didn't linger on him he would be just fine with it.
"We done?" Ashley said.
"Yes," Kate groaned.
Bagel couldn't leave fast enough. He was out the door, way ahead of the girls.
Has he got out of the dungeon, he thanked his lucky stars that he was once again a free cat unencumbered by the need to do human things. He checked himself over, making sure that he hadn't sustained any poisonous damage or scratches.
Then he stopped short.
There was one major problem.
The clowns smell had not gone away.
---
"What do you mean we had to turn off the hot water?"
Bagel was not happy with the status quo in Lisa's apartment. There was only so many times that he'll be told that he was going to have to take a cold bath before the tears came out.
It might have been the clowns. It might have been the dungeon surge. It might have been that they asked him to do another dungeon or at least be on standby.
The two comedians were that his store needed to be open so he could make enough food for people. He was more than willing to go without being paid because he was doing his restock ability to keep the bodega fully ready to go.
At the same time, they knew that he was level twenty five. They knew that he had strong cards and that he would back them up if they asked the right way. They also knew that he smelled like dead clown.
They had soaps and laundry change into. He had a layer of fur that upon first glance would be easy to clean.
At least that's what he thought. But ten minutes of cold water and scrubbing had proven that the smell was deeper than he thought.
"This is torture. How do people live like this."
"You just have to embrace it. You're going to get wet. You're going to get soapy and..." Liza said.
"...And is there any way that I could not be in the sink for this?"
"Sorry, it's the best place for you right now. Easy train and I can't bend over to clean you the way you need to be cleaned."
He didn't want to be cleaned. He wanted to be clean and apparently these were two different things. At the top of his mind now he was thinking about how I would get his own bath installed. He would make sure that it was going to be installed at least 3 or 4 ft off the ground so that whoever was going to be his scrubber on Judy that day would be able to do it without having to complain about their back. He hadn't thought about how much humans relied on their backs. Apparently they heard from time to time just because they were not so life and muscular.
Maybe they needed a stretching routine. Maybe he could charge money for that. A quick look at human anatomy in comparison to his own showed him that that was probably not going to be the case. They didn't have tails and their knees bent weird.
The best case scenario was probably them just getting more active, but most of the humans that he talked to on a regular basis are already more active than they'd ever been for most of their lives.
Who was he to interrupt their little spiraling in the apocalypse for his own game. If they didn't stay limber enough to keep ahead of the mobs, that was on them, not him.
"I think at some point in time what we need to talk about getting you to a groomer so that you don't have hair that gets way too long. I don't know when shedding season is, but do you know if you're the kind of cat that sheds?"
Bagel was going to have to check the system. Shannon would know the answer to the question. He tried to think about the year before and if he shed during that year and how that was. He didn't recall if he had or not.
That was another thing that humans were going to make him have to think long and hard about.
"At some point in time. You're going to have to admit that I can't get you any more clean than you are right now. There's going to have to be a decision made."
"Yes, but while we don't want to make a decision prematurely? There's a small chance that we don't have to go anywhere."
"There's a small chance but you know they're going to call you up if they need you. Of course you have to buy as much land as you can with all the credits we just got, but that's besides the point."
Janet was there. The rest of his energy was devoted to the three people running the shop below him.
"What are my options," he said to the AI.
"Boss with the amount of credits we just got we can do clean sweep all the way down 45th Street straight to 3rd avenue."
She displayed a 3D image of the block as it was with every single building all the way down.
There was a lot of negative space above some of the buildings including the first two buildings he'd bought behind the Bodega. The rest of them were more high-rise friendly. He was not going to be able to do much to add rooms to those buildings, but he damn sure was going to try.
"Plus you need to eat something. You're going to catch your death out there."
"Liza, I am soaking wet and sudsy. I'm trying to figure out which buildings to buy."
She waved her hands.
"Just buy the next one and then the next one like you planned."
He paused.
"You know logically I you know I had an idea that I would have to get clean and all that but..."
"You didn't expect to have to clean clown meat out of your fur?"
"I didn't expect to have to clean clown meat out of my fur."
"It happens to the best of us."
"I didn't expect so many clown dungeons though. There's an appropriate amount of clown dungeons and that is zero in my neighborhood and I would appreciate it if it stayed that way."
The Brazilian woman nodded absent-mindedly as if this was a totally normal thing for him to say. Two months ago he wasn't able to talk. So whenever this conversation was, it was off the rails to begin with.
It wasn't like he was going to be able to complain about the clown dungeons to somebody. There was no system admin coming down to take his tickets about this.