NOVEL NEXT 73. End Volume 2
It took him awhile to get back the upper East side. Even though it was only about nine blocks of travel, they would walk for half an hour, then kill a few mobs then walk some more. It felt the big cathartic could be doing the same old same old. Even though he was getting mostly Pizza rack cards once it got inside of the neighborhood, it was clearly demarcated where turtle Bay was. He couldn't put it past the system for adhering to human regulations. Neighborhoods, cities, counties, villages those are all human designations. The system had decided that the neighborhood only got this type of mob. The dungeons were all different but the mobs we're all omega rats and pizza rats.
He could see a clear demarcation as to which spawn points had remained pizza rats and which one had remained omega's. Someone from The adventurers guild had gone around with paints and painted targets and written out the stats next to each spawn point.
"I bet you did some of those didn't you," he said as they passed on 42nd avenue and 3rd. They were about to turn north.
"I hit a couple of the ones at the beginning. But after while, we got help. We had to raid a paint store."
Bagel chuckled from atop his mount as they passed by a subway station. "A paint store?"
"It was actually an art supply store that had house paint. We had to find something that would last. It sound like we had the city building department and our disposal to use all their paint. Or the roads department."
"What if we had those things at our disposal?"
"I mean they have a good physical plant. It'd be great place to expand the adventurers guild holdings. Now that we don't need as many storefronts but then they'd be going further away."
Kate paused at the intersection. Bagel checked both ways. There were no cars going.
"Honestly, the United nations complex is right there if you wanted a supervillain lair. I doubt that they're still open in this. It's technically another country."
Several drones flew past them. Bright black and white the patterns were unmistakable. They had been Ashley's designs.
They passed by, then doubled back and waggled at the pair. Ashley had clearly seen them. Clear enough that Kate visibly relaxed.
"She has been worried. I didn't want to say anything but you know her."
"I wouldn't say that I know her. We have a good working relationship, I guess," Bagel said.
Kate shrugged. "There isn't my time for a third space. Either you're eating, drinking, sleeping or out there doing something to fix the world. She chose leading the guild. I don't begrudge her of her choice."
There was something else there below the surface that Bagel was keen to glom onto. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, an Omega rat spawned in front of them.
He drew his hand. Bagel had left one cook and one worker at the store leaving him enough energy to summon one more card. In his hand he had a heal, a refresh and a pizza rat.
He scowled as he played it, sending it into the fray. The pizza rat was not going to be a match for it's evolved form. Thankfully, Kate had all of her energies available and all four of her slots. There was a park that a person did a fourth creature out in the fields. He hadn't taken it but he thought about it. It was more important for him to take the half off work. Far more important as in more important to every person around him. The pressure was intense and he only knew about it because Janet had told him.
He didn't tell anybody. It wasn't like you could tell somebody's level without a special scanning skill, but they knew, or at least they thought they did.
But the official word that he was giving everybody was that instead of a fifty percent discount, it was a twenty five percent discount, and he was going to use a difference for his own projects.
Whether people believed him that was not his problem, but that just meant that he had to pretend that he was still short on cash. It was easy enough when instead of needing a bank, he could just store it within himself. He's in the system. Credits were just a value that the system assigned to you based off of how many back and forth you had, at least according to Janet. The real power was what he could do with credits.
To that end, he was thinking about several projects that he could take on to make things easier. The first of which was to eliminate the barriers between himself and the money that the city collected as bonds.
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Kate's mob took down the Omega rat.
Bagel breathe the sigh of relief, despite never having been in doubt that it was going to happen. He knew what he was about. They wouldn't have traveled together if they hadn't been able to take care of this. All around, people on their shifts for the adventurers guild were kicking down there on my rats. Most of them already had three or four mobs out and their hands are raised with hard floating above them.
The backs of the cards were showing, always the same slate black.
"Ashley's going to be happy to see that we're safe. I don't think that she's controlling the drones himself, but probably Khaleesi is."
"Did they finish work on the situation room yet?"
It was an open secret that the drones needed a place to launch from and a place from which their controllers could lounge. That was what they had been installing just prior to the dungeon surge. With the amount of people willing to be drone pilots and spotters, there quickly was a waiting list for that duty. Once hour as a drone pilot paid one credit, something that Bagel wasn't too proud to hear. The economy was in shambles already.
He was going to have to do something to keep the value of the land and money he has worked so hard on.
It was his, right?
He had set up the shop. He had stayed and began to sell cards to people.
He deserved what was coming to him.
He was, after all, the handsomest boy.
---
The situation room was finally slowing down as Khaleesi and Ashley entered. Once the three o clock rush was over it was a cool half hour until more mobs would spawn.
Their objective? Provide overwatch.
"So it's been up two days," Ashley said. "I am more than happy to make you the secretary in charge of the assignments but are you sure that you can handle it?"
"I can handle it. I have worked retail."
"You worked at a store that has basically automated away all need for human interactions."
"You're saying things but all I am hearing is 'girl boss' paradigm shifter'."
Ashley crossed her arms. Khaleesi was trying to push her buttons, but every girl in her situation would be chafing.
Paolo and Liza didn't want her out of the apartment.
"You keep sneaking out. This is the compromise so your parents don't kill you, or me."
"I would very much like for your parents not to kill either one of us if at all possible."
Ashley let the discussion go into the minor details of how they were doing, shift change and how they were training up people. A lot of the time spent working the drone was just boring time that could have been handled by an artificial intelligence and days gone by. But without a special artificial intelligence dedicated that task, this was not going to happen. And that was why they brought Ashley in.
"So if you're willing to make another Janet, or several janets we can have them do some of the flying for us. It just means that it's easier for us to dedicate and artificial intelligence to scanning for things. Then it is for us to dedicate someone for 8 hours, especially when we can have several humans here to verify it or to be a rapid response Force."
"I'm going to have to look and see how much salvage I have. It'll probably mean I need to get rid of the rest of the cars in that above ground parking deck. But by this point, this is more important than that. If they want to go home and they left their car in the parking lot, they can just fly under their own now."
"Putting a man on an unmanned aerial vehicle? Wild."
Things were shipping up. Ashley could see that everything that you put into this was going to working out a bit better than he'd hoped.
"I think this is good. So let's advertise it. Bring the whole neighborhood in. And then I'll make you a little salvage AI if I can."
Khaleesi beamed.
---
With no one in attendance save for Janet, there was no one to observe the final acquisition on the city blocks that was between 2nd and 3rd avenue and 44th and 45th Street. But 2 months after the system had taken over his life, Bagel was not the proud owner of the entire city block. No Mobs would spawn under his control.
The only record that remained of his triumph were the minutes of the meeting. The minutes and the smile on his face as he checked his bank balance and found an extra 10,000 credits in there.
Bagel grinned a toothy grin.