Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

"What do you mean, we lost another drone?"

Bagel, manager of the best bodega in Turtle Bay, shot up.

"It looks like there's a neighborhood with flying mobs that got overrun," Ashley said.

The average height blonde woman spoke with a Midwestern accent. She wore black leggings, a black tank top and a brown vest, packed with supplies. She also sat atop a large crab the size of a city bench.

"Well, make some more then?" Bagel said.

"I'm going to make some more, but I need you to understand that we're looking for more volunteers. We're going to have to push into whatever territory this is. And Bagel... I think it might be Staten Island."

Bagel recoiled in horror. Every mob that we come from Staten Island so far had been a poison or darkness type. That meant that so many of the options that they had to deal with them would involve getting poisoned. Poison damage would kill a normal human within a minute or two. What it would also do would be to make it so that an entire neighbor could be taken out.

"Can we even land there without heavy casualties?" Bagel said.

"If we take the bridge then we can make it. There is also the ferry."

Bagel did not want to take the ferry. But if he had to do it or we had to support people taking the ferry, at least he would go in with his eyes open. Not only was he the handsomes boy on the block, he was probably the richest cat in the city.

"I just I think that the ferry is too far from here. Can we figure out a way to have it land here? Especially if we're going to be sending adventurers guilds people from here to there."

Above them a spherical Droid beeped. Janet, perfectly round drone, was a function of his mantle card. He got it because he dedicated one of his energies to it.

"Boss, if we install a ferry we could put it right up to the Henry Hudson highway. The highway technically is part of the neighborhood. You might as well figure out a way to buy up all the roads between here and 42nd Street."

The Bodega itself was surrounded by a safe zone and every time that he bought more of the roads up, more and more of the neighborhood was safe. But if they were saying that the adventure skill was able to secure the entirety of turtle Bay...

"How sure are we that we're going to have to do this?" Bagel said.

"I'm not saying it's the biggest thing that's going to happen but the mayor is making it a big point point and it's on the news. There's a guild on the other side of the river from Staten Island... The New Jersey side is trying to fight back."

"Well they can have Staten Island if they want it," he said. "We would need someone with a mantle card and a lot of capital to..."

Bingo realize for the first time that Ashley and Janet were staring at him. In a sense, Janet couldn't really stare but she could definitely glimmer or pretend to be emotional. And that was what she was doing right now as she looked at him. No eyes, just a sleek steel interior popped up letting him know that whoever has designed Janet cared more about function than form.

"And I just realized you're going to ask me for money," he said.

"It's a simple deal. We send adventurers over there on a ferry once per day or twice. We send the ferry back with them at the end of the day. They already have a dock there. We just have to build a way to get to the ferry on this side."

She was leaving at the part about where they were going to actually need to get a ferry. And bagel wasn't too up on what was going on with the humans but he was pretty sure that you couldn't just get one. You had to build one or commit some acts of piracy.

"If you think you can get a fairy then I will get Khaleesi to start building. Whatever it is you need out there," Bagel said.

"Excellent. I'm going to have to go and get some of the plans for that, but it looks like I'll be sending a team to secure a ferry... That one looks like it's going to be a fun one and then I need a team to bring it back here which means we need a driver or pilot or whatever the person operates at ferry does."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

All that was to say that he was going to have to figure out a way to get money out of this and it sounded like he was putting an investment down for someone to go do some speculative adventuring in the worst place in the city.

" You want the TSA to bankroll this."

Ashley nodded.

" And you think that by using the adventurers to finance this that we'll be able to reclaim all of Staten Island? At least. Maybe then we'll be able to raise it to the ground."

"We can all dream. It all starts with us figuring out how much we can do and grab him one of those Were-house cards."

The cards that allow people to buy a brand were rare but there was one area of the country that spawned a ton of them that was within 10 hours of driving. The area of course was in a large section of country in West Virginia. That part of the country had no problem buying up land but due to its distance from the new York City, only a few of those cards had made it up. Each one was a treasured part of an important deck that held up society against the countless mobs that spawned all the time.

"All right, I think I'm down for this plan. It's crazy. It's probably not going to work. It's authentically Ashley. I will put down 10,000 credits for this if you need it to fund it."

It wasn't a lot of money. Oh no! Was a lot of money. Killing one mob gave you one credit. But each building cost about 5,000 credits meaning that 5,000 people had to kill one mob individually or 2500 people had to kill one Omega level mob...

It was a good thing and a bad thing that mob spawned every half hour during the day and every hour during the night. Humanity had taken it upon themselves to map out all the places that mobs spawned and especially in turtle Bay. They painted the ground where they did. Up until the point where the roads got bought out and the only mobs that spawned were inside of buildings were not bought up.

Bagel had the unique position of holding a controlling interest in the TSA. The transitional systems authority was a body that the city had chartered in order to combat the encroachment by all the new mobs that had appeared when the system was initiated. The city charter led him taking money with the promise of paying back in bonds later. The entire purpose of him taking money or credits was so that he could buy a plan on behalf of the city to keep the city safe. Thus far, he got an entire city block.

It wasn't enough in the long run but it was something. And not only was it something, it was something that was growing because of the tenacity of the humans behind it. He'd expected humans to fight over resources or waste their time doing pointless things fighting each other but they had all been very m The one thing that was going to keep humans surviving and living on the future was working together to defeat as many mobs as they could to raise as many deck bears as they could and to fight to keep some fraction of their numbers safe.

Bagel had seen the horror stories. Millions had died in the first couple of days as humanity scrambled to react. Only one in 100 people had gotten a deck. It was roughly the same amount for cats but that no one had done in officials statistical analysis so he only could guess. And there was so many people that might have killed the cat to take its cards.

If you killed the deck bear, or for Dexter died then their cards would appear on top of them. This gave the perverse reality of being able to steal someone's cards the potential to destroy humans if they gone to large fights with each other. But thus far, all the humans around him had been focused and to an extent that he could never really appreciate until the drones rolled out, they all want what he wanted.

At least at the beginning, all he wanted was to be safe. He wanted to live his life under his own roles doing the things that he wanted to do because he was not playing around about being a bodega manager. He was a handsome block and he was going to get everything that was coming to him.

The door opens to the bodega and a Brazilian teenager with long curly black hair popped in. Khaleesi was wearing golden Bangles in her ears. The glow of them in the sunlight was about as tantalizing as he could imagine. If she was closer, he would start trying to bat at them.

"Hey girl. I just got word that we're going to be doing a construction project," Ashley said, embracing the teenager.

"A new one? Oh you're so kind. What is it this time? A cat carrier? A ramp? You know I think that we could do a lot with a ramp."

Ashley crossed her arms and smiled. "It is not a ramp or at least not that kind of ramp. How much do you know about boats?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Perfect! It sounds like we're on the same page then. Have you ever ridden the ferry?"

Khaleesi nodded. "I do not see how that would be related to anything we got to do. We are nowhere near a port."

Ashley was so smug that it was potentially going to rub off onto him. He could smell the smugness. It smelled like lavender.

"We're trying to figure out a way to get the ferry to dock close by."

Khaleesi smiled. Because of course she did. "Oh well why didn't you start with that?"

"Bagel, I think we can take it from here. You're willing to fund this, Khaleesi will put in the work. We just need-"

"A ramp."

"-An escort."

The two girls laughed as they exited the store. As much as he was glad to see that she was out of her shell, now he was kind of getting worried that Khaleesi was going to turn to a menace. Her brother had worked at the bodega before the system had arrived and after, he had come back with his parents and sister to live in the safety of the apartment above. The bodega itself was four stories up, including three apartments, one of which held khaleesi's family.

It was also his apartment but he didn't eat much space and he spent most of his time awake in this store, trying to figure out how to make more money. He was getting to the point where he's going to need to decide which direction to expand into and until the city told him something, he was just stocking it away.

He had roughly 50,000 credits. Waiting for a direction to take it but without the city telling him what to do, he was at a standstill. He needed more information but if they didn't give minute something soon then he was going to make an executive decision.