Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

They slunk around the corners on the way down there. Several the mobs had been larger than a gentrified crab, but he was pretty sure that that was not indicative of actual combat prowess. In fact they seemed like big dumb blocky things.

He shuddered, remembering the concrete lizards. They had been as large as a komodo dragon and able to hide in plain sight. Bagel was the perfect size for an awakened being.

It was those humans which were just the right size to be used as a mount.

They took the sidewalk down first avenue and then across. Thirty minutes felt long but he knew that whatever happened up there was a planned out action. They probably had run this several times and had to be pulling mobs off of the highways.

It wasn't that the group looked particularly busy. They had in some sense been waiting for it. By the time that the two cats turned around the corner to the entrance they could see it. Iron and concrete had been bent to the will of the humans inside of the large open space. This had clearly been set up a long time ago.

He just hadn't been paying attention to the humans this far from the Bodega.

Several of them looked familiar.

"It's Bagel!"

"Make room for the cats!"

"Clear the deck, next drop is coming through!"

Bagel and Copernicus were ushered to the back of the semi-circle. It was like a circle but they had left a hole in the back end. And within another minute, a second pair of people on top of some mobs were bringing a train of mobs to be destroyed.

"Just killed them as they come in?" Bagel said.

"You got it!" The man next to him said.

What fault was the most intense? 2 minutes of bagel's life a bystander. He attacked with his mobs and he knew Janet was above them overseeing the battle but he'd never seen so much Carnage in one place. It was one-sided Carnage. The humans were massacring the mobs. The mobs looked like they were not going to be able to handle this at all.

"Leave it to humans and take all the fun out of hunting,"Bagel said.

Copernicus is bull charged through several mobs before finally hitting something he couldn't immediately kill. Then it got back up and charged in a different direction. Back and forth, the bull zigged and zagged.

Meanwhile Bagel's mob was just stabbing over and over again. It was a simple rhythm of step in stab and then move. Then step in and stab then move.

"Is that his only move?" Copernicus said, knowing damn well it was.

"It's an honest day's work."

"It's an honest day. Stabbing is what it is."

The mobs in front of them clearly wouldn't know in a honest day stabbing if they were stabbed in the face with it and that kind of bothered bagel. For all of the bluster of the system and the things that had changed his life, there was one constant.

Mobs were stupider.

Humans might be stupid. Yes, but mobs were definitely stupid.

The fact of the mobs from Staten Island making their way across and over meant that it was about to be everyone's problem.

Bagel kept summoning and re-summoning as the humans brought in a third batch of enemies, only 2 minutes behind that last one.

"How does this work? How are they getting these mobs up here?" Bagel asked one of the humans next to him during a break.

"The guild sends runners to the lower streets and they clear out whatever can be there and if they can't clear it out then they keep running to the highway. Then they run them up here."

They were interrupted by yet another group of enemies. It was definitely not the mobs day but bye now the amount that had shown up was this significantly lower than previously.

"Those summons at their riding? They do damage over time to nearby mobs so they them softened them up for us. They're like those turtle totem cards."

Bagel looked up. Several drones are flying in patterns about them. As he watched three of the five that were there started flying away from the East River towards 1st avenue.

"That's the guild, checking up on things,".the man said. "Fuck, I never thought it'd be battling monsters and a dam undeveloped corner of Manhattan but here we are."

"When you're done take your friends over to the bodega and have a drink on me," bagel said.

He heard some hooting. Another group of mobs ran into their kill zone, dying unceremoniously.

"Humans are fucking scary," Copernicus said.

"When they get their shit together, yeah."

Bagel didn't have the time to unpack what was going on.

"This is some complicated scheme that they're doing that on his face. I really appreciate. But right now? I think that we're good."

"Do you want to head back?" Copernicus for the first time looked like he was actually happy.

Bill realized that by getting out of this situation, Copernicus would be a lot less nervous. The thing was that bagel felt closed in. Because it was not developed, the walls around the open lot were $22 to 50 ft up and sheer. There were several places where there were ladders, but the only real entrance was the southeastern part of it. This was definitely a reason why they were using for trading grounds.

Of course, we're the only one exit, felt it was easy to feel trapped. True, he had powerful cards but he felt like he wanted to leave immediately. Some primal instinct of his made him think that he needed to get away from larger predators. And bagel leaned into that. He walked through the legs and around the people on the outside of the semicircle, following Copernicus as they got closer to the East River and the parkway.

They had two choices, they could continue out towards the river and check out that they had planned or they could head back up and around the way they came. Copernicus indicated the river with his head and bagel nodded his acceptance. They moved towards the parkway. There was a lifted part of it and a lower part of it and, with lifted part being the part of the parkway that went North.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Several signs showed the only direction that one could go.

But signs are for humans and specifically for humans driving cars. Before the system had arrived, there were a lot of those. Now, the barker was barren. Any cars that have been left in the parkway were now fodder for Ashley's forge and she had been working her way down. Apparently. It was one of the reasons why the drones kind of looked like tiny cars in some cases.

They jumped up over a dividing barrier and then jumped down. They crossed another three lanes of empty traffic and then jumped up a final barrier to where they could see the East River.

It looked like the largest bath that bagel had ever seen. The dark gray water did not look inviting in the slightest. In fact, Bagel was pretty sure that he ever wanted to go anywhere near a body of water.

"That looks absolutely disgusting. Fish come from there?" Copernicus said. "Disgusting."

"I'm pretty sure that the fish come from someplace better."

"I really hope so. Because that fake meat that isn't really meat is not doing it for me."

"I don't think that is doing it for anybody honestly. That's why I go to the store honestly... And have Liza cook for me."

"They cook for you?"

"They're damn good about it. You need to come eat with us."

There was something about the river. It was chaotic but it was calm at the same time. It was hypnotic. Behind them, several humans fanned out moving back onto the parkway and South. It looked like they were setting up for another lure.

"Do you think they're doing that all day or do you think they get some breaks or what do you think they're doing?" Copeland said.

"Knowing the humans? They probably have shifts here and they get paid to do this and credits. It's effective. I'll give them that. If the humans could run faster, they might be able to do that without having to use some in mobs, but that's a problem for them to deal with."

Maybe you could see it playing out now. If they could lure the mobs by using a drone then that will be one thing. But the drones that the adventures guild had made were keyed in as technology and the mobs. When I'm going to attack technology. They would attack a construct like Janet or they would have to attack one of the salvage drones that actually made but they would not ever go after a normal human piece of technology.

And that was probably the biggest problem that he could see. The plan needed actual humans or actual summons to draw in the mobs.

If he could spend the time to buy up all that land, then he can make it all safe and they wouldn't have to do this but it was taking more and more credits to get further out. And if he just bought up the roads, they would spawn inside the buildings or they might miss things because the spawn points that we're inside were definitely being camped out all the time. Nobody wanted something to spawn in there apartment or the stairwell. Especially not New Yorkers who had just gotten a deal on their rent.

It was a big deal when your landlord passed away. It was a bigger deal when you could buy up the building that you lived in by killing some mobs.

"There really is something about that River."

"They need to figure out a way to do this without using humans. That's their weak point if the humans go down, the whole thing collapses," Bagel said.

"What?" Copernicus said, grinning.

"What?"

"You're not supposed to solve their problems for them. You're supposed to take a management fee and buy someone how to solve the problems. At least that's what my human used to do."

It was the first time he'd spoken openly about an owner or a human that he had been attached to before everything. Bagel didn't want to pry but he did want to know. He wanted to know everything about how it was like. He hadn't really had an owner in a sense. The store was just his domain and he lorded it over by doing whatever he had to do.

But not really having a human before meant that he felt detached from everyone. Sure. He liked Raul but Earl wasn't his owner from before. Raul was just somebody who really liked him. He liked Raul back but it was not the same way the Copernicus talked about his human.

"What did he say about this situation?"

"He said that it was shit. Then he said that he didn't want a part of it."

That was a pretty on the nose assessment. It was shitty. It was bad; Bagel didn't know anything else. He hadn't been awakened for nothing. If the system was not going to give you my purpose then it was going to make up his own and he was going to run with that purpose all day and night. And right now? He wanted to make his money card just as possible and feel as safe as possible. He didn't want to find that people were luring mobs to places right by his fortress.

"What do you think you would say about our situation right now?"

"He would probably say that we need to profit off of it somehow. What did it used to say bears make money and bulls make money but pigs go to slaughter? I didn't understand what he meant until I got my bull card."

Bagel had to admit that the bull was fantastic. Even though it took so much, it was a summon that just crushed others.

Bagel didn't just want to crush his enemies. He wanted to make them lament being crushed in the first place and part of that was just getting the mobs and turning them into guards so that he could sell and use them. He would also need to get some more energy so he could dedicate that to his mobs. But he had priorities. And making money was number one.