Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

The health food store was underneath a five story black brick building. It contrasted with the off yellow bricks around his four-story building. Bagel had never even gone to the second floor or above.

He didn't want to look up like a tourist, but no one was paying attention. He quickly checked, and both were intact.

Good.

The door was firmly shut. He meowed at it to open, but the door wasn't having it. It also looked locked.

This was entirely expected. Bagel could see the appeal. It was just one long hallway behind a portal. Thankfully, the aperture of it was on the far wall, away from his building. It glowed an ominous purple, like an off-brand cat food bag. His first problem was that he couldn't access it.

He needed a second opinion.

Janet popped up.

"Oh! Hey boss, that is definitely an instance dungeon. We're going to need to send some deck bearers through that. It's got to be cleared regularly, otherwise we risk things getting out of control."

"Instance dungeon?"

The drone floated closer to the door.

"Now if you wouldn't mind, please tell the classroom what an instance dungeon is?" Ashley said, the blonde-haired girl putting her hands on her hips.

Bagel regarded her with a neutral expression. He was still trying to figure out where she lived, but he knew it was close by.

"Ashley, you can't be this dumb," Kate said, stepping out. "Oh, hey cat."

"My name is Bagel. I would appreciate it if you called me bagel or his lordship."

"You're so funny, cat," Kate said, flipping her hair.

"Look, that is my bodega cat," Ashley said. "Tell me about this damn instance dungeon. What the heck is it? It's right by my apartment. Might as well figure it out. Is it dangerous?"

"Short answer: yes. I don't know how many cards you got or if you got any," Kate said, steering. "They are temporary dungeons that the system puts up and they are there to give you experience points and cards and loot and I cannot wait to get in there and get what I deserve."

There was something between the two girls but Bagel was not going to investigate that at all. "Janet, if I go inside the instance dungeon will my workers unsummon?"

It was unclear. Based on the distance, it looks like that should not be an issue.

There had to be rules about instance dungeons. They should at least be able to go through and if so, then the two workers they had should remain.

Bagel thought about his options. Without the door open, he needed help to get in.

It looked like the girls had a plan.

His energy was already devoted to his workers, with one just dedicated to the upkeep of the bodega. He was going to rely upon Janet's lasers..

One of the girls had to open that up so he can get access. But if it can take Janet and Jennifer to use her lasers offensively, that'll be one thing, but not being able to take his workers while they might at the shop meant that he was going to have to pick another thing. Plus, the shop already took one of the energy up.

"What happens if I let the energy go that is part of the bodega?"

"First off, you know that I'll disappear and then the interface inside of the shop will disappear. You won't be able to collect cards and use them for credits. At least until you head back in and reactivate it."

There's something about that which wasn't appealing to Bagel.

"In order to get enough energy to summon more, you're going to have to level up. You're maxed out the way you are."

Bagel huffed. In front of him, the two women were giving each other death stares as if their lives depended on it. It felt like a palpable hatred between the two. He was not going to interrupt them.

"If I go in there," Bagel said, "I can make more cards… or find more cards which I can sell and then potentially I'll be able to level up and get a perk or something that'll allow me to have another energy?"

"That's about right," Janet said.

While he was talking with Janet, a pizza rat spawned. The barricade was still up and the two girls both summoned creatures to attack it.

Ashley summoned a swarm creature which attacked with abandon. Kate summoned a totem which looked like it was nipping away at the creature. She also summoned her own pizza rat.

Kate's pizza rat ran straight at the mob, tearing its face off immediately. It went in for a killing blow.

Ashley's summon held itself up in the air for a moment before mopping up the remains of the pizza rat.

Having its head knocked off was not the killing blow for this mob.

Of course it wasn't, but it was something that caused a lot of consternation for the onlookers.

If the vomit on the sidewalk was an indicator, no one had seen a headless rat. Ashley's pizza rat destroyed the mob. The two of them stared each other down.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"Are you going to take the card?"

"Just like you took my spot at the audition? Yeah, I think I will take that. This doesn't mean that we're even."

Ashley walked over and grabbed the card. She looked at it for putting it into one of her pockets. She was, of course, not turning away from the other girl the entire time. This made her walk over suitably awkward.

"That's not very girl boss of you," Kate said before being cut off.

"I don't care how fucking girl boss it is of me, Kate. God, you're such an asshole. Hey guy, do you want to do this instance dungeon with me?"

She was speaking to him directly.

He thought about it for a second. Having an actual human do the dungeon meant he could see another deck in action.

It also meant that he would be safer.

He didn't know if she would let him ride on her like a mount. He could ask? If not, he could get a worker or a cook to join him. Something told him that the cooks might be better fighters than the workers.

"I'll probably have to close the grill, but I can do that. Do you want to split the loot 50/50?"

Ashley smiled down at him. "I think that is a good deal and I will take that."

She moved to the door, trying to pull it open. When it didn't open, she brought out a little shift that had apparently just been resting in one of one of her outer purse pockets. She had the door open within 30 seconds.

"How about we split the loot three ways?" Kate said. "It looks like this is the first time the dungeon is going to be run, so we might as well do it together?"

For the first time, one girl sounded uncertain. Bagel summoned his cook mentally and as the one girl was getting the door open, he got up on top of it and mounted it.

"Is that?"

"This is my summon," Bagel said. "I use it as a mount. I could instead ride on one of you if you prefer?"

"That will not be necessary," Kate said. "Didn't you just-isn't this the guy that was cooking food behind the counter?"

The cook nodded. "All orders are complete," he said evenly.

"See, he did all of his work before I sent them over here. And I have Janet, who has laser powers."

"Boss, you still want to say that my lasers are limited, and I had you really close to do some real damage, right?"

"We split the loot three ways? What happens if there's not a divisible amount of cards in there?"

Both girls shrugged. They were going to be using his mercantile prowess in order to fix this problem.

"Boss-boss," Janet said. "You could be the mediator and just go by the value of the things that we have out there. I can help you evaluate the cards and then we can give them a fair offer or trade based on what actually happens."

"Are you both okay with maybe me mediating any disputes? If we don't have an exact even split of loot? I will be able to evaluate some cards and give you a price. Especially since I'm out here selling my cards at certain prices, anyway."

Both girls nodded again.

Ashley fully opened the door to the former health food store.

---

Just because the portal was purple and gray didn't mean that the actual interior was going to be of those things and upon stepping inside, Bagel was happy to see that Janet could still interface with the real world and people were still buying dropped cards through his other worker. Counting the bodega is one of his energy. His cook was another and the worker was a third.

Bagel had three of his four available energies out on the field.

He drew up on his hand just in case and every card in his hand was worth one energy. He could spend it and then the card would go away to be reshuffled when the deck was emptied. He could not spend his Bodega while he was out though and he couldn't have spent his worker while he was out or his cook. So that left him with a seven card deck.

Over time, his hand would go bigger than a max of five cards, though we started with three. Both the girls had three cards.

Kate had a turtle with an area of effect beacon on it. It was very slow moving, at least compared to how he moved. To be fair, it kept pace with the humans as it walked into the dungeon, which looked like the base of a department building.

"Is this an apartment themed dungeon? Is that what's going on here?" Kate said.

It looked like a lobby, complete with paintings and a red carpet and a little place for a receptionist. There was even an elevator on one wall, though. It lay ripped open, and it looked like the elevator opened to the abyss. Next to that elevator was a stairwell and he suppose that was where they were supposed to go.

Two pizza rats, because of course there are pizza rats, wait in the center of the lobby as if they hadn't gotten close enough to be interacted with. Ashley sent out a swarm of little creatures towards it. She was obviously trying to see if her little tokens could take it down. Bagel looked for a way that he could get in on the action.

"Janet, can you laser their eyes?"

"On it, boss," the AI said. The drone floated up and around, blasting the rats with what looked like a little harmless laser. It was distracting them while Ashley's swarm came up for the assault.

The girls' attacks had such synergy between the two of them.

He was surprised he knew the word synergy, as he was already thinking about effective ways to put the two of them together in battle against a foe-like three or four pizza rats. Within thirty seconds, the pizza rats had fallen to Ashley swarm and the totem turtle.

Kate was definitely holding back on this, as if she was waiting for some sort of chance to lord it over the other girl.

"Do you have any other spells or card powers besides the turtle?" he asked.

"It cost me two energy to maintain this, and it's got a lot of hit points, so I think this one's worth it. I can periodically do other attacks that are area effect spells? But I don't want to waste all my energy all at once, especially when there's only two of them."

He nodded, understanding how he didn't want to exhaust all of his cards at once.

The room itself had a stale smell, as if nothing had ever existed before and that the only thing that was really smelling was himself and the two women. It was like how the summons didn't smell unless you got close to them.

Bagel pawed at his mount, urging it to move forward. The cook had a battle knife that had, until now, been a work knife. It was the knife that Bagel supposed was used to chop a sandwich, though he'd never seen quite that prismatic color. He approached the elevator shaft to make sure that what he was seeing wasn't real. His summon tested it. His knife just slashed through nothing.

"Don't go there," Bagel said, staring into the abyss. "It looks deep."

They got two cards from that exchange, though neither one was a pizza rat card, which caused some consternation.

"It's a healing card and a… what is this, a restock card?" Kate said.

"Dib's on the heal card," Ashley said.

There had to be a way to divide up loot that was fair for them, but it looked like the three of them were going to have to work it out. He definitely wanted the restock card. If for nothing else than to sell it, the heal card would be nice.

If the only thing this dungeon had was pizza rats and all they did was give things that were not pizza rat cards, then he would be happy. He had seen enough of the mobs before, but seeing as how he could kill some of them and make out different cards, that was something that he would definitely appreciate.

"You guys want to head to the stairwell after we check behind that counter there?"

"I'm on the counter." Kate moved closer and began pulling at drawers. She came up triumphant. "There are two cards here and they're both heal cards. So I guess we can all have one if we really want to. I certainly want one. I assume the cat does too if you want to sell it. It looks like a good utility card."

If there are three of them, then it is the easy way to split them. "One each, though I imagine that they're going to be a few floors to this dungeon. You don't have a special card or skill that lets you know more about the dungeons?" Bagel regarded the blonde girl.

She placed the two cards into her pocket and then moved to the stairwell to join him. The turtle was already moving its way up, and he was right behind it. Upon closer inspection, it's sides were metallic. He now was very interested in its stats.

At least, this felt familiar.