Bodega Cat (System Apocalypse, Deck Builder, Litrpg)

Ashley stood atop the borrowed ferry on their third fateful trip over to Staten Island. This would be it. Ten teams had shown up and the National guard had sent her people who actually knew how to use their weapons systems. The dungeons has stopped spawning on the island according to several sources, most likely due to no one living on it.

Due to the technicality, the people watching the line from the bridges and tunnels were not considered to be inside of the former borough for the purposes of instance dungeons. At least that's as much as the big Apple's best minds thought.

"Fliers are down!" She yelled.

Machine gun crews, now accurately laid down fire against the mass of mobs. If the mobs hadn't been disappearing every time that they got destroyed, it'll be far more blood and whose just laying around. They had figured out how to get them to go into two specific zones and using a combination of Marksman fire and lawyer mobs. I
Ashley kind of kicked herself when she saw what the machine gun cruise had decided to do. They would send out flying mascot summons p to attract the horde of Staten Island local mobs, then rain down fire on a group of shades.

She made her way to the other side of the ferry walking around the cruise and their piles of spent shells. There was so much of it that she almost fell over twice. It was an adequate amount of ammunition. Whoever Bagel has gotten to start making bullets has done a good job. She was reasonably certain that One of those machine gun crews was living through an epic childhood fantasy.

But still, this time they brought even more earmuffs. She learned so much and the people were there. Had decided that today was a day that they were really going to try to make a stand.

To that end, they were pulling out all the stops.

They would be stopping at a long Pier next to the official physical plant where they would have hooked up and moored the ferry. It was long enough to give them a straight shot of about 100 meters.

Like clockwork as soon as they finished pounding the ground with machine gun fire, several marksmen set up in the rear of the ferry on the lower level. They unleashed a concentrated burst of fire down the pier make sure that it was clear. They even lowered a plank from the ferry to the end of the pier to make the mobs go into a frenzy. Trying to get up the plank. They were never going to get up the plank.

Enough members of the The adventurers guild had flying mobs that kept The horde at Bay and after 3 minutes, The horde stopped and they were able to start sending their own mobs further in. For half an hour, they cycled mob. After mob onto the pier, trying to secure as much land as they could.

It wasn't much. But they were able to establish a 50 m perimeter around the purchased lighthouse.

Not only that, they began setting up temporary fortifications around it. It was an already dense packed urban area on the very close approach to the water. The fact that they were trying to secure it for long-term meant that they were going to need to stop the endless amount of mobs from showing up.

The problem wasn't the amount of regular mobs spawned. The problem was the amount of dungeons that had not been closed off and thus overflowed with time. That was part of the reason that Kate was now identifying as many as she could. If they could take those down and then buy up some more of the land from the system then they would.

"Alright first team?" Ashley yelled. "You're up!"

Nine adventuring parties hooted as six men and roughly twenty summoned mobs began heading towards a prominent aperture. If they were going to take these down it was going to be a slog. She was prepared for a bit of a slog but it was looking more like the best thing that they could do would be to relieve the pressure on the bridges.

There was a lull in the gunfire and she took that moment to check her tablet. Khaleesi had been giving them a live screen of the action at the bridge. Ashley moved back and forward scrubbing it and it looked like they're actually decreased the amount of mobs trying to cross the bridge into Brooklyn. The ferry wasn't that far from the bridge.

What matter was that they hadn't taken up all the available space. That was one of the things that Ashley was really afraid of. If they took all the space that was available then basically as soon as he destroyed one another one will pop up. But there was some sort of constant in play about the maximum amount of enemies that the system was allowing in a certain area. It was like once they knew that an area was defeated, it wasn't going to spend its resources.

It all made her head hurt and made her wish that she'd played a few more video games before this. It all started. She scrubbed back and forth along the video trying to see if there was any more of an effect and it looked like the freedom fighters on that bridge was celebrating a bit. No matter what they'd done, they made things easier for the the last bastion of humanity trying to keep Brooklyn humans only.

She then looked at the bridges that were coming from New Jersey and unfortunately those were on the far side of the island. She couldn't do much with that.

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

She really wanted to help those people. But New Jersey was his own thing and they had their own problems. If they were able to keep their mobs on at Bay on their side, then everything that they were doing was going to help humanity reclaim the island that nobody wanted.

---

Khaleesi checked the feeds. This far into the mission, it looked like everything had been going according to plan. Then she saw what Ashley was doing, moving through and looking around at the New Jersey Bridges and they gave her a pause. They had agreed that they couldn't affect that and as much as she wanted to, she couldn't really do much.

Khaleesi was their eyes in the skies. They were not able to be everywhere for what they wanted to do was have an effect where they were able to be and the more that she looked at it the more that She wanted to do more. It wasn't that she felt constrained or small...

Khaleesi wanted to save everyone. But the stupid system kept spawning monsters and not letting her kill them, to say nothing of the the dungeons. It really was a bother some exercise and how much was she going to have compassion fatigue when this was all over. She could already picture the therapist bills now. It would be super hard to find a therapist, especially one of the credits but she was committed to getting healthy when this was all done.

It became clear after a while that the landing team had done a good job and that they could hold the position if they had enough ammunition.

Khaleesi recentered her drawings fight paths to go around landing party. They hadn't gotten missiles yet but it would have been nice. They also hadn't gotten lasers yet. That would have been clutch.

Unfortunately for her, those things were heavy.

---

Liza and Paolo walked into the shop.

"What brings both of you here at the same time?" Bagel looked around for Raul or Khaleesi. Neither one was present.

Their parents looked at him intently.

"Bagel it's come to our attention that you are hiring people?" Liza said, holding up a hand to stop her husband from saying anything.

Paolo for his part looked bemused.

"I am?"

"You are. Gladys has been putting up notices on your behalf."

"I fail to see how that's important... Unless both of you want jobs for some reason?"

"We've both done a lot of our jobs before. That's not our only concern. If you want to hire us, that's great. We're still going to want to help out the guild, but if there's something else we can be doing?"

"Supporting the overall mission would be great."

The two of them looked at him as if he was the key to all of their doors. He didn't feel like he was that. He didn't feel particularly metallic at all. Nor did he feel like he would fit easily into the slot and a doorknob.

"Do you guys want to work for me?" Bagel said, tentatively. He didn't want to add too many people to payroll if he didn't have to.

"That would be so wonderful, wouldn't it. Well you know what? I think that I have a job that you need to have done."

Bagel was more confused than a cat who'd been raised by dogs. "I do?"

"I think you're right, Liza," Paolo said. "Now tell the poor cat what we'll be doing for you."

Bagel wasn't enraptured with whatever the heck they thought that he was going to be doing.

He just wanted to make it through another day and these guys are getting really weird.

"You want to perform a service for me for pay that I need but I don't understand why?" He said.

"Extended delivery. You're the only game in town. What else are you going to do?" Liza said.

"You want to deliver food?" Bagel said. "Is that everything?"

"You understand that you need hot jobs done. We also understand that sometimes you need to keep things in the family. We just want you to consider us before you start branching out too far. We can help you. We're here to help you. You took us in and helped us in our hour of need." Paolo said. He placed a hand on the counter.

"I guess I'll call you first then. Does this mean that you're going to help me direct traffic? There's a lot going on with the new arrivals and..."

Liza was smiling.

"Just tell me what you want," Bagel said.

"Back in Rio, you see she used to work at a soup kitchen and....I know this might be foreign to you but we have the stuff here. She just needs the backing. We get the deliveries and we'll be in business with our very own soup queen fishing up hot justice."

"I'm not the biggest fan of that name," Bagel said. "But I catch your sentiment. You want to feed a lot of people? In a short order?"

Liza nodded. "I've got the pans and I'm going to use the former pizza shop across the way as well as the Kitchen in Keats if they have one. I just need you to buy those buildings."

There is was. Someone has finally asked him to modify his buyIng plan. She probably didn't even think that he had a plan, but he did. Keats has been a bar across second avenue and if she could make some use out of it, he would be for it. It was a single story building. Perhaps he could expand it?

He brought up his menu and surprisingly he could easily buy both the pizza shop and Keats. That would be just right.