FABULOUS Rewards

There were a few big ticket items at 500 chips; Gil didn’t let his eyes linger on the 1000 chip items. He spent much longer staring at the War God Plate, a suit of magically reinforced power armor that resembled dark blue gothic plate mail and went for 500, as well as a character card for Xain, who would be drastically more dangerous with a bit more intelligence guiding his actions and the ability to leave an arena. Then Gil bought a Bakery.

Apparently a perfect replica of some kind of famous bakery in the city this dungeon floor was based off of, the Soru Bakery Skyblock Extension would apparently produce ten loaves of fresh, high quality bread with a magically enhanced shelf life every single day. Unless his entire team was living off of nothing but bread and water, that was probably far more bread than he even needed. He could be a net food exporter, which was oddly hilarious to Gil after a few weeks scrambling to always have something on the table. It wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t even particularly powerful, but it was a logistical goldmine that would pay for itself over and over again.

339

He quickly scanned through and grabbed the Gobu Gobu and Biron Monk cards for 10 and 20 chips respectively. Both would allow him to make someone into a competent fighter, in almost polar opposite ways.

The monk would allow him to grant someone the physique, muscle memory, and knowledge of someone who spent a decade training in Biron style karate every day for years. It would pale next to genuinely superhuman levels of strength and technique, but it would be enough to wipe the floor with two or three people who didn’t have any training at all.

The Gobu Gobu card had the Combatant tag, which was potentially much more potent than the Monk’s direct skill upload, but vastly harder to use effectively. Basically, the combatant tag represented someone knowing how to handle themselves in a fight at a level appropriate to someone in their tier. If Gil used it on Snow, she’d be a trained combatant. The system would choose one or two fighting styles she could plausibly know given her backstory, and she’d remember learning them in her past. She probably still wouldn’t want to fight, however.

That was the problem. Most people who wanted to know how to fight and had a respectable tier picked up the combatant tag naturally at some point. Maybe not as a primary defining tag, but Gil could only give someone a tag if they legitimately didn’t have it anywhere on their sheet. As an example, Silky had it buried in her second page of tags because statecraft had been Berelaine’s primary skillset.

He could turn a tier 5 or 6 from the bazaar into a total badass, but only if they were one of the types of people who had never before that point thought learning self defense was a good enough use of their time. They’d have the same quirks as Garri with having skill but not seasoning, and they’d probably be much less enthusiastic than she was. It was still worth having in his back pocket, however. It was cheap, and weird corner cases cropped up all the time in his line of work.

309

The next choice was almost as easy. The shop was offering Bikini Armor for 250 chips, which looked almost exactly like the 1 token bunny suit save that it was covered in sequins that made it sparkle in the light. As ridiculous as it looked, there was almost no context in which it would be bad to have more magical, super lightweight armor that could take punishment from ballistic, close quarters, and to a lesser extent even energy based weaponry.

Gil himself was wearing a spandex bodysuit that clung to his body, and would continue to do so for as long as it was the most practical armor available. If that wasn’t enough reason for one of the girls to swallow their pride and put on the high cut leotard and tights, no harm done, he’d just ask the next one down the line until one of his fighters was up for it.

59

The next thing on the docket was called the Astral Sword, and it was listed for 50 chips. Apparently made from the corpse of a Seru, it was supposedly near indestructible and able to cut through almost any material. It was also openly noted to be terribly balanced, as it was basically just a monster’s talon sharpened and attached to a hilt. Gil thought that Nessa might be able to make good use of it when she got big, either in combat or as a tool for destroying hard to damage things. Nearly indestructible magic blades were handy as a general rule, and if it didn’t work out he was pretty sure the Astral Blade would be worth a lot in the Armory.

Someone tapped on Gil’s shoulder. Another bunnygirl, nearly identical to the desk attendant, save that her uniform was torn and stained with blood. She gave him a tired smile.

“Mister Gilbert, I hope you haven’t gotten the wrong impression of the Muscle Dome.” She said, her voice distant and a little hollow. “We usually have better facilities. Has anyone offered your party anything to eat? Our chef is out, but I’d be happy to whip something up for you.”

Gil met her eyes, and they were slightly unfocused. She was the waitress, presumably. She’d just fought, badly, for nearly eight hours against an army of goblins. When they’d finally gotten past the barricade, he’d seen this woman batted aside by an orc looking for a better fight. Her head had cracked against the wall. He’d written her off as probably dead.

Gil looked around, and saw that Keilnei had laid out all of the dead NPCs with their arms crossed over their chests. She must have noticed the waitress was still alive and healed her. That was the sort of thing she’d do when nothing else was more urgent.

All of the NPCs except for the desk attendant, the bartender, the one guy in the stands, and this waitress were dead. Gil heard the orcs in the distance, slowly smashing the metal and tearing away at it. They’d get through eventually, he was pretty sure. Probably a few hours at most.

Gil looked at the concussed waitress, then turned to the desk attendant. “Is there any chance I can buy her too?”

The desk attendant looked at him blankly, then shook her head.

“What an odd thing to ask, sir.” She said, “She’s not on the list.”

He pointed at the bartender, and asked again. The answer was the same. He sighed, and called Nessa over to pick up the confused waitress. Nessa put her down on the shelf that had been housing the scale model of the Bakery a few minutes ago, and held her gently but firmly in place.

“Check again.”

The desk attendant dutifully checked the catalog. No changes. She offered to contact her manager, pressed a button, and a man in a bright yellow suit at the end of the line of corpses started buzzing. Gil checked his pocket and found a beeper and two more tokens. There wasn’t much chance he would have actually said anything different, to be fair.

Gil sighed, bought the astral sword, and shoved the rest into Keilnei’s hands.

“You did well. Buy whatever you like from the counter.” He said shortly. “Then get all the loot back to the skyblock. Don’t forget the mushrooms wrapped in hides; they are over near where we came in. I have something I’ve got to do.”

Gil stalked through the portal and past the pile of loot, nodding at Snow and Farley on his way to the barracks. There, he wrote a rather scathing note about how limiting the decision to make only one NPC purchasable really was, when a customer might get attached to any NPC for any reason.

It was stupidly limiting. NPCs weren’t even great as companions. They were officially listed as one fifth the price in most catalogs. It would have been easy, and it wouldn’t have been particularly powerful. Just another flag they could have put on every npc in the room. Short sighted, even if the Goblin infestation was unexpected.

Gil deleted more than half of his rant before sending the report; most of it had been dreadfully unprofessional. He lay back in the bed and stared at the ceiling, too fatigued to sleep.

He hoped that the dungeon floor would despawn before the orcs got through. He didn’t want to imagine the utterly pointless last stand of a single waitress. He hoped her next assignment would be peaceful. He hoped she’d be able to serve at least one meal before everything went to hell again.

••••••••••

Loot summary, feel free to ask questions or point out stuff I missed. I am in fact the dumb at times.

6 credits

35 dungeon credits

Noa + body tune up

Desk Attendant

Dungeon Key

Magic Items

Bunny Suit (Bikini Armor)

Bunny Suit x2 (Self cleaning and resizing)

Magic Ring - Allows the wearer to retain and channel mana as if their world was one step more magical

Astral Sword - A large, heavy blade which can plausibly cut through any material if swung with enough force, even materials normally deemed indestructible. Kinda terrible as an actual weapon due to high weight and poor balance.

For Her Hand glove - Duel a target for ownership of someone they have a claim to. Optimized for PvP but can be used in PVE as well.

Champion Belt: Grants the benefits of Body Tune Up to the wearer of the belt while worn

Friendly Face Mask: Makes people’s default assumption that you are a harmless person who isn’t doing anything wrong at the moment.

Silver Character Card - Regains one capture charge for one binding of your choice, allowing you to use it to capture another character in a given setting.

Corruption Fruit

Goblinizatiom Spores

Skyblock Extension:

Dance Club

Mundane Loot

57 healing shrooms total, 6 green cap goblin spore mushrooms, dozens of rough hide coats, crude spears, and crude knives. Pumpkins. Worm meat.

Tags

Anthro Tag, Performance Talent, Body Tune Up tag, Stealth tag, athletic Talent tag, possession defense Tag

Character Cards:

Biron Monk T2

Gobu Gobu T1

Johanna Stiegler (Ubersreik land developer) T1

Helga of the Ordo Ultima (Barely Competent Slaaneshi cultist) T1

Shop Unlocks

2 Arena Skyblock Extension - an open sand pit meant for martial arts and combat training

5 credits: Musta Fieldz - Allows Gil to spend armory Marks to create goblin and orc character cards.

1 Credit: Pocket Change - Gives Gil a small amount of local currency per week, enough to make one minor purchase.

1 Garden Skyblock Extension: It is dirt. Very nutrient rich dirt. It is, however, dirt.

2 credits: Friendly Local Game Store (unlocked for “selling” Gary) - contains several board games and tables.

5 Credits: Friendly Local Game Store rank 2 - Allows you to trade 2 character cards to potentially get a better one, and definitely get a different one. Also improves the board game selection. Requires rank 1 to purchase.

10 Credits: Rank 2- Improves the Gacha drop table for all gachas

20 Credits: Zenryoku Zenkai lure: When you defeat a character you find attractive, she will find you more sexually and romantically interesting. The higher the stakes, the greater the effect.

••••••••••

Probably not the MOST immediately relevant question, but:

https://strawpoll.com/XOgOVwvkrn3