WELCOME TO THE MUSCLEDOME

Gil’s team camped out overnight next to the Genesis tree and the portals, slowly tossing everything through the portal back to the skyblock. Gil was fairly sure that Snow would have an awful time sorting through everything and moving it all out of the way, but they didn’t really have a lot of options.

Farley “gallantly” offered to go and assist Snow in her task, but Gil shut him down. There was no serious problem with a big pile of money, hides, weapons, and food sitting on the platform around the dungeon, and giving Snow time gave the team an excuse to take a lot of breaks while they recovered from the Purge.

Gil still had 4 more days on the clock before the next portal day, so sleeping under the dungeon’s stars didn’t seem like it would be a problem. It gave his team time to rest after the battle, and he didn’t have much difficulty convincing the girls to cuddle with him for warmth. Garri was more interested in the other girls than in Gil, but even she didn’t seem particularly upset when he touched her briefly. Then again, she was still sulking about the fact that she’d torn her hoodie a bit, not to mention soaking it in Caruban’s blood.

The Shinra soldiers were set to keep watch; they were refreshingly competent. Cheaper than typical bazaar fodder, and they knew their work. Farley was tactful about it, but he was only too happy to sleep in the radiant warmth of the tree while his men stayed up in shifts. Gil reflected on the fact that, other than his ability to act as an officer, Farley was pretty much a strict downgrade from the Grunts in every way.

In the morning they had a breakfast made of a few roasted pumpkins and shockingly bland worm steaks, and Gil rose to speak to his team.

“Alright, I’m afraid I can’t tell you what’s on the other end of that portal.” Gil said. “What I can say is that there’s a good chance more of those goblins will be around. For that reason, we will be moving in as a group. Nessa will take the lead since she’s the most resilient, followed by Farley and his men to lay down supporting fire if needed. Keilnei, Garri, and I will follow in that order, and everyone needs to be sure to get out of the way when they step through the portal. Understood?”

“Garri, you say you know something of this world and of Noa.” Keilnei said thoughtfully. “Can you speculate about what we might find? A worst case scenario, perhaps? So we aren’t surprised?

“Well, if it’s the worst case for Noa?” Garri said, looking at the sky, “Probably Conkram. Whole city that got eaten by a Seru and everything is this giant flesh prison for everyone in the city. It’s where she’s from so that’s the worst I can think of if it’s supposed to be specifically about her.”

“I suppose it’s good to know that’s a possibility,” Farley muttered. “Best not to stop and stare if that’s where we end up.”

“Agreed,” Gil said. “Good idea Keilnei, and thanks for the intel Garri. Now that we know that, though, best not to dwell. Let’s eat and get going.”

Gil took the green mushrooms, wrapped tightly in a few layers of deerskin, as the only loot he didn’t trust Snow to handle personally. Once everyone was ready, they all charged through the door in sequence.

They weren’t attacked immediately. Indeed, they were greeted with the brassy tones of some kind of horn blower playing his heart out. Gil looked around quickly, noting that the musician in question was standing alone on an elevated stage, a bit off center. An entire band’s worth of instruments lay to the side, forgotten entirely.

Gil turned slowly, and took in the sight of a small but glitzy casino with what appeared to be a quadruple sized boxing ring in the back. It was sparsely occupied, with a few men fiddling with slot machines, a bar manned by a rabbit eared woman in a leotard and sheer tights, and another similarly dressed woman manning a counter with a large screen floating above her head.

Welcome to the Muscle Dome! Do one of:

Complete any Tournament as the Victor.

Defeat Songi in Baka Fighter.

Get a jackpot in slots

Reward: 20 Dungeon Credits, 5 credits, capture of Noa

Bonus: FABULOUS prizes available here, so long as you don’t break the rules!

“Huh.” Gil said.

“Sweet.” Garri said. “It’s the minigame zone in Sol Tower. That’s way more chill than Conkram.”

“Is that normal?” Keilnei asked, craning her head to point at something Gil couldn’t see over the rows of slot machines.

He stepped around, and saw a few dozen people crowded around a large archway. They were pushing roulette tables and overturned slot machines into place, creating an improvised barricade against a horde of greenskins trying to force their way into the casino. It seemed that the goblins fighting each other over who got to be first through the narrow tunnel entrance were almost as important to the defense as the pair of armored men jabbing at the goblins with spears.

A number of other people were assisting as they could with very clearly improvised weapons. Gil saw several men in sequined tuxedos that matched the trumpeter’s, a couple more bunny girls wielding broken bottles, and a few men in sports coats that were using barstools to bludgeon the goblins over the barricade. It seemed like most of the customers and staff had dropped everything to deal with the threat. They mostly weren’t professionals, but they were trying hard.

“Wait. Why are there still guys at the slots?” Garri asked. “There’s a green tide out there!”

“Yeah, well, they’re probably NPCs.” Gil said with a shrug. “Cheap knockoff souls. Some people like that are pretty unobservant. Don’t react or adapt, even to pretty serious world events. Just say the same thing over and over.”

Garri looked at the row of slots with a thoughtful expression. Gil moved on quickly, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with this situation.

“Keilnei, Farley, assist with the defense.” Gil said, pointing, “We’ll figure out what else we need to do and keep you posted. Try to save ammo, just in case.”

Keilnei shouldered her rifle and walked over. She glanced around, and hopped up on the nearest machine, which appeared to be an arcade cabinet for some kind of fighting game called Baka Fighter. She lined up her sights and domed a goblin that was scrambling to get over the improvised wall. She took her first shot with an arcane bullet, firing a temporary magical crystal to save herself the trouble of reloading.

“So, what can you tell me about these options?” Gil asked Garri, “I can see that Baka Fighter is over there, and I assume the slots are not something esoteric. What are the tournaments like?”

“Well the beginner one is pretty easy, but the advanced course is basically postgame so…”

“Anything you can tell me other than pretty easy?” Gil asked. “Details, girl.”

“Uh. It’s all one v one. You just kinda plow through the first five or six enemies without trying hard, I don’t really remember what they are!” Garri admitted. “The last one is a guy called Xain. He’s a big, tough bull guy. Like. Bull head, bull body, but also a dude in between. He's pretty tough, too! Definitely stronger than Caruban. Oh, and the reason the higher level stuff is harder is that you have to do with without your gear. The advanced course is even worse. No magic.”

Gil grunted. He didn’t want to flee lightly, but he was definitely glad that using a door of light to leave was on the table. He walked over to the prize counter to see what was available, and noted that the prize counter attendant was looking over at the front entrance, biting her lip nervously.

“So, who do I talk to about the tournaments?” He asked, “You, or…?”

“Oh, yes sir!” She said, jumping as if she’d only just noticed him. “Our FABULOUS Muscle Dome arena is currently… er… understaffed. So I will be handling that, yes. Just a warning: Each team is only allowed to attempt each tournament once. Should an individual fighter leave the ring during a bout, a substitute can replace them, but they will be disqualified for the rest of the tournament. So you might want to warm up and practice your moves outside of the arena first.”

She stared directly at the goblins as she said the last part.

“Any time limits?”

“No, I suppose not.” The attendant said, “Your opponent will wait for you in the ring until you choose to give up.”

“Alright, well, let’s start the first one. The beginner tournament.” Gil said. “Why not? We might as well do what we can if there’s no time pressure.”

The bunny girl stared at him blankly when he phrased the situation as having “no time pressure,” but nodded and held up a microphone to her mouth.

“We have our first challenger of the night!” She said, “And his first opponent is… a Red Piura!”

The familiar weak mole creature waddled out of a cylindrical black portal into the center of the arena.

“Nessa.”

“Yes my husband?”

“Kill that guy.”

Gil examined the various prizes kept on a force field defended shelf behind the attendant. All the way at the left he picked out a bunny suit like the one the attendant wore, a few healing flowers and magic leaves just like the ones he already had, and a large baguette. His eyes ran along the length of the wall, running over a character card of a buff man with a top knot, a massive purple greatsword, a few sparkling rings, another bunny suit, a sealed stein, and more. All the way near the end he saw a crystalline brown rock the size of his fist, and a large machine that vaguely resembled a printer and apparently went for 20,000 coins.

A single person sitting in the stands cheered, and Gil looked over to see that Nessa had impaled the Piura on her spear. The flustered bunny girl clerk looked over as well, blinking a few times in surprise.

“Well that was quick… Winner!” She said, looking down at a small tablet embedded into her desk. “Nessa Biermann.”

A single red casino chip popped into existence on top of her tablet, and she handed it to Gil.

“Your FABULOUS prize.” She said, emphasizing the word fabulous with only the barest trace of sarcasm. “One minute before the next round starts, if you want to pull that girl out. Remember, there’s no reason to deal with all of them back to back if there’s something more important you or she could be managing.”

She put a special emphasis on the words more important, glancing at the horde of goblins meaningfully. One of the Shinra grunts fired his gun, releasing a burst of bullets into the crowd of greenskins. That killed one of them and pissed a few more off. Gil tossed a lightning bolt at the one in the front, partly because his mana was topped off and partly out of solidarity.

“Nessa!” He called. “Step out of the ring after you finish each bout, ok?”

She leapt over the ropes, shrinking back to a normal human size as she did. A few moments later a skeleton was announced as round two. It had heavy boots, a shield, and one of the strange arm mounted swords found in this world that reminded Gil unpleasantly of his time possessed by a Gimard. Gil squinted at it, shrugged, and waved for Nessa to go back in and obliterate it. She did, in the space of two breaths, and hopped back out afterwards.

Two chips this time. The third foe, an animated suit of red enameled armor, took around thirty seconds to destroy and yielded four chips.

“Yo! Check this out!” Garri said, cheerfully running up to Gil.

She held up a trio of blue chips with small 5s engraved in their centers. One of them was splattered with droplets of fresh blood. Gil looked past Garri and saw that all three of the gamblers who had been steadily pulling the levers on the slot machines were slumped over, blood sprayed all over their respective machines. The desk attendant was staring in abject horror.

“What the hell, Garri!” Gil said.

“No, don't worry, it's cool. Like you said, definitely just NPCs. Check this out.” She turned and called to the bartender. “Hey! Can I get a beer?”

“You got it sugar!” The bartender called back. She poured the foamy liquid into a tall glass and carried it on a tray to Garri. She walked directly past the dead gamblers, and her mincing gait never paused for a second.

“Also, free beer!” Garri added cheerfully, “This place is awesome!”

“Goddamn it!” Gil groaned, “We don’t just randomly kill people!”

“Oh, is treating low end NPCs like loot piñatas bad now?” Garri hissed back, leaning in conspiratorially. “I didn’t get that impression when we were hunting goblins yesterday. Or before that, for that matter.”

She glanced meaningfully at the three Shinra grunts aiding in the defense of the casino. They clung to their guns and stayed in the backline, but the casino staff seemed to be taking quite a lot of comfort in their presence.

“That’s not the same thing! It’s about optics!” Gil answered, but he was interrupted.

“Round four!” The desk attendant announced in a quavering voice. “Caruban!”

The fourth opponent was, indeed, Caruban. An identical gigantic red cat curled up in the middle of the arena, waiting to be challenged.

“What!” Gil said, “I thought you said this was an easy tournament!”

“It is! You fight him way later in the game so he’s super weak… now…” Garri realized the foolishness of her words even as they left her mouth. “Well you still have that giant girl. She seems pretty badass.”

“Yeah, and I want to save her for bigger fights, if this is only round four of eight!” Gil groaned. “You think you can take him again? You know how he moves now.”

“Uh… I kinda mostly beat him because I got a free shot and he was bleeding the whole time.” Garri answered, blushing cutely and suddenly acknowledging the real sequence of events. “I don’t really know if I can manage a fair fight. Maybe?”

Gil suspected that she did actually have the ability to take Caruban, but power swaps, skins, and apparently character cards all had a similar problem: they didn’t actually provide the user with much in the way of seasoning. Garri had the skills of an elite monster huntress, but realistically she’d probably been on few enough real fights to count on one hand. It would be a serious gamble to throw her in there where she might panic or do something foolish without backup, and making Nessa solo five battles as intense as Caruban, if not tougher, seemed equally unwise.

He looked at the Shinra soldiers and considered having them hop into the ring one at a time, mag dump, and leave when they’d fired every bullet in loaded into their rifles. According to desk girl, that wouldn’t disqualify Gil’s whole retinue, it would just forbid the soldiers from going back in for the rest of the tournament.

They might even survive… though Caruban was pretty goddamn fast. They were probably NPCs, but Gil had no reason to believe they were the type with zero self preservation like those poor bastards at the slots. He might also be able to get his Sphered team to make a few attempts to soften the enemy up. True instant death was hardly ever a thing unless the brain was destroyed, so his animals could be spent as fuzzy missiles, and Silky had her materia. Farley would probably refuse outright, and he was doing fine at the door. Even so, taking things slow and softening the enemy up felt like the best option he had available.

It was a workable plan, but it still felt like a distinctly bad plan. Gil needed to finish at least one of the challenges to clear the dungeon and capture Noa. He didn’t cherish the idea of teaching himself a whole new fighting game from scratch, or of putting all his faith into the slots bestowing him with a jackpot, so the beginner tournament really seemed like the best option available.

“Garri, are you any good at fighting games?” Gil asked.

“I’ve played Smash?” Garri answered uncertainly.

“Congratulations, try to beat Baka fighter.” He said. “If you beat someone named Songi then anything else we do in here is just for the bonus objective. Oh. And if the machines are coin operated, you already got your whole budget right there.”

Gil checked over his tablet, and was pleased to see that a new T4 had joined the retinue. She went by the name Felore, and had the elf, clergy, and healer tags. Looked like Ireena had a good day. Unfortunately she just sold for 5 credits and the right to purchase a temple for the skyblock. Not immediately useful to his situation in the dungeon.

He looked over at the goblins again, and finally it clicked.

“Nessa.” He said. “Get as big as you can in here without destroying stuff. I have an idea.”

••••••••••

This poll has a lot more character than some and no direct spoilers, so feel free to read it if you’d like to see the desk attendant describe her shop‘s inventory. All the stuff Gil could plausibly afford, anyway.

https://strawpoll.com/05ZdzYvYNn6