The Intermediate Course

The intermediate course had one major difference that Garri had not explained in full. It was definitely a harder course, but not really because of the harder enemies. Sure, the first foe was the larger and more aggressive Black Piura instead of another red one, but the difference was basically academic as far as that was concerned.

No, the problem was that this was apparently a martial arts themed game, so the higher tier arena battles required challengers to fight unarmed and unarmored. Thankfully, Nessa’s symbiote was considered a part of her body and magic was still allowed, but Gil’s options were still seriously restricted by that limit. Garri’s offensive spells were more of a supplement than a primary offensive tool, so basically everyone except Silky and the beasts would be meaningfully weaker than their normal operating procedures, and the soldiers would be borderline useless

Ballistic goblins still worked as a strategy, since they were listed by the official record as “a high speed flying tackle,” but Nessa needed to disarm them before she could throw them, which added a whole extra step to the process and made at least a few chips in her stone armor all but inevitable. They took the tournament slow and steady, and Gil spent a lot of his time shopping.

Gil finally made his first purchases from the shop, starting with the Desk Attendant herself. She’d certainly earned it, and holding the possibility of her being trapped here had officially shifted from being insurance that she wouldn’t potentially get them all killed, to insurance that she wouldn’t screw him out of fabulous prizes.

He decided to buy her first as a show of good faith, though he confirmed that she would still be the one manning the desk and acting as referee even after he bought her. He didn’t want to risk someone else stepping in and calling him on his bullshit.

Gil let Blackpaw out of his ball for just long enough to kill a bright orange Gobu Gobu, apparently called a High Gomboo, that would have probably been more of a threat if Blackpaw hadn’t been able to instantly bowl him over and rip his throat out. He even dropped loot, which unfortunately Blackpaw wasn’t properly trained to fetch for Gil.

The other two early purchases were more practical: a bunny suit and a magic ring. The bunny suit was a leotard and fishnet stockings, plus accessories, and would apparently repair and clean itself infinitely while reshaping to fit any humanoid body. Given that Ireena was currently running around mostly naked thanks to her size shift destroying clothes, she would probably accept the high cut leotard as the clear upgrade it was. Plus, at only one casino chip per suit, these things represented an incredible arbitrage opportunity. Zero upkeep resizing clothes always sold reasonably well in the bazaar.

Blackpaw shocked Gil by successfully taking down the next enemy, a “dark ogre” with nothing but sheer overwhelming aggression. The ogre moved like a massive ape with a single horn in the middle of its forehead, and when it arrived it immediately attempted to adopt some kind of mystical pose. Gil’s Sense Materia finally decided to chime in and inform him that it was boosting its strength. That was apparently much harder to do with a wolf diving for your Achilles tendon. Gil watched in a combination of wonder and fascination as the ogre repeatedly swiped at Blackpaw and narrowly missed, mostly because it couldn’t put any weight on one of its legs. Blackpaw harried it relentlessly, finally managing to jump on the ogre’s back and tear at its spine.

Then the ogre threw itself backwards, slamming Blackpaw heavily against the mat, and Gil recalled the wolf before it could get more seriously hurt. He hopped into the ring to finish off the nearly immobile ogre personally. With lightning. From a safe distance. After looting the high Gomboo and getting another Dungeon Key. That actually made Gil laugh for a second; a binding from what appeared to be a random trash mob? He had gotten fantastically lucky, it seemed. He really did need to loot literally everything that dropped.

Gil snatched up a Magic Ring after that. It was his first real high cost purchase of the night, but it was also going to be a massive boost to their effectiveness. It conducted magical energy into the wearer. In a magic dead zone that would just mean that mana wouldn’t automatically bleed away, but in a relatively magical world like the lands shrouded in mist? It meant that he could refill his entire mana pool with a ten minute breather and a sandwich, so long as he didn’t exhaust himself.

It would have, anyway, if he weren’t informed that all of his winnings other than the attendant herself would be sent to his listed home address: the skyblock. Gil cursed to himself, but it wasn’t as if they were using mana at an unacceptable rate already. It just would have been nice to shower his foes with plasma with wild abandon.

Nessa had an idea for the next round, and it went swimmingly. The enemy, apparently a gold plated bull this time, stepped into the arena at the same point as always: a black portal in the middle. It didn’t have enough time to get its bearings before Nessa beamed it with a pre-aimed goblin.

The goblin in question died more or less on impact, but the startled bull started bucking wildly, panicked and maddened by confusion. It moved predictably, and the next goblin staggered it. The giant dents in its metallic hide were probably squeezing its organs or hiding internal bleeding, because the rather stupidly designed beast collapsed, dead, before she could disarm the next goblin. Really, a brass or iron bull might have been able to sustain more damage. At least it looked cool.

Gil wasn’t sure exactly how far his budget might stretch, so he just enjoyed chatting with the only slightly relieved attendant about her wares. The really expensive shit was fascinating, but he wasn’t banking on getting that far with this goblin chucking strategy. He wanted to be prepared if he did, though. The highest ticket item proved to be a new binding, in fact.

“The Arena’s FABULOUS proprietary cloning device is how we create all of our arena champions!” She said, “I have absolutely no idea why it’s being offered to you, but it can be used to create loyal simulacra of anyone and anything you have a biological sample of.”

The tooltip provided by Gil’s Sense Materia informed him that it would have all the same limitations on use per world as his other bindings, but this was one of the best bindings he’d ever seen for a test like his. One hair or blood sample, and he’d get a perfectly loyal footsoldier with none of the drama of extracting or brainwashing a local. Full personality, powers, and skillset intact. Basically what Candress thought happened to her.

Unfortunately, at a price of 30,000 tokens he was pretty sure it was bait. The master course in the arena might get him close to those numbers, but more likely it was just to convince him to try to use the slot machines. Even if he could afford it, he wasn’t sure if he’d actually get more utility out of the cloning device than he would by just buying basically everything else in the entire shop.

The next item down on the list, for example, was a pre-captured Ra-Seru egg named Palma for 20,000 chips. He’d seen what Terra did for Silky, and frankly? Ra Seru made Nessa’s Symbiote look pretty anemic by comparison. Gil tore his eyes away from the far end of the shelf full of 2000 chip and higher prices, and refocused on the more plausible items at the lower end of the curve.

The next enemy after the gold bull was a human shaped golem, called an Ironman, made out of chunks of rough and slightly rusted iron. It was, nonetheless, substantially harder to kill with ballistic goblins than anything before it. It didn’t even dodge, but direct hits barely staggered the stupid thing. Gil’s sense materia told him that it’s structural integrity was going down, but only at a rate of 1-2% per direct strike. That was enough encouragement; it was a wall, but it could be beaten down safely from afar, and so it was. Goblin after goblin flew into the Ironman until its body finally crumbled almost three hours later.

When Garri finished on the last of the Baka Fighter machines, she took off her ripped and bloodied hoodie and used it as a sack filled with casino chips. 61 in total, four times the 15 she’d harvested from the near mindless NPCs and used as seed money. Gil had heard Garri screaming something about being a king while the Ironman was slowly disassembled, but it seemed that whatever breakthrough she’d managed didn’t extend to actually beating or even reaching the final boss. If Garri was correct in her estimates, one perfect run would have been worth 56 tokens alone, but that seemed a bit much to expect from a first time player. Still, an extra 660 chips would have been delightful.

The rest of the intermediate course wasn’t any easier than the beginner course. Indeed it was substantially harder, but after the Ironman it was just another Caruban, a creepy Seru that vaguely resembled a faceless woman in a dress crossed with a xenomorph, and another Xain, which dropped a rather gaudy golden belt as loot. None of them proved especially resistant to a fifty pound projectile sucker punch, so Gil was able to rack up chips quickly.

Each round doubled the payout of the last, so it was really only the last few rounds of any given tournament that really paid well. The beginner course had paid out 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 chips, for example. The black piura had paid out 2 chips to the red’s 1, so the intermediate cup had been worth precisely double the beginner cup since both were 8 rounds.

The only thing that made the master cup even slightly intriguing was the knowledge that it was apparently 16 rounds. The geometric progression continuing for another 8 rounds would be incredible, enough for him to afford the cloning device, the Ra Seru Egg, and a lot more besides. He had to at least check, assuming they weren’t already fucked.

Gil looked over and saw that the defenders were down to nearly half their original numbers. Even with the support of Gil’s retinue and Nessa plucking goblins out of the mass, the greenskins showed no signs of slowing down, and far less of stopping. It was frankly a testament of the sheer bloody minded dedication of NPCs that they were still in the fight.

A group of normal people would have had at least a few give into despair or break under the pressure. NPCs didn’t think about anything but the task at hand, and would only deviate from their path if prompted by genuinely new information.

After making a few careful preparations, including Nessa crushing a few of the slot machines like soup cans, Gil fired up the master course. He groaned at the first enemy: another Ironman. It took just as long to kill this one as the first, over three hours, and by the time three casino tokens appeared on the attendant’s desk another two of the NPCs had died, then everything went to shit.

The NPCs were overrun before round two began, with the goblins making a push that finally overwhelmed the flagging defenders. Without the benefits of the barricade, the civilian NPCs died quickly. Keilnei, Boulder, Gil and Garri moved in to fight them, and Nessa smashed the broken slot machines one after another into the narrow tunnel. Gil’s team took a few hits, but nothing too serious for a few sparks of healing to fix. The last orc was tossed into the arena, where he was electrocuted by one of those floating UFO lizards from near the end of the beginner course.

There were still nearly infinite greenskins outside. Unfortunately, they’d be functionally impossible to contain again with all the NPCs dead. That source of ammunition was gone, and the desk attendant shook her head firmly when Gil asked if they could throw inanimate objects into the ring.

“Throw?” She said, a frantic edge in her voice, "Absolutely not. Are you implying those goblins didn’t enter the ring freely?”

“I would never.” Gil said, raising his hands in mock offense.

This dungeon run was over. Nessa was the only fighter they had left who had any real chance of throwing down with all of the arena’s restrictions; everyone else was pretty much useless. Garri suggested throwing Farley and the Shinra grunts to try to get through a couple more rounds, but Gil wasn’t quite that heartless. He sent them back to the skyblock and told them to get some rest instead. They’d earned reassignment to a better location, and Gil really hoped their next lives were less shit.

On the other hand, Gil wasn’t quite soft enough to tell Garri she couldn’t rifle through the pockets of the defenders for tokens, which proved to be a decision worth another ten chips. He set Nessa to tear apart a slot machine just in case, to no benefit, appointed Garri to the task of looting the pool of golden light where many goblins had died in the kill zone, and started making his purchases. Assuming that nothing else panned out, Gil had a budget of 839 chips.

••••••••••

His purchases are already chosen, but the next arc is still hanging in the balance.

https://strawpoll.com/kjn1DklD7yQ

Also. A vitally important question. Who will be wearing the bunny girl bikini armor Gil is about to buy? I decided to generate some fabulous reference images. For reasons.

https://strawpoll.com/jVyG2WlePZ7