“What’s with these other options?” I asked Iris.
“I’ll explain in a bit, but long story short: as you progress and level, you’ll be able to unlock more features for the Dojo.”
“Got it.”
“You’ve made a track, which is great, but no space for pull-up bars and other exercise gear,” Aya commented.
“Right,” I said as I scrolled through the options.
At five hundred Proxima dollars, adding a strip of workout gear wasn’t too expensive. There were upgrades available, but I figured this would satisfy Aya for now.
I made my selection and a series of pull-up bars and other structures to aid in calisthenics took shape on the right-hand portion of the field.
Proxima Dollars: $5,500
Spent: $4,500
Loan: 0
“Thank you,” Aya said as she lightly tapped my cheek with her ghost limb.
“You should have like five thousand left, right?” Iris said.
“That’s right.”
“Crap, it’s not a lot, but it should be enough for a fairly decent mythcrea quarters.”
“And what about us, Chase?” Lady C. asked. “Don’t you care about us?”
I couldn't help but smile at her. “Your personal dwellings will have to come later. We’re going to make this place great, but we need some captures and we need a place to store them where they can flourish.”
“Fine,” Lady C. said.
Aya mumbled something in Thulean that sounded like a death threat.
“So, I should just choose a design?” I asked as I backtracked through the training ground menu to find the base mythcrea quarters. They were pricey.
“No.” Iris smiled. “I have a few that I’ve already looked at and downloaded for you.”
“How did you know we were going to design the Dojo today again?”
“Just a hunch. Check these out.” Her hand glowed as a few designs zipped over to me.
The first thing I noticed was that we were standing where the quarters would be.
All around me now were red and green grid lines that showed the architectural outline of the potential space. I looked up and saw the upper rooms, looked down and saw the basement.
“I can’t really get a sense of it from where I’m standing.”
“Minimize it with your hand.”
I squeezed my fingers together and the large outline instantly compressed until it was about the size of a basketball, a square basketball, but at least it was now manageable.
Iris had selected three different types of quarters, each with their own advantages.
The first was a four-story space that included an expansive basement. It was spacious, and there was room in the left wing to expand indefinitely. The cost? A mere four thousand Proxima dollars.
It was definitely an option, but I had a feeling there was a catch.
The second space she selected looked more like a skyscraper than the first. At nine stories high, I liked the usage of the space, but I didn’t like the cost. At fifteen thousand Proxima dollars, it was well over budget.
“I thought you said I shouldn’t take out a loan to buy a place,” I told Iris. Lady C. approached me and politely reminded me that she’d like her own cabin. “Got it,” I told her. “In due time.”
“You can take a mortgage out to pay for your mythcrea quarters. No interest there, and it is something that people are encouraged to do.”
“Why does that seem like a bad idea?”
“I don’t think it is a bad idea,” Aya said. The Thulean stood with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at me as if to say, ‘can we wrap this up?’
“Let me check out the third option.”
The third option resembled the first. It was a three-story building constructed like the AppleSoft headquarters in Palo Alto. It provided plenty of space in the courtyard at the center of the big ring, but it didn’t seem like there was much room for expansion.
“Let’s go with the first one,” I finally said. “No debt, and we’ll have five hundred left over.”
“That’s another thing,” said Iris. “You also need a room for splicing, and the equipment necessary to combine mythcrea. I guess the basement in the four-story place will do it, but that is a little Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.”
“You can combine mythcrea?”
“Once you have a bunch of mythcrea, you’ll want to actively combine them and see if you can create more powerful creatures for your Fighting Party. But I guess we can cross that bridge when we get there. And you aren’t quite at the right level to do that. I believe you need to be at least level three.”
“Will a mortgage cover the cost of the splicing equipment?” Lady Cassandra asked.
Iris bit her lip as her glasses again turned white. After scrolling through a bunch of data, she nodded. “It would.”
“I want to go with the four-story place,” I said firmly. “We don’t need nine stories, at least right now, and from what I can see here…” I pressed an icon that said customize and saw that I could add additional stories in the future for ten thousand Proxima dollars per story. “Yep, just as I expected, it’s customizable vertically and horizontally.”
I selected the four-story building and agreed to purchase it.
As if pushed forward by a gust of wind, the four of us were moved about a hundred feet away as construction began on the house. This was purely for show, and it was fun to see cranes and tractors drive onto the scene and quickly construct the place.
What made it even odder to watch was the fact that there were no people involved.
After the heavy-duty vehicles finished their work, the bricks stacked themselves as did the floors. Once the place was fully constructed, Fujin, the Japanese wind god, and Skin-Walker, the Navajo witch, took shape at the back entrance to the quarters.
They stood there, Fujin floating with his feet on a small cloud and Skin-Walker in a battle-ready position with her eyes narrowed on me.
“Can I talk to them?” I asked.
“Of course you can talk to them.” Iris grabbed my hand and took me over to the two mythcrea. “It’s a good idea, actually, to make friends with them.”
“Chase,” I said, extending my hand to Fujin.
Wind swirled around us as he approached me. He bowed his head slightly and his form shattered into millions of tiny shards. These shards lifted into the air and speared into my body.
+3 Tokens!
“Tokens?” I asked Iris as one of the bedrooms on the fourth floor of the mythcrea quarters flickered on.
“He’s just being dramatic. You already had these tokens once you captured him. You get tokens by capturing mythcrea, and tokens allow you to advance to the next level. You can trade and sell them too. I’ll explain all this later.”
The Skin-Walker approached me, and as she did, her skin rolled back to reveal…
I gasped.
Thad now stood in front of us, and it freaked out Iris just as much as it bothered me.
It also got me thinking about something that I hadn’t discussed with her yet. Before I could tell the Skin-Walker to knock it off, she was back to her normal form, in her dark robes with her powerful, alluring eyes locked on me.
“My name is Altsoba,” she said, her voice androgynous.
“Chase, I’m Chase.”
“I see.”
Iris cleared her throat. I saw the inside of her glasses light up, and knew she was researching the Skin-Walker.
“You can read our thoughts?” she asked.
“I can.”
“And your name…” Iris started to ask.
“It means ‘all are at war.’ A fitting name, considering my addition to your party.” With that, Altsoba’s form shattered, formed a spiral of cosmic dust, and flew into my chest.
+2 Tokens!
I glanced up at the mythcrea quarters and saw a light in one of the middle bedrooms come on.
“That was unsettling,” Iris said.
“
Yeah, it was.”
“She may become one of the most powerful ones we capture,” Aya said as she approached us. “But we will see.”
“So back to the tokens,” I said.
“Do you see the blinking icon on the top portion of your dashboard? Near the settings icon.”
“I see it.”
“Focus on that.”
“Hover over ‘Current Capture,’ and you’ll see that each is worth a certain number of tokens.”
“I see, together they are worth five points, and I need five to get to my next level. Makes sense.”
“Yep, and this doesn’t necessarily mean that one is better than the other. Having a shape-shifting mythcrea may be more useful than a wind god, but Fujin gets a bonus point for being a god.”
“And what’s the point of leveling if I can’t fight myself?”
“Each level you get increases the level of your Huntresses. Your huntresses are at Level Nine and Level Ten.”
Aya and Lady C.’s stats appeared, much more colorful than the mythcrea.
I nodded, makes sense. “And I can spend tokens?”
“Yes, they have Proxima dollar value and can be traded. The only issue with doing this is you can decrease your level by spending too many tokens. Let’s say you are at Level Two with eleven tokens. You spend three, and now you’re back to Level One. Your Huntresses will also lose a level.”
“Do not touch my level,” Aya warned.
“Will this number fluctuate if I fuse mythcrea? You said I could do that, right?”
“No, but fusing mythcrea is expensive, so let’s deal with that later. Finally, do you see the part that says ‘tokens?’ This is definitely something that’s important.”
“I see it.”
“You get tokens for completing tournaments, finding rare mythcrea, and if you’re lucky and have the funds, you can set up a mining operation that mines for tokens here in your Dojo. Tokens will get you all sorts of things, from rare weapons for your Huntresses to access to EverLife.”
“EverLife? Why do I feel like I’ve heard that before?”
“Because I told you about EverLife,” Aya said. “Can we please go back to the real world now? I’m bored.”
Iris laughed. “But I can’t see you in the real world.”
“And? I can still see you.”
Iris looked at Aya funny for a moment.
“Never mind her,” I said, stepping between them. “Two more questions before we go back. First, what is EverLife?”
“EverLife is…”
“It is the goal of all Alphas and Hunters,” Lady Cassandra said. “It is the source world of everything we go after in your world. If you want to capture bigger, stronger and better mythcrea, you must go to their place of origin, where you can unlock secrets and learn of exclusive brawls and tournaments.”
“So, I would capture them there?”
Iris shrugged and looked to the two Huntresses. “Do either of you know?”
Lady C. shook her head. “I’ve never been.”
“Same here,” came Aya’s reply.
“Finally, explain the magic classes to me. I’d like to get a better handle on that.”
“It’s on your dashboard,” Iris told me. “Click ‘mythcrea’ and go to classes and you’ll find the explanation there.”
“Ah, it makes sense now,” I said aloud as I parsed through the information. The names of the various magic classes mostly had Latin roots, and I was familiar with a few of the terms aside from Ignis, Sana, and Ventus.
Iris smiled. “If you need anything else, it’s likely somewhere on your dashboard.”
“I can help too,” Lady C. offered.
“Great, thanks. Is everyone ready to go back to New York?”
“Only if we can go hunting,” Aya said.
Chapter Seven: Mortem Mythcrea
“We need five mythcrea to join tournaments, right?” I asked as my NV Visor powered down. Twenty or so updates flashed on my iNet screen but I ignored them. They quickly faded into the background as I sat up, waiting for the visor to tell me it was safe to remove.
“That’s right,” I heard Iris say next to me.
“There was the bearadillo back at that playground,” I said, as the NV Visor powered down and the words ‘You may remove the visor’ flashed. I took off the headset and turned to Iris, watching as she too waited for the prompt.
Lady Cassandra sat at the edge of the bed, her shoulder to me. As soon as I saw her, she looked at me over her shoulder and offered me a soft grin as she swept some of her brown hair out of her face.
“Glad to see you again.”
“We just saw each other,” I reminded her.
“I mean here in New York. Ooo, I’d love to explore New York. Are there any big shopping districts we can go to? Maybe some theaters.”
I started to laugh.
“What is it?” Iris said as she placed her rigged glasses over the bridge of her nose, which allowed her to at least see imprints of the Huntresses.
“Lady C. wants to go to Broadway and hit up some shopping.”
“That would be fun,” Iris said.
“See, she agrees.”
Aya scoffed. She leaned against Iris’ dining room table, her arms crossed over her chest. “Of course she agrees. She is female, and she’d directly benefit from going to these places.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You are some sort of musician, correct? I remember the instruments from your room.”
“Correct.”
“Play this guitar.”
Lady C. clapped her hands together. “Yes, play for us! That would be so sexy!”
“They’re asking me to play your guitar,” I told Iris, my cheeks turning red. “They think it would be sexy.”
“Sexy?” Iris laughed. “I guess that’s one way to describe it. Want me to play ukulele for them too?”
“I thought we were going hunting?” I told Aya.
She shrugged. “What harm could one song do? I need some war music before I capture our next mythcrea.”
“War music?” I turned to Iris. “She’s asking for war music.”
“Would that be like early twenty-first century death metal?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
Iris walked over to get her guitar and her ukulele, then returned to her bed and handed me the acoustic.
I thumbed an open E to see if it was in tune. As soon as I did this, an app kicked into gear on my viewing pane showing me how far away I was from true E.
With a quick adjustment, I tuned the first string and worked my way down, E-A-D-G-B-E. Iris quickly tuned hers up, G-C-E-A, and smiled at me.
“What do you want to play?” I asked her.
“I thought you’d make that decision.”
Iris started playing a slow rendition of Happy Birthday and singing in a sultry voice.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Aya, happy birthday to you.”
Aya practically attacked Iris with her buster sword. “Why did you stop?” she cried. “Keep playing. Bravo! Bravo! It is not even my birthday, yet I am overcome with joy!”
I laughed. “Aya loves it.”
“Let’s play them something original.”
“Got it,” I said, reverting to bass mode. While I could play acoustic guitar, it was just as easy to focus on the lower two strings and do some bass work.
Iris looked at me uncertainly. “How about ‘I Know You’re There?’ I mean, it is kind of appropriate.”
“But,” I cleared my throat, “but Thad started that one.”
“Yeah, but you and I wrote it,” she said, and just the mention of this fact triggered a memory of us in my bedroom working out the song, which was based around a repetitive chorus.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I definitely want to hear it now,” said Lady Cassandra.
Nodding my head, I counted us off using my fingernail on the front of the acoustic guitar. After a breath, I started palm m
uting a single, drone-y note. I started singing and Iris joined me on ukulele and backup vocals.
“I am with you, you are with me, even though I can’t see you I know you’re there.”
“I know you’re there,” Iris sang.
“Ooo, I know you’re there.”
“I know you’re there.”
“Ooo, I know you’re there.” I added another note to my palm muting. “I can feel you, you can feel me, even though I can’t see you I know you’re there.”
“I know you’re there.”
“Ooo, I know you’re there.”
“I know you’re there.”
“Ooo, I know you’re there.” I stopped playing. “Anyway, it is something like that.” I looked over at Iris to see her beaming with joy.
“In the name of the Empress…” Aya brought her hand to her heart.
“You two are so talented,” Lady C. said, dabbing a tear from her cheek. “My Alpha and his real-life friend, who isn’t a girlfriend but acts like one, are so talented! Maybe people with glasses make better music. Who knows?”
“I know it isn’t war music, but…”
“It absolutely is war music!” Aya said. “It reminds me of a Thulean song. Let me sing the translated version.”
“The Empress and the Holy King tore Reapers from the sky. The battle for Porthos lost, a final place to die. It sounds like your song, right?”
“Sure,” I said, not willing to critique a woman with a giant sword.
“What are they doing?” Iris asked.
“Singing to me. Aya just sang a Thulean song.”
“I’d love to hear it next time we’re at the Dojo, Aya.”
“Certainly.” Aya punched her hand into her fist. “I am very motivated now. Let’s get out there and capture something. It is close to nighttime, correct?” She walked over to Iris’ single window. “Yes, this is good.”
“Nighttime is a great for capturing oddities,” Lady C. added. “Shall we go?”
I turned to Iris. “They’re ready to capture something. Any hotspots around here?”
Iris thought for a moment. “You know, there is the construction site not far away. It’s pretty big. We’re kind of shooting in the dark until you get a monster locator app, but that will cost money.”
Monster Hunt NYC: A Fantasy Harem Adventure Page 6
