by DoctorHepa
I remembered what Odette had said. He has a lot of experience in the subject, unfortunately.
“Yeah, I’m supposed to ask you about gods,” I said.
“That can wait. It’s a long conversation. We need to get our space set up. And then sleep. So distribute your points.”
“Wait, that reminds me,” Donut said, jumping from the table. She rushed to the corner of the restaurant. Standing there, hidden in the shadows was a mailbox. I’d forgotten about that. She had a spellbook coming to her. She leaped to the top of the box and opened it up. A moment later, she grunted with annoyance.
“When am I going to get a good spell?” she complained. “The flames from Magic Missile aren’t doing it for me anymore. I want something with some kick. Like Fireball.”
The idea of Donut shooting fireballs was terrifying.
The cat scrunched up her face. “What do you think, Mordecai? Should I read it? Or maybe we can sell it?”
“Read it,” he said.
She glowed.
“What was it?” I asked. Normally, she’d apply the book without even reading the description first. I was moderately impressed that she’d first asked Mordecai’s opinion. But thinking on it, I was starting to suspect she was getting addicted to the idea of selling things more than actually using them.
“It’s a spell called Hole,” Mordecai said. “It does exactly what it sounds like. It makes a temporary hole on a surface of her choosing. She’ll need to level it up before it’s too helpful, as a level one isn’t thick enough to get through most doors, but it’s a useful spell. Especially if you’re creative with it.”
That actually sounded pretty awesome. I could already think of a half dozen uses for it. Tomorrow we would have to go out and experiment. I turned to Katia.
“What about you? Did you get anything good?”
She nodded, lifting her left arm. There was nothing there except the arm of her blue tracksuit. Any equipped gear would be invisible on her, but it would increase her mass.
“It’s an arm bracer that I can turn into a shield,” she said. “Check it out.”
She flicked her wrist, and her arm changed shape, forming into what looked like a buckler-sized glob of blue polyester.
“That’s really weird,” I said.
“Yeah, the shield is supposed to be metal, I think, but when I activate it, it just looks like the surrounding area.” She reached down and rapped on the shield with her knuckles, and it gave a metallic ring. “If I practice, I might be able to make it look like anything. Mordecai says I can change its shape too.”
Mordecai leaned forward to examine the round protuberance on her arm. “That shield has a Shatter enchantment. Use it in conjunction with your Rush ability.”
The shield disappeared, and her arm reshaped itself.
“You can be like that liquid metal Terminator guy,” Donut said. “That’d be really cool.”
“I never saw that movie,” replied Katia. “I don’t like violence.”
“You’re in the wrong job then, honey.”
“Wait,” I said. “I guess I hadn’t really realized what exactly you can do with that race. So if you’re wearing a helmet that’s made out of metal, and you reshape yourself to look like a normal human wearing a bikini, you’ll be able to make any part of your body metal?”
Mordecai answered. “That’s right. If she’s 90% flesh and 10% metal, she can make herself to look like a regular, unarmored human, but what you perceive as her bikini, or her feet, or her hands, can really be the material from the helmet. As long as it’s 10%, and it’s continuous. You can’t break up the item. Also, there’s some elasticity issues with certain enchanted materials, plus certain limits still exist, like she’s not allowed to grow four arms so she can wear forty rings, but you get the idea.”
“Well, shit. We need to get as much armor on you as possible.”
“That’s the plan,” Mordecai said. “And she’s going to train up her strength a bit, too.”
I distributed my 24 stat points. I put 10 in strength, nine in constitution, and five in intelligence. I knew I needed to add some to dexterity next, but since this floor was going to presumably focus more on close-quarters fighting, plus the boost I’d already received from the necklace, I decided to bolster my main stats. So after I was done, I ended up with:
Strength: 41 +3 (When Gauntlet Formed)
Intelligence: 15
Constitution: 34
Dexterity: 23
Charisma: 25
“A strength over 40 is good for the fourth floor,” Mordecai said when I showed him my updated stats. “It’s not anything to write home about, but you’ve already made up the ground you lost when you picked the Primal race. We still have a lot of work to do. We need to get your unenhanced strength to 100 as soon as we can. In a few levels, Donut is going to hit 100 in Charisma, and that’s going to change a lot of things. She’s at 94 now.”
“Oh I can’t wait.” I said.
“In the meantime,” Mordecai said, turning to Donut, “There’s one last thing to do before you three can get to sleep. Get your coupons out.”
* * *
“Katia, you too,” Mordecai said. “Take out all your coupons.”
“Actually, guys, I’m really sorry,” Katia said. “I was talking to Hekla, and I kind of promised her I would…”
Mordecai waved his hand. “Yes, yes. We’ve already figured that out. Don’t worry. You can cash in the coupons now, and you won’t lose them. The personal space and the environmental upgrades will travel with you, so you might as well use them now. The same with the tables you’re going to buy. The tables upgrade on their own every time you go down a floor, so it’s important to do it now. You can save the two table upgrade coupons. If you leave and rejoin another party, everything you’re about to do will travel with you.”
“Okay,” she said after a moment.
Donut returned to the counter with Wendita, who was sitting there looking very sullen.
“So I’ve thought about it, Wendita, dear,” Donut said. “I’ve decided we are going to buy a space, but we’re going to use this instead.”
She dropped the coupon on the counter.
“What is this?” The Bopca’s eyes grew huge as she examined the paper. Her hands started to tremble. “A level three space?”
“Does she still get her bonus if we use a coupon?” I whispered.
“Oh yeah,” Mordecai said. “She also gets rewards for each upgrade she sells. We are about to make her year.”
I still had my own coupon for a level-three personal space. “What should I do with mine?”
“Something very cool,” he said. “Follow.” He stepped—hopped, actually—up to the counter.
“Wendita,” he said. “Both Carl and Katia here also have coupons for a level-three personal space that they’d like to turn in. How much is the joining fee? For all three.”
Wendita looked up at Mordecai as if he’d just told her that she’d been elected the new president of the universe. If the little gnome’s eyes got any bigger, I feared they would pop out of her head and roll onto the counter.
“It’s ten thousand,” she finally said. “Five thousand for each union, but it would only require two of them.”
“We got that now,” he said. He turned to me. “Right?”
I nodded.
Mordecai slapped his webbed hands together. It made a sticky splotch noise. “Okay. So here’s what we’re doing. Make sure you get all this down. We are turning in all three of these level-threes, and then we are going to conjoin them. What will that make?”
“Uh, it looks like it’ll be a level-five.”
Mordecai grumbled as I exchanged a look with Donut.
He looked over his shoulder at me. “All that means is that when you guys combine your spaces, all of them together will give the benefits of a level-five space. If Katia leaves the party, she’ll withdraw her space from the collective, and it’ll go down to a…” He looked at Wen
dita.
“A four.”
“A level-four space, which is still pretty good.”
“Okay, you three, hand me all your coupons. Don’t mix them up. The system needs to know who is buying what. Wendita. Pull up the upgrade menu, and show me the available tier one environmental upgrades.”
The Bopca, still in a daze, waved her hand. A menu appeared floating in front of us.
Welcome to the Upgrade Clearing House.
The following tier-one upgrades are available. Drill down for more details.
Bathroom Upgrades.
Bed Upgrades.
Crafting Upgrades.
Kitchen Upgrades.
Kennel and Stable Upgrades
Magic Upgrades. (Empty)
Quest and Social Upgrades.
Store Access. (Empty)
Training Upgrades.
“What is this,” Mordecai said. Before I barely had the chance to read the menu, he reached forward with his hand and clicked on Quest and Social Upgrades.
“This is all new since the last time I’d had to deal with a personal space,” he mumbled. “They never really kept us apprised on this stuff since game guides don’t usually deal with anything past the third floor.”
A new menu appeared.
Social Upgrades:
*Social Screen. Gives detailed, AI-curated running list of comments from your social stream. Allows for better interaction with fans. 50,000 Gold.
Quest Upgrades:
*Quest Screen. Gives detailed list of available quests in your current area. 90,000 Gold.
*Adventurer’s, Inc. Employment Agency. Allows access to the general dungeon jobs-for-hire board. 100,000 Gold.
*
“Hmm, I was wondering what that was before. Your class gives you access to that Naughty Boys agency. I’ve never seen anything like this. They are always changing this stuff and not telling us.”
“Are these coupons good for any of these upgrades? Even though they have different values?” I asked. It’d be stupid to waste them on something that cost 50,000 when there were items that cost literally ten times as much.
“Ahh, no,” Wendita said. “If you read the fine print on the coupons, it says maximum value of 250,000 gold each and two may not be combined for a single item. So if you want that last one, you’ll have to pay another 250,000 gold.”
“Damn,” I said.
“We’re avoiding quests this floor anyway,” Mordecai said. “Let’s find some upgrades that’ll be useful right away.”
Mordecai went back and clicked on Bed Upgrades.
A long list of available types of beds populated the list. It started with a single-sized cot, and it got better from there.
The very last item was Ultra-Stabilized, Size-adjustable, race-adjustable alleviating sleep apparatus. Allows for full rest after a period of only two hours of sleep. Imparts 30 hours of Good Rest bonus. 250,000 Gold.
Mordecai slid one of Donut’s coupons forward. “We’ll take the Ultra-Stabilized bed.”
“Will we all get that?” Katia asked.
“Yes. As long as the rooms are conjoined, you all share in your upgrades.”
“So we only have to sleep for two hours now?” I asked. I was both fascinated and horrified at the idea.
“That’s right. And that’s not even the best bed you can get. Once you hit the sixth floor, the tier two upgrades become available. I think the top available bed allows you to press a button, and you’re fully rested. The Good Rest bonus adds 10% to all of your stats and allows for 10% higher experience and skill training.”
“Well, shit,” I said. “I hadn’t realized we would be getting upgrades like this.”
“It gets better,” he said.
“Click bathroom upgrades,” Donut said excitedly. “We need to get the cleaning thing like they had in that production trailer.”
In the end, we ended up with the bed, an automatic shower that wasn’t quite as nice as the one we’d seen on the surface, and a 255,000 gold Enhanced Crafting Studio that Mordecai insisted was necessary. The shower added another 10% bonus to our stats and lowered our “Detectability,” which meant we could sneak around better. He made me save my last coupon for the store which would supposedly become available sometime in the next few days. Katia also spent only one of her coupons on a Training Room, which would allow us to train for one hour a day on any specific non-magical-spell skill we wanted. Supposedly it would train the skill as if we were really fighting with it. That room also cost 250,000 gold. I wouldn’t be able to train anything explosives based, but Mordecai said tier-two would have something called a Bomber’s Studio which would allow me to practice blowing shit up.
There were multiple available upgrades I still wanted to get. The kitchen upgrades were expensive, but they offered up food that imparted varying degrees of buffs. The kennel upgrades did the same but for Mongo. The magical upgrades would become available later, according to Mordecai, and would offer a place to train magical spells and allow the purchase of magic-enhancing items. He said that was something else that would be a necessary purchase.
“There’s a ton of new types of craft tables. Let’s hold off for now while I study the list,” Mordecai said. “In the meantime, let’s open up the room and get some sleep.”
In the end, we had to pay 15,000 gold, which once again depleted much of our newly-acquired wealth. We slid the coupons and gold over to Wendita who had tears streaming down her face as she accepted them.
“You bless me, your majesty,” she said. “I knew when you talked me into paying my own money it was nothing but a test. A real princess would never do such a thing.”
Admin Notice. A new tab is available in your interface.
New achievement! Welcome to the neighborhood!
You have bought a home! It’s every man’s dream to some day own a place where he can fap in peace. No more filthy roommates not doing the dishes or making up excuses as to why they can’t pay the rent. No more landlord who shows up without notice and conceals hidden cameras in the smoke detectors. It’s all smooth sailing from now on.
Reward: You’re a homeowner now. That is the reward. That and taxes and having to deal with Kenneth the megalomaniac HOA president.
Every saferoom we’d been in always had a blank doorway locked into the wall and a space on the map for an inaccessible room. The moment the achievement faded away, that doorway opened up, and a small, closet-sized room appeared on the map. It was labeled Conjoined Personal Space of Team The Royal Court of Princess Donut. As I watched, the name started to blink.
“It lets me change the name,” Donut said excitedly as she walked toward the doorway. “Come on, Mongo. Let’s go see our new house.”
A note from DoctorHepa
I hope everyone had a great weekend! Ahh, a loot chapter. They take a long time to write because I need to keep track of all this stuff. But it's fun. It's always fun. This is the longest single chapter I've written for this story.
The next chapter will go into greater detail about the personal spaces, so if you have questions, they will hopefully get answered.
Reminder that we have a DCC Discord.
Over on Patreon, the patrons recently voted for the contents of that fan box Carl just received. Voting is concluded, and they'll see what terrible damage they have wrought in a few days. Don't tell them, but they have inadvertently unleashed chaos onto Carl and Donut.
* * *
Chapter 76
Entering The Royal Palace of Princess Donut.
You have upgrades that need to be placed.
We entered into an empty, industrial-styled room. It reminded me of the interior of an airplane hangar.
“Whoa,” I said, my voice echoing. “This is way bigger than I expected.”
Before proceeding further, you must set the entrance to your personal space.
A blinking, transpa
rent doorway appeared against the far wall. It slid as I turned my head, racing along the walls. As I moved, a second doorway formed with Princess Donut blazing over it. The colors of the words changed from black to pink then to an opalescent purple.
“This is very customizable,” Donut said. A moment later, her door changed color from black to purple, matching the color of the floating label over her door.
I mentally clicked Place on my door, and a second door appeared a few feet to the right of Donut’s. A moment later, a third door appeared next to mine, labeled Katia Grim.
A wire diagram of a rectangle appeared, floating against a small section of the warehouse, just right of where we’d placed the doors. It blinked again, and suddenly there was a tiny room. Restrooms appeared over the door.
“You’ll have an additional restroom inside your spaces, too,” Mordecai said. “When you conjoin a space, everyone keeps their personal restroom, and a public one also appears. The upgraded shower will be in all of them. The team leader gets to place the location of the common area rooms.” A bare, featureless kitchen area blinked into existence, followed by an area with a table and simple couch. The three familiar screens formed onto the wall above the couch. On the third screen was the message, Welcome Home. Over the kitchen was the note: Food Upgrades Not Yet Purchased.
Donut grumbled as she moved the rooms around. Large sections of wall turned transparent and flew across the hangar as I watched, open-mouthed. A moment later, she placed yet another room in the opposite corner across from the kitchen and living area. This was the biggest room yet, and it took up a quarter of the entire open area. Crafting Studio.
The moment it was locked into place, a blinking notification appeared in my own interface, and I clicked on it.
Enhanced Crafting Studio upgrade available. You may apply this upgrade to the Crafting Studio in the common area. Note: If you disengage your space, the upgrade will be returned to your library. See the Personal Spaces tab for more details.
