NOVEL WEB Chapter 6: Fashion Forward
The door at the end of the pet supplies room opens up into a concrete emergency stairwell that would be at home in a high rise apartment or office building. Our old Get! store didn't even have a second story, so these are new. There doesn't seem to be any resistance here so we move the only way we can: down.
I get to the gray, steel door one story down and crack it open. I see clothes piled up like sand dunes. Each clothes dune is at least 15 feet tall. The entire room ahead is layered with clothes. Kids t-shirts, men's jeans, women's underwear, the whole thing.
“It looks like the whole floor is this one room,” I say.
Jose says, “half the store was clothes. A whole dungeon floor of it fits.”
We look around and don't see any immediate threats, which is somehow foreboding. “Yeah, just that there's no telling what's under that stuff.”
Jose nods and lightly pushes me back so he can peer through the doorway. He's probably using his zooming vision to scope the place. He tells me, “level up first. See if you can grab something for scouting.”
I head into my menus.
Level Up
Current class: Synergist, level 2
Synergist classes:
Mage, level 1
Caster, level 1
Select from the following classes:
Mage, Fighter, Scout, Rogue, Plotter, Engineer, Tinkerer, Grenadier, Gunner, Caster Magician.
I take Jose's advice and go for Scout.
Scout
Learn mapping and perception based abilities while keeping a distance from foes. Utilize ranged attacks of all types.
A second step class. Three subclasses. One class evolution.
Gain 1 Ki, 2 Agility and 2 Dexterity upon choosing this class. Two basic map related utility techniques will be granted to you upon choosing this class.
Uses Dexterity, Agility and Ki.
Upon level up an additional random basic or advanced mapping related technique will be granted, until all basic and advanced mapping techniques are known. Each level you gain 1 Ki, 1 Agility, 1 Dexterity and 2 free points.
Let's see what I got under the Techniques menu.
Ping
Send out a sonic wave that rings when it comes into contact with a creature. Doesn't distinguish between friend, foe or ambivalent squirrels.
Range: 100 feet
Cost: 1 Ki Point
Proficiency: 0%
Minimap
Create a tiny map in the palm of your hand. It reflects what you yourself have seen. You can use your other hand to pinch to zoom, slide or rotate the map, and even put down markers that are saved between uses.
Duration: 5 minutes
Cost: 1 Ki Point
Proficiency: 0%
“Yeah, I got a couple of good abilities,” I say, closing my eyepatch menu. “Can't use them often though. They use Ki, which you already have, right? I only have 1 Ki and my Charisma is only 4 so I get my point back once every 15 minutes.”
“What're the techs?”
“Ping and Minimap. Ping does what you expect. Minimap makes a little map we can see in my hand.”
Jose motions to the door. “Ping away then.”
I swing the door open and use Ping by feeling the tingling of Ki in my hand and snapping my fingers. A golden ring spreads like a shimmering distortion in the air. Immediately it hits Jose and the sound of a small bell dings out from the ring. We watch the ring spread and as it hits a big clothes dune we hear a multitude of dings. After that my Ping ring dissipates and we're back in the silence of the stairway.
The nice thing about being in a Get! store dungeon is that everything is well lit. Fluorescent lights shine down overhead so even though we can't see the creatures hiding in the clothes pile, we can see it clearly. The walls are pure white too, and aside from the disgusting pet supplies area, it's been very clean in this dungeon.
“Any ideas?” Jose asks me.
“I mean, it's a bad idea...” I say as I summon a Fire Bat and prepare to chuck it into the extremely flammable 70% spandex clothes pile.
Jose holds a hand up to stay my impending chuck. “Maybe something that won't start the entire room on fire and probably suffocate us and everyone else in here.”
That was a lot of words at once so I know Jose is serious. I hand him the weapon. “Alright, bad idea number two,” I say.
I snap my finger again and a blue coil of electricity circles my index finger. I wait a few minutes for my Arcana to recharge, then cast Static Snap two more times. Now the middle and ring fingers on my left hand are sparking with low levels of electricity.
“There's no duration on this spell, Static Snap,” I say, explaining. “It just says it charges a finger with electricity and discharges when I touch something.” We wait a few more minutes and now I've got ten fingers full of lightning.
I approach the clothes hill, fingers outstretched. Jose is backing me up, spike darts in hand, ready to flick dog collar death into the eye of anything that might surprise me. When I get about 20 feet from the pile I suddenly dash forward to the hill.
As I approach I see what's in the clothes pile. Snakes. A dozen or more snakes. They're each about 6 inches thick and they pop their heads out of the pile and hiss at me. Each has a head made of a different pair of shoes, the soles fanged and flapping together as one mouth.
I reach for the pile of clothes and pray this works. The static electricity leaps from my fingers with a loud crack and shoots into the pile. The dozen or so snakes twitch and shake, then collapse. I start to move away but immediately see one start to stir. They're not dead, just stunned. A polished steel spike flies into it like a dart and a brown sludge oozes from the wound on the shoe.
I pull my dog tooth short sword and slip on my cat claw knuckles. Jose's spike strike came from my left so I move right to avoid friendly fire. I lay into the closest shoe snake. Its head is a pair of sandals. The hard leather and rubber repel my short sword thrust so I send a claw strike into its neck, just past the head. Three jagged lines cut into the snake's red and white striped skin. My left hand whirls back around with the short sword and I stab into it right next to my claw slashes. Brown goo oozes. It smells awful, like a rotting animal. I move on to the next snake.
I don't see what Jose is doing, I just hear a thwip-snickt as the spikes fly and find purchase in their targets. I don't need to see what he's doing. I know he's got my back. That's what desperate Army fighting gets you: teamwork. Also PTSD.
I target snakes in the order that they start waking up in. I just slash, stab or claw each one once. If that's not enough to kill it, it's probably enough to hobble it for a second or two. I've moved all the way around the right side of the hill and am now on the back of the clothes heap when I first get bit. It's a sharp, stinging pain. I look down and see work boots with teeth wrapped around my right leg. I look forward and keep striking at another shoe snake, leaving the work boots where they are for now.
It hurts. It hurts bad. But I've been shot before. I've been blown up before. Shoes with teeth? That's nothing compared to a cultist with an AK-47. I push through the pain and take advantage of the last stunned snake. My short sword rips through a groggy pair of high heels. I finally turn to the work boots and claw at them, punching into them twice. They don't let go. They bite deeper and I feel like my calf muscle is being ripped out of my body.
“Hold,” comes Jose's voice from behind me, and I freeze. Three spikes shoot into the snake's flank. That horrible rotting stench fills my nostrils as the work boots stop moving, but are still attached to me. I fall to my right onto the clothes hill so I can kick the snake away.
As I finish removing the twisted monster, I feel more sharp pain in my right shoulder. I look over and see a pair of toddler shoes biting me. The shoes feature smiling animal characters, and the heels have flashing lights in them.
I look at the messed up thing and I laugh. I can't help it. I'm being eaten by Pup Police shoes. The shoes bite down deeper and I feel my right arm go limp. I don't care. I swiftly stab over my shoulder and shove my sword down the thing's neck. I keep laughing.
Jose is walking the perimeter of the clothes dune and peppering anything still moving with spikes. I'm still laughing. Now I'm not sure at what. I survived Afghanistan only to be killed in the dog food aisle? Now I'm attacked by America's favorite show for kids under 5? This is stupid. It's ridiculous.
Haha. Look at me, bit by shoe snakes and bleeding out. I should probably lie down here on this pile of clothes. It's soft. Only 30% cotton, but still soft.
-----
I suddenly awake and find Jose sitting next to me. He notices as I go “wha? The huh? Snakes?”
Jose calmly says, “It's fine. Had to force feed ya some chocolate raisins, but yer alright.”
I sit up and look around. Still in the Get! dungeon. The room we're in must be a quarter mile across. Same size as the entire original store. Ahead I see dozens of clothes piles. Some bigger than the one we just conquered. Some clustered together too tightly to be tackled one at a time.
I sigh and lay back down. “We get anything good?” I ask.
“More coins and a whip.” Jose hands me a whip that looks like it's made of braided fluorescent colored shoe laces. Interesting but useless. “Oh, and the snake bodies disappear but the shoes remain.” He points down at his feet. He's wearing the work boots that bit my leg.
I use my eyepatch to check my status. No level up. “Well, back to it then.” I say, and begin to charge up my ten finger electro shock treatment.
Each hill takes us about 30 minutes to tackle, since I want to be fully charged with Static Snap before we strike, then afterwards Jose has to fish his spikes out of the snakes. We tackle the next three piles of snakes before we get a level up.
Jose tells me that he got a Subclass option at level 3 of Sharpshooter. And apparently the Subclass choice was a big deal. He picked Eagle Eyed, which gives him even better vision and dark vision. Totally useless in a brightly lit room covered in soft shirts and puffy jackets, but should be a real boon later on.
I look at my options, and then look at the dozens of piles of shoe snakes that we still have to get through, and I go for more Arcana to speed up the process.
Caster Level 2
My Intelligence increases to 34, my Charisma goes to a mighty 5 and my Arcana to 5. I drop the free points into Arcana to bring my total AP up to 7. The spells I get are Stalagmite Caltrops and Fluid Fist.
Stalagmite Caltrops
Summon a spot of small stone spikes to stymie suspicious suitors. Also make people's feet bleed.
Duration: 1 minute
Range: 30 ft
Area: 5 ft diameter circle
Cost: 2 Arcana Points
Proficiency: 0%
Fluid Fist
Make a big fist of water and smack people with it. You can just pummel away or shoot the fist at a jerk, ending the spell.
Duration: 10 minutes or shot attack
Range: Personal / 25 ft
Cost: 3 Arcana Points
Proficiency: 0%
Those spells aren't amazing, or at least not right now. An instant spike trap could be useful if we weren't stuck in the desert of comfortable yet affordable apparel. I can't make spikes on the floor if I can't even see the floor. (I tried.)
At this point though, we've gotten the shoe snake exterminator routine pretty much on lock. We tackle 5 more piles of snakes and I only get bit once. We're almost at the other side of the room when I look around.
I motion to Jose. “There's probably a few dozen piles of clothes we haven't gone to yet. Like that big pile over there, and that cluster of small piles.”
“Yeah, so?” he asks, getting straight to the point as usual.
“So uh, shouldn't we, ya know, tackle all of them?” I ask this with as much false sincerity as I can muster. “For the safety of others who might go through here?”
Jose shakes his head. “You just want to level up.”
“Well obviously!” I say, exasperated. “This might be a once in a lifetime opportunity! When else are you going to get a chance to do magic, fight monsters, actually gain levels and be able to change who you are with points in a menu?”
Jose puts a hand on my shoulder and looks me in the eye. “Jun, you don't need to change who you are.”
That stops me. I turn away from my friend. My best friend, really. “I don't want to get into that right now.” I take a minute and he removes his hand.
“Alright, ” he relents. “Let's grind on some shoe snakes.”
We take on the remaining piles. Along the way I find out what happens when you hit 100% proficiency with a spell. Turns out that after 100% you start increasing the potency of the spell. Right now I'm at 131% proficiency with Static Snap and the snakes are getting zapped and staying down for about 30% longer. Once I hit 200% proficiency I can stun a hill with just 5 fingers, so the last few clothes dunes go really quickly. We leave the big hill and the clutch of small hills alone for now.
By this time it's gotten to be pretty late and we're beat. We both got another level though, and I pop mine into Caster to see what kind of subclasses I can get.
Caster is now level 3!
Choose a Subclass:
Barrage Caster - You focus on small spells that can be used in quick succession. Basic attack spells cost 1 AP less, to a minimum of 1 AP.
Charge Caster - You can hold spells before completing the cast to empower them.
Blaster Caster - The area of all your Basic attack spells is increased by 50%.
Damn, these are all good and all would change how I fought. I only have Stalagmite Caltrops as an area attack spell so I nix Blaster Caster first.
“Jose,” I ask my friend, “more shots or better, slower shots?”
He tilts his head in contemplation. “For you? More shots.”
I head back into the menu to confirm Barrage Caster and am immediately rewarded with a new spell that now costs just 1 AP.
Shadow Stab
Your foe steps into shadow, thinking to hide. You pull that shadow into a spike that impales your foe. You laugh maniacally.
Range: 25 ft
Cost: 1 Arcana Point (2 before Barrage Caster)
Proficiency: 0%
I try it out. I raise my open hand towards some nearby shade and suddenly clench my fist. A 2 foot spike of darkness thrusts from the ground where I indicate. It's fast and seems accurate. Could be good in a real fight.
“We should rest before we tackle the big pile and cluster piles,” I say.
Jose nods and opens his shoulder bag to hand me water and some snacks. We sit and I check my watch. It was around 11:40 AM when this all started. Now it was past 2 AM.
Jose quietly says, “they've got to be worried.”
He means his family. His wife Amy and his kids, Ernesto, Sara and Mike. I nod and put my hand on his shoulder.
“They've been through worse,” I say. “We've been through worse.” We both know I'm talking about the cave.