The Paypocalypse 9: Failed Feature

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“I want to take a moment to remind our progressive customers that our System is coded in a non-binary eldritch programming language.”

• Quote attributed to a marketing intern (later fired). 

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Tamamo screamed into the mine.

“Nooooooo!” She pushed Martin off Eddie’s corpse and began to slap the latter on the face. “Wake up you virgin bastard! Wake up!”

“Tamamo, he’s…” Martin gulped. “He’s dead.”

While he hadn’t particularly been fond of Eddie at all, staring at his body filled him with unease. He had never seen a fellow human die in front of him before. Martin could have easily been the one to perish in Eddie’s place had things gone differently…

…

Well, maybe not that way since Martin didn’t have cat allergies, but it was the thought that counted. 

“I, I, I’ll fuck you! I’ll let you touch my breasts and everything if you wake up!” Tamamo said in a last-ditch effort to wake Eddie up, only to hyperventilate when it finally hit her that not even lust could bring the dead back to life. “Oh Board, oh Board, oh Board!”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Martin apologized in an attempt to comfort her. “It wasn’t your fault–”

“I’m dead! I hated that loser, but now that he’s dead, they’re going to kill me!” Tamamo scratched her cheeks so deeply her claws drew blood. Her eyes were wide with terror, and her skin paler than chalk. She then all but threw herself at Martin. “Take me as your Pet! Take me now!”

“What the–” Martin coughed as she grabbed him by the shirt with frantic desperation. “Get off me!”

“I’ll do anything you want, but take me now!” There was no desire or interest in her voice, only frantic panic. “Please, please, please–”

Then it happened. 

Tamamo began to glow with a red light, with her feet dissipating into crimson particles. Her legs slowly disintegrated in front of a horrified Martin. It then suddenly dawned on him why she had been so desperate to keep Eddie alive in spite of his horrendous behavior.

This entire gig was a playtest for a System Apocalypse tutorial. Its creators experimented to see which features would help their human players survive it, Tamamo included… and she had failed to keep hers alive.

DungeonCorp had written her off as a failure and begun to erase her in response.

I have to save her, Martin thought while Tamamo screamed in horror. He had no idea if she was truly sentient or merely lifelike, but her screams of terror sounded genuine enough. “System, I’ll take Tamamo as my Pet!”

Request rejected. 

“What? Why?!” Martin protested. Was he too late, or was the System rejecting his proposal because the erasure process had already started? “Call customer support! Anybody!”

“No, no, no, please, I don’t want to vanish!” Tamamo screamed in dread as her body below the waist vanished into thin air. “I don’t want to be erased!”

With his pleas for support going unanswered and Tamamo being seconds away from deletion, Martin frantically tried to find an alternative. At his wits’ end, he opened the bug report and immediately filled out a form. 

Here goes nothing, Martin thought as he forwarded his report. For a long and agonizing instant, it seemed that the DungeonCorp System would erase the poor cat from existence without a care in the world… until Tamamo’s disintegration stopped abruptly as the process reached her breasts. 

“I’m… alive?” Tamamo wondered out loud. Martin was asking himself the very same question since she had already lost half her body, but a System screen flashed in front of his eyes before he could inquire about her health.

A familiar reptilian face smiled at him. 

“Hey Martin, how have you been?!” Lerne said with her usual cheerfulness. “I’m not supposed to intervene in this gig, but the System forwarded me a customer support request! I’m here to sort this out!”

“Oh, thank God, I’m so happy to see you.” Martin sighed in relief. “They were trying to delete her!”

“Yes, and I see that you flagged it as a bug, which confused the System?” A copy of Martin’s report appeared on the screen. “She is a bad feature, and bad features get cut! No excuses!”

“But she’s a sentient being!” Martin protested. “We can’t kill her like that!”

“Don’t worry, she’s an artificial system creation with no rights whatsoever! The legal department has us covered for everything short of multiversal genocide!” How could someone speak those awful words so cheerfully? “We will entirely recycle every piece of her for crafting parts, and she won’t feel a thing! She couldn’t satisfy her chief customer in life, but she will make many adventurers and shareholders very happy in death!”

That somehow sounded even creepier. Moreover, Lerne clearly couldn’t care less about Tamamo’s fate. Either she was a stickler for soulless company procedures, or she was too cheerful to give a damn. 

“Anyway, so what is the bug you reported?” Lerne inquired. “We can proceed with erasure as soon as I fill out this complaint as completed!”

“Well, I…” Martin glanced at Tamamo, who was begging him with her eyes to save her. He had to think of something. “I kinda planned to take her for myself after Eddie died, but I can’t. That’s the bug.”

“Planned?” Lerne’s reptilian eyes widened. “Oh, so you planned it? That changes everything!”

“It… it does?”

“If employee Eddie died because of her, she’s a failed feature; if you killed him, it’s simply natural corporate selection!” Lerne explained. “This is an apocalypse tutorial, so we allow a degree of competition between our playtesters here for maximum immersion and to study player behavior.”

The knowledge that attacking fellow employees was almost expected sent shivers down Martin’s spine. He had already figured that DungeonCorp played loosely with workplace safety when they threw him at goblins for his first gig, but this? His flatmates were right, E-rank employees were expandable. 

At least this played into Martin’s hands. He had a chance to save Tamamo from death. 

“Yes, I… I kinda noticed his allergies when Tamamo kissed him on the cheek earlier, but I didn’t say anything because I hoped he would die from it,” Martin lied. He had been very, very tempted to just ask Tamamo to come with him and ditch Eddie within minutes of meeting the latter, so there was a kernel of truth to this lie. “I–I egged him on to his doom so I could claim his Pet for myself!”

“That’s right, Martin-san has tried to steal me away since we met!” Tamamo argued upon catching on. “I warned Goshujin-sama to use allergy medication from the moment I met him, but he wouldn’t listen! This devil tricked my master into his completely avoidable death!” 

“I see...” Lerne squinted at Martin, who tried to look innocent. “I suppose this would count as a bug since we do allow player killing for loot to foster competition… but conspiring to steal a fellow worker's female pet is a violation of the Employee Code of Conduct or ECC. I can’t let you off the hook for that!”

Martin froze in horror. He couldn’t receive a demerit on his second gig. What if it affected his chances of promotion? Getting blamed for Eddie’s death alone might cause him trouble down the line.

However, Martin only had to take a look at Tamamo’s fearful eyes and Eddie’s corpse to reach a decision. He couldn’t have one more death on his conscience. 

“I-I’ll suffer any appropriate punishment,” Martin said. “She’s worth it.”

“Wait a second, I’ll put on the right hat for this,” Lerne said before cutting the connection. When the screen appeared again, the Hydrassistant had traded away her employee cap for a pope-like hat and addressed Martin with a solemn tone. “My son, you have sinned by lustfully desiring a fellow employee’s pet. You must repeat the holy words to cleanse your soul of stain.”

Martin gulped. “Okay?”

Lerne took a long, deep breath, and then uttered the cursed words.

“Cuckolding is a trash fetish.”

A short silence followed her declaration, quickly followed by Martin saying, “Come again?”

“Repeat the holy words after me, my son,” Lerne insisted. “A sin confessed is half forgiven, and yours is very bad. So say it with me: cuckolding is a trash fetish.”

Martin took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Cuckolding is a trash fetish.”

“Netorare has no place in the workplace,” Lerne said. 

“Netorare has no place in the workplace.” Martin felt dirtier just uttering these words out loud.

“I shall not make babies with my fellow employee’s lover, pet, or intern without their permission or proper financial compensation.”

Was this the company's actual code of conduct? Martin groaned but powered through. “I shall not make babies with my fellow employee’s lover, pet, or intern without their permission or proper financial compensation.”

“There, you are forgiven!” Lerne said with enthusiasm. “You’re off the hook this time, but don’t do it again outside the tutorial, or I will have to send you a strongly worded letter, and those are mean.”

That… that was a rather light punishment all things considered, but Martin wisely didn’t complain about it. Tamamo’s missing body parts reappeared out of nowhere, and a new System notification appeared.  

A new Pet has joined your party!

Name: Tamamo Yakudoshi Lot 19-33-37.

Type: Beast/Humanoid.

Class Equipped: Cybercat 3 (Rogue/Support).

Earning track to next level: 500/1000. 

Cybercat 3 (Rogue/Support): The sexy experimental fusion of a cyberpunk hacker and a nekomata catgirl, only at DungeonCorp! Strength D, Agility S, Vitality E, Perception A, Magic C, Intelligence B, Charisma C, Luck S.

Innate Perk: Pet (Passive): You can read, speak, and understand your owner’s language.

Hack E-Rank Item (Active): You can hack E-rank items you can see, allowing you to disable them, repair them, or tune their stats like reducing damage to increase accuracy.

Hack: Speed Trick (Active): You create an area around you where speed behaves abnormally, with higher AGI creatures being slowed down and lower AGI creatures moving faster. The zone lasts for five minutes. 

You have recruited a Pet! A Pet is a monstrous creature that an employee can purchase to serve as a companion, bodyguard, or whatever job comes to mind. A Pet cannot change their Class nor earn money for themselves, with all their gains going to their owner, but they possess unique abilities and can equip unique items. Don’t hesitate to check our Monster Menagerie online store to outfit your new Pet with state of the art accessories!

Finally, Pets will die if you do, so as to ensure maximum loyalty, though you may also choose to bequeath them to your next of kin or party members! Check your Buddyguard status option for more information!

“Good luck with your gig, Martin!” Lerne said with a smile, as if she hadn’t been a breath away from erasing someone from existence. “I hope you survive!”

The Hydrassistant cut the feed, leaving Martin and Tamamo alone in the mine with Eddie’s corpse. The two exchanged a glance, with the catgirl tearing up. 

“You… you saved me… you saved my life…” She threw herself at Martin’s leg and began to sob against it. “Thank you, Goshujin-sama, thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you so much, I’ll do anything you want!”

“C-can you please not call me Goshujin-sama?” Martin asked. As much as he loved anime, he wasn’t that deep into the rabbit hole. “It’s so weird!”

“I’m… I’m not sure I can?” Tamamo moved back and wiped her tears. “It’s a contractual branding thing. All Tamamos are taught Japanese before we’re out of the tubes.”

“All Tamam–” Martin choked upon rechecking the System notification. “There are thousands of you?”

“Oh yes, we’re mass-produced for the Isekai market! I’m an experimental breed!” Tamamo scratched her cheek. “Do you… do I have to kiss you for new levels, too?”

“Uh, no? I’m not into catgirls.” Plus, it would feel gross to kiss her right after it put Eddie in the dirt. “Let’s just… let’s just stay professional, alright?”

“Oh, thank the Board,” Tamamo said with a sigh of relief. “It’ll be so good to work with someone tolerable for a change.”

“Let’s just complete this tutorial and be done with it,” Martin decided. He had seen enough deaths for today. 

Martin glanced at Eddie’s still-warm corpse and searched it. While it felt dirty to check him for money right after he had died, they needed all the funds they could get. 

Eddie left them an inheritance of 750 credits; the thousand he had taken from the dead elf minus the cost of Tamamo’s third level. Between it and Martin’s own share, his net worth had risen to 1917 credits. Tamamo’s ‘earning track’ showed that she was 500 short of a level-up, as was Martin’s Credit Cardmaster class, so he invested in both. This immediately resulted in the both of them earning a new Perk. 

Tamamo’s Level 4 Perk: Subvert Infrastructure I (Active): You can mentally interface with any computer, digital technology, or infrastructure that functions through sending signals such as alarms or radios within a ten-meter range. You can try hacking or sabotaging them with sufficient INT. 

Credit Cardmaster Level 5 Perk: Travel Assistance I (Active): You may call an automated Gold Universelite spaceship cab to your location once per day and then have it transport you to a destination of your choosing to the best of its ability. While comfortable, the spaceship cab is unarmed (for now). 

Martin double-checked the notifications. While Tamamo’s new ability would be extraordinarily useful anywhere outside the Australian wilderness, Travel Assistance raised so many questions. 

A spaceship? Martin could call an actual spaceship on command? How big would it be? Could it bring them anywhere in this tutorial, including its end? He had to check. 

“Travel Assistance?” Martin called out in the hope of summoning the spaceship, only to suddenly realize he had made a mistake. “Oh…”

“What is it, Goshujin-sama?”

“We’re still in the mine–”

A metal hull pulverized its way through the ceiling, sending stone flying everywhere and throwing Martin to his back.