The Paypocalypse 7: Competition

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“To earn is not the same as to deserve.”

• President Golich’s Thought of the Day.

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They found three more bugs on their way out of the ghost town. And by ‘they,’ Martin mostly meant he and Tamamo. The only way the latter managed to convince Eddie to help was by promising him a kiss on the cheek if he earned enough money to level her up, and even then he mostly stuck to following them around. 

“I tell you, we should check what happens if we register the bug at the same time!” Eddie insisted. “Who knows, maybe we’ll both get paid for the same job!”

“Goshujin-sama is so wise!” Tamamo chirped, her so-called master nodding to himself in approval. 

Martin hesitated to follow through. They had managed to leave the town relatively unscathed and made their way to the nearby mines on their way to the fake Uluru that their guiding quest arrows pointed at. Luckily, the emus had seemingly given up on pursuing them so far. 

They had found another bug in a miner’s shack near the mine’s entrance, whose color continuously shifted between brown and rainbowy neon. Martin was no programmer, but he was pretty certain this whole Tutorial was a complete hack job. 

Whatever the case, Martin had been about to register it when Eddie suggested they both fill out the form at the same time. He was pretty sure that it was just an attempt to leech off his hard work, but eventually decided that his fellow playtester had a point. The risk of losing a hundred credits, while unwanted, paled before the possibility of the both of them getting stronger for the same work. This could double their income and thus their chances at survival.

“Okay, let’s try it out.” Martin gathered his breath as he and Eddie faced their survey forms. “One, two, three!”

They both smashed the ‘send’ button on their respective screens at the same time, but only Martin heard the wonderful sound of his net worth increasing, much to Eddie’s distress. 

“I got nuthin’!” he complained. “How is it that you’re the one getting the payment?”

“M-maybe because I have a higher Luck or Agility with my current class? That or the System picks at random.” Martin scratched the back of his head. “Either way, that idea is a bust. Only one payment per bug reported.”

An undeterred Eddie turned to Tamamo. “Can’t you hack the System to give us extra money?”

“Maybe I could do that with more levels,” Tamamo replied with a heavy wink. 

“Uh, fine.” Eddie ‘graciously’ purchased a level for her by paying a grand total of 250 credits. “I’ll give you a treat, but you promised me a kiss.”

True to Tamamo’s earlier words, she could only level up if her ‘owner’ paid for it. Her metallic ears and tail glowed with neon light and made a purring engine noise. 

“Whoa, new move!” Tamamo pressed her fingers against her temples. “Hack: Speed Trick!”

A large, purple rectangle with transparent energy walls and a ceiling appeared around the group. Martin immediately felt a pressure upon him, as if gravity had increased twofold. By contrast, Eddie seemed almost lighter. 

System Anomaly: Higher Agility will decrease speed rather than improve it, and lower Agility creatures will move faster.

“See?!” Tamamo boasted. “Reality bends to Goshujin-sama’s wishes!”

“It’s pretty good,” Martin agreed. While it penalized him, this technique might save their lives should they encounter an enemy faster than them. 

Moreover, Tamamo had unlocked a new Perk on her second level, as far as Martin knew, while Credit Cardmaster only granted him Velvet Lounge on his third one. All the bugs he had found so far allowed him to invest in a fourth level and confirm his theory. He only received stat bonuses, but no Perk.

Classes and Pets apparently progressed along different tracks, with the latter flat-out unlocking new abilities earlier than their owners. Martin guessed that it made sense since they would have to defend someone else on top of taking care of themselves.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Eddie chided his pet. He blushed red when Tamamo kissed him on the cheek, but the moment didn’t last long. “W-wait, only on the cheek?”

“Next level unlocks the lips option!” Tamamo replied. “And two levels, the foot one!”

“A-and then?! When is the good stuff?! The sexy stuff?”

“Uh, I…” Tamamo scratched her cheek before quickly regaining her composure. “You’ll unlock the shoulder massage options in three levels!”

Martin had had enough failed dates to see that she was making up excuses on the spot, but Eddie brought it. “One more level for a kiss on the lips?!” he grunted in annoyance. “Well, you better get back to work then!”

Martin caught Tamamo quickly rolling her eyes as her Speed Trick rectangle area faded out after a few minutes. He took a moment to approach the shack and test his own ability. 

“Velvet Lounge,” Martin said upon grabbing the rotting doorknob. The door’s outline glowed, and when he opened it, Martin found himself staring at a wildly different room from the old mining shack. 

His Velvet Lounge looked like a… well, a luxury private lounge. It was a closed space with pristine walls of roughly sixty square meters of surface with a tasteful, unobtrusive off-white color scheme. It had its own table, a comfortable sofa, leather chairs, ceiling-integrated lamps producing such a soft light that Martin barely noticed them, and a giant plasma screen TV taking up an entire side of the room. 

“This is so classy,” Eddie whistled upon trying to step inside, only to hit an invisible wall at the threshold. “Hey!”

“S-sorry, I need to invite you!” Martin apologized. A System screen showing a ‘guest registry’ showed up the moment he thought of it. He only had to register Eddie and Tamamo to allow them inside. “There.”

“Ugh…” Eddie massaged his nose and immediately settled on the sofa as if he owned the place. It barely took him a second to find the remote, which showed an almost instinctual familiarity with TV binging. “Where’s the minibar? It’s a lounge, there’s got to be a minibar.”

“I don’t think I’ve got one,” Martin replied. That was probably a higher-level Perk. “At least I have a TV.” 

“Can we take stuff outside?” Tamamo wondered. 

That was a good question. Martin grabbed a chair and attempted to take it outside, only to hit the invisible wall on the threshold and receive an error message for his trouble. The fact that Tamamo had no issue walking in and out with a rifle showed that the rule didn’t apply to items they brought inside. 

“Okay… what belongs in the lounge stays in the lounge, but we can stash supplies in it.” Martin scratched the back of his head. “I guess we could turn it into a detention cell too in a pinch…”  

“I can stay here while you and Tamamo hunt bugs outside,” Eddie said as he switched on the TV and quickly happened upon some strange anime about a dragon catching a thief in his den. “You know, supervise you from afar and watch over the supplies.”

“But Goshujin-sama, your dear Tamamo needs you to report bugs!” his pet protested.

“I can’t do all the work for you,” Eddie replied, his hand scratching the cheek on which Tamamo kissed him. It was still red. “I need my downtime too. Plus you can focus more on the work without having to worry about my safety too. I’m easing your task.”

Martin shuddered in disgust and glanced at Tamamo, who somehow managed to keep a blank expression. He never had to deal with a manager before, let alone a lazy one, but he already sympathized.

“You know we’ll receive 3,000 credits the moment we finish that gig,” Martin said in an attempt to convince Eddie. “I think that’ll be enough to buy, like, five levels in one go.” 

That did it. Eddie’s eyes gleamed with interest, and he quickly bolted out of his seat with a determined look on his face. The possibility of speedrunning through Tamamo’s conditions was too much to resist. “Well, I guess I could lend you a hand then.”

Martin was starting to realize what bothered him so much about Eddie, but he asked to be sure. “Have you… ever held a job?”

“Yeah, this one.”

“But what about before?”

“No, I dropped out of college. They wanted me to wake up before ten in the morning, so I set my foot down.” Eddie nodded to himself for his brave choice. “We men have rights, Martin. There are things in this world we can’t compromise on.”

It finally clicked for Martin. Eddie was an unemployed college dropout in his thirties who had probably received a DungeonCorp offer in between playing two dating sims. He was, in short, exactly the kind of person Truck-kun usually picked up to send to a fantasy land. 

And as it turned out, they sucked in reality! Eddie was no dashing hero material!

I’m starting to see why these guys are used as unpaid labor, Martin thought as they left the lounge, which he closed behind them. Their ‘directional mission arrows’ pointed at the mine, so they walked into the nearest tunnel. The trio entered a long and narrow cave lit by patches of strange fungi and phosphorescent lichen. 

The tutorial’s devs had at least a passing understanding of wild west mining if the wooden timbers holding the ceiling up were any indication. The whole area smelled of dust, oil, and rot. They followed the arrows to a minecart rail leading into a vast cavern lit by lanterns embedded in the ceiling. A vast ravine split it in two, with a single bridge of wood and metal allowing passage across. 

Martin stared at the shadowy hole with suspicion. He couldn’t see anything except darkness. “There has to be a monster at the bottom, right?”

“Tamamo doesn’t hear anything coming from below, but she does smell bones at the bottom,” Tamamo said before squinting at her owner. “Goshujin-sama?”

“I’m fine,” Eddie said, although his cheek had begun to swell for some reason. “Martin should go first.”

“What? Why?!” Martin protested. “Tamamo is a cat! She should land on her feet if anything goes wrong!”

“I could go first, Goshujin-sama.”

“Yeah, but Martin’s the leader,” Eddie replied with a shrug. “Risking themselves to inspire their subordinates is what a leader does.”

Why was he putting up with this guy again, besides his OP companion? Martin was starting to wonder if these two were worth the hassle. He regretted handing his rifle to Tamamo, or else he would have forced this lazy ass to walk across the bridge at gunpoint. 

I’m dumping them as soon as we leave the mines, Martin thought as he stepped onto the bridge. Starting a fight or argument now wouldn’t serve anyone. No wonder the survival rate is one out of four if most playtesters share his attitude. 

Martin walked along the bridge, with Tamamo and Eddie following once he was halfway through and thus certain the support beams wouldn’t collapse beneath them. The wood creaked a bit as they advanced, but not enough to strike fear in their hearts. 

Martin was only a sprint away from safety when he noticed someone stepping out of the shadows ahead of him.

The figure looming at the bridge’s end was a dark-skinned elf like Olivia. He looked quite handsome with short blonde hair, emerald eyes, and a charming smile. He wore a purple suit with a hat and quickly bowed to the group.

Martin was instantly on his guard, doubly so when he heard Tamamo whisper a warning at his back. “Goshujin-sama, behind us!”

Martin peeked over his shoulder and winced. A hooded archer had appeared out of nowhere on the other side of the bridge, their bow pointed at their backs. They had fallen into an ambush!

“Hey fellas!” the elf smiled, his grin about as sincere as that of a telemarketer desperate to make a sale. “How good it is to see fellow DungeonCorp employees!”

“Wait, you’re playtesters too?” Martin sighed in relief. He had feared they were enemies. “I’m so happy to see a friendly face here!”

“Same!” The elf straightened up and cracked his knuckles. “Say, would you be interested in contributing to our victory fund? Keeping these bridges in one piece so they don’t send bad players plummeting to their death is very expensive nowadays.”

“I mean, sure I–” Martin froze in mid-sentence as he quickly caught on. “Aww… you’re robbing us?”

“No, no, we’re taxing you, because we have the power of authority on our side. So take the fall…” The elf pointed at the ravine. “Or take the fall.”

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