The Paypocalypse 5: The Hunt (& Monster Menagerie Survey)

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“Today, one animal out of two is domesticated. A sad state of affairs, yes, which brings the question… how do we exploit the other half?”

• Monster Menagerie Manager's speech to his employees.

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The two emus shot about as well as could be expected from literal bird-brained stormtroopers: badly. 

Martin couldn’t tell if it was because his S-rank luck stat somehow improved his chances of avoiding hits or that those two were just poor shooters in general, but the bullets flew past him without inflicting any harm. They shattered one of the saloon’s windows, damaged a wall, destroyed a light hanging from the ceiling… in short, hit everything except the spot Martin was in. 

Unfortunately, the damage showed that the bullets were unfortunately very real. 

Martin had only been in a single real fight in his life—the one with the goblins—and he had been the one with the gun back then. Still, a lifetime of playing games had taught him he needed to find cover now if he hoped to survive without any weapon of his own. The saloon he had rushed into was a small and poorly lit Wild West-themed bar with enough seating space for two dozen people. One of the chairs was floating close to the ceiling for some reason—probably one of the bugs he had been tasked to find—and the counter was stocked with rows after rows of beer, liquor, and especially whiskey. 

Martin rushed behind the bar in the hopes of finding a shotgun. There was always one hidden there for the bartender to defend himself in movies and tv shows. Instead, he only found whiskey bottles, a bit of cash, and a Crocodile Dundee porn magazine stashed in a corner.

TV had lied to him!

“Mein emu, mein emu!” he heard one of the birds shout outside. “Should we call the others?”

“What is he going to do alone, fräulein? Throw his monkey feces at us?”

Throw his—wait, Martin had an idea! His Credit Cardmaster could produce temporary credit cards that ignored half of a target’s Vitality, whatever that meant for damage calculation. Maybe he could use them as weapons? 

“Grandmaster Card?” he said while remaining hidden behind the bar. A multicolored plastic credit card with DungeonCorp’s logo on it materialized in his hand. It looked classy, expensive, and completely useless in his situation. “Ugh, a metal one would be more effective.”

He only had to say it for the card to transform into a platinum, metallic counterpart. This one was heavier and quite sharp along the edges. Encouraged, Martin focused and managed to materialize a second one in his other hand. Martin learned two things from this: one, he could apparently customize his credit cards however he wished; and second, the Perk responded to his voice and thoughts. 

Now he had a plan. 

“I’m going to peck your banana!” one of the emus threatened as they entered the saloon. “The fleshy one!”

Martin screamed like Rambo as he emerged from behind the counter and threw his credit cards like shuriken. 

In retrospect, alerting the birds to his position so vocally was a mistake, since one of the two birds managed to dodge his projectiles in response. The other took a credit card to the face, though. Its sharp edges somehow cut through the soldier's helmet he wore and dug its way into the skull, drawing blood. The emu gargled and fell dead on the saloon’s floor.

“Fraulein!” The other emu glared at Martin with rage and swiftly returned fire. Martin barely had time to duck into cover before a stray bullet pulverized a whiskey bottle behind him. “You filthy vine swinger!”

The absurdity of being in a firefight with a talking bird was lost on Martin, mostly due to the adrenaline rushing through his veins, the glass shards flying everywhere, and the alcoholic contents of shattered bottles falling on his back. The emu thankfully jammed his rifle from overuse and gave him an opportunity to counterattack. 

This time, Martin didn’t make a sound as he emerged from behind the counter. He materialized a volley of credit cards from his hand—proving he could summon more than one at a time—and threw them at the emu in a surprise attack like throwing knives. He managed to slice the bird’s throat with one of them, killing it instantly. 

Martin gathered his breath once the saloon finally fell silent. True to the Class’ description, the cards vanished out of thin air a few seconds after leaving his hand. It also seemed to slightly improve his accuracy with them, or maybe his higher Perception stat did the job. 

He waited for the inevitable surge of experience that would eventually strengthen him into an overpowered master of his fate… and waited… and nothing.

“I’m not getting rewarded for killing those birds?” Martin wondered out loud, which caused a System screen to pop up. 

Please report any bugs in the survey. You will gain 100 credits per bug found.

What, that was how he would get paid? 

“Oh right, I’m not an actual player, just a playtester…” Martin grumbled as he reported the floating chair and saw his net worth increase by one hundred. “Does that mean I can still increase my level by paying for it?”

Nobody answered. 

“Lerne? Lerne? Leeeerne?” He tried to call out his personal hydrassistant for help, but she wouldn’t reply. The playtest had probably cut off the connection to prevent Martin from receiving outside help. “Debug? Help? Menu?”

That one did it. 

Status

Class Compendium

Inventory (Locked)

Marketplace (Locked)

Gig Board (Locked)

Buddyguard (Locked)

Skilltree (Locked)

Crafting (Locked)

Most options were locked as warned by the tutorial’s rules, but Martin noticed that two options remained available. 

“Status?” Martin asked, making a separate screen appear. That one showed the employee ID which he had already checked with Lerne earlier—including his ranking and net worth. “Okay… Class Compendium?”

That one was more interesting. That one opened a nearly empty online library showcasing Martin’s Employee and Credit Cardmaster Classes in separate slots. They thoroughly included their description, stats, and Perks alongside a level-up for money option highlighted in gold and neon colors. Every part of the interface looked designed to shake him down for money. 

“Umm,” Martin spotted an odd detail. “Credit Cardmaster is marked as ‘equipped’ and Employee as ‘equipable’. Can I only equip one at a time?” 

Since no one answered him, Martin clicked on the equipping option for his Employee Class. Although it didn’t alter his clothing in any way, he did feel a slight change in strength. Credit Cardmaster’s description changed to ‘equipable.’

“Seems so,” Martin complained as he switched Classes again. What a pain. “I'd better stick to Credit Cardmaster for now. Those birds can already talk English well enough to throw racist insults my way.”

He checked the Class Compendium feature a bit further in case he had missed something, and indeed he did. Each of his classes had a few suboptions marked as locked beneath them: ‘fuse’, ‘sell,’ ‘trade,’ ‘promote,’ and ‘harvest.’ 

“Harvest? Promote?” Nothing happened. “And of course, the only option available is to pay for more levels…” 

Martin hesitated about waiting to spend his limited, hard-won money until he had better choices, only for a new System notification to pop up out of nowhere.

How would you rate the difficulty of your last random encounter on a scale from one to ten? 

“The difficulty…” Martin pondered his answer for a moment. While being ambushed by rifle-wielding giant birds had been surprising at first glance, those two shot like blind lemmings and fell easily enough. “Fffffive, I guess?”

Answer registered. Increasing difficulty for a more authentic Australian experience. 

“What, no!” Martin protested. “I retract my response, I want to change–”

“Mein emu, mein emu, what was that racket?!” a shrilly, birdlike voice called out from outside the saloon.

Martin clenched his teeth and stealthily peeked through the window. A group of seven armed emus identical to the last two he had just slain was moving towards the saloon with bloody murder on their minds. Worse, two of them wielded flamethrowers instead of rifles. 

Damn it, damn it, damn it! Why was he punished for being honest?! Martin quickly grabbed one of the dead emus’ rifles and looked for an exit. He spotted a flight of stairs near the bar leading upstairs and immediately went for it. With luck, he might be able to reach the roof and jump to the nearest building undetected. 

Olivia and Kenji were right. He should just focus on speedrunning the tutorial and escape as soon as possible since killing enemies wouldn’t bring him any extra money. 

With the threat of another ambush on the rise, Martin decided to invest in himself and level up. Hoarding money wouldn’t be of any good if he stayed weak and died to birds of all things. 

Since it was supposed to be a cheat Class, Martin clicked on the level-up option for Credit Cardmaster. He felt a brief surge of power flowing through his veins as he paid 250 credits to reach level 2. His senses slightly sharpened, and he became more aware of the wooden dust and the smell of piss pervading the building.

Meanwhile, his Employee Class remained at level 1. Martin had wondered if Classes built up on top of each other like in D&D or similar games, but they instead appeared to progress along independent tracks. Martin himself wasn’t leveling up; his Classes were. 

The transition from level 2 to 3 of Credit Cardmaster cost 250 credits, bringing the total investment to 500. Having better stats in one class was probably more valuable right now than diversifying, considering the risks ahead, so Martin prayed that his cheat Class was worth its hype and leveled up again.

“How is it that I now have less money than I started with before taking the job?!” Martin complained out loud after seeing his net worth shrink to 267 credits once the level up was completed. “This is exploitation!”

Level 3 Perk: Velvet Lounge I (Active): You can turn any doorway you touch into a teleporter to your private extradimensional Gold Universelite Member lounge. Only those you designate may enter this space, and the portal is shut and made invisible behind you when you enter (you may open it again from your own side at will).  

Martin’s mood immediately improved. This Perk basically provided him with a portable safe space, with the only limit being that it had a single entrance. All he had to do to avoid the emus was to find the nearest door.

Martin quickly looked around. The saloon’s first floor included a long corridor with a series of doors that likely led to bedrooms used for lodging. Any of them should work for Velvet Lounge’s purpose, so he reached out for the closest of them. 

His hand was reaching for the doorknob when he heard a woman’s voice behind it, startling him. 

“Yamete, Goshujin-sama!!” she said, speaking Japanese words any serious anime watcher had heard at least once in their life. “Yamete kudasai!”

“Say oni-chan!” implored a second, male voice. “Say yamete, oni-chan!”

Martin knew he should have switched to the next door or activated his Perk. He knew, but he still opened it out of morbid curiosity.

And as he found himself facing a fellow human being trying to grope a woman with some decidedly non-humanoid parts, Martin suddenly recalled that Olivia warned him that only one out of four Sysapoc playtesters survived this kind of gig; the true significance of her words only hit him now.

There was more than one beta-tester in this tutorial. 

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Welcome to Monster Menagerie’s Rent-a-Dere product line, Playtester 2! Thanks to your participation in our System Apocalypse tutorial, we can offer you a select choice of high-performance furry-friendly deres.

Please choose the second playtester's companion.

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