Discount Dan

The Compass of the Catacomber turned out to be exactly as awesome as I’d anticipated. Hell, it was probably even better than I’d thought on first inspection. The map was incredibly detailed, and it showed the location of every single Dweller, allowing us to easily avoid the fiercest pockets of resistance and obvious ambushes. It used colored symbols instead of proper labels, so it was impossible to tell what kind of creatures we’d be facing or what their respective levels were, but it still gave us a huge edge.

There were also the mimics to consider.

We skirted by no fewer than five of the sneaky sons of bitches, which were disguised as objects that ranged from mannequins to drinking fountains. They didn’t show up on the map at all, but thanks to Spelunker’s Sixth Sense, I spotted them long before we ever got close to any danger. They were all Juvenile Monomorphic Flytrap Mimics, just like the fake Monolith outside the Lobby stairwell, and since I’d leveled up my Mana so much, taking them out at range with a couple of Bleach Bolts was easy work.

I earned 100 experience points for killing each one, which pushed me up to Level 6, plus they all carried a Common Relic that replicated the effects of the Basic Camo Kit I already had in my Spatial Core. The Relics didn’t all look the same, though. One took the form of an invisible ink pen, another resembled a Hide-Away money belt, while a third was just a fist-sized smoke bomb. But each made the user slightly less noticeable. Like the Tinfoil Hats, I couldn’t add any of them to my Spatial Core, without first swapping out the Camo Kit.

Aside from killing the mimics and earning some easy experience, I took the liberty to loot pretty much everything that wasn’t bolted down, tossing all of it into my Subspace Storage System.

I raided the back-to-school section first, pilfering backpacks by the dozen, before moving on to the shoe department. I shamelessly stole boots, running shoes, and flip-flops, then hit up the men’s clothing department, grabbing heavy-duty Wrungler blue jeans, thick Ironguard work jackets, and enough T-shirts to keep me in fresh clothes for a month—not that I’d be likely to use them, I considered bleakly.

None of them were Artifacts, they were just clothes, which meant no Effect Slots and no Stat bonus. But the T-shirts would make excellent pressure dressings for wounds, and I could always sell everything else to customers once I got my shop up and running. I also took the opportunity to fit my Redwing work boots with a new pair of shoelaces so they wouldn’t threaten to fly off every time I broke into a run.

We followed Unerring Arrow through the Style-for-Less, finding surprisingly little resistance, and out through a hidden door tucked away inside the fitting rooms, which connected to a secondary utility corridor that shaved off hours’ worth of travel time.

Our next stop was a tiny storefront called Extreme Supplements, which loosely resembled a GNC. That one wasn’t quite so easy to clear.

Although the shop was small—almost claustrophobically so—it was filled with a handful of extremely disgruntled level 3 Roid Gremlins, who were impossible to avoid, despite our best efforts.

The Gremlins were short and stocky, each standing no more than three feet tall, with large bat-wing ears and huge mouths filled with jagged black teeth. They wore tiny red Speedos, which showcased their painfully swollen muscles, and were slathered in so much bronzer and tanning oil, they left treacherously slippery puddles in their wake. Angry, swollen zits as bright red as their Speedos carpeted swollen lats and bulging delts.

One—the apparent leader of the weight-lifting tribe who was the only level 4—wielded a bench-press barbell like a bow staff and wore workout gloves with large iron spikes jutting from the knuckles. The Gremlins weren’t especially fast, but they were strong and, even more importantly, they were irrationally pissed at everything and everyone. It was hard to blame them, considering how bad their bacne was.

That would’ve made me pissy and self-conscious, too.

“How long are you gonna be on the squat rack?” one shrieked before charging toward me with an inarticulate bellow of rage.

“Don’t bogart the free weights, bro!” another snarled, swinging a heavy flail, which was built from a weighted jump rope with a kettlebell attached to the end.

The whole interaction was extremely confusing—especially since we were in a supplement store filled with shelves of pills, bottles of pre-workout, and huge plastic tubs of protein powder, but absolutely no weights. There wasn’t a squat rack or dumbbells anywhere in sight. Not that the Roid Gremlins gave two shits about that. As a former Marine, I’d worked with some world-class crayon-eating morons, but these jackholes made those guys look like bona fide rocket scientists.

Dumb or not, after squaring off against the level 3 Janitorial Handyman in the Lobby, I was genuinely nervous to go toe-to-toe against the veiny dude-bros.

Turned out, however, my fears were misplaced.

Although I hadn’t gotten physically stronger while leveling up, my Bleach Bolt was devastatingly effective, which made sense considering the Gremlins were only a flimsy red thong away from being completely naked. The concentrated bleach ate through bronzed skin and bulky muscles like a ravenous pack of paranoia. I also discovered another perk, courtesy of the Compass of the Catacomber.

The Researcher’s Codex not only granted me additional information about the individual Dwellers, it also projected their Health and Mana bars during active combat events. Which meant I could see exactly how much damage my attacks were doing, and how much magic each individual Dweller had at their disposal. The Gremlins had no magical ability whatsoever and needed to be in punching range to do any kind of damage. Thankfully, they were slow as balls, so keeping them at a distance wasn’t all that hard.

And when one of the irrationally angry Gremlins did manage to get close enough to be a threat, I took the opportunity to cast Psychedelic Light Show of Minor Distraction.

A pair of illusionary blacklight dragons exploded from my hands, draining the rest of my Mana, but they ended up being well worth the expense. The glittering creatures flitted gracefully between the supplement shelves, looping, swirling, and dancing together as they spit brilliant bursts of neon sparks from their jaws. After two steps the encroaching Gremlin went utterly still, staring up at the light display in slack-jawed wonderment like a kid seeing fireworks for the first time.

It almost made me feel bad when I slipped around an endcap stacked with bottles of PowerPro Muscle Might Extreme Pump Preworkout—“Unleash Gains That Defy Sanity!”—and drove my hammer into the back of the Gremlin’s skull with a sickly wet crunch. I gagged on reflex as a combination of hot oil and warm blood sprayed across my face and ran down my neck.

Maybe someday I’d get used to how absolutely disgusting this place was.

Today was not that day.

The hammer blow would’ve killed anyone else, but the jacked Gremlin just stood there, swaying on thick legs, eyes still fixed on the blacklight dragons. I brought the hammer screaming down twice more, once into the side of his head, then again into the base of his spine. Finally, the Gremlin’s beefy legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor. The brief pause had let my Mana recover just enough to launch another Bleach Bolt, but I didn’t need to. The rest of the Gremlins were dead, thanks to Croc, who was now covered in a truly obscene amount of gore.

I’d only caught a brief glimpse of the mimic fight, but it had been enough to make me eternally grateful that it was helping me and not hunting me. Croc’s head had split open revealing an immense circular maw, lined with teeth. A small army of writhing, flexing tentacles had exploded from the mimic’s spike-lined gullet, ripping apart one of the Gremlins, then consuming another one whole.

Croc was made out of… well, Croc material, which meant it was hollow and dotted with holes, so I had no idea where in the name of sweet baby Jesus the Gremlin had disappeared to.

I didn’t ever want to find out.

Croc and I had killed five Gremlins between the two of us and I ended up with a total of 675 total Experience, while Croc wound up with 425—how exactly those points were divvied out was hard to say—but on top of that, the Gremlins ended up being a gold mine of greasy, disgusting treasure.

I earned a new research achievement, Mind Fucker, for successfully utilizing the Psychedelic Light Show of Minor Distraction in battle and my first two Uncommon Shards. Each of the Gremlins also carried a bright-red jockstrap that looked vile and smelled like taint cheese and rancid feet. Honestly, I considered burning the whole lot of ’em on general principle until I examined their stats.

The Gremlin’s Groin Guardian

Common Relic – Level 1

Passive Ability

Look, we can give this thing whatever fancy name we want, but we all know this is a magical nutbucket, plain and simple. Is it dignified? No, absolutely not. But neither is getting kicked in the dick, so pick your poison.

The Roid Gremlins who commonly wear these things are basically naked because their ridiculous muscles serve as armor. But some areas need a little extra protection no matter how strong you are.

The Gremlin’s Groin Guardian grants an additional 10% resistance against ALL physical attacks and an enormous 95% resistance against physical attacks aimed at the ol’ Long Dong Silver. But this armored banana hammock also comes with a bad case of magical jockitch—you receive 10% additional damage from all magical or elemental sources of damage. Better get that looked at…

The idea of having a dirty Gremlin jockstrap tucked away inside my soul was a revolting notion, but the passive benefit was too good to ignore. I added it to my core even though it made me feel dirty on the inside.

The level 4 Gremlin had a second Common Relic, which was even better than the gag-inducing jockstrap.

The Relic, called The Force Multiplier, resembled a pair of sweat-encrusted workout gloves with iron spikes protruding from the knuckles, and unlike the enchanted jockstrap, there was no downside. When activated, Force Multiplier allowed me to deal an additional 10% damage on a single strike, while using any item that qualified as a blunt weapon. Even better, it consumed Stamina to activate instead of Mana, and though the price tag was a little steep—10 Stamina per use—it meant I had a wider range of options to draw on.

It made perfect sense that the Roid Gremlin would have a skill like that, considering he used a blunt barbell to crush the skulls of his enemies, but it worked great for me, since my claw hammer was still my go-to melee weapon. The barbell in question also turned out to be a Common Artifact. It didn’t have any specific magical power like my Slammer of Shielding, but it did have a single empty Effect Slot. I tossed it into Storage along with the makeshift jump rope flail and the rest of the stained jockstrap Relics.

Even though I was jonesing to get to the Arcade, I took a little extra time to pick over everything that Extreme Supplements had to offer.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten—sometime during the hazy, booze-fueled bachelor party—but that had been more than a day ago. Most of the stuff crammed onto the shelves was just a single step above nonsensical garbage, but I did manage to turn up a bunch of whey protein powder, an accompanying box full of shaker bottles, and disgusting off-brand health bars called Protein Power Pucks.

They tasted like dirt slathered in peanut butter.

But they were also three hundred calories apiece and packed in thirty grams of protein.

Truth be told, I’d eaten far worse during my time in the Corps. The Protein Pucks were heaven on earth compared to the Veggie Omelet MRE, and they were a thousand times better than slowly starving to death. I scarfed down two and added another three dozen to my storage space.

The other big find actually turned out to be the tiny plastic bottles of PowerPro Muscle Might Extreme Pump Preworkout. I never would’ve even considered looking at the endcap, but it glowed with a hazy yellow aura. The aura was so subtle at first that I almost thought it was a trick of the light. Upon closer inspection, I realized all of the Preworkout bottles were actually One-Time-Use Drink Elixirs.

PowerPro Muscle Might Extreme Pump Preworkout - Greater Rage Elixir

Uncommon Elixir

Type: One-Time Use

Tap into the Primal Fury within to “Unleash Gains that Defy Sanity!” As your muscles swell, a homicidal rage grabs you by the goddamned throat, giving you superhuman strength, titanic stamina, and the raw damage output of a guy on bathsalts loitering in front of a Waffle House at 3 AM.

Although your gains will be LEGENDARY, the line between friend and enemy might blur just a little. Hallucinations are common and you may find yourself seeing your fellow gym-goers as the ultimate challenge to be eradicated. Will you leave a trail of devastation in your wake? Yes. Obviously.

The real question is, who the fuck cares?! It’s all about them Gains!!!

After reading the description, I resolved to never, ever use the Preworkout drinks from Hell, but I also couldn’t justifiably leave them behind. They were all Uncommon Elixirs, and someone out there would pay top dollar for them, even if it wasn’t going to be me.

Into the Storage they went.

Prizes in hand, Croc and I left Extreme Supplements behind, slipping through another concealed Employees Only door and back out into the mall proper. I conjured Unerring Arrow once again and watched as the trail of glimmering blue light shot away, then curved slightly and disappeared into a neon-lit wonderland.

We’d finally made it to the Loot Arcade…