Discount Dan

The kiosk crab scuttled toward us with a warbling screech, lashing out with a pair of enormous claws big enough to cut me in two.

Synthia 2.0’s chainsaw hand screamed as she charged with no regard for her own safety. A pincher darted toward her, but she was surprisingly nimble, and ducked the attack, before laying into one of the crab’s legs with her blade. Orange sparks flew as chainsaw met chitin. A health bar appeared above the crab’s head, but it didn’t drop even a fraction of an inch.

Drumbo and Croc both circled right, trying to outmaneuver the creature, while I unleashed my screwdriver and activated Pressure Washer all at once.

Pressure Washer was my best single target ranged attack, and I’d finally sacrificed enough Relics to push it up to Level 5, unlocking the first threshold ability in the process. The Mana per second had increased from 5 to 7, but that was offset by the hefty surge in damage output, which jumped from 15 to 27 points of Slashing Damage on contact, while the additional scalding damage doubled from 5 to 10 points.

Hitting the first threshold also unlocked a secondary effect called “Dual Nozzle,” which let me simultaneously cast two streams of water at once—though doing so cut the damage in half for each stream.

My beam of pressurized water slashed across one of the crab’s flexing claws, but like Synthia 2.0’s chainsaw, the attack failed to even scratch the creature’s bulky exoskeleton.

That didn’t mean the crab was invulnerable, however.

The Backrooms was a hard and unforgiving instructor, but it had taught me many lessons since I’d first arrived. One of those hard-won lessons was that everything had a weakness if you survived long enough to find it.

The crab’s armor was tough, but its deeply recessed eyes looked awfully squishy. The screwdriver shot forward on strands of telekinetic power and slammed directly into one eye with a sickening pop. Blue blood spurted out in a high arc and the creature’s health bar dipped for the first time, dropping from 440 down to 390. The creature reared up and squealed in rage and pain. Its mandibles opened wide, and a blue fog bank rolled out.

For a second, I thought the crab could breathe fire—because that would be just my fucking luck—but it wasn’t flame. No. It was a cloud of incense that smelled like lavender.

The creature dropped low and spun like a top, the cloud quickly filling the courtyard with its potent aroma. The gas clawed its way into my nose and mouth. In an instant, my lungs were a furnace and my eyes felt like they were being stung by a swarm of fire ants. A muddy yellow notice, embossed with a black exclamation point, strobed in the corner of my vision.

You have been afflicted with Essential Oil Cloud (Lavender Barrage) and suffer from 50% reduced vision, painful breathing, and sluggish reaction speed for two minutes or until cured.

Back during my days in the Marine Corps, I’d been volunteered—entirely against my will, obviously—for the Non-Lethal Weapons Combat Course. It was a grueling month-long slog, designed as a way to legally haze Marines. The course ultimately culminated in what was called the Non-Lethal Weapons Gauntlet. First you were tazed for unspecified “reasons.” Then, before fully recovering, you were blasted in the face with bear mace and forced to run an obstacle course, where you had to fight off “assailants” who all had riot gear and gasmasks.

It was exactly as bad as it sounds.

This was just like that.

As terrible as that training had been, however, it helped me now. Despite the pain, I stayed cool and kept a level head. Although I couldn’t cure myself, I knew this was just uncomfortable but not life threatening. It would pass.

Squinting against the pain, I forced my way through the haze and lethargy, and recalled my screwdriver with a slight mental tug. It zipped back to me and stopped on a dime, hovering just above my left shoulder once more.

The rest of my team was faring much better against the noxious blue fog, which was already starting to dissipate.

Neither Synthia 2.0 or Drumbo Rebooted were technically living creatures, so they didn’t have to worry about inconvenient things like breathing or pain, and the toxic cloud seemed to minimally affect Croc. The second the crab finally stopped its mad spin, all three darted in again. This time Synthia jammed her roaring chainsaw into the crab’s leg joints, which were more vulnerable than the armor itself, while Drumbo laid into the monster with his huge sledgehammer.

The blunt force trauma seemed far more effective than Synthia’s slashing blades.

As for Croc, the rubbery dog was now easily the size of a bear. While the crab had been busy break dancing across the courtyard, the mimic had taken an escalator to the second level, which overlooked the battlefield below.

“Bombs away!” the dog cried as it vaulted over the railing and cannonballed straight down onto the kiosk hut, which served as the crab’s shell.

The dog-bear tore at the kiosk itself while fleshy blue tentacles slithered out, searching for any weakness in the creature’s armored hide.

I let loose with another concentrated blast of water, this time targeting a claw joint, just like Synthia 2.0. My attack hit true, and this time the beam of water sawed through the limb. One huge claw clattered to the floor and blue blood spurted like a fountain as the crab’s total health dropped by another ten percent.

In retaliation, the crab reared up like a bucking bronco, easily tossing Croc from its back though inadvertently exposing its belly. Jackpot. There didn’t seem to be any armor there at all. That had to be its weakness. Before I could exploit the opening, the crab dropped back down and the kiosk storage doors shot open, disgorging a horde of smaller crabs.

Though smaller didn’t mean small.

Dweller 0.335S – Juvenile Kiosk Crab [Level 5]

Thuds and thumps hit the floor as a horde of crabs ranging in size from chickens to rottweilers filled the courtyard. All were too small for proper kiosks of their own, so instead they sported a wide range of discarded mall items as shells. Some wore pedicure foot baths or metal cookware. Others, plastic trash bins, glass fish tanks, and clay flowerpots—likely looted from a garden supply shop. One even protruded from a comically oversized bong.

The smaller crabs swarmed Synthia 2.0 en masse.

Synthia backtracked away from the larger kiosk crab, hacking at the encroaching tidal wave of legs and claws, but for every crab she cut down another took its place. In seconds, they buried her in scuttling limbs and armor-plated bodies, tearing away pieces of meat and machine with ruthless pincers and powerful mandibles. More of the crabs were bum rushing Croc, though that was the last mistake they would ever make.

The mimic was substantially stronger than either of my summoned Horrors and ripped the crabs apart with pitiful ease. The mimic’s formidable bear-like claws shredded exoskeletons and fleshy tentacles pulled the crabs into the cavernous, teeth-studded maw that filled Croc’s entire chest cavity.

With a thought, I redirected Drumbo Rebooted away from the larger kiosk crab and toward Synthia 2.0. The Horror responded without a moment of hesitation, spinning on one oversized heel, then charging into the writhing mass of crustacean bodies with his sledgehammer swinging for the fences. Now that Croc wasn’t riding the kiosk crab like an insane rodeo cowboy hopped up on Redbull and truck-stop caffeine pills, I had a few more options to work with.

I thrust my hammer forward as though I were wielding Mjölnir—and not a Vaughn, 19oz rip claw—and cast my most powerful AoE ability, StainSlayer Maelstrom. The spell conjured a hurricane of industrial grade bleach, so potent it could strip flesh from bone like a school of hungry piranha. The only drawback was that it didn’t discriminate between friend and foe. Anything unlucky enough to get caught in the blast would be picking its skin up off the floor.

With Croc and the others away from Mama Crab, I wasn’t going to get a better shot.

Mana poured out of my core as violent, swirling blue clouds formed overhead. Great beads of sweat rolled down my forehead and slicked my chest as my Mana Pool dropped by thirty-five points. Fat, sizzling drops of frothy blue rain fell on the gargantuan crab in a torrential downpour. The corrosive super bleach splashed harmlessly against the kiosk itself, but viciously bit into the crab’s exoskeleton. The Dweller’s HP bar continued to drop slowly but steadily as the spell extracted its terrible price.

The gargantuan crab let loose an undulating screech that felt like the metaphysical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard and turned its attention fully on me for the first time. The kiosk crab put on an impressive burst of speed and shot forward, her remaining claw rocketing toward me like a piston.

Working on pure combat instinct, I activated Neural Slip Stream, my newest Fable-grade Relic—forged by combining Moving Walkway, Mall Ninja’s Strike, and Frequency Shift.

The last remaining dregs of my Mana vanished as cold power surged through me. My limbs went oddly numb as my body turned both translucent and incorporeal, as I transcended the material realm. For five seconds, I was a Spectral Thought, 90% resistant to all forms of damage, capable of phasing through physical objects and terrain hazards, all while moving at six-times my normal speed.

Except, it didn’t feel like I was moving fast.

Instead, it felt like the world was moving slow. Everything took on an iridescent shimmer and those five seconds stretched out like a breath held too long.

The world wasn’t frozen by any stretch of the imagination, but it was the easiest thing in the world to leap backward, avoiding the incoming claw attack. Although I couldn’t technically deal any damage while in Spectral Thought form, there were still plenty of other things I could do. Notably, any item on my person transformed with me, and they remained completely functional during the phase shift.

I pulled a Mana Restoration Elixir—which took the form of a too-sugary Jolt Cola—and shotgunned that son of a bitch. I’d been chugging beers like this for the better part of fifteen years, and it was second nature at this point. Whoever would’ve thought my borderline alcoholism would prove to be such a tactical combat advantage? Certainly not my Battalion CO, that’s for sure.

I crumpled the empty and tossed it away as the spell ran its course and the world finally managed to catch back up with me.

“Gonna have to do better than that, you cantankerous cockwomble!” I crowed while lashing out with my screwdriver again. It sailed through the air and smashed into the crab’s other eye, popping it like a swollen zit.

Just like that, another chunk of HP went right down the drain.

The Kiosk Crab went berserk, huge legs tap dancing across the floor, leaving tiny craters in its wake. The lesser crabs turned as one and rushed toward me, Croc and my minions momentarily forgotten.

I was the new number one target, and the Kiosk Crab was sending everything it had against me.

The Jolt Cola hadn’t completely topped off my Mana Pool, but I still had more than enough juice for a few nasty surprises. I stretched my left hand toward the floor, palm down, fingers splayed outward, and activated another new Relic I’d picked up after my battle with Frank and his Jungle Gym Jamboree, Fault Spike. This one, I’d looted off the original Drumbo Chumbo. The same the Pachyderm Percussionist, currently hammering at the Kiosk Crab with an oversized construct maul.

Well, a version of him, anyway.

This was my first time actually using the Relic in a life-or-death combat scenario.

Talk about baptism by fire…

The floor trembled and ten rocky spikes, each as thick as my wrist, erupted upward at various angles, forming a natural half-moon barrier around me. Several spikes ripped through encroaching hermit crabs, killing them on the spot. The rest retreated a few paces, giving me enough room to cut ’em down with Pressure Washer. And unlike Big Mama crab, my beam had no problem slicing through their shells.

More crabs were scampering at me from all sides, but these things were level fours and fives. The power gap between us was a gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon. There were a lot of them, sure, but so long as they didn’t bury me, I could kill ’em all.

I slipped back as the smaller crabs crested my spike barrier and rushed toward me, then I darted forward, cackling madly. I pumped mana into my Vaughn and it swelled until it was the size of a medieval warhammer. The weapon sang in my hands as I crushed makeshift shells and snapped overextended limbs. I fired beams of water with my left hand, cutting the crustacean shitheads down by the boatload. All the while my screwdriver darted back and forth through the air, killing the creatures with quick, precision strikes.

Blue blood covered the floor in puddles. It was a massacre.

While I handled the mini-crabs, Croc and my minions resumed their assault on Godzilla-Crab. Synthia 2.0 wasn’t looking so hot—the junior crabs had reduced her total health pool to less than ten-percent—but Croc and Drumbo Rebooted were holding their own. The two worked in tandem, one drawing the Kiosk Crab’s attention while the other smashed or hacked at one armored limb or another.

Going that route would take forever, though.

We needed to end this before something invariably went wrong, and I had a plan.

The internal cooldown for Neural Slip Stream had finally lapsed, so I activated the ability for a second time. Icy power washed through me once more as I temporarily faded from material reality. Instead of retreating like I had before, I bolted forward as the world slowed to a crawl. A giant leg flashed out, but the limb passed through my chest—dealing only a few points of damage—then continued onward, swatting Drumbo across the courtyard like a ragdoll.

My Taxidermied Horror cartwheeled through the air and crashed through the large glass window of the Neon Nightmares storefront. The boutique store appeared to be some sort of 80s themed fashion outlet, filled with brightly colored tops, ridiculous pleather coats and skirts, and far too many feather boas. A trio of mannequins, who’d been motionless in the display window just moments before, lurched to life and threw themselves at the temporarily incapacitated Drumbo.

Like the smaller crabs, they were only level four. Nothing the hulking pachyderm couldn’t handle.

I repositioned myself until I was directly beneath the giant crustacean. The creature was heavily armored just about everywhere and even at level 5, my Pressure Washer skill simply wasn’t powerful enough to pierce through the creature’s formidable, armored exterior.

Its belly was another story entirely.

The flimsy particle board of the kiosk was the only thing protecting its undercarriage and if this thing actually reflected real hermit crab anatomy, then the interior portion of its body would be extremely vulnerable.

Although I couldn’t personally deal any damage or launch any offensive spells while in Thought Form, that limitation didn’t extend to Mental Micromanagement which was technically classified as a utility spell. And because my demolition screwdriver wasn’t on my person—but rather floating in the air several feet away—it was still completely solid and one hundred percent locked, cocked, and ready to rock. This was a particularly useful exploit I’d discovered after a little experimentation.

The screw shot upward with the force of a fifty-caliber rifle round.

It punched through the kiosk flooring just as the effects of Neural Slip Stream ended and I phased back into material reality. Lucky me. A fist sized hole appeared in the creature’s belly and a geyser of fetid blue blood drenched me like a firehouse. I gasped and gagged as some of the goop accidentally went into my mouth.

I forced down the desire to vomit up every single thing I’d ever eaten and focused on the job at hand: killing this big ol’ sumbitch. I raised one hand and let loose a concentrated beam of water with 90,000 PSI of sheer force behind it. The crab’s natural chitin had deflected Pressure Washer easily enough, but the thin kiosk flooring offered no such protection. The beam cut through the crab’s defenseless stomach, and the monster’s health bar flashed and plunged below ten percent.

More gore rained down, soaking every square inch of my body.

Didn’t matter. Not now anyway. All that mattered was survival. Was killing this thing.

Hammer in hand, I wheeled in a circle and smashed the blunt head into one arachnoid appendage, triggering Gavel of Get Fucked in the process. Normally, the attack burned 20 Stamina and dealt damage equal to 20% of the opponent’s exist Health Pool. But, because the enormous murder crab was already below 10% total Health, its secondary execute ability, Killing Blow, triggered instead. That also activated the cascading effect Wave of Justice, which applied the Gavel’s primary damage dealing effect to all enemy combatants in a twenty-foot radius.

Most of the smaller crabs caught in range of the blast were dead before they even knew it. Meanwhile, a tsunami of power flowed out of the hammer and the crab’s insides just…

Exploded is the only word that really fit.

A trickle of gore turned into a flood as its innards dropped onto me.

The crab stumbled and swayed then, with an almost languid motion, it pitched over onto one side. I dove, narrowly clearing the crab’s toppling corpse, then rolled back to my feet as a notification pinged in my ear.

Research Achievement Unlocked!

Bloodbath

Usually when someone says, “Wow, what a bloodbath,” it’s a figure of expression. But not you. No, no, no. Clearly, your brain is far too smooth for the nuance of smile or metaphor. You took the assignment literally and just backstroked through a pool of blood and guts. Good job, I guess? I don’t know, I have mixed feelings about this. I will say, though, wearing the entrails of your enemies is a great way to dissuade future adversaries. Just ask the Flayed Monarch.

Reward: Yeah, no. I really don’t want to reinforce this kind of behavior, I’ve seen where that goes.

Title: Bloodbath – Increase in your Health Regeneration by 15% for 8 hours after bathing in the blood of your enemies.

I dismissed the achievement, then surveyed the courtyard.

It was a scene of pure carnage. There was blood and body parts everywhere. Crab legs and bits of plastic mannequin strewn about haphazardly. Croc was hurriedly stuffing the last crab into its cavernous belly-maw while Drumbo Rebooted was swaying drunkenly in place. Synthia was face down on the floor, her limbs twisted in unnatural ways, her health bar at zero. She glimmered then vanished in a flash of light—returned to the extra-dimensional subspace container where she resided when not in use.

I would need to repair her before I could summon her again, but she’d served admirably.