Everybody Loves Large Chests

Boxxy trudged into its home dungeon feeling especially irate. Though the withdrawal was part of it, the main reason for its sour mood was Stain. Or more specifically, the weird memories she had put into Rowana and Doris’s heads. The mother-daughter pair seemed fine mentally, but were convinced they’d spent the last week or two doing nothing but playing cards and sleeping. No eating, no drinking, no going to the toilet, just poker and naps. Needless to say, if that slime was going to do something like this again, she’d need to put a lot more effort into those fabricated visions.

Thankfully the women themselves didn’t seem at all perplexed by their implanted memories, which gave Snack plenty of time to spice them up a little while they slept in the coming nights. The triplets had all met their respective tutors and had started their individual training with only minor issues. Keeping track of Lydia was going to be a bit awkward since she had left on a trip around the countryside, but Boxxy felt confident Claws could handle that task.

The biggest problem was just how much gods-damned attention Arms drew to herself whenever she walked in public. The shapeshifter had initially intended to have Fizzy escort Robin, but the dynamo golem refused to do so. Though she agreed that it was important to keep those girls safe, there was someone else that was far higher on her priority list. A certain someone named Boxxy T. Morningwood.

“Come on then, let’s get busy,” the radiant construct demanded. “My HERPES isn’t going to test itself.”

“Yeah, yeah…” the shapeshifter grumbled.

The two monsters walked over to the dungeon core platform, which was the brightest part of the cavernous tree trunk. Boxxy sat cross legged on the floor with its back to Fizzy. The metallic Artificer then proceeded to stick a series of six mithril clamps into the gray flesh covering its spinal column. She linked them together with some wiring that fed into a small half-collar, which was attached to the base of the doppelganger’s skull. She then flipped a tiny switch, causing Boxxy to shudder reflexively as the machinery sprang to life.

“Alright, all set on my end,” Fizzy reported. “Let’s start the first trial.”

The shapeshifter groaned affirmatively while the golem walked around it to face it with a sealed vial of Honeydew in her grasp. Its hand twitched as if it was about to make a grab for it, but Fizzy’s arm-cannon was pointed at its head before it could even make the attempt. Keeping a vigilant eye on the greedy monster’s spotty impulse control had been the main reason she had refused to help look after the girls. No mortal knew this creeper better than her, and she understood that not even twenty-four-hour supervision would be enough to keep it in check.

Which was where the Honeydew Exposure-Reactive Preventative Electrocution System came into play. The contraption’s main function was to release a minor electric shock every time the thing it was attached to - in this case, Boxxy - came into contact with the narcotic substance in question. Simply dangling a vial of the stuff in front of the monster was not enough to set it off, of course. However, it started beeping quietly once Fizzy uncorked the container and let the drug’s fragrancy wash over Boxxy. The closer she brought the sample to its face, the faster it beeped. She then poured a few drops of it on top of the monster’s cranium.

The HERPES responded instantly by letting out the loudest and longest beep yet, followed immediately by a painful zap of electricity that was funnelled straight into Boxxy’s spine. The monster shrieked and shuddered in pain before collapsing, its body paralyzed by the invasive current. Fizzy walked over and checked on the controller unit on the shapeshifter’s neck, noting the values on the tiny gauges that she had built into it.

“Okay, seems I over-tuned it a bit,” she reported casually. “No, Plus, that’s not how that works. Null, can you please tell her? I’m busy… Yes, I know it’s pointless, just do it. Thanks.”

The golem continued chatting with her alter egos as she fiddled with the delicate device. The payload it was supposed to deliver was intended to bring discomfort, not outright paralysis. She had simply underestimated just how vulnerable a doppelganger’s spinal column was to its Bane. This sort of thing was why the testing phase was arguably the most important part of developing a new invention.

However, the golem had forgotten about the glob of Honeydew on Boxxy’s cranium. The HERPES picked up its presence the instant it had finished charging back up and went off before its creator could finish tweaking it. The repeat shock was just as powerful as the first one, incapacitating the shapeshifter mere moments after it had regained control of its body. Fizzy realized her mistake and wiped the narcotic substance from its skin to prevent any more… misfires.

“Were you trying to kill me?!” it complained a short while later.

“Relax, the HERPES monitors your vitals. It will avoid shocking you if there’s a chance it might drain the last of your HP.”

“Doesn’t that mean I can just leave myself near death and-”

“You really don’t wanna do that.”

As expected of Boxxy, it had immediately figured out a way that security feature could be exploited to circumvent the device’s automated disciplinary action. However, Fizzy had also thought of that.

“Honeydew takes a few days to completely work itself out of your system. What do you think the HERPES will do if you actually manage to swallow some?”

“… It will keep zapping me, won’t it?”

“Exactly. And it won’t ever run out of juice since it powers itself by sapping some of your MP.”

Boxxy had to admit, the idea of being zapped every few seconds for days on end sounded far more unpleasant than the withdrawal symptoms. It could, of course, just rip the thing from its body, but the rational side of its mind recognized the need for it. The HERPES was there to dissuade Boxxy should it have a moment of weakness and there was nobody else around to keep it from reaching for the hylt-derived drugs. It was just thankful that Ambrosia was supposed to be napping for at least another month, otherwise it would likely never be able to clean up its act.

“Boxxy, you’re drooling,” Fizzy pointed out.

“Yes, and?”

“… Nevermind. So, what’s on the agenda for tonight? You mentioned you had something important to do while the meatbags were asleep.”

“Right. I think it’s high time our little group held a more in-depth training exercise.”

“What, another instant dungeon run?”

“Not exactly. Those are good for getting used to working as a group, but I noticed a certain flaw with that method when we fought Erena.”

“Really? I think we did pretty good.”

“Perhaps, but ‘pretty good’ won’t cut it on the Shattered Isles. We need to be flawless, and what I saw back there was anything but.”

Boxxy, being the control freak that it was, made sure to regularly take note of the strengths, weaknesses and abilities of each member of its posse. This was vital information to have if it hoped to utilize them to their fullest. However, it felt that something was missing during the encounter with the old God of Destruction. It had spent most of the next two days analyzing its perfect recollection of the fight, courtesy of the Legendary Intelligence Perk. This had allowed it to notice a lot of small things that it couldn’t pay any attention to during the battle itself.

The conclusion it reached as a result of this retrospective was that Boxxy appeared to be the only one who knew everything about its allies. While the monster-demon coalition had certainly performed well considering this was their first real fight together, there were a lot of missed opportunities to deal heavy damage. Snack, for example, was not mindful of Claws’s highly flammable webbing when flinging her Spells, nor did Jen give Fizzy any opportunity to imbue her with Holy Infusion.

“We, as a group, lack information about one another,” the shapeshifter declared. “And by ‘we’ I mean ‘you.’ None of you seem to be aware of any Skills, Jobs, Perks, Spells or Martial Arts outside your own. You’ve always just sort of assumed what the others were capable of and sort of went with the flow. It’s worked so far, but relying on improvisation alone will get us nowhere if we plan to challenge the scores of veterans and VIPs that will be attending the Dragon Festival.”

Though the golem naturally disliked having her shortcomings dragged into the open like that, she couldn’t help but see Boxxy’s point. Fizzy herself was just one of many examples of how combining Skills and abilities from multiple Jobs could produce a result that was greater than the sum of its parts. However, she had never even bothered to think of achieving something like that with beings other than herself and her Parallels. But the people that would attend the Festival? They’ve already had decades to not only figure out which synergies worked best, but also practiced executing them to the point of it being second nature.

Therefore, not only was the meeting Boxxy proposed likely to be quite beneficial, but it was also a perfect excuse for her to strut her stuff.

“Alright, so how do you wanna do this?” she asked, eager to begin. “I mean, you still need to look after those three meatbags and one of them is out of town.”

“Nrgh,” it grumbled. “Will need to wait until things calm down.”

It would have loved to just kidnap all the people under its protection and stuff them inside the dungeon while they slept, but the FIB security detail was going to make that tricky. Truthfully speaking it really didn’t want to engage their services, but it just seemed like something Keira would do. As such it needed to postpone the meeting until all of its minions and allies could attend it in person.

It wasn’t until a week later that the opportunity finally presented itself. Lydia had returned after a ‘misunderstanding’ with her tutor, so all the nephilim were currently in Azurvale. The FIB had also completely bought into the scapegoat Boxxy had given them, giving Keira an excuse to rescind her request regarding their guard detail. The Sandman’s familiars would still stick around ‘just in case,’ but the elf operatives were allowed to attend to other matters.

However, it was a bit odd that they delayed informing the public about having captured the ‘culprit’ behind the Great Collapse. A brief bout of investigation later revealed this was due to political reasons. The government was determining the best time to publicly condemn and execute the man-puppet in order to garner the most approval from the populace. Apparently the ones in charge were concerned that revealing they had caught the mastermind too soon would make people think they were merely putting on a show to mask their incompetence.

The shapeshifter was perfectly alright with that decision since its primary Facade would only benefit from a larger and more well-received public event.

For the moment, however, it focused on its internal information exchange. Picking out a quiet evening, it had Rowana, Doris, and the triplets taken from their hotel rooms and safely deposited in the dungeon’s prison block without anyone noticing. The women themselves were sedated through magical or alchemical means, leaving them blissfully unaware of the way they were treated as luggage. With them handled, Boxxy fetched Jen from its ‘branch office’ in Velos, summoned up all three familiars and tore Fizzy away from her projects, gathering all of them underneath the glowing dungeon core.

It briefly explained its concerns regarding their lack of cooperation and then flat out ordered them to participate wholeheartedly in the meeting, even if some of them thought it stupid or boring. That said, the shapeshifter recognized that going over everything itself and its underlings were capable of would require far too much time, effort and concentration. Its monstrous troupe possessed nearly three hundred Skills, at least seventy Spells, around thirty Martial Arts, and a few dozen Perks in total. While it personally could keep tabs on all of those, none of the others shared its mental faculties.

That was why it had spent the past week preparing concise summaries of the most important and crucial aspects of each of those things, which it gave out to everyone in attendance.