[ Killing Blow: WillT

  Most Damage: Val

  Top Contributions:

  1. WillT and Khan Zoomer

  2. SkullGirl33 and Deadphones

  3. Val and Mall Minotaur

  4. Shirokage482 and Yuzumaki

  5. Trinity_K and Toxobite ]

  [ Participation Rewards: +20 EXP

  Contribution Bonus: +$600, +1 Gold Lair Crate, +3 Silver Lair Crate, +3 Crate Keys

  Boss Bonus: +1 ZETTAMALL? Harsh Boss Crate

  Killing Blow Bonus: +1 Gold Lair Crate ]

  I sat up and downed my last Cherry Healing (I'd melt my stomach some other time.) More notifications popped up.

  [ The Baby Of Bosses, A "Toddler Baby" If You Will

  Defeat a Miniboss (Team Lead tier).

  Reward: Title: Team Lead ]

  [ No Deals, Only Darkness

  Clear a MAGLOPITEK Lair.

  Reward: +1 Bronze Shoplin Crate ]

  I scrolled through the rest. Shoplin Marathon! for defeating my 50th shoplin, You're Welcome for hitting the leaderboard, Now You're Getting It for a tutorial Lair... the rest of my rewards were starter and sponsor crates though, and I felt I was outgrowing those.

  I could also pull up the Lair summary and see how my party did. Moving further down the leaderboard reduced the rewards: second place had scored Kara $500, four silver crates, and two keys, while fourth got Chaz $300 and two silvers. Lex got three bronzes, which seemed to be the minimum. I felt a little bad about asking her to shield the others in the back now, even if it worked.

  I got to my feet and picked up the bow I'd received mid-fight, to find out how ashamed of itself it should be.

  [ A Confused Husband Cratepopper! Once per week, shoot a crate with this bow to open it without spending a key. Crates opened this way only drop arrows and bolts. If neither are present on the crate's loot table, nothing happens and you can try again.

  Confused Husband: It's Probably What They Wanted ]

  Okay, moderately ashamed. I wouldn't turn down a bow though, even if I could only use its power once this tutorial.

  "Uh, hey," Chaz called out. "Little help?"

  I strolled over to see he was looking at, along with the rest of my party. Apparently the Expired didn't count towards Lair completion, because Chaz had left one standing.

  Well, not standing. It was the baby in the pram.

  We stared at it. It screamed. Not because of us. It just hadn't stopped screaming since it was pushed out here.

  "WAAAH! WAAAAH!"

  Chaz looked at his hammer uncertainly. "So... I mean, do I, you know..."

  "Please don't pi?ata the baby," Kara said.

  "Well, we can't exactly keep it," I said. "Can we?"

  "Maybe it can be like a mascot," Chaz said. "Pi?ata the Zombie Baby."

  I looked at the baby. Pi?ata looked like a pre-loved haunted doll and smelled like Frankenstein's diaper. "A mascot for what, colitis?"

  Lex gagged. "Can we at least put it away somewhere?"

  I stepped away from the baby to get some air. Before I forgot, I also reached up with Khan and unhooked the crate hanging above the throne. It was dark and covered in graffiti, with shoplin-head icons on the sides and a gold keyhole. Once I'd freed it, it disappeared into my crate window.

  [ A Gold Shoplin Crate! Contains a high-quality item from a Shoplin brand, and at least one Shoplin crafting material. ]

  "Oi, Will," Val called out. She was standing by the altar with the other teens. "Take a look at this."

  The altar was an ornate block of grey stone, its sides carved to resemble an army of otherworldly beings bearing the altar-top on their shoulders. The ominous, mystical effect was undercut slightly by a panel in the corner with built-in cable ports, which the shoplins had been using to charge stolen phones. The corpse on the altar blocked the rest of it. As I inspected it, a new window appeared.

  [ You've found an Altar! Sacrifice 3 crates to receive a random crate, with a high chance of receiving a higher-ranked crate.

  As the top contributor, you may use the Altar first.

  Current Brand: MAGLOPITEK

  Time remaining: 01:29:57

  Now Serving: WillT (0:09:57) ]

  "Oh, this could be useful," I said. "We just gotta move this guy—"

  "I got it." Chaz casually flipped the corpse off the altar, letting it land arse-up on the ground.

  The altar-top was carved into a stylized shoplin shape. It had three glowing, cube-shaped holes carved down its body, large enough to fit a crate. Its wide, gaping mouth was a square of the same size. The sticky blood on the altar didn't seem to affect it.

  I checked my crate window. I now had twenty-one crates, mostly starter and sponsor crates and a few slapfight ones. I summoned the slapfight crates first, slotted them in, and hit YES on the confirmation window.

  The holes glowed, the holes slammed shut, and the altar vibrated.

  [ Sacrifice accepted. ]

  The mouth hole opened, and a wooden box with scratched-up black paint popped out with a ding!.

  [ You've received a Coffin Surplus Battle-Tested Suit Crate! Contains one fine example of Player Versus Player tailoring.

  Coffin Surplus: Fill Them In Style! ]

  [ Brand Obeisance

  Treat a corporate brand with the respect it deserves by performing a ritual sacrifice at an altar.

  Reward: +1 EXP, ZETTAMALL? Bronze Coupon ]

  Chaz whistled. "This could be huge."

  "Good," Kara said, wincing. Her can hadn't completely healed her. "I almost died. I'm not doing that again for free."

  "Can you combine everything into one super-crate?" Chaz asked.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I dumped out more crates. "Let's find out."

  The altar rejected the random crate as soon as I placed it, then the limited edition one. Everything else seemed to be fair game. I fed it my nine Warcrimes and Zettamall crates, which got me a silver starter and...

  [ You've been blessed with a MAGLOPITEK Silver Warlock Crate! Contains a selection of shoplin-brand items curated by MAGLOPITEK'S finest pactmakers.

  MAGLOPITEK: Lord of Deals and Darkness! ]

  [ You've been blessed with a FleshMart Silver Organ Cooler! Open to receive a powerful new organ. It's self-installing—press it into your weird body, and it will seamlessly integrate itself into whatever you've got going on in there.

  FleshMart: It'll Grow On You! ]

  That last one was a wet cooler with a huge biohazard symbol. I immediately shoved all three crates back into the altar.

  "Nope!"

  This time the altar shoplin's eyes glowed, and a weird guitar riff played.

  [ You've been blessed with a Gold Shoplin Crate! ]

  I stepped back. "Okay, I'm keeping the rest. Have fun."

  The altar was open to everyone now, so Chaz stepped forward. "Let me try something. Oh, and I want pillage crates, so don't sacrifice those! I'll trade you for them!"

  The survivors gathered round, and we were able to nail down a few more rules.

  Every crate had a rank, in the crate window if not in the name: Bronze, Silver, or Gold. (PvP crates had Battered, Battle-Tested, and Burned, but they were the same thing.) Three bronze crates got you a silver crate, three silvers usually got you a gold, and mixing ranks hurt your chances. Shoplin and Maglopitek crates came out a lot.

  There were a lot of edge cases. The altar rejected Limited crates, Boss crates, and (unopened) random crates. It could spit out palm-sized coupon crates, but it didn't accept them. Lex's Death Daddy crates—the memento one and the one for surviving a fight with 1 HP—were rejected with prejudice.

  [ Sacrificing this crate does not align with MAGLOPITEK's brand identity. ]

  "I think it's calling you a terrible person," Kara "whispered" loudly.

  "I-I was just curious!" Lex stammered.

  Once we had the rules down, I stepped away and looked at my hand. I had something else to do.

  "There's essences here, yeah?"

  "Of course," Khan said, his arm snaking out towards the bodies littering the floor.

  I went through the Lair's essences. Basic shoplins offered the power Mall Sense, which gave me a map of the mall I was in. I already knew the layout, so I passed. The Headhunter archers offered an accuracy bonus, and apparently there'd also been Lair Guards, which could smell customers. I passed on those too.

  "Then there's this, of course," Khan said, yanking an essence out of the miniboss.

  [ < Essence: Shoplin Warlock [Mini] >

  +4 Cunning, +4 Memory, +4 Perception, [+4 Free], Power: Maglopic Blast ]

  "Free?" I asked.

  "As a treat for absorbing a miniboss essence, you'll be able to invest those four points anywhere you want," Khan said. "But keep the fee for changing your essences in mind before you commit."

  On the one hand, that sounded great. On the other hand, that would mean opening the secondary stat subsystem and reading it. Ugh.

  I looked at the power, just in case.

  [ Power: Maglopik Blast

  The Lord of Deals and Darkness protects its own. You can shoot bursts of kobalophasic energy from your hands in mid-to-short range. These concussive blasts have a chance to knock enemies over if they're not careful. ]

  "...Goddamn it, this looks good."

  I needed a good attack right now. So far I'd just been using whatever weapons I could lay my hands on, and I'd broken two of them. I needed a weapon I couldn't lose.

  Plus, to be honest, I needed to take something soon anyway. I might have clinched the top contributor reward this time, but now that my friends were getting used to their powers I was falling behind. Chaz could turn invisible, for fuck's sake. My "we have Inspector Gadget at home" bit wasn't cutting it.

  "Alright, fine," I said. "Give me this one."

  "Very well. And the points?"

  I still didn't want to read the secondary stats window. "You're good at Speed, right? Split them between Speed and... Dodge, I guess? I heard there's a Dodge."

  Khan turned my arm into his body, unhinged his jaw, and crammed that essence into his face.

  The orb disappeared. I could feel it moving down my arm, warming, spreading...

  "Gah!"

  It felt like I'd received a static shock inside my skull. For a moment, I thought I'd been hit with something.

  My brain buzzed. My mind felt a little clearer for a moment, like I'd just had a coffee and read a really interesting Wikipedia article.

  Whatever just happened, the system seemed to like it. I got Khan Zoomer: Food Court Coronation for finally consuming an essence and Khan Zoomer: #Wargoals for making it a miniboss. As a reward, two gold Wizard's Treats coupons appeared in my hand. I stuffed them in my pocket for now.

  "Are you okay?" Kara asked. The others were back to debating what to do with Pi?ata.

  "I think so," I said. "Consuming an essence feels weird."

  Khan shifted back to a metal claw, which jerked and spun for a few moments. As I watched, fresh seams dug themselves in squares across my wrist.

  "I think I just got a new power. Not sure how it works..."

  "Try thinking about activating it," Khan said.

  It didn't work at first, but I quickly noticed why—the squares were trying to open, and the shield strapped to my arm was in the way. I pulled it off and passed it off to Snakpak. The strap was starting to fray anyway.

  I flexed my hand and tried to think shooty thoughts.

  My hand spun and unfolded, revealing a miniature cannon. It looked like the warlock's rod had erupted out of my palm. Cables poured out of of my new wrist-holes and converged on a cubic device between my metal claws, topped with a glowing blue metal ring.

  A crackling blast of cyan energy roared out of the ring and obliterated Pi?ata the Zombie Baby. The entire pram tumbled backwards and landed in a crumpled heap at the exit seal, upside-down. A single wheel rolled away from the wreckage.

  [ You have defeated an Expired! ]

  The others stared at me.

  "Whoops," was all I had to say.

  We checked the other stores while we were here, and I tested my new weapon on the lingering Expired.

  It did decent damage, though it took a second to recharge after every shot. The biggest problem was that my aim was hot garbage when I wasn't blowing away zombie children. I'd need more practice before I could make it my main weapon.

  The post office was empty. The shoplins had left some kind of device in the back room—a metallic archway wide enough for two humans, wrapped in cables, duct tape, and more weird shoplin technology. It looked like someone had disassembled a bunch of computers and turned them into an art piece. A janky rectangle had been marked on the floor around it in safety tape.

  [ A Lair Portal! The Lair is cleared, so it has deactivated. ]

  "Reckon that's where they've been coming from?" Lex asked.

  "Probably," I said. I tried to move it, but couldn't. We moved on.

  The remaining shops were empty. It suddenly occurred to me that DClass, one of the Zettachat people who'd been updating us on Level Three's activity, had stopped replying at some point. Either they'd escaped and ran out of battery or something, or...

  Damn. I barely knew them, but seeing messages from people who were probably dead now was a little disconcerting.

  As the others wrapped up the search, I returned to Bullseye to see how the back line was doing. The survivors looked pleased with themselves, and I didn't see any dead, but there were a lot of injured people lying on the sofas.

  My group was fine, but that was because we were powerful, hot-shit adventurers with a whole two levels, whole hours of combat experience, weapons that worked most of the time, and even some healing drinks that didn't twist your intestines into balloon animals. These people didn't have most of that.

  I accepted a few high-fives and back-slaps as I wandered over to Michael. He was kneeling in a forest of empty cans, bandaging someone's wounds. Reg sat nearby, nursing his own bloody arm.

  "Hey. Everyone alright?"

  "More or less," Michael said. "Most of the cries of pain you're hearing are from the cans. They saved a few lives. We'll need a lot more to get everyone back into fighting shape. It seems you only get that legally-required crate if you don't know the can is going to hurt when you drink it, so if you give out another uncalibrated can, don't warn them."

  "Or let Hugh do the warning," Reg said breezily. "He's terrible at explaining it. By the way, cuz, nice job on the boss."

  I sat in an empty armchair. "That was thanks to you guys. If we had to fight everything at once, I think we'd be cooked."

  "Thanks to you, everyone's on track to get one of those robot companions by noon tomorrow," Michael said. "Be proud."

  I nodded and leaned back. It had been a long day, and then a long night. But I felt like we finally had some breathing room.

  I relaxed. That was a mistake.

  It was late, I was tired, and soon I was asleep.

  [ STATUS

  TIME: Day 2, 12:39 AM

  CUSTOMERS: 711/1167

  ODDBOTZ: 129/711 ]

  [ END OF PART ONE ]

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