Timeskip (3 Months)

Today was the first day Ben’s group had made it past the Commercial Kitchen Sink area in The Dishes. So far they had challenged the dungeon over thirty times, and only now had they made it to the halfway point. A Zero-Thirty losing streak, but today, they were determined to go all the way. They were currently recovering from a fight involving a set of thick ceramic holiday plates wielding extremely dirty meat tenderizers that inflicted poison on whoever they hit. The fight was made triply difficult from the omni-present Suds that were whizzing around and creating hyper-slick paths to fall off into the void and die.

They had set up a bonfire, and were cooking up enough food to feed a group twice their number and three times their size. Most of it was for Ben, [Magical] again, who was chewing through loafs of bread and hunks of meat with the air of a man resigned to a very tedious task. He had already eaten half of his body weight, and needed to eat and drink even more than that if he was going to recover from being [Magical] for the rest of the dungeon.

“Easy mode,” Ben muttered darkly between bites, “what a fucking joke. Oh God I never thought I’d hate eating this much,” Ben said, “My fucking jaw’s sore from all this chewing,” he said, massaging his facial muscles. Ben finished eating, and then Frankie appeared with another comically oversized hunk of meat on a cartoony looking bone. “Thanks Frankie,” Ben said, then sighed and started eating again. His body was growing visibly more physical with every bite.

“Just be grateful you can die over and over and over again,” Vivi said, his eyes suddenly darting around every few seconds, “the rest of us aren’t quite so unkillable.” Vivi was on the lookout for the large masses of steel wool that would sometimes gleefully be shot at them from the final boss area. Vivi in particular had been shredded more than anyone else, and was on high alert. “Besides, this IS ‘easy-mode’,” Vivi said, making air quotes with his eye-stalks. “We’re getting real experience, real levels, and real training; with no risk of actually dying. Who cares that we have to beat the dungeon to take anything out of it?”

“I still think there’s secret treasure past the garbage disposals,” Short Bus commented, and everybody groaned, “Look, if we just get some rope and-”

“-And get fucking blended? Again!” Vivi shouted, then took a deep sluggy breath, “I understand and admire your dedication to exploring the unknown, but just because Red can’t see into the garbage disposals, doesn’t mean there’s treasure in them.”

“I am deeply suspicious of the garbage disposals,” Red said, her energy eyes glaring in the direction of the nearest one. “What secrets are they hiding from us?”

“You’re all doing great!” Ghost Ears said, laughing and flying around, “Keep it up, we’re nearly half done!” Ghost Ears looked like the adventurer equivalent of Batman. His ability to make personal dungeons, along with a nearly cheat-level tendency to get soulbound potions of [Tirelessness], meant that he had been grinding nearly non-stop for three months straight.

He refused to disclose his level, but had [Evolved] several times to become a ridiculously tough little bastard. He’d had Short Bus stomp on him a couple of times several weeks back, and wasn’t any worse for the wear. When questioned about it, he said he received a rare evolutionary option called [Body of Rubberized Steel]. When questioned about his other [Evolutions], he just laughed and avoided the question.

“I wonder why I’m not pregnant yet,” Red said, glancing down at her own stomach. Short Bus started laughing, and Ben leaned back and mouthed ‘oh my god’.

“You’re a fucking demonoid from the realms of chaos,” Ben said, and it’s worth noting that his terror of Red had completely vanished over the last few months of exposure to her, “The odds of you and Charles being able to have a baby are pretty fucking low, Red. Pretty fucking low. Also, stop trying to get pregnant. You’re just as bad as the rest of The Girls,” the Dark City refugees, “and I don’t need another eternally pregnant Lariah right now.”

“You’re being really unfair,” Vivi said, “One to fifteen years is a perfectly reasonable timeframe for a pregnancy to come to full term-”

“No it’s not! That’s fucking forever!” Ben said, putting his face in his hands and abandoning his food, “And if it takes her a fucking decade to give birth, what about you?” Ben asked, pointing at Red, “A century? Christ, I’ll be dead by then, and down a party member for my entire life!”

“The key to getting pregnant,” Short Bus said, a sage tone in his voice, “is to go deep-”

“You need to stop,” Ben interrupted.

“Deeeep,” Short Bus finished, then grinned at Ben. Red got a little smirk on her face and nodded her head a couple of times to herself.

“Ben, you stopped eating,” Vivi said, nudging him telepathically, “You’ve got to recover your physical body so we have the maximum odds of success-”

“I fucking hate eating!” Ben said, standing up and tossing the food into his Utility Pocket, “It takes forever and my jaw is sore and I wish-” Ben stopped, feeling his wishing ring grow hot, “nope, no wish. Hmmm,” he said, thinking about things intelligently for a moment. He’s been about to wish there was an easier way eat a massive quantity of food.

“Oh man,” Vivi said, a gloating glee in his sluggy eyes, “I thought we were about to see a repeat of ‘The Incident’.”

“Shut up for a second,” Ben said, not wanting to relive ‘The Incident’ where he accidentally burned a wish he had on loan from The Vault. He’d gotten in trouble for that. No, Ben was focusing on rubbing two brain cells together and seeing if he could get them to spark. “So I chew food with ma mouth,” he said, rubbing his jaw, “and it goes down ma throat,” his hand was following his words, “and down into ma gut,” he finished, patting his stomach, “where [Instant Digestion] rips it apart to repair my body, or Dr. Manhattans it into pure energy if I don’t need any healing.”

“Who’s Dr-” Vivi began, but was cut off again.

“No, just wait a second. Mouth, throat, stomach, then [Instant Digestion]. Soooooo,” Ben finished, then opened a Utility Pocket inside his own stomach, “why bother chewing at all?” Ben deposited a small amount of food into his stomach, where it was instantly digested and vanished. “Holy shit I fucking win!” Ben said, jumping up and starting to run around, hooping and hollering. As he ran, he started feeding more and more food directly into his stomach, where it was instantly converted to physical mass. His body grew more and more substantial by the second.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Well,” Vivi said, being the first one to figure it out, “now that’s quite an exploit.”

--

The [Cast Iron Cauldron] mini-boss was a happy, cartoon faced dealer of death and destruction full of the dirty, dirty remnants of ten thousand failed alchemy experiments. It was the size of a standard one story starter home in America, and stood on four black clawed feet. Its arena was a battlefield, a gigantic square slab of quartz-granite countertop, and on it, [Suds], [Soap Drops] and [Scrubbers] fought with [Greases], [Grits] and poisonous [Alchemic Blobs].

“I’m so dirty!” the cauldron bellowed, then laughed “Ah Ha Ha,” with a distinct pause between each laugh, before spewing forth more filth.

[System Announcement!]

[You have reached the Cast Iron Cauldron! Break through his army of filth and scrub him clean!]

The fight normally went like this: Ben’s party would enter and immediately start trying to fight their way directly to the cauldron. The logic was that if they drove a wedge through the circular formation, the [Suds] and [Soap Drops] would be able to pour through and start cleaning the cauldron. This normally resulted in everyone getting poisoned and dying after the cauldron was half clean. It was a frustrating and humbling experience, being killed by a happy, oblivious, dirty pot. What made it worse was that as soon as anyone in the group got the [Dirty] or [Greasy] debuff, they were immediately targeted by their ‘allies’, who attempted to get them clean with predictably fatal results.

“Not today motherfucker,” Ben said, walking into the arena, putting on some goggles to keep from getting blinded. His party followed behind him. Short Bus was also in goggles, Ghost Ears was flying overhead, watching for threats and preparing to apply buffs and debuffs. Red was riding on Vivi’s back, ready to start converting corpses into useful items for the fight with [System Looting]. Vivi, the fastest of the group, was tasked with hit and run and causing as much devastation as he possibly could. He could cause a lot of devastation.

“Initiate Operation Undying Horsie Cockroach,” Short Bus said, his eyes serious as he adopted a pseudo military manner.

“Eyes up,” Red said, and one of her eyes floated above the battlefield.

“Linking group,” Short Bus said, and immediately everyone gained a top down awareness of the fight, in addition to their normal vision. It had happened enough that at this point, it was more useful than distracting.

“Horsie. . .” Vivi said with a sigh, then said his line “Horsie is ready to neigh.”

“King Cockroach is ready to die,” Ben shouted, his heart pounding as his physical body realized, ‘holy fucking shit I not only could die, but I am planning to die’. It was by far the single biggest rush Ben had ever experienced, and he could enjoy it for the simple reason that dying wasn’t enough to kill him anymore.

“Operation Undying Horsie Cockroach is a go, I repeat, Operation Undying Horsie Cockroach is a go!” Short Bus yelled, then charged forward and grabbed two of the gigantic rectangle [Scrubber] mobs to use them as weapons.

“Operation Undying Horsie Cockroach is a go!” Vivi yelled, and zoomed off. Vivi summoned creatures from the elemental plane of fire, living creatures of malevolent intent, and launched them like the meanest and most devastating version of the [Firebolt] spell ever conceived. The [Summoner’s Firebolt] each screamed with hatred as they flew, and had extremely angry faces. They punched whatever they hit, then bit onto it, then exploded. The whole time they were swearing in the elemental language of fire, and it was probably for the best that no-one could understand them.

“Operation is a go!” Ghost Ears yelled, “Applying debuffs! [Presence of Royalty!]” All combatants who weren’t aligned with a [Royal] of some kind had their defense lowered. “[Royal Advice: Offense!]” Ben’s group’s offensive power was buffed. “[Will of the Vizier: Turncoats!]” The debuff gave every enemy combatant a chance to spontaneously turn traitorous and fight on Ben’s side.

Ben’s body erupted with wild, unrestrained fire. Everything around him, everything he touched, burned. He burned through his mana and his stamina and even his health at an alarming rate, and recovered it just as fast as he deposited a constant stream of food directly into his stomach. In this way, his resources were functionally limitless, at least until he ran out of food. Due to the nature of his Utility Pocket, he was not going to run out of food anytime soon.

“I AM FUCKING INVINCIBLE!” Ben yelled, a club appearing in his hands as he ran, wound up, swung, and splattered a [Grease] into flaming chunks. Ben felt his [Titanic Physique] kick in the moment he engaged with violence, and felt the immediate surge in power, followed by a building sense of limitless energy. Reality shifted and twisted like distortions in water or glass, adding a little extra oomph to everything he did, and hindering the efforts of anything done against him.

Ben charged forward, without any regard for his own personal safety, months and months of frustration erupting out of him in a homicidal desire to clean the dishes to death. A [Grease] glomped onto him, coating his body. Ben’s skin, under the grease, immediately turned black as Frankie covered him in a utility pocket, that blasted out a wave of water, destroying the [Grease] and freeing Ben of the impediment. The new plan was simple: Destroy all the enemies, and then attack the [Cast Iron Cauldron].

Ben dove and ducked and attacked, losing weapons as quickly as he gained them. Frankie portaled between him and Red, now intelligent enough to tell her what kinds of weapons Ben needed. She would loot for swords, spears, clubs, shields; anything and everything that was situationally appropriate. Spell scrolls were another big one, giving Ben the versatility he needed to really wreak some havoc. Frankie ferried the items to Ben and delivered them right to his hand, right at the moment he needed them.

Ben felt a parchment paper enter his hand and immediately opened it up and pointed it at the nearest cluster of enemies. An [Ice Storm] opened up overhead, launching spears of frozen death. A particularly hard looking clump of [Filth] charged Ben, and he was holding a warhammer. Ben yelled and swung with all his might, shattering the monster. The hammer was immediately discarded, and a new weapon replaced it, situationally appropriate.

“I’M INVINCIBLE!” Ben yelled, “I’M FUCKING INVINCIBLE! I’M- oh shit I’m out of food.”

A full party wipe shortly followed. They were all panting, sweaty, wide-eyed and dazed looking.

“That-” Red said, between gasps, “That was the farthest we’ve ever gotten, ever.”

“Ben, you were fucking invincible!” Short Bus yelled, “Operation Undying Horsie Cockroach forever!”

“I didn’t even get to play horsie!” Vivi said, sounding honestly disappointed, “You died too fast! I was supposed to go get you if you died and pull you away from combat so you could recover from being [Magical]!”

“Vivi, you would have been a most excellent fucking horsie!” Ben yelled, “and next time, you will be!” Ben flipped up from laying on his back, an expression of wild eyed excitement on his face. “We’ve got to go buy some food! All the food! ALL THE FOOD!”

“This is the best plan ever!” Short Bus yelled, then got up, put Ben on his shoulders and started running around in a dangerous, but fun, way, “humanity forever!”

“Humanity forever!” Ben yelled, “Woohoo! Humanity forever!”