In truth, Terrance forgot completely about socializing after he got to the second floor and started working on the velociraptors. Machines were easier to deal with. You can talk to them about your troubles and they would listen. As for their troubles. Well, to fix those usually requires Terrance to whip out a wrench and replace something. Or to perform an upgrade. People were complicated, and in a game where everybody but you seems to be a murder hobo on mobs. You have to get creative to socialize.
And Terrance rather use his creativity on machines. The extent he did the first day of immersion is look up dungeon lore groups and found there were none. That is inaccurate, Terrance realized after looking up the tenth or so such group. They have lore groups, but those groups focus on digging up strengths and weaknesses and bonuses of mobs than anything else. No, what Terrance realized is there is no group dedicated to the story of the dungeon. So he made one before checking up on all the other stuff.
The police station, Terrance found, was a real boon. Ever since it’s introduction his level went from under twenty to over forty in the manner of a day. What he did not realize was that bounties gave both coin and exp as rewards and with his share in rewards, even if it was small, amounted to a lot. Especially when you scale the bounties of higher level players to the equation. A bounty on a level 60 being collected would be 10% of that person's exp of it’s previous level at a minimum. (with a max of a full level at higher reward ranks) Considering Terrance would get 2.5% of that 10% as his reward for unlocking the police station, he zoomed by the earlier levels.
With Terrance’s new found levels he got the artificer class to go with his default mage class for his level 20 to make him a magical artificer. To double down on the class he advanced the class with engineering and alchemy. Making his final class golem researcher.
As for the wealth, he reinvested most of it back into the police station. Making bounties better for everyone and added a rewards program. Where bounties also reward rep points and you can exchange them for unique equips that grant unique bonuses against players with bounties. He also added a ‘pardon’ system as well. So someone with a small bounty can ‘buy’ their way out.
After the police station, Terrance focused on the garage that housed his squad of SPARS unit. With a smile, he bought a simple backup memory system. It will only back up the team before and after deployments and if they are destroyed there is only a chance that mission logs are undamaged, but it prevented Terrance from having to once again build them up from the beginning.
After his dive down to the third floor to farm all the mats he could, Terrance returned to his room to look through his notifications he had paused till after a dive. To his surprise there is someone who wants to join his group. After some back and forth eventually they agreed on meeting. Which would be at the Dickens Shack.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Terrance bit into the dicken’s breast sandwich and pondered on the extra spiciness of it as a small fairy flew to the table. To his surprise she had a shoulderless 1 piece dress on and large rimmed glasses. She didn’t say anything as she took one of the fries from the plate he ordered for his guest and shoved it whole into her mouth. Considering the fry was half as tall as she was, he considered that a mighty achievement. Still he let off a subtle cough to get her attention.
“ Oh, I should I have checked first, Loreright right?”
Terrance gave her a draconian smile as he nodded.
“ Thank god, last time I got out I picked the wrong table.”
Something seemed wrong to Terrance with that but he merely gestured to the plate.
“ Help yourself, it is what you wanted right?”
She smiled and downed another fry. Half a plate later she paused to notice Terrance staring.
“ Are you done with yours?”
Terrance broke out of his daze and looked down at his half eaten sandwich in his hand.
“ I,... oh... no, it's just I never seen a fairy player...”
She smiles widely and winks before putting her mouth to the milkshake straw and half of it disappears in an instant.
“ Game physics, most people do portions to their size. I prefer big meals. That is why I chose to be a fairy.”
She then paused and looked away slightly before looking back at Terrace.
“ So, I saw your new group looking into lore. So what exactly are you trying to do? Are you looking for some kind of global bonus or something? Ambitious if you are.”
Terrance shakes his head and puts his sandwich on his plate.
“ Well, no, I just like reading the backstory. I mean I can see some of the patterns. The Jenkins family on every odd level. A movie theme on every even level. The avatar with a deep understanding of pop culture. Just look at all the patterns.”
Terrance's passion clearly made the fairy pause as she was half way to eating another fry when she stopped to listen to him. It took a moment for her to realize he stopped and realized her jaw was locking up. Taking a second to decide to actually eat the fry or not, she gulped it down and took full view of Terrance.
“ Well, damn, here I was hoping you were some sucker looking for a global bonus that does not exist. I got to say, I am sorry, you see I am an info broker and... well... I was hoping to take... what... you... know... and... ... ... sell it...”
Terrance looked at the fairy and barely contained a laugh before taking out a notebook.
“ One, how much do you know about dickens? And two, what is your name?”