“Oh…” Jake’s grandmother immediately deflated in her chair.

“What’s wrong?” Jake asked, surprised. This was definitely not the reaction he was expecting.

“It’s that bad, huh?” she asked. “You’re going to drive it out to throw it in the dump or something?”

“What? No. I’m going out to test it some more.”

“Oh.” She perked up. “Really?” The smile that she had in those old pictures the goblins threw out returned.

“Yeah, Grandma.” Jake smiled back. The urge not to admit it disappeared when he’d made her sad. More than he didn’t want to see her staring at the television like a zombie, Jake didn’t want to see her like that.

“So, you like it then?” his grandmother asked, excitedly.

“Mmm…” Jake had some conflicting feelings when it came to being bought an apocalypse in a box. “I’m still testing it out.”

“Okay,” she said, sounding a little smug as she leaned back into her chair.

Jake shook his head, then turned towards the door. “I’ll be expecting a plate of that carbonara one day when I get back,” he joked.

“If that’s what you want.”

“I’ll see you, Grandma.” He stepped out of the room.

“Be safe.”

No promises on that, he thought. It was nice to have a decent conversation like that with his grandmother for once, but the positive feelings wore off by the time he had reached the front door. Walking through his grandma’s junk hoard had brought back the usual feeling of hopelessness in full force.

Sure, he could still talk to her, but not about the things that mattered like throwing away all this trash. She was more protective of her junk than an angry dragon was with its treasure. What could he say to her when she wanted to keep the junk more than she wanted to keep him?

A question he was still looking for an answer to.

With his car’s trunk loaded, Jake got in and set off, heading towards the abandoned gas station. It would be a hassle if he didn't have what he needed, but home was about a twenty minute walk away and an even shorter trip driving.

The fact that this place was only a few blocks away from his grandparent’s house really showed how fast a city could switch things up on you. The block that the old closed down gas station was on was so rundown that it honestly looked like it had gotten early access to the apocalypse before him.

On that street, there was graffiti everywhere, the windows were boarded up, and the paint on the walls of the businesses was dull, cracked, and peeling. Some of the buildings had the letters stolen from their signs and there was even a building with blackened bricks from a fire that had thankfully been put out.

It was like that for a couple blocks up and down the street too.

Jake hadn’t ever really considered rolling his car through this part of the neighborhood to look around, so this was the first time he was giving the old gas station a real good look. It was in a similar condition to the businesses surrounding it. There were six pumps, no cars, no prices listed for gas, and wooden boards in place of glass windows for the convenience store.

He got to work setting up scanners fast. This block and the next few going both ways were the part of a ghost town that ghosts would refuse to haunt because they were afraid they’d get robbed. It wasn’t a place he wanted to be caught loitering in.

The area he set up for the instance with the scanners only covered the convenience store section around the gas station with a few feet of space for breathing room around it. Considering that his level hadn’t even been high enough to generate an instance over the entirety of his treehouse and the tree it sat in, he decided that it wasn't worth his time to try to rope in the parking and the gas pumps too.

Instance Generating…

Jake took his shades off as soon as the generation light show began. He wanted to see the experience from the eyes of someone who hadn’t been affected by alien technology yet.

The blinding light and the darkening surrounding that would have been visible with the shades weren’t to his naked eye, but the strong whistling wind was definitely still there.

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That sudden gust brought on by the instance’s generation had Jake looking around to see if there were other people. Thankfully, there wasn’t, at least not as far as he could see. That wouldn’t have been the case if he had chosen one of the other stores.

He’d have to make sure to stick to the deserted places for most of his future instance generations. Considering this was Golding, that wasn’t too much to ask. If he ever needed to generate an instance in a busier location, he’d just have to wait until it was late at night.

Having learned what he wanted to know, Jake slipped back on his display shades just in time to catch the tail end of the generation process. In preparation for the gas station instance being bigger on the inside, Jake popped open the trunk of his car and took out the pair of binoculars he’d brought with him.

Instance Generated!

As luck would have it, this was not one of the instances that was bigger on the inside. In fact, when he flipped his shades on and off, the generated version of the abandoned gas station looked to be the same exact size as the original to Jake. The only difference he noticed for the exterior was that the boarded up windows had been replaced with glass.

Still better to look from afar where it was safe when entering the instance the wrong way could mean death, Jake looked into the generated store through his binoculars.

The System, in its attempt to form an illusion of what the convenience store once was, had populated the instance version with two long rows of shelves that split three aisles. Lined up against the wall with a backdoor to the right on the opposite side of the store from the entrance, there was a line of refrigerators. To the left of that line was a counter with a slushie machine on top of it.

There was also a clerk’s booth closed off with bulletproof glass a few feet away from the entrance that had a couple racks for things like magazines, sunglasses, and headwear in front of it. To the side of those there was also a freezer for ice cream.

The one thing the instance didn’t restore to its version of the store was life. The freezer, the racks, the shelves, and the refrigerators were all empty and the only thing in stock was built up dust. That and the zombies.

Heads Up!

Receiving Courtesy Information

Remnants

Remnants are zombie-like creatures that have attachments to a role they are acting out. They grow stronger and more aggressive in dark places and become enraged when you take actions that will heavily disrupt their role.

Note

This is the kind of information on common monster types that can be bought along with other guides at your local Gamify connected store.

There were five of them: one standing in front of the empty hat rack trying to put on a hat that wasn't there, one standing in the clerk’s booth behind the register waiting for a customer who'd never come, one trying to get a slushy from the broken slushy machine, one trying to cool off in an old fridge that wasn't plugged in, and one who was just browsing the wide assortment of dust shelved up and down the center aisle.

Founder's Quest 3 - Closed Down Convenience Store

You've chosen a great location for a future Gamify USA connected store! The only problem is that this location has monsters lurking within its aisles.

Clear out the monsters and clear out the shelves while you're at it, so that our Gamify partners can move right in.

Reward

Note: Relevant Bonuses Already Included!

+500 Game Tokens

+$500 U.S Dollars

Failure: You will continue to not have access to the Gamify Connected Store Network.

Bonus Conditions!

+200 Game Tokens, +$200 U.S Dollars will be added to quest rewards if at least one remnant is slain after the sunsets.

Add +50 Game Tokens, +$50 U.S Dollars to quest rewards when you smash a shelf, a rack, or a slushy machine with a remnant nearby.

Those bonus conditions sounded like bait for something dangerous if he had ever seen any. It didn't matter, though. Jake was plenty willing to step on a few mouse traps if the pay was good enough. Besides, there wasn't anything said about whether or not he could wear steel-toed boots while doing it and speaking of which, he had a pair of them on right now.

Jake went back into his car’s trunk and opened an empty large plastic tub. Bulk teleporting into his Inventory cost him less mana than doing it one at a time, so most everything that was going into the instance with him was going into the tub.

From arsenal present in his trunk, he loaded the tub with a couple cans of bear spray, a few cans of pepper spray, a flare gun, a road flare, a few of those white decorative rocks he’d tried throwing into the last instance, a couple of hunting knives, some wasp spray that he could set on fire with the flares, and of course, his chainsaw.

Once the tub was packed, he teleported it all into his Inventory. After that, he put on his motorcycle helmet, put on his leather jacket, and picked up his metal bat.

Honestly, Jake was more of a fan of the chainsaw after what he’d done to the goblins, but it worked better for when he wanted to intimidate his enemies or draw attention to himself. The bat had more maneuverability, didn’t have the chance of getting stuck cutting through something, and wasn’t going to call all the zombies in the building to him shouting, “Come and kill me if you can!”

Ding!

If the generated convenience store had anything going for it, it was that the automatic doors still worked.

Walking into the store with a bat and a biker helmet on, Jake looked like the kind of guy the clerk remnant would consider pressing the panic button on. If it still had half a brain that is. Instead it looked like he was waiting for Jake to tell him what pump he wanted to put twenty on.

Stepping up to the remnant struggling to pick up a hat that just wasn’t there, Jake immediately chose violence.