9 Hours, 45 Minutes Until Reset
The rest of the 11th floor and the 12th floor are incomprehensibly awful. The second half of the 11th floor is more of the same but the 12th floor is worse. Much, much worse. What those Elder Things (and three fish men) did to people... Was truly monstrous.
We only find three more people able to be saved, but I don't know how they'll live from now on. The “experiments” done to them are seemingly impossible. Humans just can't be implanted with... You know what? Fuck this place.
It made me angry. It made us all angry. I want revenge. On whoever, or whatever is responsible for this debacle. We talk it over and agree that the Ambrose Society, the group that had initiated the sacrifices and hostages, needed to be shut down. As in taken out. As in “we mop the floor with them and anyone still alive faces war crimes charges.”
The Ambrose Society was responsible for the uranium mine four years ago. Their crazy cult ideas associated R-32 with Lovecraft. And that association is why this place has a Cthulhu mythos theme. There's no other reason why the system would put American cosmic horror into an Afghanistan dungeon. So the Ambrose Society has a lot to answer for.
Over the course of two floors I gain three levels which go into Scoundrel/Archmage. With the combined 51 free attribute points, I'm able to hit 100 in Strength, Dexterity, Reflexes and Ki.
Notice! You have reached 100 Strength and are offered the following choice: Weight or Impact.
Weight - The mass you can lift and carry is increased by 50%.
Impact - Your attacks and instant uses of strength are increased by 50%.
Notice! You have reached 100 Dexterity, and are offered the following choice: Aim or Fire.
Aim - Your precision increases by 50%.
Fire - Your attack speed increases by 50%.
Notice! You have reached 100 Reflexes, and are offered the following choice: Focus or Peripheral.
Focus - Your focus on things you actively track becomes 50% more effective.
Peripheral - Your focus using all your senses becomes 50% more effective.
Notice! You have reached 100 Ki and are offered the following choice: Accelerated Recovery or Reduced Combos.
Accelerated Recovery - Your Ki Point recovery rate is increased by 50%.
Reduced Combos - Using combined techniques costs only the KP cost of the most expensive technique.
For Strength, the choice is easy. More punchy power, please. For the rest I consult with my good buddy and probably over 100 in those stats sniper, Jose Amarillo.
“Jose, you over 100 in Dexterity, Reflexes and Ki?”
“Mostly. I'm over 100 in Dex, Cha and Reflex.”
“Cool! What did you think about the options? What did you pick?”
“Hrm. For Dex it was Aim. I need to aim faster, not pull the trigger faster. Cha I chose the regen option because I didn't want an aura. Reflex I went focus because I'm a sniper.”
“Wait, what were the options for Charisma?”
He thinks for a minute, trying to remember. “Aura or Regen. Can't remember the actual names. One was an aura that made allies less scared. The other was just 50% faster Ki regen.”
“Great. 100 Ki gives the option for Regen or some combo thing. If I hit 100 Charisma I can get both regens and really speed up my Ki recovery.”
“Combo thing?”
“Ah, you know how you can use multiple techniques at once? This lets you do that but only pay the KP for the most expensive tech.”
“HOLY SHIT that would help me out.” I haven't seen Jose this excited since we got the 97 inch LG OLED 4K TVs. “I stack a bunch of stuff to get my big bolts out.”
“Cool. I'm taking the flat regen though. I don't need more things to think about, even with two sub-minds.”
“What the crap are you two talking about?” Alicia asks. We've been in this extremely slow moving elevator, going down, for what seems like five minutes. And the team has been silent for most of it, because none of us know when the elevator will stop.
“Ah, so, I don't know if you know this, but when a stat gets to 100, you get a choice of two different abilities, and both are quite powerful.”
“Real powerful,” Jose confirms.
“So at 100 Intelligence you can choose to either think really deeply about one thing at a time, or basically get true multitasking with sub-minds.” Alicia looks mildly interested, so I go on. “My two sub-minds are like, uhhhhhhh little AI assistants? They don't have a will of their own but can handle thinking about things that I want to think about.”
Alicia rolls her eyes. “You found a way to make thinking more complicated. Good for you.”
I can't really argue with that point. Having sub-minds is great -lefty tells me we've gone down about 46 floors now- but slightly distracting. Like having way too much coffee. All the time. Did I mention that I named them lefty and righty? They sort of feel like they're down and to the left and right of my brain.
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I go back to my 100 point choices and select Fire for Dexterity, Peripheral for Reflexes and Accelerated Recovery for Ki. Basically the opposite of what Jose took.
The Peripheral bonus takes hold and it's like I can hear and feel things more clearly. Have you listened to music on real shitty headphones, and the music is there, but you can't really tell the instruments apart? Then on good headphones you can clearly follow each instrument. This is like that. The combined senses that are telling me “you are in an elevator” are now separated out, into “you are traveling down, the room is slightly warm because 5 people are in a small elevator, the elevator is quiet but occasionally grinds against the walls.”
The real reason I took Peripheral is that I was hoping my vision would improve, and I'd be able to focus on my literal peripherals better. That would improve my telekinetic control over a wider area. This comes through in spades and I can clearly see details to my left and right without shifting my gaze. It really is quite an improvement.
The levels and 3 humans saved weren't the only things we got from floors 11 and 12. We also found a few items.
Alien Scalpel. Cuts through non-terrestrial life forms 33% more easily.
Surgical Goo. This is basically just glue, but if used to attach, or reattach body parts, the body is almost guaranteed to accept the implant.
Medical Gloves, Elder Thing edition. These only have 3 fingers, so you can't wear them. But if you want to cut off a finger, you can wear it and gain +25% range with all your psychic spells! *chants enthusiastically* Cut it off! Cut it off! Cut it off!
Potion, Ruby Red. A very potent health potion, usable by humans. Not made by humans, mind you.
Potion, Sapphire Blue. A very potent Arcana Point recovery potion. Does NOT taste like blueberries. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Potion, Golden Yellow. A very potent Ki recovery potion. Nothing else interesting about it.
Potion, dull grey. Recovers Luck, if you spend Luck. Most people don't. So it's probably useless. Maybe just smash this and walk away.
Elder Thing Skin, black. The skin of an Elder Thing, torn off and able to be worn by a human like it's a coat. Gross, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Improves your resistance to all elements except for Toxic.
Nobody wanted to wear the skin coats, but they went into inventories all the same.
Once we found out that each hospital room carried a set of the potions, we walked away with dozens of each kind. We each got 5 of the health ones, and whoever needed the others got them. We unfortunately found out that after drinking a potion you get “potion fatigue” which means if you drink two potions within a minute of each other, the second one makes you barf. I'll leave it up to your imagination as to who barfed for us to find this out.
We also got more coins than we can count. Though our inventories count them for us. So all in all we've got close to 100k coins in our “bigger on the inside” inventories. Which, hey, that's something.
“Also, I can't stay this serious for this long anymore,” I say out of nowhere. “I need someone to really elevate this conversation.”
Mercy looks up at my terrible pun. She likes terrible puns. “You're really bringing us down,” she says.
Jose points at the control panel. “You guys are starting to push my buttons.”
“Jesus, kill me now,” Alicia says to Quins.
“Oh no,” he says seriously. “Are you feeling a bit shafted?”
“I hate you all,” Alicia says, and that finally breaks us. We all (except Alicia) have a good chuckle.
That's when we see light through the cracks in the elevator door. We get back into ready mode, which is everyone pressed against the walls for cover. I'm pressed against Mercy, but she's still in mecha armor so it's not that sexy.
Did I mention that the armor doesn't cover the bit of her thighs that extends from her waist to about 2 inches above the knee? So there's this delicious strip of brown skin exposed amidst the metal plating. God I just want to squeeze-
The doors slide open and we see maybe the last thing we expected. No monsters, no nuclear weapons, no horrid laboratory.
“Books?” asks Alicia.
“It's a whole bleedin’ library!” exclaims Quins. “Reckon they have Hitchhikers?”
Before us is a massive room, maybe a hundred feet tall, and I don't know how wide or long. I can't see around the shelves. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of bookshelves, each one four or five stories (get it?) tall. And each one is crammed full of books.
I don't see anything on my radar. I step in and look around with my newly heightened senses. The room is lit by glowing yellow orbs on the sides of each bookshelf. The shelves themselves are all at odd angles to each other, forming a sort of rat's nest of a library. I approach one of the shelves and find it full of books in French. The shelf itself seems to be made of thick grey hardwood. I carefully pull a book off the shelf. Nothing happens so I flip it over. It's an Arsene Lupin. Nice.
“I think this really is just a library,” I say. “But let's ninja sweep the area before we get cozy and make some tea.”
We sweep the room as best we can and find nothing but millions of books. As far as we can tell, there's no repeats, but there do seem to be some various language versions of books. Jose finds a shelf with Brandon Sanderson translated into Portuguese. Alicia finds a shelf that's all King James bibles, but in different languages. The number of bibles is dwarfed by the number of smutty romance novels.
There also seem to be books from various eras and time periods, though few are older than 1800. I'm pretty sure Quins found a copy of the Gutenberg Bible and slipped it into his inventory. Sneaky brit. I find some Jane Austins that are from the olden days and pocket a Pride And Prejudice.
Jose finds a far wall and we follow it. The room turns out to be a very, very big circle with red brick walls. And just opposite where we came in is the exit, a 15 foot tall wooden door. I listen at the door.
“Nothing,” I report. Then I notice the blue light along the bottom of the door. “Wait, safe room.” With my now massive strength I push open the door a crack and look down into a narrow spiral staircase ripped right out of a castle. “No, actually I think this is the safe room,” I say, motioning towards the library.
“So, lunch then?” asks Jose, who is always ready for lunch.
“Lunch,” I say, and bring my green cooler out of my inventory. This one is filled with a variety of Jimmy John's sandwiches. I ordered about 50 of them one day, and stored them in inventory. The fact that stuff in there doesn't age is absolutely wonderful. I've got fresh tuna and avocado, some turkey clubs, and more. All fresh as the hour they got made. Plus chips. Can't forget the chips.
Jose brings out his drink cooler and we have a library picnic. We all wander a bit, looking at what we think is literally every book ever printed. I spy a shelf with all of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure in Spanish and smile. I open to a random page and find a man holding an ice cube while firing a revolver. Hirohiko Araki truly is a mad genius.
We needed this. We needed a break from the violence, the loss of Franco, the horrors of the last two hospital and laboratory floors. We walk around and show each other oddities, funny titles and interesting rarities. I think we all end up pocketing a few volumes of something or other. Maybe to sell later. Maybe just to have. Maybe as a reminder of a perfectly decent moment in an awful place.
“Okay,” I say to the group after we gather before the stairs down. “These should go to floor 14. Penultimate floor. Expect the worst. 15 is probably a big boss fight, so I bet the dungeon will throw numbers at us. Maybe a horde or something awful.”
Everyone makes sure they're locked and loaded. And me? I go over my status one more time...