Friday, May 14th, 2027 - Floor 58

It took some repeated pointing while saying names, but as soon as Chez understood, he grabbed Cheddar in a hug and delightedly squealed, “Chedeer!” Cheddar grumbled something in goblin and pushed him off, but then Chez looked at me with a confused expression.

He pointed at himself and said, “Chez.” Then he pointed at Cheddar and said, “Chedeer.” Finally, he pointed at me and waited. It was rather obvious that he was asking for my name, and I felt quite silly for not telling him before.

“Mark,” I said, and then I repeated it while pointing at myself.

“Mark,” he repeated, and I was touched that the first word he said correctly was my name, but then I remembered he had said it before while trying to pronounce the “mac” in mac and cheese.

It seemed that he was remembering the same thing as he started happily yelling, “Mark! Chez! Mark end Chez!” I laughed at his antics, and realized that in naming him after Cheeze, I had made our names into a pun. Cheddar was initially staring at us with attentive eyes, and I was sure she was learning our names, but when Chez started dancing and shouting, “Mark end Chez,” she just sighed and turned away. I realized that she didn’t understand the significance of mac and cheese and decided that her naming day was a perfect opportunity to fix that.

After we dumped two more bodies into the abyss, we popped up to floor 59 to check it was clear, and then we headed home.

I cooked up a double batch of mac and cheese, and Chez was happily chittering the entire time. Cheddar seemed to be ashamed of his antics, though she did perk up at the smell. As I was about to serve Cheddar, I remembered my first meal with Chez, and the progress we had made on teaching Chez English. “Mac and Cheese,” I proclaimed while holding the bowl in front of her, but she only stared at me like I was an idiot. Not to be cowed by a judgemental creature half my size, I doubled down and said, “Mac and Cheese,” again, slowly and carefully, but she just continued to stare.

Chez spared me from the awkward moment by singing, “Mak end Cheez! Mak end Cheez!” I immediately capitalized on his help by handing him the bowl of cheesy goodness, trying to show Cheddar that saying the words meant she would get food, but she just continued to glare at me no matter how many times I said, “Mac and cheese.” I wondered how much of this was her thinking that begging for treats was beneath her, and how much of it was her being pissed off at me for forcing her to fight. I knew it would set a horrible precedent, but when I remembered how skinny and thin she had been before I put a shirt on her, I couldn’t just not feed her. In the end, I caved, and she got her mac and cheese without earning it.

When I pulled the clothes out of the dryer and went to give Chez his favorite shirt, I realized Chez needed a bath after helping me drag all those corpses. Chez moaned and wailed while I scrubbed him down, acting like a dying animal, but when Cheddar’s turn came, she bore it stoically and silently, though her judgemental glares continued. I knew she still talked to and argued with Chez, as I heard them talking in goblin, but she refused to speak to me.

I sighed, and resolved to give it time. I had more than enough to deal with without worrying about a female goblin’s scorn. Most of those things I had to deal with required killing hordes of goblins and potentially orcs, so I was quickly running out of things to do on the secured floors to avoid the decision I was dreading. I had at least one more stop I could make. With my strength increased to five, I wanted to make another attempt to string one of the bows.

The archer’s apartment was just how I had left it, with three bows and a plentiful hoard of arrows. I grabbed the bow that had been the easiest to bend, set one on the ground, and tried to bend it with all my weight and strength. The end I had set on the ground slipped, and I fell on my face. As I was groaning from the pain, I heard hearty, raucous laughter and turned to see both Chez and Cheddar clutching their sides as they giggled and howled at my pain. With a long-suffering and embarrassed sigh, I moved to a corner of the room and wedged the bottom of the bow into the corner so it was braced on three sides. I heaved and pressed down with all my might, but it was just an inch shy of meeting the string.

I wasn’t willing to give up when I was so close, so I called Chez and managed to get him to hold onto the top of the bow and hang off of it, pulling it with all his weight. When I added my strength and weight to his, it was barely enough to string the bow. Chez awkwardly extricated himself from the bow I had strung around him, and I hefted my new weapon.

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It was made of a rich, red wood that looked like freshly stained mahogany. Both limbs were black and flat, and I couldn’t begin to guess what material they were made from. The center of the bow had an odd shape to it, but I found my left hand fit perfectly in it. Above the grip was a strange, carved-out section, and I assumed that was where I would set an arrow.

I wanted to test it out immediately, so I slung it over my shoulder and moved on to the arrows. There were two types of arrows. The first type had a small metal head that looked like a pencil eraser with a point. I planned to use these for practice because the second type looked wickedly lethal. They were a more traditional arrowhead shape, with four sharpened metal blades intersecting at the tip. There were fifty of the smaller tipped arrows and thirty of the bladed ones.

I filled one of the quivers I found with the regular arrows and took a ride to floor 56, where my mattress shooting range was still propped up in the hallway. I stopped about thirty feet from my target and readied my bow. I awkwardly loaded an arrow, resting the back above the bead on the string and the front on the little ledge above the grip, drew back the string to about even with my nose, and released.

For my first shot, I was pleased that it hit the mattresses even if it was in the corner far away from the target, but the arrow vanished. When I pulled off the first few mattresses, I found the arrow firmly embedded in the last two mattresses and the wall. I tried to extract it as gently as possible, but the feathers were ruffled by their passage through the mattresses and from me pulling it out. I was torn, I didn’t want to ruin the arrows by practicing, but I wouldn’t be able to hit anything if I didn’t practice.

The only other option I could think of was to shoot at the apartments’ wooden doors, but I didn’t know if the arrows could survive repeated hard impacts either. The solution that I came up with was halfway between both. I stacked up two mattresses in front of a door and used a marker to sketch an outline of the door on the front of the mattresses. The hope was that the mattresses would slow the arrows while being thin enough that the feathers wouldn’t touch them once the arrows were embedded in the door. I didn’t know if the mattresses would slow the arrows down enough to make a difference, but it was the only idea I had to soften the blows.

I selected five arrows, including the ruffled one, to be my practice arrows. I would fire them repeatedly until they broke and then decide if my practice was worth the cost. A quick scan of the shop revealed that arrows varied wildly in price. Some types of wood and plastic arrows were cheap at one shard each, but the first ones that sounded well made started at three shards each. The list climbed on to absurd heights, and I stopped scrolling when I reached some enchanted elven arrows that cost over a hundred shards each.

I was surprised at the first sign that enchantments were possible. I supposed it was silly, but I had an easier time believing in flesh and blood goblins and even dragons than actual magic, but the blue screens hadn’t lied to me yet. I was, unfortunately, turning into a bit of a jack-of-all-trades character with my wildly varied skills, so it wouldn’t hurt to learn a bit of magic as well.

I paced out thirty feet and started firing again. My aim was terrible. Like before, I could at least hit the mattress, but goblins were much smaller than a mattress. I had never held a bow before, and I had no one to show me how. I fired off all five arrows, retrieved them, and fired again. Both of the goblins stared at me in fascination, and an idea came to me.

The orc had given me an extra ten shards on top of what I had reserved for the plan I was refusing to think about. I pulled up the weapons shop, and thought “goblin bow,” and a surprising amount of results appeared, though only the cheapest one caught my eye.

Goblin Hunting Bow - 8 shards

I shifted my thoughts toward “arrows for a goblin bow” and the list reformed again.

Two Cheap Goblin Arrows - 1 shard

I immediately bought a bow and four arrows and then groaned. The bow was misshapen, and the arrows were bent with dull stone heads. I couldn’t exactly ask for a refund, so I presented the bow to Chez. Chez cheered and hugged my leg before taking the bow from me, and he immediately began shooting at my target. One of his arrows hit the mattresses, and the rest buried themselves in the wall. I sighed, and we continued practicing together. By the end, one in five of my arrows could strike my goblin-sized target, and half of Chez’s shots hit the mattress.

With the day winding down to a close, I couldn’t put off my decision any longer. Even as I agonized over it, I knew my decision was already made. I returned to floor 53, and hesitantly opened up the shop menu. I cursed my weakness, but I was too weak and too afraid to clear this building floor by floor. The chance of me surviving another 50 floors of constant battles were slim to none. As I stood over the untainted corpses I had reserved, I bought three more pouches of goblin bane. Last time, I had made the choice in ignorance, not fully knowing what I was about to unleash. Tonight, I was making a conscious choice. I was choosing the easy option that would ensure my safety, knowing full well it would damn dozens of creatures to a hellish end. As I rubbed the poison into fresh wounds and dragged the bodies down to the hallway of the floor below, I knew I had just damned my soul to hell.