---Richard---

🚓 Achievement get: Poison a police station. (Unique)

Description: Filled entire private police building with helium. “I’m Higher than a whale!”

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Stat: +5 Mental planning power

Richard seemed to be falling into a pattern.

Bash a head in, steal some clothes. Walk around nonchalantly pretending he belonged.

…it wasn’t his fault it was the optimal way to infiltrate! He didn’t have an invisibility cloak! Yet. He didn’t have one yet – one day he’d own that glorious piece of cloth priced like a luxury car and then he’d be rocking the infiltration game.

Anyways. Next time he’d pretend to be a garbage can or something. He hated how ‘samy’ these infiltrations were getting.

The hardest part of this one was definitely how he had to keep his face straight and pretend to be panicked. People kept yelling in a foreign language squeaked up to 11. They sounded hilarious! It was hard to take the panic seriously when it sounded like that – 10/10 prank, would fill a police station with helium again.

Since he had started, corrupt cops had opened windows and certain areas were lowering in density again…

But considering several pigs had asphyxiated and dropped due to oxygen deprivation, the mayhem was continuing even if the original source was dissipating – to be honest his prank was a bit more lethal than he had intended. Teeny tiny bit more… but that didn’t really matter with how corrupt they were.

…Richard really hoped he wasn’t wiping out janitors or anyone ‘innocent’ – that would rain a bit on his parade. Punching down instead of punching up – wouldn’t be nearly as funny with collateral damage.

Finding a document room and trying to ignore the growing worry, Richard started rustling through files.

Fuck. Everything was in a different language.

Where was the translator? He should start carrying one in his pocket…

Finding a corner of the room happily held a scanner and Richard began trying sheets randomly.

Thankfully they were separated by type of incident and sorted by date – he found his own file after a few minutes of searching. Either this being the central headquarters meant it was the document place, this was the building he had been taken to, or documents were copied…

Either way, score!

Rustling through the values Richard got two names he had been working for.

Dr, Dostramalius – the ‘person’ he had been sold to.

Commander Cad – The officer who had sold him.

As easy as those two names were to find, it was much much harder to figure out where they actually were. By the time Richard found a client booklet that gave a location for Dostramalius the sounds of panic had died down. He’d have to forgo the officer’s punishment.

…peeking out as carefully as he could Richard saw an empty hallway.

That wasn’t good. Richard had a sudden vision of the building surrounded by mechs trained on the door he would come out of.

Did they know he was in here? Probably not right? He hadn’t been clumsy with his knocked out guard…had tossed ‘it’ in a bin in the alleyway.

He should still be fine.

Deciding to stroll though the building until he found an escape route, Richard heard a thudding sound and ducked into the nearest office.

In the hallway just on the other side of the door, a growling hiss rang out. Low and sinister sounding as something shuffled by.

What…what the fuck was that?

Did they let loose a bloodhound? This game's equivalent of a bloodhound that sounded like a monster from a horror film called ‘the thing’?

…or was it just ‘Steve’? The officer who was a bit weird – ‘he was just like that, don’t mind him’.

Richard opened the door right into the face of what looked like a giant mole rat crossed with a spider. Its pink sniffing nose undulated in the air and its many legs were touching both the walls and floor.

Richard didn’t think – he whipped his gun out of his holster – slot connecting to its aether input – and fired the shell point blank towards the horror in front of him.

He had filled its chamber with “shotgun” style rounds – the stone carefully weakened to shatter upon firing – and each shot sprayed the entire hallway.

Instantly the spider mole was flung back with a surprised hiss, but Richard didn’t stop there.

One hand reaching into his fanny pack and grabbing several rounds Richard dumped them into the ‘loader’ on his mini cannon. Pulling a small lever in and out to cock each shot Richard fired, cocked, fired, cocked. Five full blasts of shrapnel peppered the entire hallway – each shot accompanied by a sharp crack from the gun and hissing from the monster. Each blast flung his arms back slightly but the gun didn’t seem to operate off of explosions. The ‘crack’ was somewhere between the sound of a whip and breaking glass. At least one thing was true about this weapon. It was just as satisfying to fire as Richard had been imagining.

…it looked like the giant mole spider had died somewhere between the second and third shot…he had gotten slightly carried away emptying all his grabbed rounds.

Ah well. There’s no kill like overkill – poking the creature with his barrel a few times to make sure it really was dead Richard fumbled around in his pack and reloaded once more before placing it back by his waist.

This had been…enlightening but also any cover Richard had had was probably blown. He should start treating this game under the assumption they knew he was here and were coming for him.

Multiple mooks with unknown tech and monsters under their command – Richard suddenly really hoped he hadn’t just shot someone’s equivalent of a pet dog. This was a tracking monster, right? Monster.

Glancing idly around as he strolled down the hallway Richard paused then did a double take.

That…looks familiar, doesn’t it?

Poking his head into a doorframe Richard found the room he had been held in last time.

The ‘not dungeon’. Stepping through and looking around Richard found a side door – and stepping through that door he found an office. It looked like he had found Captn’ Cad’s lair!

Quick! What do I do?

Really…a fitting punishment for the officer – karma for what Richard had been put through – would be to sell the captain. Shave him bald. Find a fucked up human trafficking ring and enter the cop into it as some merchandise – basically the same as what he had done to Richard.

…that plan would be the most satisfying but…it had a few small problems. Namely: where do you sell humans? Can you even sell a police officer? Did he just hide here, bag him, then walk about through shady looking streets?

That was too much effort.

Richard would just have to make do with shitting on the man's desk.

…That plan also had a problem. Namely, Richard didn’t have fuel in the tank – he didn’t have the magical ability to shit on command.

He could just leave? Richard had already given up on punishing the cop once before – sorry pranking him.

Did he even have to do something that was funny? He could just smash all the stuff in here. That might be fun?

Reaching around his baggies of various ammo effects Richard flipped through them all like a catalogue.

A neurotoxin.

An impact-based explosive.

A pseudo acid – 'dissolution powder' and a catalyst that activated it. Supposedly for piercing rounds.

A bag of confusion.

…according to the shopkeeper, this was a special sort of poison that caused anyone hit by even a trace amount of it to make ‘more mistakes’.

It was meant as an opening shot on intelligent monsters to make them easier to handle but I could...idk fill something in here with a bit of it. Kinda like ‘You made a big mistake selling me off. Now make some more mistakes!’

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

…still kind of disappointing.

There was a baggy of combustion powder filled with ignition capsules. Supposedly good way to set stuff on fire with hard to put out effects.

Nothing was funny. Some of them might be funny to watch but…

Really was booby trapping the office a good punishment? Setting some ignition and explosion powders about under his seat?

…Richard had seen an anime once where someone had been shot up in the air on a chair and he had laughed at the time. Slapstick works much better if you can actually watch it, however. It lost some of the satisfaction if you didn’t see it happening.

Boo. Fine. I have better plans for the scientist anyways – plus this officer is kind of just part of the entire police station of corrupt officers. A punishment for all of them is just as good as a punishment for ‘him’. The helium kind of counts? Why isn’t the blimp using hydrogen? If it was, I could probably blow the place up.

Isn’t hydrogen easier to produce too? Electrolysis on some water and bamn? But then again, I haven’t seen any signs of electricity other than those stun batons. I guess if they have a natural geyser, helium might be easier to acquire, and convenience will win out…why am I even considering that? It’s a game, the resource might just be spawned in out of sight.

Finding the office’s bathroom Richard dusted the bottom of the flush toilet with dissolution powder and cracked the capsule overtop – a bit got on his finger burning slightly but the main point was a small hole being dug near the bottom of it.

Juvenile but it made Richard smile more than any of his other plans and it was just such a waste to do nothing.

Leaving the office and the attached dungeon, Richard skipped through the empty building reaching a doorway to peek out.

Immediately he was grabbed. This time however the one doing the grabbing was a nurse – not a mech.

The man wasn’t strong enough to move Richard if he didn’t want to be moved but Richard allowed them to pull him to the side and shine a light in his eyes anyways.

Speaking to him then giving him a thumbs up when they realized Richard couldn’t understand the nurse pointed him towards a group at the side.

Walking into the group and then leaving Richard…just left.

Scot-free – the perfect crime no one even paid him any attention as he snuck away.

…

Richard felt like he was flowing through the city. Everything was just so easy – the ai one these NPCs was too simple.

It almost made it less fun. Almost – Richard was happy he didn’t have to go through a prison arc again.

Finding the lab of the good doctor. Richard was met with what was essentially a maximum-security building. No windows and no doors that he could see were visible from the outside. Everything was layered copper panels with different sheens on them. Slightly different tints of different colours.

How should he get in? Finding an out of the way portion and trying to melt through didn’t work – it seemed like the wall was basically immune to his dissolution powder.

The stone ice cream scoop didn’t work – it only really worked on stone and stone-like materials of which the wall didn’t count.

There had to be an entrance? How did the mad scientist get supplies? How had Richard been transported in?

Should he find another private police depo and steal another mech? Would a mech even make a dent on this place?

Just when Richard was starting to despair a group of officers walked up to the wall in the distance.

Covertly sneaking around behind them Richard was just in time for a portion of the wall to open – it spread out like a mouth puckering letting the group inside.

What was the scientist’s relationship with the police? Did they regularly bring him test subjects?

They didn’t seem to have a victim this time.

Richard walked in right behind the last one.

No one seemed to notice him – the NPC’s really were stupid, not that Richard was complaining right now.

Ducking sideways as soon as he entered Richard quickly moved into a side passage and started running as quietly as he could.

No one had noticed yet – Richard finally figured out part of why these infiltrations were so easy. There weren’t any security cameras. The tech level was all over the place – how the hell did they have mechs but no security cameras?

…it reminded him of how he had heard it was so much easier to commit crimes a century or two ago on earth. Back then you did the bare minimum and you could never be caught – they didn’t even have DNA testing! You could leave fingerprints and blood everywhere without anyone the wiser…

Finding the room Richard had been held in last time. I don’t have to wander around the whole facility again! Fucking A. Lets go –

Grabbing a bucket Richard ran over to the last vat of acid dunking it in to pick up a good portion of it.

…halfway back up into the air and the bottom had fallen off the bucket the metal melting like a cartoon.

…what were the walls of this vat made out of?

Richard looked around. Was that his only bucket? No! There was one over there…

Grabbing the second bucket Richard used his melted test subject to try each vat.

Finding one that didn’t seem reactive with the metal but stung his finger when he dunked it in Richard filled up the bucket and ran towards the door.

Carefully balancing the bucket of acid on top of the main door, Richard ran back towards the vats.

Once again recreating a classic prank – this time with a twist!

Richard hid, peeking around the vat in anticipation. The best karmic punishment for the man who melted him was to melt him back. See how he liked it – scientists probably didn’t have good acid defense right? They the brains behind an operation?

Richard waited. And waited. Finally, he heard the faint sound of footsteps. Nearly immediately after the mad scientist pushed into the room head bent down as he read from a clipboard.

The bucket teetered. It tipped.

And landed straight on the scientist’s head!

Yes!

The last moment the scientist's face had looked so surprised. Worth it! Sometimes it’s the little things…

🌊 Achievement get: Acidic surprise. (Unique)

Description: Dump acid from on top of a door onto a ‘NPC’. Classic prank. Remember when we used to do this as kids? No? Just me?

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Stat: +1 Brain power.

Richard paused.

One…one single stat seemed kind of stingy of the system, didn’t it? The scientist was still standing despite being drenched. His clothing had melted in parts as had a portion of his clipboard but…the man itself seemed strangely fine.

The bucket obscured the scientists features even as they raised their hands high in the air.

And then the acid rose.

Globules of burning liquid floated up off the floor to hang in the air like a reverse rainstorm.

Peeling off of him acid floated out and began spinning, tiny droplets colliding and growing larger.

Within a dozen seconds the scientist – still with the bucket on his head – began walking into the room droplets floating out and away from him like drones.

“Shiiit! How was I to know the man was magic!” Richard yelped as a droplet whizzed over to his hiding spot and smacked into him.

Rolling out of his hiding spot Richard pulled out his gun and fired.

Shrapnel flew across the room spraying wide – but the scientist had already pulled more fuel out of the nearest tub and what little bits that would have hit him sizzled ineffectually as they met with a barrier.

Fumbling around Richard cursed – he should have better sorted his pouch instead of just tossing stuff in.

He didn’t need a shotgun round he needed a proper bullet. Why hadn’t he premade some of the special shots?

Grabbing a smoother-feeling bullet Richard slid it into the loader cocking it even as a spray shot of acid smashed into the side of his face.

…it burned but was bearable. Richard’s highest stat was acid defense – thanks in part to this very man.

“Hey. Try and block this one” Richard aimed and shot. He didn’t have gun knowledge – not like the system had given him hammer skills – but he was close enough the shot still seemed to fly true.

Bullets were faster than moving globs of acid no matter how fast he moved them and Richards's shots were huge. The base bullets looked more like something a floor-mounted gun would use than a handheld.

The shot rang true – it fucking zoomed across the room smashing through a defensive barrier and into the doctor's shoulder behind.

“Sorry! Gotta work on my aim” Richard shouted even as he fished about for a new shot.

Blasting him with a massive dose of liquid Richard flinched slightly as he felt his entire chest begin to burn slightly.

…he was a tank. Toss everything into defense and laugh when attacks didn’t affect him.

Gritting his teeth Richard pushed through – his passive skill was already increasing his acid defense and the sting was fading rapidly.

“Hey! Stop getting melty shit into my stuff!” Richard shouted feeling the whole bottom of his fanny pack was full of acid several holes already melted through the bottom.

Shit, his scooper!

Grabbing the most important item in his arsenal Richard wiped it on his shirt then tossed it to the side. This bullet should do – all his packets of bullet effects were broken open by this point the powders dispersed in the acid and coating everything. A portion of his bag had caught on fire.

The bullet he grabbed was slippery and wet.

Loading it quickly and hoping it didn’t break his cannon, Richard ran towards the man in front of him. Guns were fun and Richard understood they were ‘ranged’ weapons…but he was in the moment and shooting someone point blank was funny in a ‘that’s not how you’re supposed to use it’ way.

Ducking under one droplet then being bombarded by two more – the scientist was running at this point. He seemed to have understood Richard was resistant to most of these acids and was heading towards the last pool. Maybe he recognized Richard by this point? Realized this was all just karma.

Revenge!

Laughing wildly as he slipped about and was beat by blast after blast of caustic liquid Richard was gaining.

It seemed the scientist had gotten within range – his fingers sprayed out and pulled.

With that yank a massive ball of acid pulled out of the farthest pool splashing a massive amount of excess across the floor that left visible marks.

Richard raised his weapon pointing directly for the bucket head. Pulling the trigger his arms shook slightly and with a jerk the scientist flung back.

“Boom! Headshot” Richard shouted even as the super acid from the end impacted his front and shoved him back. That felt good. Pulling the trigger had felt so satisfying. He was making the world a better place. A benevolent assassin!

A flashback to the melting session filled Richard's head as he screamed. The skin on his front looked awful and the pain briefly spiked as his body warned him about the damage.

💱 Achievement get: You kill me. I kill you. (uncommon)

Description: Come back like a specter to kill the person who killed you last time around. Most don’t get to revenge their own death. You are not most.

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Active skill: Unstable shot.

Stabilize a concoction that really shouldn’t be stable into a bullet. Concoction will break apart once it impacts something.

…but it was dripping off. The acid wasn’t attacking him anymore. The mad acid manipulator hadn’t seemed to have bullet defense. Walking over Richard stared down at his tormentor.

“Fuck!”

Why was he dead already? Kicking the scientist's side in frustration, Richard wished it had lasted slightly longer. His torment had been over hours and hours – this hadn’t been enough. Sure it had felt great but it wasn’t enough.

Kicking off the bucket so he could get a good look at the doctor he saw a mess of a caved in face and sneered. Stepping down Richard stomped and twisted messing the face up further. He’d teabag the corpse but that was less funny than in games with a respawn cooldown where they could see what you were doing as a ghost.

Picking up the body Richard dragged it towards a tub. There didn’t seem to be much point in this anymore. Throwing the body into the pool Richard watched in angry satisfaction as the body melted.

🐢 Achievement get: Clean up after yourself. (rare)

Description: Dispose of a body you created.

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Stat: +2 mental power.

Turning Richard stumbled away he felt…he felt strange. Shouldn’t he be sick? Why was killing the NPCs so easy? Sure it wasn’t even as graphic as some of the stuff he had seen online but weren’t you supposed to feel something when it was in person? Guess he was just desensitized to violence. Or maybe those stories were just about bitches who couldn’t handle a little blood.

Richard barely paid attention as he wandered through the lab to pick up his scooper.

He wasn’t a thief…but taking from this lab wasn’t stealing, was it? It was ‘looting’. Fair game in games, wasn’t it? Besides, he had melted his fanny pack – he needed a new one.

Loot. Then leave for the next area – nothing really holding him here anymore was there?

Richard went off to search for rewards a slight haze of disappointment following about behind him.