---James---
James awoke on a street bench feeling surprisingly refreshed. Sitting up, he found himself face to face with Richard – eating some wrapped foodstuff noisily at the end of the same seat.
“This is a fucking good sandwich.” Richard swallowed and spoke lifting the wrapped thing slightly and giving it a shake as if showing it off.
“Got you one too – oh and said you’d rather not go to a hospital. We’ve ditched our minder after the attack. She was taken to be treated…want to go do something fun?” He continued then took another bite.
Reaching down James picked up the package unwrapping it slowly then took a bite.
It was good – surprisingly so. It kind of reminded James of a gyro…but instead of a pita, it was a weirdly fluffy and stretchy bun.
…the bun almost seemed like soft and fluffy playdough – it was almost like uncooked, risen dough in texture but tasted like baked bread.
James took another bite, a flash of pleasure flicking across his tongue. There were actually several things happening in his mouth. A strange sort of texture from the soft, raw dough mixed with cotton candy ‘bread’. A solid but unidentified meat and sauce, with a flavor mostly like souvlaki. A tiny twinge of something that seemed to radiate out of the dish even as it fell down James’s throat and into his stomach – a flavor he couldn’t pinpoint having ever touched before. Faint balls reminiscent of garlic or maybe onions…so shallot balls?
If James had tried to describe this meal to anyone he was positive he wouldn’t be able to convey just how good it tasted right now. He couldn’t even describe some of the underlying tastes let alone the overall picture. It was good – probably the best thing he had tried in years.
Before James realized what was happening his meal was completely gone. All that was left was a greasy texture on his fingers and a slowly fading after taste.
“I know right?” Richard laughed watching his expression.
“Technically you paid for it – they handed you a prepaid card after I said we didn’t have AI’s…Oh! Did you know most people have brain chips? It's how the army men talked to each other without verbally saying anything and it’s how a lot of stuff in this city works…” Richard looked around.
“Not having an AI Chip is kind of like not having a phone. Kind of want to get one – apparently if you have aether slots you can buy them for much much cheaper and grow them yourself. The ones that don’t need a slot or aether to run are much more expensive.” James looked down at the strip of metal. It looked like a really thin credit card – the same thickness and length but with a width closer to a popsicle stick than a full ‘card’.
James took his card up off his lap and looked at it with mixed feelings. He hadn’t wanted to deal with money because he hadn’t wanted to work again.
James had gone through so much because he was afraid as soon as he “gave in” and started working again he’d revert to that empty state he had been in before he got here. That was the real reason he refused to take a easy job and get supplies before heading to the wilderness.
But now…money had fallen into his lap – almost literally. It would be wasteful not to use it now that he had it right? Should he be annoyed Richard had used it without asking him? Had forced him to buy a sandwich and gotten himself one?
…Actually, that had tasted so good James found it hard to be mad. He was actually kind of thankful – it reminded him of the time in university when a friend learned he hadn't eaten in a week. The friend had microwaved eggs and rice and forced James to eat several bowls before they were satisfied...
What did he want to do with the rest of it? James didn’t want anything he would be sad about losing…if he respawned and lost all his stuff he didn’t want that to be the end of the world.
…there was only 3 respawns now. James really should start treating it like he had none he couldn’t afford to waste them anymore. Don’t plan for failure, plan for success.
“Real talk. Everything needs fucking slots. I need a slot for my weapons. I need a slot for an AI chip – breaking the link to AI’s is even more shit than breaking it to other devices – I need a slot to play with my new mutation and start actually trying it out. Fuck! Why does everything want so much from me! Let’s try and get more skills before anything else.” Richard continued talking – not seeming to care that James wasn’t responding.
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“Not like we can purposefully get skills right?” James responded to show he was paying attention. The system would just hand them out if they did something worthy of it – and inside this city what was the chances they would find something worthy of getting a skill? He’d already stopped a robber and gotten…well admittedly some nice stats but no skill.
Richard turned to look at him and smirked. “Didn’t you hear? As long as you break all your skills you are basically guaranteed a new one every time you beat a dungeon or kill a field boss.”
James hadn’t heard that. There was a tiny problem with the information – namely that James hadn’t broken any of his skills yet and refused to do so until he learned about magic and mana.
“…not going to break my skills yet.” James muttered.
Richard’s eyes widened slightly then went to normal. “Well fuck. I can’t really remember what the rules are if you aren’t breaking your skills…I honestly didn’t give a shit when I read it at the time. Sorry mate. Something like double your rank is the maximum number of unbroken skills and undoubled is the number you can get without too much work? So if you are rank 2 right now you can get 2 unbroken skills in your backlog before you should go break them, or 4 skills before you literally can’t get any more?
“Don’t think there’s a limit for broken skills but it does get harder to get them the more you have…” Richard trailed off. “Something something, think there’s a soft cap for three times your rank in unbroken skills? Something about it being directly related to your added up tiers. There’s some math bullshit for if you’ll get it, but I still want to bang out a dungeon run. You coming or should I solo it?”
James had mixed feelings. Or…actually his feelings weren’t that mixed he just didn’t know what to think about them. Somehow in the past day or so Richard had grown on him. He was already past the point James’s work friends had been at – it felt like they were ‘friends’ but when had that happened? They’d barely done anything together… Also was that even a good idea? James…James had made very few real friends over the years. Nearly every single one of them – the actual ones, the friends he confided in and had gotten close to. Nearly all of them turned out to be suicidal – his best friend in university had drunk an entire bottle of whisky and then attempted to jump off the library roof. James had held him back with another one of their friends…was Richard also going to put him through that? Was that why they were getting along? Fuck. If someone did that right now it would probably chain react and set James back to square one but that sounded so bad to focus on.
James was doing that weird thing where he didn’t respond again wasn’t he? Time to make a decision.
“Sure, I want to buy spices but I’ll try beating a dungeon with you as well.” James blurted out.
Where had that come from? I mean yeah James wanted that but why was it what had come out of his mouth? ‘I want to buy spices’ there was literally zero context for that. The sandwich must be effecting me more than I thought.
Richard started laughing. “I wasn’t expecting spices. Alright, let's go find you some – OH! Yo I just got a great idea to make this dungeon run more fun, lets see if I can sell anything for credits and chip in”
…
Richard had found his “chips” were not a real currency. Aether crystals as they were called could be sold for chips – but he had to find a loot distributer by the dungeon to do so and went off to exchange some things leaving James alone to shop.
Shopping sucked. Was it just a guy thing? James didn’t want to spend ages waffling over this or that. He didn’t want to bother the cashier or spend enough time for a random store person to come by and ask if he needed help.
Picking literally one of every single good looking spice in the supermarket James also grabbed a backpack and a water bottle on sale for 140c and a portable lighter because he had hated how hard it had been to start a fire from scratch…hoping against hope he had enough money for all this – if he rang it up and didn’t have enough he’d probably just die.
The total came to 412 credits – from what James could tell of the value of a credit was roughly 30 cents. Most produce seemed to be roughly 3x the dollar value from back home, he really had just spent like 140$ on spices hadn’t he?…technically the backpack and water bottle had been nearly 50$ of that? Either way James had less than 100 credits left from the 500c bounty and had definitely proven his priorities.
Stepping out of the supermarket James nearly walked into Richard speed walking past.
“Oh good! Do you have any money left? I got some supplies but if you want to burn the rest of your bounty we could do with more condiments…” Richard lifted a bag of stuff and laughed.
I just left…if I go back the cashier is going to recognize me and think I’m an idiot who forgot something…
No. It’s fine. Just…don’t care what people think. That’s what Richard said to do right?
Turning around James re-entered the store a tiny bell dinging above. The cashier didn’t even look up as they walked past and traveled to the food section.
“I got sausages and buns, Figured we could have a mini barbeque picnic in the dungeon. Might be a good place for a party…couldn’t find booze sadly and probably wouldn’t have enough for it anyways.” Richard looked over as if asking for James’s permission.
That sounded fine. Some food was good and would give them energy for any fight they went through. Might even be a more relaxing place to have eat then out here surrounded by people? “Sure, I think I saw something to drink near the back”
James walked over the far corner where a small section had some unknown spirits each labelled with ‘14%’ and some unknown scribbles. “Done! I’ll pay you back if I get more money. Richard reached in pulling half a dozen bottles out and juggling them in his hands.
He seemed more excited by the dungeon delve than James. I really should try and relax. Have some more fun.
The last thoughts James had as they headed back towards the ‘dungeon district’ was how strange this world was where monster filled dungeons were less than a kilometer away from a grocery store and how modern conveniences were a trap that was luring him into not wanting to leave.