Day 11

In the morning I summoned undead until each of my two lieutenants had 6 minions, then resumed training, focusing on throwing knives today. Once more, there were no more improvements by the time Jen arrived with lunch. It wasn’t until she poofed back into existence that I remembered the slightly awkward talk about dating yesterday. But she was already trembling when she arrived, and immediately started flailing with seemingly 20 tentacles, which was quite a few more than I was comfortable with.

“Congratulations!” Her voice was warm and bright, but I just simply scratched my chin.

“Uh why?”

She seemed slightly put off that I didn’t share her enthusiasm, and her tentacles began to droop. “This is an important day for you. You got a bonus, and if you finish today without letting anyone through, you will get promoted.” She held out an envelope to me.

“A promotion? Wha…” I opened the envelope inside was a check for 500 towers. My eyes bulged. “Wha?!?!” With this, I could go and buy things from the counter!”

“Yea, apparently you stopped a challenger who someone had bet quite a lot of money on passing the entire first floor. Management was very pleased, and this is your reward. And you didn’t know? Anyone who let’s no one through for 3 days in a row is promoted! It will come with a salary increase and everything! Oh, but you might fall back down if your blockage rate gets too low, and someone below you is 100% for three days.”

“And here,” She said with a wave of her tentacle. 10 100 gallon drums appeared. “Is your lunch for today! You got a cash bonus too, but I just added it all to today’s lunch to celebrate! Oh, and one drum's from me, because I…”

She started drawing in the dirt with her tentacles. “Because I… Because we…”

I just looked at her, wondering how she detected the rest of the world with her slime body. Then I noticed that instead of a pink frilly apron, she had on a black lacy one today. Which looked… nice, I suppose…

“...are coworkers…” She finished lamely, and disappeared, leaving my lunch.

*****

The lieutenants were handling challengers fine, so I focused on training. But no matter what I tried, I just felt like my training throwing knives wasn’t enough.

-I have an idea.

-Oh, other me?

-These leaves, I’m controlling… try to hit them.

Since moving up to level 2 in Air Affinity, other me had managed to keep one leaf afloat indefinitely, and had recently moved up to juggling two, trying to keep them close enough to keep mana down, without them touching. Still, it was a good idea.

We agreed to become a little more liberal with the mana limits, after all I didn’t use too much making minions this morning, and I stood stock still as two leaves floated around me.

My eyes snapped open, my hands blurring. Two knives shot out, zooming towards the leaves. But other me gently twisted the leaves, and the knives flew harmlessly past. I drew two more knives and focused on the leaves, the way they moved. I opened myself to the affinity with air, not to interfere, but understand what was happening.

It was a little shocking how light the leaves were, and how fine other me’s control was getting. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking. There were two ways to hit the leaves. Predicting how I would react to a throw or throwing a knife in a way that I couldn’t avoid. The former was extremely difficult, because other me was utilizing the same high Processing Power and Timeless Perception, giving the tiniest glimpse of the future. The latter was even more troubling. Could I throw a knife that would follow the leaf…?

Instead of trying one knife for each leaf, I drew several more knives and decided to focus on a single leaf. It danced playfully. I grimaced

6 knives flashed out, some fast, some slow, staggered so as to form what I hoped was an inescapable net. Unfortunately, other me wasn’t phased in the slightest. The leaf spun and pirouetted, sliding between two knives and completely out of the net.

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Ruefully, I glanced at the notification that popped up.

Congratulations! Due to your actions, your skill has improved to “Lesser Air Affinity Lvl 3”. Mana cost for manipulating air has decreased. Degree of control has improved. Amount of air that can be controlled at once has greatly increased.

5 leaves floated up now, dancing before me. I rolled my eyes, walking to retrieve my knives before I tried again.

*****

I pressed on the sigil square and instantly reappeared in the taverny area. Glancing around, I noticed that it was just as boisterous as it was on my previous visit. Paying the people around the room drinking no mind, I walked over to the counter. As I approached, once more the language changed to something legible. A thin man with 6 arms spared me a glance, but then continued to wipe down 3 mugs at once.

I considered the options once more: Minions: 50. Traps 50. Puzzles: 50: Environments: 100. Buildings: 50. Skills: 1000. System Assistance: 200. Miscellaneous: 50.

With three days of pay and my 500 bonus, my account had 530 towers. I was most curious about System Assistance, and most interested in Skills, but I wasn’t willing to spend so much on the former without any benefit and the latter was still beyond my price range.

‘Still,’ I thought to myself. ‘Its not like it really matters if I waste these towers anyway…’

Minions was interesting, but the raise lesser dead had worked pretty well so far for populating my path. And my two mid level minions had done an exemplary job today: not a single challenger had made it through. But the difficulty would likely increase if I really received this promotion, so they might not be enough…

Environments was also interesting. Right now the curving road up the hill made it relatively a direct confrontation. Not many places to plan an ambush. I had grown slightly nostalgic for the marsh, which was basically the only environment I remembered fondly. Skeletons and Zombies sneaking among the tall grass would certainly be effective…

Almost against my will I found myself pressing the environments on the counter. The counter beeped, and 100 towers were deducted from my account. I was pleasantly surprised to find that contained within were several general environmental alterations, including desert, tundra, forest, plains, as well as several dozen premade environments ranging between 100 and 200 towers. I found a night one that was 180 towers, complete with a castle sitting on a hill above a marshy forest, all of it blanketed in a low hanging mist. What was particularly nice about this environment was that the weather would be an eternal twilight, hampering the challengers vision while still allowing us that were used to that level of light to move freely.

With 250 remaining, I used 50 to buy the traps category. Within were what you would expect: pitfall, pressure plates, trip lines, and rolling boulder traps. Unfortunately… each trap cost 50 to 300 to purchase, and then an additional 10 each to install them. Annoyed, I purchased a bear trap, and bought 10 to install throughout my new home.

Just as I turned to leave, annoyed by the surprisingly money grubbing nature of this shop, the satyr appeared next to me. “Ah, good you’re here. You’ve held all challengers off for three days, so you’ll be moving up. Your daily salary of towers will go up to 30. Additionally, everything here at the shop will be 10% cheaper. Congratulations, and keep up the hard work.”

He disappeared. I stared at the reduced prices with a glum look.