Chapter 168 – Pay to Win

Jack's alarm clock was the splash of ice-cold water followed by several slaps to the face. It felt as if he had taken a power nap, but then drastically overslept for twelve hours and was now left in a groggy state of mushed up brain matter and wishing he was dead.

Twelve hours actually hadn’t passed, and he doubted he had been out for more than thirty minutes judging by the fact he was still freezing his ass off. He tried to roll back over and drown out the world, but his body wasn’t exactly responding. He did a quick damage check, or at least tried to, but he could barely feel anything. His entire body was radiating that dead sort of static needle-like feeling when you sat on your foot too long. He tried to wiggle toes and flex fingers, but he couldn’t be sure he was even moving at all.

What he could be sure of was someone repeatedly splashing water in his face, followed by several escalating slaps that started with gentle taps and were now full-fledged bitch slaps.

“Wha…!?” Jack croaked out, barely able to peel open his eyes. Before he could get the word all the way out and level an accusing gaze at his slapper his vision immediately filled with a notification that made his heart sink a little.

[Danger Level Seven]

“What?” Jack said again, this time finding the words as confusion painted a picture across his face. He tried to push himself up off the ground and might have managed it had a summer elf not pushed him back to the ground.

“Good. You’re awake,” the summer elf said, pressing his hands to Jack.

A warm radiating glow filled his chest, and Jack glanced down at the small cabal of summer elves pouring healing spells into him. There was a large, glowing orb hanging in the air that looked to be fighting the good fight in dispelling the aftermath of the battle, melting the ice and generally warming everything up. The elves wore their typical garb of white, and generally looked as if they had just come from a toga party in the Hamptons.

Jack could feel the healing working as the warm light melted into his muscles and smothered his bones. Sort of. It didn’t do much to abate the pain and general levels of fatigue he felt after using [Lightning Engine], but he had only used two very small drops of mana, so the backlash wasn’t overwhelming, and after a minute or two it was starting to feel like he could maybe function like a normal human being again. Maybe.

Still, the amount of damage for how little amount used is concerning, he noted, trying once more to push himself off the ground.

“What’s going on?” Jack tried again, finding his voice and glancing around. “And what the hell is that?” he finished, his eyes landing on a monstrous looking death knight looming menacingly around the group.

“That sir-“ the summer elf started, only to be interrupted mid-sentence as the death knight sprung to life at the acknowledgement, grabbing the summer elf nearest to Jack and hurtling him headlong over his shoulder, sending him sprawling across the courtyard. The death knight came to a kneel next to Jack.

“Dreadnaught Bale, leader of the Arbiters, and your loyal servant, sir…” A cold frost complimented the voice as it spoke. The death knight was hooded, and despite Jack searching for a face, he couldn’t find one in the pitch-black void beneath the hood. The Dreadnaught was roughly twice the size of the other death knights and wrapped in armor that could only be described as violent. Pitch black with hard angles. It looked as though someone slammed pieces of metal together with nothing but brute force to forge the armor. Spikes in all the wrong places and a small collection of skulls hung from his belt.

“Cool armor” Jack said, giving the arbiter an evaluating gaze. “Wait a second… Where is MY armor?” Jack said, looking around for Wiggleworm. Last he remembered she was wrapped around the panther before Jack zapped the oversized cat with a bolt of lightning so impressive it would give Thor an orgasm.

Uh oh… he thought, trying to stand up and falling back to his ass.

“I wouldn’t suggest that so soon, sir.” One of the elves said, trying to push Jack back into a resting position. Jack tried to protest but his body still wasn’t behaving. He glanced at the still kneeling arbiter.

“You. Manservant, take me to that pile of rubble,” Jack said, taking the haughty tone befitting his new role as God-King of Broken Moon City.

Without question, Bale scooped him up into a princess carry and stomped over to the pile of rubble where he hoped to find Wiggle.

“Wiggle? You alive? Are familiars immune to their owner’s magic?” Jack asked, his voice tinged with hope as he scanned the pile of rubble and ash.

He was rewarded with a pitiful flop from something that looked like a black piece of rope.

“Oof.” Jack muttered, “Fetch that for me,” Jack commanded, and Bale did so, picking up Wiggle in his gauntleted hand and dropping her onto Jack’s lap. He gave the bug an inspecting gaze. She had shrunk dramatically, barely longer than a foot, but seemed to be showing some signs of life, if not a little… cooked.

“You guys! Hey, spin me around asshole,” Jack directed the arbiter, who easily obeyed. “Heal this,” he said, tossing Wiggle back over to them.

They glanced down with a look of disdain, pulling back slightly as she flopped across the ground, and then set to healing her as well. Jack wasn’t sure if that’s how it worked, or if they even could heal familiars, but no one seemed to overly protest as they cast her in the warm glow of their magic.

“So, what the fuck is going on? Danger level seven?” Jack asked, glancing between Bale and an approaching summer elf.

“Sir. I’ve set the arbiters to defend the councilors, but we are losing numbers at a prodigious rate. While the Death Knights have received a considerable power boost at danger level seven, so have the inhabitants of the city. I urge you to build more arbiters.” Bale said, his tone walking the line between serious commander and elegant diplomat, it was a jarring voice coming out of something that looked like it ate nightmares.

“Right… So danger level seven is a thing…” Jack nodded. To reinforce the point, there was a loud roar from above, and a dragon made of bones flew across the night sky.

“That thing on our side?” Jack asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Bale said flatly.

Jack glanced over at the summer elf. “You have any more of an update for me?”

“Only that things are as dire as the… Commander… claims,” he said with another disdainful look at Bale, who was still cradling Jack in his arms. “Per Elera I am to heal you by any means necessary so you may assist us. Please sir…” he finished, bowing slightly.

Jack glanced back at Bale. “You said I could build more arbiters?”

“Yes. Your city control interface.”

Jack pulled up his menu, finding the control menu.

City Control Interface.

* City Leader: Jack Atlas

* City Coins: 37,324,163,865

* City Name: IWONMOTHERFUCKERSBUTFORGOTTOBRINGAHEALEROHGODSENDHELPFASTEVERYTHINGHURTSITHINKMYDICKISBLEEDING

* Councilor Seats: 6

* Seats in Contention: 0

* Messages: 23

* Void Storage

City Management:

* Buildings

* Defenses

* Arbiters

* Sectors

* Setting

* Quests

Jack stared blankly at the amount of city coins. Mortimaxx had mentioned there would be a lot of city coins, but he failed to mention it was in the billions. Jack shook his head free of the thousand and possibilities that presented and quickly selected the [Arbiters] option

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Create Arbiter

* Common [Unlimited] x 100 City Coins

* * Current: 27,3664

* * Queue: 0

* Uncommon [Limit: 10,000 per sector] x 1,000 City Coins

* * Current: 7832

* * Queue: 0

* Rare [Limit: 100 per Sector] x 10,000 City Coins

* * Current: 327

* * Queue: 0

* Epic [Limit: 10 per Sector] x 100,000 City Coins

* * Current: 4

* * Queue: 0

* Legendary [Limit: 1 per Sector] x 1,000,000 City Coins

* * Current: 0

* * Queue: 0

* Ancient [Limit: 1] x 100,000,000 City Coins

* * Current: 1

Types

Modifications

Jack stared blankly at the interface menu for a long moment, already cursing out The Tower that he was the one who had to deal with this shit. He glanced at the summer elf still stuck mid bow and briefly considered giving him the mayor job, but saner heads prevailed… barely.

“Tell me…” Jack started, “Are you the ‘Ancient’ arbiter?” Jack asked, staring deep into Bales void maw.

“Yes,” came the cool icy breath.

Jack nodded. “Roughly how strong are you?”

“Had Lord Mortimaxx let me intervene in your duel, you would have been dead in less than a second,”

Jack squinted at the Dreadnaught. He had heard that line uttered at him more than once during his time in the Tower, but with him it almost felt true. Almost.

It felt as if The Tower had more or less taken control of the lich for their fight, but apparently, he still had some modicum of control if he could stop his Dreadnaught Commander from intervening...

The Tower was up to some bullshit again, he could feel it in his bones, Jack grimaced. I wonder if he’s still alive… and why didn’t that asshole tell us about danger level seven?

Jack put the questions out of his mind, understanding the power scale of Arbiters a little better.

He started spending City Coins like crazy. In a matter of seconds, he maxed out every singular option. Which quickly brought him up short as the Queue skyrocketed. He focused on the rapidly growing queue.

Common Arbiter Build Time: 5 Minutes.

Instant Build: 10 City Coins per.

He selected the instant build option, and was pleasantly surprised to find that for the low-low price of 100,000,000 City Coins he could instantly build 100,000 common arbiters. The instant build price went up in multiples of ten per rarity, but that had only put a small, tiny dent in the amount of City Coins leftover.

In the span of seconds he had built an army worthy of… Of something!

“You said you’re the commander right?” Jack asked, staring at Bale. “Get your ass to commanding then. You’ve got the troops now buddy. First mission, don’t let any of my councilors die. If they do, I’m going to modify you in several very unpleasant ways,” Jack said, unsure if he could actually do that.

Bale simply nodded, dropped Jack unceremoniously onto his ass, and then took a heroic leap into the sky, disappearing into the darkness.

“Hmmm…” Jack mumbled, returning his attention to the city interface menu. First he selected the sectors, and was pleasantly surprised to learn he could transfer city coins to his councilors. An option that they themselves were unable to do as Councilors. Jack quickly transferred them each 100,000,000 city coins, hoping that would help them stem the bleeding.

He went to check his messages, 23 and counting.

Over half of them were from Nutt and all laced with expletives, each painting a different graphic picture of how much he was suffering and how much help he needed. A few were from Hannah, also laced with expletives, wondering what the fuck was going on. A couple from Cristopher, much the same as Hannah’s although far nicer. Devin’s message just said, ‘Hurry up and fix this’ and Elera sent him a very, very, very dirty message.

He closed out of the messaging system with a slight blush and returned to the sector interface. The first thing he built was waypoints. They cost 10,000 City Coins and went up with every purchase. When he bought them, a map was pulled up and Jack got his first good look at the city in all its glory. It looked like an arrow target, big and round, each sector a ring. He placed the waypoints like a clock, twelve in each. By the time he was done building twelve in each sector he had burned through another 100,000,000+ City Coins.

He didn’t stop there though.

He pulled up the city defenses interface and was pleasantly surprised to find a list of artillery.

Ballista and trebuchets lined the tops of the walls and soon a steady rumble of thundering explosions could be heard throughout the city as boulders were flung through the night sky, hitting god knows what.

Jack gave pause for a brief moment. Mortimaxx could have made this so much worse, but he never did… That was odd.

Maybe he really did just want it all to be over and done with, Jack mused as he chewed on the problem. It really seemed like he just sort of gave up. Or maybe he couldn’t? But that didn’t make much sense either.

[One New Message: Hannah]

Jack was pulled out of his thoughts and pulled up the messages. “Thanks” was all it said.

Jack hoped that meant things were settling down in the sector. He took another glance at the arbiter numbers and while they were still dying left right and center, the death count seemed to be dramatically slowing. Jack maxed them out again and put it out of his mind for a moment as he explored the city interface menu a little more. The first thing on his agenda? Getting rid of this creepy ass cathedral.

In the buildings section was something called the Mayor’s Base. He selected it.

Mayor’s Base:

* Undiscovered

* Undiscovered

* Tippers Tavern: [Locked: 100,000 City Coins]

* The Gilded Lodge: [Locked: 1,000,000 City Coins]

* Bale’s Fortress: [Locked: 10,000,000 City Coins]

* Mortimaxx’s Cathedral: [Currently Selected]

* Everwatch Tower: [Locked: 250,000,000 City Coins]

* Undiscovered

* Undiscovered

Every single cell in his body was urging him to purchase the tavern, but he was currently possessed by the ghost of reckless spending, so he picked the most expensive option he could.

[New Base Selected]

[Unclaimed Items Sent to City Void Storage]

The ground disappeared beneath their feet, and Jack threw a panicked glance at the summer elves still tending to Wiggleworm. Everyone dropped several feet before the ground reappeared beneath them. White marbled stone. It rose slowly until they were back level with the rest of the city.

The cathedral had disappeared entirely, and it was a little awkward looking at the blank slate. The wall of sector one was the only thing surrounding them. Then at the center of them all a giant stone column erupted out of the ground and shot a mile up into the sky. Jack tried to trace it to an end but there didn’t appear to be one. He glanced around awkwardly, the summer elf healers just as baffled as he was.

“Sir…” One of them ventured, walking over to him with a slightly healthier looking Wiggle.

“She ok?” Jack asked before they could ask their question.

“Yes, she’ll be out of sorts for a while and will need to feed on your mana, but she should be back in working order in a few days,” he nodded, handing his familiar back.

Jack took her in his hand, and she melted back onto his skin with little to no protest, taking shape as a tattoo on his arm.

“May I ask… what is the status?” the summer elf gave Jack a look of concern, his eyes darting to the massive Romanesque column beside them.

“No idea… I think it’s my new base. Help me figure out how to get in.” Jack said, limping towards the column, his body still sluggish. They walked around the column. It was hard to describe just how girthy the thing was. It took Jack at least a minute to make it all the way around the radius. He was hoping for a door, and ideally an elevator, but the column was a seamless piece of marbled rock, without blemish or indication of any way up.

“Over here,” one of the summer elves called out.

Jack sauntered over best he could, feeling his exhaustion come back with a vengeance as even the exertion of walking was starting to prove too much. On the ground was something similar to a waypoint. A large medallion with an engraved eye embedded into the ground. Jack stepped on it.

[Enter Everwatch Tower? Y/N]

He selected yes, and the platform glowed a cool blue, and then launched him up at speeds so fast he thought his skin might rip off. He landed unceremoniously atop a small platform that fed into a much, much larger looking covered platform. The speed of the journey had proved far too much for his still recovering body, and he climbed to the edge of the landing pad to unload his burdens.

His eyes widened as he stared down below. He could see the city in its entirety, magic lightning up the city like fireworks as chaos and violence clashed below. He promptly threw up over all of it.