Chapter 6) Fight Club. Or, We don’t talk about that.

By the time I was done with the equipment room, the place looked like my old garage.

Okay, maybe not quite so bad. For one thing, I could make the room bigger and I did so. With two fifteen foot deep and ten foot wide alcoves filled with shelves on either side and pegs grown out from the far wall to hang stuff on. But my point was, that everything had its own spot, and a labeled one at that.

Nothing was stuffed in wherever I had space, it all had its own little place to call home.

The pouch of what was supposed to be money, which I should have added to the basic starting kit, the winter gear, the armor repair kits, the seed packets, everything.

I was a bit surprised at some of the stuff that was included. Nothing alive, but enough in the way of gardening stuff to start a good sized garden, and enough tools to build a cabin.

All stuff someone could carry in their arms or stuff in a bag, but it seemed like whatever situation you found yourself in, there was stuff ready to be provided to keep you alive both short and long term.

"What exactly am I sending people into here? Or is this set up so I got what they need… No. It's not just set up for me, is it? This is all standardized so whoever gets this job, training people for the Fighter class, has whatever they need already on hand to give out. So they don't have to make special arrangements depending on different needs.”

It’s a turnkey operation. Like buying a license to set up your own fast food chain restaurant and you get everything you need to do it included in the price.

“So I’m like the new owner of a McDungeon.”

I hoped someone would pick up on that one day so I could ask if they wanted fries with that.

For right now the equipment room is just filled with shelves and spots for the ghostly images of stuff, which I hope will all get replaced with real stuff later on. But right now I have one more thing to do.

Two things, I think as I stop at what I’m going to call the second skill Arcade, with the ten foot wide opening to the fire starting room standing there opposite the now off center five foot wide entry to the jumping room.

“That is going to bug me forever if I leave it like that.”

At what I was guessing was a few hours later, the jumping room was now twenty feet wide, with a ten foot wide entrance. Inside there was five foot wide walkway in front of a twenty by twenty foot sand lot going all the way across the room with another solid five foot landing on the other side.

"There. Now they got a target to jump for if they want to overachieve."

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After all, they only needed to jump five feet. But I had the room for more, and I didn't feel like just putting a single five foot square of sand in a whole big room, and an off center one at that.

I also didn’t want to fill in the whole room to make it smaller, and asymmetrical to the fire starting room.

Not perfect, but good enough.

Then I was off to the end of the long hallway, which was a bit of a long stretch, to the final room.

I wondered if I should put the weapons, and maybe the armor down here just before the entrance to the fighting room so people can switch out and try out different stuff. Maybe later on? Besides walking this far with everything including their fighting stuff should give them a bit of an idea of if they really want to trudge along on a long haul with everything they picked out.

“Okay, show me the options for the fighting room. Please and thank you.”

What? It don’t hurt to be polite.

So, no squares. Just options. Eight of them.

A free standing skeleton, a rabbit with a horn, a pile of green jello, a nasty looking little green guy dressed in rags with a chunk of wood, a big cockroach, an eyeless squid floating in the air, a little tree guy, and a ball of sickly green light.

Or as the page that popped up put it.

Mr Bones as the Starter Undead.

Horny Rabbit as the Starter Magical Beast.

The goop is a Starter Amorphion.

Mr Green as the Starter Opponent.

The bug is a Starter Gigant.

Squidworth as the Starter Wyrd.

Shrub man as the Starter Aberrant,

And green glow light as a Starter Fey.

No more detail than that, but then…

Focusing in on the big bug like I had when I tried to regrow a wall, even with it still just an image on the panel, got me more information in burning red letters.

[ Gigantic Cockroach ]

[ An oversized insect with structural changes that allow its physiology to work at an increased size ]

“Well, that was different.”

Once again that information showed up as floating words in the air that slowly faded away as I stopped looking at them.

“Almost like… Dramatic pause... Like some of the stuff I’m doing here in what Alice something or other call the Strata isn’t exactly the same thing as what them Panels are all set up to do.”

So what do we have here?

The skeleton is a surprise, surprise, a Skeleton. An animated corpse held together and animated with Bale magic, whatever that is. Trying to focus on what Bale magic is doesn't get me anything.

The bunny is a Horned Rabbit, simple enough. But I also get that its horn can be used to enhance magic for fast movement.

The jello is a Slime, and it has a solid rock inside of it that is pure magic in a solid form.

The green guy is a Goblin, and that’s all he has going for him the words that pop up has to offer. But he is armed, something the other starter creatures don't have, which means… It's armed? ...nope, that's all I got. It can use weapons, and other things maybe?

The squid is an Abyssal Stalker that can float around as long as it's touching the ground or anything else that is touching the ground.

The tree guy is a Shrubling, an animated plant.

And last is the ball of light, which is a lesser Will O Wisp that can hypnotize people with its light and shock people if they get close enough.

...Huh. Other than the sickly green color and the smaller size, it looks a lot like me.

Creepy.

Now I kind of want to go back and do the focus in things on all the squares and equipment.

But I do that later, right now I want to get this room set up, and I need to choose a critter for people to fight.

Or more than one? After all, I got more than one square, and I was able to put a whole bunch of stuff out in the equipment room, so could I put more than one monster out?

Of course, I wasn't sure how much of that equipment was going to turn real when someone showed up, and putting more than one monster out might be too much of a fight for someone. But it is supposed to be a fight.

So the Goblin, or Starter Opponent, is what I was going to throw out there. Let folks have a chance to fight something at least a bit familiar with the idea of getting into a fight with, namely another person, who can fight back with a weapon.