I gave Pomoroi her new costume. No cutscene triggered. I guess that a “mere” One Star like her didn’t rate one. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or not. She looked pleased when she got it, but…

I gave my cheeks two quick slaps and got my head back in the game. It was fun seeing the new rooms, but what was vital was collecting the rewards. The Fifth Wave was coming, and it wasn’t going to be anything nice to play with.

Up to the Throne Room. Collect my wave rewards. Decorate the tower with some of the furniture I collected in the last trip to the dungeon. Order an expedition to the pond, lead an expedition back to the dungeon, figure out how to improve our defenses in light of the armored variant, and THEN, just to cap off the day, fight a wave that I expected to have at least a mini-boss.

The days were just so packed.

Well. Good that I have options?

There was a very sparkly chest waiting for me. Delicious, delicious lootcakes, just for me. Got a cool five hundred Rune Bones. Would that be enough for Hattie? I had a feeling that it would not. Maybe if I added a zero at the end of that. Or two.

A Milinary order, this time usable! A nurse cap for Maria. Oh boy. And it provided no stat bonuses. Well I would jump RIGHT on that one.

Resource packs, good ones too. More concrete, iron bars, even some stone. Nice. Very nice. I could see that being very useful. Still rated as Trash Tier though. I was starting to get pretty curious about the benefits of higher tier materials. Better resistances, at least. Or so I assumed.

Oh, there were seventy resonance crystals! Nice! I checked my supply of crystals, and I didn’t quite have enough. However, given that I had just unlocked a new floor’s worth of shops-

Yep. A quick check of the missions list revealed a bunch of missions to visit all the new shops, get the free equipment, make the free equipment, get the upgrade from Hattie, and even to fulfill an order at Made to Order. Thank you tutorial missions!

I pocketed the fresh supply of resonance crystals and started to turn to the stairs before my brain caught up with my feet. I still had a perfect wave clear reward waiting!

The little golden token flew out and embedded itself into the wall, next to the other three. It was nice seeing them there, glittering at me. I want to fill an entire wall with them. I wonder how broken my stats would be by then. Very, hopefully.

Direct Damage and Snipers- Knockback Damage increased as though the weight of projectiles had increased by 3%.

I had to blink at that one. Then again. I scratched my head a bit, then looked again.

One advantage of being a terminally online weeb is that you can look up a lot of stuff quickly. There are people on the internet who are wrong, and it is my duty to correct them. Unpaid duty, admittedly, but it was a labor of love.

One of the things I learned is that people do not, in fact, go flying back when you shoot them. They don’t even fall down until they notice they have been shot.

Or die, but, you know, I’m talking about basic principles here.

People, when shot, do not go flying backwards, even if you shoot them with a .50 cal. This is because humans weigh a whole lot more than bullets. Heck, even that .50 cal. weighs in at less than an ounce and a half.

A ton of energy in the bullet, sure, but it’s focused on a very, very small area. The force of that impact is moving forward in basically a very narrow cone through the body. Again, not enough to knock you over. The force is just not distributed right.

I weigh in, both in my old life and here, at a lot more than an ounce and a half. A three percent change in felt impact, even for something as heavy as a crossbow bolt, would amount to nothing. Maybe it would slow down the armored monsters very slightly?

Would it… do more damage to the armor, without explicitly piercing it? No idea.

Actually, now that I think about it some more, “as though the weight” made this completely worthless. The weight either changed or it didn’t, which would change the energy or not. K=1/2M^2V. I wasn’t completely asleep in physics! But the buff doesn’t change the mass, only “as though” it had. Just what in the Sam Hill is going on here?!

Please, oh great god Gatcha, let me draw more artillery and front line. Lots and lots of both would be ideal. Anything to spare myself figuring out how these mentally diseased designers worked.

Down to the pool I went. Chucked in the stones. Sighed at the half hearted WoooOOOaahaiiiiiIIIII music. Then-

“Never fear, Mika is here!”

Huh. I’m genuinely not sure how to feel about that. Did my new hat buff work or not?

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Later, when I caught up with Versai, she just shrugged. “I told you she is a super common summons. I hesitate to use the word “generic” but if I was going to pick one One Star to represent the whole tier, it would probably be her.”

“Six, though. My summons are now basically Mika and supporters.”

“First of all, no, your summons consist of me, and assorted supporting units.” Versai arched a perfect, and perfectly arched, eyebrow at me. “Second, that’s a good thing from what I can tell. You said you don’t have enough damage dealers to hold the wall. Well, getting six Rakims isn’t even a dream, so six Mikas is actually pretty damn good.”

“Especially buffed by Kim.” I nodded. “Alright, let's table that weirdness and talk pond. You have never investigated a pond?”

“Nope. If a previous tower master ever found one, they must have ignored it. Which I understand. “Pond” doesn’t exactly scream a decisive advantage.”

“Fair but I think also misguided. All these field items seem to be to help us, one way or another. Have you ever been attacked on an expedition?”

“In a ruin site, of course. But… I don’t think outside of one. Keep in mind that I haven’t actually been on a ton of expeditions, comparatively.”

I nodded. “I can imagine running into monsters as we start exploring further and further out, but this site is still pretty close to the tower. My thought is that we send a very cut-down expedition- basically Rache, the Judiths and Marci. That reduces the operation time to one order.”

Versai sucked her teeth. “Your decision.”

I nodded. Yeah. My decision.

I made the order. Then we waited. To kill some time, I went and started plonking down furniture. To my immense irritation, the “furniture” consisted of a painting of a field, a green rug of no particular virtues and the world’s most generic side table. On the plus side, my throne room now had furniture. On the minus side, it didn’t have a throne.

Not to be picky, but I have always considered a throne mandatory in a throne room. Others may disagree. I have accepted that there are many wrong people in the world, and I can be broadminded about that. But I have only one chair, it’s not a throne, and it’s not in the throne room. This whole thing is a sham. A SHAM I SAY!

Christ, I hope they are okay.

I sat on the basically-okay-if-I’m-being-honest carpet and tried to just… breathe. Which I don’t really need to do, I think. Just one of those things the devs let my body remember doing. Mimicking that core human experience.

Three non-combatants and Rache, who might as well be a non-combatant when it gets to a stand-up fight. It made complete logical sense from an efficiency perspective. Complete sense. But… Hell.

I went outside again, and walked directly away from the Tower. One, two, three… ten paces actually carries you a decent little distance. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. When I tried to take the fifteenth pace, I slammed into an invisible wall. No progress past this point.

The game seemed to define a pace as being not one step but two- Right foot, left foot, right foot- one pace. Fourteen of them got me about half way to the closest barricade. I drew a line in the dirt with my toe. There. I had measured the boundaries of my world.

I really, really hoped everyone was fine. They… had gone where I couldn’t see them. Couldn’t give the orders that might save their lives. I had been tempted to send Versai, but that would have made it a two order expedition and I desperately needed those orders!

Now. Did I need those orders more than I needed Rache, the two Judiths and Marci?

No. Almost certainly not.

And yet.

I went around and around. Time didn’t exist here. They would be gone for an arbitrary period, that period being defined as “one order.” They still hadn’t come back. Damn! Damn, damn, damn!

The next segment of the dungeon was Crusher Jim’s fighting pit. Sounded melee heavy. I had one real melee fighter. Such, SUCH joy. Alright, Versai, Rakim, Kim, Pammy and Mika Alpha. Best I could do. Hating myself, I launched the expedition.

We were back in Gradden March. It feels different now. More familiar, but with that familiarity came understanding. This wasn’t just a pocket of burning buildings. It was a big, fancy “saloon” that doubled as a music venue. A casino that was an intelligence front and smuggling operation. Many of the buildings that were too collapsed to enter were bars, or nightclubs, or little apartment buildings.

There were restaurants here too. I could make out the painted signs with roasted chicken or beef. Bunches of wheat. A woven garland of garlic roasted when the window it hung in finally collapsed into the flames.

These were people's homes. This is where they worked and played. You could get a late night kebab, or the local equivalent, watch a show, watch a fight, and generally have a great time. The Floating Quarter of Gradden March. Apparently a den of utter depravity by local standards, but to my jaded New York eyes?

It was nice. Even in post-Giuliani New York, it was nothing too scandalous or shocking. I mean, the streets need serious cleaning, I don't trust the hygiene one inch and I’m pretty sure the whole place was still eighty percent scams by volume, fire not withstanding. So… better than Wall Street, though not a utopia.

I pointed. “That should be Crusher Jim’s fighting pit.”

Versai nodded. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You think maybe after this wave?”

“I really don’t know. I really don’t. I want to, and I don’t. I can’t explain it.”

“Well. Let’s go do what we can with what we got.”

Kim opened the path and we burst into Crusher Jim’s place. Which, unlike the other places we visited, was packed.

Neatly lined up were cues of burnt corpses. They shuffled through, dropping the ruined remains of coats at a coat check, and pantomiming buying drinks at the bar.

There was a cough by my elbow. A charcoal shaped like a man stepped out of the shadows.

“Welcome, everyone, to The Bloody Pit. There is a two drink or one bet minimum, the coat check is five guilders flat, per coat, and management reminds you that while you may keep your weapons, violence must be confined to the Pit.”

It took a moment to appreciate our stunned faces, then continued. “Regrettably, however, due to forces beyond our control, there is no leaving our humble venue. I hope you are prepared. Sooner or later you will be joining our other guests-” It waved at the shuffling crowd.

“Not to worry. We love new faces around here.”