I dove back into the loot pile. I briefly debated- was it time to rub my hands together and chuckle? I think so. The rubbing went fine, but the chuckle?

“Ohohohohohohoho!”

The chuckle needed work. I was going to have to workshop that chuckle a bit. No matter- the loot awaited.

Ah, the difference time and perspective made. Resource packs, yes, a good stack of them but, more importantly, there were a few that had bronze tinges to their edges. Could these be at least common tier materials? Because we were already doing a lot with trash. I couldn’t wait to see what my workers could do with better stuff.

Then the furniture orders. Hadn’t I been complaining about a lack of furniture? Well I’d have five new pieces as soon as I ran back down to the Commerce Department. That was a big quality of life improvement.

The costumes- I reviewed them again and nothing popped out. Ah well. Still. One promotion order was already huge. A game changer!

I pushed the quest-items to one side. I had no idea what they were for, for now. Instead, I focused on the runed bones. I had largely been ignoring them as they were the cheapest, most basic game currency.

Right now, I had identified four currencies in the game- the summoning crystals (Resonance and Iridescent Clarion) Runed Bones and Frozen Diamonds. Runed Bones were the most ordinary currency, and most worthless. You needed a mountain of them to buy mediocre stuff. But it was farmable. Kill monsters, get rune bones. Easy-peasy. Frozen Diamonds?

There wasn’t a single Frozen Diamond in the sacks of loot left by the killed Tower Masters. Either they hadn’t gotten any or, my personal suspicion, they had already spent it. If there was a way to farm for it, I hadn’t figured it out yet. Frozen Diamonds were precious, and were the currency of choice for higher quality goods.

I let my pouch do the counting. I had 5,453 runed bones, and two frozen Diamonds. I hated to do it, but it might be time to hit the shops attached to the fliers in the Throne Room.

Just because I didn’t loot a tar pit trap didn’t mean it was completely unavailable. At least there was hope. I could feel a smile tugging my lips up. I had never been rich enough to be domineering back on earth. Maybe I could act like a tycoon now?

I strode into the empty Throne Room, and immediately frowned. This room… more than furniture, it needed repairs. All the windows in the towers were still missing. The floors were missing stones in places. It certainly wasn’t what anyone would call “level”. The lack of a throne was just the disgusting Maraschino cherry on the misery sundae.

A throne room is a room with a throne. A room without a throne is just a room. A throne without a room is a toilet in the forest.

Having demolished the devs with facts and logic, I examined the shops connected to the notice board. And immediately felt like the Devs were having their revenge. Most of the damn flyers were for the shops in the Commerce Department! There was the Gnome Market, so that was… something… and there were still a surprising number of blurred out entries.

I tapped on the Gnome Market.

“He he he HELLOoooo! Welcome to the Gnome Market! Special prices for special customers. See what we have on offer today!”

And just like that, it was awkward. Again.

The scene took me straight back. She was still a pretty little gnome-mannequin, still had that gnome artificer drip, still had the wall of wooden, box-like shelves behind her. It reminded me of something…

I stared at it. I had seen it before. A lot. Did… I own shelves like that? Surely not.

After a few seconds, I buried my face in my hands and took deep breaths. Kallax. It was a goddamn Ikea Kallax bookshelf, scaled up to cover a whole wall, and made out of some pale blonde wood instead of laminated plywood. Once I punched the devs a few thousand times, I’d call Ikea’s general counsel’s office, report this whole shenanigan.

Then call Nintendo, and say they had hidden art of Link doing very non-canonical things with Mario in the game. A complete violation of their copyright. I’m sure Nintendo would be very respectful of fan-created content.

“What do you have in stock?”

“Here- our list!”

Oh… interesting. Very interesting indeed. The first thing to snag my eye was resonance crystals. A thousand rune bones for five, and there was a fifteen -crystal limit. “Hey, the limited quantity goods- how often does that refresh?”

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“Our stock is unpredictable!”

Something to remember, but I should see about those missions first. Still, the fact that they were available for purchase at all was pretty important to know. What else… Millinery Orders, Cutthroat Clothier Receipts… wait, weren't the clothiers downstairs called “Made To Order? Who were Cutthroat Clothiers? I shook it off. Must not have unlocked them yet.

Arguably the most interesting thing was an upgrade token for “Hunters of Crooked Moon Mountain”- a group I had yet to encounter. The number of zeros in the price tag was practically a joke. There was something else going on there. Good to know you could buy that kind of thing in a store, but not needed, or possible, now.

As I got lower on the shelves, the items got progressively more interesting. The Automated logger (Cuts down trees automatically, for up to fifty trees! Only five hundred Runed Bones!) definitely had its place, as did the Ditchomatic-Jr. (Digs a straight three Glemphts by fifty Glemphts ditch to a depth of up to two Glemphts!)

“How deep is a Glempht?” I asked. The gnome just blinked in reply.

At least it’s not something weird like meters. Alright, remembering that. What else?

Mutilator 3k! Launches three buzz saw blades at high speed and higher rotations per second in a narrow cone in the direction the arrow is pointing on the case. Can fire every five seconds if triggered continuously. Good for One Wave. Two thousand Runed Bones.

There was a 6k and 9k version too, but there were too many zeroes in the price tag for them to be seriously considered. I was already happy enough.

I carefully read through the rest of the items. Stone Tapes were cheap, mercifully, and had a five thousand item cap on them. Which said unpleasant things about how many of them I would need to level my higher star units. There were a few other utility things, but nothing that really grabbed my attention.

I checked the missions. The rewards had already been collected. I blinked, and checked again. Collected.

But… that wasn’t possible. I was the only one who could collect the rewards right? I looked again. Defeat the fourth wave- done. Yes, right I…

I sat down with a thump. Time. It was still the fifth day. I had sent Rache off on her mission, collected the rewards, then went to the ruin site. It was… still the fifth day. It might feel like hours or days since I went into the ruin site, but it had only been… One. All that time spent staring at my desk, trying to feel human again? That had been no time at all.

The chronological madness of this world was starting to catch up with me. I was losing track of time. Of what had been done and what hadn’t. I probably shouldn’t beat myself up about it. Perfectly normal to let a detail slip, what with everything.

Gut check time- did I want to be one of those angsty, stare at the sky and moan about the unfairness of it all, protag-kuns? Or did I want to be the sort who embraced the madness, determined to carve his way through the world with a devil-may-care smile?

The latter, obviously. Not that I knew how. But since I had unlimited time to learn, it was time to wring every benefit I could from the Dev’s crappy design.

Deep breath. I can spend bones here, or at the armory downstairs. So what I am really choosing is, do I upgrade base stats for my existing characters via trash-tier equipment, or do I go for level ups/traps/summons?

The armory equipment currently gave crappy, single digit improvements to single stats. Level-ups got me more bang per bone. Easy choice there. BUT. I had eighty seven Resonance Crystals, and could buy up to three sets of five crystals from the store at a thousand Bones a set.

Get the Mutilator 3k and the three-pack, and I got a damage dealing trap and a new summons. Trade off- I couldn’t buy anything else that would have a major impact. One or two stone tapes wasn’t going to do it.

I went back and forth on it, but opted for the trap and the summons. Wave Five. A number divisible by five was like catnip to developers. They can’t help themselves. They see a 5 or a 0 at the one’s place and they lose their minds.

Boss monster, for sure. Or a field effect. I could see them slapping some wide scale field debuff. An incremental improvement in the troops wasn’t going to cut it. I’d buff them on Wave Six. Now I needed something fresh.

I looked at the crystals, but before I summoned, I wanted to find out what was in the pond.

“Rache!” I yelled down the stairs. “What did you find at the pond?”

“Fairies, Tower Master!”

I had to blink at that one. “You found fairies? Come up and report.”

She trotted up. “Well Boss, we found fairies around the pond. Nothing to harvest, just fairies. They said that they would trade berries for Runed Bones, though. Gave us a sample. Have to do an expedition to the pond to get more, they said.”

Rache handed over a small sack of berries. I held one up. Buwilp Berry. Only Fairies know how to cultivate this delicious aquatic berry, and they never teach outsiders. Delicious in parfait, it is best used in combat. Speed +40 for one Wave, Least Blessing of the Fairies.

Least Blessing of the Fairies- While in a forest environment, gain a +2% miss chance against enemy attacks.

There were five berries in the sack, naturally.

“Merchants. You found merchants.”

“Boss?” She scratched her haid. I smiled anyway. It wasn’t amazing. Not what I would prefer. But it was something. It would let Versai get in and out faster. Would it let Rache do more damage? We’d find out soon enough.

Now, it was time to do something that was long past due. I looked over at Versai, still mindlessly cranking the music box and watching the dancer spin around. “Versai. I need you here, please.”

She looked grumpy, but she did come over. “What is it?”

“We saw Sebastian manipulating the rules of this world-” aka working a possible exploit, “and we saw Jim flat out pushing them to the point of breaking. So what you and I are going to do is sit right here on the floor and come up with our own ideas. Our own game breaking strats. We have, literally, all the time in the world to do it. So before the Fifth Wave, let’s figure out how we crack this sucker wide open.”