Now that her boxes were behaving again, it only took Jill a few minutes to read through the various options she had.

“These are godamn insane,” she said. “Doubling the trailer for 1 point? An extra 70 kph? Hell if those 5 stack then she’d go…” Jill paused for a moment, multiplying in her head “600 kph! We’d flip over in an instant if, I don’t know, the power to never flip fucking ever was also just 1 point.” She shook her head.

“You wanted magic truck powers, you got magic truck powers,” Ras said. “It's still just a truck.”

“You’re lucky there isn’t an ejector seat option, asswipe. No insulting the Bertha,” Jill said. She cranked her neck around to address Babu. “Some of these are too good to pass up, but what do you think? Anything crazy to you?”

He shook his head. “It’s hard to tell without knowing how the individual power upgrades scale. Linear? Sublinear? Exponential? You said 5 points in propulsion would get to 600 kph, but what if each additional skill point isn’t 70? The only way to tell would be to invest some points in everything, but there are so many options! I wonder how you increase the tier of the modules,” Babu said, his voice dropping in volume enough that it was clear he was mostly talking to himself now. His eyes flicked back and forth, reading one of his own boxes. “Oh, when the prerequisites are met. How helpful. Maybe it has to do with the indicated maximums on Bertha’s powers… Class Powers don’t have those.”

“Well, no way to tell but to try! Double the cargo each trip? Yes please,” Jill said. “Pull over, Ras, I need to see what happens from the outside when I give her a bigger ass.”

“That might not be the best idea,” Ras said with a meaningful glance to the side mirrors.

Jill had to lean hard over to get herself in the right alignment to see back, and when she did she nearly choked. There was a small horde of monsters chasing them. Mostly dog sized creatures that were probably more Dire Lemmings, but she could make out a few larger animals as well, including a stag whose antlers had to be clearing twenty feet off the ground. “Flapclaps! How long have they been there?” She pulled her rifle down from the rack and started pulling out extra boxes of ammo from the concealed compartment under the floor. It had been the product of her father, brothers, a handle of cheap bourbon, and a blowtorch, but was a surprisingly good hiding spot for all sorts of things.

“A while now. Maybe half an hour?” Ras shrugged. “They can’t catch us so I didn’t think it was a problem. Just, well, no stopping for now.”

“For now? When would we be able to?” Babu flicked his brother on the back of the head. “They don’t seem to be giving up, so was the plan to just drag a huge swarm into Billings?”

Ras shrugged. “I’d have mentioned it eventually.”

“Next time you tell us when you know when there are shitbags trying to kill us, got it?” Jill said, glaring. “But I can’t say I’m too worried, at least while the bullets last. As godamn weird as it is to talk about levels, they’re real, so let's get them while we can. There are a lot more dangerous things out there than Lemmings.” She shivered a bit in anticipation of the feeling of her stats increasing, even if she knew that the high from a single level wouldn’t be as intense as 5 at once.

“I wish we could have started when there were fewer of them.” Babu said, still glaring at Ras. “I’ve been thinking about the experience gains we’ve gotten, and, well. If the System is a game it's design isn’t very good. There doesn’t seem to be any weighting at all for the difficulty of encounters. Kill 1 level 1 monster, get a 100 experience. Repeat as much as you want. Kill 10 all at once, get 1000, despite 10 monsters at once being so much more dangerous.”

“There’s a bonus for monsters higher level than you,” Jill said, recalling most of her kill notices.

“I know! But no penalty for killing low level ones! Isn’t it interesting?” Babu said, growing excited. “Anything gamified is just a set of incentives to make the users do what the designers want! So the System designers don’t care about fighting fair, they just care about the monsters dying, with two optimal methods: killing large numbers of low level enemies that don’t pose a threat, or single high level enemies that you can ambush and get a huge bonus!” Babu coughed. “Or at least it seems that way to me.”

Jill finished checking her ammo. “Huh,” she said. “Interesting. I never did ask: what do you do? Some kind of scientist?”

Babu reared back and shut his mouth with a click, and looked away. “No.”

Jill glanced at Ras but the man’s face was carefully blank. She shrugged and resolved not to ask about it again. Some people were self conscious about their jobs after all, even if she thought that was kind of dumb.

“Allright boys, time to thin the herd,” she said, reaching for the window control. While before it had been a clunky plastic switch, now it was a smooth chrome toggle. “Nice,” she muttered, then clicked it to the down position: the window slid smoothly and silently into the door. “Allright, drive smooth and let them get a little closer,” she said.

The wind battered her hair and muffled her hearing as she leaned carefully out the window, rifle held tight against her shoulder. The firing position really wasn’t great: not only was the trailer blocking more than half of the horizon behind Bertha, but the constant wind kept tugging the rifle barrel out of where she wanted to point it. It got slightly better as Ras let up on the accelerator and Bertha slowed, but the monster horde seemed quite a lot more dangerous when it was catching up instead of falling behind.

Jill waited until they were in range, then started taking measured, deliberate shots. There were some hits, and a few Dire Lemmings died, Jill dismissing the boxes before they could form and block her vision, but more of her shots were missing than she would have liked. Especially because she was firing into a whole crowd of monsters! She took another few shots then drew back into the cab.

“This isn’t working,” Jill said.

“Let me try, let me try!” Babu said, bouncing up and down in excitement.

“What are you, a titsucking two year old?” Jill said. “Get the shotgun and load it up if you want to play, we might need to get closer to do any real damage to that group anyways so you’ll be in range.” She glanced at Ras. “You still ok driving if they get closer?”

He shrugged. “As long as I don’t have to turn we can’t flip, so I’m good for now, but I would appreciate you taking the wheel later so I can get some kills for myself. I got a portion of the experience for those Lemmings, but I’m going to fall behind just driving.”

Jill checked the kill boxes for the Dire Lemmings: she had gotten 80% contribution, so the System must have awarded Ras 20% for keeping them away from the swarm.

“Ok, I’m almost ready,” Babu said as he loaded the shotgun, a box of shells open next to him on the bed. “Uhh, how are we going to both fit out the window? I don’t think I’ll fit next to Rassy’s giant head.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Jill said. She summoned Bertha’s upgrade boxes again, “I wanted to see what these Class Powers did, so lets fucking use one!” Before she could second guess herself she spent a point on the turrets module.

Turrets (small arms) module added! 4 Class Power points remaining.

Prepare for integration.

Bertha’s available mana dropped alarmingly quickly, but stabilized with a quarter remaining. There was the creaking noise of bending metal and bizarrely the smell of lilac in the air, then a metal ladder, rungs coated in non-slip rubber, dropped down from the ceiling right between the driver and passenger seat. Jill looked up and saw that there was a small circular room with a seat above the cab; the turret, presumably.

Turrets (small arms)

‘Bertha’ has 1 turret for small arms weaponry.

Includes: Firing station, viewing slits (armored glass).

Addons (0/1): None (12 gauge shotgun, .243 rifle available).

Turret (small arms) Upgrades:

Mana Substitution (0/1): Unloaded small arms may fire, drawing mana from ‘Bertha’ to generate and propel ammunition. Fired ammunition lasts for 84 seconds.

Superchargers (0/5): Increases damage and rate of fire of addons by 14%.

Dakka (0/5): Adds 1 turret with 1 small arms addon slot.

She eyed the ammo she had stacked at her feet as passed the new box to Babu and Ras, getting noises of appreciation in return. While the several hundred rounds she had left would probably be enough for whittling down this group of monsters, they wouldn’t last forever. Better to save what ammo she had for those times she had to leave Bertha behind as well. With a flicker of thought, she purchased Mana Substitution.

“All right,”Jill said. “Lets try this one more time.”