Chapter 9

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

I was lying on the couch in my apartment, trying to hide from reporters. They’d found out where I lived and were hounding me for interviews. Yesterday, they were putting ladders against the side of the building to reach my third-floor window. I’d had to save one of them when the ladder slipped, leaving them hanging there, screaming for help. The moment I got them to safety, they’d tried to get me to give a comment, pretending like they hadn’t almost died.

The reporters were a pain but better than the crazies. There were a bunch of religious nuts calling me Saint Morgan. They’d built a shrine below my window and were going through my trash to eat my leftovers.

I needed to find a new apartment.

Somewhere off the grid.

On the screen of my phone, Harriet shook her head. “As far as we can tell, each station has individual quests with unique methods of success, irrelevant of whether or not they share factions. The cultural information package always appears. And the liaison has appeared several times for special clearance rewards. We think it has something to do with our species compatibility, that this species' way of life might be compatible with our own. Let me pull up the file.” she looked off-screen. “Here it is. There are eight stations connected to the Kilocksin sectors. Four of the station masters have launched expansion quests. All of them have received Kilocksin as their first hurdle. One of them cleared it by sharing a meal with them. He also received a liaison as his special clearance reward. He’s the only one that has cleared it with the special clearance other than you.”

“Has anyone cleared the Horde in a special way?”

“Let me check. Yes. They received an information package.”

“Is there a recurring theme for how the quests are cleared? Tee told me that there are social indicators, but I more or less fluked mine.”

“There is currently a theory that the most repeated word between encounters is a clue for what your unique quest is about. It’s going to be tested during the next cycle.”

My gut told me his answer might be right. “Give me a second. I need to ask Tee a question.”

I added Tee to the call. Almost half a minute passed before he answered. His face appeared in the middle of a crowd.

“That’s him!” shouted a man behind Tee.

“I’m looking at his holiness,” shrieked a woman.

“Yes, that’s Saint Morgan,” Tee said, grinning at me. “Honestly, he’s ever holier than they say. He might be the second coming. I remember watching him pick up what I assumed was a dead bird, but it then flew away. At the time, I thought I must have been wrong, but who knows, maybe it really was a dead bird, and he healed it. I mean, our pets can’t die or get sick anymore.”

Tee cut the call.

“Ah, what’s he doing?” Harriet asked concerned.

“I have absolutely no idea. And he just hung up on me, so I’ll have to ask him my question later. Let’s move on to something else.”

“The last thing I have to mention is the design team wants to talk to you about your station. They recreated the designs they’d already given you in the Great Game and used the AI’s to tweak it. They found information that tells them their current design is extremely flawed. They want me to schedule a call with them to talk about it.”

That was more concerning than what Tee was up to. “How soon can you schedule it?”

“Give me two hours.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

Harriet hung up and I turned on the TV. Every second channel had something to do with me. If they weren’t sharing heartwarming stories on those that were healed days from death’s door, they were debating what it meant for a new country to appear or whether or not my ownership of Mars should be recognized.

Earlier, I’d watched a reporter interview a rabbi who’d escaped a concentration camp and spent the late stages of World War II in an extremely active civilian resistance unit. They weren’t interviewing him because I’d healed his terminal cancer or given him back his youth. They’d been interviewing him because he had one of the highest kill rates of anyone who survived the cull.

Fifteen minutes later, I still hadn’t found anything to watch, but Tee unlocked my front door and walked in with Buster giving me the distraction I needed. Tee was wearing designer clothing, sunglasses, shoes, and jewelry that cost more than some sports cars. My credit card bill had already surpassed my old annual income. I also had bills from all sorts of weird places. I wasn’t sure if Tee was messing with me or if he’d taken up ballet and pottery.

Buster let out a happy, “woof,” and dashed over to lick my face.

I patted him enthusiastically to show him I was happy to see him too. It sucked that I couldn’t walk him. He had so much energy now that I wanted to take him to the park and watch him run around. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that until he could do it again. But I couldn’t leave the apartment building without being mobbed.

I glared at Tee while I patted Buster. “What the hell were you doing with the crazies?”

“You thought it was funny to give me a micropenis. I thought it was funny to tell a bunch of religious fruit cakes that you’re the second coming. I think I can get them to build a church.”

“I don’t want a church!”

Tee smirked. “How will you be the second coming without a church?”

“They crucified Jesus. I don’t want to end up like that.”

“I’m sure they won’t do that to-” Tee stopped to think about what he was saying. “You should probably buy a security bot or a personal shield. Like today. Those guys are nuts. There’s a lady with a ball of your hair.”

“I’ve already ordered both.”

Tee relaxed. “Then there is nothing to worry about. What did you call me for, by the way?”

“What word did Tumpa say to me the most?”

“Good.”

“How is that word related to my quest?”

“I don’t know. Why are you asking such a weird question?”

“The government has an idea that the most repeated word said during the expansion quests is a clue to how to solve the quest’s special clearance.”

Tee put Buster’s leash on the hook, and then went over to the window and waved at the crowd, before returning and pushing my legs off the couch to take a seat on the other end. “Okay, that’s more interesting. Kilocksin don’t differentiate between the words good and respect. They use them interchangeably. You cleared the quest by showing him respect and being good, so they might be on to something. The word the Horde repeated the most was territory, and every time you didn’t respect it, they killed you. The quest clearance might be as simple as you talking to them and then getting out of their territory and shouting at them until they talk to you.”

“How the hell am I going to work out where their territory is?”

“Easy. It’s wherever they don’t kill you for being in.”

“Okay, what do you know about Clack Breeders?”

“They don’t talk. Not in any way you can understand, so the game won’t translate for you. And you know it’s stupid to allow it to lay eggs which is exactly what will happen if you try to communicate.”

Yeah, that did sound stupid. Who would want a bunch of- “Wait, can’t I farm them for experience?” I thought about that for a second longer. “Wait, I think I’m supposed to farm it for the experience.”

“What?”

“Think about it. It lays eggs. The eggs hatch. I kill what comes out and get experience. The moderators got all huffy over me doing to the Wargarg that they sure as hell wouldn’t put it in as a normal function. I think the special clearance for that quest is for me to farm its babies for experience without harming it. At some point, the quest will end.”

“The question then, is when is it the right time to kill them?”

“I’m guessing there will be a sign.”

***

It turned out the sign was when they attacked the station’s systems. The government guys were definitely on to something with the most common word thing. I’d talked to the Horde and then backed up and started shouting at them. They’d come and kill me, and I’d try again, doing it further and further away until they finally hadn’t killed me.

I’d then asked them what they wanted, and they’d just said me getting as far away from their territory as I could. It had been as easy as walking to the furthest point on the station from their spawn point.

Even though I had cleared the second expansion quest, I’d stopped thinking about building the station. The design team and I talked for more than a day because they’d found out that the station they designed for me was fundamentally flawed. My view of the station was also flawed. Actually, up until their discovery, everyone’s views of stations were flawed.

The stations weren’t towers.

Well, they were like towers at the early stages, where everything seemed to be built almost instantly. But that was only because everything was so close. When a station got larger, it was more like an RTS than a tower defense, and the distance between structures mattered. If I centralized ammunition construction and my weapons ran out in the middle of a battle, the outer guns might take five minutes to receive a reload. Subsystems like my sensor array became less effective the bigger the structure was, so having one wouldn’t work. The whole project had turned into a nightmare and we had to rethink everything.

So expansion was currently out of the question, at least for a couple of months. They needed to think everything through properly. There was currently a design team of over two hundred working on not just my station but every station our faction had. They were trying to make a template that we could all build from to customize to our needs.

That meant I couldn’t wait to build the R5-Ms. I just had to suck up the extra resource cost because the experience loss was too much to accept.

I tried to get that out of my head as I put my back against the corridor wall, preparing to turn the corner. The Clack brood warriors were tearing their way through the wall outside the main reactor. Their exoskeleton was harder than the steel walls, making it possible to peel away layers with their claws.

The squad was preparing to hit them from the other side. When they started shooting, I had to help them.

“Tee, where are the other Clack heading to now?”

“They’re attacking your R5-Ms. You’ve already got three offline. You need to deal with these quickly and move on to the others.”

“Okay, keep me posted.”

The familiar whine of the squad’s automatic weapons filled my corridor as they let loose on the Clack. They were equipped with particle rifles that were similar in shape to assault rifles. The hailstorm of fire lasted for about five seconds and then cut off.

The Clack screeched. I didn’t know whether that was because they were injured or pissed off. I gave it another second and then turned the corner, raising my particle pistol.

Clack stood about five feet tall. They were insects shaped like centaurs with four legs and a humanoid-shaped upper half. Their blue exoskeleton covered most of their body, and only a few unprotected spots in their exoskeleton were a weak point that would cause injury. None of their unprotected areas was an instant kill. They were walking death machines.

The predators on their planets had to be nightmares for their species to evolve this way.

I saw a dozen injured on the ground, barely moving. Eight were racing off towards the other end of the corridor, where the squad had attacked from. Two were tending to the injured. I shot twelve times, emptying the particle pistol. Every shot was perfect. The two tending to the others fell to the ground, their knees joints gone. They each had another blast to the throat. Tee said there was an artery there, so they would bleed out in about ten minutes. That’s how tough they were.

My particle pistol wasn’t good enough to take them out the easy way at its current level, so I had to do it in steps. My last two shots went in the injured, hastening their demise.

A grenade exploded in the other corridor, concerning me. They must have been having trouble.

I stood back and waited for my particle pistol to recharge. Several experts in the military thought that the squad was an example of the perfect unit of immortal soldiers and that if we copied them, we’d end up with the ideal dungeon mob unit. After seeing them in action, I believed them, but I was waiting for someone else to take the plunge before I committed. The upgrades to get them there were expensive and I didn’t want to be wrong.

When my particle pistol finished reloading, I put another shot in the injured Clack and waited for it to recharge again. The squad showed up before it was ready. The moment they came around the corner, I turned and started heading for the new location. They could finish them off faster than I could.

“The reactor's cleared,” Tee said when I was halfway to the R5-Ms. “You need to get to the sensor array.”

“What happened to the R5-Ms?”

“They're still being attacked, but the sensor array is more important.”

“I’m on it.”

Eight hours later, I was finally proven right. The endless waves were the way to clear the quest correctly. By that time, the Clack had destroyed half the systems on the station.

Quest Completed

Expand Control III

Quest Rewards:

Defense Slots: 80

Path Points: 1

Tokens: 900

Special Clearance Reward:

Clack Cultural Education Package.

“Just three more to go and you get full control of the station again,” Tee said cheerfully as I trudged back to the command room. “You want me to fire up the next quest?”

“No. I’m going to get some sleep. I’ve cleared two quests in the last 16 hours. I need a break. Also, I need to know if this sort of damage was normal. You told me that better weapon systems would spawn mobs that could damage the station, but you never mentioned they could outright cripple it.”

“Does damaged mean something else to you? Like if your car’s engine is damaged, do you think you should be driving it?”

“I thought there would be a few minor issues, but that was complete chaos. How many weapons do we have online?”

“Six. And I believe the difficulty was higher because the reward was greater. If you had been a lowly level 5, you would have gained a bunch of levels from this quest. It probably would have taken you a couple of days too. I mean, an experienced station master would have walked through that, but you did well enough.”

I continued to trudge as I passed through the blast doors into my command room. “Gosh, thanks. You make me feel all giddy inside with your backhanded compliments.”

“It’s a gift.”

I slumped into my command chair. “We need to research the other races before I take on the next quest. I don’t want to screw this up. I need more advantages.”

“You’re the station master of the most advanced station in your faction; you need to relax.”

“How am I doing on a general scale?”

“You’re in the top 5% for this early.”

“That’s bad,” I said. “Casuals play at this level. The real contenders are all in the top 1%. What do I have to do to reach that level?”

“Spend about 10,000 years doing this,” Tee said. “Or create another set of circumstances similar to your first that doesn’t get removed.”

“I’ve got an idea on how to do that.”

“I’m listening.”

“You know The Librarian’s idea for a melee-based dungeon?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, I think I’ve worked out a way of bringing the Kilocksins into it. How much does the blueprints to a tier six shield bracer cost? I want to add the shield bracers to the dungeon as loot.”

“About 250,000 credits, but you would first have to get your hands on one and break it down to gain access to the blueprint. They won’t go for it, even if you do? It’s a standard-issue military shield. It’s not that interesting.”

“That’s where you are wrong. I’ve got a whole bunch of Kilocksin culture bouncing around in my head, and those shield bracers and their laser spears hold a prominent place in it. They’re part of their culture and history.”

“They’re not great weapons.”

“But they are dependable. No matter what other equipment their warriors have and fight with, they always have their shield bracer and laser spear. A warrior is considered naked without it. If everything else is gone, a Kilocksin will fall back to these.”

“So what?”

“So, they are a status symbol as much as they are weapons. There are only three types of people given tier six shield bracers in their society: the shield guardians, their low-ranked officers, and prominent members of a clan. There is also only one other way to acquire one. And that’s through combat. I want to make a six room dungeon for them to challenge. In each room, the reward will be a shield bracer with a tier that matches the room number, but in the sixth room, there will be a fifth-tier bracers chest with a 1% chance of being upgraded a tier.”

“Why not just offer them the sixth-tier bracers?”

“Because in their society, they have to earn it. Giving it to them will make it so they throw it away. Making them fight for it time and again will give them a story that they can take back to their clans to be proud of. It’s something that will be accepted. We’ll have to stamp them with our faction’s mark, but it should work.”

“Who would fall for that?”

I grinned. “Teenagers, I’m going to farm their noobs.”

“Have you thought this through?”

“Completely, The Librarian is right. The Kilocksin can be encouraged to raid the dungeon. There are trillions of them. All I need to do is convince a fraction of a percent that their time is best spent here.”

“You still need to level.”

“I know. Start filling the defense slots with R5-Ms. I’ll go level the rats and kill them after I’ve gotten some sleep. Unless anything attacks, I feel like it’s going to be boring around here until I complete the starter quest.”

***

Life was as dull as I predicted. Dad was right. Between battles, this was more like a career than a game. Completing the other three expansion quests hadn’t been difficult. It had taken a fair bit of thinking and study, but it wasn’t difficult. For the Octorin quest, I just had to send them components to build a communication drone. They didn’t like dealing with other species directly. For the Udo, I had to show up and kill them one by one. Eventually, the quest ended. For the Wargarg, I had to fight their leader for dominance and make him yield.

So, near the end of the sixth day, I finally completed my starter quest.

Quest Completed

Control the Station

Quest Rewards:

Complete control of your station and its systems:

Structure Slots Per Level: 10,000

Defense Slots Per Level: 5,000

Path Points: 1

Tokens: 10,000

Special Clearance Reward:

Six Faction Station Master Knowledge package.

You may now name your station.

I grinned. The special clearance reward was everything I’d hoped. “I name this station, The Crucible.”