The group didn’t return to the same wasp room, Rina said the room took a whole six hours to reset. It was one of the longest reset timers on the floor. The challenge room they did take on next was a familiar type to Nick, the spider-like creatures. Now this was something Nick could use to gauge how much of an improvement his new class gave him.

Nick found himself rather excited as the first of the creatures spawned into the room. That was quickly dashed as the archer easily dispatched them before they could even cover a few metres. Once again Nick was left waiting until the later waves for his chance to have a fight of his own. Nick found that each of his strikes easily dispatched the monsters, surprising him greatly. The first time he had fought these little beasties it had taken him a lot of effort to take out a single one of them.

During his hazing in the challenge room he had struggled his way through two waves of the monsters, barely able to defeat that meagre amount. Now as the waves came piling in Nick was barely challenged. Even on the 10th wave, with 50 of the spiders scurrying around him he didn’t feel pressured. The wasps had aerial superiority, they could swarm him from almost every angle. The spiders had no such advantage. They ran along the floor and only had two ways to attack him. Either they’d get close enough to climb onto him and bite down, or they’d jump at him.

Nick easily manoeuvred his way through the group, literally just booting away any critters that got too close. His internal damage passive applied to his kicks as well, so even his crappy kicks would seriously cripple the monsters. If they leapt at him it was even easier for him, it was simple target practice for his punches. After spending a good hour or two fighting smaller, more nimble, flying monsters a leaping spider felt too easy for him.

It was only on the 11th wave, where the creatures became stronger versions of themselves that things got a bit trickier. The spiders were considerably sturdier than the wasps, it took a very solid strike from him to properly put one down. The archer was almost useless, only their skill arrow actually hitting a spider would kill it. The skill must have had a decent cooldown or cost, as the archer only shot one of those special arrows out every few minutes.

Nick and the swordsman were certainly dealing with this type of Horde much easier than the last one. The swordsman skewered the spiders as they scuttled towards him, if they leapt then a simple slash would cleave them in two. As the number of stronger spiders grew Nick’s energy began to dwindle. The task of defeating the monsters fell onto the shoulders of Nick and the swordsman, meaning each of them had a lot of work cut out for them. Nick couldn’t quite boot these monsters as far as the weaker ones, so he found himself having to be a bit more cautious of his footing.

Still, even with the increased challenge, the group managed to comfortably defeat the 20th wave. Things drastically changed on the 21st wave though. The number of spiders dropped back to five again but they underwent a more drastic change. They got significantly bigger, now coming up to about the height of Nick’s knee and looked far sturdier. Nick’s suspicions were confirmed when he tried to boot one and it hardly shifted, in fact, it hurt his foot a bit. Nick had to resort to stomping down on the creatures.

Nick saw that the Swordsman’s sword was no longer able to cleanly penetrate the carapace of the monsters, he was clearly exerting more force to get through. It took a solid bit of effort but the group managed to dispatch all five of the monsters. They decided as a group to end this run here. They’d only risk injuring themselves if they bit off more than they could chew.

When they declined to accept the next wave the dust laying in piles around the room gathered into a chest in the centre of the room. Paige and Rina came over and started evaluating the recruits on their performances during the fight. Nick even got some comments, which was cool.

He was praised for his fighting ability, which Nick explained as his training from the outside world. Apparently Brawler was a class usually taken by unruly fighters who sought to add some extra damage to their wild swings. Rina said it was popular in the Parklands, where human on human violence was more common than fighting monsters. It was a little tidbit of information about the Parklands that Nick hadn’t heard before, he wanted to ask more but felt like it probably was the right time or place. Professor Oak would be so proud of him.

The group then inspected their loot. Three items, one sticker and another load of pills. Nick got the pills and two of the items. The Exes took the sticker and one of the items, a bow. The archer tried the bow out and even without getting it inspected decided to use it as their main weapon. Nick was given the old bow. The two items Nick got were a chest piece and some leather greaves. Nick was pretty happy to have something to protect his shins, especially if he’d be fighting more critters. Nick was happy to have two items he could freely give to Tony, the man would be demanding something from him and Nick wasn’t going to be giving up anything he could directly use.

Nick asked Rina for the time and found out it was 6pm. The sun began to set at about seven so if Nick left now he could make it back before anything got too risky in the car park. He got less loot than yesterday, but it had only taken half the time. Nick told the group he’d be leaving for the day but he’d be back for tomorrow. He found out that the recruits were under a pretty strict regime. They were here on the 71st for four days, they’d be out fighting for 16 hours of the day and they’d be given eight hours to sleep. It was brutal but Nick guessed there wasn’t much else for them to be doing here.

Nick said his goodbyes and said he’d arrive far earlier tomorrow. It was Trickster challenge room day tomorrow and Nick was looking forward to it. Nick made his way back to the dining room and decided to snag a couple of meals for his family while he was down here. He wasn’t sure how the magic bag would treat them but the kitchen did takeaway boxes so he hoped for the best. Nick now had hundreds of pills, spending a couple dozen of them on a bunch of meals felt like a pretty reasonable expenditure.

Nick then took off on his jog through the car park, things were much more relaxed during the day and Nick didn’t have to step in and help any of the 71st militia. The 71st floor had things under wraps. The same couldn’t be said for the 72nd. Once he got up the ramp he found a group of militia folk awkwardly standing around staring at a monster a bit of a distance from them. Nick asked what was going on and was almost appalled.

The monster was on the pathway back to the central fort of the 72nd car park, so the militia should deal with it but they were umming and erring about it. It was far away enough that they’d have to move away from their position on the ramp, they were worried that something could happen and Tony would get mad. Nick shook his head in disbelief, it felt like a pretty simple ordeal to him.

Nick walked off and decided to deal with the monster himself. It looked to be some sort of Brute, as he got closer he could make out that it looked like a crab. It had a large shell with a single giant claw. It looked like a cross between a hermit crab and a fiddler crab. If it’s shell didn’t look like a giant black scab it could have almost been cute.

Nick approached the monster and it attacked him with surprising agility. The creature swung it’s claw out at an unexpected speed and almost caught him in it’s giant pincers. Nick activated his speed buff and circled away from the crab, once behind it he identified a pretty glaring weakness. Nick felt a little mean but he began to stomp the legs of the crab, they poked out from the shell and weren’t that armoured. He managed to mangle two of them before the crab turned itself around to face him.

Nick just repeated what he did last time and managed to get three legs this time, removing the crabs ability to properly move itself. Now stranded in place Nick just stomped on the shell. His fight with the Trickster and then the spiders had made him realise he didn’t have to repeatedly punch things to get his combo ability going. Nick just repeatedly stomped the shell until it began to crack, Nick’s legs certainly weren’t as conditioned for this sorta stuff as his arms and he tired out quickly.

Nick realised he probably needed to start training again, keep his boxing sharp and start developing his other strikes. He’d have to be on the lookout for someone that could actually teach him some sort of technique for kicks and stuff, he only had formal training for punching.

The crab didn’t put up a fight after it’s shell had been cracked, the internal damage passive had already left the monster practically scrambled.

Nick didn’t bother turning back to the group guarding the ramp and just made his way to the hotel. He didn’t stop in the fort and just jogged through, he was extra cautious on the second half of the journey, watching the ceiling with much more zeal. Thankfully there were no incidents and he made it to the door with no problems at all. Gareth was still there and Nick really had to wonder if the man even slept. Nick didn’t stop to chat though, simply said hi, gave the man a takeout box, and went on in.

It was a weird experience seeing the hotel so empty, spending more time on the 71st floor had been acclimatising him to the larger amount of people down there. Coming back up to the 72nd made him realise how quiet it was up here. There were certainly groups and a decent amount of people about, but it just wasn’t on the same level. Nick made his way into the bar and found Tony sitting there. Nick didn’t say anything and just took out the bow and chest piece, placing them on the bar. He also took out one of the meals and handed it to Tony.

The man seemed genuinely grateful for the food. “Thanks kid. Good work today.”

Nick just nodded. “There will be more tomorrow. I’ll leave earlier.”

“Good.”

Nick then walked off to the Quarters and found his family sitting around in the room, about to start eating a meal.

“Stop right there!” He called out.

He pulled out some of the takeout boxes from his bag, which was greatly entertaining to lil Benny. Nick explained what they were and the family was excited. Henry then spoke up and made a suggestion.

“Nicky, go over and invite Maddy and Abigail over, I’m sure they’d love a good meal.”

So Nick did exactly that. Maddy was happy to come over but Abigail declined the offer, he still gave her one of the takeout boxes. Just seeing the box made Maddy excited. Once they were back in Nick’s room everyone chowed down. The family was surprised about how good the food was, even though it was cold. Even the picky Henry looked pleasantly surprised. He asked how the food tasted so good. Nick went on to explain that there was a Chef class that made food taste even better. That led to him pulling out his pills and explaining how the taint in the food worked.

“Well, that settles it. I’ll be taking the Chef class. No doubt about it.” Henry huffed.

The group laughed. Everyone in the family knew that there was no chance that the old man wouldn’t be taking the class as soon as it was brought up. After they were done eating Nick made sure everyone took a good handful of pills. He confirmed with Maddy that you couldn’t overdose on them first. She just laughed in response and said you could eat thousands of them and they wouldn’t do anything negative. People had tried apparently.

It sounded like a bit of an exorbitant way to spend so many pills, but Nick couldn’t actually say. He didn’t have a great reference for how much a pill was actually worth. That didn’t concern him too much. If he could continue earning a couple hundred pills a day then it would likely cover any sort of problems that would come up. It was certainly enough to stop his family getting sick.

The family finished up eating and invited Maddy to stick around and play some board games for a bit. Everyone was laughing and having a good time by the end of it.

Nick couldn’t help but think that maybe things weren’t all too bad about their situation.