PART FIFTEEN

MPD: 38

I know the last 'cliffhanger' wasn't good grammar. Don't @ me. It's called style. Look it up. You'll see a picture of me. In a beret.

How to Lose Friends

Oblivious to my blunder, I half-closed one eye. "Nicki Valentine. Why is that name so familiar? Are you a streamer?"

She had turned red. "All right, stop, this isn't funny. Tell me how you knew my name."

I blinked. She was upset. Really upset. Not for the first time, I'd tried to be cute and playful and ended up being abrasive and annoying. "Um," I said.

"You're not supposed to be able to do that."

"Supposed..." I mumbled, not sure what was happening. She was really mad at me!

"My name," she almost shrieked. "That's not what I tell people my name is. That's my user name. That's private. That's my privacy. You invaded my privacy. You're not supposed to be able to do that." She was almost hysterical.

"Right," I said. "And I can't."

"Then how did you -"

At this point I'm ashamed to say I had a little flash of petulance. I had planned to tell her about my Dungeon Consultancy gig and maybe even see if she had any ideas for new games to try. She seemed like the sort of person who'd enjoy the challenge. But I realised I had taken one or two facial expressions, one or two comments, and extrapolated that into this woman being the next Nicky Tesla. And even though in that moment I DID understand that what I'd done could be interpreted as super creepy, I had meant to present my 'knowing' her name as a jape. As a lark. And I felt she should have understood that. So I didn't react with optimal maturity. "Somebody told me. Okay? Somebody told me your name. I knew your name because someone told me. I didn't know they gave me the wrong name. I thought you might like to see my little project here and I wasn't trying to... whatever you're thinking. And before you continue shouting at me," I said, before she could continue shouting at me, "I really, really, can't have the one fun hour of my day turn into daytime TV. If I made you feel bad, I'm sorry. I'm leaving now. Goodbye."

And I zooped out of there.

After The Unpleasantness

Oof. Yuk. That went well. Not.

The next day I logged in at a totally different time and stayed in the dungeon, far away from the old town. The old town was radioactive now. When things get radioactive, you stay in your bunker and talk to your sentient jewel and listen to your best friend - a skeleton - play chamber music.

386 had questions. "Billy-Bob," he said. "I have questions. About that woman."

"I bet," I said. "But questions are a burden to others; answers a prison to yourself. I can only stay for a quick chat because I want to save my minutes for tomorrow daytime and talk to some merchants. Oh!"

"What?"

"It's just that I had a great idea for me to make some extra money in the game. You'd be doing most of the work, though. I'd use the cash - in theory - to buy some land just outside you."

"What would you do with the land?"

"Build an inn, probably. A shop. When there are thousands of people coming here every day, that's going to be prime real estate."

"Smart."

"Yeah, well, someone else will be making that money. I just want to indulge my curiosity, really. See how far I can take this project before life pulls the plug. So if you'd be willing to help me..."

"Go on."

"You know those logs?"

Chuck Eager

Chuck isn't a major character in this story, but you wouldn't know that from the way I keep going on about him. This might be the last time he shows up. Don't go thinking, 'Oh, I wonder what Chuck is up to right now?' Or 'gosh when will we get an update on Chuck's business and his relationship with Elijah?' Ideally, you'd already have forgotten the name Elijah - if so, you get an owl sticker to put on your workbook.

Right, so I went to see Chuck and found out how much a log would cost. Like the one he'd brought to the dungeon. He said a gold. So that's 100 bronze bits.

By the way, Chuck had been adding and taking away logs, really trying to test the system. He'd bring a log and take it back the next morning. Then he'd bring 2 logs and take them both back. 386 didn't seem to mind the lack of trust.

"Chuck, there's going to be a new delivery and pickup system."

"Here we go," he said, as though I was about to tell him the next phase of the scam.

"Can you gather any employees likely to be doing the deliveries?"

Chuck unfolded his arms and whistled. All the men formed a semi-circle in front of me. "We all take turns," he explained. "Depending on the shifts."

"Fine," I said. A bit louder, I laid out the future of interdimensional storage. "Here's the skinny, yo." All their eyes rolled up, simultaneously. It was eerie. I decided to stop being so hip and use words they knew. "From now on, you won't use the main entrance to the... modern playground. We've created a new room. Delivery room. It's to the left of the main entrance. You won't see it when you go there but there should be a little sign, unless those little brat kids tax it." Their eyes all rolled up again. Argh! "Tax is slang for stealing. So if you're there at 3:59 what you'll see is an entrance appear and a cart will be there. The cart will be pushed out by a friendly skeleton. He’s my employee. He's called Lennie. If I hear that you threw stones at him or some ship like that I will brutally murder you. I want to make that clear from the off. So now there's a cart just outside the dungeon. You put the wood on the cart, or take wood from the cart, and push it back inside. The dung… the benevolent spirit of fun and whimsy who lives in the hill... will close the door behind you."

"We know it's a dungeon," said one worker.

"Yeah," said another. "I wanted to be an adventurer like you but then I took a tentacle to the knee."

"No tentacles any more," I said, looking at the time. "Right, is all that clear?"

"Yes," said Chuck. "Except why the new system?"

"Several reasons. One, it's safer," I said. "The new room won't technically be part of the dungeon. We could use more resources. Glass and metal and stuff. Those suppliers might not be as brave as you lot."

The workers stood a bit taller at that.

"All right," I said. "I'm offski."

They all looked up. Sigh.

On the Straight And Arrow

The almost-last step in my little side hustle was to go to a fletcher.

"Good day to you, sir," I said. I'd gone British again!

The fletcher responded like I'd made him an actual knight of the realm. "Oh! What a pleasure to meet such a respectable member of society," he beamed, shaking me by the hand. His ruddy cheeks jiggled as he did so.

I was a bit stuck. Did this mean I had to continue being British every time I spoke to this guy? I decided to be British for the start of a sentence, and then be American for the end. "Well met, my good chap, I was pondering if you might tell me what I wanna know."

He smiled and frowned at the same time. "Surely."

"I have come into possession of a talented apprentice that could, perchance, allow me to churn out arrows like Hollywood churns out sequels."

"I do not know the reference but the meaning is clear enough. You want to make arrows?"

"Twelve lords a'leaping," I said, "You have the right of it, sir. You have a quick and nimble mind and no mistake. I come like a Greek bearing gifts, and today the gift is cheap arrows you wann'em or not?"

"Oh, er..."

"Perhaps I have expressed myself inelegantly, as I am so often wont to do. How best to put it? I sell arrows. You buy. How much?"

"What quality?"

"Top quality. Top."

He looked dubious. He went round to the back of his counter and picked up an arrow. It looked really spiffing. I mean, super. It looked super. "This is the best arrow humans can make. Precision crafted. Glorious balance, flies like a dream, hits hard, can take two poisons, if they're complementary."

I leaned closer. "That's a thing of beauty. May I borrow it? I'll show my guy what he's up against."

"Hmm. I suppose so. Why not?"

He handed it to me and my goat, it felt good in my hand. It was heavy and light at the same time. It was one part sublimely beautiful creation and two parts terrible instrument of destruction. "Spiffing," I said. "Positively spiffing." He seemed pleased. "So if I bring you 100 of these, how much will you pay?"

He pulled a face. "100? That would take your man weeks."

"How much?"

He shook his head. "Honestly, I wouldn't buy 100. They're too expensive for most people. I don't sell 100 in a year."

"What do you sell a lot of?"

He showed me, and I finally got a price out of him. He'd pay me 3 gold for 100 of those standard quality arrows. I was on my way out when I had a thought. "Ugh. This stuff at the end."

"The fletching?"

"What's it made of?"

"Feathers."

"That's going to be a bottleneck for a while. Would you be interested in 100 arrows without the feathers?"

"For the right price, yes."

I sighed and negotiated. He said he'd pay 2 gold per 100. I took as many arrows as he'd give me as samples.

Rubbing My Hands Together Emoji

I found a guy who was looking for extra work. He was called Luga. I told him I'd pay him 20 bronze to take a log from Chuck's Wood to the dungeon, then take 100 arrows to the fletcher. I'd be getting 200 bronze and paying 120. A daily profit of 80 bronze! And as long as Luga didn't let me down and 386 was happy to turn the logs into arrows, that would happen every day!

There was a good chance that I could scale this scam up into something huge and self-perpetuating. Why stop at arrows? That was just the easiest thing I could think of. I could do chairs. Tables. I could be BetterVerse's IKEA!

I suspected that if I took things too far I'd have a few thousand carpenters lining up to kill me and 386, so I used a little bit of common sense.

I had to stay under the radar. Not draw too much attention to myself.

Remember those words later on in this book when I'm doing everything humanly possible to draw attention to myself.