The 'beds' were actually cots with sheets so heavily starched that they crunched. There was a thin pillow and a thinner blanket; I slept chilly but I was so tired it didn't matter.

In the morning I used the saferoom's shower to get myself clean and tried to get the worst of the blood out of my shirt. I had no other clothes to change into and there were no towels to dry off with so I needed to drip dry but at least there was soap. Bannon's potion had worn off so I wasn't feeling as utterly stable as I had yesterday but with food and sleep I was doing okay.

I emerged from the back area to find Eva already waiting at one of the tables in the middle of the room, staring at the door with her foot juddering impatiently as she waited for me. She glared at me as I sat down.

"Sorry," I said. "Have you been here long?"

"Never mind. Ho! She's here!"

The door to the kitchen swung open and Ho emerged. He was wearing a mostly-clean chef's uniform and walking with a portentous step as though he were enacting some kind of ceremony. His hands were empty.

"Good morning," I said with a smile.

"Yes. Ho has your special request food." He reached out and two metal frameworks shimmered into existence, one on either side of the table. Displayed within each frame was the most ridiculous, unappetizing, impossible thing I'd ever imagined.

A narwhal's tusk looks like the unicorn horn of fantasy stories, but it's three meters long and eight centimeters wide at the base. A swordfish bill is about four and a half meters, flat, and wide enough that I couldn't get my hand more than halfway around the base. Ho had found an unusually large pair of lobsters as the centerpiece to this insult to food, but they were still barely large enough to be skewered by the swordfish bill without exploding, and Ho had clearly despaired of also getting the narwhal horn through the lobster without destroying the poor thing, so he had settled for tying the lobster claws together around the tusk as though embracing it. Four slabs of breaded and fried fish meat bracketed the lobster, each slab nearly a meter long.

All together, having these things appear on either side of our table amounted to being trapped behind two walls of stinking, oily meat.

"Ho did not think to ask about correct preparation," the hairy gnome said, twisting his hands uncomfortably. "Had thought you were supposed to use entire fish but that was not practical because halibut Ho received was four meters long. Had to use just steaks, but tried to keep them big. Is okay?"

Eva was eyeing the dish with excitement in a degree similar to my own horror. She studied the food a moment longer, then looked up at him with a smile. "Thank you, Ho, this is perfect. Exactly the way it should be." She gestured towards it. "We obviously aren't going to be able to eat the entire thing in one sitting so we'll need to take most of it with us, but I'm grateful. One thing...that steak you made last night was the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. Would you mind making us a few things to take away with us? I don't think it's likely we'll find another place that serves food as good as this."

Ho nodded, the nervousness falling away. "Ho is glad he did the food correctly. Yes, Ho can make food for takeout. You want anything special?"

She shook her head, blonde hair swaying. "Surprise us. No need to do specialty things like this"—she waved at the walls of meat—"just regular eggs, bacon, sandwiches, steaks, that kind of thing."

"Okay. Ho will make salads too. Vegetables are important for humans."

"Thank you, Ho," I said, giving him my best smile. The poor little man had gone far out of his way to make this ridiculous thing for Eva, so the least we could do was show our appreciation.

He nodded and walked back to the kitchen, his step far more relaxed than it had been on the way out.

"Eva, what is this?" I hissed, gesturing at the food. "This is disgusting!"

"It's not about the fish," she whispered back, keeping her eyes on the kitchen door to make sure Ho wasn't suddenly popping out to overhear. "It's about the weapons! The horns are spears, the swords are axes or something."

I blinked and stared at her, drop-jawed.

New Achievement: Exploitation Inspiration!

You found an exploit! You didn't have the guts to follow up on it yourself, so your more psychopathic friend had to do it for you, but at least you gave her the inspiration! Keep having ideas like that and you might actually survive, although it would be better if you could woman up and do shit instead of whining. Maybe this will help.

Reward: A Legendary Try to Be a Little More Badass, Okay? Box

"What was that?" Eva asked, eyeing me closely.

"What? Nothing," I said quickly. I didn't want to tell her what the AI had said.

"You got a notification," she said. "What was it for?"

"Um...it was a loot box. For...inspiring you to think of the exploit with getting Ho to make weapons for us."

"I didn't get anything. What did it say?"

"It was pretty rude, actually. It was telling me to be 'more badass' and do things for myself instead of just giving ideas to other people. Which is weird, because it was your idea." I hurried to add the last part when I saw the look on her face.

"...Fine, whatever. Open your box, put one of these things"—she gestured to the skewers and their contents—"in your inventory, and eat up. I want to get moving as soon as Ho comes back with the real food."

Using the plastic knife and fork provided by the restaurant, she sliced off a slab of breaded, deep-fried halibut and dumped it on my plate.

I nodded and obediently pressed 'Open Loot Boxes' in my menus.

The loot box shimmered into existence, looking like a fist-sized round-cut diamond with streaks of red and blue curling through it like smoky contrails. It appeared in midair directly in front of me, hovering there until I carefully picked it up and opened it.

Inside was a ring.

Ring of the (hopefully!) Wannabe Badass

+15 Constitution

I looked at Eva with a sickly smile, not sure how to explain that the AI was explicitly trying to cause bad feelings between us by giving me amazing loot for her clever idea.

"Is it good?" she demanded. With relief, I remembered that unless she was physically holding the ring she could only see its name, not its properties.

"It's a Constitution bonus," I said, casually slipping the ring on. "I think the AI thinks that I need to toughen up and get into the fight more."

"Hm." She eyed the ring for a moment, then shrugged. "Whatever. Eat your fish."

o-o-o-o

The fish parts actually made for terrible weapons. The narwhal tusks had a lot of flex in them, the tips wobbling back and forth across a span of nearly a meter if you moved them sharply sideways, and the bases were too big around to hold in your hands conveniently. I ended up tucking it under my arm and using my right hand to support it while controlling it with my left. It was better than the chain but not by a lot.

Eva experimented at using the swordfish bill as a polearm with little success, as it was even wider at the base than the narwhal horn and also longer and heavier. The edges were more 'abrasive' than 'sharp' and thrusting with something so unwieldy was difficult—you had to either swing it like a battering ram or move your whole body forward.

Still, regardless of how bad they might be, they were much better than what we had previously had. We successfully killed more of this area's cat-themed monsters. We'd worked our way through the easy ones now; Eva was up to level 5 and I was at level 4 but most of the monsters were levels 5 and 6 and they were coming in pairs or trios. We were having to pick our battles carefully.

That was when we met Gene.

We were taking a few minutes to rest in a side corridor and wait for our mana to regenerate before going hunting again when Eva noticed a blue dot on the very edge of the map. She pointed it out and I clicked on it.

Crawler #781,592. "Gene."

"We should talk to him," I said.

Eva shook her head. "He might be a player killer. We're doing fine on our own."

"He might know where a stairwell is."

Eva thought about that for a moment. "All right. How's your mana?"

"I'm at three."

"So you can only heal yourself once. Great. Well, if he twitches wrong, stab him in the face. Now let's go."