MADMAN APOCALYPSE

“Holy crap,” I said, as the Triops showed us her assortment of wares within a large metal box full of shelves that she had pulled up from the pond in the middle of the room. The box, when opened, was the same size as her and probably weighed over two tons, but she’d just yanked on the chain attached to it and pulled it out of the water in a single motion.

On the shelves were: Tinctures of Full Recovery; Antivenom Pills; Sanity Pills; Curse-Lifting Powder; a Familiar Egg that could, apparently, turn into anything, based on the Player nurturing it; a Transport Cage for Familiars, which looked like a small purple-blue box; two different types of Spontaneous Class Change items similar to the Anointed Mask, with one giving ‘Mentalist’ and the other giving ‘Part-Time Hero’; Fusion Gum; a few different Boss items that could give abilities, such as a ‘Turd Hobgoblin Ear’ and a ‘Rat King Crown’; and, lastly, a Golden Fusion Urchin.

None of the items were cheap though. The Tinctures cost 500 Coins each, the Sanity Pills were triple the price of the ones Steve had bought in the Safe Zone, the Class Change items were 1200 each, the Gum was 750, the Boss items were 950, and the Urchin was a whopping 2400.

I kind of wanted the Transport Cage, since it allowed me to stow away Lordie, which seemed prudent for Boss fights, given that he was a massive weak-spot that refused to hide beneath my armor. However, it was 800 Coins.

One thing that caught my eye was an anvil that stood off to the side, seemingly separated from the items on sale.

“You wouldn’t happen to be a Wandering Smith, would you?” I asked her.

The three eyes on her head fixed me with a stare and though I couldn’t see her mouth, I thought she might be smiling. The eye in the center of the two black ones had an X instead of a pupil and it felt like it could see more than the other two, somehow.

“I am. What would you like to have made?”

I had Bee pull out the ‘Unicorn Horn’ and showed it to her. “What can you make with this?”

Her segmented plate-cover arm took it from Bee’s hand and placed it on the anvil, which began to glow, before a pop-up hit me.

‘Unicorn Horn Rapier’ x

Requirement(s) to Wield: 9 Dexterity

Formed from the white-silver horn of a Unicorn, this weapon is both perfectly-balanced and elegant, but it takes a skilled hand to wield it.

Deals double damage to certain creatures, like Undead and Demons, due to its pure nature.

Special Skill(s):

‘Silver Thorn’

After piercing an enemy with this weapon, this ability can be activated to release devastating thorns of pure silver to sprout within their body, causing massive hemorrhaging.

Cooldown: 5 minutes

Weight: 4.1 Pandas

“Damn,” I muttered appreciatively.

“You can’t use it,” Panda said.

“Why not?”

“Your Dexterity stat is all garbled.”

Shellby the Triops nodded. “The white rat is correct, your Attributes are insufficient in your current state.”

“I’m not a rat!” Panda protested.

Then the three of us paused and gave Shellby an altogether different look.

“You can see him!?” Bee and I asked in unison.

“Of course,” she answered, tapping the third central eye with the X pupil.

“That’s surprising,” Panda said.

The Triops, all business, brought the conversation back to what mattered: “I can buy the Horn from you for 300 Game Coins.”

“Hmm,” I mumbled.

“Can you make anything else?” Bee asked, starting to pull items out of her inventory.

Shellby held up a plate-covered hand. “No need to empty out your belongings, I can already see the items you are carrying.”

She stared intently at Bee, who, at her words, put the items back into her inventory and waited patiently.

“You don’t have enough components for anything that either of you can utilize,” Shellby declared.

“Aw.”

Then it was my turn.

The two black eyes locked onto me, but it was the third eye that seemed to peer into my belongings, which felt like some kind of violation of my rights, truth be told. The upside was that I could at least keep my clothes on, unlike every other time I’d been scrutinized in the past.

I brought up my own inventory screen, just to have something to look at while I waited for her verdict.

Gambit’s Inventory x

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Looking Glass, Conspiracy Whistle, Wet Grey Pajamas, Black Suit, Screwdriver, Fingerless Socks, Pocket-Watch, Survival Kit, 6x Victory Champagne, Moon Boots, Tattered Black Suit, Fur Collar, Swan Fois Gras, ????, Skin Robe, Challenger’s Stopwatch, Paper Crown, Unicorn Blood, Unicorn Horn, Cultist Robes, Soul Compass, Sewer Map, Anointed Mask, Queen’s Droplet, unFake Plugin

---

GAME Coins: 1568

Safe Zone Tokens: 5

Total Weight: 213.4015 Pandas

“If you give me the two black suits, Unicorn Blood, Moon Boots, Carapace Suit, and Fingerless Socks, along with the Unicorn Horn, then I can make this:”

‘Unicorn-Slayer Suit’ x

Requirement(s) to Wear: killed a Unicorn & >75% Insanity

You would be forgiven for thinking this was a normal business suit, but it isn’t! This is the armor of a Warrior of Mundanity, who sets out to slay the Dreams of Children and Creatures of Myth belonging to Fairytales!

Only the most cold-hearted and mentally-unwell could don this suit, which is formed from make-belief-made-manifest, and the blood and body of a true Unicorn.

Wearing this armor imbues you with the following effects:

-25% Physical Damage Taken

-25% Magical Damage Taken

-50% Damage Taken from Undead and Demons

+50% Damage Taken from Children

+All Fairytale or Myth-based Enemies and Bosses will prioritize hurting you over other Players

Special Passive(s):

‘Immortal Fabric’

This suit slowly regenerates any damage sustained to itself once out of combat. So long as a single piece of it remains, the entire suit can regrow back to full.

‘Stainless’

Thanks to hand-wavey bullshit magic, this suit is, somehow, self-cleaning.

Weight: 9.35 Pandas

“I’ll take it!” I said immediately. Neither Panda nor Bee objected, which I took as a sign of approval.

“That will be 600 Coins,” she added.

I frowned at the price-tag, but handed her the money, along with all the items.

As I stood there, in nothing but my Schmonic Boots and purple Lust Demon Loincloth, Shellby placed the items on the anvil, which began to glow a golden-orange. She didn’t do anything exciting, like bringing out a magical hammer, mutter magical words, nor anything like that, as, disappointingly, the anvil itself did all the work. Nevertheless, it was hard to beat the results, as a gorgeous and apparently-indestructible suit manifested from the seemingly-random components melding together.

The moment she handed the suit to me, I tossed it into my inventory and equipped it through its magical powers, the suit appearing on my body without a fuss. The fabric was black and stretchy, with notched lapels, and an absurdly-comfortable inner lining.

“It fits like a glove,” I said, satisfied.

Shellby fixed me with her three-eyed glare again, and then said, “I will buy the Anointed Mask and Fur Collar from you for 1000 Coins.”

I blinked, surprised at the number. Though I wasn’t sure we should be selling the mask, since that kind of Class sounded pretty powerful.

“I’ll sell you the Collar for 800,” I said.

“It is not worth that much,” she replied.

“I’ve seen 3 Class Change items thus far, but only one race-changing one. I’m sure it’s worth double what I’m asking.”

The Triops narrowed her eyes. “I can trade you the Transport Cage for it.”

I inspected the item, trying to figure out if I actually wanted it or not. It took me a second to realize that she had somehow sussed out that I wanted the item, though it was also possible that she’d just noticed Lordie who lay atop my head, fingers splayed while he slept.

‘Familiar Transport Cage’ x

A transport cage the size of a Tic Tac box that is, through dimensional fuckery, able to store a familiar of any size within.

Since storing a pocket realm inside a pocket realm leads to Recursive Reality Degradation and Timeline ‘Hiccups’, you cannot put this item into your inventory.

Familiar Capacity: 1

Warning: If the cage is destroyed, any familiar inside dies.

Weight: 1.2 Pandas

“It can’t be put in your inventory, but it’s definitely a much smaller target,” Panda said. “I think you should get it.”

The Unicorn-Slayer Suit came with a front pocket that would be the perfect size to hold it, which was ultimately what sold me on the trade.

As I gave Shellby the Fur Collar, glad to be rid of the thing, she handed me a little box like one for cigarettes, except made of purple-blue quartz or something. If not for the sign on the shelf of the chest full of her wares, I wouldn’t even have known that this thing was a ‘cage’ in the first place.

“In you go,” I said to Lordie, flicking open the lid and making him immediately disappear inside.

Satisfied that it worked, I put it into the front pocket of my neat new suit. No sooner had I lifted my hand away than the lid flicked open on its own and Lordie appeared back atop my head.

“Meow!” he complained in his deep sultry voice.

“You get back in there this instant, young man!” I scolded him.

“Me-ow!”

“You take that back!”

“Meow..”

“What’s he saying?” Bee asked, while Panda and Shellby just watched.

“I’m not going to repeat his words,” I told her. “But he doesn’t want to be in the cage…”

“Tell him that it’s only during fights.”

“You heard her,” I said.

“Me-ow..?”

“That’s right. Only during fights.”

“Meow.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Hand him a Twizzler,” Panda advised and I obliged.

Only after the hand-spider had slurped up the sugary treat did I ask, “Why?”

“Positive reinforcement.”

We did some more haggling, though I didn’t buy anything else, holding on to my remaining 968 Coins for when we killed the Mayor and got our own Safe Zone Sphere. Bee sold the ‘Spark Tube’ we’d looted off of Isabella, along with her armor, sword, and a bunch of other random items she’d looted here-and-there. Most of it was just small stuff, and she’d even brought several of the horrific-sounding cans of food and desserts with her, the latter type of which greatly interested the Triops. After selling the Birthday Cake and Tuna Ice-Cream cans, she’d made a profit of about 650 Coins, but she used 500 of them to buy a ‘Tincture of Full Recovery’.

‘Tincture of Full Recovery’ x

Although we can’t tell you what these little vials contain, we can reveal that the Child Protective Services is the only Agency in the GREAT GAME that produces them.

The Queen of the CPS Hive herself is said to consume dozens of these Tinctures daily, in order to keep her rapid aging and countless illnesses at bay. After all, she is the longest-living entity across all of the Agencies.

Anyway, the effect of this item should be very familiar to you:

Consuming this fully recovers your body and restores it to peak condition.

Weight: 1.2 Pandas

“Alright, with all that out of the way, let’s pick a door,” I said.

“Green!” Bee exclaimed.

“Definitely Yellow,” Panda answered.

“My choice would be Blue.”

“So it’s a Mexican Standoff,” she said seriously, while nodding to herself for some reason.

“Let’s do Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine whose door we go with,” I said.

“That’s not fair,” Panda complained.

“Oh, right, no fingers… Hmm… Lordie will do it in your stead.”

“Meow!”

“What’d he say?” Panda asked.

“‘Bring it on’,” I translated.

“Don’t let me down, Lordie,” the plushie told the hand-spider.