MADMAN APOCALYPSE

We went towards the Blue door, after I’d won the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, crushing both Lordie and Bee in two separate ‘best of 3’ matches, after beating them simultaneously the first time.

“How did you do that?” Bee was wondering. Panda was sitting on her shoulder and nodding along.

“Meow.”

“I didn’t cheat,” I told Lordie, then looked over at Bee. “I’ve never lost a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Ever.”

“That’s statistically-impossible,” she replied.

“And yet true.”

Panda frowned. “He’s not lying, as far as I can tell.”

Two achievements came just as I was about to put my hand on the Blue door handle.

Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x

‘Kitted out!’

Equipped a Legendary piece of Armor.

Legendary armor doesn’t just get handed out on a whim. There are very specific requirements to obtain it, such as locating elusive Wandering Smiths and having the right materials, defeating particularly-challenging Boss encounters, or placing first in GAME Events.

Finding a Smith AND having all the materials for a Legendary armor to be crafted is highly unlikely, given how obscure the schematics are!

Mark my words, we will find out how you’re cheating the RNG of the System!

Reward: x50 ‘GAME Coins’ & ‘Fusion Gum’

Congratulations! You have unlocked an achievement! x

‘Unanimous Victory’

Flawlessly defeated a Player in a Game of Chance.

This achievement is meant to trigger off a specific type of Challenge Dungeon and GAME Event, but instead you triggered it with… Rock-Paper-Scissors?

We asked the Moths for guidance and they said that this is not a bug.

Anyway, how did you do that?

Reward: ‘Lucky Dice’

‘Lucky Dice’ x

Everyone has a method for tweaking their luck. Most of it, like wearing your smelliest pair of underwear or chopping off a rabbit’s foot, is obviously superstition that doesn’t work, but this pair of dice is different.

Roll this pair of dice to make your next luck-based Encounter, Skill, or Loot Drop veer heavily in your favor.

Charges: 1

This item appears on your Appraisal!

Weight: 0.3 Pandas

“Tweak my luck?” I pondered.

“That might work on your Spin the Wheel ability,” Bee guessed, after reading the tooltip.

“Could also use it before activating a Boss item, in order to get a rare Skill to appear, like the Soul Blade,” Panda said.

“The fact that it appears on my Appraisal is worrying,” I remarked.

“Eh, you already have so many things listed on there, what’s one more?”

I turned around on the spot and waved the Lucky Dice at Shellby, who was in the middle of closing down her large metal box of wares in preparation for moving on.

“Hey, Shelly, how much are these worth!?”

The Triops Merchant stopped what she was doing, and bolted to the side of the room where we stood so quickly that the breath seized in my lungs. I had definitely caught her interest.

“Where did you get that?”

“An achievement.”

“I will buy it from you for 1200 Coins.”

“That much, huh? And no thanks, I’m keeping them.”

“1500,” she said, raising the price.

“Unless you’re paying me 5000, the answer is still no.”

Shellby narrowed her eyes.

Then she sighed in defeat and said, “Since you are the first customers of mine, I will share this with you.”

‘Cheater’s Gloves’ x

Schematic

A Wandering Smith’s schematic for the Legendary item ‘Cheater’s Gloves’.

Components required:

5x ‘Lucky Dice’

x3000 ‘GAME Coins’

‘Fusion Gum’

‘High-quality gloves’

‘Deck of cards’

“What do they do?”

“You will have to craft them to find out,” Shellby replied.

“I bet they’re really strong,” Panda commented.

“If it uses Lucky Dice, then maybe it has something to do with making you so lucky it seems like cheating?” Bee guessed.

“Wonder how I can get more of these Dice,” I said.

“Since they appear on Appraisals, maybe you can kill other Players who have them?”

I nodded. “Good thinking.”

“Come find me when you have the components,” Shellby said, then began walking back towards her box lazily, none of her earlier speed present.

I watched her for a moment, then turned back to face the Blue door.

“Let’s find the treasure that awaits us!” I said excitedly and pushed it open.

“You know where this leads?” Panda asked.

I gave him a knowing smile. After all, Lordie had said that the order was like this:

Boss — Death — Treasure — Setback

Bee followed behind me. “Green is definitely the one with treasure.”

“No, that’s Yellow,” Panda retorted.

“Brock says Red, like blood,” the gauntlet chimed in, probably just because he felt left out.

As the Blue door shut behind us, the hallway was submerged in total darkness. A second later, it pulsed with glowing colorful dots, as countless ribbons of fairy-lights all lit up at once. They were stringed across the walls and ceiling, pulsing gently in warm whites, reds, yellows, oranges, greens, and blues.

Bee gasped in delight and spun around, as we walked through the hallway.

Then the floor disappeared below us and we were deposited in the middle of a rounded tunnel.

Screech!! came the desperate voice of a child-sized rat running past us on all fours. Several more followed right behind it, utterly ignoring our presence.

We spun around to look back the way they’d come, just as the second-worst stench I’d ever had the displeasure of inhaling filled my nostrils. My vision went white from the sheer impact of the foul smell, and a painful whine filled my ears, as my brain struggled to comprehend what my nose was registering.

“Good Lord, what is that?” I said, while pinching my nose in vain.

“Me-ow!”

I blinked and looked up at the familiar on my head, who was doing a spirited wriggle. “What!? You traitorous little shit!!”

Bee spared a glance my way, as the sound of something slimy came from down the end of the tunnel, where it curved to the left. “What’d he say??”

“He said: ‘Hah hah, Blue wasn’t Treasure, Blue was Boss. This is what you get for shaking me!’”

“I think you deserved that,” Panda remarked

“Yeah, that’ll teach me to listen to his advice for sure.”

“You’re definitely missing the point here.”

Bee yelped.

I looked back down the tunnel and saw what she’d seen.

She shared the Appraisal from her Nerdy Spectacles with me, and then we both turned and ran after the giant rats.

Level 40

‘Shit Worm’

World Boss x

“*Munching sounds*”

You may be wondering. How did this creature get its name? Is it because it smells like shit? Is it because it eats shit? Or is it perhaps because it is made of shit?

Wrong, wrong, technically-yes.

The System, in its unknowable wisdom, found and reanimated a Fatberg, i.e. the resultant mass of the most cursed union between unflushable wet wipes and fatty substances like oil and grease. Given how it smells, it might as well be called a Shitberg. Especially since it has been trawling its Sewer Kingdom for sustenance and coated itself in a shiny protective layer of excrements.

As you might imagine, the Envy Demons watching are quite a fan of this vile creation. There’s a special reward for you if you can kill it, but please, for the love of the Absolutes, don’t use fire!