C20 Trash Ready

For the rest of the day, Eddie worked on his two spells with the team. They were extremely helpful and he was levelling them up frighteningly fast. Eddie was recovering with them while Frank had brought over some food. Eddie was ogling at the new gains that he had gotten thanks to Mira and her team.

You have levelled up Trash Chute II→III

Mana Cost: 15

Distance: 4(+1)-36(+3)m

Damage: 4(+1)-43(+3)

Cooldown: 5s

You have levelled up Trash Chute III→IV

Mana Cost: 15

Distance: 5(+1)-39(+3)m

Damage: 5(+1)-46(+3)

Cooldown: 5s

You have levelled up Trash Chute IV→V

Mana Cost: 13(-2)

Distance: 6(+1)-42(+3)m

Damage: 6(+1)-49(+3)

Cooldown: 4(-1)s

You have levelled up Trash Wall I→II

Mana Cost: 35

Defense Rating: 42(+2)-69(+4)

Damage: Undetermined

Cast time: 3s

Cooldown: 40s

You have levelled up Trash Wall II→III

Mana Cost: 35

Defense Rating: 44(+2)-73(+4)

Damage: Undetermined

Cast time: 3s

Cooldown: 40s

You have levelled up Trash Wall III→IV

Mana Cost: 35

Defense Rating: 46(+2)-77(+4)

Damage: Undetermined

Cast time: 3s

Cooldown: 40s

You have levelled up Trash Wall IV→V

Mana Cost: 30(-5)

Defense Rating: 48(+2)-81(+4)

Damage: Undetermined

Cast time: 2.5(-0.5)s

Cooldown: 37(-3)s

“The cooldown went down at rank five,” Eddie commented. “Does that always happen?”

Denzel nodded as he tried to get through the toughness and dryness of the trash panda meat. “It’s urm-” Denzel swallowed, tearing his throat into pieces. “Yeah, that will happen. At rank ten it should get a quirk added to it or might even evolve.”

“Evolve?” Eddie questioned.

“It will change the name and skill entirely into something better,” Viktor explained, cigarette in mouth. “No one knows how it works.”

“Oh,” Eddie said in thought, wondering about all the other trash type spells he could acquire. There were two others that the system offered him but they were pretty bad.

Eddie yawned as he rubbed his belly, he was stuffed and now tired; perfect time for a food coma.

“I’m gonna go in and get some sleep. Thanks guys for today.”

“No worries man,” Denzel said. “Rest up, we’ll need you, Frank and Robo tomorrow.”

“Night, Eddie,” Mira said.

Eddie got up and gave them a kind wave before heading back into his workshop. Frank had told him he was organising more houses for all of the refugees that were coming. By the end of the day already, there were another five that had arrived. They all told the same story that Jimmy did. They were put into cages and then a mage teleported them down into Arindought’s trash dump.

He felt exhausted as he walked up to his workbench door. He stopped when he noticed the door was ajar and sounds were coming from inside. Eddie was now in cautious mode as he didn’t realise people could enter his private areas with his permission. It wasn’t Mira’s team and it definitely wasn’t Frank or Robo. He was now adamant a thievery was in motion.

He drew his woggle staff out and held it like a baseball bat as he creaked the door open as slowly as he could. The sounds still came inside which meant the thief wasn’t alerted.

Eddie crept forwards as his mind raced to who it could be. It was definitely going to be a guild member, possibly even a player that had snuck in. But when Eddie’s eyes landed on a familiar face and then a label above his head- he was taken aback.

“Rose?” Eddie questioned.

She didn’t appear to be snooping, instead, was bent over a metal arm and appeared to be working on it. She jumped up from Eddie’s stool and fell over. She looked him in the eyes and quickly knelt down to the ground.

“I am so sorry, Master Eddie, I-I-”

“What were you doing?” Eddie questioned.

“I-I-I w-was looking at the metal arm you made.”

“You could've just asked me,” Eddie remarked.

“Really?”

“Yeah, sure... How did you get in?”

“I… Picked the lock,” she admitted without looking up.

“You picked my signature lock? How?”

“I just picked it, there’s a fault with immediate pressure on the back.”

Eddie looked up to the ceiling in surprise and then back down to the floor. No one, ever, in the military, even in his whole life of being a mechanic, had ever been able to pick his lock. “I’ll make you a deal.”

She nodded meekly.

“If you show me how you did it, I won’t tell your father.”

“Really? Thank you, Master Eddie.”

“Ew, stop calling me that. Call me Eddie.”

She looked up to him and Eddie took immediate pity on her. She looked to be around fourteen years of age. Her hair was wild and she had bright blue eyes. She had changed into better rags of clothing so she didn’t look nearly as bad as she did before. What annoyed Eddie though, was that she was almost as tall as him.

“C’mon, show me how you did it,” Eddie instructed.

She slowly stood up and Eddie instructed her to the door. He watched carefully as she pulled out homemade tools and took apart his ‘signature’ lock. “The back pin is weak to air pressure,” she explained. “Even when I blow into it, it unlocks the second mechanism which allows me to pick it like a normal lock.”

Eddie knelt down next to her and looked at the lock, he took it apart and saw exactly what she meant. “I’m an idiot,” he said to himself.

“Sorry,” she said, looking down again. “I was just interested in how you made the golems.”

“Oh, Frank and Robo? Yeah, I can show you.”

“But I need to help my fat-”

“He can cope on his own, I’ll let him now,” Eddie said. “If you want, I’ll let you look at Frank and Robo. You can help me maintain them and I can give you some pointers.” For an NPC to pick Eddie’s own own master lock, she was clearly smarter than the rest- or Eddie was just dumb; probably the latter.

“Are you sure, Mast- Eddie?”

“Yep, you’re the first person to genuinely seem interested in how I made them so I should teach you… Not right now, though, I need some sleep. Tomorrow morning, I’ll need to do a check up on them and you can help me with that.”

She knelt down to the floor and put her forehead against the dirty trash floor. “Thank you so much, for everything.”

Eddie was not a fan of this kneeling thing, it felt wrong, especially when it was an NPC. “Urm, sure, no problem. You know, instead of doing that, let’s shake hands.”

“But a peasant should never shake a person of higher standing’s hand.”

“Not to worry, we’re all peasants here. The rules up there aren’t the same down here, everyone’s equal.”

She swallowed as she stood back up. Eddie extended his hand out to her and she shook it weakly. “There you go, see, much better. Come find me before we leave tomorrow alright.”

She smiled with tears in her eyes. “T-thank you,” she murmured before hurrying off.

Eddie yawned again. He couldn’t be bothered to process something like that. The only thing he was looking forward to was falling asleep on his piss stained bed. He didn’t piss in it, which makes it more gross.

His face landed on the not-pissed stained pillow and he dozed off extremely quickly.

Eddie was awakened by the smell of cooking goblin meat. He levitated out of bed like a disney character and was gently laid down at a wooden table.

“Good morning, Sir, you’ve slept well.”

“Tell me about it,” Eddie said. “I haven’t slept like that in years.”

“Stress often does that, Sir,” Frank replied as he laid breakfast down in front of Eddie.

It was goblin meat with undead bone shavings on top. The taste was unique, like truffles but only crunchier. He devoured it like there was no tomorrow and sucked on his fingers for a good five minutes afterwards.

“What’s the time?” Eddie asked.

“Nine in the morning, Sir. Just to let you know, three more refugees turned up during your down time.”

“Are we ok to house them still?” Eddie asked.

“Our food ratios are going down slowly but we should be able to support twenty for the next three days.”

“And after?” Eddie asked, yawning and stretching his entire upper body at once.

“I suggest creating a market, Sir,” Frank offered. “Players will go out and farm materials, they sell them to the NPCs and they then craft them into sellable items. Food, weapons, armour- anything, Sir. I’m guessing that all NPCs possess skills that can be useful. Jimmy has been telling me that he can teach and also cut wood.”

“Where? In the basin?” Eddie asked, standing up.

“Yes, Sir. We can still create a market here, just not houses. We can impose a direct 3% taxation on all items that the NPCs sell.”

“Hmmm,” Eddie mused. “I kinda wanted only us to do it. I could probably set up another stall-”

“Sir, in the long term we would make far more money. If NPCs make 3 silver a day, we earn 9 coppers from our 3% taxation, multiply that by the number of NPCs and you would have a large sum of constant money flow.”

“Smells like capitalism.”

“And you want to be socialisitc, Sir? You are currently in a trash dump in a virtual world that was created by a company that has a net worth of 3.7 trillion dollars.”

Eddie didn’t really know how to respond to that. “Urm, yeah, sure, we can do the tax thing.”

“Wonderful, Sir.”

“Wait, Frank, so we should start letting people into the basin?”

“Yes, Sir. Give the NPCs a small loan and let them build a stall with our tools.”

“That’s not a bad idea. Could you get that sorted out soon? And how much money do you need?”

“I’ll take some from the stall out front, Sir. It should all be done by the time we leave.”

“We need to start saving too so don’t dish it out.”

“No issues, Sir. I do have some ideas for money making methods but as of right now we should focus on the Tier 2 relic.”

“You’re right,” Eddie agreed. “Has that guild master come yet?”

“I’m not sure, Sir. There do appear to be guild members already in the basin.”

“I’ll head there now,” Eddie said.

“Oh, Sir… Shirt.”

Eddie looked down to his food stained bare chest and nodded slowly. “Right, right, first impressions matter.” He looked like he had been pulled through a charity store that specializes in medieval clothing, and then thrown in a trash dump- which he had been. His hair was all messed up, pulled through piles of oil and lubricant. He loved not washing and he was mostly glad for the perk he received so he doesn’t smell like a trash panda after intercourse.

“Right,” Eddie said, “See you in a bit, Frank.”

“Urm, Sir, you didn’t put a top on.”

“Didn’t I? Oh, yeah.”

Second time was the charm as Eddie strutted out of his trash cave with the leather chestpiece on. He was feeling refreshed after such a good night and he breathed in the air when he arrived in the basin.

“Fresh as ever.”

“Eddie!” Mira shouted over to him.

He hurried over and Denzel moved his giant frame to allow him to view what was going on; Brody was giving a talk on the tactics for the raid boss. Regardless of the hatred between the two, they still had a common goal.

“Right, we’ll be split into three groups in the same raid party. I’ll control the DPS and tanks, Guild Master will control the healers and support and Mira will control the ranged and mages. We should try and do this first time, I know it’s going to be challenging but we’re on a tight schedule.”

Eddie ws nodding along like he actually knew what in the fudge was going. He was still struggling to understand what DPS was.

“What’s DPS?” he whispered into Mira.

“High damage dealers, melee in this case,” she thankfully whispered back.

“Like a knight?”

“Kinda, swords, longswords- Bear’s one. Denzel and Bear will be joining Brody while Viktor and you will be with me.”

It was slowly coming together now. Eddie couldn’t believe that it was going to be this tactical. He just thought they were all going to turn up there and just kill it.

Brody carried on. “We have five healers, Guild Master is bringing another since we have four right now. I know that’s not enough so don’t be reckless since we don’t know what abilities and resistances it has. We don’t have a time limit whilst we’re in there so take things slow.”

Eddie was wondering what sort of boss it would be. It made him excited to see what a raid boss was actually like. Then again, his knees were shaking about the thought of a giant goblin. The small ones were gross enough.

“We leave an hour after the Guild Master gets here.”

“Oh,” Mira said, “Does anyone have any armour for Eddie to borrow?”

Everyone’s attention turned to the ragged man.

“Are those the starter trousers?” one asked.

“No,” Eddie lied. “They’re limited edition.”

“No, I think they’re the starter trousers.”

“Who cares,” Mira said. “Honestly anything guys, a cheap helmet you got from a trash panda. He just needs something to not die.”

“Is he a warrior? He’s going to be useless if-”

“He’s a mage,” Mira confirmed with a hardened gaze at the person. “He actually has a very useful spell.”

“That is?”

Hesitantly, Eddie cleared his throat. “A wall of trash.”

“A wall of trash.”

“Can be used as a platform and to move the things,” Denzel added, purely because a wall of trash didn’t sound as useful.

“Whatever,” Brody said. “He makes 50 and he’s doing the quest with us. I don’t want a randy with us.”

Eddie nodded at him and the man nodded back. Their beef had just been squashed. “By the way, who’s Arandy?”

Mira slapped her forehead.