MADMAN APOCALYPSE - Chapter -38 (Patreon)

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Madman hit #2 on Rising Stars earlier today and is close to hitting 2500 followers, both of which were kind of dream goals I had for when I launched the story. Pretty damn excited to have achieved all this within just the first month of the story's release.

Thanks everyone!

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Chapter -38

I thought about it for a while. “If I picked Change Class, do you think it’ll offer other Glitched classes?”

            “Maybe?” Panda said. “But why risk it?”

            “Won’t they come after him even more if he becomes more Glitched?” Bee asked.

            “At this point, it’s like putting whipped cream atop frosting,” I replied.

            “…I don’t know what that means,” Panda said.

            “He means that it doesn’t matter,” the Beetle Girl explained.

            “Uhuh… Speaking of Classes, why’d you get a normal Class??”

            “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask that as well,” I said.

            “I don’t think it’s normal,” she said. “It’s clearly tied to my monster transformation.”

            “But you don’t have any broken skills…?” Panda argued.

            “Maybe the System just thinks I’m an actual Beetle now, like those REPD guys.”

            “That makes a lot of sense,” I replied. “Anyway, I’m picking Evolution.”

            I tapped the option:

            “Definitely no to the Wizard one,” I said immediately.

            “Corrupting things sounds kind of cool,” Bee commented.

            “QA is probably more your style,” Panda joked. “You like to slam your head against problems until something breaks.”

            “And thus, through the power of elimination, I pick ‘Exit Code 3’!”

            “No, wait—!” Panda started to say, but I’d clicked it already.

            “At least inspect the Class features, before you do any—”

            “YES!” I shouted and clicked the screen.

            “You goddamn buffoon!!” Panda scolded me.

            But I wasn’t listening, as it felt like my entire body was instantly submerged in hot water. Then a shock flowed through me, as though I’d gripped a cattle fence. Another pulse followed, then another, and then the final one made my entire body spasm so forcefully that I nearly fell into the hole in the center of the floor, but Bee thankfully caught me.

            Like a microwave, the System announced:

*BING!*

Class Evolution complete!

            “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

            “You’ve got a hole in-between your clavicle bones now,” Bee said.

            “Maybe that’s the Plugin Slot it mentioned,” I replied, trying to look down at it, though it wasn’t easy.

            “You look like a discount Iron Man,” Panda remarked scathingly, obviously bitter that he didn’t get his way.

            “Status,” I said to bring up my new Status Screen. I also invested my new attribute point in Dexterity.

            “…Your status screen is completely messed up now.”

            “I’ve got emojis!” I exclaimed.

            “Let me see!” Bee said, putting her arms on my shoulders and shaking me rigorously, as though I owed her money.

            “I wished you could have a look,” I said.

            “Wow. That’s so odd!”

            I tapped the ‘Plugin Slot’ under my new Core options.

            “If I’m reading this correctly, it seems like you can collect these ‘Plugins’ to get special abilities. Maybe you can even swap them to suit certain situations, that’d be pretty cool actually.”

            Before I’d even had time to answer, the achievement had appeared and a thick metal cylinder had appeared in the air and landed in my hands.

            “Uhhh…”

            “Yeah, don’t use that, obviously,” Panda said.

            “Inspect,” I said.

            “I kind of want to try it,” I said.

            “Are you that fucking stupid!?”

            Bee nodded, also having inspected the item. “Nothing like the thrill of the unknown.”

            “Gambit, look at this girl, you’ve poisoned her mind with your ridiculousness!”

            “Do I really need to remind you that appraising you was what turned her insane?” I asked.

            The plushie looked away shamefully.

            I spun the Plugin around in my hands, it was actually quite heavy. There was a strange yearning in the Plugin Slot in the top of my chest, and I could feel my hands tingle with the desire to insert the clearly-malicious cylinder.

            “I guess I’ll keep it in my inventory,” I said, stowing it away.

            “What!? No, throw it away! You had no qualms about throwing away the Pacifier and Left-handed Scissors, so why keep this clearly suicidal item!?”

            “Because fuck you, that’s why Panda! I do what I want!”

            Before he could climb up onto my shoulder, I picked up the balloon hammer and took a running jump across the hole in the floor of the Production Control’s waiting room.

            “Come back here!” yelled Panda.

            As I rounded a corner in the tunnel, I came out into a larger room full of desks and monitors.

            “Finally, we’re alone,” said Brock romantically.