MADMAN APOCALYPSE - Chapter -45 (Patreon)

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Woops, posted this too early... because Patreon is such a pain to use ... so, anyway, it's a day early, but, eh, yeah enjoy ^-^'

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Chapter -45

Annabella and the Birthday Boy’s mob hadn’t returned to the comfortable moss room yet, so I took the time to pull out my rewards from my inventory, while handing Bee one of the Victory Champagnes. However, as soon as the champagne manifested in my hand, it disappeared in a poof of smoke. I still had the tray and seven more glasses in my inventory, but it was clear I couldn’t pull them out here, as they seemingly had an area restriction tied to them, such as being in the Victory Lobby.

            When both of the new trophies were in my lap, a pop-up appeared before I could inspect either of them:

            “Huh, you need to clear Dungeons now to level up,” Panda said.

            “That’ll slow things down a bit,” I replied. “Still, level 13 already is huge.”

            Bee frowned. “I didn’t get any new levels.”

            “How far are you from your next level?” I asked

            “Level Progress,” she said, then showed me her screen.

            “That’s not that far though,” I told her.

            “I want to evolve my Class too!” she complained impatiently.

            Panda patted her on the hand and said, “Patience, young Padawan.”

            “Pretty sure we’re firmly on the Dark Side now,” I replied.

            “Don’t ruin this for me, Gambit.”

            I ignored him and brought up my Status, before trying to invest one of my three available points into Intelligence.

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ERROR!

Unable to invest point in chosen attribute!

Please pick another.

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            When that didn’t work, I invested them in the following manner: Vitality, Athleticism, & Defense. 

            “Still confusing as hell,” Panda remarked, looking over my shoulder.

            “It’s shaping up though.”

            “Sure, if you say so.”

            I ignored his pessimism and finally inspected my two Event Rewards. As I pulled up the first, I saw that Players were slowly coming into the room from the far end, meaning I didn’t have much time, before they spotted us. Fortunately surprise was on our side still.

I threw the Participation Trophy away but it just disappeared and return to my inventory. Then I looked at the other one, but my hopes were already crushed by the tooltip of the first. That being said, this second one was fancier and was sculpted to look like me, Birthday Suit and all…

            I lifted the Top Ten Trophy to my lips and gave it a kiss. Next to me, Panda and Bee both made sounds, like ‘Yuck!’ and ‘Why is that a trophy of you naked and why are you kissing it?’

            Although the thought of throwing glitter at people was kind of amusing and might even have some decent uses, I picked the Plugin Slot purely because of the versatility offered by the Plugins I was steadily gathering.

            With a puff of steam and a strange feeling travelling through my body, a new Plugin Slot opened somewhere.

            “Does either of you see the new slot that just appeared?” I asked my friends.

            “It’s on your back, on top of your right shoulder plate,” Bee said.

            “Strange, I can’t even feel it.”

            “I guess it doesn’t interfere with your body at all, that’s kind of strange.”

            “Far from the strangest thing,” Panda commented dryly.

            I brought out the unHero Plugin and shoved it into my shoulder-plate hole. Once again, it had a perfectly-tight fit, as the cylinder slowly slid down into my body, before releasing a puff of steam and popping out a small lever. As with the first one, I spun it clockwise with my right hand, though the motion was quite awkward due to how it was positioned on my back.

A surge of electricity shot through my body, before a familiar message appeared:

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PLUGIN INSERTED.

Booting up ‘unHero’ protocol.
Installing…

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            The sound of a cassette tape being rewound emitted from the Plugin, before a loud click! announced its completion.

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PLUGIN INSTALLED.

‘unHero’ protocol now in effect!

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            “Now, let me tell you my plan,” I said mischievously, while unable to stop myself from chuckling.