MADMAN APOCALYPSE - Chapter -16 (Patreon)

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Chapter -16

“I can’t help but feel like all these abilities you get are a bit contrived,” Panda commented, once more back on my shoulder.

“Why?”

“Well, think about it. You were started in a high-level Dungeon, but conveniently acquired an ability that allowed you to kill its boss. Then you got a passive that made your punch even stronger and allowed you to kill an Agent that the System said was level 60… and now, after soft-locking this Dungeon, you were given an ability to break down the door that leads out.”

“I guess if you put it that way. But what about my BIRTHDAY_SUIT passive?”

“I’ve got no clue about that one,” he admitted.

“What’s that?” Bee asked. “What does the suit look like?”

“Erm…”

“Best you don’t find out,” Panda replied.

“Aw. You’re keeping secrets from me,” she said with a frown.

“Some things should stay secret.”

I nodded in agreement.

We came out of the hallway and into the rectangular room with the deflated balloon animals and the large Workshop Door. No sooner had we come into view of the door than a man pointed at me and yelled, “You!”

“Oh, look, it’s Hawaiian Shirt Guy.”

He began stomping towards us, while three other people who’d been with him stayed behind. There was a middle-aged man in a ruined suit, a woman in a pink jogging set, and a morbidly-obese green-haired person whose gender I couldn’t quite place. They all looked supremely-weak and unprepared for the apocalypse. Even if they got out of this Dungeon, they would probably perish in the Game Event that was starting soon.

“Thanks to you, we’re all stuck here!” the man yelled at me, getting right up in my face.

I pushed him aside with a simple gesture, but instead of merely moving aside, his body tumbled across the floor until a giant plastic chair-leg stopped him.

“Did you mean to do that?” Bee asked me.

“No. But he did stab me with a screwdriver, so call it karma.”

The three people standing by the large door drew back as I came closer. It was clear they weren’t friends with Hawaiian Shirt Guy, but people like him had a tendency to make indecisive losers orbit them. Like sheep following a shepherd.

“That’s a red-pilled toxic mindset,” Panda told me, commenting on my thoughts.

“I don’t care, it’s true.”

“What’s true?” Bee asked, glancing at the three losers.

Panda pointed at them, though they couldn’t see him it seemed, and said, “He thinks they’re sheep.”

The Beetle Girl nodded slowly, then said, “They don’t look like sheep to me.”

“It’s a figure of speech,” the plushie tried to explain.

“Alright back up a little,” I said as I stopped in front of the Workshop Door.

Bee took a step back, and the three people stepped even further away, while mumbling amongst themselves.

I pointed my left hand at the door and then said, “…Break.”

-Confirmation 1- 

“Huh, that’s odd,” I remarked, starting to dread what the result would be if it required a confirmation. That being said, I quickly tapped the ‘Yes’ button.

-Confirmation 2- 

‘Yes’.

-Confirmation 3- 

“Oh my god, how many times do I have to click ‘Yes’??”

-Confirmation 4- 

“YES, GODDDAMN IT, I’M SURE!!”

Thankfully, a fifth confirmation message did not appear, and instead a tiny golden-glowing droplet left my palm and lazily drifted towards the massive door. The bystanders and Bee, all of whom hadn’t seen the confirmation screens, just looked at me like I was mad, only belatedly spotting the thing that’d floated out of my hand.

The golden droplet connected with the wooden door and there came a strange sound, a bit like a gong being hit, producing a long drawn-out and bassy bwooooong!

Light suffused the entire massive door like a spiderweb pattern on shattered glass and from one moment to the next, the door became dust that quickly disappeared.

“That was… very underwhelming,” Panda commented.

“Hey, it got the job done at least.”

The three nearby losers shared glances amongst themselves, and I could hear them whispering, “He did it!” and allowed myself a smug grin.

With the door gone, a new dark room awaited us. Although the System messages had said that this was a less straight-forward Dungeon, i.e. no kill-the-boss-and-leave design, I had the ominous feeling that walking into that darkness wasn’t just a straight path to freedom.

Before I could voice such concerns however, the three bystanders began moving through the threshold. I owed them nothing, but if they were walking into a trap, it would kind of be my fault for opening the way.

“Come on,” I said to Bee and we followed after them into the darkness.

As I passed through, it was the same experience as when I’d entered the Psychiatrist’s arena in the Asylum, and when I turned around and tapped the veil in the doorway, I felt how it had become solid.

“I knew it…” I muttered to myself.

A second later Bee passed through as well.

“That’s a strange feeling,” she commented, then looked past me to the middle of the room. “What’s that?”

I turned around and took in the ‘arena’. It was a workshop, but with the same theme of everything being much larger than normal, though, in this case, the chairs and other furniture were made for the giant Clown I’d killed, meaning they were four times their normal size. Discarded toys and unfinished projects lay everywhere, but in the very center of the room stood an ominous colorful box. The wooden floor around it was cleared of other toys, as though this one was significant in some way.

Pulling out my Looking Glass, I scanned it:

-Suspicious Box- 

As the three people ahead of us walked closer to inspect it, with no clear sense of self-preservation, the lid popped open and laughter preceded a figure that leapt out from within. I was still holding the Glass to my eye, so his description popped up immediately:

-Jack-in-the-Box- 

I didn’t even have time to put the Looking Glass away before the obese green-haired person was carved into four chunks, their blood going everywhere.

“Oof,” Panda grimaced at the sight, as the man in the ruined suit and the woman in the pink jogging set both started running back towards us.

“There’s an escape hatch under the box!” I yelled, after reading the appraisal, but neither of the two tried to act upon this revelation.

“What do we do!? Do we try to fight him or try to move the box?” Bee asked.

“I don’t think you have a choice in the matter,” Panda remarked, as the suit-wearing man was knocked to the floor by Jack-In-the-Box and quickly disemboweled from the back. While laughing like a maniac, the Boss began chasing down the woman who was only a few yards from us.

Without thinking, I ran forward to intercept him.

Bee raised her arm and took aim at the same time.

“Let’s put this Jackass back in his box!” I yelled.

“…That was really lame,” Panda deadpanned.