Museum Core Chapter 27: Redecorating

“That cop was a cultivator, wasn’t she?” Thomas finally asked once everyone was out of the Dungeon. “Crazy physical strength, but no obvious magical powers.”

“Cultivators don’t progress that quickly, they need time to pack all the energy they get into their cultivation method. ‘Suddenly get power, flex your hand a few times to get a feel for it’, that’s usually a System. But I got a good scan of her, she’s definitely leveling and her System’s pretty cool too,” Elias explained.

“I thought Systems were all pretty similar?” Thomas frowned.

“Stat-wise, yes,” Elias agreed. “But they all have their quirks. Me, I could forge my own powers from the smaller sub-skills I’d pick up while moving through the ranks. They came out perfect. Did I ever tell you about ‘Crimson Link’? Basically, I cut someone, I do more damage to them for the rest of the fight and everyone outside the link does less damage, and I can target as many people as I want. The more links I had, the tougher I was, so I could just tag a bunch of people on one side of the battlefield and then fight on the other side, and then just mop up the rest at the end.”

Ok, that sounded awesome as hell.

“Can I make powers like that?” Thomas asked.

“Nah, you could only build something like that with Dretolara’s System, you’d end up with a lesser version,” Elias shrugged.

“And what was her quirk?” Thomas asked the question he really wanted to ask.

“Her System reforges her baseline like you do to your Champions,” Elias grinned. “As she gets proficient at stuff, it expands into the realm of the supernatural. Jumping turns into being able to do a second jump off the air, punching turns into invulnerability while punching, and so on.”

“And how on Earth did you get that kind of scan on her?”

Elias laughed. “Mate, I’m a former S-Ranker. We’re not gods, but to everyone else, we might as well be. We’re literally energy incarnate, and anyone who gets to that point can destroy continents just by existing if they ever decide to stop controlling their energy. Hearts that beat with enough force to cause earthquakes, blood so packed with energy that it vaporizes neutronium on impact, skin so tough that it would take a black hole to tear, and eyes that see a hell of a lot more than we might want to.”

“And yet, you couldn’t tell I used to be human,” Thomas needled.

“Yeah … that doesn’t really show up in a scan,” Elias awkwardly replied.

Thomas decided to let it lie there. He’d keep beating that horse for as long as it made Elias uncomfortable, but spread out the blows for the sake of preserving their working relationship.

“So was ‘Infinite skill leveling’ her F-Rank power, then?”  Thomas asked. “I didn’t see anything. Or was it some kind of snake radar?”

“I don’t know what ‘radar’ is, but her snake detection was just part of a bigger power. Basically, she’s borrowing power from an animal, there’s some kind of conceptual version of it giving her powers. Toughness, senses, and something to do with snakes, I think.”

“Huh, do you know what creature?” Thomas asked.

“Some kind of small predator? Aggressive, tough but loose skin, black and white, always goes for the most vulnerable spot? Does that ring a bell? I mean, I’d have gone for one of those hippos if I were limited to local animals …”

“I think that might be a Honey Badger,” Thomas laughed. “Their fury is legendary, they’ll fight literally anything and everything that gets in their way, even if it’s a pride of lions.”

“What about tigers?” Elias asked.

“They don’t exist in the same area, but if they did, the honey badgers would fight them too. They’re literally too stubborn to care about the odds and tear into anything that gets in their way, they even scare off apex predators that weigh ten times as much as they do. Hell, they’re so terrifying that cheetah cubs mimic their appearance because no one fucks with honey badgers,” Thomas explained. They really were fascinating critters.

“Tiny but terrifying. I guess I should call myself ‘the honey badger’, now that I’m a fairy.”

Elias then proceeded to regale him with a grand tale of his past adventures, including the countless horrifying yet immensely impactful ways he’d used his blood-based magic.

For example, slitting open the throat of a manticore, and then, to add insult to injury, turning the spilled blood into a blade and then driving it into the manticore’s throat.

But while that was going on, Thomas was altering and improving his Dungeon.

Mostly, he added the creatures he’d removed to make the first-ever delve by humans easier back in.

And then, he proceeded to add better hiding spots for his snakes, including more hollow spaces in the walls, as well as a whole bunch of foliage, both real and artificial, on the walls and ceiling. And finally, he added some dirt and leaves in the corners of various rooms.

It looked nice, and it would make anyone who knew about the snakes very paranoid further down the line. Yes, that included the polite, who he didn’t actually have anything against, but given that they were mainly a defense against people with bad intentions, the paranoia was unlikely to affect too many of the wrong people

And as it turned out, one of the many crates they’d gotten from the archives included some dripstones, which he promptly used to line the walls of Cheshire’s room. He’d have used icicles if he’d had them, they’d have nicely added to the theme of a slippery floor, but they still added a lot of character to an otherwise bland room.

But looking good wasn’t the only requirement he had for his rooms, now did he? He wanted visitors, delvers, and that room was very hard. Excellent for stopping real invaders, but it also ran a risk of alienating the visitors he actually wanted. So, he needed a way to make it beatable that could be revoked.

That … that wouldn’t be too easy.

Altering the room directly wasn’t something he could undo in a pinch, and he really didn’t want to give up on the comedy potential of the slipperiness of Cheshire’s room, so what did he want to do instead? Give people a way to get through that could be revoked?

How did one beat a smooth, wet floor? By boiling away the water?

Well, forcing people to maneuver around the Molotov Cocktails they used to clear the water would be funny to watch, but that was probably a better option for an optional difficulty spike.

A “use this and get a pet sabertooth tiger if you survive” kind of deal.

And as for the main way people would pass, well, yoinkability was the name of the game.

… Thomas had a nearby monkey facepalm. Ironically, a monkey would be an important part of the plan.

What he needed were bags of sand, that could be strewn about the place to give people somewhere to stand without risking faceplanting.

Bags aplenty were available, and sand was pretty easy to make by having a giant sloth bang two rocks together and then absorbing the debris that fell.

And then, he summoned five monkeys alongside five bags on the far side of Cheshire’s room, then made a narrow, monkey-sized walkway around the circumference near the ceiling. That way, the monkey could deliver the sand to regular delvers, but withhold it from invaders. Not to mention that the sand would only help humans, monsters would have real trouble using the sandbags even if they somehow got their hands on them without passing through Cheshire’s room in the first place.

That just left the small issue of needing to keep the monkeys from getting killed the instant they showed themselves. Tiny Porter’s uniforms, maybe? Would be cute, certainly.

But how would he ever get his hands on them? Maybe … well actually, he could just ask for them, couldn’t he? Give the next delvers a replica of the stuffed Capuchin he’d absorbed and a letter, promising a ton of cool materials in exchange for uniforms. Porter’s uniform, maybe a lab coat, possibly even a tiny power suit … oh, that would be cool. Now all he had to do was figure out a way to write a letter without humans around to do the writing for him.

“You know, that ‘Compact’ got me thinking,” Thomas finally said. “I think a proper contract wouldn’t be the stupidest thing. Something that lays out my relationship with humanity and the British government. Legal protections from any deaths that happen in here, guarantee that no one tries to evict me because I can’t really leave, and so on.”

“And what are you offering in exchange?” Elias asked. “Are you just going to make the old concessions legally binding, or something else?”

“I mean, I’m going to also officially promise to not make cash or gold,” Thomas grinned. “But only near the end of negotiations. So basically, everything else is already almost done, but then, I ask if it would be possible for me to hypothetically, theoretically, possibly, maybe get the museum because, you know, it’s kinda my body at this point but if they give it to me, then I promise I’ll never make cash, gold, or anything else liable to crash the economy.”

“And if they haven’t realized you can do that yet, they’ll probably have a hard time trying to counter the argument,” Elias grinned wolfishly. “How are you going to argue that a museum is worth more than preventing someone from crashing the economy in an afternoon?

“I mean, we’re talking about politicians here. Someone is going to try.”

“What do you think they’re going to do when they realize you were human?” Elias asked.

“Curse up a storm when I inform them of the fact that I’m not a citizen of things country and that they can’t tell me what to do,” Thomas shrugged.

“You’re not?” Elias raised an eyebrow.

“Nope,” Thomas announced. “Tourist here. I don’t know much about the city beyond that it’s big, and has a bunch of really old, really cool buildings in it. I don’t know where anything is, I only have a vague idea of various locations because of the subway map, and I have no freaking clue about the local laws.”

“Maybe we should ask someone for a law library?” Elias asked.

“Good idea. But there has to be some kind of statute about bodily autonomy somewhere on the books,” Thomas said. “That, or something about reproductive rights that can be read in a way that guarantees bodily autonomy.”

“Sure about that?” Elias asked.

“Yes,” Thomas said with certainty.

“And you’re sure that that’s going to hold up considering how much people can get by not granting you that freedom?” Elias pressed.

“It’s a nice rallying cry,” Thomas pointed out. “’ If the government decides what I do with my body because they can profit, what might they do to you’, something like that.”

“And you really think that’s going to work?” Elias asked.

“I think that there aren’t many issues thornier than that,” Thomas shrugged. “As long as I don’t become one of those nightmare dungeons you’re so afraid of, it should be fi- …”

“What?” Elias asked, alarmed.

“Someone kicked the hornet’s nest out there, and guess where all the hornets are going?” Thomas sighed and got ready for a fight.