The XP: Chapter 19

The tournament started with two million nine hundred ninety four thousand six hundred and eight players making up five hundred twenty four thousand two hundred and eighty eight teams. With each team fighting a match a day the first week of fights saw the field reduced to thirty two thousand seven hundred sixty eight teams. Each member of each team got five thousand gold per victory.

So by Friday Trart had more money than he had ever seen in game, and he went a little nuts.

The rest of The Almost Entirely Awesome Adventures of the End of the World Club were at the closest bar to the area celebrating the return of Torcano. He had maxed out his Gunslinger and was going to take The Matriarch’s place in the rest of the matches.

The Matriarch raised her glass in a toast “To Torcano, for what has to be the slowest ‘quick’ grind of a toon I’ve ever seen.” She said with a smile as everyone else raised their glasses.

Torcano raised his glass as he answered. “What can I say, I was not prepared for the number of adoring fans I made while I was a GM that would be dedicated to finding and expressing their joy to me that I am now a regular player.” He explained.

Blackout pointed at Torcano, waving his finger sarcastically. “That’s code for laziness, pure and simple.” He accused with a smile on his face.

Torcano nodded swallowing another drink. “You got me. I had three squares a day, slept eight hours a night, and took long luxurious bubble baths every night. It was glorious.” He said unable to keep from laughing at himself.

Trart blew into the bar in a whirlwind, grabbed an empty seat from a different table and sat with the group at their table. “Hey Toracano, glad your back. What’s on my mind? Glad you asked, who wants to lend me six thousand gold? A thousand from each of you? That’s far to kind, I really appreciate this, you won’t regret it, in fact this is going to be one of the best things you or anyone else will ever see in game. I’ll take that money now.” He held out his hand and looked around the table. He got nothing but blank stares in response.

Bob was the first to reply out loud. “You have at least thirty five thousand in your own account, what could you possibly be buying that you need an extra six?” She asked in shock.

Trart couldn’t contain the smile on his face. “There’s a junk dealer that has four hundred full stacks of Winter Man Detector Bombs for sale for forty two thousand gold. I’m six short.” He was practically vibrating and the sentence came out less like normal speech and more like a single word.

There was silence around the table until Blackout shrugged. “Ok that is pretty cool. You owe me.” He replied transferring a thousand gold into Trart’s account.

The Matriarch did some quick math in her head. “What do you need a hundred thousand bombs for?” She asked.

Trart looked around the room and seeing no other players closed still leaned in. “Blackout did this thing at Christmas where he mined the front entrance to a dungeon with these bombs and then used the remote control car toy to pull agro on everything in the dungeon to effortlessly collect an entire dungeon worth of loot.” He explained

The matriarch shook her head. “Yeah but the car doesn’t pull agro anymore they fixed that the day after Christmas.” She said.

Trart nodded. “Right but the Hall of the Gods doesn’t fill with mobs until you activate the summoning stone. So we can mine the entire hall with just enough mines to do lethal damage to everything the second they get summoned in.” He countered.

Bob’s eyes lit up. “Jesus Trart a full clear of the Hall of the Gods would net easily five hundred thousand gold in loot.” She was sold now.

Trart nodded. “Yeah, I did the damage math. A hundred thousand bombs placed correctly is enough to complete FOUR full clears of the hall.” He sat back with a cocky smile on his face.

Everyone else scrambled to transfer the money into his account.