The search continued much like an Easter egg hunt. Around noon, Flor received a new notification.

  Congratulations! You have unlocked the Interface 3!

  Alastair - Party: Yes! Well done, team! Did everyone get that or do we need to hunt down a few more?

  Galoots - Party: I might need one or two more.

  Sparks - Party: I’m a bit shy.

  Alastair - Party: Okay, so we’ll pick up cat hunting after lunch? Let’s meet in the kitchen. If anyone sees Maelstrom, we can now add her to the party.

  Flor closed the party chat without seeing if anyone replied. What would they do after this? Alastair planned to storm into the Keep, and while Flor wanted to be done with this stupid game, she didn’t think they were any better off than they were yesterday. Fortunately, the aches, be they phantom or real, had faded with the activity of cat hunting. Well, it didn’t matter what the team wanted. She would push forward and get out of this game one way or another. Preferable tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. But soon. So soon. {The cats gathered at the Monastery, to this point, include Al, Zinc, Steel, Iron, Copper, Brass, Bronze, Mangum, Nickel, Lead, Titus, Tungs, Silver, Gold, Chrome, Barry, and Cadmium. Each of these cats came with the same five additional footnotes, but I’ve removed them so that you, the reader, don’t have to suffer.}

  The group joined the lunch queue for more bread and beer. Flor said a silent thanks that she hadn’t started here, otherwise she might find a way to gain weight in the real world from eating and drinking so many carbohydrates. As they gathered their food and drink, they went to a table. Flor sat as far away from Alastair as she could - there wasn’t any reason to unnecessarily aggravate herself, and she still hoped that once they were out of this game her aversion to him would disappear entirely.

  Alastair said, “I guess you all wonder why I’ve asked you here.” It wasn’t endearing. But, Flor realized, maybe her time with Amets was helping, because she wasn’t completely annoyed at him right now.

  “Ha, that’s great, Nova. Get to it,” said Maelstrom. Flor was still unconvinced that she should trust her.

  Sparks and Galoots both smiled, and Flor felt fortunate they didn’t look at her, lest they see the scowl on her face.

  “So, I think we can get a couple more cats, then we need to work on maximizing our equipment layout. We’re all partied up, but what else will we need to complete an assault on the keep?”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Guns. Lots of guns,” said Galoots.

  “Matrix quotes aside…wait. Everyone here gets Matrix quotes, right? Well, anyway, Sparks, we should probably get you to level three. Then how do we most efficiently maximize our equipment? Mal, you’ve been at it the longest? What are your thoughts?”

  Flor glanced at Maelstrom, who seemed overly tired. She pulled her hands up, “It’s the dungeons. That’s the way to make money. Well, using the loot to make items that sell.”

  “How far up have you gone?”

  “Solo? Part of the way through four. With a well-adjusted party, which this is not, we might be able to get through six, though. Probably not through seven. This means we’re either back to the city or the keep. They are the only locations with a dungeon that deep. I think. I haven’t explored them all.”

  “Galoots, there is a dungeon here, right?”

  Galoots looked up from her beer. “I mean, it’s not much of a dungeon. But you enter combat mode when you engage the yeasts in the brewery.”

  “Huh. So, you fight the beer?”

  “Not really. It’s just like a set of rooms that the yeast attacks, and they die pretty easily. There isn’t loot, although I’ve found a coin when I wandered through those rooms for a change of scenery.”

  “We should probably test our multi-person combat dynamics, regardless. Then, I want an analysis. Is it better to split the party into two groups or stay the same size?”

  Flor thought about it for a moment. That was a reasonable analysis question, although without good answers. She was saved by Sparks, though, who said, “Based on what we’ve seen, the loot drops increase the further you get. So the analysis is whether you get more from a deeper dive versus a split party. It’s probably a mixed bag. I don’t think we have enough data for a full analysis.” {Arithmetically, the benefit is to a deeper dive rather than a split party. There. I’ve done the maths so you don’t have to.}

  Flor knew Alastair liked to be contrary, so she was surprised when he said, “Fine, let’s do a deep dive. We’ll avoid deaths, so only go through level six. Can we repeat the run? I mean, what’s the reset timer?”

  Everyone looked around them, as if curious about the answer.

  “So we don’t know. I guess that’s the next question. Do we drive at this thing until we exhaust the resources?”

  Sparks said, “What else is there for it?”

  “Okay, let’s go test run fighting some beer yeast.”

  An amount of time had passed. The group had petted more cats, getting Sparks and Galoots to the level 3 Interface. Flor was disappointed that she hadn’t found more, although she spent some time in her interface and now knew exactly how many cats remained in the Monastery. And in all the other locations. She saw a composite picture of things left to accomplish: the beasts left to slay; the dungeons left to explore; the items to allow her to access the endgame; the spaces for the gear that would make her fearsome; the things she needed to accomplish to change her title; the affinity of every NPC toward her. And a large number at the bottom middle, blood red, displaying how much she had accomplished. And a new feeling swept over her: incompleteness.

  The number, almost pulsing, was well under 50 percent.

  Surely Flor had suffered through this nightmare game long enough to be more toward complete than not. It was enough to make her frustrated, but not mad. And it was one more reason to get out of her as quickly as possible.