Sell you a Bridge chapter 106

Unnamed Lair Island October 24th 2010 12:00 AM EDT

The  extra two hundred points I felt blaze through me was a nice boost to an  already portentous moment as I gaped at the new base screen. I had to  admit, game elements of the email aside I didn't expect...this. I mean,  of course it cost points, but still this was unbelievably cool. I walked  into the castle, feet echoing on the stone floor and the others  followed, clearly clued in to my state of distraction and deciding to  leave me alone as they split off to explore in groups of two to check  out our new place.

Zee wandered  off in one direction, with Jim following behind as per her magical oath,  and Artemis and Reggie wandered the other way. Between her attack power  and his mobility they should be safe enough even if the place wasn't  safe, which I knew it was because my power would have told me if we had  to clear it out or something. Even run down and crumbling this place was  something else to look at, and I had to admit it had a sort of dark  majesty. As much as I could stare at my first lair for hours and not get  sick of it though, I had a menu to check out.

I  took another look at the window I'd seen, I knew I could call it back  by concentrating on the orb, which was the focus for the entire island. Welcome Future Lord of Darkness! You have entered your villainous lair, would you like to see your list of available upgrades? I grinned. Fuck yes I wanted to see my list of available upgrades. I concentrated again and a new window popped up. Please select a category! Defenses, Security, Amenities, Structure, Minions, Misc. Each category had a sort of impression in my mind that let me know what they did, and each one was fucking amazing.

Defenses  was obvious, that was protection from outside or hostile forces. My  current concealments technically counted as defenses and were without a  doubt the most powerful thing in lair. In the email it implied the lair  was used but that its concealments worked perfectly, which was why I  bought it. Apparently that meant literally everything else was fucking  busted, but honestly I almost preferred that because it meant I could  rebuild from the ground up. Defenses would be a heavy priority going  forward, real ones, not just cloaking tech and spells.

Security  was the flip side of defenses, and could technically be described as  the same thing. It was the offense to go with the defense. Cannon  emplacements, killing arrays, fucking guard alligators, anything that  could be considered offensive that wasn't literally sapient was on the  list of security upgrades. Some of them were so absurdly over the top  and expensive that I couldn't imagine ever getting them, running into  the millions, while some were pricey but seemingly within reach if I  save for a while.

Structure  was the obvious, the building itself, and mostly focused on materials,  design, and some weird and useful workshops and rooms I could buy that  would boost my own and my friends abilities. Like a training dojo where  training skills worked better, a forge that boosted the power of magic  items, and an explosives workshop where products were more stable and  produced a bigger boom. Each room came with materials that would restock  regularly and could be upgraded and I tried not to squeal like a little  kid at the thought of the things Artemis and Reggie could make.

Amenities  was a weird one. Five star restaurants, bowling lanes, theaters, a  fucking water park, there was some insane stuff on there, but it was the  first section where I saw a requirement for another section for most of  them, which was Minions. Minions could be anything apparently. I could  get myself a master alchemist or a demolitions expert, a gourmet chef or  a torturer. There were options for dominatrixes and mistresses and  manservants and butlers. Bodyguards were a dime a dozen, some with  amazing races or species or unbelievable meta powers, but almost all the  powerful ones were insanely expensive.

Finally,  last and seemingly least was misc. Misc was weird random stuff.  Cleaning supplies, cooking utensils, a lot of the stuff or materials you  could buy for the rooms but cheaper and without the room attached.  Personal items were on there too, weapons and gear that would be  upgrades to my current stuff or weirder more sciency things like powered  armor and personal shield devices. Between all five categories there  was pretty much anything I could ask for. I was spoiled for choice.  Except for one important detail. As was always the case with my power,  every single thing here cost points. Most of the useful things cost  exorbitant amounts of them too.

I  dragged my eyes away from my bases defenses and the powerful servants I  could call up and forced myself to prioritize. This place was busted as  fuck and I needed to fix it. I clicked on structure, and then checked  the repair options. Repair Doomhollow Hall? Tier 6 material,  Igneous Nightstone required, total repair cost, 50,000,000 points.  Downgrade materials? I winced. Going by the level of the  concealments I'd been kind of afraid of that. This place had been pretty  fucking high level before it got wrecked apparently.

I sighed and selected downgrade material. Repair  Doomhollow Hall? Material downgrade to Tier 3 Shadowspawn Marble. Total  repair cost 50,000 points. Cannibalize Igneous Nightstone remnants for  one time 90% discount? That...seemed like it might be a really  big mistake honestly. Going by the point value I was probably massively  losing out, but considering this entire island cost me five thousand I  was guessing the fifty grand castle would be plenty amazing, even if I  had to give up a bunch of rocks that were probably too powerful for me  to even break.

I  sighed deeply and confirmed the repair. The orb flashed into existence  floating over my palm and the purple glow started spread. It returned to  the full brightness of when I got it, then brightened more, with the  power overflowing the crystal and pouring out into the stone like liquid  as it began to shine. The purple glow spread through the entire castle,  burning into the rock and increasing as it went until the entire  fucking building was blinding in its intensity. It got so bright I  couldn't even fucking see and then, suddenly, it went out.

When  the brilliance faded I was staring at a real, true blue, castle. A  fully repaired and refurnished castle with amazingly tasteful decor. The  black stone of the castle, now a polished smooth black marble with  veins of white shone under a clean, white flame from black wall sconces  with torches in them. The floor was the same polished marble along the  edges but with long plush red black carpets with white trim lining most  of the floors. I had to hold myself back from literally squealing with  delight, even as I felt the five hundred points I'd shown up with empty,  leaving me two hundred left.

I  was kind of dumbstruck by the whole thing, but not nearly as much as  the others, who came barreling back the way they'd gone to glare at me.  Well, all except Zee, who straight up hurled herself into my arms  babbling excitedly. "Oh my gods that was amazing baby! What did you do?  The whole place was destroyed and it got completely restored. The  material seems different though, I could feel the power in the old  place, this seems orders of magnitude less potent. How did it work? Can  you get it back to the way it was before?" She was gleeful at the  changes and I didn't blame her, this was awesome.

I  leaned down to kiss her to stop her endless questions. "Calm down. It  was messed up but there was a repair mechanic in the email I guess. It  costs points to work but I was able to get a big discount by using up  the energy from the much more powerful stone apparently. There's a bunch  of other stuff I can do too but it's all crazy expensive." I set her  down. "Now why don't I fill you in on all the options and you can help  me plan out what we're going to do with this place. I literally can't  imagine how useful it could be if we got it outfitted to a decent  level." This whole place was a fucking treasure trove of potential  assets.

I  filled them all in on how the place worked, since Jim and Reggie knew  the truth now and my mentor was probably in the best position to advise  me on how to apply the improvements. I had no illusions about how  quickly that would happen of course, even once I got to level fifty I'd  be rocking four hundred points a day, most of the potent upgrades cost  in the tens of thousands. Plus all the rooms and Amenities were Tiered  like the stones of the Structure were when I went back to look.

Every  tier seemed to be a qualitative increase in power and in price. I had  no clue what a Tier 2 restaurant would give me that a Tier 1 wouldn't  aside from probably better tasting food. Some of the Amenities didn't  cost much more up a Tier, and it seemed like the only difference for  things like the bowling lane was the materials involved in the  construction, which didn't really have too much of an impact. The  workshops on the other hand scaled like crazy price wise and each Tier  up seemed like it represented a new peak of potential. Zee was nearly  salivating as some of the casting rooms and even Reggie was excited  about the explosives workshop.

Jim  pretty much nixed the rooms as a first purchase. "I respect the desire  to improve, and I agree your choice for your first upgrade was well  spent, but you'll need to ration your points with your current income.  Proper defenses for the island should be your primary purchase. I know  it's tempting to ignore them because we're so well concealed but things  have a way of going wrong in the worst ways. We need to be prepared in  case of any incidents, and once the protections are out of the way we  can move on to improvements both for ourselves and the premises."

As  much as I wanted to argue he wasn't wrong. This was Gotham, or close  enough to it, and shit went wrong all the time. We needed to be  prepared. On that note though I pulled up another option. "I was  thinking these would be first actually." Because of the focus I was able  to share windows so I pushed them over to share them with my friends. Base  to base teleportation pads. Allows instantaneous transport to and from  the lair and a secondary location. White list permissions required for  non host use. 1000 points. Those were a bit pricey but they seemed pretty much perfect for our needs.

Jim  nodded. "Yes I could see the utility. I take it the white list  mentioned is a list of people you verify for the use of these devices?"  At my nod he looked pleased. "I'll have to check and make sure they work  securely, I can always add protections of my own, but that seems like  an admirable start. Of course it will take quite some time to save up  for the few of these we need, but depending how secure and well hidden  they are we may be able to add them to locations like your school for  easy travel and as an escape option." I hadn't even considered that but  it was a great idea. With a grin I started going into some other ideas  and we began planning out how to develop the base long term. I had  always loved base building games. This was going to be so much fun.