Dungeon Core Online 67 Chapter 67

James sighed as he floated away, looking down at his hard work. After Rue had left him, he had done his best to fully realize what the best options would be for his NPCs on his floor. He figured, since he was allowed five NPCs, and there were five NPC types, it would be logical to make one of each.

That had been the easy part.

It seemed the developers had added in quite a few options to toy around with for the NPCs, and the implications of adding in the NPCs, and their categories, made the choice extremely difficult. James had spent more time than he would like to admit, in fact, trying to decide what type of Training NPC he wanted to add into the floor. Especially given his final choice.

"Shit." James mumbled as he glanced at the time. Apparently, planning out his NPCs, summoning them, and setting everything up, had sucked away nearly 5 hours of his day. Sure, that may not seem too terrible, but he already knew he was likely going to spend a good amount of time on the other option, World Boss, before he even got around to upgrading his second floor in preparation for Z's raid group.

"All finished?" Rue's voice yanked him from his mulling's and made him let out a slight scream. She had literally just been down…

Slowly, James glanced down at the racetrack, where a human sized Rue form was riding around, and then turned to look at the Rue behind him. Her eyes shown with amusement, full of typical Rue mischief.

"The hell?"

He shot a glance once more down to Rue's human sized doppelganger, and back to her. Was his brain injury coming back to him in game? That shouldn't be possible… plus, Z had assured him he was alright to dive into the game tonight. Though, he would have anyways…

"Oh, I got bored of racing around the time you finished working on your Training NPC." She yawned and stretched her arms, as if waking from a cat nap. "Nice choice by the way." She let out a melodic laugh.

"Thanks." James said slowly, his mind still trying to figure out what was going on. You would think, after two weeks of in game time, he would have been getting used to her. But noooo, now she went and pulled another new stunt. James was starting to wonder if she was purposefully acting out, following Xander's last chat with the duo.

"You're welcome." She beamed. "Though, do you really think they are going to use it?"

"Oh, trust me, they will." James knew gamers. James knew MMO gamers. That was why his training NPC had been so tough. Since he had only planned to make a single training related NPC, he had realized, looking at the options, there was going to be trouble. There were training NPCs for classes and stats. Limiting himself to just one, meant he would be alienating a large part of the player base, regardless of what he chose.

There was, however, a single option that every player in DCO could take part of. Pet training. He had already seen players battling their pets against one another's in the dungeon, and he could guess they were doing the same outside. The pets not only brought skills and abilities to the table, albeit small ones, for PvE events, but also allowed players a PvP aspect, in the form of Pokémon esq battles. Putting in a pet trainer, therefore, meant he would have a trainer every player could use. It also meant James may have upped the cost of the trainer's tiers a little more. He wasn't about to turn down such an easy way to profit.

"Whatever you say, oh mighty Glyax." She shot him a wink, which disappeared mid yawn.

"So, are you going to explain what's going on?" Had she been sleeping? She was definitely acting like she had been napping.

"What do you mean?" She grinned, the grin growing wider as he sighed and pointed a tentacle down to the Rue that was racing around the track.

"I'm pretty sure you don't have a twin."

Her eyes flashed mischievously. "Are you into twins? I could totally have a twin." She snapped her fingers, and the Rue on the dicken disappeared, and a new one reappeared beside her, sharing her trademark mischievous smile.

"What do you say Glyax? Is this better?" The two spoke in unison, each gliding towards either side of him, fingers playing gently with his tentacles. His mind nearly broke right there.

"No….nope. Come on Rue, we have work to do." He fought the urges of his teenage mind, pulling his tentacles away from the duo, doing his best to harden his voice.

The mirror images cast him a disappointed look, before laughing merrily, as the doppelganger disappeared from sight.

"Fine, maybe later." The pixie floated back in front of James and summoned her hot chocolate. Thank the gods she couldn't drink as well… James would have been a goner.

"So?"

"So?" She took a sip, and then reacted as if just remembering their conversation. Yup, she was definitely acting out today. "Oh, right. Well, after I got bored of dicken racing, I had thought about joining you. However, you seemed to be really deep in thought, and were mentioning something about Pokémon and IVs to yourself. I didn't want to distract you, so I made a clone of myself, to keep racing. Then, I went invisible, and took a nap." She waved a hand, and completely disappeared from his sight, leaving a floating cup of hot chocolate where she had been. A moment later, she reappeared.

"Of course, you can go invisible and make copies of yourself…" James muttered to himself. Her father had given the AI literally every freaking tool and ability that they could possibly think of, hadn't they? He must really like Anime….

"I can do a lot of things." She purred, but James held up a tentacle to stop her.

"I'm sure you can Rue. But not right now." The pixie pouted, crossing her arms.

"Why not."

"Because, we have some important tasks to do, and I'm running out of time." He pulled up his screen, moving over to the World Boss tab.

"The only other new feature you have is World Boss. And you have 19 hours left. Eleven if you plan to sleep. That means we have some time to goof off." James remembered she was stuck in the game while he was out and about in the real world. She must really have gotten lonely without him. Part of him wanted to goof off with her, but that could come a little later. World Bosses, and foiling Z's raid in an epic manner, came first.

"Trust me Rue, I've got plans for things we can do together a little later on." Namely, Supernatural binge watching, but hey, he was sure they could think of others. "But, for right now, I really need to focus."

"Fine." She started to float away, dejectedly, like a child pouting. His heart nearly broke. Nearly.

"You want to help with my World Boss?" He called after her, his tentacle hovering over the button. He was sure he could craft the World Boss all by himself. But he really did feel bad for the pixie. For every 9 days' worth of immersion time, she spent 15 days of immersion time alone. It couldn't hurt to have her help, and besides, she had been quite valuable in the past, even if distracting. And, what's more, she was his only ally against Xander and the tyrannical dev team. Plus, apparently James's parents and her father knew each other, so he saw no reason why they couldn't work together.

Besides, what's the worst that could happen?

Chapter end