With our plan set, we broke apart, Temp peeling off to wrangle Roomkeepers, Ed limping away to find Wraith, while Harper beelined for the laundromat, muttering about “industrial bleach” and “a hot shower.”

  Croc trotted after me like a lost puppy.

  “Want me to tag along with you, Dan?” the mimic asked, though its googly eyes kept drifting toward the arcade-turned-restaurant. “I’d love to hear more about this Van Helsing. You know I adore anything that involves vampires. Or waterslides. Or froyo. Does Van Helsing eat Froyo, Dan? Or go on waterslides?”

  I grinned at the absurdity of the question. “No,” I said, shaking my head, “but the movie’s still worth watching, despite the lack of froyo or waterslides. I’ll see if I can’t find a DvD copy for later. You’ll love it, though the vampires are less sparkly and more bloodthirsty. For now, though, why don’t you go check in on Pooh—maybe grab a celebration snack. I’ll come get you when it’s go-time.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Croc said, with a sigh of obvious relief. “I really would’ve come with you, Dan—we are best friends after all—but all that Kiosk stuff is really boring. And without that vampire in my belly, I am feeling a little peckish.” The mimic offered me a toothy grin. “I bet I can get Hugo to make some of those mystery meat sliders.”

  I blanched at the thought. “Sorry, bud, but I don’t eat anything advertised as mystery meat.”

  “But, Dan,” Croc said, “the ‘mystery’ is why they’re so delicious. Every meal is like a Secret Santa present slipped between two perfectly toasted buns. I bring Hugo corpses, then he grinds up all the left-over parts, so you never know what you’re gonna get! Sometimes it’s tongue. Other times it’s ground liver. I even got a whole finger inside a patty one time. The possibilities are endless.”

  “That is, by far, the worst sales pitch I’ve ever heard,” I replied. “But knock yourself out.”

  “Are you sure, Dan? Because I will come with you if you need moral support. I’ll even pretend to pay attention to whatever you’re doing.”

  “Naw, I got this one in the bag. Now get out of here. Those mystery meat sliders aren’t gonna eat themselves.” I paused. “Although this is the Backrooms, so maybe self-eating meat isn’t outside the realm of possibility.”

  Croc scampered off while I made my way toward the Kiosk Network Hub, which I’d relocated to the breakroom—right next to the security hut. The door was secured with a heavy duty padlock and there was a sign that read Authorized Personnel Only, though I doubted it would be much of a deterrent. Camo Joe and his two devil dog golems, on the other hand, were a helluva way to keep people from snooping around.

  I unlocked the deadbolt and slipped inside the Hub.

  It was a circular room, lit by a faint golden glow. The air hummed with mechanical life, the walls were plastered with digital displays, and a legion of screens flashed an endless stream of sales data and kiosk analytics. In the center of the room was the prized jewel—a squat mall kiosk, crafted from black metal polished to a slick sheen.

  Above it all hung a holographic map of glimmering lights.

  Interconnected nodes that showed every kiosk connected to the Network, though many of them had gone dark. The Flayed Monarch had been using the auction house as a supply depot for his troops, but my first official act as the Franchisor had been to put the kibosh on that shit.

  Unfortunately, they could still move through the physical network and there was nothing I could do to directly stop that outright. The kiosks didn’t have an Admittance Credentialing System like the store; so long as someone possessed a kiosk club card tattoo, they could roam the corridors freely.

  I’d wondered a lot about that since inheriting the Network. Many of the kiosks were claimed by Dwellers and, like every other part of the Backrooms, untold horrors had taken up residency within the connective tunnels that snaked between floors. One of the lingering questions that had continued to bother me was why the Dwellers didn’t immediately attack intruders? I knew from personal experience that the Kiosk Club Cards would keep them at bay, but that still didn’t explain why.

  But after examining the temporary tattoos for hours in the blistering heat of the Soul Forge, I finally had a reasonable explanation. The club cards were Uncommon Artifacts, and like most of the temporary tattoos that could be purchased through the Loot Arcades, they came with buffs that lasted as long as the tattoo stayed in place. When equipped, the club cards emitted a repellent pheromone that acted in a similar manner as my Fish in a Barrel title—actively driving away lower-level Dwellers.

  Essentially, the monstrous residents within the Network perceived those with club cards to be far more powerful than they were in reality. They stayed away, not out of some misguided loyalty, but based on pure survival instinct. But, oddly, the club card tattoos only affected Dwellers within the domain of the Network. It made me think there might be some way to manufacture a similar item that repelled all Dwellers. If that was the case, it might explain how some of the Safe Harbors on the lower levels maintained a degree of safety.

  As the new owner, I could generate more of the tattoos using the mainframe hub, but they weren’t regulated, and thousands were already listed for sale on the auction house. Still, even if I couldn’t completely stop the Syndicate or the Aspirants from traversing the Network, there were others ways I could dick ’em over.

  I’d already used the backend interface to spike the ambient mana density in several key sections of the physical Network—the same routes the Aspirants relied on to slip around unnoticed. Although I couldn’t actually control the Dwellers inside the vast tunnel system, the stronger the ambient mana density, the more powerful Dwellers it attracted. They were drawn to it like flies to shit. By now those corridors would be crawling with so many overpowered horrorshows that not even the Club Cards would be able to keep them away completely.

  And that was just one of the many perks I had at my disposal.

  In a lot of ways, the Network operated in a similar way to my store, only on a much larger scale. It was a living thing, not sentient but malleable. The Network had its own Mana reserves to draw on and, just like my store, it came loaded with custom features and a variety of upgrades that could be purchased by overcoming key thresholds.

  Like my store, the total Mana Pool was directly related to the overall size of the Network. The more connected kiosks and pathways, the more Mana the Network had to work with. But upgrade points were earned through two new key features: Trade Activity and Network Stability.

  According to the Kiosk Interface, Trade Activity was measured through “economic throughput,” which revolved around trade volume, fulfilled deliveries, and positive customer interactions. On the surface, those metrics seemed bizarre. Trade volume I could at least wrap my head around—apparently the Network gained experience from every sale, and the more crap you moved, the more XP the entire system raked in.

  The other two were a bit more counterintuitive.

  Initially, I’d assumed that deliveries were always fulfilled in a timely manner. After all, the auction house was basically a giant subspace storage unit, not so different from the personal storage all Delvers had access to. Just bigger. Much bigger. Customers could list items, auction items, or buy items, and once something was sold, the Network delivered it seamlessly and instantly through the bullshit power of spatial magic.

  Except it didn’t always deliver things seamlessly or instantly. As the Franchisor, one of the Teir One Upgrades was a Perk called System Latency.

  When activated, it allowed me to create delivery delays to or from targeted nodes. Items purchased through the Network would still show up… eventually. Sometimes hours, other times days. It all depended on how high the latency was set too.

  As a die-hard Amazon Prime subscriber, I knew the value of blazing fast delivery. Sure, it might’ve seemed like a minor inconvenience, but some things were time sensitive. If a customer was bleeding out on the floor and bought a badly needed Zima, only to receive it three hours later… There was a good chance they’d already be dead by the time it finally arrived.

  But System Latency was a double-edged sword.

  Not only did it burn Mana, but using it too much slowed trade volume across the entire Network, effectively decreasing the “successful delivery” stats and pissing off customers in the process. And, unlike Delvers, the Network’s overall “level” could degrade overtime. If trade volume dipped too much, so would the “active” experience, reducing the ability to enact Perks or earn additional Upgrades.

  It was a valuable weapon, but one I’d have to use with caution.

  Ledger Lock was another Tier-One Perk, which let me temporarily freeze outgoing payment transfers to selected Franchisee accounts for weeks or even months. Less drastic than pruning a Node but still damaging to the health of the Network. The Tariff function was my sole Tier-Two Perk, and it had all the finesse and subtly of a sledgehammer to the face. With it, I could artificially impose import and export tariffs on specific kiosk nodes as a giant, and very targeted middle finger to my enemies.

  A perfect way to financially kneecap the Syndicate

  All of them were effectively a way to punish “noncompliant” Franchisees.

  As for Network Stability, it measured how “synchronized” and healthy the Network’s spatial connections were. Of the two, it was arguably the more important stat when it came to earning additional perks.

  Pruning nodes was a necessary evil, but it tanked my overall Network Stability and gutted most of my economic firepower. While Trade Activity Perks let me mess with auction settings or slap on sanctions, Network Stability was the real backbone of the system—it allowed me to connect new nodes, issue Franchisee Opportunity Placards, reroute infrastructure, and tweak the ambient mana density in certain parts of the physical network.

  Most importantly, with the right Upgrades I could open spatial gateways between connected nodes. It was a painfully slow and Mana-intensive process, but one with massive potential. Unfortunately, that feature was locked. Once I cracked it, though, I’d be able to open portals to any lower floor I wanted, so long as there was a connected kiosk. Not much use to me now, but eventually, it’d be one hell of an ace up my sleeve.

  The Network wasn’t meant for war, not really, but if I’d learned anything as a contractor, it was that any tool could be a weapon in the right hands.

  At the same time, I needed to be careful.

  I felt like an EOD tech, snipping IED wires while praying this whole thing didn’t blow up in my face. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t carpet bomb the Syndicate, so my first task was figuring out how to hit ’em where it would hurt the most without inflicting massive damages to the Network as a whole.

  I pressed a palm against the black kiosk and the machine whirled to life, a series of ads flashing across my feed. Even as the new Franchisor, I still hadn’t figured out a way to get the ad-free version which irritated me to no end.

  All of the commercials looked like late night infomericals that had been filmed in the 90s by someone drunk on Vodka and taking copious amounts of LSD. The first ad was for Juice??. A hand poured what appeared to be orange juice from a glass carafe, except the pitcher never ran out no matter how long the disembodied hand poured.

  “It’s not water,” a cheery female voice said, “it’s not fruit, it’s Juice? That’s right, every bottle contains 7% mystery fluid and 93% curiosity. Juice? is a surprise waiting just for you! Try all of our compelling flavors, including: Orange-Adjacent, Bleachberry, Questionable Red, and Mystery Flesh! All Juice? products are now fortified with essential anxieties for added emotional depth!”

  A Buy It Now link flashed at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds, before the ad vanished, replaced by another one for Forever Meat?. A slab of raw, bloody beef wormed its way across a kitchen countertop and onto an unwashed serving platter covered in grime.

  “Looking for a meal to feed your whole extended family? Try Forever Meat, the meat that never stops growing! That’s right, our VRD lab-grown meat substitute regenerates faster than you can eat it. Slice, cook, consume, then watch it crawl right back onto your plate! Unlike other conventional bio-meat, Forever Meat loves to be eaten. It’s the perfect option for families, growing cults, eldritch banquets, and Bar Mitzvahs since Forever Meat is 92% Kosher Certified! Now available in ‘Human Texture’ and ‘Regretful Cow.’”

  That one was disturbing, but somehow I thought Croc would love it. Against my better judgment, I clicked the Buy button and forked over a single Silver Loot Token.

  The last ad was for Bucket of Teeth, which was exactly what it sounded like. Just a big ol’ bucket of teeth, all ‘Humanly, dentally sourced’—whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Although you could buy almost anything you wanted or needed through the Kiosk Network, that included a whole lot of weird, Progenerated stuff that absolutely no one, anywhere, ever needed. Although, the fact that I’d just purchased Forever Meat, said otherwise.

  Once the last ad finally faded, I selected the Access Network-side transaction data and analytics option from the menu.

  First, I sorted by Syndicate controlled nodes and whistled when the total blinked to life on one of the display screens. Theo might’ve been a treacherous douchebag with terrible fashion sense, but he hadn’t been lying. The Syndicate controlled just over six hundred nodes, and a lot of them were the sort of hubs that held the physical pathways together. If I pruned even a third of ’em, the Network would melt down.

  I hadn’t done all this just to destroy the prize I’d worked so hard to earn.

  But if they wanted to play dirty, I could play dirty.

  So next, I toggled the heatmap feature, searching for patterns and anomalies.

  Of the six-hundred odd nodes, thirty of them pulsed brighter than the rest, burning like miniature stars. I focused on those, pulling up key analytics stats: location, trade volume, turnover rate, shipment cadence, preferred product categories.

  Everything I could get my grubby little hands on.

  A third of those hotspots were on floor 54—often referred to as Studio 54—which was no real surprise, since Howler intel told me that was the beating heart of the Syndicate operations above floor 100. There was a similar concentration down on floor 154, another known Black Harbor outpost, while the rest were scattered across various floors, ranging from 28 all the way down to 313.

  I was guessing each of those corresponded to kiosks near Syndicate-aligned Safe Harbors—smug little outposts that made the blood-money run. Those were the arteries. The most vulnerable and strategically import points of their whole operation.

  Most interesting of all, however, was the single node located all the way down on floor 313. If the others burned like stars, that one was a supernova of trade activity. Untold riches flowed to and from the kiosk like the flood waters of the Nile Delta. High-tier Relics, Fabled Artifacts, medical supplies, food shipments, rare alchemic components, and more elixirs than I’d ever seen in my life.

  The analytics confirmed what my sources had already told me. Floor 313 was home to Nephraxis, the gilded city of the Lord of Coin. His base of operations.

  I was half tempted to prune the location just to be petty, but Temperance had specifically asked me to “avoid inciting a territorial war with another Sovereign.” Technically, I was already in a territorial war with the Lord of Coin, so I wouldn’t be breaking the letter of my promise, but I’d sure as shit be violating the spirit of it.

  I didn’t want to do that.

  Temp would be pissed, and I’d never hear the end of it.

  Besides, if that wasn’t reason enough, the node had enough vital connection points to make it look like a load-bearing support column. Not all nodes were created equal and obliterating that particular location probably wasn’t a smart play, even if it would be immensely satisfying to watch.

  For now, I’d leave it alone and wage war against the Lord of Coin’s proxies.

  First, I targeted two hotspots, one on floor 54 the other on 154, which had a large trade volume—but not a lot by way of spatial connections—then used the Network Stability feature to effortlessly prune both hubs, cutting them from the Network entirely. It would hurt the Syndicate far more than it would hurt me, and it would send a message they wouldn’t be able to ignore. I watched in grim satisfaction as they went dark on the Network map above.

  Then I targeted the remaining twenty-eight nodes and queued a rolling sequence of punitive measures.

  Rolling Ledger Locks staggered across the next two weeks, along with selective Latency pulses during peak trading hours, followed by steep Tariffs on their top five elixir SKUs. Then, I opened the auction house menu and scheduled a series of Flash Deals on every elixir I currently had in stock, undercutting Syndicate prices by a wide margin. Instead of the usual silver Loot Token per bottle, I priced them at a single copper and added a “buy four, get one” promo.

  The Syndicate prided itself on owning the potions trade. Not anymore.

  Of course, that also meant taking a long, hard look at how people actually paid for things across the Network.

  There were a few different options.

  Loot Tokens were the most common, universal form of payment, with Relic Shards coming in a distant second. Bartering was technically possible, but it was clunky as all hell—manual trades, endless haggling, waiting on someone to click “accept,” and just begging for someone to get scammed.

  But far-and-away, Loot Tokens were the de facto gold standard—and for a damned good reason. They were earned through blood, sweat, and trauma, and represented actual value pulled from the Backrooms’ pseudo-quantum loot system. They could be used to redeem actual prizes at Loot Arcades and could only be awarded by the Localized Administrators for completing bounties or accomplishing research objectives. And, once they were spent at an Arcade, they were reabsorbed into the system.

  That alone limited the quantity of Loot Tokens in circulation.

  Problem was, the Lord of Coin was an economic powerhouse who probably had a Scrooge McDuck sized vault of Loot Tokens at his disposal. Selective tariffs and routing latencies might put pressure on individual Delvers or even smaller Safe Harbors, but they weren’t going to do dick against a Backrooms billionaire.

  There was one other option I could try, though it was as risky as eating gas station sushi, something I’d done on more than one occasion. Both times, the end result was a night slumped over a toilet.

  As the newly minted Franchisor, I had the ultimate trump card—the ability to introduce additional forms of currency, which could be used as payment within the Network.

  But I wasn’t an economist. I’d barely passed high school algebra and knew as much about monetary policy as I did about the breeding habits of the elusive pink fairy armadillo.

  Hell, the last time I’d tried to balance a checkbook, the bank had sent me a sympathy card. That and a past due notice. I knew just enough about economics to be dangerous—like how printing money could tank mortgage rates, raise beer prices, or drop a tactical nuke on people’s retirement savings. Whole countries had collapsed because somebody in charge got cute with the money supply. Hyperinflation, bank runs, markets spiraling into the toilet—pick your poison.

  But I was at war, and the only tool I could hit ’em with was the kind of reckless monetary bullshit that gave economists stress hives.

  There was one idea, however, that had some merit.

  I’d already floated a rough version of it past a Howler named Maurice, who actually had been an economist before No-clipping from Westercon 52 back in 1998. He was smart. Soft-spoken. The kind of guy who considered his words carefully, deliberately, as though they held great weight and he couldn’t bear the thought of misspeaking. He also happened to have an immense Lego collection inside the little Quadcon he called home in Howlers Hold.

  I hadn’t told him everything, of course. Nice as he was, this was secret squirrel level intel, and I couldn’t risk the Syndicate catching wind of what I was planning before I was ready. But I’d shared just enough to gauge his reaction, and from the way his eyes lit up, the way he started muttering about “supply elasticity” and “controlled scarcity,” I knew the idea had legs. Short, stubby little legs, maybe, but legs all the same.

  My plan revolved around Croc Coins.

  Right now, they were basically glorified in-store credit—copper coins embossed with Croc’s goofy mug plastered across the front. With a little help from the folks at the Soul Forge, we were churning ’em out in record numbers and customers could use them for food, lodging, or whatever else we had on hand. But they weren’t real money. Not in the way Loot Tokens were. They had no intrinsic value outside the store itself.

  But with a little tinkering, I could change that and screw over the Lord of Coin and the Black Harbor Syndicate while I was at it.

  I’d briefly toyed with the idea of introducing them as a way to compete with Loot Tokens directly, but Maurice had shot that down before I could even finish the sentence.

  “No,” he’d said gently, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose while a half-built Lego cathedral loomed between us. “That’s not competition, Dan. That’s monetary suicide.”

  He broke it down for me shotgun style, and I quickly realized just how right he was.

  Right now, we’d minted just under 4,000 Croc Coins in total. That seemed like a lot, but against the Lord of Coin’s vast hoard of wealth it probably wasn’t even a drop in the bucket. I’d need to mint hundreds of thousands of coins to make them a viable alternative, and flooding the market like that would destabilize things in ways I couldn’t even begin to predict. Even Maurice had been unsure what the ramifications might be, though he assured me the fallout would be immense. Probably catastrophic.

  Worse, the Lord of Coin would still be able to buy the coins up and use them across the Network, which could screw me in the long haul.

  What I really needed was a way to undercut the Lord of Coin’s biggest advantage: his obscene piles of money. I couldn’t prevent the Network from accepting Loot Tokens altogether—that would make the Network as useless as an ejection set on a helicopter—but there was something else I could do… Something sneaky. Something my bank had done to me more times than I could count on both hands.

  Transaction Fees.

  As the Franchisor, I collected a fee from the seller’s end for every single transaction that occurred across the entirety of the Network. Sell a potion, pay the toll. A Relic? Pay the toll. A gas-station hotdog? Yep, you guessed it, pay the toll. Every time a transaction happened, my outstretched hand was there to get my cut. I could set how high or low that fee was, but more importantly, I could set rules for how those fees needed to be paid.

  After chatting with the Howler, it was obvious to me that Croc Coins would never replace Loot Tokens, but I could use the back-end fee structure to create an artificial chokepoint. Even if the Lord of Coin and his goons in the Syndicate had millions sitting in reserve, they wouldn’t be able to do jack shit if they couldn’t pay the toll.

  All that money would be effectively useless, at least so far as the Network was concerned.

  Maurice had been dubious about this scheme, too. He’d sat there in his little shipping container-turned house, absently snapping Lego bricks together, his brow furrowing ever deeper while I gave him a broad overview of my theoretical plan.

  “That’s… less catastrophic,” he’d admitted, tilting his head to one side. “But only slightly. It’s still liable to explode. But it’ll be a controlled demolition instead of a nuclear event.”

  I consider that high praise, coming from someone like him. In my mind, it was basically a greenlight.

  I toggled through the Kiosk backend until I found the setting I needed, then added Croc Coins as an approved form of currency and manually adjusted the fee payment settings.

  The fee on every transaction was tiny, but if you wanted to sell something through a Kiosk terminal—anywhere from Floor 1 down to Floor 313—you’d need Croc Coins to do it. Period. No exceptions. No workarounds. Not even the Lord of Coin could weasel his way out of that. And since there were currently zero Croc Coins in circulation, that meant the moment I flipped this switch the entire Network would effectively grind to a standstill.

  No fees paid. No transactions processed. The trade volume would flatline.

  It was a terrifying thought.

  I was about to shut down the entire multi-floor economy.

  At least temporarily.

  But if I played it smart—if I controlled the rollout—then it could shift the balance of power in my favor. In theory, demand for Croc Coins would spike instantly and I was the only one who could supply ’em. People would list items for sale in Croc Coins just to get their hands on some. And the Syndicate? They’d be forced to do the same. Their mountains of wealth didn’t mean shit if they couldn’t pay the fee that let ’em use the Network.

  Of course, there were potential pitfalls.

  Too few Croc Coins in circulation and the market would freeze forever. Too many and the price would crater and the whole plan would collapse under its own weight. And if transaction volume stalled for too long, then customers would get pissed and start looking for off-Network alternatives—black markets, smugglers, hand-delivered shipments, whatever kept the lights on.

  But if I got the timing right…

  If I injected just enough Croc Coins to get the gears turning again…

  Then I could effectively force the entire Backrooms economy to buy tokens directly from me at whatever price I damn well pleased.

  I didn’t love the idea of creating a bottleneck, especially one that could slam the brakes on trade, but long-term? It could cripple the Lord of Coin’s ability to outflank me.

  He’d be forced to buy Croc Coins.

  He’d be forced to rely on me.

  And every single Croc Coin that changed hands would be like reading a sign that said “Dan owns your ass” in fine print.

  I was sure he’d figure out a way to fight back eventually, but hopefully by the time he did, I could get our hostages back and bury the Syndicate.

  Still, I hesitated. This was big. Maybe not the nuclear option, but pretty damned close. But if the Syndicate wasn’t willing to play ball, what other choice did I have? I’d learned a new expression from an Australian Delver that I thought fit this situation pretty damned well—“We’re not here to fuck spiders.” Or, in American parlance, it was time to shit or get off the pot.

  I took a deep breath, calming the tremors in my hands, and hit ACTIVATE.

  The Kiosk whirred to life as new commands wrote themselves across the walls in gold fire.

  [NEW CURRENCY TYPE REGISTERED: CROC COINS]

  [ALL TRANSACTION FEES MUST BE PAID IN: CROC COINS]

  [SUPPLY: MANUALLY MINTED ONLY]

  [WARNING: TRADE VOLUME MAY TEMPORARILY COLLAPSE. TRY NOT TO PANIC.]

  My stomach knotted as the changes went live—not fear, not excitement, but that queasy anticipation right before stepping onto a stage to give a presentation you hadn’t really prepared for.

  This felt dangerous. But it also felt right.

  A Research Achievement blinked to life a moment later, dragging me from my thoughts.

  Monetary Menace

  You’ve decided that the best way to solve your problems is by inventing a brand-new currency and injecting it directly into a fragile, nightmare-powered economy. Bold move, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for ’em.

  Is this scheme deranged? Yeah, maybe. Inspired? Jury’s still out. But it’s definitely a choice that you made. It’s not a choice I would’ve made, but you do you, boo. By instituting Croc Coins as a transaction fee currency across the Kiosk Network, you have either laid the foundation for unprecedented financial stability… or kicked over a rickety Jenga tower made entirely of debt, greed, and financial hubris.

  Economists everywhere are pulling their hair out. The Syndicate is, no doubt, sweating literal blood. Legions of kiosk owners and shoppers everywhere are surely cursing your name and praying for your untimely, and painful—don’t forget painful—demise. Whether this turns you into a visionary market architect or the idiot who accidentally caused hyperinflation in an extradimensional hellscape remains to be seen. History will remember you. Possibly as a cautionary tale.

  Reward: What, is being an economic puppet master not good enough for you? This is the kind of biblical greed that will get you smote sooner rather than later.

  Title: Monetary Menace (E) – Gain .01 Experience for every transaction made through the Kiosk Network while under your control.

  The Achievement was belittling at best and demeaning at worst, and it didn’t come with a Reward, but my eyes bulged when I read over the title. Fractional Experience for every transaction made across the Network? That seemed busted as hell. I squinted and did a little quick mental math, my good mood souring slightly. It really wasn’t much—only a hundred extra Experience for every ten-thousand transactions.

  But it was an evolving title.

  Which meant it had the potential to get better over time. That alone made it a reward worth far more than any amount of Loot Tokens, assuming I stuck with it.

  With a grin on my face, I waved away the notice, but then a new ping lit up my console—urgent, encrypted, and stamped with a seal I hadn’t seen before. A golden scale, perfectly balanced. This one wasn’t from my Localized Administrator.

  The message preview scrolled across the holo display, sending shivers up my spine.

  — LORD OF COIN —

  You are playing with fire. I’m going to burn you with it…

  I just stared at the words for a long moment, then found myself laughing.

  Yeah, Temp definitely wasn’t gonna be happy. But so what? Temp was never happy.

  I, on the other hand, felt surprisingly great.

  Overpowered assholes had been pushing me around since the moment I Noclipped. It was nice to finally have enough power to push back. From this point on, every purchase, every trade, every little deal on every dusty floor of this hellscape would run through me. The Lord of Coin was watching, but I didn’t care.

  He might run commerce, but now I ran the currency.

  And all of his lackeys would soon feel the burn.