Dickhead directed me to a medium-sized, deep-blue, hollowed-out mushroom hut on the other side of town. Apparently, that’s where Dr. Patchwork had set up shop.

  Most of the other medical NPCs in town specialized in fungal remedies, which all fell under infections, and my Uncirculated trait made me immune to them.

  The entrance to the mycelial building had a tendrilled curtain for a door. Long and thin, they gave off a bioluminescent white glow. As I approached, they parted on their own, going from eerily pretty to pretty creepy in an instant.

  Inside, I found an empty waiting room. From the ribbed walls sprouted mushroom caps in a range of sizes. The small, medium, and large mushrooms were presumably seats to accommodate most players.

  A skeleton held together by a purple fungus greeted me as I approached what I assumed to be a reception desk made of driftwood. A spiderweb of mycelial roots held the planks together.

  “I’m looking for Dr. Patchwork,” I said.

  “First Patient,” a voice said from inside my damn chest.

  I stepped back, re-examining the room for threats.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Sporespeech,” the voice echoed in my chest again.

  It was weird, and I didn’t like it one franking bit. I’d rather talk to Dickhead at this point.

  “Dick, I’m talking to a creepy skeleton that’s using me as a goddamn walkie-talkie. What the hell is going on?”

  “That’s a fungalshade. You can think of it like a hermit crab. The fungus is the crab, and the skeleton is just how it gets around. Also, you remember those spores you breathed in at the hatch?”

  “What about them?”

  “Joined,” my stupid chest said.

  I closed my eyes and took a slow breath. I knew I didn’t need to breathe anymore, but it still helped me calm down.

  “Dick?” I prompted.

  He was stalling, we both knew it.

  “You’ve, uh… joined their network. The spores living inside your lungs allow you to communicate with sentient mycelial-based creatures. Technically non-sentient ones too, but it’ll be more vibes and fewer words.”

  “Shouldn’t I be immune to infections?”

  “The spores inhabit you. They aren’t co-opting your cells to reproduce.”

  Stupidly, that made sense. I didn’t want to ask my next question but needed to know the answer either way.

  “Am I going to sprout… I don’t know, cordyceps or some other fungal shit?” I wasn’t interested in being The First of Us.

  “No, nothing like that. The spores just allow you to communicate; they’re harmless otherwise.”

  I let out my held breath. “Thank God.”

  “Ready,” the fungalshade said via my chest. He lifted his skeleton arm and swung it over to another tendrilled door.

  “Finally.” I left the receptionist and headed for the exam room.

  Dr. Patchwork was a frankenbeast, a mishmash of sewn-together corpse parts. It made sense why Dickhead sent me here.

  “Have a seat,” the doctor said with a dry, raspy voice.

  I didn’t really care how the guy sounded, as long as he used his own voice and not me to say it.

  A puff of spores spurted out as I sat on the cap of the mushroom seat. It was the motivation I needed to stop breathing. I held my breath.

  The doctor approached, smelling like he’d just dumped a gallon of Axe Black Vanilla body spray on himself. Instead of a white lab coat, he wore a leather apron. I could see the leather stitches used to hold his bare arms, shoulders, and chest together. They looked aged but clean. All of his insides stayed inside, and that was good enough for me.

  After giving me a quick once-over with his jaundiced eyes, he asked, “Just the missing limb?”

  I pulled my arm out of my inventory and slapped it down on the exam table on my right. Calling it an exam table might have been a stretch. It was more of a shelf growing out of the wall, like an upside-down mushroom cap. The surface was relatively flat, made up of tightly compressed gills.

  “You saved the limb,” he said, pointing to my arm. He picked it up, rotating it to get a good look at the exposed joint. “Smart. Aftermarket parts can get expensive. That’ll be a hundred gold.”

  I laughed at him. “I’m not paying you just to look at it. You’ve got to reattach the damn thing first.”

  He pointed to a sign on the wall that read, “Payment Required Before Treatment.”

  Not sure how I missed the stupid sign. It was the only non-mushroomy thing in this dump. Even the lights on the ceiling were just bioluminescent goo-filled tubes. At least they didn’t have that grating fluorescent hum. That shit was annoying.

  A Trade Menu popped up in my vision. It broke down the transaction into a couple of sections: buying and selling. Selecting the item expanded the menu and the math.

  I could buy items for 100% of their base value, minus my Bartering skill discount. And I could sell items for 10% of their base value, plus my Bartering skill bonus. Since I didn’t have any Bartering skills, the arm reattachment would cost me 100 gold.

  Like most of the menus, at the bottom there were a couple options. Accept and Cancel.

  I’d ask Dickhead about how to improve my Bartering skill later. Tapping on Accept only earned me another error.

  [ERROR—NSF]

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  I didn’t need to be told what that meant. I couldn’t go more than a few months before getting one of those from my bank.

  “Shit, I don’t have a hundred gold.”

  Dr. Patchwork crossed his mismatched arms over his chest and asked, “Well, what do you have?”

  “Do not mention the FrankUp coin,” Dickhead warned. “Don’t even respond to me. We can’t afford to piss this guy off. Vendors get upset when they think you’re screwing them over.”

  I wanted to ask why not. It’s not like I couldn’t go out and get another one. But I behaved and kept my questions to myself. I started listing everything in my inventory.

  “I’ve got a human head—”

  He stopped me with a raised eyebrow and asked, “Are the brains intact?”

  “Yep.”

  For a moment, I thought I had him.

  “Hmm. What else?”

  “Uh, a slightly used pitchfork, one pair of farmer’s boots, a rock, and a potion of healing.” I took my manager’s advice and kept the FrankUp coin to myself.

  “A potion of healing?” his raspy voice asked.

  I waited for him to finish mulling it over.

  “Give you fifty gold for it,” he finally said.

  I wanted to ask Dickhead if that was a good price, but I didn’t want to call in a second opinion—some doctors didn’t like that.

  “Deal.” I held out my hand for a shake, but instead of a gentleman’s agreement, I got another Trade Menu.

  This time, I added both potions of healing to cover the arm reattachment. It’d cost me nothing. I accepted the transaction and got a skill-up.

  [Your Bartering skill has increased to level 1.]

  “Good. Now remove your jacket and shirt, lie down on the exam table with your stump facing me, and I’ll get started.”

  I did as he asked. I hadn’t realized how beat up my jacket had gotten. It was in tatters, ripped and full of holes, not to mention missing an entire sleeve. I’d been delusional in thinking all it would need was a good dry cleaning.

  “Better just to get a new one,” I muttered, draping it across the mushroom stool.

  “There’s nothing wrong with this arm,” Dr. Patchwork said.

  “I was talking about my jacket.”

  “My license is only good for patching up the living and unliving. Can’t do dead. You’ll have to take it to a leatherworker.”

  “You think they can save it?”

  “I’m about to sew your arm back on and you’re asking about patching up a few holes in your jacket? Afterward, you should see about getting an upgrade token. They might be out of your price range for a while, and the enchantment you get is random, but even upgrading from mundane to Common will increase its durability.”

  Upgrade tokens, another item I added to my ask-Dickhead list.

  I finished removing my shirt and slid onto the table. The fleshy, gill-laden exam table felt wonderful. It was both supportive and comfortable. I was definitely going to get one of these bad boys for my Lair.

  Finally able to relax after a long day, I drifted off.

  Day 2

  When I woke up, I had two functional arms again. Dr. Patchwork faced away from me, sitting on an infested-looking stool. He must have heard me sit up because the chair squeaked as he spun around.

  “You’re awake. Good. How’s the arm feel? Make a fist for me.”

  The stitching looked tight, clean, and professional. I rolled my shoulder. It felt exactly as before. Then, I held my hand out, flipping it back and forth. Finally, I balled my fingers into a tight fist. My forearm shook from the strain as I squeezed even harder. I released before blowing a stitch or worse. It was easy to forget I was a lot stronger than tougher now.

  “Feels great,” I said. “And so do I. How long was I out?”

  “Most of the night.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “And you just let me sleep?”

  He shrugged. “No one else showed up, and I figured you needed the rest.”

  That was awfully nice of him.

  I didn’t like it. Not one bit. People were only nice when they wanted something, and I had already paid him.

  “So, I’m free to go?” I swung my legs over the side of the table.

  “Correct.”

  I hopped down and pulled on my shirt.

  “We’re square, right?”

  “You’ve already paid.”

  I bent down to fetch my tattered leather jacket off the mushroom stool. Dr. Patchwork had placed what remained of my sleeve on top of it.

  I inched my way toward the door to the waiting room. It felt weird just leaving, owing nothing.

  “I’m going to go now.”

  “Lucky you. I’ll be here if you need anything medically relevant.”

  It sounded like the World Dungeon treated these NPCs like video game vendors. They were always available to the players. I didn’t really care if he had a home, a bed, a wife, or whatever. I just wanted to know if I’d have to chase his ass down in some other part of the city the next time the System had a hissy fit.

  The tendrils parted as I approached, granting me access to the waiting room. My plan was to ignore the fungalshade and bolt for the exit.

  I almost made it out when it said, “Goodbye, First Patient.”

  I shuddered, freezing mid-step from its chest-resonating communication. After a quick nod, I got the hell out of there.

  It was only after I’d gotten outside that I realized he’d called me First Patient. I wondered if I was their only patient since the Tutorial started. Kinda weird to think that out of a couple thousand people, I was the only one of them to lose an arm.

  Or maybe I’d been the only one to lose an arm and survive?

  Thoughts for another time.

  “Dick, tell me about skills.”

  It sounded like he was smiling again. “Oh, I can do more than that.”

  I halted in the middle of the damn mycelial road as my Main Menu came up, immediately shifting to the skills submenu and blocking my view.

  An ogre sideswiped me as he pushed past. “Move it, asshole.”

  “Shut it, Shrek,” I barked back.

  He glanced over his shoulder and grunted. “Like I haven’t heard that one before…”

  I ignored the prick as he kept on walking.

  Not worth my time.

  The streets were very busy, and I was tired of getting bumped into. I found a quiet, out-of-the-way spot and checked out the skills submenu. There were several categories I could dive into.

  Relevant

  Building

  Civic

  Combat

  Movement

  Social

  Sports

  Subterfuge

  Survival

  Unarmed

  Weapon

  Dickhead walked me through it. “The first category, Relevant, lists all the skills you have levels in. You can poke around in the other categories, but honestly, if it’s important, you’ll already be doing it, and it’ll be under Relevant.”

  I tapped on Relevant.

  Bartering skill: level 1

  Biting skill: level 1

  Grappling skill: level 6 increased from (1) due to Deathgrip

  Intimidation skill: level 1

  Punching skill: level 1

  Running skill: level 5

  “You can tap on each skill to see what it does,” Dickhead said.

  I tapped on Bartering first.

  Bartering skill level 1

  NPC Buy price: 99.5% of base value.

  NPC Sell price: 10.4% of base value.

  Curious as to how far I could scale them, I asked, “Are there caps on skills?”

  “Yes, five per expansion.”

  That was good to know, but I wasn’t about to extrapolate a bunch of math. I went back, then tapped on Biting next.

  Biting skill level 1

  Additional biting damage: +1 piercing

  Additional biting hit chance: +1%

  “One piercing damage seems a bit low,” I said.

  “It’s flat damage, which means it gets added before any multipliers. You’re right, one point of damage doesn’t seem like a lot, but it adds up quick.”

  I left the math to him and tapped on Grappling next.

  Grappling skill level 6

  Additional melee hit chance against grappled targets: +30%

  Additional chance to grapple: +6%

  Additional chance to maintain grapple: 6%

  “Damn, does grappling really give 5% chance to hit per level?”

  “Yep. It’s a hard counter against faster, more agile opponents. You Know Who likes to make sure everything has a weakness to exploit.”

  “We’re all playing Rock, Paper, Scissor. Got it.”

  Intimidation was next on the list, so I checked it out.

  Intimidation skill level 1

  Additional NPC demand compliance: +1%

  “What the hell is demand compliance?”

  “So, there are three ways to ask NPCs to do something for you: demand, request, or command. Intimidate handles demands. Persuasion handles requests. And Leadership uses commands.”

  “Sounds like they all do the same thing. Do they stack?”

  “Yes, they stack. At first, they’ll seem to do the same thing, but each skill has a long-term effect. Do you want them to fear you, like you, or respect you?”

  In my experience, fear was fleeting, and love a fickle prick. Respect was obviously the best choice, but it often took too damn long to earn. I didn’t have an answer for his question, so I tapped on Punching instead.

  Punching skill level 1

  Additional punching damage: +1% blunting

  Additional punching hit chance: +1%

  It was pretty much the same as Biting. Lastly, I checked out Run.

  Running skill level 5

  Additional base movement speed: +5%

  Frank yeah! I thought with a grin. That meant I could offset my stupid movement speed penalty if I worked hard enough. It also meant I’d capped out my Run skill for this expansion.

  “Alright Dick, now tell me about upgrade tokens.”