Ollie was reflecting on how unsatisfying the fight was when he caught sight of a figure moving in the shadows of the car park up ahead, darting between two sedans and ducking out of view just as Ollie spotted the figure.
“Shit. Did you see that?” he asked.
[Nero] While I don’t technically see in any real sense, I am aware of all the sensory data that passes through your eyes. So, in a sense, yes, I did see it.
“There’s nothing on the map,” Ollie said, pulling out his crowbar and approaching the enemy. “What kinds of enemy can hide from the map again?”
[Nero] At novice level, there are relatively few. Most either possess innate magic, which hides them from certain forms of surveillance, but there are those who possess trinkets or potions which can hide them for a limited period.
“Yeah, thanks for that. About as useful as a screen door on a submarine.”
[Nero] I’m sorry, Ollie. I am unable to be more specific as my experience of the game needs to remain limited to your own perception. I can provide guidance and can expound on enemies that you encounter, but I am not permitted to provide any details of future encounters and the like.
“Shit. Could you though? Like, can you tell the future as far as the game goes?”
[Nero] Not exactly. I do, however, possess quite accurate predictive algorithms, and I have access to a great deal of information gathered from feed cameras and NPC data. There are restrictions in place that prohibit my capacity to predict future encounters and warn players, as this would provide you with an unfair advantage.
Ollie snorted. “Unfair, huh? Yeah, ‘cause the System’s sure as shit interested in being ‘fair,’ right?”
If Nero replied, Ollie didn’t hear it. His attention was captured by a figure darting out of the shadows to his left and blinking past almost too fast to see.
>> WARNING: FUNDS STOLEN
>> 150 Belch Bucks withdrawn from wallet
“Fuck!” Ollie barked, spinning around and swinging the crowbar through the air.
He looked left and right, searching for some sign of the enemy but finding nothing but the eerie quiet of the car park interior. The zombies he’d slaughtered were still lying off in the distance where he’d dispatched them, and he couldn’t see any other enemy.
“Still nothing from the System, huh?”
[Nero] It would appear that the Mammon System is having just as much difficulty finding the enemy as you are, Ollie.
“Well that’s—”
There was another flash of movement, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of a shadowy figure darting past his back. The figure was short—goblin height—and wore a hooded cloak, but other than that, he couldn’t make out any detail.
>> WARNING: FUNDS STOLEN
>> 130 Belch Bucks withdrawn from wallet
“Fuck a duck!” he spat. “Nope. I’m not having this. No fucking way!”
Long years of experience gaming had taught Ollie many things, but by far the bulk of his experience when it came to role-playing games related to the paladin class. And one thing he knew with certainty when it came to paladins: they were dynamite when it came to taking out rogues, thieves, and other slippery classes.
He looked up the details of his Vaulted Reserves ability and found exactly what he was looking for.
>> VAULTED RESERVES
Ability can be triggered where no enemy is present and will utilize a portion of your available supply of Belch Bucks into area of effect damage or healing, with the amount taken scaling according to level.
A smile spread across his face as he crouched down low and triggered the ability, spending thirty Belch Bucks to send out a mild burst of area of effect damage. A moment after he triggered the ability, something moved into range, shimmering into existence right in front of him.
The goblin was clothed in a tight-fitting black jumpsuit with a cloak and hood. It held one hand out toward Pete, surrounded by golden light, while its other hand clutched a long, black dagger. Unable to act quickly enough to strike the figure with his crowbar, Ollie simply stuck out his foot and tripped the goblin, who was already suffering mild damage from his Vaulted Reserves ability.
The creature fell hard to the ground, and Ollie jumped on the goblin before it had a chance to escape, swinging the crowbar at the back of its head. The weapon hit with a satisfying crack, and the goblin slumped down, limbs twitching as it turned onto its back and stared up at him.
Blood dribbled down from the goblin’s head as it lay looking at Ollie, its face covered by a black mask that looked like the face of an Oni, complete with horns and protruding cheeks. Before Ollie could interrogate the wounded figure, it tapped something on its belt and vanished in a puff of smoke, filling the area with an acrid stench that forced Ollie to stumble backward.
He triggered Vaulted Reserves once again, alert now to the enemy and hefting his crowbar as the System finally registered the enemy.
>> NON PLAYER CAPITALIST [NPC] CLAN
NAME: Loan Breakers
TYPE: Rogue / Economic Defaulter
AFFILIATION: None (Blacklisted from the Mammon System)
THREAT TIER: Mid-to-High (Variable Interest Rating)
>> CLAN DESCRIPTION:
Loan Breakers are goblins who once worked legitimate contracts under the Mammon System or a subsidiary of the Tongsly Belch Corporation. Tasked with menial recovery or sabotage work, each was issued a micro-loan to cover startup and operational expenses. When repayment day came, they didn’t just default — they vanished, preferring a life of crime to honest labor.
Combining black-market encryption tech, stolen cloaking charms, and pure goblin cunning, Loan Breakers operate beyond the reach of most collection algorithms. The System marks them as financial fugitives wherever it finds them; creatures that exist in the narrow cracks between transactional space and reality.
Loan Breakers rarely attack directly. They prefer skimming, rewriting, and turning the System’s assets against itself—though when cornered, they can fight with ruinous precision, utilizing high evasion levels and stealth abilities to baffle their foes and vanishing into the ether when outclassed.
>> OFFENSIVE ABILITIES
+| DEBT REVERSAL
Converts the outstanding debt value owed to the System into kinetic backlash. The Loan Breaker marks a target as a “Creditor” and releases accumulated debt energy in a targeted burst, dealing damage proportional to the total uncollected credits within range. Foes may experience burst damage in the form of electrical current and may experience severe glitches in any digital components they possess.
+| OVERDRAFT STRIKE
Channels a temporary surge of stolen funds into a precision attack. Sacrifices a portion of the Loan Breaker’s hidden funds to deliver a high-damage strike that ignores armor and block modifiers but increases their own bounty rating.
>> DEFENSIVE ABILITIES
+| LEDGER VEIL
Creates a cloaking field that erases all financial traces and visual signatures for a brief period. The Loan Breaker becomes undetectable by both sight and credit scan, and all damage-over-time effects are paused. While veiled, nearby System interfaces display “ACCOUNT NOT FOUND.”
“Guess that explains it then,” Ollie said. “Slippery fuckers.”
[Nero] Curious. Once more, I find it odd to see such figures in the contest at this early stage. Technically, however, they are outside of the official contest, so I suppose they are not bound by normality in any sense.
Still squatting down, Ollie scanned the area, looking out through his peripheral vision and listening for the slightest sound. It was eerily quiet. But for the occasional sound of birdsong outside of the structure and a little wind, there was no sound at all other than the noise of his own breathing and his bare feet pressed against the concrete.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Need to find myself some damned shoes, he thought ruefully as he continued to sweep the area for signs of the enemy.
Ollie was unsure whether there was just one Loan Breaker skulking around in the shadows or half a dozen enemies all surrounding him and waiting to pounce. He imagined that figures like this might operate alone in the interests of avoiding detection, but that idea was quickly refuted when his area of effect spell wore off and two figures darted from the shadows at the same time, glossy black blades flashing as they struck in unison.
Ollie brought up his crowbar and deflected one of the strikes but missed the other as the second Loan Breaker drove the blade rapidly into his back three times before darting out of range as Ollie screamed and swung his weapon around. Blood poured from the wound as he spun, a blinding shock of pain tearing through his back.
>> WARNING: FUNDS STOLEN
>> 110 Belch Bucks withdrawn from wallet
Cursing, Ollie triggered his Gold Standard ability, and a bubble shield rose around him as he spun around, still hefting the crowbar and wondering how he was going to approach the fight, given that he now knew there were at least two enemies.
No. Three!
The one he had wounded hadn’t attacked the second time, and the brief glimpse he’d caught of the masked figures suggested different enemies from the first attacker.
>> PAIN TOLERANCE PROFICIENCY +1
Ollie triggered Vaulted Reserves, this time choosing to heal himself rather than send out an area-of-effect damage burst. The same kind of golden light spread out on the ground, and he felt a flood of warm healing caress his body, healing the knife wounds he’d sustained and pushing back the pain that had been screaming through his mind.
He watched as a small trickle of Belch Bucks began to drop from his wallet, signaled by little golden coin trails at the bottom right of his HUD, above the shield indicator. Judging by the rate he was losing coins, he’d be able to keep up the shield for some time, but only if he could stop these Loan Breakers from stealing all of his money. Given that his abilities depended on a store of Belch Bucks, he didn’t want to think about what it would be like trying to fight with nothing in his wallet.
That thought lent urgency to his movements as he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye and immediately spun around, swiping the crowbar through the air in a deadly arc. At the same time, he triggered his Vaulted Reserves ability once more, this time sending out a burst of damage in a golden ring surrounding him.
>> PERCEPTION PROFICIENCY +1
The goblin ahead of him, obviously sent to distract Ollie while a second enemy approached from the rear, skillfully avoided the swing of Ollie’s crowbar. It ducked low and then darted back, but Ollie sensed the second attacker coming up behind him and thrust his elbow back toward the enemy.
He felt a satisfying crack as his elbow connected with the second goblin’s facemask. That was followed by a shock of pain running up his arm, but Ollie ignored this as he spun around, swinging the crowbar once again and aiming for the diminutive figure’s head as the stunned Loan Breaker slashed out at his body with a dark blade.
Forced to abandon its attack and frustrated by the area-of-effect damage that had staggered the goblin in the first place, the Loan Breaker withdrew, narrowly avoiding the end of the crowbar as it whistled past. But before the goblin could flee, Ollie triggered Balance of Judgement. A large gold coin appeared above the goblin’s head, spinning wildly before landing on a fist symbol.
The resulting strike hit the Loan Breaker like a punch from above as a giant holographic fist slammed into the goblin with enough force to crack its facemask and send it to the floor in a crumpled heap. Smoke burst from the small creature as it attempted to vanish, but Ollie swung the crowbar as hard as he could, slamming the weapon into the side of the goblin’s head and knocking it to the side with a decisive blow.
>> KILL REWARD: 100 Belch Bucks
A trio of blades shot from a hidden sheath in one of the Loan Breaker’s wrists, and Ollie recoiled as they cut into his chest and torso. The pain was immediate and was accompanied by an acrid smell. He staggered backward, realizing that the knives sticking out of his body must have been tipped with venom. Ollie ripped them out with his spare hand, noting the noxious green stain on the end of each blade, mingling with his blood as he dropped each weapon into his inventory.
While he was still reeling from the attack and starting to feel the effects of the venom, a second and third Loan Breaker appeared, their black knives cutting deep into his flesh, one of them attempting to slit his throat while Ollie battered the goblin away with wild swings of his crowbar.
“Fucking…”
Ollie coughed and spluttered, his breathing now labored while his vision started to blur.
>> WARNING: FUNDS STOLEN
>> 215 Belch Bucks withdrawn from wallet
He lurched forward, swinging wildly but unable to see clearly now that his vision was affected by the venom. He was beginning to lose feeling in his hands and could feel a cold fogginess coming over his mind. Desperate, he triggered Vaulted Reserves once more, sending a burst of healing outwards as he sucked in breath and gathered himself.
The healing wasn’t sufficient to close all the wounds he’d sustained, but it blocked the effects of the venom and gave him sufficient mental clarity to continue the fight. A quick check of his Belch Bucks reserves told him that he had just three hundred and fifty-five coins left, and they would quickly vanish if he had to keep using self-heals and area-of-effect damage bursts.
The problem was, these Loan Breakers moved too fast and were basically invisible most of the time. He might have had superior strength and height, and a wider range of attack, but he was much slower than the goblins and would likely take damage every time he fought them. That would require healing which, in turn, would sap his Belch Buck reserves.
All of this meant that he had to end this fight quickly because the longer it went on, the more it played into the enemy’s hands.
He turned to see that the Loan Breaker he’d clocked on the side of the head was still lying in the same spot. Its fellow Loan Breakers hadn’t attempted to take the body. In fact, it looked like the figure was missing its mask, suggesting that they’d stripped it from the dead goblin but left the body where it lay.
“Okay, think Ollie, God damn it!” he said, turning around and spotting the far wall of the car park.
There was a section of the car park where five empty spaces backed up against the wall, and Ollie ran toward that space, eyes and ears peeled for signs of attack. Something moved to his right, and Ollie triggered his area-of-effect spell, sending out a ripple of golden light and power that spread out onto the concrete below and briefly illuminated a Loan Breaker that blinked into view and then vanished before it came within range of his crowbar.
He turned and kept running, realizing that they were probably attempting to drain his Belch Bucks by forcing him to use his abilities. It was a sound strategy because he was losing them fast, particularly having to heal as frequently as he was. Ollie had no idea whether the Loan Breakers had some way of telling how much money he had left, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if they did. It would explain the precision of their attacks and the fact that they seemed determined to take him out.
A second attack drew his attention, this time from directly ahead. Once more, he triggered Vaulted Reserves, and another Loan Breaker appeared and darted out of view before he could strike.
“Fucking rogues!” Ollie barked, charging forward into the car parks lined up against the wall and moving in close so that his back was only a foot or so from the wall.
Against a force with overwhelming numbers, backing into a wall like this might not be the best idea, but against rogues, it meant that he could focus all of his offensive efforts ahead and to the sides because none of the enemies were going to get behind him. It was a strategy he’d used time and time again in various games, and he was confident that it would work here too.
Time would be the deciding factor, of course. If they were patient enough, the Loan Breakers could simply wait him out. They could stay hidden and wait for Ollie to grow bored and leave his defensible position, then strike at their leisure, picking him off once he was moving again.
Then again, he wasn’t sure why they would be so interested in him. He didn’t have many Belch Bucks, and he didn’t really possess anything else of worth given that most of his money so far had gone into attribute and class unlocks.
No.
No, that wasn’t right. He did have something of value, buried in his inventory. One of those stupid Bobo dolls. The Puke and Pay doll. That must be why the Loan Breakers were still interested in him. For all Ollie knew, that was the reason they’d attacked in the first place. They must possess some kind of technology that found items of worth in nearby enemies, and they’d tracked him down after he’d registered the Bobo dolls with a Vend-o-matic machine.
He crouched low again, trying to steady himself by lowering his center of gravity and to get closer to the height of his enemy. He could still feel the pain of several wounds in his back and sides but didn’t want to spend more money healing the injuries and burn through more Belch Bucks.
[Nero] May I suggest, if you are able to survive this encounter, that the next time you happen upon a Tongsly Belch Vend-o-matic machine, you purchase some medkits? At higher levels, this will not be necessary as your reserves of Belch Bucks will be so high that your class healing abilities and passive attributes will be much more effective. In the early game, however, medkits are a far less expensive and more effective way of healing.
Ollie rolled his eyes.
“That’s great advice, really. You know what would be even better?”
[Nero] What?
“If you tell me that shit while I’m standing in front of a fucking vending machine instead of in the middle of a fucking fight! When I was selling all the zombie weapons or those Bobo dolls, you could have just mentioned it then. ‘Hey, Ollie, maybe pick up a few medkits, bud. They might come in handy in the early game because your heals are gonna cost you an arm and a leg at the moment.’ Something like that would have been super helpful.”
[Nero] I apologize, Ollie. I am programmed to offer helpful advice and direction wherever possible, but sometimes I cannot present an option until a practical situation arises where that option makes sense.
“Yeah, I get the picture. You’re gonna wait until I get stabbed in the balls by some weird alien plant before telling me that alien plants are dangerous. Honestly, your advice is about as useful as tits on a bull most of the time.”
Something shot out of the space just in front of Ollie, and he braced himself as a trio of knives, just like the ones now sitting in his inventory, thudded into his torso. He had tried to deflect the attack but had moved too slowly. The shield he’d been maintaining mitigated the bulk of the damage, even managing to deflect one of the blades entirely, but the other two struck home, and he felt the now-familiar bite of the venom begin working its way through his body.
“Fuck!”
He triggered healing, driving back the venom and healing his wounds as, once again, he plucked the knives from his body and dropped them into his inventory, leaving the knife that had bounced off his shield lying on the floor up ahead.
“Can’t keep this up,” he mused, realizing that running might be an option he’d need to consider. “I don’t have enough money to just stay here and let them take potshots at me.”
[Nero] You may need to distract the enemy to make an escape. If you could throw any items of value you possess, the Loan Breakers might be drawn toward those items, and you could flee while they are distracted.
Ollie nodded. Once more, Captain Obvious had suggested something he’d already been thinking about. If these bastards were after the Bobo doll, he could use that as his distraction. Either way, he was going to have to do something soon, or he’d likely end up dead.
>> MAMMON SYSTEM COMMISSION
>> Loan Shark Enforcer subclass
Would you like to learn more? Yes/No
“The fuck is this?”
[Nero] Oh my. It seems the System would like to offer you a class upgrade.
Ollie scanned the area ahead of him, wary that the Loan Breakers might use this opportunity to attack again. “Oh yeah. How much is this upgrade gonna cost me?”
[Nero] This is a System commission, Ollie. It will not cost you anything. It will mean that you are, in some sense, actually working for the System itself. You will actually get paid for your assistance.
“Like, bounties and shit?”
[Nero] I believe so. Perhaps you should explore the details of this subclass, and then you can make an informed decision.
Ollie flinched as he caught sight of movement further back in the car park. He could swear he saw one of the shadowy figures dart behind a parked car in the near distance. He waited, twisting the crowbar around in his right hand as he watched and waited.
No attack was forthcoming, and he could no longer see the figure moving behind the car.
“Alright then. Let’s see what the System has to offer.”