>> STATUS WARNING: YOUR ASS IS BROKE!

  You are currently broke, meaning that you have no funds in reserve. This means that you will be unable to use mammon charged abilities or spells and will not have access to any System functions that require Belch Bucks. It is recommended that you acquire some money immediately, as prolonged periods with a BROKE status can cause spontaneous debuffs and will significantly hamper your ability to survive.

  There is also a stigma associated with being BROKE, which can impact your future ability to gain sponsors and secure lucrative sponsorship deals. It is recommended that you always keep a store of funds so that you can avoid being BROKE in the future.

  >> IMPACTED ABILITIES:

  +| Coin Toss is currently non-functional.

  Pete dismissed the message, prioritizing the needs of the current fight over the troubling implications of what it meant to be broke in a gladiatorial contest that effectively ran on money. He moved up beside the unharmed hobgoblin that was still attempting to cleave Sam in two and planned his attack.

  He had his Pauper’s Ward, and the big brute’s attention was fixed on Sam, so he would have the element of surprise. That chance to strike first was key, but Pete was debating the best place to hit the hobgoblin. So far, his attempts to strike at the heart hadn’t gone well, and when he’d tried to cut through Grinko Maas’s leg earlier, he’d only managed to get the machete wedged into the bone.

  With Coin Toss out of the picture, Pete had one weapon, and there was no way he was going to do anything that might risk losing the blade. So, he decided that shallow cuts to the hobgoblin’s calves would be the best course of action. If he could distract or even hobble the brute, that would give them all time to deal with the other hobgoblin.

  

  >> STATUS WARNING: YOUR ASS IS BROKE!

  It is recommended that you fix this status immediately; otherwise, you will potentially incur devastating debuffs. If you are able to reach a Tongsly Belch Vend-o-Matic machine, you can apply for credit. If credit is granted, you will receive a small amount of funds that will pull you out of the BROKE status.

  NOTE: Credit acquired in this fashion must be paid back within 48 hours at a rate of 150% of the original loan amount. Applying for credit regularly will also have a negative impact on your likelihood of securing sponsors.

  Pete cursed as he dismissed the message, crouching low and feeling his jeans strain, slick with blood and reeking. He moved in close, trying to stay in the hobgoblin’s blind spot and holding the heavy machete in both hands to keep it from touching the ground.

  He moved within a few feet of the enemy as the brute roared in frustration, kicking out at the car and sending it skidding across at Sam. She jumped out of the way, narrowly avoiding being shoved by the shuddering vehicle, but tripped and fell to the ground as the hobgoblin advanced, axe ready to swing down at her prone body.

  Pete darted forward and slashed out at the brute’s left calf, trying to judge the cut so that it would do damage but not risk trapping the weapon. The blade sliced through leather armor and meat alike, sending a spurt of vivid green blood out onto the road as the slash struck home.

  The hobgoblin stumbled, twisting around in confusion as Pete moved to his right and tried to get at the second leg before the brute turned its attack on him.

  

  >> DEBUFF WARNING: YOU ARE NOW INSOLVENT!

  “Fuck!” Pete blurted, trying to dismiss the message as the hobgoblin spun around, axe in hand, spittle frothing.

  The brute stared directly at Pete, brow furrowed, jaw tensing. But the hobgoblin seemed to be staring right through him, his rage turning to momentary confusion as he looked down at the injury he’d sustained.

  

  >> DEBUFF WARNING: YOU ARE NOW INSOLVENT!

  >> INSOLVENCY [Debuff Condition]

  Your finances have collapsed, your credit destroyed, and your worth reduced to nothing. In this pitiful state, you vanish from the eyes of the Market itself.

  

  >> EFFECT: Upon reaching a wallet balance of 0, you slip into a stealth state. Enemies cannot perceive you through conventional means while this effect is active.

  +| Movement Penalty: Movement speed is reduced by 10%, as poverty slows even your steps.

  +| Critical Surge: Attacks made while Insolvent have an increased +25% critical strike chance, representing the desperate, all-or-nothing strikes of the destitute.

  +| Sustained Poverty: Unlike normal stealth effects, Insolvent does not end when you attack. As long as your wallet remains empty, you retain this stealth state.

  Pete stood blinking, staring at the hulking figure as the hobgoblin turned back to face Sam, apparently with no idea that Pete was there and unable to see or detect him. A moment passed, and the hobgoblin started walking towards Sam once more, limping on his damaged leg and twirling the huge axe around in his grip so that the axe head spun.

  Raising a hand, Pete confirmed that he could still see himself. This Insolvency status hadn’t made him invisible to himself, but the hobgoblin had obviously not been able to see him.

  Stealth? Pete mused, thinking through what he’d just learned.

  This wasn’t an ability, per se. It wasn’t a skill that he’d chosen or something that he had been forced to slowly develop; it was technically a debuff. But any way Pete considered it, there was nothing negative about the Insolvency status at all.

  [Nero] I might point out, Pete, that this new condition does indeed have drawbacks. Being BROKE will make you less appealing to sponsors, especially as the contest progresses. Very few backers will offer rewards to a contestant who is repeatedly broke, and, in fact, the opposite may happen. Some may deliberately pay for debuffs to be added simply to remove you from the contest. There are also other areas of the game that you will be excluded from as long as you have no money.

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  Pete moved up behind the hobgoblin, walking to the right of the green blood trail the creature left behind.

  “Yeah,” he whispered, “but while I’m broke, I technically have an unbreakable stealth, right? Even if I attack, I’ll still remain in stealth?!”

  [Nero] That is correct. Gaining monetary rewards of any kind will break the debuff condition, however. And, again, there are other drawbacks to being BROKE.

  “Right, but is this going to be consistent? I mean, will the same thing happen every time I’m BROKE?”

  [Nero] It seems so. Typically, the Mammon System utilizes a default debuff setting that comes into play when a player is BROKE for a certain period of time. Your unique Penny Pincher class seems to possess its own debuff in relation to this status, however. I’ve not encountered this Insolvency status before. It is…quite puzzling. It almost seems as though this class has intentionally programmed a negative status that exploits certain code weaknesses within the Mammon System.

  Pete moved in close, watching as Sam held her jammed shotgun out in front of her like a club. To her credit, she wasn’t backing down even though she’d lost her primary weapon and was facing a much larger, stronger enemy who was thoroughly enraged.

  It didn’t seem as though Sam could see Pete either, or, if she could, she was doing a good job of not telegraphing where he was. Either way, he was able to get up to within striking distance without being seen. He moved to the right side of the hobgoblin, waited for the brute to raise its axe again, and then swiped the machete through the meat of his calf.

  Once more, a gush of blood sprayed from the wound, and Pete backed away as the hobgoblin spun around, growling as he swung his axe through midair. Pete ducked below the swing, then pivoted and brought the machete down against the brute’s forearm with all his strength.

  The blade sank in deep, giving off a sickening click sound as it sliced into the bone. The hobgoblin cried out in rage, wrenching his arm back and lifting Pete off the ground as he held onto the machete handle and was picked up off his feet.

  Thankfully, his weight and gravity were enough to dislodge the weapon and send him falling back to the ground as the hobgoblin grabbed at his wounded forearm with a free hand. The brute’s axe clattered to the road, and Sam used the opportunity to dart forward and pick the weapon up off the ground.

  Unfortunately, the axe was so heavy that Sam couldn’t lift it more than an inch or so off the road. The huge weapon disappeared as she dropped it into her inventory and then walked back a few paces to pick up her jammed shotgun.

  It wasn’t until that moment, as Pete watched a woman who must have been half his weight and a full foot shorter than him pummel a wounded hobgoblin with the business end of a shotgun, that he realized just how courageous Sam really was. She didn’t even have a class yet, and her primary weapon wasn’t working, but that didn’t stop her from battering the shotgun into her enemy over and over again.

  Before the hobgoblin could spin around and grab Sam, Pete swung his machete twice more, making deep gashes in the brute’s legs and causing the creature to lunge left and right as it tried to locate the source of its baffling injuries. Being able to attack without being seen wasn’t the same as being invulnerable, but it certainly made the job of cutting down a monster like this a hell of a lot easier.

  Pete pulled back, waiting for the brute to spend his strength swinging wildly and then darted in to stab the beast in the back once it had turned to face Sam. Dividing the hobgoblin’s attention like this made it easy to drain the brute’s strength, and soon it was on its knees, its face a mask of confusion as blood poured from multiple wounds all over its body.

  

  >> KILL REWARD: 5 Belch Bucks.

  As the hobgoblin finally slumped dead onto the ground, Pete saw Sam grinning and shaking her head.

  “I don’t know what the hell you did there,” she said, “but it was impressive. Big bastard didn’t know what was going on.”

  Pete was about to reply when a fluffy shape darted past his eyes, screaming a high-pitched scream as it flew by.

  “Heeeeeelp!” Coop screeched as she rolled on the ground, tumbling over and over until she came to an abrupt stop.

  “COOP!” Pete yelled, running to check whether she was okay.

  “I’m fine,” the ferret muttered, her head crooked under her body awkwardly in a way that most definitely did not suggest she was fine. “Just kill that green lout!”

  He turned to see the hobgoblin who had taken the first two shots from Sam’s gun. Miraculously, he was still standing. Blood was flowing from the gunshot wounds in his chest, but it seemed as though most of their damage had bounced off the plate armor he wore.

  “I’m the big boss now!” the brute bellowed, jamming a thumb towards its chest, a huge grin splitting its face. “I’m the Grinko Maas! I’m the gang biggin!”

  Pete started running, and the hobgoblin kept boasting as it strolled towards Sam, an axe in one hand and a balled-up fist thrust in the air as he moved towards her. The brute couldn’t see Pete and either couldn’t hear his footsteps and the troubling squelching of his blood-soaked pants rubbing together as he ran, or he was too enthralled with his own speech to notice the figure charging towards him with death carried in one hand.

  It was a risky move, and Pete could see the opening between the brute’s chest armor, and some part of him desperately wanted to kill one of these hobgoblins with a single strike to the heart. He wasn’t sure exactly why he’d become possessed by the notion, but it felt like a fitting way to dispatch the last of the brutes.

  When he was five feet from the last hobgoblin and fully committed to the plan, Pete realized his error. Some part of his brain recognized the fact that he had just picked up a five Belch Buck reward for killing the other hobgoblin and, by extension, was no longer BROKE. That meant that the miraculous stealth his Insolvency debuff provided was no longer in operation and he was very much visible to the hulking hobgoblin directly ahead of him.

  He leaped into the air, right hand driving the machete towards the space between two chunks of metal plating while the hobgoblin tried and failed to swat him out of the air before the strike was made. The blade sunk in deep, for once hitting exactly the point he was aiming for and driving into the brute’s heart in one devastating thrust.

  The momentum he’d picked up during the charge slammed Pete into the brute’s body, after which he bounced backward and promptly fell on his ass. The large blade jutted from the hobgoblin’s chest, quivering as the brute stumbled after him, clawing at the air as though he might stave off death if he could only lay hold of Pete.

  “I…gonna be the big…boss…” the creature blurted as his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped first to his knees and then onto his face.

  The hobgoblin hit the road with a resounding thud, followed immediately by a raucously loud fart that trailed off into a high-pitched whine at the tail. Pete sat breathing heavily, waiting to see if the brute would rise again.

  

  >> ACHIEVEMENT: Glorious Charge!

  Congratulations! You just charged a 900-pound killing machine and stuck it right through the heart with a single stroke. Either you’re God’s greatest idiot or you know no fear. Let’s face it, the odds are strongly in favor of choice number one, but either way you did it, so well done!

  ACHIEVEMENT REWARD: 20 Belch Bucks!

  >> KILL REWARD: 5 Belch Bucks.

  Pete turned to see if Coop had recovered from her tumble. The little ferret seemed to be a little shaken but largely unharmed. She was walking toward him, shaking her head and muttering curses.

  “You okay, Coop?!”

  “I’m fine. It helps that I only weigh about three pounds.”

  Sam walked up alongside Coop as the pair came to stand in front of Pete. Sam shook her head, considering the dead hobgoblin lying a short distance away.

  “I mean, there’s no other way to say it. That was just nuts! Balls to the wall crazy.”

  She turned to Pete. “You just charged that guy and stuck him with your knife.” Sam turned around to look back at the previous hobgoblin that he had killed. “And what the fuck was the deal with that guy? I swear he couldn’t see you.”

  Pete threw her a smile. “I think I’ve kind of found a glitch in this thing. A kind of stealth that doesn’t break when you attack.”

  “What?” Sam asked, eyes wide. “You’re serious?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a whole thing. I’ll explain once we get all this gear and sell it. Need to get a full load of Core Attributes so we can start racking up Proficiencies.”

  Sam moved closer and held out a hand to help Pete up off the ground. He took her hand and got to his feet, the blood-slick jeans making the task all the more difficult.

  “First thing, though,” he said with a grimace. “I gotta find myself some new clothes.”