Dickhead explained, “The Wage Hour is when You Know Who deducts your daily expenses. It happens at midnight.”

  Sixty gold was way more than I had expected.

  “I thought it was just five gold per Freelancer?”

  “That’s correct, but there are other expenses. There’s a fifty-gold maintenance fee for every fifty tiles in your Lair, for example.”

  I sat up and kicked my legs over the side of the bed. Jesus, I’d slept wearing my damn boots.

  “What if I pack everything up before midnight?”

  “Assuming you could sort out the logistical nightmare of storing all your resources in a forty-nine tile Lair, the daily expenses are based on the maximum tiles used for the day.”

  Damn, figures it wouldn’t be that easy.

  The System hadn’t charged me anything yesterday morning, but that was before I expanded my Lair. My back popped as I twisted and stretched in bed. I’d do my best to keep the threshold in mind when designing my Lair.

  Those resource nodes weren’t going to unlock themselves, but I needed a shower first. My clothes were filthy, and I reeked something fierce.

  “Dick, where’s the bathroom?”

  “You haven’t unlocked it yet.”

  I glanced up at the ceiling with a sour face. “Are you shitting me?”

  “There should be no shitting until you’ve unlocked the appropriate blueprint.”

  My gaze dropped to my shirt and pants. I poked a finger through one of the many holes. They were probably lost causes at this point.

  “I take it a washer and dryer are out of the question, too?”

  “I’d recommend getting a deathwash machine, but, uh…”

  He didn’t need to say it. I could already tell where I’d have to look to buy one. And he knew damn well that every credit was going toward unlocking the profanity filter first.

  “How the hell am I supposed to get cleaned up?”

  “Safe Harbor offers cleaning services.”

  “If I wash myself, do I still have to pay?”

  “You’re paying to use their facilities, not for someone to wash you.”

  I guessed that was fine; I wasn’t a touchy-feely guy anyway. I took out a hearthrune and dropped it.

  [Exiting your Lair. Please wait…]

  [Welcome to Safe Harbor.]

  I snagged another hearthrune from the bartender, but I didn’t get a notification about the gold exchanged. I checked my Inventory. There were two hearthrunes in there, so I’d gotten my item.

  Boy, did I wish I had paid better attention to my gold, because I couldn’t tell if the payment had gone through or not.

  “Dick, is there something wrong with the loot notifications?” I tried to be as vague as possible.

  “Nope, but Player Town 111 just unlocked another amenity this morning: tabs. Shops will let you purchase items and services together now, instead of having to pay for them individually. Now you’ll get just one loot notification when you leave the shop. But don’t worry. It still won’t let you buy anything you can’t afford.”

  These amenities seemed to be fairly minor upgrades.

  I leaned against the bar. “How much for a shower?”

  “Five gold, but you can use all the hot water you want,” the bartender said.

  I waited for her to bring up a trade window. She smiled at me when she realized I was waiting on her.

  “Shower’s over there, darlin’.” She pointed to a door off to the side. “It’ll go on your tab when you walk in. I’ve got better things to do than to make sure no one’s sneaking themselves a shower.”

  I was surprised there wasn’t a line; I found out why when I opened the door. A portal greeted me; even the damn bathrooms were instanced. Speaking of going to the bathroom, I hadn’t needed to take a leak or a dump in two days. I wasn’t sure if that was a zombie thing or a World Dungeon thing. But seriously, where did all those brains go?

  If it was just a zombie thing… That meant, without a bathroom, those HATE assholes I sent to Lair timeout might be sitting in a ten-square-foot room in squalor, forced to eat where they shat.

  I didn’t feel that bad for them though, considering how they treated everyone who had a different complexion or political view from theirs.

  I shrugged and stepped through.

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  [Exiting the Overworld. Please wait…]

  [Welcome to the Bathing Room.]

  The lack of a toilet on the other side kind of answered the question for me.

  “Not going to lie. There are some perks to this whole World Dungeon thing. Not having to waste time on the crapper being one of them,” I said to myself.

  I stripped and tossed my clothes in a pile. Handwashing them would only leave them soaking wet. Semi-clean and wet was just as bad as soiled and dry.

  The shower came with toiletries: soap, shampoo, conditioner, a loofah, and a shower cap. I tossed the last three and cranked the dial to hot-as-frank. Scalding hot showers were the best.

  I slipped under the spray head and doused myself before grabbing the soap. I scrubbed every inch of myself into a lather. It took me half an hour to wash all the grime away. Then, I spent another ten minutes washing out my hair.

  At that point, I’d changed my mind and reached for the bottle of conditioner I’d tossed on the floor. I’d already paid for it, so I might as well see what all the fuss was about.

  After toweling off, I checked myself in the mirror. Damn. I was one sexy zombie. Two days of beard growth had me looking more rugged than usual. My hand ran through my damp, dark brown locks. They’d never been this soft or shiny before.

  I finished up with a quick shave and used my hands to gargle, swish, and spit water from the faucet. For five gold, I should’ve gotten a damn toothbrush. If I didn’t have such a limited inventory, I’d have taken the soap, shampoo, and conditioner with me.

  Only two things were salvageable from the pile of rags I’d been wearing: my socks and shitkickers.

  “Dick, is there a… I don’t know, a regular clothing shop in town?”

  “Yep, I’ll mark it for you. You should see it when you leave Safe Harbor. It’s not far.”

  “Good,” I said, lacing up my boots. “The closer, the better. Especially for everyone else.”

  I stepped out of the portal with boots, socks, and my birthday suit. If werewolves could walk around buck naked, so could I. I tossed my filthy clothes into the hearth’s fire and made for the exit with a tavern’s worth of eyes glued on me.

  Not that I gave one flying frank. My little soldier was a shower, not a grower, and he’d gotten nothing less than stellar performance reviews. Or used to, anyway. If this whole zombie thing was permanent, that meant the little soldier had already given his last salute.

  I marched through the door and got a notification.

  [You’ve spent: 104 gold. Total gold: 5,153.]

  I followed Dickhead’s marker to a stall. It was tiny, barely a stalk wide, but the vendor had plenty to choose from. He was one of those creepy, chest-talking fungalshade guys.

  I flipped through pages and pages of options as I scrolled through the digital catalog in his Trade Menu. They had styles from all over the world, but who in their right mind had time to sort through every damn option?

  All I wanted was a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Was that too much to ask?

  “Eyes up here,” I warned when I caught his empty eye sockets drifting downward.

  I’d gotten used to observing my surroundings while browsing the semi-transparent menu. Not that hard after a bit of practice.

  “You guys deliver?”

  The vendor shook his head. “Amenity. Locked,” he said through me.

  I frowned. That was a shame; all these clothes were so cheap. Each item was only five gold. If it weren’t for my stupid inventory restriction, I’d have bought an entire wardrobe from him.

  We completed the transaction: one pair of boxers, a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and another leather jacket. I hoped this one would last more than a day. Then I got dressed and left the shop.

  [You’ve spent: 20 gold. Total gold: 5,133.]

  Now I was off to see how much of a pain in the ass the waygates would be.

  There wasn’t a line when I arrived, so I stepped onto one of the circle pads. A display of my discovered map appeared in front of me. It was huge, because it included the 200-odd miles I’d run from the spawn point.

  I zoomed in to the area around Player Town 111, and it showed me the locations and prices of each waygate I’d attuned to.

  “Shit, no more climbing for me.”

  It only cost five gold to get to the town entrance from here. That was too good not to use. The other waygates cost fifty gold, which was still relatively cheap, especially considering all the travel time it’d save me.

  I tapped on the waygate next to the forest resource node and then dematerialized.

  It was franking weird. One moment I was standing there getting beamed up, and the next I was walking myself out of the arch at my intended location. I hadn’t even left the World Dungeon. While it was disorienting, it didn’t hurt anything but my wallet.

  [You’ve spent: 50 gold. Total gold: 5,083.]

  Another picturesque day in the Overworld. The sun rose, peeking through a cloudy sky. I cracked my knuckles and stepped through the portal.

  [Exiting the Overworld. Please wait…]

  [Welcome to resource node: timber.]

  On the other side, I found myself in the middle of a densely forested area. It was obvious what resources Jesus would gather here.

  A deep, thunderous bellow rolled through the trees. Part roar, part grunt, and way too close for comfort, it sounded like a bear. Not that I’d ever seen a bear before, but I’d heard plenty on TV.

  “Dick, I thought you said all the NPCs were human?”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s just what you inferred. The NPCs have access to hero classes; they don’t always have to be human.”

  I found out what that meant when I found the damn bear.

  It was a grizzly by my best guess, but I wasn’t a zoologist; hell, I hadn’t even hiked before all of this shit. For all I knew, it was a huge brown bear. But that didn’t matter. I’d need to kill it before I could send Jesus.

  The grizzly padded along as if it couldn’t smell my perfumed ass stalking it from two dozen feet away. Like the other NPCs, it seemed to have a limited aggro range.

  I inched my way through the forest after the furry bastard, but there was just too much shit on the ground. I ended up snapping a stick underfoot.

  The bear stopped.

  I stopped.

  It slowly turned to face me and growled.

  I sighed. My low Stealth skill had screwed me again.

  So much for the element of surprise.

  He reared up on his hind legs and let out a primal roar. A red mist-like aura enveloped the furry bastard.

  “Uh… Dick, why’s it glowing red?”

  “So, I know you don’t like me giving you advice on how to fight, but you should run.”

  “What?”

  “You should be running right now. Run!”

  He didn’t have to tell me a fourth time; I turned and ran.

  I flew through the trees, weaving my way around them. All I could hear was the wind in my ears, grizzly grunts, and trees snapping behind me.

  “Dick! What the frank is that thing and why is it glowing?!” I got smacked in the face by a low-hanging branch. It left a scratch, but not enough to trigger Critical Thinking, thankfully.

  “I think it’s a bar-bear-ian or maybe a bear-zerker?”

  “In English, dammit!”

  “A bear with a level one barbarian class.”

  “They gave the bear a goddamn class? Come the frank on!”

  “It should be level one. You can do this. All you’ve got to do is outlast the raging buff. Then it’ll be too weak to defend while it recovers. That’s when you can kill it.”

  “With what?!” I demanded. All I had were my damn hands. God, I hoped the billy club wouldn’t break. There wasn’t enough time to dig up another sharp rock.

  A second low-hanging branch slapped me across the face as I ran.