"So what I need is is to figure out if I can get a helicopter?" Bagel said , over the dinner table.

  "I don't think that she was serious about that part," Khaleesi said.

  "What's this about?" Liza said, plating everyone's food. She took special care to give Bagel his first.

  "Mom, Bagel has a crazy idea that he needs to make some sort of Air Force to combat the pigeons."

  Bagel sniffed his food. "I'm the top cat around here. If I don't establish dominance then somebody else is going to try to step in."

  Liza grinned. "Yes, you're a good cat. You're a very handsome boy. And you definitely need to establish dominance. I wouldn't expect that you want to try to do something a little bit smaller first, like have enough drone pilots ready to go."

  Raul looked up from his plate, waving a steak knife. "Hell, Bagel have you even thought about this? There's got to be dozens of awakened pigeons if not hundreds. We've only got what like twenty five drones?"

  "I'm aware that we don't have that many. We're just going to have to work harder."

  He'd already talked to Kate and actually about them helping out more. Kate was the one that was able to transform raw materials into drones. Her conversion rate with her forge could turn one car into one drone.

  At some point in time if the owners of the cars that have been left in the parking deck showed up again, they might want to get some sort of reparations. After all, bagel had been pretty free about and taking up whatever cars were available. He had taken up the parking deck. Two doors down. He had also taken up the parking garage across the street from that parking deck which unfortunately had fewer cars. The raw material needs of the card forge were what they were and he was using some of that material took his truck the perfect building for himself, Meatball and the rest of the cats.

  It was what one did when you got bored and you had a lot of resources, start ridiculous projects.

  "I thought that we could think about that human adage about working smarter," Bagel said. "Don't people want to work smarter?"

  "Of course they do," Liza said. "But what people want to do and what they're actually going to do are often two different things. It's hard to break that people are going to follow through with what they want."

  That made a lot of sense to him. But Bagel knew what she was talking about. They had a shared understanding and he really was enjoying his thinly sliced chicken breast.

  I really was exquisite how well she cooked her meat. And the fact that she was able to cook this for the same time. She was cooking steak for Raul and the rest of her family. That was just the best thing that he could imagine. Also the fact that they lived upstairs to modega so we didn't have to go far. Bagel had finally come down on a opinion that had to decide on forever. He did not like moving around. He was going to do his best to not have to leave the safety of Turtle Bay.

  This also helped him decide that he would need to spend some time at the pit everyday. Yes things were different hour by hour but for the most part it was just summoning the right amount of monsters into a pit, designed for exploitation.

  It was like they sent runners out only to bring them back in faster every time. Several of the

  It rewarded combat. It especially rewarded diving through dungeons. It didn't really reward him, save for selling and buying cards. He just used that to make himself safer over time.

  He only stayed down there for 2 hours. That was about as much as he could take before the 2DM took over. Humans might be able to sit there all day on their phones. Waiting for more monsters to show up to kill. Bagel had an agenda. And a large part of the agenda was not being sucked into things he couldn't control.

  He needed to have his paw on the pulse of the city and the best place to do that was by being in his store or the adventure of guild he owned.

  This arena might be a way to get the pigeons to focus on something. If he could get them to appear here or have them become part of the luring they could integrate better with the humans. Humans liked cats. There just weren't that many awakened cats around. It was a rarity.

  But he threw himself into work. Eventually it would pay off. If he ever got around to get into level seventy-five there might be another perk that would help him with his acquisitions.

  He could only hope so.

  All this had to do was something and he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to make it that far.

  The people that were tasked with luring mobs rode bicycles, roller skates, heelies and one had to be using an empowered card to run faster.

  He had been near a threshold for a while. It was reassuring to reach a new level that was a multiple of five. He was able to select a new energy to add to his various types. He could play just about any deck.

  Leveling was nice and all, but he did not miss dungeons. Not even a little bit.

  But as people brought in more mobs and he was able to summon cards and defeat more mobs he felt more at peace.

  This at least, he understood. Instinctively the system wanted him to be able to understand how to do the thing that he was seeing. That made it easier for him to conceptualize it.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The system did not prepare him to do taxes.

  It urged him to fight and defeat mobs. It rewarded dungeon dives.

  He would twist it to his ends.

  ---

  " I'm just saying that now that people are able to get these cards that we should be able to buy them for reasonable prices."

  Bagel had a blank flat state that he intended to give to these kind of people. Everyone in New York City was searching for a deal of some kind. Nobody was going to be able to get their hands on these warehouse cards outside of a dungeon run. And even then they wouldn't be able to get them in quantity. He was the only game in town. "So I suppose I should just lower my prices because the demand is so high."

  "That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I just want to pre-order one. If they're available. I'll put down 400 credits if I have to." The man looked disheveled. But it was more the kind of disheveled shovel that you got after a bad day at work than living as a homeless person for a while.

  Bagel had seen the many gradations of disheveled people. The homeless man that had found himself on Bagel's stoop when the system arrived was now a member of the adventurers guild.

  "Look I want to give you as away as much as I can but I'm not at the point where I'm oversaturated with them. I'm still feeling orders that I got from people from a month ago. Do I think that I'll be able to get Warehouse cars for everybody? No. Do we have to give most of the cards to the city? Yes. That part is beyond my control."

  "But..." The man stammered.

  "And even if I gave you one of the cards? What are you going to do with it? You need about a thousand credits to buy any building."

  "I'll just I'll just figure out a way to make that many. That's what like that's only 500 mobs. If I get Omega rats. I can do that in what, a week... a month?"

  Bagel shook his head. " The only reason I'm not allowed to buy up land is because the city gave me a special charter. I don't know what would happen if I didn't have that charter. You can do whatever you want with it but in the end, the city goes back and tries to seize it. What are you going to do? Stand against them?"

  If the man had been deflated before now it was like the last fast stages of the oxygen in his body was now leaving. Demoralized wasn't the only thing he had to be feeling. He came in hoping to make a deal and he was going to be leaving empty-handed. That was kind of how things were going to go. If you didn't have enough money to pay for the card you wanted, you wouldn't get it. And he wouldn't sell one of those cards for less than 500 credits.

  All I needed them to do was accept the way that things were. Humans were remarkably bad at that. Bailey doesn't understand why he couldn't. Just point out the problems with the man's intent and fix it for him.

  "Janet, do you want to tell him about our bonds? I think he might be interested in that. If nothing else is a good place to park your credits. There's no early withdrawal penalty."

  "Absolutely boss. So under the bylaws of the TSA, we are now allowed to issue bonds based on the sale of buildings around Turtle Bay and further. If you can place money into one of our special certificate or deposit accounts then it will bear interest. Right now, they're set to Bear a lot of interest over the next two years when the bonds mature."

  Bagel have been assured that the city government would help him pay people back. He was straight investing every single credit. He got to expand how much save soon there was and it seemed like this would just go on forever and ever. There was so many blocks in the city and you couldn't reach them all yet. And even then, he had to divert some of his credits to the other areas of his empire.

  Janet, talk the man into giving her half of his stash. With the addition of a special lunch for only 10 credits, The man had dumped a lot into bagels. Next acquisition. He was ready to start getting a another row of city blocks. Rather than just extending he had begun extending his blocks Westward.

  Either he would block the pigeons from going north or you would block the squirrels from going south. But either way he would have a clear shot from the east side of Manhattan to the west side of Manhattan.

  "And finally, if you want to make a lot of credits really fast, all you have to do is join the adventurers guild and ask do you put on the Staten Island crew for a day or two. Once you're down there for a while, you will make a lot of credits immediately. And if you don't make as much as you want, you can sell the cards to Bagel and he will give you credits for the cards."

  Janet concluded her 20 minute long spiel about how the man could make some money. Her point about sending him to Staten Island might have been helpful if he had looked like he was inclined to do that. Bagel didn't think that he was ready for that kind of opportunity. But maybe if he really wanted to shrink it on his own, he would pull himself up by his bootstraps and make his way down there.

  The adventurers guild needed the help. And he? Well he needed the money.