Getting Chris, James, and the MLP Society inside Greg the Humanbus was easier said than done. Bee had predicted that none of them would get inside the bus on their own, so we somehow convinced them all to wait with us in the middle of the road while Bee summoned it to our location.

  Within 10 seconds, the Humanbus flew around the corner, coming from the nearby street where we’d parked it. Its mouth was wide open, and its crazy eyes looked positively demonic. Unsurprisingly, everyone tried to run away from it, but nobody could avoid its maw swallowing them up, especially since I held on to Cooper and Chris who seemed to be the fastest of the bunch.

  Getting devoured by the Safe Zone bus was a strange experience, not too unlike being teleported, except with a lot more screaming and crying. However, when everyone landed on their own seat inside, they quickly calmed down.

  Before they could start blaming me too much, Bee stood up and accepted responsibility for the trickery.

  “But!” she added. “Now that you are all inside the Humanbus, you will be safe from monsters and will have access to the various features we’ve installed, like the bathhouse and bunk beds.”

  Within seconds, the nine members of the MLP Society were running down through the bus to the bathhouse, all of them complaining about not having taken a shower in over a week.

  Even though James was not a Player, he was apparently counted as a ‘Player Occupant’, which put our total at thirteen, which in turn stretched our sleeping quarters and bathhouse to make more room, thanks to the dimensional expansion that Bee had purchased.

  “Greg!” I exclaimed. “Set our destination for Madeville Lake!”

  [AYE AYE, VICE CAPTAIN!]

  As the Humanbus took off, running down the street towards our destination on its many feet, I moved towards the bunk bed room. It had expanded and now had a total of fifteen beds, more than enough for us all to get one for ourselves.

  I just took the one nearest to the door and plopped myself down.

  “Panda, wake me up when we get there.”

  He stood next to the pillow and scowled at me. “Do I look like your—!?”

  Before he could finish the sentence, I’d passed out.

  ***

  Something squishy bapped me on the head again and again.

  “Wake up!” Panda told me.

  “That was fast,” I replied with a yawn, getting up from the bed.

  “You’ve been asleep for over an hour,” he said. “Also, Bee took us on a detour.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just come see for yourself,” he said and hopped off the bed, waddling towards the door.

  I stretched and followed him out.

  At some point the MLP Society had finished their bath and now they sat around near the back of the bus, talking about something very serious. Even though the marketplace was supposed to be back there, none of the NPCs had shown up yet and possibly wouldn’t until we either physically picked them up or finished the first Game Event.

  I tried to look out through the windows, but the thin skin-like membranes pretending to be glass were all fogged up by either condensation or on purpose.

  James stood up near the front next to the large brain, chatting away merrily with the Humanbus. I remembered I still had its brain in my inventory, but since it would give me a movement- or transport-based skill, I felt like I didn’t really need it right now.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Chris was standing in the doorway next to James, looking outside.

  I went up to him to look and saw something I hadn’t been expecting.

  It was the Castleburg Prison, although the name was misleading, since it was placed off the highway between Madeville and Castleburg, technically putting it closer to Madeville. South of us, past the highway, was the forested mountain that separated the two cities. If I remembered correctly, the raincoat demon that Matthew Twine had killed and gotten his wings from would be somewhere on that mountain.

  Bee stood outside the Humanbus, staring at the prison.

  “What are we stopping here for?” I asked her.

  “Panda said that someone powerful is in there,” she replied, turning to face me.

  “Who?” I asked him.

  Panda, who was sitting on Bee’s shoulder, gave me a disappointed look. “You don’t remember her? Isabella?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve known a lot of people by that name.”

  “First off, no you haven’t,” he replied, “and secondly, you fought her just the other day. Killing her pushed Liam over the edge and turned him into the Lord of Sinners.”

  “Oh, her.”

  He sighed. “Anyway, I was thinking, since Liam isn’t here and she is motivated by money, we should get her on our team,” he explained.

  “I think we should look for Otto instead,” I replied.

  “I’m not a fan of institutional authorities,” Bee started, “but Panda told me that all the guards and such inside the prison are still human, so I think saving them would be a good idea.”

  I paused at her words. Bee normally didn’t really care this deeply about saving strangers.

  Then I figured it out. “You just want to add them to the bus, so it levels up.”

  She looked away. “That’s not true.”

  “You’re lying!” I said. “Look at me and tell me you’re not lying!”

  She spun back to meet my eyes. “Fine! I want to add them to Greg, so he becomes stronger, and we get coins from them using his services!”

  “Coins? We can get coins from them??” I replied.

  “Yes. And the more money we generate, the more upgrades we can get, and the stronger Greg will become. Once he reaches level 2, even better upgrades will be made available.”

  “Leveling unlocks new upgrades!?” I asked excitedly.

  “Exactly!” she replied. “So, you can see why—”

  I stormed past her, cutting her off mid-sentence and tearing through the barbed wire fence. “Come on! What are you waiting for?”

  The prison was just three white square concrete blocks surrounded by barbed wire fences and nothing else. I’d been inside it in the past, but my memory of that time was hazy at best.

  A tunnel of fences led to the main entrance and there were several checkpoint fence gates that I easily pushed through. Bee followed behind me, skipping along excitedly.

  “What do you think we’ll find inside?” she asked.

  “It’s supposed to be a hybrid dungeon,” Panda said. “The inmates are monsters, and the guards and normal workers are human.”

  “That sounds fun,” she replied.

  We reached the front doors, and I pushed them open.

  Then darkness enveloped me.

  WARNING!

  Now entering level 10 Dungeon ‘The Warden’s Funhouse’!

  The darkness faded and I found myself in a room full of people on high alert. It looked like solitary confinement, except the room was quite large, as though eight cells had been joined together. There wasn’t any furniture though and the people around me just had their basic work clothes and tools. Two guys were clearly just janitors, but fortunately they’d been carrying mops when this whole thing started and now they were clenching them as though their lives depended on it. Which they probably did.

  Bee appeared next to me and only then did the people notice us.

  “Who are you!?” yelled a spray-tanned blonde guy in a disheveled white suit with his tie wrapped around his right hand like an improvised knuckleduster.

  The two janitors aimed their mops at us, and the eleven other people all looked ready to throw down as well.

  “We’re looking for Isabella,” Bee told them.

  “Why the fuck do you have horns?” someone asked.

  “She’s gotta be a monster! Just like the thing that ate Ted!” another person exclaimed.

  Knuckleduster guy glanced between us, ignoring the panicked voices of the people around him.

  “Why are you looking for Isabella?” he asked.

  “We’re here to help you guys out,” I lied. We really just wanted them to survive so we could farm them for Game Coins later.

  For some reason, he didn’t question that at all and said, “Isabella and the other guards are trying to find a way out. They’re mapping the way to the exit bit by bit, but there are a lot of monsters and traps out there, so those of us who didn’t get useful Classes are staying here to not get in their way.”

  I eyed the walls of the room, realizing there were eight different metal doors leading out. I also just now noticed the monster corpses on the floor around them. They were like zombies in orange jumpsuits, although their skin was purple-gray and they had large metal screws sticking out from the sides of their heads, just like Frankenstein’s Monster.

  “Which door do we pick?” Bee asked.

  “It’s that one,” the guy said, pointing off to our right. “Avoid the floor panels spray-painted with an X.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “I’m Waldo, by the way,” the guy said, reaching out to shake my hand. The others around him seemed to have calmed down a bit, though they still gave us funny looks.

  Just to play nice I returned the gesture, giving his hand a firm squeeze.

  “I’m Gambit,” I replied.

  Waldo’s expression soured and he squeezed my hand as hard as he could, keeping me from easily pulling away.

  Around us, everyone suddenly looked very mad.

  “Uh oh,” Panda muttered.