Well, he reflected, that pretty much takes care of the jumpsuit, Curtis thought as he tried to clean the acid-beer mix off of it. It wasn't working well - it was full of holes now and rips were appearing. At least the hard hat was still good. Also, he was down to only a couple gallons of beer in the barrel. The ooze remains were getting more visible, and more smelly, currently blocking its doorway to him in his bare feet unless he wanted to walk through the watery sludge.
Well, maybe not. That jumpsuit could still be wrapped around his feet, using the arms and legs, tied off, so he could explore that direction. Filling the jug once again with beer, he did just that and set off - if there were more Oozes, he wanted to know about them!
Splashing beer ahead of him, he made his way down the passage and around the curve, coming to a strange sight right from modern Earth, or so it looked. The passage ended in a sliding glass door, through which he could see what looked like an ordinary workplace break room. There were a couple tables, a half-dozen chairs, a wall-mounted TV, a counter with a coffee machine and microwave, and two vending machines! There were also two more doors, of the solid-wood upscale-office type, on either side of the far wall.
Curtis tried to slide the door open - locked. Trying to pry it open, the frame bent and the glass shattered into thousands of of small, safety-glass pieces. Oh well - the way was open. Also, he regained another health point just then.
Rather than waste more beer, Curtis scooped up glass shards and tossed them around the room, in case of more invisible foes - no result, just a messy floor. Walking over to the counter, there were 8 packs of instant coffee, 4 tea bags, and 3 packets of instant coco - as well as a dozen small sugar packs and 5 of what seemed to be creamer. The coffee machine itself was coated inside with ancient, dried-up coffee. The microwave was empty. Both machines were plugged into a wall socket, but no lights showed.
The same proved true of the vending machines - plugged in but without power. Just to test, Curtis cut off the power cord of the coffee machine and stripped the ends of the wires with his dagger. Plugging it in and tapping the two wires together produced no sparks - dead. Unplugging the vending machines, he tested that plug-in as well, with the same lack of result. Looked like brute force would be the way to go.
The vending machines were a candy/snack assortment, and a soda machine. The snacks yielded quickly to rebar bashing, giving him an assortment of over 20 less-popular (over half the items were sold out) candy bars and chip packages. He also got 10 packs of gum, life savers, and breath mints. The soda machine was much harder to get into.
After a long, frustrating crowbar workout (during which he recovered another health point), he got it open, giving him 3 diet cola, 2 orange soda, a grape soda, 2 Mountain Dew, and a root beer (net, there were also several cans that had given out over time and were empty). He gathered all the good stuff on a table, the set about gathering all the wire and usable-looking metal parts he could scavenge.
Checking the doors, he immediately saw the first was marked with a "Men/Women" symbol, and it proved to be exactly as expected - a small restroom. He quickly grabbed the half-roll of TP. Unfortunately, the fixtures were long since dry, and attempting to flush did nothing, same with the small sink. Echoing from the drain fixtures, he heard faint sounds of movement, so he left and closed the door behind him.
The other door was locked, and Curtis left it alone for now. Gathering up his stash into inventory, Curtis felt quite heavy, but still able to walk fairly normally, so he made his way back to the barrel room. At this point the jumpsuit had been reduced to mere rags, so he just tossed the remains in the empty barrel. The mirror, unfortunately, didn't show any added xp from all his gathering - fights and magic discovery was it, so far.
Deciding he deserved a break, he climbed back up to the altar room, and ate a Mounds bar while drinking a diet cola, casually scrolling through the leader board entries - now over 40 billion, as he healed up to full health. The chocolate on the candy bar was partly white from "chocolate bloom", but still edible, even fairly good tasting, overall. The soda was a bit flat and metallic, but WAY better than the beer or wine.
The current "leader" record was Divedivedive, killed on level 36 by an exploding staff. From the names, it now looked like most "leaders" were just going as deep as they could, as fast as they could - with the lucky ones able to take a lot of monsters with them as they died. He couldn't find a single "Alive" listing in the first 1000 ranks. So many masochists, Curtis thought, recalling the pain he'd been in recently. There was no way he could imitate that strategy. Checking around the 1 million ranks got him the most info - some in that range were using names to give hints.
"Stratlevtwo", "Deathsforlbops", "Dontbaslime", "Noitemsfornone", "killracetounlock" were all decent clues. Curtis started pondering what he might name himself next time - but then caught himself "That's defeatist - I don't want to plan to die any time soon!". If he DID die, he'd consider it then - there was no time limit on choosing a name, so far as he could tell.
That was a flip-side to all this - was he immortal now? Would he age here? What about old folks - would they get younger, or were they stuck in eternal decrepitude? And what was going on with all the little kids? Were they also alone, or with their parents? He then recalled a "Cantfindmykids" name on the list - that didn't bode well.
Feeling restless, he went back down to check out conditions - finding the ooze remains were just a sticky mass of goo now, that no longer seemed acidic. Deciding to chance it, he crossed over the goo to the break room, and grabbed two chairs into inventory - then a table. Each time, it worked once he fully picked it up off of the floor. Now loaded down, he crossed back to the barrel room, washed the good off his feet, and then climbed (with great effort due to the extra weight) back up through the trap door.
Gleefully, Curtis now set up his table and chairs beside the Leaderboard, sitting on one chair and putting his feet up on the other - popping a stick of Spearmint gum into his mouth and pretending, for now, that life was ok.
