As it turned out, Bagel was going to be able to buy of the blocks that he wanted to. He needed to figure out a way to make it look like he was trying something silly. He wasn't going to be able to fool the humans as to what had been bought.

When mobs stopped appearing in a place, it was somewhat noticeable.

When dungeons stopped appearing inside a building it was close to a national holiday.

The first thing he did was have Janet go through several maps about what the final outcome would be.

"And you're sure that you want this to be adjacent to the East River? That's not a place that they can retreat to unless they have the ferry out there," Janet said. "Unless we clear the Henry Hudson parkway so the humans can escape that way?"

He could see it now in his mind's eye based off of his little tip down to the beltway that ran around the city with Copernicus. Both cats were very curious about the road with no traffic lights, but apparently it was just fast for humans that way to travel and then exited and get off with these really tiny exits that only accommodated small vehicles.

"Humans want a way out, if we let them use this as a retreat then things will be better."

"Their behavior is erratic as a whole but individually they are doing great for the shop."

Bagel hesitated. "Maybe if we put some signs there letting people know that there's a shop here? There can't be that many people who..."

But he knew what Khaleesi was complaining about.

People looked hungry. He felt hungry. His stomach rumbled but he needed to figure this out first and make his purchases.

"If I just buy up the roads and connect them then we'll have..." Bagel trailed off.

"Monster spawns on the roofs and the ones inside of the buildings will still happen but those will be much easier to identify. Tudor City gives us the best option."

Tudor City was an apartment building complex south of them that encompassed two blocks. The blocks that it encompassed were below forty third Street, above fortieth and between first and second avenue. Bagel had passed through it several times. It was big enough to be called it's own neighbors but small enough to not have it's own mob.

Bagel had his eye on it because it had a garden and a raised roadway as well as the right amount of stairs. On top of that, it would provide a safe living space for over thirty five thousand people, at bare minimum. This would bring him even more people to buy from his shops. Safety was great but...

"I can turn this into a profit, right? Charge people some rent and then..."

"Boss, we just charge them something reasonable like thirty credits a month each apartment and then we'll be well on our way to owning the upper east side by next year."

Will he be satisfied with just owning Manhattan? Probably but he wasn't going to stop there if he had to. There were five boroughs after all and there was some place else that people used to mention was it called upstate? On New Jersey.

He was going to have it all.

"I guess I'll get Tudor City and then we can get the block above that next. It's not going to be hard to argue that we don't want the mobs to be there and then we can center our block around that."

With his block being the core of it, he would be buying the block directly southeast and the three below it. Then when had enough credits, he would buy the block directly to the east of them.

Now all he needed to do was figure out how to get more restock cards and perhaps somebody to just to permanently be restocking on his behalf. It shouldn't be that hard. They were not humans that didn't want to be on the front lines that could do it. Heck he would do it but each one made him think that he really wanted to feel extra safe.

He would have safety no matter the cost.

"The amount of buildings on that first block in question should cost over one hundred thousand credits. Extrapolating from that we need five hundred thousand roughly to get those next series of buildings."

"Make it so," Bagel said.

Janet made the console light up with the intended next purchases and bagel watched 100,000 credits swapped out from his investments account into escrow. He wanted to call it his investments accounts, but he didn't have a separate line of credit or something. It was just what the system told him. In fact, without banks, he didn't really need anything else. He was the bank.

Now he just needed that adventurers guild to clear them out one by one so he could actually buy them.

They needed to be empty.

"Get Raul!"

---

A girl rushed over to the adventurous guild office where we saw more than 30 people just sitting around doing nothing. They were in between jobs or they were bored or they were just trying to enjoy the convenience of being in the center of the safe zone. Any one of those things can be true. He held up a hand and walked over to talk to Kate.

"We got a quest here. Big money. Clear out buildings bagel's offering a lot of credits to just clear out Tudor City one building at a time."

He wasn't being quiet but he definitely got a lot of people to notice what was going on. Several people, almost certainly the party leaders or the party faces walked over to see what he was talking about.

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"You got some quests? Do they pay well?" A woman in yoga pants and a crop top said.

"They absolutely do. These are coming from the bodega cat himself. So you know he's good for the money. You just have to coordinate with Janet as to when you're clearing the building so that she can purchase it."

The shop AI had followed him in to take note of anyone that took the quest immediately. Bagel always offered good pay for the work so he always got his people.

"200 credits per person? Does that work?" Raul said.

And it sounded like a ridiculous amount to drop on one person clearing a building. But if he was going to have a six-person team do it, then Bagel would throw almost as much credits into buying the building as it cost to buy it. There was an effect that they got from making sure that the buildings had no hiding mobs that helped them all clear nearby buildings.

"That is quite an incentive. Are you sure it's just for one building?"

"He'll also let you live there rent free for one year afterwards. After that it's going to be roughly 30 credits per month to live in one of the apartments," Raul said. "It's about the best deal you can get."

You can see her shake her head. Something was warring there and it looked like her wanted to have a lot of money to buy things with. Was warring against her desire to have a safe job. This was a safe job, as far as quests went from the adventurers guild.

It wasn't his problem that people had decided that they were going to do something about that. A second group arrived behind her.

"What building? We're ready!"

Raul smiled. It was the easiest sale of his life. He could get used to this.

---

"There's minimal mob presence. Maybe one or two in the whole building but it needs to be clear before..." Bagels eyes glazed over. "It's empty."

"816 second avenue is clear," Janet said. "It sounds like the next building has even fewer mobs. I think we paid these guys too much money to clear these buildings. Especially if they're only finding less than three mobs in there according to Raul."

The building was more than ten floors tall, mostly commercial assets. It cost ten thousand due to how many ways they could use it. Bagel already had Janet going through various options on how to parse out living spaces.

It was on the northwestern corner of forty third street and second avenue, visible from the Bodega itself. Bagel had bought up all of the roads out front of it and when Khaleesi was done with her mission to try and create a machine gun mount, they would be creating a new set of fences or move the ones they had up.

As it stood, the fences held back the mobs but the mobs never got that far.

"What time is it?" Bagel asked.

"Four thirty five boss," Janet said.

"Why am I not hearing any fighting or seeing any mobs?"

They looked down the road and he couldn't even pinpoint any active mobs. He owned the roads all the way down but he hadn't even heard anything. He expected to be able to hear some combat but this?

This was quiet.

It was very odd.

He was absolutely not going to mention anything about it.

For the first time in forever, he missed the honking of the taxi cabs.

---

"He did what?" Ashley said.

"The whole building. Big ass building next to the path to Tudor City. Apparently it's been already mostly cleared out? No, don't get up."

Ashley couldn't figure out what Bagel was about. She was so certain that he was going to pick any other direction but Tudor City made sense. They needed to expand the safe zone towards the water eventually.

"Yeah, I think I'm good. Your shift at the guild was good?"

"Raul came in and dropped one of Bagels quests and stirred up the guys that were inside standby. It was pretty ridiculous how many people were just sitting around waiting for something."

"That's a good sign, right?"

"That's a good sign like the fact that we still have hot water."

Ashley raised an eyebrow. "We need to take advantage of that is what you're saying?"

"Do you think he will let us go get one of those Korean spas next?"

"Let me be real. If we can get one of those I will probably never leave. There was a great one on the Hudson River but fuck man that's a trip and a half."

Ashley really need a good day trip. She really needed like a month-off vacation but she was going to get that. It was weeks into the apocalypse and now it felt like they could finally take a minute or two off to think about what was going to happen next.

"Fuck man I can't imagine being stuck there during system integration. That would have been sick. I am sure that they would have immediately shut off the electrical though."

Kate paused. Ashley stilled hadn't gotten up. She buried herself deeper under her pillow.

"So tomorrow huh?"

"Tomorrow we test the mounts. Also I guess I just became an arms dealer? When I told the NYPD that I was going to fabricate these guns I thought at least they were going to say no or something."

Kate perked up. "They didn't?"

"They encouraged me and in fact I think that they uh...ordered one?"

"Arms dealer indeed. Now what are we going to do about the ammunition?"

Ashley grinned.

"What are we going to do about the ammunition Ashley? Ashley?"

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