Book 8, (Earlier conversation) + chapters 54, 55, 56, and 57 (Patreon)

Happy 2026 everyone! I hope to see some of you tomorrow in Lakewood, WA for my signing. Apparently they sold 400 tickets to this thing, so please be patient. Thank you all for your continued support.

Lots and lots of back editing going on this week. I'll try to keep you apprised of major changes, but for today we just have one big one. Instead of explaining this scene, I'm going to post it. Today's drop starts with a conversation between Carl, Donut, and Prepotente that will have occurred much earlier in the book. I already blended it in, but I have extracted it and planted it here so you have it. It may or not be vitally important later.

(Begin earlier conversation. This is placed in the chapter where they first enter the Lollipop. Chapter 14 or 15ish)


Prepotente was looking down at his drink. He let out a strange, little bleat, which wasn’t something I’d heard from him before.

“You doing okay, buddy?” I asked.

“I find myself having a conundrum. I am in need of advice.”

I exchanged a look with Donut, who jumped to the table. Across the way, Jurgen was happily chatting at the bar with the gremlin bartender. The others were deep in conversation at the other end of the table.  

Donut put a paw on his hand. “You can ask us anything. Right, Carl?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

Prepotente looked down at the paw on his hand for a long moment before he retracted it and then pulled something from his inventory. He placed it on the table.

It was a glowing, familiar little item. We all looked at it.

An enhanced pet biscuit. The same item that both Prepotente and Donut—and Bianca—had taken to turn from regular animals to how they now were. According to Mordecai, if a pet took one of these, there were over 100 different possibilities on what could happen. Some good and some bad.

I didn’t know the details, but Miriam Dom had entered the dungeon with a whole herd of goats, and she had received several of these pet biscuits, but they’d stopped using them after there was a bad a result. One of the goats had killed several of the others. Prepotente still had multiple, regular goats in pet carriers in his inventory, but it wasn’t clear exactly how many he had. I’d heard different reports. I had the impression it was more than we realized, but Prepotente was deliberately evasive when we asked him about it.  

“I received this one in a celestial box,” he said. “There were three of them. They are different than the run-of-the-mill enhanced pet biscuit. Each one is slightly different. One is called ‘party companion,’ one is called ‘nothing special,’ and there’s this one.”

I tentatively picked the crumbly little treat up. I remembered the first time I’d held one of these, the description had been pretty short. That wasn’t the case this time.

Enriched Pet Biscuit. “The Paramour.”

This is a unique item.

Okay, so we all know by now what enhanced pet biscuits do.

While extremely valuable, enhanced pet biscuits are items that leave the result up to chance, and when you feed your pet one, there’s a very real risk you’ll be saying goodbye to your furry friend forever. Or they’ll be saying goodbye to you.

Princess Donut is the lucky result of a pet biscuit that gave her the ‘enhanced growth’ benefit. Prepotente is one that received the ‘smarty pants’ benefit. Both of these are results under the Party Companion subtree of the result list with Donut under tree path one and Prepotente under tree path two. Bianca received the ‘hellspawn familiar’ benefit which is under the Pet subtree. These are all considered good results.

What you’re holding right now is an Enriched Pet Biscuit. This leaves nothing to chance. These are highly-refined, specialized pet biscuits with a known result.

This particular biscuit imparts the “Paramour” benefit. This is a subset of the party companion tree. It will have the following effects on any pet or animal-class mob who consumes it:

Non-sapient pets will have their Intelligence and Wisdom* stat raised to at least 3 and then additionally enhanced to be commensurate with their level and original form.

Dungeon-born pets will be given a crawler number and assigned crawler status.

The former pet will be required to immediately choose a class if this is consumed after the third floor begins.

The pet will be given a subtree two-B transformation. This will result in a physical transformation to an oxygen-breathing, upright, bipedal form with grasping fingers and thumb upon two arms. The resulting height will be within one and two point five meters with a mass proportional with their new form. Winged creatures will retain wings but will no longer have the ability to naturally fly. Bla, bla bla. You know, basically a cat girl. A mascot. A furry depending on what their original form was. This is what happened to Prepotente, while Donut, who was under subtree one, remained wholly a cat.     

The pet will be given the paramour benefit. They will receive a permanent, incurable* charm that will make them fall hopelessly in love with the entity who fed them the biscuit.

“Oh wow,” I said, sliding the biscuit over to Donut, whose eyes went huge when she read it.

“What do the other two do?” Donut asked.

“The ‘Party Companion’ one is all the same benefits, but it is under the first subtree of the party companion, meaning they will stay in their existing form. It is the same thing that happened to you, minus the enhanced growth. The ‘Nothing Special’ one is the same thing, but it is under subtree one-A. It’s identical to Party Companion, but its anatomy won’t be changed to allow it to speak.”

“And minus the mind control sex slave part,” Donut said. She slid the biscuit back toward Prepotente where it disappeared back into his inventory.  

“What sort of advice do you need?” I asked, leaning back in my chair, afraid of his answer.

“So...” Prepotente said. “Her name is Ragazzaccia, and before the dungeon began, she was...”

“Absolutely not,” Donut said. “You will not be turning anyone into a sex slave, Prepotente. How is this even a conversation? My goodness.”

Prepotente wrung his hands together. “But with the other two biscuits, she would remain in regular goat form, and it would be weird. She was my girlfriend before the dungeon started, so it’s not like...”

He trailed off, looking down at the table. “I’m so lonely.”  

Donut sighed. “Prepotente, darling. I know you miss your friends. But you can’t do it this way. It’s not right. Even if it didn’t have the sex slave benefit...”

“It is not called that. It is called paramour.”

“...Even if it didn’t have the sex slave benefit, think about what you’d be doing. She’d become a crawler, meaning she’d be stuck with us. What level is she? She won’t be allowed to stay in a pet carrier or in your saferoom. She’ll get hurt. I would never allow Mongo to take such a thing. Not now that we’re so far into the dungeon. It’s just too dangerous.”

He sat there for a moment, not saying anything. “You’re right, of course,” he said. “It is too late. I... I don’t have anybody to ask these things. Sometimes I like to imagine my mother and I having these conversations, and she said the same thing you did. But sometimes I don’t know. Your benefit came with an enhanced memory that allowed you to remember all those conversations and television shows, and you know how people are supposed to act. I don’t have that. Mother was teaching me, but...”

“Please listen to me,” Donut said. “Nobody will like you if you use that pet biscuit on anything. Can you imagine if that’s what had happened to me? Do you really think I could be a proper girlfriend for Carl? It’s a crime against nature. Don’t use it. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. It’s a terrible idea. Right, Carl?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still caught up on that one biscuit that makes it so your pet doesn’t talk. Do you think it’s too late for me to give it to Donut?”

“That’s not funny, Carl. This is a serious conversation. The next time you have a question, you can always ask me. I am an expert when it comes to things like this. If you wish, I can compile a list of rules to live by to help you get by. Rule number one will be don’t use magic to make someone fall in love with you.”

“But you have that Love Vampire skill. That makes mobs literally fall in love with and die for you. Your entire build is charm based.”

“Rule number two is to stop arguing with me when it comes to social interactions. That’s different because it’s to kill bad guys. See, there’s a difference. Now, listen. We will talk every day, and you can ask me any questions you have. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Of course. Of course. Thank you, Donut.”

Jurgen finally returned to the table, his arm full of drinks. “What did I miss?”



(...Okay, back to the regularly scheduled chapters. )

Chapter 54

Entering the Lollipop.

Dong Quixote was not with us. He wasn’t in the saferoom, either. I’d ordered him to stay, but he’d left anyway, going with Splash Zone, Doctor Bones, Gluteus Maxx, and Bucket Boy to the Desperado Club next door. They were following up on a lead in the casino regarding the possible exit method of crawlers who didn’t worship a god to get to the Pineapple Cabaret.  

This method, if it worked, was much preferable to the other possibility.

Mordecai, Rosetta, and Tipid were hard at work, investigating this backup plan that involved a shop interface hack. At first, Rosetta had refused to even entertain the idea because it seemed ridiculously dangerous, but I told her that, supposedly, a former crawler named Herot had been the one to figure this out. Tipid then chimed in and noted how he’d closely followed Herot during his season.

She got it and decided to help Mordecai investigate, though she was still clearly skeptical.

The shop interface exploit was dangerous as fuck, and it involved the cleaner bot. They were currently testing the first part of the plan with Samantha to see if it was even remotely viable. The problem was, it required some tinkering with the cleaner bot itself on the engineering table.

We were using the white cleaner bot that I’d picked up in Admiral Houston’s surgical theater.

For right now, however, we needed to focus on the Corcunda quest. We had to get into the performance guild, and then we had to talk Porky, the other half of Corcunda, into going with us. Then we had to get him to Corky, and we had to do the ceremony to join Corky and Porky together, which involved a fleshmancer.

That guy, the fleshmancer, was here in the Lollipop with us now. The tall, gaunt mage sat in the back of the bar, sandwiched between Louis and Linus, who was now allowed out from underneath the table.

Louis was double-fisting a pair of snacks. He had what looked like a giant, chocolate cookie in one hand and a piece of cornbread in the other. He was taking huge, messy bites of each in turn. He had chocolate and cornbread bits all over his scraggly face. He smiled as we approached.

“Hi guys,” he said, keeping his voice down. He gave a nervous look at the other side of the table where Zhang and Tran were deep in conversation with Imani and Elle. He held up the half-eaten cookie. “Have you seen Bodi’s list of places to eat? I just ate a corndog that gives us a 20% speed boost next race. The chocolate chip cookies from this one vendor buff your shield by 5%. But don’t eat the peanut butter ones. They give you something called the Trots.”  

Elle shot Louis a glare. “What part of not loudly announcing this stuff in front of the NPCs don’t you understand?”

“I’m whispering!” Louis protested.

“You tell him, Elle,” Linus said, clucking his tongue.

“Shut up, Linus,” Elle snapped.  

“Yes ma’am.”

The fleshmancer sitting between Louis and Linus held what appeared to be a cappuccino in one, slender hand. The man looked down with disdain at his own blue, flowing robes which were now covered with Louis crumbs. He was sitting ram-rod straight, and he flicked the crumbs away as Louis, oblivious, continued to happily munch on his snacks and Linus stared with puppy dog eyes at Elle.

I examined the newcomer.

Gregori the Placid. Human. Level 93 Fleshmancer.  

This is a hired mercenary of Team Meadowlark.  

This Mercenary worships Gula.

Gula was a new one, and I filed that away.

The thin, poised man looked absolutely out of place between Louis and Linus.

Linus’s shirt had changed from a naked picture of Elle to one with a moving, all-over print of an extreme close-up of Elle’s screaming face as she was casting Ice Bolt or a similar spell. The flashing caption underneath read. “Right in the keister!”

I’d asked Imani and Elle to bring the fleshmancer because we wanted to get this guy to talk to both Corcundas. Elle said the guy had a stick up his ass, but he clearly knew what he was doing, and he and Imani had been trading healing tips while he’d been sequestered in their saferoom.

As we approached the back of the bar, Donut took one look at the guy and let out a harrumph.

Donut: HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET HIM INTO THE GUILD? HE DOESN’T LOOK LIKE SOMEONE WHO CAN SING!

Carl: No, probably not. And it’s possible I might not be able to get into there, either. We just need to make sure YOU get in there so you can charm his pants off and instead get Porky to come out. If we tell him what we have planned, everything will hopefully go much easier. We need him to believe it’s doable for him to be reunited with his other half, and the fleshmancer will help convince him it’s possible

Donut: IF SAMANTHA FINDS OUT WE’VE BEEN HIDING A FLESHMANCER, SHE’S GOING TO BE MAD.

Carl: I know. That’s why we’re not going to tell her.  

Donut: OKAY. I HOPE THIS WORKS. BUT SHE’S GOING TO FIND OUT. SHE ALWAYS FINDS OUT.  

Carl: One problem at a time. We need to make this work.

I kept thinking of the AI’s cryptic warning when we’d first gotten this quest.

It’s not like the fate of all biological life depends on it.

Donut: YOU STILL HAVEN’T TOLD ME THE FULL PLAN. WE DON’T KNOW WHY THIS IS SO IMPORTANT ALL OF A SUDDEN.

Carl: I know. I’m sorry. I know you’re scared. I wish I could tell you everything. I don’t take the trust you have for me lightly, and I need you to trust me on this one. I will explain it all after we win this quest, after it’s too late.

Donut: TOO LATE FOR WHAT?

Carl: Too late for them to take the prize away. But hopefully y’all will have a chance to react properly. To decide what to do.

Donut: WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE PARTNERS IN THIS, AND YOU’RE MAKING ME NERVOUS WITH ALL THIS STUFF. THE PRIZE IS WE CAN BRING TWO PEOPLE WE WANT TO THE 11th FLOOR. ELLE THINKS YOU MEAN THE PRIME MINISTER LADY AND MAYBE CASCADIA OR SOME OTHER SHOW RUNNER, BUT SHE’S AFRAID THAT KILLING THEM ISN’T GOING TO DO ANYTHING. AND I DON’T THINK WE SHOULD HURT PRIME MINISTER VICTORY. I KNOW SHE’S A BAD GUY, BUT SHE’S ALSO MY FRIEND, AND I’M SCARED ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO.

I reached up and scratched Donut.

“I know you’re scared,” I repeated, this time out loud. “I’m scared, too. But all will be clear if we can just get through this next part. It’s all important now. The pig, this quest, and the war mage plan. All three will help us survive. All of us.”  

I hadn’t told Donut, or anyone else, the full plan yet because I was, for the first time, moving against the AI itself. None of our usual communication tricks were going to work.

I was pretty sure he was going to be happy with what I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to risk it.  

“And what about Agatha?” Donut asked, also talking out loud.

“We don’t know where she is,” I said. “She could be dead for all we know. She doesn’t show up on anybody’s Find Crawler. I can’t imagine she’d be doing well this floor if she even is doing the racing thing. Nobody claims to have seen her. I don’t know how that’s possible. But if we do find her, we’ll deal with it.”

“Deal how?” Donut asked.

“I want to talk to her, and then we’ll decide.”

On stage was the karaoke regular, Dekoki, the kappa from Team Yokai. Her team was right there, front and center, cheering her on. The Minister of Blood-Letting was also there, dancing with his skeletons behind him.

Dekoki was singing “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama. I paused, watching them all for a moment, remembering that instant when Finley had been mowed down.

They are all the main characters in their own story.

The cruelty of this particular floor was getting to me. I sighed and turned to the main part of the table, finally taking in the full scene. Before we dealt with this Corcunda quest, we had an even more pressing matter.

Li Na.

Chapter 55

Tran and Zhang sat at the end of the table, flanked by Imani and Elle. Tran was in his spider wheelchair, nursing a beer while Zhang had his head down on the table. I knew Elle had been trying to talk to Na, but that clearly hadn’t worked.

“Did you put your song in?” Imani asked as I slid into a chair. Donut jumped to the table and gave Zhang a headbutt.

“We did,” I said. “The DJ says it’ll be a bit. Prepotente is up there now, arguing with the DJ. He’s going to try to get in, too.”

“Hi, Donut,” Zhang said, reaching up and giving her pat without looking up.

“What have we decided?” I asked, looking at the sour faces all around.

“Hey, Carl,” Tran said, sounding morose. “We were just explaining to Zhang that he’s being an idiot.”

Zhang finally looked up, eyes rimmed red. “It’s the only way. Rezan. Dubroh. Ming Lui.” He reached up and touched the side of his face. “Soo-bin kissed my cheek, before that last heat. She said she trusted me. They’re all dead now.”

“Like I told you,” Tran said, clearly doing his best to sound patient. “This is not your fault. And it’s not all Na’s fault, either. They attacked her. Rezan was an ass. And Soo-bin is the one who talked the others into trying to attack you.”

Zhang shook his head. “They attacked us because Na’s gone completely psycho. There’s nothing left. She died when her brother did. I thought maybe I would be enough, but I’m not.”

“She didn’t get player killer skulls,” Tran said. “It’s those dreads of hers. They all killed each other.”

“It was horrible,” Zhang said. “I can’t do that again. I can’t do another race with her.”  

“Wait,” I said, raising a hand. “What do you mean ‘it’s the only way’? What are you planning?”

“Hang on,” Elle said. “I didn’t make a privacy bubble because we wanted to better listen to the music, but let me do it now.” She waved her hand, casting her Cone of Silence all around us. The singing instantly cut off.

Zhang looked at me. “Na is in lead saddle for the next race. I’m going to kill Torpedo when her back is turned. It’s the only way. I’m not strong enough to stop her, and if any others try to, they will die, too. But with Torpedo dead, the system will kill her. It’ll kill us both.”       

Torpedo was the name of their mount. The octopus.

“No,” Donut said. “No, you can’t.”

“That won’t work anyway,” I said. “Not anymore. You just lose your containment. Na is strong enough to get to the finish line without a mount. But you’re not.”

He shook his head. “What else can I do?”

“No,” Donut repeated. She looked at me, eyes shining. “We’ll find something to fix it. Right, Carl?”

“She’s killing people,” Zhang said. “She’s stopped talking to me. She got poisoned, and it’s slowly draining her health, but it’s not going down fast enough. She’s not who she used to be.”

Tears streamed down his face. He met my eyes, and he ripped the target cloak off. He threw it on the table. “I wish I had died before. In the temple. I was scared, but I wasn’t ashamed. Now I am ashamed. I wish I’d never gotten this far. I wish Jun was here. Why? Why was it him and not me?” He started to quietly cry again. “I promised him I’d watch over her, and I can’t even do that. What sort of friend have I been?”

“Oh, Zhang,” Donut said, rubbing against him, going back and forth.

“There’s gotta be a way,” I said. I looked up, addressing the whole table. “We need ideas.”

“That’s what we’ve been doing,” Imani said. She sounded grim. “We’ve been workshopping ways to fix this.”   

Zhang wiped his eyes and then the words just tumbled out of him. “She ripped Jun’s eye out of his face after he died, and then she ripped her own eye out to install it. Who does that? It was then that I should have known she was gone. I used to think I could, you know, temper her. Keep her from going too crazy. Jun didn’t want us telling people what had happened on the 8th floor in Beijing. She’d apologized. She’s always been so practical, so matter-of-fact. She wasn’t like the others at the warehouse. She never joked, never laughed. But she would smile at her brother, and she would smile at me, sometimes, too. She used to be so pretty. And I don’t mean pretty in the face, but she was that too. I mean I used to feel so safe, and happy when I looked at her. She was my best friend’s sister, and I thought, maybe I could get her to like me, and we would get married, and I would have my best friend and her, and now I have nothing.”

He put his head back down on the table. He let out a sob. “We have to kill her. What other choice do we have? If we don’t, she’s going to keep hurting everyone who gets in her path.”

“She’s not killing for fun,” Tran said. “She’s not going out of her way to hurt people. She’s not bad... She’s just sort of lost her humanity.”

I nodded, remembering what she’d done to that mantaur on the 4th floor. She’d pulled all his limbs off just to keep him alive. She’d always been like this. She’d been a sociopath this whole time. But that wasn’t a bad thing. “We need that. We need people like her. She’s so strong.”

“She’s not a weapon, Carl. She’s a person,” Donut said. Her voice lowered. “And I like her, of course. But we can’t let her keep hurting people.” She straightened. “But we can’t let Zhang just kill himself, either. It’s not right.”

I looked at Zhang’s target cape sitting on the table. The AI had given it to him on the previous floor after surviving the battle inside of Club Vanquisher. He didn’t have to go to that fight. He’d gone because we’d needed his help. And Li Jun had died keeping Donut protected when she was in the tower. Even though we were the ones to originally help save them when they were on the Maestro’s show, we owed them a huge debt.

Donut: WE NEED TO FIND A WAY TO TALK SOME SENSE INTO HER. IT’S THE ONLY WAY.   

Elle: I was just in there with her, and I gotta say, she’s gone completely whackadoodle. And by this point, does it even matter? Every race from now on will have her versus a bunch of others.

Imani: Carl, I know you have some plan, but what if we use the Corcunda quest to get the NPCs she has to kill so she can heal again? Maybe that will, I don’t know, snap her out of it? She clearly has some sociopathic qualities. What if her not being able to heal is also exacerbating that? Zhang said she was on a lot of medications before the collapse.

Donut: WE SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD CARL TO GIVE HER THE RING. THIS IS OUR FAULT.

Elle: No, kiddo. Don’t play that game. This isn’t anybody’s fault except the people that stuck us all in this hellhole.

Carl: There were three concubines that got away when Li Na marked the ball, and this quest will only allow me to bring two people to the 11th.

Elle: Maybe one is dead by now? She should know. Maybe if we ask her, she’ll answer.

I bit my lip. No, I thought. This is our chance. We can’t waste this opportunity.

Donut: EVEN IF WE CAN DO THAT, WE DON’T KNOW IF THAT WILL WORK. WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING TO STOP ZHANG FROM KILLING HIMSELF, BUT I DON’T WANT TO RUIN CARL’S PLAN JUST BECAUSE IT MIGHT WORK. WE NEED TO TRUST CARL EVEN IF HE WON’T TELL US WHAT HE’S DOING BECAUSE HE’S A BIG STUPID HEAD.

I gave Donut a thank you pat.

Carl: Also, this isn’t the 9th floor anymore. We’re not positive that the tourists who get sent to the 11th actually die. It sounds like those on the 18th who get killed are just regenerating in their hotel rooms in the Scolopendra Club or whatever.

Elle was looking at me with an unreadable expression. She shook her head and sighed.

Elle: I guess you’re right. But we need to at least try something that won’t lead to Zhang going out like this. I don’t want to kill the poor girl, especially since it would probably backfire and end with all of us turned into shredded cheese.  

I looked at the clock. We had three hours until the next heat started.

We had so much to do. We were going to sing in a few minutes, and the War Mage thing...

And then, there it was. Of course. Of course.

I had an idea, but we’d have to move fast.

Li Na didn’t worship a deity. She couldn’t worship one with her Changbi class.  

Despite what Donut said, Li Na was a weapon. A weapon that could be especially effective if she was pointed in the correct direction.  

I sent three separate messages.  

Carl: Splash, have you guys figured it out yet? Do you think the casino exit will work?

Carl: Mordecai, how did the Samantha test go?

Carl: Bodi. Did you commit do a race yet for this next heat? Zhang is going to need a jockey. Li Na is leaving the dungeon.

Chapter 56

Splash Zone: Man, I don’t know if this is going to work. The croupier guy is a complete dick. He stabbed Gluteus for no reason! They got rid of the Nothing spots on all the games and replaced it with things like “You get your ass curb stomped” and something called “The dirty teabag.”  

Carl: Shit. Okay. Make your way back to the base. And keep an eye on Dong.

Splash Zone: Wait. You didn’t ask for him? He said you asked for him to go to the bar. I think he’s on his way to you.

Goddamnit. I looked up, and Yuto the Oni was on stage. I knew we were up soon. I looked around the bar to see if Dong had come in, but he wasn’t here yet. I did see Prepotente still by the DJ stand, and I saw something else I wasn’t expecting. Dwight the unicorn had just wandered in. He had a Shitfaced debuff over him.

I realized this was the first time I’d seen the unicorn outside of the vine. He looked pretty much like I’d expected, though he was a little shorter than I thought. But he was a white, sparkling horse. His rainbow horn glittered brightly in the dark light of the bar.

The drunk unicorn pushed a few gremlins out of the way and made his way to the DJ booth. He gave Prepotente a shove which sent the goat sprawling.  

Carl: You better get here, too, then. We’ll need you to watch him. Some stuff is about to go down.

Splash Zone: I’ll be there in a bit. I asked for an audience with Hamed, the new leader guy, to see if he could help me find my wife, and the guards said he’d see me. So me and Gluteus, and Dr. Bones are gonna go talk to him. I’ll send Bucket Boy your way.

Carl: Okay. Be safe. Keep me updated.   

I moved to get Prepotente away from the idiot unicorn before a fight broke out, but I was interrupted by another message.

Mordecai: Believe it or not, it actually worked after we built the release valve. But Samantha also can’t die, and she’s not the most reliable test subject, so we tested it again on some sluggalos. It works, but there’s a few wrinkles. We have some solutions that I’m working on right now. It has to be voluntary, which is good because that thing can be pretty grumpy. Saferoom rules and whatnot. I should also add that white cleaner bot had only used up about 5% of its storage, and there was some really disturbing things in there. It’s really, really fucked up. I had it suck it all back up because I didn’t want that in our workshop. It was mostly bodies that were folded. Even Bigs vomited when she saw it.

Rosetta: None of this means this next part will work. We can’t even test the shop interface part because of that standing purchase order. It requires us to trust that War Mage wasn’t lying.

I waved at Imani and pointed at Prepotente who was sputtering and getting up. The DJ was shouting at Dwight, who was now sitting on the floor like a dog and sobbing. Imani got up and moved quickly to get herself between the unicorn and goat.  

The swirl pattern tattoo on my palm itched.

Carl: Oh, I’m sure he was lying. But not about the Cabaret itself. The fact that purchase order is even there suggests part of it is true, and don’t forget Eris also said this will work. I’m pretty sure the War Mages need us to clear the Cabaret, and then they’ll turn on us. If we can talk Li Na into doing this, I’ll make sure she knows the full story and is prepared. This isn’t something we can force on her. She’s too strong, and she’s too smart for us to trick her into doing it, and I wouldn’t want to do it that way anyway. This will keep her alive, keep Zhang alive, and it will keep her from killing more crawlers. It’ll also let us test Herot’s theory. I think she’ll go for it.

Mordecai: Kid, this is so far off the codex, we don’t even know if the system will allow her to do this. And if it does, it’s possible she could still die when your floor collapses. We have no idea what the rules say in this regard. What if she doesn’t say yes?

Carl: Then we move to plan B.

Imani dragged Prepotente to the table and made him sit down. He was shouting, looking at Dwight, who remained on the floor, sobbing, surrounded by bewildered gremlins. The Minister of Blood-Letting was patting him on the shoulder. Prepotente was clearly ready to get up and attack the unicorn, but he quickly calmed after seeing the look at everyone at the table. They all had their eyes on me.  

“It’s a go,” I said.

I could feel it. A wave of relief swept over everyone. It was like a dark curtain had been pulled away from everything. Tran clasped his hands together and bowed deeply.

This was a ridiculous, probably-not-going-to-work plan. But that was okay. It was something, and that’s what we’d been missing.

We just needed to talk Li Na into going along with it.

Ever since the previous floor, several crawlers had been complaining that the cleaner bot upgrade was no longer available in the personal space shop due to “overwhelming demand.”

We’d just figured it was because of Faction Wars, with all the warlords buying them up. That was part of it. As it stood, the cleaner bot that Admiral Houston the viceroy had in his surgical theater—the white one I’d looted—was an old model. It was literally the last available one in the store.

That was because Herot had a standing order to purchase every cleaning bot that showed up.

Menerva was apparently on the 17th floor, in charge of the NPCs who were building and occupying the Backstage Death Maze. This was where the AI had plucked Growler Gary from when he’d used his body as an avatar. It was also why Gary’s level had been so elevated. They were training, getting stronger and stronger in preparation for the impossible eventuality that crawlers would make it that far.

This whole 17th floor was just something built into the dungeon, invisible to the showrunners who were just happy to have a box ticked. It had been going like this for hundreds and hundreds of seasons, completely ignored.

Herot, however, was not backstage. He was trapped on the other side of the portal. He was in the Pineapple Cabaret itself, the secret dimension they’d built to hide the NPCs and keep them safe. He had limited powers to control that world, but he did have a shop interface.  

Honestly, I didn’t know how all this worked when the AI could literally create stuff with a virtual snap of his finger, but we’d seen these sort of artificial shortages before, like with the food after the flooding of Larracos.

That cabaret place was currently overrun. Akuma had been a little...fuzzy...on who the bad guys were. He mentioned something called the Ogre Imperium, which was a long-forgotten plotline that had gotten binned because the ogres were made too intelligent, and they immediately figured out that they were trapped in a dungeon. And there was a shadow mimic infestation, which was just as bad. But there was something more, too.

The war mages wanted our help to clear the place out.

Either way, the plan was this:

Cleaner bots used their own dimensional storage to suck up garbage. This was a weight-limited storage, and it was based on a crawler storage system from many seasons ago, different than the current one we used or the slot system most NPCs used. This was typical of dungeon systems, so no surprises there. Pet carriers used a very similar system.

But one of the most distinctive differences was, like pet carriers, if a living creature got sucked into it, they didn’t immediately die. Unlike pet carriers, unfortunately, they weren’t put into stasis. And there was no air. Mordecai was working on a solution to that right now.

Cleaner bots were normally not “allowed” to pick up living creatures, but that was only because of the saferoom rules. The problem was, once something got sucked into it, the cleaner bot didn’t have the ability to get all the stuff inside out.

There was an exploit, however, that had been used a few times in earlier seasons. Using the engineering table, one could build a release valve into the cleaner bot. A few crawlers had learned how to weaponize their cleaner bots in earlier seasons, and in faction wars, the Operatics often used them to quickly loot battlefields. I had no idea this was a thing.

Even inside of the cleaner bot, Li Na would not be allowed to go to the 17th floor.

But she could go to the Pineapple Cabaret. And if she survived inside of the Cabaret until the current crawler floor collapsed, she would “lose.” But she would not be killed. At this point, she would no longer be a crawler. Though she would remain trapped in the dungeon.

This part was all theory. We wouldn’t know if it was true or not until we tested it.  

If this was true it had some horrific implications regarding the now-broken Nothing. Implications I didn’t want to think about. But it also made Justice Light’s sacrifice even more noble.      

We were going to have the cleaner bot “clean” Li Na, and while inside, we would put the bot up for sale on the shop interface. Herot had a standing order to purchase them. He would receive the bot and then release the contents, including Li Na, into that dimension.    

Li Na was dying of poison. Her Left to Fester debuff would not go away, and in fact, it would get worse because one’s health automatically topped up when they moved to the next floor. That would stop.

However, the War Mages also claimed there was a possible exit from the Pineapple Cabaret to the Earth’s surface. That would, in theory, cure her Left to Fester. Maybe. This all involved the “Scavenger’s Daughter” which they were in control of.  

There was so much here left to chance. So much built on faith, and if Akuma hadn’t dropped that name, Herot... If Eris hadn’t said it might work, I wouldn’t have believed any of it.

If we did this now with Li Na, like now-now before the next race even started, we’d have a good idea if it would work before we tried it with several crawlers at once, which we’d have to do after this fifth heat.

That presented a new problem. We had two cleaner bots, thank god, but our main bot only had so much space. The other solution, the Desperado Club exploit, didn’t seem to work.

One problem at a time.

Chapter 57

Elle, Zhang, and Tran pulled back from the table. Zhang grabbed his target cape and pulled it back on, standing straight and tall and with purpose. They were going to go back to the saferoom and attempt to communicate with Na and tell her the new plan.

“Good luck,” I whispered to Elle.

“Yeah, you too,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Donut, who was currently forcing Gregori the Fleshmancer to brush her. We’d just transferred mercenary ownership over to our guild. The strange human appeared to actually be enjoying himself while Linus watched. The soother alien was gently patting Donut’s chainmail crupper, which caused it to jingle. Even though the tourist was half-corporeal, he was really here. He started running his long fingers over her tail.

“I’m touching her, I’m touching her,” he said.   

Elle raised her voice. “You, Linus. Stay here. If I catch word you do or say anything perverted I’ll have someone in the outside world break your creepy little fingers. You understand?”

“Such a fuzzy little pussy,” he said, stroking Donut’s tail. “You smell so good. Elle doesn’t let me sniff her.” He leaned down and whispered something to Donut. Then he took his triple-segmented index finger and stuck it in his mouth and started sucking on it.

Donut turned. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

“All right, nevermind,” Elle said. “Linus, you’re coming with us.”

“Oh goody,” the alien said, jumping up.  

“Carl, you need to get ready!” Donut cried. The sunglasses appeared on her face. “What do you think, Gregori? With or without sunglasses?”

“With,” the fleshmancer said, speaking for the first time.

“I agree,” Donut replied. She let out a long sigh. “This isn’t the cleanest establishment for a concert, but I suppose it’ll have to do. I know I’ll be able to hit the right key, but Mordecai made a few special potions, compounded together, for us to make sure Carl and I are in proper sync. A shame, really, that it won’t be a pure performance. It’s not as bad as lip syncing, of course, but what’re you going to do?”

I felt strangely nervous. I knew the potion would work, and that I’d be able to sing, but I still felt...weird about it. The compounding was something new that he’d been working on, and it was a way to get around potion cooldowns when we needed to take several at once.

I’d never sang in my life, except when I was hammered at a bar with a bunch of other coasties. And that had been years ago.

As it turned out, if we did a duet with one of the guild entrance songs, we both had performance bars, and it was possible for only one of us to succeed.

This particular song wasn’t technically a duet in the traditional sense of the word, but it was listed as having two singers in the book, and that’s what really mattered.

I would be taking the lead on this song. We did it this way because Donut only had a few lines, meaning the chances that she would be successful were much higher, even though we’d picked a song that was pretty hard to sing. Hopefully I’d be able to get in, too, but if not, I was confident in Donut’s ability to charm Porky out of the guild.

In addition to the potion, Donut would be using her headset with the autotune turned to the max. The double microphones were unnecessary, but there was no way around it. And I had to use a scroll to make certain I was physically able to hit the proper notes. The scroll was called Gelded Choirboy. Even if I could sing, this song wasn’t in a register my deeper voice could normally hit. We weren’t taking any chances.

Mordecai insisted the name of the spell wasn’t literal.

The scroll would make my voice a little squeaky, so I was going to wait until the last possible second to read it. The singing potion would last a long while, so I took it now. I felt the warmth spread through me.

You’ve been Honeyed! You are able to control your singing much better now.  

You’ve been Yo-Yo Ma’d! You have perfect pitch! You will be able to determine a note just by hearing it!

You’ve been Dio’d! You can hold your voice for much longer!

Donut zapped Mongo out into the room. The large dinosaur screeched in surprise and started waving his wings, looking around. Several patrons cried out and jumped back.

“What the hell, Donut?” I asked. “Why isn’t he in the garage, guarding Hedy?”

“Jamal is in there with some of the slugs. She’ll be fine. I don’t want Mongo to miss Uncle Carl’s stage debut! He would never forgive me! Isn’t that right, Mongo? Aren’t you excited?”

Mongo let out an excited screech and waved his wings some more.

I met eyes with Imani, and she smiled, genuinely smiled, at me.

“I don’t know why you’re so set on completing this quest, but I ain’t gonna lie, Carl. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for a long time.”

I grinned back at her. I wished I could tell her how important this truly was. Instead, I just said, “I hope you like Norwegian music.”

“Wait, what are you going to sing?”

“Don’t tell her!” Donut called. She also glowed, having taken the potion. “It’s a secret!”

The DJ, who’d been on the floor yelling at Dwight—who still hadn’t moved—returned to his booth and tapped his microphone.

“Singing ‘Take on Me’ by A-ha, it’s Princess Donut and Carl! Get on up here you two.”

Donut hopped up and down. “It’s time! It’s time!” She raised the volume on her headset. “Okay, everyone! I want you to put your hands together. This will be Carl’s first time singing ever! So let’s give him some encouragement!”

The small crowd started to roar.  

“A-ha?” Imani asked, raising an eyebrow.  

“There were only a few two-singer songs on the list,” I said. “If it doesn’t work, we have a few backup songs planned. The good thing is we can keep trying until we get in.”  

“Elle is gonna be pissed she missed this.” She turned and raised her hand, motioning at Chris, Florin, Bautista, Britney, and Jurgen, who’d all just entered. They started moving toward the back.

The bar, which had been half-full until this moment, was suddenly more packed than I’d ever seen.  

Across the way, I saw Dong Quixote in the entrance, looking at me. He gave me a sheepish smile. He started walking toward us, his giant sock over his shoulder like a Santa bag. Bucket Boy rushed in and grabbed him by the shoulder.

“Hurry up, Carl!” Donut said, bounding toward the stage. “No, Mongo. You stay back here. You can stand on the table and watch. Mommy will be right back.” I sighed and approached the platform. Dekoki the kappa and Yuto the oni from Team Yokai both patted me on the back. So did one of the skeletons from the Bleak Congregation. The gremlin DJ had a small microphone on stage already attached to a stand, placed at Donut height. He slapped a second microphone into my palm as I turned to face the crowd. A pair of screens sat at an angle, facing the stage, showing the lyrics.

A pair of happy faces danced back and forth on the screen with the words “Get Ready to Sing!”   

I activated the Gelded Choirboy scroll.

You’ve been Choired! What a beautiful voice you have!  

Donut looked up at me. I could see my reflection in her sunglasses. My cheeks were burning red, and I wasn’t sure if that was nerves or if it was a side effect of the choirboy thing.

“Remember, Carl. Just sing naturally. It’s okay if you mess this up. I already put us down for a second go just in case. Follow my lead, and we’ll be fine.”

“I’m ready,” I said. I startled at my own voice. I sounded as if I’d just sucked a balloon full of helium.

“Here we go,” the DJ called. The music started to play, filling the club with the happy, synth-pop that could’ve only originated in the 1980’s. The crowd cheered and started blissfully jumping up and down to the beat. The little performance gauges appeared over each of our heads. Across the bar, Mongo screeched with encouragement.

Okay. You can do this.  

And that’s when Dwight the unicorn stabbed the DJ in the face with his horn.

~~~~~~~~~

Happy New Years everyone!