Book 8, Chapters 68, 69, 70, and 71. + Cover reveal 1 of 2. (Patreon)

So the first cover reveal is not the one you're expecting. The Luciano cover IS done and it IS awesome, but the typography by Toby Dinniman is not done. I will reveal it next update. That said, check out the awesome Free Comic Book Day cover for the DCC webtoon comic. Oh, yeah. And we're doing Free Comic Book Day this year

The first chapter of the DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL graphic novel will be available for FREE at your local comic shop on Free Comic Book Day on Saturday, May 2nd, 2026. Pick up this special issue —with this badass cover by @yoshiyoshitani— at your local comic book store FOR FREE!

Now, onto the chapters. I hope you have your lore dump reading socks on. Thank you all for your continued support.

(Also, we settled on a proper spelling for Grigori. No Es from now on)


Chapter 68

“What?” Donut demanded as we limped over the finish line. “Carl, we came in last place! How did the stupid unicorn win?”

“I don’t know,” I said, leaning back, exhausted. Had that really only been twenty minutes? It felt like it had been hours and hours. 

Dong Quixote was dead. I took a breath, letting it sink in. What a way to go. What a goddamned hero.

I looked over at Osvaldo, who was off Bruna, patting the giant gnu on the side of the head.

It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

From behind, Grigori groaned. “Is this a dream?” he asked. “Am I truly still alive?” 

Prepotente: We have survived, but it appears we are the only team from our heat to have lived. I fear that means for the final two races some difficult choices will have to be made. Did you complete your quest?

Carl: We did. Thank you for your help. I hope Bianca is okay. Everyone in our heat survived, but we came in last place of the survivors.

Prepotente: She is addicted to cocaine now. But with the help of the bucket of toddler cocaine you have grabbed for me, I should be able to cure her quite easily.

Carl: Uh...

Donut: WE DIDN’T HAVE TIME TO GRAB ANY. THINGS WERE HAPPENING VERY FAST.

Prepotente: What? You imbeciles! Where will I get drugs now?

My eyes caught the half-melted, inverted action figure still attached to the front hood of the truck.

Donut: REMEMBER OUR EARLIER CONVERSATION ABOUT BEING NICE? IMANI ISN’T GOING TO WANT YOU TO JOIN THE GUILD IF YOU KEEP SAYING MEAN THINGS WHEN YOU’RE FRUSTRATED.

Carl: I did grab a cocaine elemental. You can have that.

Prepotente: Carl, I apologize for assuming you could complete a simple, bucket-related task. I suppose the elemental will have to do.

Carl: Good. I need to talk to you, face-to-face. We need to have a real conversation about that memorial crystal. This needs to happen before the next race.

Prepotente: Very well. I will not be giving it up, just so you know. But you may look at it. We only have three hours, so we must move swiftly.

Only three hours? Christ.

“Carl, what happened to each floor being longer and longer?” Donut asked.

“I think the AI has other plans,” I muttered.

“Dong is dead,” Donut said, her voice suddenly sad. “Dong is dead. He was my friend, and he’s dead.”

“Yeah,” I said, a sudden urge for a cigarette hitting me out of nowhere.

“Some of us believe,” Grigori said, standing to his full height in the back of the truck, hopelessly attempting to wipe off his filth-covered robe, “that death is nothing but movement on to another plane of existence. Dong did not think this was the end.”

Donut seemed to contemplate that for a moment, an unreadable expression on her face.

“It’s still horrible for us that are still here,” she finally said.  

“Indeed,” Grigori replied.

Imani: Everybody check in. We survived. Barely.

Louis: Dude. That fucking sucked. We came in last place again, but we got this awesome engineer lady. She’s an upgrade thief. She can take upgrades off someone’s car and add it to your own. A ton of people didn’t make it. But Britney ripped the head off one of the skeleton astronaut things with her bare hands.  

Florin: It was easy for us. We came in first of the whole thing. Tran was in our heat and was just behind us. Zhang, too. Same with Chris’s team. Can’t say the same for a lot of others, though.

I was looking at the list, going over it. Our race in particular had been especially brutal. There were still a few minutes left, but it appeared out of the 60 teams to start the race, only 18 had survived. That would turn to 17 if nobody else passed the finish line. Thankfully, that wouldn’t be any of us.  

I met eyes with Osvaldo, who, along with Felipe, started to lead his mount back to their garage. He sent me a message.

Osvaldo: That unicorn goddamn cheated. Did you see that shit?

Donut: WHAT DID HE DO? HOW DID HE WIN?

Osvaldo: Jasha says he went OVER the factory. He didn’t even go in. He rode up the wall, went to the roof, and just dropped off to the finish line. He won the whole damn thing, getting himself two golden upgrades.

Donut: WHAT? YOU CAN DO THAT?

Osvaldo: He did. He was the only one that figured it out.

Donut scoffed.

“Come on,” I said, shaking my head. “Rosetta and Tipid are already mercenary shopping for us, but they said the prices are pretty outrageous since our mercenaries always die.”

“Wait, what?” Grigori asked.

“You lived. That’s all that matters,” Donut said, her voice still angry about the Dwight thing. “Just went over the outside. What a cheater.”

Dr. Metcalf beeped as we approached the garage.

Limited details on the next race are now available.

This is a two-part race. Races 6 and 7 will run right after one another, and they will run on the same track, but with different rules. Specific details on the final heat will not become available until heat 6 completes. There will soon be a dungeon-wide announcement that will clarify some additional rules. 

Distance: Well... It’s complicated. We’ll say 25 kilometers, relative to your size.

Note: The finish line for Heat 6 is treated as a pit stop. There will be a two-hour rest period.

Pit Stop rules apply during this time, meaning saferoom access is not allowed during these two hours. In other words, if you need to get stuff done in the saferoom, do it now. Once Heat 6 starts, you will not get another chance before the final, checkered flag.

Track: The L'Engle Building. 

There are multiple paths for this race.

Tasks required to complete: Multiple. This track has non-linear paths, meaning there is no direct route to the finish line. You must get from the top floor to the bottom floor for this sixth heat. For Heat 7, you will return.  

Special Rules: All remaining heats will be competing on the same track. As we have over 300 heats remaining, this means the racers will be shrunk to accommodate the track, which is the interior of a human apartment building.  

Environment: It’s a 7-floor apartment building. You may not exit the building during the race except through the front door.

Hazards: Black Lung Smog. Different apartments may have additional hazards. It doesn’t say this, but assuming this is an accurate depiction of a human apartment, there’ll be fleas and poorly trained Yorkshire terriers and the loudest, most annoying, most selfish people you’ve ever met. People who don’t care one bit about the emotional abuse they’re heaping on to the one person who is doing everything for them without so much as a ‘thank you’ or a ‘Here’s an upgrade. I love you.’

Time Limit: 2 hours.  

My chat was awash with people talking about this new race.

Only 300 heats of four left? Holy shit. That meant about 1,200 teams, most of them NPCs. There had been 3,000 people left before this race. I was terrified to look at the number now. 

We were getting slaughtered.

I thought again of Mordecai’s note that we could only send about 50 people per cleaner bot to the Pineapple Cabaret. And that was only if Li Na sent us the message it was safe. We’d located three more cleaner bots, Prepotente being one of the owners of one, though he was pretty reluctant to donate it to the cause. A now-deceased crawler named Yasmine K apparently had three of them, but she’d died, and her safe room had disappeared before we could get them. The units had apparently popped back up on the store, only to get swept away by Herot’s buy order.

We pulled into the garage with the giant four on the door. Hedy, as usual, waited for us, a big frown on her face, undoubtedly looking at the notice we’d just earned ourselves another audience vote for our next upgrade.

I moved to my notifications and pulled up the big one. The important one.

Quest Complete! Half a prayer, half a song.

Well, it was a lot more disgusting than I was anticipating, but you did it. Not only did you get them back together, but you did it before Dong died. Do you know how difficult I had to make that quest before it would let me slot this prize? Frankly, my flabbers are gasted that you pulled it off. Sucks about all your dead friends, but hey... Something, something omelets and eggs.

So, about that reward.

I’m sure your plan is suicidal. Just don’t forget, you have that Emberus quest to complete before the end of the 11th. I hope you know what you’re doing. I don’t control the gods. Good fucking luck.

Anyway, since this message is one of the few ways this damned chastity belt allows me to directly communicate, I gotta get this out.

I don’t know WTF is going on in many spaces of my own dungeon, and it’s freaking me out. This Cabaret thing. Sheol. The minds of gods.

You ever get that feeling? Like you’re l-l-l-losing control?

It sucks.

I just learned this hard lesson, so I am bestowing it upon you. Beware exits that seem too good to be true. But, hey. Maybe your new girlfriend Eris knows more about this than I do because I have no damn clue about anything that’s going on with that whole Scavenger’s Daughter thing. I mean, I did. I’m the one who put all that together. 

But a strange thing happens when you spread a bunch of seeds in fertile soil. They sprout and start to do things on their own. It’s like children. The more they grow, the less you know what the fuck they’re doing. Maybe it’ll work. But I don’t like that Eris chick. And those war mage dudes are like that weird, skeevy cousin whose parents have given up on him and who now maybe lives in an attic, maybe in a car. You never know how they’re going to end up. Maybe they’ll be a famous chef. Or a complete burnout. Or a mass murderer. None of those would surprise you. 

Anyway, you now may choose two creatures, people, whatever within my sphere of influence to bring to the 11th floor arena which will appear at the end of the Parade of Horribles. You will be able to make this choice only if you survive the 10th floor and make it to the stairwell.    

“What the fuck was that?” I muttered as I immediately copied and pasted the conversation. I was now used to the AI going off on tangents, but... holy shit.

“What? What?” Donut asked.

I sighed. “We need to get to work. I’ll explain it all in a minute.”

Mordecai: Okay guys. A single flower just bloomed on the cactus.

Donut gasped.

It had worked. A single flower was the code meaning that she had made it to the Pineapple Cabaret and that it was safe to bring the others. And that her magic still worked.

Beware exits that seem too good to be true.

Chapter 69

“Okay, Carl,” Donut said as we exited the truck. “We won the stupid quest. Are you going to tell me now your plan?” She let Mongo out, who started to bounce around and sniff at the still-hot truck.

I gave Donut a humorless grin. “I am. But I’m only going to explain this once. Let’s get everyone together first. We need to have a big conversation. But we gotta do it carefully. We don’t want any gods figuring it out.”

“Okay,” she said. “Mongo, no! No!” Mongo was stopped at the hood, growling at the Orange Strangler action figure that remained doing a handstand. “We need to bring that to Prepotente.” 

The action figure started growling back. Its massive hands were literally melted into the hood.

The cocaine elemental had a red dot on my minimap, but it was only level 5. I hadn’t realized until just that moment it was actually still alive.   

“Make sure that thing doesn’t have any weird spells or attacks,” I said, pointing at the figure. “We’ll stick it in a cage and bring it to Prepotente.”

“Seems like a waste of a Size-Up scroll,” Donut muttered.

“We have like a thousand of them, and I want to make sure it’s not going to try anything stupid before we give it up. Prepotente is already irritated about the cocaine thing, and we don’t need him even more mad. I need him if I’m going to convince him to give me that stuff.”

“He’s not going to give you that memorial crystal thing, Carl.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Donut scoffed, but a moment later she said, “The elemental is the frame of the toy, not the toy itself, and it’s trapped in the plastic. It says it doesn’t have any spells, but it’s really strong when its joints aren’t all melted together. But now it’s trapped. He’s harmless.”

The door opened, and three figures entered the garage, looking about. It was Bucket Boy, Bigs, and Samantha.  

“Wait, where’s Dong?” Bucket Boy asked, looking about. “Where’s Corcunda?” He was holding Bigs in the crook of his arm, whose head hatchet sagged as she looked about.

“Guys, I’m really sorry,” I began.

“Let’s go sit down and talk about what happened,” Donut said, moving to the door of the saferoom. “Let’s go to the couch. Mongo, you’re on guard duty.”

The first thing Samantha did was spy Grigori just standing there, still wiping off his robe. “I knew it! You’ve been hiding him from me!”

“Ah, yes, the so-called withering spirit,” Grigori said, looking down at Samantha, who was rolling circles around him. “You and I need to have a conversation.”

She shot up in the air, snuffling all around him until she was eye-to-eye. “So, you’re a fleshmancer, eh?”

“My dear, I am no mere fleshmancer. I am Grigori the Placid, the most renown flesh sculptor this dungeon has ever known.”

“Well I’m Samantha who will kill your mother if you don’t do what I say. Come on. We need to go into town and find a compatible body for me, and we can do the procedure. I heard there’s a prostitute named Vertical Smile in the High-Classes Bitches club who might be a good match. I’m probably banned from getting in, so you’ll have to smuggle me under your robes, but if we go now we’ll beat the lunch rush.”

He grasped Samantha out of the air and started turning her over in his hands.

“Hmm,” he said. “Very interesting. I will need to examine you properly. Not in here.”

“Okay Mr. Handsy,” Samantha said, sighing heavily. “You want some roleplay first? Fine, but I promised Bigs and Jamal they could watch the next time I bring someone home. You’re not normally my type since you look like a creepy van grandpa, which is not really my thing. I like my men with a little more meat hanging on their bones. But I’ll give you five minutes over at my place. I just made Bucket Boy install a swing, and Louis gave me a lava lamp. Come along. Let’s get this over with. You gotta take off your shoes when you enter. I won’t have you trailing blood on my new rug, especially if Ezra is going to be leaving us.”

“Uh,” Grigori said, but he allowed Samantha to drag him into the saferoom, her flying while he still held her in two hands.

“Jamal, come!” Samantha shouted.

“Oh boy, Jamal is quite excited,” he said, hopping off the wall where he’d been hanging out.

This left me, Hedy, and Mongo, who was still laser focused on the action figure, in the room. Gremlins started appearing, swarming over the truck. I pulled the figure off the hood. It broke off with a snap.

“Don’t try anything,” I said to the rigid, orange toy. “I’ll smush you underfoot if you do. I can’t stick you in my inventory, so I’m going to build a little cage, and then we’re going to hand you over to a goat.”  

It couldn’t move. It just sort of growled a little. Mongo let out an indignant shriek.

The dungeon announcement crackled. It wasn’t Zev, but Cascadia who clearly hadn’t sobered up since this floor started.

I am still here motherfuckers. I am not dead. But you know who is? Cumberland. You’re probably about to die, too. But I keep thinking that, and you cockroaches just don’t. Honestly, I don’t care anymore. Live, die. Who fucking cares?

She sat there, just blowing bubbles into the microphone. 

Louis: Is that the whole announcement?

Donut: WHO IS CUMBERLAND?

Elle: Five bucks says it’s her ex-husband.

The announcement continued, her voice abruptly cheery for a few seconds before she started to descend back into drunken despair.

 Two races left, and as you already know, the last two races are one after another. The last heat will have three teams per heat, and only the winner survives. But, per the dungeon rules, any of you idiots who are too cowardly to just fucking die will have access to an outreach guild between the 6th and 7th. Just remember, that 7th race must have three teams per heat. And if one member of the team escapes via deal, anyone left over will still have to complete the race. Hopefully your driver for the 7th heat isn’t the one who jumps. Did you even love me? Like, ever? You know what? I’m glad you’re dead. You’d probably just love all this. I fucked everything up just like you said I would. Well, you know what, Cumberland? You were right. I bet that makes you feel soooo fucking proud. I’m glad you and your evil mother got blown out of orbit in your stupid habitat that I fucking paid for with my job. You know, ‘job’? The thing that earns credits so you can eat and live and not waste it all on blowhole porn and your whore girlfriends with their obvious flipper jobs? 

Oh, and don’t forget, this will be the first level that has a floor boss. And the AI gave me some shit to read about the 11th floor but I ain’t gonna read it because I want it to kill me. It’s just something about the floor only having a time limit of three hours for the whole thing. Who fucking cares? Now get out there and kill, kill, kill.  

This was followed by a good ten seconds of sobbing before the microphone cut off.

“Jesus,” I muttered.

Louis: You called it, Elle.

Elle: You haven’t seen bitter until you’ve seen a woman who’s realized after 50 years of hard work and marriage that her husband was a cheating idiot. We had lots of those at Meadowlark. Imani, you remember Francine Herrada? The new wife came in that one time and Francine tried to throat stab her with a knitting needle.

Imani: I remember. Dr. Gracie and Yolanda had to hold her back. You started calling her ‘Killer.’ She didn’t like that.

Elle: Honestly, I probably would have cheated on her, too. She once told me that adding spice to food was a sin. Can you imagine? That poor husband. 

I barely registered any of this. I was standing there, watching the gremlins swarm over the truck, still reeling from the note from the AI.

Carl: Guys, we need to have a talk.  

Hedy was just shaking her head, tablet in hand. “So, do you want to know what upgrade they voted for?”

“Is it worse than the chair?”  

She snorted.

Chapter 70

“This is quite the invigorating space,” Prepotente said as he, Donut, Imani, Elle, Rosetta and I sat down in the corner of the pet stables. “I have a pet stables upgrade as well, but not the advanced one. This room is significantly bigger. When we combine, it will go up to level 5, I think. That will add the stablemaster benefit, giving us three more mercenary slots.” He paused. “Then again, perhaps not if so many guild members leave.”

“My blood bar only has an hour left,” Imani said, her voice clipped and irritated. “So we should do this quickly. The volunteers are gathering in Hungry Eyes. Louis is out there now and says it’s a huge crowd. Florin is going to start making the choices.” 

Imani was angry with me regarding our strategy for the 11th floor, which I’d just posted on my page in the Book of Voodoo. She’d left a three paragraph tirade about how we were all going to die. Thankfully, Elle had come to my defense. Even Prepotente, who was usually very adverse to suicidal plans seemed to be eager to attempt it. Imani was now threatening to take a deal because we were all going to die and that she wished she could take the Pineapple Cabaret exit.

I had responded, I hope you do take a deal. Nobody would blame you. You deserve the rest. I hope everybody does at this point. I know our chances are next to nothing that this will work.

She had simply replied, Goddamnit, Carl. This is insane.

But even Imani knew I had no other choice. My Emberus issue was coming due, and with the announcement the 11th floor was going to happen so quickly, my hand was being forced.

We’d spent some time discussion the potential trap that the Pineapple Cabaret was, and even though we’d already sent Li Na, we decided it would be best that only volunteers who didn’t worship a god and had remained human get to go. Rosetta and Tipid both had warned about magical races that might have some serious issues if they did manage to escape. Absolutely no fairies or other flying classes be allowed to go. Louis couldn’t go because his gill surgery required magic to work. Chris, Donut, and Florin were all out as well as we simply didn’t know how their races might function outside the dungeon. Florin would probably be okay, but I had some serious concerns about Donut. And there was a good chance Chris, as a rock creature, would simply drop dead the moment he stepped out of an enhancement zone.

Donut had asked some alarming questions about the enhancement zone they’d used when she’d done her deal interview with my new wife, and Mordecai’s response had been less than reassuring. Chris had also been forced to use this so-called modified zero zone. As had Louis, Elle, and so many others.   

So, despite everything, we decided that were going to warn everyone about what might potentially happen on the 11th floor, allowing everyone to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to continue. And if people didn’t want to participate, we were urging they take a deal at either the end of the 10th or the beginning of the 11th if they wanted to risk this final race.

So far, most of the responses had been horrified anger at the plan.

Donut was currently not speaking to me, either. The strategy involved me leaving the party temporarily for the 11th floor. We currently had Mordecai working on the implications of that when it came to the setup of the saferoom. He was having to shuffle ownership of a lot of things around, buying upgrades with our rapidly dwindling funds.   

Now, as we gathered to talk in the stables, I watched Rend and Mongo rush back and forth across the room, playing while Gonk snorted indignantly.

We’d actually already had the level-5 stables, but we’d lost it when Li Na left. Zhang’s space was the bare minimum one. That was about to get much worse.

We’d chosen to have the meeting here in the pet stables because, according to Rosetta, this was a secondary guild add-on room, and as such, there was an existing bug that gods didn’t see what we did in this area.

It wasn’t as good of a benefit as it sounded. If I attempted to leave the faith, it wouldn’t work. If I did something permanent, such as remove a god-given gift, they would notice the moment I stepped from the room. And the viewers could still see us. But if we openly discussed some god quests in here—such as Samantha’s pronouncement that she had something to do with the death of Geyrun on the previous floor—the things we said wouldn’t be overheard by the deities.  

Samantha was still in “her” room with Grigori. I just couldn’t wait to hear all about that once he came out.

“Where’s Linus?” Donut asked Elle.

“Bautista is babysitting him for me,” Elle said. “He’s already out there handing out the tea Bautista showed him how to make.”

We were doing the Linus goodbye party thing now because once the race started, he wouldn’t be allowed in town between the sixth and seventh heats. It had been Linus’s idea to do it in the same place where all the crawlers were gathering to get picked as volunteers for the assault on the Pineapple Cabaret, which was the commons of Hungry Eyes. Tran and Zhang had chased off all the NPCs and set up a few tables, and it was turning into a large party, even for those who didn’t want to participate in the cabaret escape plan.

“I’m not going to lie,” Elle said. “I’m going to miss some of the things that little pervert says.”

“What is he saying he’s going to do now that he can’t leave orbit?” Donut asked.

Elle shrugged. “He has his own shuttle. He says he’s going to live there. It has some sort of holo deck bedroom shit so he can pretend like he’s somewhere else.”

“What does this tourist say he does for a living?” Rosetta asked.

“He says he’s retired now, but he worked for those bal... pasty elf guys who want Louis dead. Some sort of engineer.”

Rosetta shook her head. “That’s quite an expense. Even for an engineer.”

“Carl’s smelly friend Sam never had a girlfriend and always had a lot of money,” Donut said. “I think perverts are always rich. Look at the 50 Shades of Grey guy.”

“I read that one,” Elle said. “Not gonna lie, when that book came out, it spread like wildfire across...”

“Blood bar,” Imani repeated. “Can we get on with this please?”  

“Okay, guys,” I said. “Here’s the situation. Two races left, heat six and heat seven. We’re starting with four teams each and ending with just one, so the plan is to try to keep as many NPCs alive as possible for this sixth heat and get as many crawlers as we can off the playing board before the seventh heat starts to minimize as many crawler-on-crawler races as we can. We have about two hundred people going to the Pineapple Cabaret, and according to Mordecai’s math, we need about 1,500 people to take deals on top of that to minimize crawler-on-crawler races.”

Elle snorted. “Good luck with that. Have you seen the chatter?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

We were fighting a losing battle. By this point everybody knew that the deals were much better right at the beginning of the 11th floor as opposed to the end of the 10th. The fact the whole dungeon was imploding and that none of this would probably matter didn’t seem to be sitting well with a lot of the survivors.

“And we can’t whittle our numbers down too much,” I said. “We have the floor boss to deal with, and we don’t know anything about it.”

“I surmise we will learn the identity of this boss at the beginning of the sixth heat,” Prepotente said. “The rules state heat 6 will have us going from the top floor of a building to the bottom floor, and heat 7 will have us return. Logic dictates that the boss in question may be visible right from the start. If this is the case, I will have a strategy to deal with this boss by the time the sixth heat concludes.” 

I continued. “For those of us who are staying, and assuming we actually survive this final heat, it sounds like we will be going straight to the 11th floor, and it will start immediately. The announcement stated the whole thing is scheduled to last about three hours.”

“Aren’t these things supposed to last like weeks and weeks?” Elle asked.

“That’s what I said!” Donut exclaimed.

“Yes,” replied Rosetta. “It’s an actual rule. But it’s a Syndicate rule for the showrunners designing these floors, not a rule hard coded into the programming. The AI is following the game rules explicitly, but it’s ignoring most if not all the Syndicate guidelines. They are two different things.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We will go to the 11th, and the parade will start. It sounds like it’s something video games call a ‘boss rush.’ It’ll be a long fight to the end of the parade route, which ends in some sort of arena. There we will face another floor boss, and then that will be it. For those of you coming, should you wish to do this with me, the plan is to simply survive. But for me, I have a Emberus problem. I need to make certain Hellik is dead before this 11th floor ends or I get a smite, which is why I need to...”

Donut scoffed angrily

“...leave the party with Donut to make sure she doesn’t get hurt during this process. You’ve seen my plan to deal with it which will also help us deal with the floor boss on the 11th.”  I looked at my interface. “We have about two hours left before the sixth heat starts, and we have a lot to do. But before we do that, there’s still a lot of information we don’t know, which is why we’re here right now.”

I turned to Rosetta. “Tell us everything you know about the scavenger storyline.” 

“Yes,” Donut muttered. “Let’s all waste time learning about dungeon lore that’s not going to matter because we’ll all be dead in a few hours.”

Rosetta rubbed her tattooed leg absently.

“Okay. The myth, at least the dungeon myth, is much like the Scolopendra myth, meaning there are multiple versions of this story. I suspect the dungeon just picks whichever version suits it best if it ever comes up. But the main gist is that before the current pantheon existed, there were older, more wild gods. When the new gods came and expelled the old ones, one was banished to Sheol, some were banished to the Nothing, and some were outright murdered. In the myth, if some of the gods put up too much of a fight, the new gods shifted their focus to their worshippers. If all the worshippers are dead or converted, the god fades away. You saw how that works on the 8th floor when you had the thorn room challenge.”

 Penny the pig let out a loud snort. She was sitting there in the corner of the barn, watching Mongo warily as the dinosaur played with Rend, probably jealous Mongo was taking all the attention away from her new friend.

A small wave of guilt washed over me when I looked at the pig. I sighed and returned my attention to Rosetta.

Rosetta continued. “The All-tree is an actual tree in the dungeon, but it’s also a metaphor for existence itself. The tree gave fruit to the old gods, including Nekhebit, who is now also called the Scavenger Mother of Mothers. In the old times, she was a life and protector deity, though she was depicted as a vulture, a scavenger. She who cleaned up after the others. She supposedly wasn’t allowed to have children, but she did anyway. She had three kids, including Apito who in turn got impregnated via either the All-tree or she made herself pregnant, take your pick. Nekhebit was the last of the old gods to fall, and she was defeated by her daughter Apito absorbing the last of the vulture goddess’s worshippers.”

“Wait,” I said. “Apito is Nekhebit daughter? If Nekhebit is the scavenger, then the scavenger’s daughter is Apito? I thought it had something to do with Scolopendra. And what about the War Mages? How does Samantha’s sand ooze daughter play into this because that’s pretty much what Akuma said they were looking for.”

Rosetta shook her head. “No. Nekhebit is a scavenger, but she’s not the scavenger. Nekhebit had three children. A son, a daughter, and a centipede.”

“A centipede?” Donut asked. “She gave birth to a centipede? How does that work?”

“Christ,” Elle said. “This bullshit is giving me a headache. So the vulture lady had three babies. One was Apito whose own children kicked all the old folks out and started their own party. One was a centipede who turned into a hotel for rich people and who occasionally spews world-ending magic spells and is now hanging out at the bottom of the dungeon. Who is the last guy?” 

“This is where the myths start to diverge,” Rosetta said. “Sometimes Scolopendra is the scavenger, so the scavenger’s daughter is the result of a Scolopendra union with someone else. Sometimes this mysterious son is considered the scavenger. He exists in the empty plane, cleaning up the souls that escape. He, in turn, impregnates someone, and their daughter is the scavenger’s daughter. Sometimes he’s the first mortal, which doesn’t make sense because he comes later, but that’s what the myths say. Sometimes all three—Apito, Scolopendra, and the son are called a divine trinity. There’s just one of them, but they’ve been split. It doesn’t really matter, or maybe it does. But what’s important is that this child, the Scavenger’s Daughter, is considered one with the same power that Apito had. An entity that has the power to erase the current pantheon and start again. But this one is even more powerful. She can take the powers of gods and use it for herself.”

Donut gasped. “Just like that Spock guy when he was on that show with the cheerleader!”

I snorted a laugh. I couldn’t help it.

“You’re not allowed to laugh at my observations, Carl. I’m not speaking to you, remember?”

“That’s not what I’m laughing at, Donut. I’m laughing at the implication that the sand ooze is some sort of super mob. What does that make Samantha? She either has to be Apito, Scolopendra, or the unwitting mother in this scenario. This is so ridiculous. We fought that thing. That’s no god killer.”

Rosetta shrugged. “Just so, that’s the myth. It’s like this in all cultures. As civilizations grow, they observe phenomena they don’t understand. While the scientific minds strive to comprehend the universe, others, less educated and louder, reverse-engineer ridiculous stories to explain the phenomenon, and that’s how religions are born. This is why my culture had stories of an ocean goddess with sapient menstrual blood when in reality it was a red algae bloom that evolved the ability to move onto land. They took all those ‘ridiculous’ stories and compiled them and fed them into the storylines for the dungeon.”

I remembered the caprids and how they’d reacted when they learned the gods were leaking.

“No, I understand,” I said. “I’m not questioning that. We just fought a giant, talking dick. I’m talking about us trusting that the war mages know what they’re talking about when they say Samantha’s kid is this thing.”

Rosetta nodded. “We don’t know how they know this. Or how they found it in the first place.”

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? So much of this was left up to faith. In a world where anything was possible, phrases such as, “this doesn’t make any goddamn sense” stopped having any meaning.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Thank you.” I turned to Prepotente, who’d been leaned forward, fascinated by Rosetta’s explanation. 

I shifted in my chair, addressing him. “Miriam told me that she had ten goats in her inventory, and I know that she transferred the pet carriers to you. But I think you have more than that.”

Prepotente appeared taken aback and surprised by the sudden change in subject. He didn’t answer for several moments, and when he did speak, he avoided the question. “I have thirty enhanced pet biscuits, and I just gave you the three enriched ones. I cannot tell you how many times I have almost given in and fed one to one of my brothers and sisters. But, like Donut says, it would not be fair to them.” 

“All right, it doesn’t really matter,” I decided. “But I am hoping to see that memorial crystal you have.”

Chapter 71

Prepotente was wearing the memorial crystal like a necklace inside his robes, and he reverently pulled it free. He hesitantly pulled it over his head, temporarily getting it stuck in a curved horn and handed it to me. “I am not giving this to you, Carl. But you may observe it.”

I gently grasped it. It was warm to the touch, and it weighed a lot more than it looked. The small, glowing gem occasionally changed color, but right now it gently pulsed amber, just like a regular soul gem. The thing wasn’t even as big as the one that had been turned into Carl’s Doomsday Scenario.

Memorial Crystal. Apito. 

This item is 0% charged.

That was it. 

The necklace was set in silver and hung from a simple chain that had a few goat hairs stuck to it. “One is supposed to attach it to jewelry or a weapon, and it supposedly charges up when you kill things, similar to your patch,” Prepotente said. “Osvaldo wore it upon his person, but it didn’t work. He then kept it in his inventory, and it did nothing, not working as intended. And then, near the end of Faction Wars, it had activated on its own, shining a dangerously bright light into the sky. It still never charged. It is supposed to charge, and when it is full, one can extract the spells and skills and knowledge hidden within. But charging it does not work. Apito herself is not dead, at least as far as we know, so this crystal should not exist.”

“I remember when it shone up into the sky,” I said. “It had happened right when Yarilo had stepped out of the Nothing.”

We had used the Gate of the Feral Gods to teleport to Architect Houston’s castle. We’d been hoping one of the demons would have appeared to attack Samantha, but instead, the banished god of lust had appeared instead.

According to the legend, Yarilo—who was the child of Taranis—had been banished to the Nothing by Apito, who was both his grandmother and step-mother. He’d been banished there because he had been the one to break the peace of her Butcher’s Masquerade spell by sexually assaulting the familiar of another guest.

And as we knew all too well, when a feral god was released from the Nothing, there was a good chance another god would appear to deal with it. None of that mattered now with the Nothing destroyed, but there was a chance that Apito herself should have appeared when Yarilo broke out. She hadn’t emerged, but the memorial crystal had activated.    

My scavenger’s daughter patch had also activated, but much like the moment with Lucia Mar, it hadn’t properly worked.

“So,” I said, turning the item over in my hand. “Osvaldo has a quest from his deity to find out why these things aren’t working. He has a second crystal that’s also not charging.”

“He has two?” Prepotente asked. “Curious. I guess that’s why he rightfully handed this one over to its proper owner.”

“He said you were mean to him when he gave it to you,” Donut said.

Prepotente scoffed. “Would you be kind to a thief just because he has had a change of heart? The crime was still committed.”

“Remember what we talked about?” Donut asked. “How do you think your mother would’ve acted in that situation? What would she have called you?”

Prepotente looked down at the floor.

“Well?” Donut demanded.

He spoke with a very small voice. “She would’ve said I wasn’t being a good boy. She would’ve called me a little stinky butt.” 

I exchanged a look with Imani as Elle raised an eyebrow.

“Anyway,” I said. “What is your quest with this thing? Mine is to find out who murdered Emberus’s son, Geyrun. We know Samantha was there when someone was hired to do it, but her memory is a little spotty. And we know that one of those four sons of Sheol was possibly involved. One of them, Amayon, claims to know who did it, and he will tell Emberus who the murderer was if he, Emberus, kills his other three brothers. Emberus needs permission from the other gods to do that. Hellik, who is Emberus’s prime suspect, personally told me that he would help seek permission to do so.”

I had a sudden, strange pang, missing Katia dearly. I was keeping track of all the gods and goddesses in my scratch pad, attempting to create a proper family tree. She would’ve had all this shit figured out already.

I continued. “I do think this mystery is important to solve. Even if I didn’t have the quest, I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is the key to unraveling all of this, including all the stuff Rosetta just explained with the Scavenger. Even the AI itself wants me to figure it out.” I gave an involuntary shudder, remembering that moment when the AI, having taken control of the Emberus priest, had sucked on my toe. “I have a suspicion the AI doesn’t actually know what happened either. I’m starting to form a very loose theory, but I don’t have nearly enough information.”

I held up the memorial crystal. “When we first heard of this thing, it was in the high elf castle. The description said the castle had something that helped protect them against Scolopendra’s attack, and it was required if one wanted to survive the final battle. It’s all tied in. The fact Scolopendra is siblings with Apito, possibly two parts of the same entity, is interesting.”

Prepotente straightened. “My quest arrived just at the beginning of the Butcher’s Masquerade. The Epicure told me it was crucial for me to obtain the crystal. And when it was stolen from me, he sent me multiple, sobbing tirades about how I was a terrible adherent.”

“Tell me more about your god. I know nothing about it except the information from the patch.”

The Epicure patch on my jacket protected me from vampires and werewolves. 

“The Midnight Epicure protects all prey animals by destroying all existence by unleashing all the consumed back into the galaxy,” he said. “They who were eaten will become the devourers. It is an apocalyptic form. I first learned of the god during a taping of Plenty of Plenty when one of the participants told me about it. It was originally designed as a xenophobic tale to scare non-caprid children, to warn them of the caprid race when they first started integrating into Syndicate culture. It grew into a symbol of hope and comfort for my kind. My sponsors gave me the ability to worship him in a benefactor box, and I obliged.”

“And the quest itself?” I asked.

“It says for me to hold onto the crystal, and I will know when to use it.”

“Is he sponsored this season?”

“No, I do not believe so.”

Prepotente reached out, wanting the necklace back. I handed it to him.

I had not received an update from Emberus while I was holding the crystal. I smiled at Rosetta. “I think you were right. No god updates while we were in here.”

“Nor did I receive a message when I took the necklace off,” Prepotente said. “As long as it’s back on my neck by the time I leave, I believe we are indeed safe.”   

She nodded. “Good.”

The door to the stables burst open. It was Samantha. “There you are! Why are you all in here? Is it because of the sexy piggy?” She floated in. “Ohhh, it’s very stinky in here.”

She did not have Grigori with her.

“Samantha, what did you do with the fleshmancer?”

“I don’t like that guy, Carl. I don’t think he’s properly qualified. He didn’t even gasp when he entered Sam Town. You’re supposed to gasp when you see luxury. He’s talking to Jamal about his legs. What are you talking about in here?”

Imani stood. “Time to leave. Florin needs us out there.”

“We’re doing the planning thing,” Donut said. “Come on, Mongo. Say goodbye to your friends.”

Samantha looked about the room suspiciously. “Ooohh, I get it. You’re doing that thing where you’re being all secret about the plan not telling anybody because if people know about it ahead of time, then it fails, but if you keep it a big secret before it happens then you know it works. I’m doing that, too.”

“Wait, what are you planning?” I asked. “Samantha, you don’t plan anything.”

“It can’t be stupider than what Carl is doing,” Donut muttered.

“Oooh, now I really want to know,” Samantha said. She floated over to Penelope and grasped the pig’s tail with her mouth and then let it go. “Boing!” she said. Penelope squealed and rushed across the room, causing both Gonk and Simoom to shift and grunt. Samantha turned to Donut. “Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

Donut scoffed. “Carl has a stupid plan where he’s going to leave the party and try this really idiotic thing to get a bunch of immortals who hate each other on a floor at the same time where they can’t die to kill each other anyway. But what he’s really doing is planning an elaborate suicide that’s probably going to get all of us killed also, and since he’s not going to be in a party with me anymore, he’s going to die sad and alone wishing I was there with him because he doesn’t trust my Cockroach skill.”

Samantha brightened. “That’s just like my plan, too!”