Chapter 37 (Patreon)

Mordecai shrieked in rage. “Out! Out of my room!” He kicked at the monsters, punting them like oversized footballs out into the hallway. 

“Gah,” I cried, jumping back. “Why aren’t they teleporting away?”

“They won’t until they attack,” he said. “Not on their own, at least.” He was scooping them up by the armfuls, tossing them back out into the hall. But it was useless. For every two he tossed out, four more got in. Eventually he gave up and slammed the door, trapping several dozen into the room. He waved his hand, and they all disappeared. He wiped his hands on his fur. “There.”   

There were hundreds of them in the hallway. Thousands of them. I just stared, dumbfounded. They kept coming and coming. We had the neighborhood map, and there’d only been a handful of them slurping around when we’d entered the guild an hour earlier. 

They’re following us, I realized. Where the hell were they coming from, though? Up until now, it had seemed all the dungeon’s monsters were pre-seeded. Once we killed all the monsters in an area, that was it. The area was safe. These guys were being spawned somewhere nearby. They had to be. 

I leaned against the door and zoomed out the map to view the whole neighborhood. Thousands more of them were crawling their way toward us. They seemed to be coming from the south, from a direction we hadn’t yet explored. The hallway with the stairs wasn’t yet infested. But it would be soon.

“What the hell is this?” I said to Mordecai. 

“I’ve never seen anything like this, not on the second floor,” Mordecai said. His eyes had gone glossy, which I recognized as him searching through his special menu. “Yup, as I suspected.” He looked at me, his shaggy face looking grim. “They’re being spawned.” 

“Yeah, no shit,” I said. 

“Every floor has a waste disposal system,” he continued. “So far you’ve seen rats and the grubs. It’ll be something different the next floor down. They’re supposed to home in on corpses, but if none are nearby, they’ll hunt crawlers. That’s what they’re doing. These guys don’t attack, but they’ll still swarm at ya.” 

“But why are there so many of them?” 

“It looks like the system is spawning anywhere between one to 15 of them when a corpse is created. It usually doesn’t do that unless there aren’t any janitor mobs nearby. You killed a lot of mobs in that last battle, so here they are.” 

“We didn’t kill that many! Plus, we’ve been destroying the corpses.” 

“They probably had a couple hundred grubs in that cage in the boss room,” Mordecai said. He paused. “Yes, there were 750 of them. All fried. Plus you killed another 85 clurichauns between grinding away and the boss battle. Destroying the corpses only keeps them from leveling up. It doesn’t stop them from being generated. You, my friends, have been set up. You’ve fallen into a trap. Good news is they’re easy to kill. The bad news is these little buggers don’t give any experience. At least not the level-2 ones.”

“Wait,” I said. “This even works on themselves? So for every grub we step on, 15 more will appear?” 

“Sort of,” he said. “There’s a per-quadrant limit. If you kill all 5,000 of the grubs out there, 75,000 aren’t going to appear.” 

“Do you know what the limit is?” I asked, looking at the map. The entire area blinked red, centered on us. 

“Uh, yeah,” he said. “You’ve already hit it. It’s 5,000.” 

Fucking hell. “Is it like this everywhere? Across the whole dungeon?” 

“It looks like it,” Mordecai said. “It’s to keep people from camping out in one area for too long. As long as you keep moving, it shouldn’t be an issue.” 

Carl: Brandon, can you see this? 

We’d set up the chat, but we hadn’t really used it yet. 

Brandon An: Loud and clear. You guys doing okay? 

Carl: We have an issue. It’s not a huge deal yet, but it will be soon. Let’s get your folks moving toward the stairs now. We’ll meet you in the hallway outside this quadrant.

Brandon An: 10-4. We’re on our way. Wait until you see what we built. 

They were barely 3/4's of a mile away, but with that crowd, it’d take a couple hours at least for them to get set up.

“Come on, Donut,” I said. “We need to carve a hole back to the other team. At least these bastards are all the level-two grubs.”

Even Donut cringed the moment I said that out loud.  

~      

We started by tossing firebombs in the halls, then moving forward, but after a while I realized it was just a waste of good moonshine. The level twos by themselves were literally harmless. I could pick one up and put it on my lap, and it didn’t do anything. They were large with scary-looking mandibles, but they didn’t bite or attack or anything. They just sort of squeaked and wriggled. And for every one we killed, we were just generating another. Plus, if we didn’t properly destroy the body, we were increasing the chance of getting these guys to level up. 

The problem was they were so thick in some places, it was impossible not to step on them with my bare feet, crunching them down. I tried my best to avoid them, but for every one I killed, I smeared down with my foot, crunching until the X went away on the map. The moment it died, its friends all turned on it, taking bites from its body. Even when I completely destroyed it, they continued to chew and lap up the remains. I took that as an ominous sign. 

If had to step on more than two or three grubs in a hallway, I tossed a boom jug in behind us. Better safe than sorry. 

“This is taking forever,” Donut complained from my shoulder.  

“We’re almost there,” I said, pushing a grub away with my foot. This last hallway was mostly clear. Only forty or so of them. Brandon and crew were making record time, he said. They were almost there. 

Once we hit the main hallway, we were all going straight to the stairwell. I plotted a path starting a few alleyways down, so we only needed to get them through a pair of grub-infested intersections. As long we moved relatively quickly, this would work. 

And once they were down the stairs, we’d carve our way north, punching back into the neighborhood with the danger dingoes and kobolds. From there we’d head back to the saferoom, watch the evening’s show, sleep, and then hop on the Chopper and spend the rest of the time grinding away in different neighborhoods until it was time to hit the stairs. Hopefully we’d find a different exit, but if not, we’d come back and firebomb our way to the stairwell here. 

Donut: CARL, PEOPLE ARE GETTING BORED WITH THIS! MY FOLLOWERS HAVEN’T GONE UP IN FIVE MINUTES. 

Carl: For fuck’s sake, Donut. Don’t worry. I’m sure something awful is going to happen any second.     

We exited out into the main hallway. The moment we did, the grubs behind us seemed to lose interest in following. They just stopped, settling down. It was creepy as hell. 

I saw the wall of blue dots coming down the hallway. It looked as if it was all of them, so we went jogging toward them. I stopped and laughed the moment I saw the parade. 

Imani and Brandon were both wearing leather straps across their chests that I recognized as pig harnesses from the tuskling courtesans. They strained as they pulled all of the others behind them. 

They’d built a parade float. That’s what it looked like. They’d taken the wheels from multiple wheelchairs that no longer had owners and affixed them to long pieces of wood. I had no idea where the wooden platforms had come from, but I knew Imani and Chris both were as obsessive about looting everything as I was. Using some of the goblin tools, they’d hobbled together the contraption. 

Looking more closely, it was more like a train or a set of rollercoaster cars. There were a total of 39 people being pulled, most of them sitting upon their own chairs, which sat locked in place, two by two. The ones who normally used walkers sat crosslegged on the boards, watching wide-eyed as they were pulled along. The giant centipede was ten cars long, and each section held four people. The individual cars were attached to one another by a set of glowing metal chains. The same chain attached Brandon and Imani to the rest of the train. It seemed it was one chain, running from Brandon, through all the cars and back up to Imani. 

“It’s more maneuverable than it looks,” Brandon said, jogging up. “We made it from the safe room to the hallway no problem. There were a lot of those grubs, but we ran right over them.” 

“Where’d you get that chain?” 

“Imani had a scroll called Yog’s Special Chain or something like that. She just got it from some Gold box, I don’t know what for. She could pick any length up to something crazy, like 1,000 feet. It’s light as a feather, but the chain only lasts for 30 hours. This whole thing was her idea, though Brandon designed it. He even added ramps so they can get on and off easily.” 

“Hey, you have an extra star by your name,” I said. 

He nodded. “You know the Mind Horrors? The floating brain things? Yolanda, Chris, and I went to clear them out. I remembered what you said about needing to train, so I figured we better. Yolanda would shoot them from down the hallway, deflating them before they could hurt us. The boss room was this abandoned warehouse thing. The boss was a giant blimp. We took it out pretty easily thanks to Yolanda. That’s also where we got all this wood.” 

“Did it come out of its room?” I gave him a quick recap of what had happened with Krakaren. 

“Christ, dude. Our boss battle was much easier. It never left his lair, but we went in pretty quickly.” 

They were lucky to be alive, but I was glad they’d spent the time training themselves. Yolanda was now level 9, equal with both the brothers. Imani was still level 11, and she didn’t have the extra bronze star. 

“Imani didn’t go with you?” I asked. 

“No,” Brandon said. “Someone had to stay with the residents.” 

“Any sign of Agatha?” I asked. 

“Not a one,” he said. “But with these grubs, I’m not surprised. They devour everything. We saw a few level threes on our way up here.”

“Yeah, we need to get moving,” I said. I pointed to an alleyway. “Guys, down that way,” I called to Imani and Brandon. They nodded and turned. 

“I see a safe room down that way. What’s in there?” Brandon asked.  

“I don’t know,” I said. “We haven’t checked that one out yet.” 

This hallway was only a few meters from the edge of quadrant, the one with the kobolds, who we hadn’t yet seen. I kept a wary eye out for dingoes. Some of the residents clapped their hands with delight as we turned into the hallway. Mrs. McGibbons, the one who wanted to watch Divorce Court, looked down at me as they passed. She was on the very last train car, and she was the only one on the platform in a wheelchair. The other two were men with walkers, both sitting down. 

The name over the woman said Crawler #12,330,800. “Elle McGib.” 

“Hi Carl,” she said. 

“Hi Mrs. McGibbons. You remembered my name today,” I said, moving to walk alongside the train. 

“This reminds me of the tunnel of love,” she said. “Back in my time, my Barry and I used to always go to the carnival. We’d eat the cotton candy and throw darts at the balloons. We’d go in the tunnel of love. Back then it was a boat. I’d let him touch my boobs, but only on the outside of my sweater.”

I laughed.   

“I loved my Barry, but he wasn’t the prettiest man to look at. If you were in the tunnel of love with me, I’d have let you do more than touch my boobs.” 

“Uh,” I said. “Thank you?” I couldn’t think of a better response. The old woman cackled. Behind her, Yolanda barked with laughter.  

“You’ve been hit on twice now,” Donut said. “Once by a meth-addled goblin shaman and once by Abraham Lincoln’s grandmother. I can’t wait to see who you attract next. Five gold coins that it’s some sort of bog witch with a beard.” 

Yolanda had told me earlier that this woman was 99 years old. I looked up at her. Ninety-nine years. She’d lived an entire life. Had a husband, whom she’d clearly loved. It seemed obscene that she’d be here in this place. I thought of the others who’d spent their final hours in a safe room, singing. We should have made them all stay. This isn’t a kindness, keeping them safe.  

Donut jumped from my shoulder and landed on the woman’s lap. 

“Oh, hello pretty kitty,” the woman said. She started to petting the cat. Donut purred loudly.

“Bring that pussy over here,” one of the men said. He laughed. The man seemed even older than Mrs. McGibbons.  

“Don’t be crude, Jack,” Yolanda said.   

I moved forward to walk alongside Brandon and Imani, keeping my eye on the map. Yolanda kept up the rear, walking with her bow at the ready. “We’re taking a left two intersections down, right past that safe room. We’ll have to cross through an infested area, but I’ll firebomb it.” 

The mass of red dots was already starting to shift toward us. Thankfully they were slow. 

“Carl, thank you,” Brandon said. “You are helping us to your own detriment. You are a good man.” 

I smiled. “If we get to the point where we don’t help each other anymore, that’s when we stop being human.” I felt something catch in my throat, and I coughed.

Zev (Admin): Carl, that was great. Can you say that for me again, but this time, don’t cough. 

I stopped dead. My neck tingled with goosebumps. I knew we were being watched and followed, but having someone actually comment in my mind was one of the most unnerving sensations I’d ever felt. 

Carl: Are you kidding me with this? No, I’m not going to say it again. Have you been watching this whole time? 

Zev (Admin): You and my other clients. This save-the-elderly storyline is playing great with most viewers. That said, about 20% of the focus group thinks you’re wasting time and being stupid, but most of them understand what you’re doing. Donut is right, however. It’s a little dry. Maybe you can… Oh shit, oh fuck. Carl, Donut. Run. Run to the safe room now. 

“No, Jack, Jack, no!” Yolanda called.

I turned to see Jack, Cincinnati Bengals hat sitting cockeyed on his head. He’d stood to his full height, using the wheelchair with Mrs. McGibbons and Donut as a brace. His pants were down to his ankles, dick out, pissing directly on the wall.