Chapter 72 (Patreon)

Remex screamed. The sudden, terrifying noise jolted my eyes open. I took in the room. 

“Fuck,” I said, scrambling up. I jumped for the case, which had fallen to the ground. 

We hadn’t died. Obviously. Light streamed from the container like a miniature, caged sun. The explosion had been completely silent. Lance-like rays burst from the glass, one of them streaming directly into Remex’s chest, who was now on the floor, screaming and convulsing. Whatever had happened to him, it had bestowed upon him the ability to roar with supernatural volume. 

The case itself glowed red hot. The floor was on fire, the wooden floorboards bubbling and bowing under the extreme heat. I feared the whole thing was about to fall through, taking us with it. The glass case and gem had transformed itself. I didn’t have time to read the full description, but my eyes focused on the Status: Explosion Imminent in the two seconds before I grabbed it. Please, please, I thought. My fingers burned as I pulled it into my inventory. I cried out as the caged explosion disappeared. 

“Holy shit,” I said as I cast Heal on myself. My skin had burned off, so thoroughly and quickly it barely even hurt for the initial two seconds. That changed as it started to heal itself. I gasped in pain.  

A page of notifications appeared. I waved them away for now. I examined the newest item in my inventory. 

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario
Type: Unstable custom explosive
Effect: An explosion large enough to rattle the teeth of a god.
Status: Explosion Imminent (3 / 1x10 to the 7th)  

Created by a man who murders babies and steals rare collectibles from his elders, this device is powerful enough to level an entire city and all the suburbs around it. It is created by combining a massively overloaded soul crystal and a Sheol Glass Reaper Case.

Warning: This item can no longer be stabilized. 

“The quest hasn’t ended,” said Donut. “But we’re not dead, either.”  

I just sat there on the floor, breathing heavily. My hand ached, my fingers and palm pulsing despite the healing. I couldn’t believe that had worked. What the hell was I going to do with that thing? The moment I removed it from my inventory, it would explode. I would have less than a second.  

At least we were alive. 

“Uh, Carl,” Donut said a moment later. “You don’t happen to have any more of those glass cases, do you? Maybe a really big one?” 

I looked up to see Remex, still convulsing on the ground. 

“Oh mother fuck,” I said. 

“You sure have been swearing a lot lately. I’m not sure I like that, Carl.” 

Now Remex had a timer over him. Twenty minutes. It hadn’t started counting down yet, but the timer blinked red. I cringed as the new notification came.   

Quest Update. 

You’ve probably noticed you’re not dead. Everybody say, “Thank you Crawler Carl.” I’ll give you a second to luxuriate in your victory. 

That’s the good news. You might want to sit down for this next part. 

Remex shrieked, and the world went white for a moment. I suddenly felt heavier, more tired. A massive racket filled the warehouse, like the sound of dozens of pots and pans crashing to the ground. 

“What happened?” Donut asked. 

“It’s like when we’re in a production trailer. We just lost all of our equipment stat buffs.” 

The bad news is there’s still an explosion coming. A bigger bang, actually, but the area of effect will be similar. I won’t bore you guys with the technical details, but what you just felt is called a precursor burst. It’s a foreshock. The first of four before the big show. The one you just felt temporarily removed the magical properties of all your equipped gear. The next one will do something different. 

All of this will culminate with a burst of pure, wild magic much more potent than the magically-infused chemical explosion from which you guys were just spared. Less physical damage to the environment. More face melting. I prefer this, if we’re being honest. Have you ever put a marshmallow in a microwave? Imagine your head as the marshmallow. It’ll be kinda like that. Prepare your defenses accordingly. 

You now have twenty minutes to save yourselves. 

“Come on,” I said. “We gotta go.” I stood and turned, once again, for the small trap door. I gave one last look at Remex, who remained in the corner, convulsing. Every instinct told me to put him out of his misery, but I knew that would likely be a very Bad Idea. 

And that’s when the floor collapsed. 

I cried out, landing in a heap in the midst of a room full of sizzling armor pieces and swords. The EMP-like burst from Remex had deactivated all of them, causing the armor to fall to the ground like junk. I groaned as I pulled a few random pieces of armor, along with a colossal broadsword into my inventory. I yanked myself to my feet and downed a healing potion. At least those still worked.  

Remex hadn’t fallen through. A loud, electric hum now emanated from him, still up on the second floor, just beyond the hole in the ceiling. The noise grew louder until it overwhelmed his constant screams. 

“Where are we going?” Donut asked. We rushed from the building and turned right, due east. I pulled up the quest chat and started furiously typing instructions, giving people their two options for escape. 

Mordecai: Take off every magical item you have and put it in your inventory. Stop whatever you’re doing and do it now. It’ll be safe in your inventory but not on your skin. I don’t know what the hell you just did, but your current situation is only barely better. 

Carl: I don’t have any clothes that aren’t magical except my jacket. Even my underwear is magic now. 

Mordecai: Goddamnit, Carl. No time to argue. Nobody is going to care about your trunk swinging in the air. 

Donut: What about my crown? 

Thanks to the tiara’s Fleeting status, it would disappear if she removed it. And then it would be given to another crawler, which would be a very bad thing. Only one of them would be allowed to proceed to the tenth floor. Mordecai paused for an unusually long time. 

Mordecai: Better leave it on. But there’s a chance you might lose it. It’s possible one of those bursts is going to have a negative effect on your stats permanently. You might get hit with Sepsis, too. The poison effect will be negated, but it’ll still stagger you. Wild soul magic is unpredictable. It turns your own magical items against you. Keep Mongo locked up. 

Dozens of responses to my group chat post poured in as I pulled my gear off, including my underwear. I also removed my xistera, just to be safe. Removing the stuff was easy, a lot easier than putting it on. I could just transfer it directly to my inventory. Goddamnit, I thought, reading the messages in the chat. Three different crawlers had given me the same response. The entrance to the back room at the Desperado Club had disappeared when the safe rooms closed off. They were insulating the club from the impending disaster. 

That left us with only one escape. 

Katia came jogging up, along with a handful of other crawlers, mostly human. I didn’t know any of them. Daniel Bautista was not among them. 

“Okay guys,” I said. “If you haven’t already, magical gear off. We have sixteen minutes, and we need to run at full speed. We’re out of time.” 

The group just looked at me. Finally, one of them said, “Dude, why are you naked?” 

I pointed east. “Go!”

~

The next pulse occurred just as we left town. A man near the back of the group exploded, just like that. His name had been Conrad E, and he’d had a Russian accent. He’d been a level-12 Ranger. 

“What the hell was that?” I asked as I ran. Ahead, three emu-like mobs appeared, screeching. They were called Ruin Flockers. Donut hit two of them with Magic Missile as another mage hit the third with a lightning burst. That third ostrich didn’t die, but hit the ground. I stomped its neck as we continued running. 

“His quiver. All of his arrows blew up, I think,” Katia said. “He’d put his bow away, but he’d forgotten about his arrows.” 

“Donut,” I said. “I don’t like this. I think you should take it off.” 

Donut remained on my shoulder, despite being faster than me. Behind, someone shouted about another mob. “Leave it,” I yelled. 

“I’ll lose five intelligence!” Donut whined. “And my Sepsis debuff. And I really like it.” 

“These bursts are attacking our magical gear,” I said. 

“But if I lose it, somebody else will get it and put it on. We’ll have to fight them. I don’t want to hurt a person.” 

“I know,” I said. I didn’t want that either. I didn’t add that only an idiot would actually put the thing on after reading the description. Anybody still around at this point would know better, so I wasn’t too worried about that anymore. I leaped over a pile of rubble. We were coming up on ten minutes. A pair of dead crawlers appeared on my map, surrounded by the red dots of Street Urchins. We didn’t have time to investigate. 

Before, I’d never been the fastest runner. I had good endurance, more so than a lot of the guys who only trained on weights, but I’d never been a speed guy. I’d always hated jogging, but I played a lot of basketball. Not many team sports trained cardio like basketball, except maybe tennis or soccer. And probably jai-alai, too. 

Now, I ran through the city with ease, moving much, much faster than I’d ever been able to before. My breaths came in ragged gasps, but my body didn’t slow down. It was an odd, disconcerting feeling. If we survived this, I really needed to push myself more physically, to test my limits. My brain still thought of myself as a normal human. As a group, even the slowest amongst us moved faster than a squad of Olympians ever could’ve. I recalled my poor, long-lost chopper. It wouldn’t have done well on this level, not with all the debris in the streets. 

“Well, I’m not taking it off,” Donut said. 

“That dude blew up, Donut,” I said. To our left, a group of four more crawlers appeared. They merged with us. 

“Are we sure it’s there,” one of them, a shark-headed creature, called. 

“It’s there,” another called. “I can see it on my map already.” 

I turned my attention back to Donut. The next burst was due at any moment. They weren’t coming at exact five-minute intervals. “What’s going to happen if you permanently lose five intelligence, and then you lose the tiara anyway? Then you’ll be down ten instead of five.”  

“But it was my first item,” she said. 

“It also might catch your damn head on fire,” I said. “Besides, remember the description? You’ll still be an official princess.” 

“I agree with Carl,” Katia said, jogging next to us. 

“Oh, all right,” Donut grumbled. 

The Sepsis Crown atop her head crumbled into dust, disappearing like ash. 

“Hey!” Donut cried. To my left, one of the newcomers also cried out. His pants disappeared. “It disappeared before I could remove it!” 

The second pulse had apparently activated all magical weapons. This third one had destroyed any still-equipped armor.

The fourth pulse ripped through the party just as we pulled up to the small, decrepit building. We’d run the distance in record time. 

Chaos ripped through the group. A lightning bolt ripped through the party, glancing off a human, who tumbled and hit the ground, almost dead. Another person simply teleported away. Katia’s whole body glowed, and she leaped forward, clipping me in the process and throwing me down. She ran directly into the wall, and blasted through it like the Kool-Aid Man. I bounced off the floor, crying out. Donut hissed and leaped away. I felt my arm break in that moment Katia slammed into me, but it was healed by the time I finished rolling. 

You have been poisoned! 

It took me a long moment to figure out what the hell had just happened. Normally, I was immune to poison, but that came from my Nightgaunt Cloak. Donut had also been poisoned, but she was also now immune thanks to her Former Child Actor class. 

The first two items in everyone’s hotlist had activated themselves on their own. So much for items in our inventory being safe. For both me and Donut, it was a healing potion and then a mana potion. We’d both ingested the second potion before the potion timer ended, inflicting us both with potion sickness. I knew Katia had an active skill called Rush, something she could only do once a day, and that’s what’d happened to her.

The poison effect kicked me in the stomach, doubling me over. Once the fifteen seconds passed, I took an antidote potion and surveyed the crowd. We’d all stopped dead in the street outside the building. Katia returned, a dazed look in her eyes. Her nose had been knocked completely sideways and was now just below her ear. She didn’t seem to have noticed. 

“That really hurt,” she said. 

Nobody had been killed, but we didn’t know what happened to the guy who’d teleported away. I leaned over the human who’d been cooked with the Lightning spell. He was unconscious. I poured a healing potion into his mouth. This was one of the newcomers who’d met us as we ran here. The Asian man’s eyes fluttered then snapped open.  

“Please get your dick out of my face,” he said. I grinned and backed away. 

I looked over my shoulder, and through the hole in the wall Katia had created, I could see it. I glanced at the timers up in the corner of my vision. We had three minutes before the big detonation.

We also had two days and 18 hours left before this floor would collapse. 

A familiar face appeared, jogging up with a new group. Daniel Bautista. 

“I told you it was here,” he said, indicating the stairwell down to the fourth level. 

I clapped him on the shoulder. The man nodded and turned toward the stairwell, disappearing down to the fourth floor. 

We didn’t have a choice. I was going to just send everyone without Desperado Club access to the stairwell, but with the club closed off, it was either this or death. 

“Go,” I said. “Everybody down the stairs.” 

We watched as the procession of people lined up and rushed down the hole. 

Carl: Mordecai, are you in your room?

Mordecai: I’m safe.

Carl: What’s going to happen to us when we go down early? Or you?

Mordecai: I am going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs for three days. You guys won’t notice a time difference. I’ll see you on the other side. Also, I just peeked out the door. The NPCs are all safe, all that I can see. Nobody is on the street except the guards, who reactivated with that second burst. They all only have a single life point. It’s too bad you’re not here, otherwise I’d have you kill as many as you can. It wouldn’t be as much experience when you’re just finishing them off, but it would still be quite a bit.  

I glanced over at Katia, who stood at the entrance to the stairwell, waiting for us. 

Carl: Are there any guards still in the warehouse?

Mordecai: I don’t know. Probably a few. They’re still moving out to their regular positions. I’m not going over there to look. Now get your asses into that stairwell. 

Carl: Okay. Oh, and Mordecai? 

Mordecai: What? 

Carl: Congratulations. 

He didn’t answer. Donut looked up at me, eyes wide. “That’s right,” she said. “He’s free now, isn’t he? We make it to the fourth floor, and he gets to go home once the dungeon is over.”  

“That’s right,” I said. I thought of Remex, who was also about to finish his “duty.” I wondered how long he’d been stuck here. I remembered what Donut had said when she learned what he really was. Carl, I don’t want to become an NPC. 

And she’d said something else, too. It was heartbreaking, when you thought about it. I know she’s dead. 

I thought of everyone we’d met on this floor, of the crawlers and NPCs we’d come across. We’d only been on the floor less than a week, but it felt like a millennia. I thought of Signet the half-naiad. Of Quint the possum-faced pharmacist. Pustule the hobgoblin explosives dealer. I thought of poor GumGum the orc. Of Miss Quill. Of little Ricky Joe, the one-armed, child dwarf. I wondered if his mom ever had her baby.

The three of us turned toward the stairwell. Donut pulled Mongo out of his cage, and the dinosaur grunted with annoyance for being stuck so long. 

We proceeded down the stairs. I knew from the last time, the floor ended the moment we pulled on the handle. The door at the bottom of the stairs was the same as always, with the oversized Kua-Tin carving, making them look bigger and more menacing than they were really were. 

You’re not going to break me. Fuck you all. 

I examined its properties. 

Entrance to the fourth floor.
This is where the real fun begins.
Mind the gap. 

“What does that mean?” I asked. 

We had 100 seconds left. 

“Katia,” I said. “Pull out that detonator I gave you earlier. It has a ten second delay. Wait until the timer is at about 15 seconds, and push it. Then we’ll go in before it goes off.” 

“Why?” she asked, pulling the pencil-like detonator out. The thing had a range of ten kilometers, so we were more than close enough. “Won’t that make the bomb go off faster?” 

“Yes, but only by a couple seconds. If people aren’t safe by now, they’re already dead. I set the dynamite. I let Donut smush a few of the detonator blobs onto the wall. If we get any experience for it, we’ll all share in the spoils.” 

She shrugged. Just as the timer hit twenty seconds, she pressed the button. 

We turned to open the door. 

“Hey, Carl,” said Donut, just as we started to dissolve away. “You probably should have put your pants back on when we still could get into our inventory, don’t you think? Aren’t we going straight to Odette’s show?” She cackled with laughter. 

I looked down at the cat, horrified. 

“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said. 

End of Part 3

***

Whew.  Part 4 starts in a few days.  Lots of neat things coming on the 4th floor. The Sponsorship starts, and with that comes a new wrinkle in Mordecai's decision to have them keep their heads down. We have a unique floor, and I'm going to let higher-tier patrons vote on the theme of the 5th and eventually 7th floor.  Also, they have fan boxes to open, and all of the patrons will get the opportunity to vote on those.  But for right now, I sleep.

Thanks everybody for reading. I really appreciate it.