Chapter 76 (Patreon)

Entering The Royal Palace of Princess Donut. 

You have upgrades that need to be placed. 

We entered into an empty, industrial-styled room. It reminded me of the interior of an airplane hangar.

“Whoa,” I said, my voice echoing. “This is way bigger than I expected.” 

Before proceeding further, you must set the entrance to your personal space. 

A blinking, transparent doorway appeared against the far wall. It slid as I turned my head, racing along the walls. As I moved, a second doorway formed with Princess Donut blazing over it. The colors of the words changed from black to pink then to an opalescent purple. 

“This is very customizable,” Donut said. A moment later, her door changed color from black to purple, matching the color of the floating label over her door.

I mentally clicked Place on my door, and a second door appeared a few feet to the right of Donut’s. A moment later, a third door appeared next to mine, labeled Katia Grim.   

A wire diagram of a rectangle appeared, floating against a small section of the warehouse, just right of where we’d placed the doors. It blinked again, and suddenly there was a tiny room. Restrooms appeared over the door. 

“You’ll have an additional restroom inside your spaces, too,” Mordecai said. “When you conjoin a space, everyone keeps their personal restroom, and a public one also appears. The upgraded shower will be in all of them. The team leader gets to place the location of the common area rooms.” A bare, featureless kitchen area blinked into existence, followed by an area with a table and simple couch. The three familiar screens formed onto the wall above the couch. On the third screen was the message, Welcome Home. Over the kitchen was the note: Food Upgrades Not Yet Purchased. 

Donut grumbled as she moved the rooms around. Large sections of wall turned transparent and flew across the hangar as I watched, open-mouthed. A moment later, she placed yet another room in the opposite corner across from the kitchen and living area. This was the biggest room yet, and it took up a quarter of the entire open area. Crafting Studio.   

The moment it was locked into place, a blinking notification appeared in my own interface, and I clicked on it. 

Enhanced Crafting Studio upgrade available. You may apply this upgrade to the Crafting Studio in the common area. Note: If you disengage your space, the upgrade will be returned to your library. See the Personal Spaces tab for more details.  

I clicked on it and chose to apply it. Nothing apparently changed except the title. Enhanced Crafting Studio. 

A new room clicked into place, this one taking up a third of the entire hangar. Training Room. 

What had been a massive, open area just a minute before was rapidly filling up. 

A new doorway appeared with a loud clack, right behind me and next to the door to the exit. If we were following the normal laws of physics, this new door would also lead right back into the restaurant. The note on the door simply read Manager. 

Mordecai croaked with relief. “Thank the gods,” he muttered. He caught my questioning look, and he grinned. “You can’t conjoin a manager’s room until your base is combined into a communal space. I wasn’t expecting you guys to ever bother upgrading your base this much, at least not any time soon. Once you bought a space, I would have moved in anyway, which meant I’d have been sleeping on the floor. Now I can get to my private quarters, and when you come to new saferooms, I won’t teleport away unless I’m outside.”

“What are the differences between the rooms anyway?” I asked as we walked deeper into the space. The floor was made of solid concrete. Donut, Katia, and Mongo went exploring. Mongo jumped onto the counter of the kitchen, clicking his claws on the industrial sheet metal countertops. There was no oven or fridge. The whole thing was an empty, useless area that Donut probably shouldn’t have bothered placing. 

“Okay, so thanks to the AI, you guys skipped right ahead and moved straight into advanced personal spaces. At the basic level one, either you or Donut would have purchased a space. Whoever bought it is the owner, but there’s a setting where you can share it with your party members. It’s about a fourth of the size of this place, and it’s just one open room, save for the crafting studio, which is much smaller than the one you have now. I think the crafting area is always a quarter of the room’s size, but I’m not certain. Anyway, it has a bathroom, the couch and screens, a couple of cots, and that’s it. The level-one crafting area will hold up to five basic crafting tables. Some are bigger than others. You can purchase and add any tier-one environmental upgrades you want as long as they fit. The best ones, like the training area are too big.”

I watched Katia wander toward the door with her name on it. She hesitantly opened it and disappeared inside. 

Mordecai continued. “At level two, the room gets bigger, which allows for more upgrades. Level two also comes with the ability to add kitchen upgrades. Level three is bigger yet, and the individual rooms are pretty huge. Big enough for a training module.” He looked up. The ceiling was high above our heads. “I don’t think it’s as tall, but I’m not certain. But the largest benefit of a level-three space is that you can convert it to a communal hall as long as you have one other person in your party with a space. Only one of the spaces has to be level-three. But once they’re combined, the individual rooms get much smaller, but a communal space is created, and all share in the upgrades.” 

“Plus the manager gets to keep his own place,” I said. 

“That’s right. And any other helper. I’m not the only kind you can employ. In a few days, we’ll need to purchase a store interface. We’ll be able to buy and sell items more easily.” He lowered his voice. “The training room is more important, though. I let Katia purchase it with her coupon, but I want you to keep your coupon free until we’ve made sure she’s staying.” 

“I can tell you right now that she’s going to bounce the second she gets a chance,” I said. “I know she likes us, but I get the sense she felt safer in Hekla’s party. She didn’t like the idea of me using her to tank damage. Also, what happens if she dies?” 

“You lose the upgrades,” Mordecai said. “And if you die, too, then it’ll be just me and Donut. No more community space. I’d once again lose access to my room. Any upgrades that no longer fit will go into her library.”  

I nodded. That kind of sucked. “Okay, so our space is level five. What’s the difference between this and a level four?” 

“I’m not certain,” Mordecai said. “Most people don’t go beyond three or four. Usually what happens is someone upgrades their space to three, and someone else in the party buys their own level one space, and they combine it all into a communal space. That usually keeps the overall level at three. Then they spend the rest of their money on room upgrades. But since we have three level-three rooms all shared, that made it a five. I think, but I’m not certain, we might be able to add a second floor to the base if we run out of room.” He pointed up. “The ceiling is really high.” 

“Okay, that’s enough exposition for now,” I said. “I’m going to sleep. Tomorrow we can discuss crafting tables and all that. I’m glad you’re here. Figuring all this shit out on our own would’ve been a real chore.” 

“Fair enough,” Mordecai said. “Oh, but Carl?”

I turned to face the toad. My entire body felt as if it was being dragged into the floor. I was both physically and mentally exhausted.  

“You only sleep two hours now. So I’ll see you out here in time for the recap show.” 

~

I knew, philosophically, that only having to sleep for two hours was a good thing. It gave us more time to train and to get things done. But I dreaded the idea of not being able to get into a bed, close my eyes, and not have to worry about anything for six to eight hours. 

That was it, wasn’t it? Sleep was my sanctuary. No matter how fucked-up the world now was, I could still get away for part of the day. Now, that luxury was being eroded. Sure, our bodies would no longer be tired. But what about our brains? We were already well past burnout. What was going to happen now? 

Donut insisted I sleep in her room. I hadn’t even gone into my own yet. Since we had a combined space, the individual rooms were much smaller. The room was the size of a large apartment, about twice the area of my place from before the collapse. She could add a small crafting area and kitchen into the space if she wanted, but it was optional, and she chose not to. She’d found some menu that allowed some simple, free decorations, including carpet and wallpaper and simple furnishings. She placed the bathroom in the corner, which was actually just the same bathroom from the hallways. The shower was in a separate room next door. She made me take the cat tree and place it next to the “Ultra-Stabilized Bed,” which looked like a regular, queen-sized bed with no sheets or pillows and a semi-transparent mattress that looked oddly like clear Jell-O. Then she made me place the framed picture of Bea on a small table next to the bed.

“Okay, get in bed, Carl. You too, Mongo. We’re all tired.” 

“You know I have my own room now, right?” 

“Shut up, Carl. I can’t sleep without you, and you know it. Now get into bed.”  

I grumbled, but the moment I lay down, it felt as if I was encased in a warm hug. Donut jumped onto my shoulder, curling up near my neck. Then Mongo hopped onto my legs, and I didn’t feel the weight of him. 

I fell asleep in seconds. 

I was, indeed, fully rested when I awakened. And more importantly, I felt rested. I felt as if I’d slept for 10 hours straight, which I always thought was the perfect amount of sleep for a lazy day. In fact, I was so certain that the bed hadn’t worked, I checked the clock, but we’d truly only slept for just about two hours.   

New achievement! Well-Rested!

You managed to sleep so well that you woke up feeling refreshed and full of energy. You are ready to take on the world and make some monster’s mother cry because her only child was ruthlessly slaughtered by a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Crawler.

Reward: You now receive the Good Rest bonus every time you sleep in this bed. This buff adds 10% to your base stats for 30 hours. 

Back out in the common area, we found Mordecai and Katia placing plates of food on the kitchen counter. It was two plates of hamburgers and French fries, plus a salmon platter and a bowl of raw meat for Mongo. Mordecai had what appeared to be a plate full of dead bugs, and he appeared slightly ill as he looked upon it. 

“It’s all from Wendita,” Katia said. “I went out there to get food, and she’d already made us all of this for free. I’ve never seen one of those Bopca guys in such a good mood.” 

Donut sniffed at the plate suspiciously as the recap show came on. She shrugged and started stuffing her face. 

“The Iron Tangle!” the announcer called as the show went underway. Different shots of railroads and subway cars flashed across the screen, from old locomotives to the more modern high-speed rail trains. This went on for some time. The scenes were an odd mix of real-life footage and passages from movies and video games. It included stills from the animated movie the Polar Express and a bizarrely-long sequence of a beat-up John Travolta riding the subway from the movie Saturday Night Fever while the Bee Gees played in the background. After that, the program went into a detailed history of trains, focusing mostly on subway systems. 

As always, the program went out of its way to showcase only the negatives, displaying mass overcrowding, people falling onto the tracks. It presented pictures from the Japanese subway sarin attack, along with dozens of other disasters, making the entire world look like a shithole.

I ate the hamburger while we watched. The show was going on and on about trains. Mordecai started rambling about maintaining a schedule. Wake, eat, apply buffs—which included showering, brushing Donut while I worked on my feet—and then spending an hour in the training room working on a specific skill. Mordecai had somehow found what appeared to be a dry erase board, and he was marking items to train on the list. Today he wanted me to train my Smush skill. Apparently you could only train one skill a day, even if skills overlapped. Katia was to train her Catcher skill, which appeared to be the opposite of Dodge. And speaking of Dodge, that was on Donut’s list for the day. 

After we trained, we’d work on crafting for an hour or two, though that wouldn’t start until tomorrow. And after that, we’d spend the rest of our time out on the tracks. Our first priority would be to attempt to get a better map and find a reliable path to a stairwell, all while grinding our way up the ranks. 

On the screen, the show finally wrapped up the history of the earth rail systems. He started speaking, but then he froze. The word REDACTED appeared on the screen. 

“Get used to that,” Mordecai said. “He’s explaining how the level works. They don’t want us seeing this part. You’ll see this on every level from now on.” 

“The Daughters are also at a station number 83,” Katia said as we waited for the show to resume. “The same thing happened to them as us. They were on a train that filled with monsters, but they only had a single stop before they got to the transit station. They are at a conjunction of the Orange and Indigo line. They haven’t seen any sign of the Red, Yellow, or Nightmare lines.” 

“That’s interesting,” I said. “So different lines will have the same number system, and we know that number 83 is a transfer station. The map said specific numbers would have stairwells, but they were all lower numbers. We need to find a way to go back down.” 

“I bet it’s the ones without color names,” Donut said. She’d finished her fish, but it’d come with little potato things she didn’t like and was pushing them off her plate and into Mongo’s waiting mouth. “We should go on the Nightmare line to see where it goes.” 

She was probably right, but I didn’t like the idea of immediately jumping onto a train called “The Nightmare Express.” 

I turned to Mordecai. “What about you? When you first got here, you said you were at a different train station. Do you remember the names?” 

“Yeah,” Mordecai said. “I wrote it all down. It was station number 317. The two smaller trains were the Yellow and Emerald line. And the big one was called the Misery.” 

“Charming,” I said. “We should probably start charting this out. Do you have another one of those dry erase boards?” 

“I have one more in my room,” he said. “I’ll get it and start putting it all down. So far we only have the yellow line in common. Talk to your friend Brandon and figure out where he is. As soon as you come across any other crawlers, get all the info you can from them.” 

I nodded. I also had Daniel Bautista on my chat, and I would ask him as well. The screen unfroze, and the announcer said. “And now it’s time to present the current top-10 list!” 

He went, one-by-one, presenting the top 10 crawlers. He read the name, and it was followed by a short clip. The list was exactly the same as the one Odette had. 

He started with Mrs. McGibbons. It only showed her for a quick second, and I realized I’d actually seen her a few times already in quick shots on the recap episodes. I just hadn’t known it was her.  

She’d turned into a “Frost Maiden” which meant she was now a blue-skinned, white-haired elf thing that floated instead of walked. I didn’t see any of others in that short clip, but it showed her shooting icicles from her palms, skewering a troll-like monster in a subway car. 

Next was Li Jun, who’d taken a monk class. He looked the same as before, and it showed him with Zhang and his sister, Li Na. Zhang was also human, but Li Na was an odd, demon-like race who fought with chains. 

Number eight was a man named Ifechi. He’d remained human, and he was a healer. I’d seen him a few times I realized. He was now traveling with Florian, the Crocodilian shotgun guy, who was ranked number four. But I’d first seen Ifechi early on the show. He was African, running with a group of soldiers armed with AK-47s. The entire team had been killed a while back by a City Boss slime monster. The man had survived because he hadn’t been in the room when it sealed.    

After Ifechi, it went straight to us. It showed Donut blasting magic missiles at the Drek babies followed by me pummeling the janitor ghoul with my fist. 

Then was Miriam Dom, the goat lady. Then Florin the Crocodilian. 

Number three was a goat. His name was Prepotente, and he was the walking, talking goat creature—called a Caprid—that I’d seen earlier traveling with Miriam Dom. I knew they had another, monstrous goat monster traveling with them, too, though that one was considered a pet. 

Then we saw buff Hekla skewering a mass of four-legged rat things with her crossbow, then Lucia Mar, who was simultaneously terrifying and badass as ever. It showed the disgusting witch form of Lucia literally ripping the head off one of the Jikininki janitor ghouls. The girl laughed maniacally as blood showered the interior of the train car. 

The show ended, and a moment later, the second screen populated. 

While the list of names was the same as what Odette had presented, I immediately noticed two differences. 

1. Lucia Mar – Lajabless – Black Inquisitor General – Level 30 – 1,000,000 

2. Hekla – Amazonian – Shield Maiden – Level 28 – 500,000

3. Prepotente – Caprid – Forsaken Aerialist – Level 27 – 400,000

4. Florin – Crocodilian – Shotgun Messenger – Level 24 – 300,000 

5. Miriam Dom – Human – Shepherd – Level 27 – 200,000     

6. Carl – Primal – Compensated Anarchist – Level 27 – 100,000 

7. Donut – Cat – Former Child Actor – Level 26 – 100,000

8. Ifechi – Human – Physicker – Level 18 – 100,000  

9. Li Jun – Human – Street Monk – Level 25 – 100,000

10. Elle McGib – Frost Maiden – Blizzardmancer – Level 17 – 100,000

Mrs. McGibbons had risen from level 14 to 17, and Lucia Mar had hit level 30. 

I opened up my chat. I hadn’t connected with Brandon in a while, and I wanted to talk to him. The moment I clicked on the messages, though, I realized I’d missed a chat from him. It was in a weird folder I’d never seen before, off to the side of his name, which was why I hadn’t seen the notification. It had arrived while we were incommunicado, waiting for the floor to open. Before I could click on it, the daily announcement came, and my interface froze. 

Hello Crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor! 

We are so very excited to introduce you to what is being hailed a genius feat of engineering. We call it the Iron Tangle. The trick is to find the stairwells. There are a lot of them out there, but where? Let’s see how many of you figure it out.  

This is important. This is not a permanent change, but it is a new rule for this level only. You may not go down early this level. The stairwells will open six hours prior to collapse, and that’s it. Again, you may not go down early this floor. Now have fun out there. These train things are so nifty. We never had anything like it on our world. 

Patron bidding is active, and we are very happy with the results so far. You will get a notification when your bidding has concluded. We’ll have more info on that later. 

You will notice that the leaderboard has finally populated. Congratulations to everybody on the list. As you can see, each member of the top 10 has a bounty after their names. That means hunting season is open! Isn’t that exciting? If you kill one, you will receive a loot box containing the reward. If you are on the leaderboard, don’t worry, you get to join in on the fun, too. If you survive the floor, you will receive 10% of your own bounty upon floor collapse. That percentage goes up each floor. 

Finally, we’d like to address the especially high mortality rate of the third floor. This occurred due to a high instance of group quests gone bad. While the number of crawlers are still in the acceptable range, we are all concerned about early extinction. That does not mean we will be letting up. So quit sucking. It’s as simple as that. 

Now get out there, ride the rails, and kill, kill, kill!  

“Quit sucking?” Katia asked. “Is that supposed to be a joke?” 

“Do you really think people are going to hunt us?” Donut asked. “I don’t like the idea of not being able to trust people. It gives me anxiety.” 

I barely heard them. The moment the message had ended, the directory with Brandon’s message unfroze, and I finally noticed the name of the folder in the top corner of my interface. 

Messages from deceased Crawlers. 

“Oh. Oh no,” I said. It hit me like a damn truck. I slid to the floor. Everyone in the room stopped talking and turned to look at me. 

“Carl?” Donut asked.  

The message was right there. I didn’t want to read it.

I took a deep breath, and I clicked on it.  

Brandon: Hey bro. I’m sending this message to Imani and Elle, too. You wouldn’t believe what’s happening with Elle. But just in case they don’t make it, I wanted to get this out to you, too. It looks like this is the end for me. The third floor is about to collapse. Me and Henry—he was one of the residents—we’re holding the line against the advancing Shade Gremlins. I hate those fuckers. Imani, Elle, and the others are getting away, but it’s already too late for me. The floor timer is down to ten minutes, and that stairwell is twenty minutes away. 

I saw your escape last night on the recap episode, so I know you made it to number four. Everyone knows about that bomb you now got stuffed down your pants. 

Look, man. I got into a fight with my brother Chris, and he left the party. He took a few of the guys with him, but I can see they’re all dead. All except Chris. I know he’s alive because he’s still on my chat. I can see he’s alive, but it says he can’t accept my messages. I don’t know why. I think maybe he blocked me, but I’m not sure. He was never much of a talker. Mom said there was something wrong with him, maybe he was slow. But he ain’t slow. And even if he was… I said something stupid, and he got mad. He left, and now it’s too late to tell him I love him. I never said it. I’m about to die, and it’s all I can think about. 

So if you see him, tell him I said I was sorry, and that he was right. He’ll know about what. Tell him I said if there is an afterlife I promise not to give him shit ever again. He can eat all the damn crawler biscuits he wants. I promise not to get mad about him taking risks. Not about girls. Not about him stealing my Matchbox cars. Nothing. 

And tell him I love him. That’s the most important part. It’s always been the most important part, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late.  

I gotta go. Damn shade gremlins. Get them for me, brother. Get them all. 

“Jesus Christ,” I said, gasping. The sudden loss was so unexpected, so out of nowhere, I thought I’d had the breath knocked out of me. This is just like with mom. Deep breaths. Deep breaths.  

“What is it?” Donut asked again after a few minutes of me just sitting there. 

I told them. Brandon was the only one of the group we’d added to our chat, which was stupid. I couldn’t talk to Imani or Chris to see if they were okay. For all we knew, Mrs. McGibbons was the only one left. I thought of all the work we’d done to get them down to that third floor. What a waste. What a goddamned waste.

I hadn’t known him long. But he was a good man. He was my friend. In all of this death, he would barely be a blip. And that enraged me unlike anything else that had happened so far. 

I got up and turned toward the training room. 

“You need to apply your buffs first,” Mordecai called after me. 

“Fuck off, Mordecai,” I said. 

I entered the room, and an interface popped up, listing all of my trainable skills. 

I clicked Bare Knuckles (Current Skill: 8). A one-hour countdown timer appeared. Wooden dummies rose from the floor. 

You will not break me. Fuck you all. You will not break me.

I went to work.