Chapter 82 (Patreon)

I was out of my chair, fist forming before I realized what I was doing. I was prepared to drop a smoke curtain, or if necessary, Protective Shell. But would that work against fellow Crawlers? I tried to remember if Frank and Maggie’s dots had turned red when they attacked us. Shit. I don’t think they did. That meant Protective Shell would be useless. 

The crowd, which had been running, stopped at the edges of the dance floor. The music stopped abruptly. Donut remained there on the middle, looking at the man she had killed. 

Multiple bodyguards moved in from all directions, moving slowly. Since I didn’t know what had happened, I feared they were coming for her. I quickly assessed the situation. 

Both of the Cretin bodyguards were alive, but they’d been stunned. They each only had a few seconds left before they’d wake up. A glowing, bloody dagger lay on the floor.

The corpse was about 25 years old, Asian. His name was Ji-Hoon. He’d been a level 21 Knife Sharpener. 

“Carl?” Donut asked as I rushed up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” 

“Shoulder,” I cried, turning to face the guards. “Then heal yourself.”  

Donut leaped to my shoulder. The guards didn’t attack us. One stood over the body of the fallen crawler. The others moved to help Bomo and The Sledge. None of their dots were red. I relaxed, but only slightly.

“You’re okay,” I said. I pulled the alcohol cure potion and held it up. “Take it.”  

“I’m sorry,” Donut repeated. She’d healed her own health, but it didn’t cure her of her inebriation. She’d used a potion instead of the Heal spell. She took the alcohol cure potion into her inventory, but it’d be a few minutes until her potion sickness wore off. She started to sob. “Carl, I never wanted to get a skull. I’m sorry. Nobody is going to like me now.” 

“It’s okay,” I said, anger rising by the moment. “What happened?” 

“The lady, she cast a spell and my guy and the other rock guy fell, and I fell too, because Sledgie was stunned, and the other guy had a knife and…” 

“What lady?” I snapped before she could finish, my eyes scanning the crowd. 

Whoosh.   

A woman from the crowd flew forward. She tumbled to a stop at my feet. A two foot-long icicle erupted from her eye socket. She’d been pierced from behind. 

“That lady,” said Donut. 

Imani and Elle rushed forward, joining us on the dance floor. The bouncers parted to let them pass. 

“She was about to blast you two,” said Elle, looking about for additional threats. Both of her hands glowed. I watched as a skull appeared after her name. She didn’t seem to care. “I get dibs on her gear. Donut, loot the one you killed before we get kicked out of here.” 

Imani took up a position behind us, wings fully spread. I shuddered as she brought us into an ethereal hug. 

You’ve been Juiced! 10% Temporary buff to Strength! 

You’ve been Shrouded! 10% Temporary damage reduction! 

You’ve been Trolled! 25% Temporary acceleration to healing! 

“I didn’t want to kill anybody,” Donut said once again. “Maybe those stupid dogs. But not a person. Not a real person.” 

I reached up and rubbed Donut’s head. A crowd had formed around us, everybody staring. The bouncers all stood still and didn’t move, surrounding us. In the far corner of the club, from the unmarked door that led into the back, a tall, shadowy figure emerged. It paused, taking in the scene. A second figure also came from the back. This was a small fairy, buzzing about the other figure’s head. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I whispered to Donut, who continued to quietly sob. “They attacked you, and you defended yourself. There’s no need to be upset. If you hadn’t killed him, you’d be dead now. And don’t worry about people not liking you. Nobody will get mad at you for this. Trust me.” 

“Are you sure?” she sniffed. 

“I am positive,” I said. 

I took a moment to puzzle over Donut’s reaction. She didn’t blink at killing a trainload of monsters, or NPCs for that matter. She wasn’t human. She’d never been human. But for some reason she was having a really hard time with this. I knew part of it was because she was drunk. Every day she was growing into a more and more complicated creature. She was far removed from the cat who had first emerged in Mordecai’s guild all those days ago. 

“Anybody else want to try something?” Elle shouted. “You come for Donut or Carl, you come for all of us. I will freeze the blood in your veins and make your eyeballs shatter like glass!” 

“Easy tiger,” I said. “I think it’s over.” 

“That’s right it’s over,” she called. She glared at a dwarf crawler. “You giving me the hairy eyeball? Back the fuck up!” 

“Me?” the dwarf squeaked. “No, no, sorry.”  He took several steps back.

“Is she always like this?” I asked Imani, who just shook her head. I was starting to see why Elle was in the top 10 and Imani wasn’t. 

“Don’t you think anything about it,” Elle said, speaking to Donut. “Don’t you cry. This was inevitable. Once word gets out how you handled it, people will be hesitant to try it again.”  

The tall figure in the back of the room turned and disappeared into the club’s offices. The smaller figure, a hand-sized fairy buzzed through the air and approached. The figure barked at bouncers who jumped at her command. Bomo, The Sledge, and Clay-ton approached, heads down.  

The fairy was clearly female, but she wore a tuxedo like the bouncers. Her raven hair was tied up in a severe bun. Tiny red sparkles followed her as she flew through the air.  

Astrid – Bloodlust Sprite. Level 125. 

Assistant Manager of the Desperado Club.

The Bloodlust Sprite is one of the rarest, most deadly of the Sprites. They are naturally imbued with Cardiovascular Magic, allowing them a wide range of attacks and abilities over any creature that uses a circulatory system to live. It is said they have the ability to cause one’s heart to beat so quickly, it literally bursts into flames, which is both disgusting and really cool at the same time.  

WARNING: This is a fairy-class NPC. NPCs of this class inflict 20% more damage against you due to your goblin pass. 

Level 125? Holy shit. I noted the lack of the usual “This is a non-combatant NPC” in her description.  

“Princess Donut,” Astrid said, coming to hover over us. Her deep, serious voice didn’t seem as out of place with her fairy appearance as one might expect. “On behalf of management, I’d like to personally apologize for our security’s inexcusable failure. While we guarantee no one’s safety within this establishment, that changes the moment someone employs personal security. You have my word that this will be dealt with swiftly.” She looked over her shoulder to glare at Bomo and The Sledge, who stood rigidly.  

Donut sniffed. She glowed, and I knew she’d finally taken the sober potion. She straightened on my shoulder. “It’s quite all right.” 

“Nevertheless,” Astrid said. “We will refund you the 400 gold, and you and Carl will be granted complimentary security from now on.” 

“We appreciate that,” I said, interrupting Donut, who was about to correct the Sprite. We had paid 500 gold for the guards, not 400. Clarabelle had cheated us. I filed that information away. 

“Very well,” Astrid said, turning away. 

“One more thing,” I said. The sprite stiffened and then turned. 

“How you run this establishment is none of our business,” I said. I gestured at the two guards. “But you can’t blame them for what happened. We would consider it a personal favor if you didn’t punish these guys too harshly. Donut and I have taken a liking to them. We’d like them each time we’re here as our own security. Including for the remainder of this evening.” 

“You are correct, Crawler. It is none of your business.” She paused. “But your request is not out of line. Very well. It is done.” She turned and buzzed away. 

The two rock monsters stared at us curiously. They’d fucked up, but I suspected I’d just saved their rocky asses. I’d trust them much more than someone else. Especially if that someone else knew we were responsible for their friends getting fired, or worse.

Elle clapped her hands together, and shards of snow flew everywhere. “Now that’s what I call entertainment.” 

~

The four of us sat down at a table and unrolled the paper. I’d made Donut loot the body of the dead human. He had a lot of armor, all giving a few stat point boosts. I figured we’d give most of it to Katia. He also held a dozen daggers, each with a different enchantment. The one he stabbed Donut with had a 100% damage bonus if it was stabbed into someone’s back. It would have killed her instantly if it hadn’t been for Donut’s cockroach ability. 

Donut sat quietly at the table. She ordered a regular, nonalcoholic Shirley Temple and sat there munching on cherries.   

“We’re at 241 on the Beige Line,” Imani said, looking over our map. “It intersects with the Coquelicot and the Camel line.” She pointed at station number 277 on the Yellow Line, which also intersected with the Camel line. “This is the only joining I see. If you want to meet up, we can do it there.”

“Mordecai found a pattern in all of this, but I think he had outside information,” I said. “We need to figure it out.” 

“Other than the transfer station patterns, I don’t really see it,” Elle said. “We know where the transfer stations are, and we know where the Desperado Club is. We also know every five stations is where all the monsters get off. It sounds like we need to go all the way to the end and see what’s there.” She seemed bored. Our three guards surrounded the table, arms crossed. She watched a large, shirtless NPC elf gyrate on the dance floor.  

“What’s the transfer station pattern?” I asked. 

“All of them are prime numbers,” she said. She tapped the numbers of all the checked-off transfer stations. Then she pointed to a note Mordecai had written and circled in the corner that said, “Prime.” I hadn’t even noticed it. “I thought you already knew that.” 

“What’s a prime number?” Donut asked, speaking for the first time. 

“It’s a math thing,” I said. “You learn about them in fourth or fifth grade, and then you don’t need to know about it ever again unless you become a mathematician. Or a math teacher.” 

Elle grunted. “It sounds to me like you need to know about them right now.” 

“We don’t have enough information,” Imani said. “We need to know what happens inside of every fifth floor. And more importantly we need to know what happens at the end of the line.” 

“Agreed,” I said. “Let’s do this. We keep talking to others to see if they’ve figured anything out. In the meantime, you take your team and investigate one of these fifth levels. Donut and I are going to get our hands on one of these engineers.” 

“Those engine cars are locked up tight, hotshot. How are you going to get one of the engineers out?” Elle asked. 

I grinned. 

~

We said our goodbyes to Imani and Elle. We stopped by the Silk Road and sold some items and picked up a few explosives, including an additional case of smoke curtains. I also bought some items from Mordecai’s list. The large booth that supposedly sold trap supplies wasn’t open yet, but instead of an empty space, the skeletal outline of a booth was there, indicating it’d likely be open soon. 

From there we checked out the newly-opened row of guilds. This was a dark hallway lined with doors, each with a word or two written over them. Most of the skills were rogue-themed, from Lockpicking to Sleight of Hand. There were several rooms not yet opened. But one of the rooms was listed as “Dodge.” 

We tried to open the door, but it was locked. A note appeared. 

This room is only accessible to Crawlers with a Dodge skill of Seven or better. 

Donut’s skill was only six, but after another session or two in the training room, she’d hit seven. 

The two guards Bomo and The Sledge followed us diligently, growling at any NPCs or Crawlers who got too close. They didn’t speak or acknowledge what had happened earlier, though they did appear more contrite, in their own sort of rocky way. I tried talking to Bomo who just stared back at me blankly. I knew they could talk. Clay-ton had spoken. Once. But they used those words like they had a finite supply. 

I remembered Chris had been like that, careful with his words. A rock monster was a perfect choice for him. 

Finally, we headed to the Casino. 

While not as glitzy and loud as a Vegas casino, the room’s purpose was clear the moment we entered. There were six card tables, a roulette table, a vertical wheel of fortune type game, and a craps table. These were all earth-based games, and I wondered on that. I knew we shared some cultural markers with the rest of the universe, but I wondered how that worked with the gambling area. Were the games different every season? I suspected they were. There were no slot machines. NPCs huddled over the smoky tables, quietly gambling. I wondered how that worked with the NPCs, if they were automatons like the dancers. I only saw one other Crawler, a dragon-headed woman leaning over a card table playing blackjack. 

Like with the previous hallways, the moment we entered, the thump of the dance floor disappeared. It was replaced with a sultry, jazz-like song being played over a loudspeaker. The music was a mix of voice and freeform synth. I wondered if it was Manasa, the murdered Naga. The song was unlike anything I’d heard before, almost intoxicating. I suspected there was magic in the music, designed to get us to spend more money.  

I counted eight tuxedoed guards in the room. These were not Cretins, but more Crocodilians. They watched us through beady, suspicious eyes. 

This room was about the size of the dance floor, making it smaller than I expected. However, a pair of opulent, spiral staircases were closed, leading down. I suspected there were additional casino games at the lower levels. The stairs were right next to the entrance, and each were guarded. One led down to the Hunting Grounds. The other was labeled Larracos. I could hear laughter, shouting, and raucous cheering coming up from this second stairwell. 

“What’s Larracos?” I asked Bomo, who just stared at me blankly. 

“Larracos is the capital city of the disputed lands,” one of the nearby guards said. He was a level-45 Crocodilian named Igor. “It is the prize over which the factions fight.” 

“They sound like they’re having a good time down there,” Donut said. She’d been sitting quietly on my shoulder this whole time, but she was starting to return to her normal self. 

“Their fighting is mostly good-natured,” Igor said. “The Desperado Club is where they come to unwind. The armies of the factions aren’t allowed to start conquering each other until you lot reach the ninth floor. So until then, the serious commanders train their units, and the rest party. The gambling that occurs on that level is done with credits, not gold.” 

I nodded. The ninth floor was like a distant, looming stop sign. An impending disaster. But at this point, I doubted we’d ever make it down there, and there was nothing we could about it now other than train.

I held up my 100,000 gold comp chip I’d received long ago. “I want to cash this in.” 

He peered at it. “You got two options. You can turn it in at the Wheel of Fortune game right now, or you can hold on to it and use it at the High Rollers Roulette Table. That’s not the roulette table that’s here. You’d have to wait until the sixth floor.” 

I strongly suspected it would be better to hold onto it, but at this point, I didn’t care. It had been one blow after another recently, and we needed to have some fun. “I never like roulette anyway,” I said. That was Bea’s game. We walked over to the wheel of fortune game.   

On the way there, we passed the roulette table. The guy running the game was human, and the NPCs playing were a mix of elves, human, and orcs. I noted that the symbols on the table were not two different colors and numbers, but a strange mix of four different colors and different symbols, like bones and knives, and a ringed planet. 

The wheel of fortune was a vertical, round wheel filled with random prizes. A little more than half of the spaces were red and with labels such as “Nothing!” and “Get stabbed in the stomach by the croupier” and “Get poisoned” and “Vomit blood for ten minutes straight.” 

Some of the good prizes, however, were very good. They were “A new pet” and “50,000 gold” and “A Legendary Weapon box” and “Unlimited Free Handies over at Bitches or Penis Parade,” and several other items, mostly Platinum and Legendary boxes. Most of the spots were the same size, except the Nothing spot took up two spaces and one of them, 500,000 gold, was a tiny sliver with “Spin Again” on either side.

“Oh fuck this,” I said, looking over the list of items. I wasn’t about to risk landing on a red spot. The cost of a single spin was 10,000 gold. “Let’s wait until Mordecai comes back and…” 

“I see you got a chip,” the human running the wheel said, interrupting. The bald man was named Tito, and he was huge. He was taller than me and looked like he came out of central casting for a mob enforcer. He only had one tooth in his mouth. It listed him as Desperado Club Wheel of Fortune Croupier. Also, the guy who will stab you. “The comp chips are for a hundred grand, which is the maximum bet. Every bet over the minimum removes one of the red spots and adds a positive one. So if you use the comp, only two red spots will remain, which leaves 22 positive results. It will be the Nothing spot and one more.

“Which one?” I asked, my eyes focusing on one that said, “Every hair on your body turns into a snake for five seconds.” 

The large man pulled out a large, serrated knife and stuck it into the table. “Guess.” 

“Don’t do it, Carl,” said Donut. “You’re going to get stabbed in the stomach. This game never plays fair.” 

“Hey,” the man said, sounding offended. “This game is 100% on the up-and-up.” I looked over at Bomo, who shrugged. One of the prizes was a “Choose any skill to level-up potion.” I’d love to get my hands on that one. 

“Is your dagger enchanted?” I asked, peering at it. 

“Nope,” he said. “Nobody has ever died from me stabbing them. And that’s the god’s honest truth.” He smiled sheepishly. “Nobody playing the game, I mean. I stabbed plenty on me off time.”  

I calculated the odds in my head. There were 24 spots. It was 25, really, since the Nothing! spot was a double. Assuming the game was fair, which Mordecai said it was, then I had a what? Slightly worse than a 10% chance of not winning a prize? And really, it was only a one in 25 chance of a terrible result. Getting stabbed would suck, but the odds were no worse than anything else we were doing. I plunked the chip on the table. “Let’s do this.” 

Tito slapped his hands together. “Excellent.” He looked up at Donut on my shoulder. “You’ll have to step back, I’m afraid madam.” 

Donut grumbled and jumped to The Sledge’s shoulder, whose showed no reaction. But a moment later, the rock monster reached up and gave her a surprisingly gentle pat.

“All bets are in!” Tito announced. The wheel flashed, rearranging itself. Several spots changed. Two red spots remained on the wheel. Nothing! And Get stabbed in the stomach by the croupier. He reached up and gave the wheel a mighty spin. It started clicking loudly as it spun. 

“Come on! Come on!” Donut cried from The Sledge’s shoulder, her voice rising in excitement. “Big money! Big money!” 

I relaxed. This was the real reason I’d done this. The wheel spun for an absurdly long time. It eventually started to slow. It passed the “Get stabbed” box, ticking slowly to a spot. It approached the thin spot awarding 500,000 gold. 

“Carl, Carl!” Donut cried. “Carl we’re gonna win big!” 

Click. Click. Click. 

“No!” Donut cried. 

It’d stopped on Spin Again. 

“Spin again!” Tito shouted. He reached up and spun it again. 

Behind me at the roulette table, an NPC screamed. I turned to see the floor open up underneath him, and he fell, disappearing in the hole. His screams got quieter and quieter as he fell. Additional, ethereal screams emanated from the hole, and a ghostly, clawed arm rose up from the darkness before turning into smoke and dissipating. The trap door slammed shut. 

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

Tito shrugged as the wheel started to slow. “They also got a Nothing spot on the roulette wheel. Works a little different though. You have to bet that you won’t land on the spot. But if you do, you’re fucked. That game is much safer than this one, but I got the better prizes.” 

“Wait, what?” I said, alarmed. “That’s what happens if I land on ‘Nothing?’”

Igor grinned. “Yeah, the Nothing sure is something.”

I watched in horror as the wheel started to slow, perilously close to Nothing! Click, click… The little needle hung onto the last spot, and I held my breath. The needle settled on a green spot. Holy fuck. That would have served me right.

“Winner!” Igor shouted. I landed on Scroll of Upgrade.

It appeared on the table in front of me. A twenty-minute countdown timer appeared. I’d received one of these before. I had twenty minutes to read it. It upgraded a random one of my currently-equipped items. Mordecai had warned me last time not remove anything before reading it as the system tended to fuck you over if you did that. The last time I’d done this, it had added to my boxers. 

I picked up the scroll, took a breath, and read it. 

I felt my foot buzz. I looked down to see my toe ring glowing.    

Enchanted Toe Ring of the Splatter Skunk. (Upgraded)

The item has been upgraded once. 

Imbues wearer with +10 Strength and gives +5 to the skill Powerful Strike. Also, it’s a toe ring. It’s probably uncomfortable and it makes you look like one of those hippie assholes who sit around in a field juggling and hula-hooping all day. 

The toe ring had gone from +3 in Strength to +10, adding 7 points. But more importantly, my Powerful Strike skill went up two additional skill levels. I had a base of seven with the skill, so with the plus five and the one more from my gauntlet, I had a skill of 13, which meant after all my other skill upgrades with punching and kicking, my damage was now multiplied by 13. Just two levels more before I started to see some serious upgrades and benefits. The closer I got it to 20, the more godly my damage became. 

“Want another go?” Igor asked.

“Yeah, no,” I said. “I think my gambling days are over for now.” 

Igor appeared disappointed. He looked forlornly at his knife. “Suit yourself.” 

“What’re we doing now?” Donut asked. 

“We’re going back to base,” I said. “We have an hour of training to do, I need to build a few things at the table, and then we’re going to crash a train.”