Chapter 109. Welcome to the Fifth Floor. (Patreon)

Part 5

Chapter 109

Phase One of Four. The Gnomes.

Time to level Collapse: 15 Days.

Views: 1.43 Quintillion
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Leaderboard rank: 3
Bounty: 800,000 gold

Welcome, Crawler to the fifth floor. “The Siege Engines”

Sponsorship bidding initiated on Crawler #4,122. Bidding ends in 45 hours.

Remaining Crawlers: 178,887

Entering Bubble #543 out of 1172. Air Quadrant.

New Achievement! The Quarry Sees Another Spring.

You managed to enter a stairwell while listed in the current top 10. You’re a survivor. A scrapper. And just as the buck’s antlers grow another point as they mature, you too, have grown as both a crawler and as a prize.

Reward: You have received a Gold Venison Box! Don’t get too excited. It’s just money. In addition, all bounties against you now and in the future will have a (x2) modifier attached.

Hey, at least the prize for surviving the floor goes up, too.

“What the shit?” I said, seeing the notification. Nobody had warned me our bounties would double. Mordecai hadn’t mentioned it, nor had I seen it listed in the cookbook. I wondered if that was a new thing. Those fuckers.

I coughed, regretting I’d said anything out loud. I spit the sand from my mouth.

Tens of thousands of crawlers hadn’t made it past the last few hours of the fourth floor. I felt my fist clench and unclench as we trudged forward, leaning into the wind.

Donut mewled with irritation from my shoulder. Hot wind blasted against us, and every time I breathed, my mouth and nose started to fill with sand. We needed masks. We could only talk using chat.

We’d stepped from the warehouse onto the fifth floor just a few minutes after the fourth level collapsed. I felt the standard rumble in the ground while we were still in the warehouse, but it was much more distant than usual.

Donut: I NEED TO PICK A NEW CLASS! I REALLY WISH THEY GAVE ME MORE TIME. THE CHOICES ARE ALL DIFFERENT.

Carl: Mordecai. Help Donut choose. We’re in an air zone, and Odette said it’s a crafting level.

Mordecai: There you are. By the gods, did Odette make you clean her house first before she let you go? I’m already here and have been gathering intel. Come to the town that’s hunched up against the northwest curve. The walls block the sand storms. Locals say the storms only last an hour or two each day. Apparently there’s only two towns in the area. Donut, read me your choices.

Donut quickly read off some of the class choices. None of them had a flying ability. Many sounded more interesting and exotic than usual, like Nine Tails and Demigod Attendant, though there were a few in there that had to be a joke. Like Vape Shop Counter Jockey. Mordecai asked rapid-fire questions. He zoomed in on two choices.

Mordecai: I’m torn. The class choices keep getting better. We still need to keep your Constitution up. You just lost ten points from losing your Football Hooligan. There’s two that’ll replace it and more. Glass Cannon normally forbids you from adding to your constitution upon level-up, but it comes with a plus fifteen constitution base, and it’ll also greatly increase your training speed on all spells. It does not increase your intelligence, but it lowers the cost of all spells, which is almost the same thing. Your Magic Missile will be much stronger, and it’s already pretty strong. You can’t train constitution anyway, so it’s a good choice, especially if we grind on your magic. But if you don’t actually obtain some of those benefits, it could be a waste of a class.

Donut’s Character Actor benefit went up in power each time she descended a floor, but it still came with a risk. She didn’t always obtain all of the chosen class’s benefits, and once she picked, it was set for the floor.

Mordecai: I’m waffling between that and Crash Test Dummy.

Donut: I AM NOT CHOOSING A CLASS WITH DUMMY IN THE NAME.

Carl: What does it do?

Mordecai: It’s actually a tank class, but it has a few benefits that might come in handy on this floor. It comes with a tremendous plus twenty to constitution, plus five to her Cockroach skill, the limb regeneration benefit, Shield level five, and potentially the Engineering Plan benefit, which adds one level to all the crafting tables in your space. It’s a great class. It’s easily the better choice short term, but long-term, the only potential benefit she might keep once the floor is done is that Shield spell. Which she needs. If she picks the other one, she’ll likely be much stronger at the end of the floor.

Shit. I could see the benefits of both. Crash Test Dummy would keep her much safer on this floor, and it’d boost our ability to craft. But Mordecai was right. We needed to be aggressive with our training. We needed to think long-term.

Plus I really didn’t want to fight with her over something stupid like the class’s name.

Carl: I think Glass Cannon. Katia?

Katia: Agreed.

Donut: YAY! I CHOSE IT, SO IT’S TOO LATE FOR YOU TO TALK ME OUT OF IT, MORDECAI.

Mordecai: Well? What did you get?

Donut: I… WELL, I GOT EVERYTHING. EXCEPT THE PLUS 15 TO CONSTITUTION.

“Goddamnit,” I muttered and immediately regretted it. I had to spit out more sand.

Mordecai: Okay. We need to really focus on keeping Donut out of harm’s way until we get her better armor. No more riding Mongo into battle. I’m going to start brewing some shield potions for her now that my table is high enough.

Class choice out of the way, we started to move. Dust and sand swirled around us. The ground felt solid, though my feet sank to the ankles with each step. With the dust storm, I could barely see more than about twenty feet in each direction. I looked up, and I saw nothing but brown. I turned, and the door we’d just left was gone, replaced by a curved, rocky but uniform wall. It seemed to rise high and away, like we were standing inside of a crudely-sculpted bowl.

Katia: Okay. I see the edge of town. It’s close, about three hundred meters ahead and to the left. My pathfinder skill is acting a little odd. I can’t see anything behind us except the mountain wall.

Donut: THERE ARE NO TUNNELS AT LEAST. I HATE TUNNELS.

I wasn’t so sure about that. My chat was filled with people checking in with their surroundings. I minimized it until we were someplace safe, but I saw a few people mentioning tight, claustrophobic tunnels. Bautista was in one such passageway. Elle and Imani said they were on a round, floating island that was really a bunch of boats lashed together. They were being pelted with a hailstorm and had taken shelter in the hold of a cargo ship that was filled with level-29 fish monsters.

Carl: I can’t see shit. Watch out for mobs.

Donut: THIS IS RUINING MY HAIR. AND IT’S HOT. I DON’T LIKE THIS, CARL. MONGO IS MISERABLE.

Carl: Mongo is still in his container. You don’t know if he’s miserable or not.

It was hot. I remembered how cold it was when we’d first entered the dungeon. My eyes caught a countdown timer in my upper left vision. It was my potion sickness indicator from when I’d taken Mordecai’s Special Brew. I still had over four hours until I’d be able to take another potion. At least the timer had kept ticking while we were on the surface.

Carl: Donut. Minefield.

Donut unleashed Mongo, who squawked with dismay at the driving sandstorm. She cast Clockwork Triplicate on the pet, and she ordered the two automatons to range ahead of us. With our limited vision, they’d provide an early warning for both mobs and sand dunes.

The town was close, but getting there was a chore. We didn’t see any mobs. We passed a cave-like entrance in the ground that offered shelter, but the clockwork Mongos were unable to enter despite it being wide-open. It was a short, sloped descent filled with swirling eddies of sand. In the hole I could see a tunnel fading away into darkness. I took a few steps down the slope, and I saw the shimmering wall. It was not a portal, but a forcefield of some sort, similar to the wall of my Protective Shield spell, protecting the entrance to the cave. The sand passed right through. A clockwork Mongo walked up and swiped at it, claw bouncing off it like it was a physical wall. The creature didn’t explode or blow back. I formed my gauntlet and hesitantly reached out to tap it.

Warning: You may not enter this quadrant until your current quadrant’s castle is liberated.

I tried to shout what I’d learned at Donut and Katia, but the wind was just too loud. We had to stick with chat.

Carl: This is a cave entrance to the subterranean zone. It sounds like we can’t leave the air zone until we deal with the gnomes.

Katia: The map won’t let me see anything inside there. But look at the walls. I thought this was a mountain, but it all looks carved. I think there’s a building under our feet.

I took a banger sphere and rolled it down the slope. It bounced a few times down the uneven ramp, entered the area as if the wall wasn’t there, and just kept going. It disappeared into the darkness.

A moment later, the ground rumbled with a distant explosion. I didn’t hear it, but I felt it in my feet.

You have set off a trap. Maybe next time you’ll be more careful.

Carl: Shit, it sounds like the subterranean tunnels have traps in them. We need to be extra vigilant.

Katia: I believe it’s an underground tomb. Like Indiana Jones stuff.

She pulled a regular torch from her inventory, lit it, and tossed it through the forcefield. It lit up a long, sloping hallway made of carved bricks.

Carl: I think you’re right.

Relief patterns of what looked like a flaming, screaming pterodactyl adorned the walls. Well that’s ominous.

Donut: CAN WE DISCUSS THIS AFTER WE GET OUT OF THIS SAND? I MEAN, REALLY. WE CAN’T EVEN GO IN THERE. THAT’S NOT OUR AREA. THIS IS JUST AWFUL. SOME PEOPLE ON THE CHAT SAY THEY’RE IN A TROPICAL PARADISE AND SOME SAY THEY’RE IN A SNOWING ZONE. ANY OF THOSE WOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS, AND I DON’T EVEN LIKE SNOW.

We abandoned the cave entrance and continued on toward the town. The fact we hadn’t seen any mobs was concerning. Less mobs usually meant stronger mobs.

We did see one oddity as we trekked to the town. There was a twisted, burned-out shell of metal on the ground. It appeared it’d been there for some time. I couldn’t determine what it used to be, but it might’ve once been a vehicle. The system didn’t label it at all. I touched the metal to see if I could take it into my inventory. It felt solid and light, but rusted. It was half-buried in the sand. We left it and continued on our way.

We soon came to a tall, curved wall made of sheets of metal riveted together. The walls rose high, maybe twenty feet, and a fabric awning covered it above that. The thick, blue and white striped material whipped violently in the storm, threatening to rip away at any moment. The fabric curved up and away into the darkness. Every few dozen feet, large, dark boxes stood atop the walls. I wasn’t certain, but they appeared to be lookout towers. They were closed up against the storm.

Katia: The town is built against the wall. There’s an entrance that way.

She pointed right, and we followed along the patchwork metal until we reached an arched doorway built into an alcove that was mostly protected from the wind. Donut started hacking up sand onto my shoulder. There was a crude sign over the large, double doorway. It read “Hump Town. Bang twice to enter.”

The knocker was a mallet, like for a giant drum. It hung from a chain by the entrance. I grabbed it and smacked it against the door twice. The whole doorway echoed loud and deep.

“That was louder than I expected,” I said. We could finally talk here, though we still had to raise our voices.

Donut continued to hack in my ear.

“Hey, don’t puke on my shoulder.”

“Where else am I going to do it, Carl?” she said between breaths. She proceeded to puke on my shoulder.

“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said.

“In ancient Egypt, it was considered an honor for a cat to vomit upon you. You should thank me.”

“Hump town,” Katia said drily. “I can’t wait to find what that’s all about.”

Several minutes passed, and nothing happened. The clockwork Mongos timed-out and collapsed. I was about to bitch at Mordecai to come open the door when it groaned, opening inwardly.

“It’s a big NPC,” Donut warned just as the creature appeared.

The tall creature looked down on us while we looked up at him. It was a camel. A giant camel wearing a headscarf and robes. The thing walked on two legs and had long arms with two fingers and a thumb. The tan creature had to be eight feet tall. His giant hump looked odd when he stood straight, like an overstuffed, low-slung backpack covered with robes.

Clay – Dromedarian. Level 30.

The Dromedarians are a common, formerly nomadic race that is found throughout the drier parts of the universe. With the ability to store mass amounts of liquid in their bodies, it is said a Dromedarian can survive up to two months without taking a single sip of water. When these hunters and warriors are placed in a situation where they can no longer wander, they tend to become lethargic, sloth-minded creatures. But make no mistake, this is a mighty race of warriors who were once known for their abject brutality.

Trapped atop the Necropolis of Anser, these local Dromedarians are locked in a three-way stalemate with the Bactrians and the Dirigible Gnomes. Any day now this smoldering conflict could boil over into an all-out war. A war they probably would not survive. In the meantime, they’re perfectly content to sit around, smoke weed, and do their best to drink all their problems away.

“Hump town,” Katia said, looking up at the camel. “That’s what they mean.”

“Yo,” Clay the camel said. “Welcome to Hump Town. Don’t just stand there. Get in so I can close the door.”

I just stared, blinking at the creature. Based on the way he was dressed and the description, I was expecting a stereotypical middle-eastern type accent. This was more like a gruff, biker dude. Like Joe Camel, I thought. The old cigarette mascot.

“You don’t worship Grull, do you?” I asked as we stepped in. The wind howled around the village, and sand still rained in a dozen little spots here and there. The ground was covered with it. But it was nothing like out there.

“Do I look like a face-painting, bull-worshipping bitch?” Clay asked.

“Uh, no,” I said.

“You lot got here just in time. Storm’s almost over. It’s dangerous to be out there when it stops blowing.” He slammed the heavy door closed. He carried a long, dangerous-looking spear over his shoulder. But he also carried a long tube that looked like a homemade bazooka or mortar. Sure enough, five, pineapple-shaped explosives dangled on a string from his back. My UI tagged each one as a Guided, Anti-Air Rocket. They were unarmed, so relatively stable. If they were “guided” then it had be magical, as they appeared to be pretty simplistic. It wouldn’t let me examine them further.

“So the beasts hide when the wind is blowing?” I asked after Clay caught me staring at his gear.

Clay grunted, a loud, wet sound that sprayed snot everywhere. “You must be new. You’re lucky you ain’t dead.”

“There’s a Desperado Club,” Katia said. “No Club Vanquisher. I see several stores and inns.”

“Not so fast,” Clay said as I took another step. “You can’t just enter Hump Town empty-handed. You gotta pay the toll. And if you’re the Club Vanquisher type, you are in the wrong place. They don’t call it  Hump Town for nothing.”

“What’s the toll?” I asked.

“Gold, drugs, or pleasure.” He looked me up and down. He snorted again, spraying more snot. “Gold or drugs for you.”

It was the dungeon version of the old bumper sticker, “Cash, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free.” I chuckled.

“How much gold?”

“How much you got?”

Donut, sensing a deal to be made, straightened on my shoulder. Sand cascaded off of her. I held up a hand to stop her.

“How about this?” I asked, pulling the single blitz stick from my inventory. It’d been my freebie from Quint the Desperado Club pharmacist.

Clay pulled it from my hand and squinted, examining it. He immediately popped it into his mouth and lit it.

“Good shit. Welcome to Hump Town. Stay out of city hall. Dromedarians only. Other than that, have fun. If you’re into weird shit, Weird Shit Alley is up against the far wall on the northeast side of town. Otherwise, the regular girls are mostly on Hump Street. I recommend Jazmin Delight over at the Wiggle Room.” He winked at Katia. “She’s a twister, like you.”

“Wait,” Katia said. “So the town is called Hump Town because…”

“Yeah, we’re a brothel town. What did you think? Now get out of here. And again, stay out of city hall.”

New Quest. “Stay out of city hall.”

Find out what’s in city hall. It just might be important.

Reward: You will receive a Silver Quest Box.

“Well that’s, I don’t know. A little obvious,” I muttered as the camel wandered away, smoking his blitz stick. He stopped and talked to another camel, pointing at us. They both laughed.

“Do you think the prostitutes are more camels?” Donut asked. “Because that’s just weird.”

“Not as weird as an entire, prostitution-based economy when there’s only two towns. It’s like the Iron Tangle all over again. It doesn’t make any sense.” Clay proudly showed his blitz stick to another camel, who also laughed. I was starting to realize what had just happened. We’d gotten scammed. I grunted. You asshole. Well-played.

“What’s a twister?” Katia asked. “Do you think he meant she’s a doppelganger?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Let’s find Mordecai.”

The town’s streets were laid out like a set of nested semi-circles, like a rainbow. The residences dotted the outer ring, just inside the wall, interspersed with barracks-like buildings. The second ring consisted of shops and a handful of training guilds with the large City Hall building in the center. It was the largest building in town, rising up to the top of the fabric awnings, which all ran from the top of the building to both the town wall and the tomb wall behind it, like an umbrella. Each individual awning piece was triangular, like a jib on a sailboat, but much, much bigger.

The town was larger than I expected. Larger than the medium skyfowl town I “owned” from the third floor. The inns and Desperado Club were all on the third ring, the aptly labeled “Hump Street.”

As we made our way, the wind abruptly stopped. And just like that, dirty light streamed in from the spaces between the fabric awnings. Shouts rose around town, and suddenly camels were everywhere. A group appeared, pulling ladders and climbing the walls, unhooking the fabric. We had to step out of the way as a group of tall camels, made even taller because they strode by on steampunk-like, metal and spring stilts rolled the fabric up. In minutes, the massive sails were pulled up and placed atop the city hall. I caught the shimmer of enchantment in the fabric. A group of camels expertly twisted the sails atop of the tower. The blue and white stripes formed a pattern, making something between a minaret, the onion towers atop Saint Basil’s cathedral, and soft serve ice cream. Only it was all made of fabric. Fabric they could quickly unfurl and re-deploy the moment another storm arrived.

Actually, I realized, seeing the lines of rope that remained in place, the whole tower was like a gun. They could probably “fire” the tower, deploying the awning over the entire town in seconds. Like a flower that could bloom on demand. What we’d just witnessed was the town coming together to expertly reset the system.

“That’s pretty nifty,” I said, amazed at how quickly they’d taken it all down.

“Amazing,” Katia agreed.

I stared up into the sky, agape. On the third floor there’d been a fake ceiling with an illusory sky. There’d really been ceiling up there, one I could easily hit with my slingshot.

Now, I could see the distant shimmer of what appeared to be forcefield, but it was high, high in the air. Airplane height. I turned in a circle. The city ended at a massive wall that had to be over a hundred feet tall. Before, I had thought it felt as if we were in a giant bowl. I realized now that I was correct. A bowl that sat atop a tomb. What had the description called it? The Necropolis of Anser.

“Carl, this doesn’t feel very dungeon-like to me,” Donut said, looking up at the sky.

I laughed. “You said you didn’t like tunnels. There’s a top. It’s just really, really high up there.” Remember what it said when we first came in? It called this place bubble number 543.

Katia was also turning in circles, looking into the air. “We’re under a dome,” she agreed. “Look at the way the light shines. It’s gotta be four or five kilometers to the top.”

Something flew by high above. It was a giant bird of some sort. It dove out of view past the edge of the bowl.

“If we’re in the air quadrant, and the subterranean quadrant is under our feet, where are the land and sea quadrants?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But if we’re in a bowl. Maybe it’s like an island, and there’s water outside the bowl.”

“You’re close,” a new, almost-familiar voice said. I turned to look at the skyfowl. The large eagle approached us from one of the deeper streets.

“Mordecai,” I said, looking at the light brown and beige eagle. “Is that you? Like the real you?”

He grunted. “Are you taking the scenic route? By the gods, I had to come looking for you. This isn’t what I really looked like. They made me a rock edge skyfowl. I was a centurion. Darker feathers. Larger wingspan. Bigger talons. Much more handsome.”

Mongo rushed up and sniffed at the manager, and upon realizing who it was, started bouncing up and down.

“You eagle guys all look the same to me,” I said. We, again, had to move out of the way as a group of dromedarians marched past. There were seven of them, and the system listed them as Level 48 Waster Patrol. They were decked out in dark robes. They carried spears and more of the bazookas over their shoulders. These guys walked with purpose and headed straight for the exit.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Mordecai continued. “It’s amazing. It’s the first time I’ve been in a body similar to my real form in a very long time. But they fucked me.” Mordecai spread out his wings. “I’m in the body of a goddamn cleric. That means I’m clipped. I can fly, but only short distances. Imagine if you suddenly woke up in the body of a eunuch and then thrown into an orgy.” He looked up into the sky and sighed heavily. “At least it’s still a skyfowl. And anything is better than the damn toad.”

Skyfowl didn’t have arms. Just feet and wings, like regular eagles. “Can you still, you know, do potion stuff in that body?”

He looked at me as if I just asked to see nudes of his mom.

“Better than ever,” he said. “Anyway, Katia, you were close. We are in a dome. Like a snowglobe. They’re calling them bubbles. The Necropolis of Anser is a very high tower, and we are on top of it.” He pointed up. “That bubble is bigger than it looks from here. The ground and the sea are far below us. You came in a few minutes late, so you missed it, but there’s going to be an announcement explaining the floor’s rules in a couple of minutes. Let’s get into a saferoom and get some food and listen to what they gotta say.”

We walked toward Mordecai’s chosen inn, a bar called The Toe. I walked ahead with Mordecai, while Katia, Mongo, and Donut held back, oohing and ahhing at all the sights. The town was an odd mix of stereotypical, movie-style, middle-eastern village mixed in with the Burning Man Festival. The adobe buildings were oftentimes augmented with rusty, metallic exoskeletons. I couldn’t tell if it was armor, something functional, or just art. One residence had a massive telescope on top, pointing up. Another held a weather station that glowed with enchantment. A battery-powered engine chugged outside of another building. A pair of young camels zipped by on a tracked cart, like a mini tractor, dragging a rickety cart stacked impossibly high with branches. They laughed as they bounced. The whole town smelled of smoke and oil and dirt.

Every NPC I’d seen so far was a camel, but that changed once we hit Hump Street. A pair of women standing outside one bar spied us, and they both changed shape, one into a human woman, the other into a skyfowl.

“Are those changelings or doppelgangers?” I asked. The tag over them said they were what they portrayed.

“Changelings,” Mordecai said sourly. “Don’t trust them. If you’re feeling like you need to, you know, stick with the Desperado Club.” The cookbook had something similar to say about changelings. It’d called them thieving, backstabbing whores, or something of the like.

I observed a pair of crawlers gawking at us. Both were level-22 humans. I waved, and they backed away into a different bar, as if they were afraid of me.

“Fifteen days, huh?” I said, changing the subject.

“I was expecting 12,” Mordecai said. “The fact they gave us three more than expected is not necessarily a good thing. I already know how the floor works, and we’re already screwed. So with the extra three days, I suspect we might be in for a nasty surprise.”

“Why are we screwed?” I asked.

“You’re stuck in a quadrant with maybe three dozen other crawlers. That’s it. Every one I’ve seen so far other than you guys is so underpowered, it’s a miracle they’ve made it this far. And what’s worse, you gotta use them to help you storm the gnome castle to get to the stairwell.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We need to reset our buffs, get some sleep, open up all our boxes, and then see if we can find the place.”

“Find it?” Mordecai asked. He pointed up. I looked, following his finger. High, high above, brushing the ceiling of the dome was a tiny, little speck. “There’s your castle.”

“Shit,” I said, looking up. “I wasn’t expecting it to be thathigh.”

“It moves, too,” he said. “And they have defenses.”

“Fuck me.”

~

The Toe was a simple, inn-style tavern with a Dromedarian proprietor. The place smelled like a petting zoo. This inn only employed a single prostitute, a woman changeling named Juice Box, who sat pouting in the corner after we all rejected her. In addition to the woman, the Toe also offered alcohol, food, and a few rooms.

The incoming message was not a regular announcement as we still had ten more hours until the recap episode. The bar had the traditional three screens, but the middle screen with the top-10 was empty. A countdown appeared, indicating it would populate in ten hours after the recap. Apparently that was a normal thing.

We ordered drinks and food and sat at the table, waiting for the message. It came quickly.

Hello, Crawlers. Welcome to the fifth floor! We are so very excited for you to enjoy this new and exciting level! We have just over 178,000 of you joining us. The last floor was somewhat of a mystery, and finding out how it worked was part of the fun. This floor is a little different. The layout is not so much a secret, and the rules are pretty simple. We want you guys to have a great time with this one.

There are a total of 4,688 stairwell exits on this floor. Each stairwell is placed inside of a castle. There are 4,688 different castles, and no two are the same.

There are a total of 1,172 bubbles. All of you are inside of a bubble, equally and randomly distributed the best we could. That comes to a little more than 150 crawlers per bubble. Like with the castles, every bubble is different.

Furthermore, each bubble is split into four quadrants. Land, Sea, Air, and Subterranean. Each quadrant has a single castle within. Your mission is to find the castle, raid it, and take the throne room. Once the throne room is occupied, the castle is considered conquered. The stairwell is also located in the throne room, so no need to be scrambling around, worried about not being able to find it. Easy, right? Take the castle, take the stairwell.

“That sounds simple enough,” I said. But it wasn’t simple. If we couldn’t fly, how the hell could we get up there? It’s not like we could build a cannon to toss us. We were going to have to build a balloon. Or an airplane. Or find a way to shoot it down. Something.

But, there is a small hitch. In order for your stairwell to actually open up and be passable, all four castles in your bubble must first be taken. That’s right, the Land, Sea, Air, and Subterranean castles must all fall in order for you to proceed to the sixth floor.

Mordecai groaned.

“Goddamnit,” I said. I exchanged a look with Katia, who looked grim. Even Donut seemed taken aback.

Luckily for you, once you have taken your own castle, you may traverse outside of your quadrant to lend a hand to your fellow bubble buddies. Once all four castles are taken, the bubble is popped, and you may proceed outside of the bubble area if you wish. You may not enter other bubbles until they are also popped.

Good luck folks. Some of these castles are much easier to crack than others. Also, the second round of sponsorship bidding is underway. We’ll have another message in a few hours after the regular recap episode. Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!

We sat in silence for several moments. Mordecai’s feathers around his neck ruffled and unruffled. He turned to look at us.

“I’m going to assume right now that out of the 150 or so crawlers in this bubble, every single one of them is an incompetent idiot. That means you have less than four days to take each castle. So get that food in your mouths, open all the boxes you’ve accumulated, get your asses to bed, and then get back out here. We got a lot of work to do.”

***

Woohoo! Welcome to the 5th floor. This is a rudimentary map to help you wrap your head around the level. Any questions you have will likely be answered in the coming chapters. I'll make a nice, fancy schmancy version soon.