Chapters 115, 116, and 117 (Patreon)

Chapter 115

New Achievement! Total, Utter Failure.

You failed a quest less than five minutes after you received it. Now that’s talent.

Reward: Ha.

“Oh fuck off,” I muttered as I ascended the stairs just as Donut cried, “Get down!”

Louis and Firas hit the deck as the chock was hit with an explosive. Ka-blam!

Fire licked through the room, and everything tumbled as the incredible sound temporarily rendered me deaf. The chock was bent over and dislodged with a hole right in the center, peeled open like a baked potato. The brace that went from the floor to the ceiling held strong. The door itself was shattered. Smoke filled the room, black and choking.

One of the camels had blasted a rocket at the door. They’d probably shoot another one any second.

“Fire in the hole,” I coughed. I threw one of my new eighth-strength hob-lobbers through the mangled doorway, hurling it down the long hall. I crouched. The explosion came, but I couldn’t hear it. The walls shook, followed by a secondary explosion that was even bigger. Part of the ceiling caved in. Experience notifications scrolled by.

That’s why you don’t carry your explosives on the outside, motherfucker.

I still couldn’t hear anything, but the building continued to rumble. The stench of gunpowder and smoke filled the room. This was real smoke. The building was on fire. I downed a health potion, and the pain in my head eased. I knew from experience it’d take a full minute for my hearing to return.

Both Firas and Louis were on the ground. Louis was screaming, his hands to his ears, burn marks across his forearms. He had shrapnel wounds up and down his torso. That asshole needs armor. Firas had been blown across the room and was Unconscious, but otherwise looked okay. The rocket had propelled everything back, scorching the walls. But the metal block had protected them like a shield.

Donut jumped astride Mongo. Both had been in the back part of the room and appeared unharmed. She moved to Firas and used one of our precious healing scrolls on him. They hadn’t seen us yet, but that would change in a moment. I dropped one of my last hobgoblin smoke curtains at my feet.

Carl: Donut, let’s get out of here.

Donut: WHAT DO YOU THINK I’M DOING, CARL?

Donut cast Hole on the far wall, and it materialized, leading outside. It faced the side of an alley, but luckily, if we stood to the right of the hole, we had a line-of-sight down one of the main thoroughfares, all the way to where it curved away and toward the wall of the bowl. There were camels everywhere, all headed in this direction. The smoke curtain, much too powerful for such a small place, billowed out the magical hole. The camels on the streets all had white dots on the map, so the opacity of the smoke curtain wasn’t enough to obscure us when they got close. We couldn’t let them see us. We had to move fast. We moved to the side of the temporary hole.

“Louis, take a potion,” I hissed as I pulled the stuffed, Grulke infantry figure from my inventory. My ears started that familiar buzzing, letting me know my hearing was returning.

Bautista had given me the beanbag toy. He still had almost a thousand of the things, all different. He was going through them rapidly as he and his team explored through his subterranean level, which was really some sort of ant colony thing.

I ripped the tag off the beanbag and tossed it through the hole and out into the alley. We waited a few precious seconds for the creature to be summoned. Louis finally figured out the health potion and rose to his feet, whimpering, rubbing his arms. He was covered in splotches of blood. I hissed at him to crouch down and stay away from the room’s new window.

A mighty croak filled the chamber. The grulke creature stood to his feet in the alley. He turned to peek his head back in through the hole to look at me. He had a 25-second timer over his head. The level-15 frog creature looked just like Mordecai had on the last floor.

“What am I doing here?” he asked, looking directly at me. Half-opacity smoke billowed all around us. Shouting came from every direction. The entire building felt as if it was about to collapse. I thought of the protective sail over the building that safeguarded the town from the sand storm. The storm would be here in less than two hours.

“Think you can hop out onto the street, turn right and then hop over the city wall?”

I couldn’t see it from here, but the main entrance to the town was only a few hundred feet away.

“You summoned me just to make me run like a little bitch?”

“Yes. Hurry. Go!”

The frog only had ten seconds left. He grumbled but hopped out onto the street, landing in front of a pair of surprised camels. He bounded to the right, sailing up into the air, crashing loudly. He hopped once more and out of sight.

“Do it,” I said to Donut as I tossed one more smoke bomb, this time out on the street. I really needed a non-magical version, one that worked on NPCs and not just red-tagged mobs. Behind us and through the mangled remains of the interior door, I heard shouting. More dromedarians were coming into the building, despite it being on fire. Donut’s Hole spell would soon run dry. It was time to go.

Louis dragged the still-recovering form of Firas over, and we teleported away. Donut puddle jumped us all the way down the street, right where the street started to curve with the wall.

I quickly looked around. There were several camels about, but all had their eyes on the city hall building, which billowed smoke into the air. Fire burst from a window on the second level.

“Whoa, that was way further than I expected,” I said, standing to my full height. “I wish you’d done that last time.”

“It lets me send us really far now,” Donut said, also looking around. A female camel standing about ten feet away looked in our direction and startled at our sudden appearance.

“Oh my, what happened?” Donut asked, sounding innocent.

The camel paused uncertainly. Her eyes focused on Firas who was being held up by Louis. I pulled an empty bottle of whiskey from my inventory and pretended to drink in an attempt to look like we’d just wandered over here from a nearby bar. She seemed to relax. She blinked twice and said, “The town hall was attacked by frog creatures. Nobody knows where they came from. I saw one with my own eyes. He jumped to the top of the house right there and then leapt straight out of town.”

“I never liked frogs,” Donut declared. “Filthy creatures. Have you seen their tongues? They’re sticky. Anything with a sticky tongue can’t be trusted. Can you imagine having something sticky in your mouth at all times?”

The dromedarian nodded and returned her attention back to the burning town hall. The tulip-shaped sail atop the building was not catching on fire, but the whole structure was about to collapse to the ground. Camels on stilts appeared, all pouring buckets of water on the fire. It wasn’t going to help.

Katia came strolling up in her regular, human form. She had what looked like an iced tea in her hand with a little umbrella. She sipped on it.

“What was the plan again?” she asked. “Oh yes, I remember. You were going to sneak in, figure out what they had hidden in there, and sneak out again undetected. Good job.”

“That’s why we have backup plans,” I said, still watching the burning building. “At least they don’t know it was us.”

“The frog con isn’t going to last,” she said. “This world is too small to pull that sort of scam off. They’re going to go out there and find no other frog creatures. Or worse, they’ll find that stuffed animal it turns back into. And then they’re going to realize the only ones who mentioned seeing the frogs were all the new people. It’s not rocket science.”

“I thought it went quite well,” Donut said. “Also, they’re toads. Not frogs.”

“Is it always like this?” Louis asked. He looked like he was going to vomit again. Firas had healed, but he was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth.

“Like what?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

I turned my gaze back to Katia. “We have bigger problems than them figuring out it was us. The moment the gnomes realize their collateral is dead, they’re going to unleash hell on the town. I’d like to avoid that, but I don’t know how.”

“How will they even know?” Donut asked, looking up into the sky. Above, the twin suns were getting closer by the minute.

It was still unbearably hot. I snatched Katia’s drink and took a sip. It wasn’t iced tea. It was some girly alcoholic drink. “I don’t know. But they found out about the other town’s collateral somehow.” I told them exactly what had happened in the basement. “I’m guessing those subterranean assholes probably did the same thing on the other side. They killed the collateral, whatever it was, in an attempt to somehow get to the map, that was likely just out of their reach. Whatever happened, it caused the town to be bombed. I bet we just did the same thing here. We have a little more than an hour before the storm, two hours of storm, two hours of post-storm twilight, and then two hours of night. That’s about how long before that airship will be back in this general area. So whatever we do about it, we better do it quickly.”

To accentuate the point, the city hall collapsed with a mighty crash. The minaret atop the building tumbled over and landed on the street as camels scattered.

“You keep destroying governmental buildings, Carl,” Donut said. “People are going to start thinking you have a problem with authority.”

~

Soon after, several dromedarians went to work manually affixing the storm shield over the city. The town hall had been the tallest building, but they had prepared for this contingency. A group of dromedarians tirelessly set up a scaffolding system to hold the shield up. They worked quickly, unfurling the canvas, filling the town with shadow.

“That material looks like it used to be part of a balloon,” Katia said. “It’s definitely magical.”

I stared at the creatures feverishly working to protect the city. Were these guys real dromedarians? Or were they changelings? Katia had witnessed a shapeshifter murdering two dromedarians, so it was clear the camels didn’t know that their ranks had been infiltrated. This was some serious Invasion of the Body Snatchers bullshit.

Carl: Is there any way we can tell which ones of these guys are real?

Mordecai: I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I have an idea. Donut. Do your sunglasses have the ability to see based on heat signature?

Donut: I DON’T KNOW. THERE ARE LOTS OF MODES. PROBABLY.

Mordecai: If it does, a real dromedarian and a changeling will have almost an identical heat signature, but the brain of the changeling will be a lot hotter. That might make their heads a little hotter. It’ll probably be very subtle, but you might be able to make that work.

Donut: OKAY I WILL TRY BUT I WOULDN’T GET MY HOPES UP. THEIR HEADSCARVES WILL MAKE IT EXTRA HARD TO SEE.

I sent Louis and Firas off to a saferoom. There was only a single real saferoom in town for folks without a personal space, and it was in Weird Shit Alley. We hadn’t gone in there yet, but everyone was a little scared of the street. I told them to go anyway. They’d both received several achievements for participating in that fight, likely all boxes we’d already received. They were both marveling at the sudden influx of views and follows. After they collected their loot, they needed to hook up with Langley and the other archers, who were going to spend some time outside the gates grinding until the storm hit.

We needed to do that, too. This floor was going to require us spending a lot of time in the crafting room, which meant less time for regular experience. That was deliberate, designed to slow down our progress. We couldn’t keep relying on boss battles to give us big bumps of experience. Regular, old-school grinding was important, not just for experience, but to keep training up our skills.

We were always juggling. We were slightly ahead of the curve, but the archer guys were a perfect example of how lagging behind on a single floor could bite you on the ass.

“Hey,” I said to a passing dromedarian. Donut was playing with the settings on her sunglasses, trying to figure out how to overlay the heat signature setting. She wanted me to get one to pause close by so she could figure it out.

“Are the gnomes going to bomb the city now?” I asked. “Like they did to the other town?”

This camel was a woman. A level-30 named Emerald.

She looked at me with disdain, but then Donut complimented her headscarf, and the camel seemed to deflate.

“We need to get through the rubble. There’s something important buried in the basement of the town hall, and… and it may still be with us,” she said, though her voice held little hope.

They didn’t know if Wynne the gnome was alive or dead. They were going to be sorely disappointed.

“What if it’s not?”

She paused. I didn’t think she was going to answer, but then she said, “Then we move to the shelters. Every day after sunrise, we give the gnomes proof of collateral. If that doesn’t happen tomorrow, what happened to the Bactrians will happen to us.”

“Proof?” I asked. “What sort of proof?”

“Look, I’m going to help with the rescue efforts. But if I were you, I’d go find a different town.”

“There are no other towns,” I said.

~

We headed toward the Desperado Club where I was to meet up with the idiots from the subterranean level. I was going to speak with them for a bit, maybe leave Katia and Donut in the club so they could transfer the map over the best they could. In the meantime, I had to get back to base as soon as possible. I was going to spend some time with the two-stage rocket, though I feared even that wasn’t going to be strong enough to reach the Wasteland. According to the guy Donut and Mordecai bought the rockets from, the projectiles could only hit planes that were under 500 feet off the ground. Preferably under 300. That was no good. I was going to use my sapper’s table to build a rocket that would, hopefully, have much more range.

I checked in with Gwendolyn Duet as we headed to the club. They’d managed to breach a hole in the first of the four walls, which was made of sand. The second was made of seashell, and they felt they could break through that also instead of going over. She had them building siege ladders and catapults just in case. They hadn’t seen or met any resistance from the castle itself, but it was slow work because the mobs on the beach were a constant threat and were always attacking.

Worst of all, however, was this massive bird that kept harassing them. It was a giant version of the chainsaw buzzards she’d described earlier, only this one was a borough boss. It was constantly circling the structure of the necropolis. If it saw any crawlers out in the open, it would swoop down to attack. It had wrecked two siege towers they’d started building, causing them to abandon the idea. It was too strong for them to fight, so they had to hide every time it appeared. The thing was so fast, they couldn’t even get a good description off of it. The creature was seriously hindering their efforts.

Gwen: Oh, I do have some good news. I saw a pair of crawlers on the water. They were too far away to talk, but they were in some in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-looking submarine thing. It popped up like a cork. The two crawlers emerged and fought a jellyfish thing attached to the outside of the sub, and then they disappeared again. So we know somebody is working on it under there.

Carl: That is good news. Take care of yourself.

Just before we entered the club, all three of us received a notification.

Admin Notice. Congratulations, Crawler. You have received a second sponsor!

Viewers watching your feed will now see advertisements produced by both of your sponsors.

Sponsor’s Name: The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network, Intergalactic NFC.

Additional details available in the Sponsorship Tab of your interface.

My heart sank the moment I saw the word “Pacifist.” Who the hell were these guys? I sent a quick message to Mordecai.

Mordecai: Never heard of them, but they gotta be rich. That NFC stands for Not for Conquest. That means they’re not sponsored by any system, and they are free from taxes. Like a non-profit.

Carl: A goddamned charity? Like some religion?

Mordecai: There’s no such thing as a non-profit religion. At least not in the legal sense. It’s sounds like one of the many groups out there that don’t support the crawl. They probably bought into your sponsorship so they can show commercials. I hope that’s not the case. If it is, you won’t be getting any boxes from them.

I started to respond, but I was interrupted by Donut.

“Carl, Carl, I got a new sponsor!” Donut said, hopping up and down on the back of Mongo, which caused him to also start hopping up and down with excitement. “They’re called, ‘Veriluxx RealPet Companions!’ Don’t they sound just awesome? I wonder who that is! Who did you get? What about you, Katia?”

“I got the Squim Conglomerate,” Katia said. “I don’t know who that is.”

“I do,” I said. “They’re the corporation who ran the crawl the last season. They’re a planet-mining company just like Borant. They do the battle royale style crawls. I don’t know what type of alien they are.”

“Huh,” Katia said. “Interesting. You can see who else they sponsor, and the list has like 500 crawlers on it. I don’t recognize any of the names.”

I remembered that was a thing, but the Valtay hadn’t sponsored anybody else. I checked now, and they still only sponsored me. My new one didn’t sponsor anybody else, either.

“Hey, not fair,” Donut said, suddenly sounding dejected. “My new sponsor sponsors a bunch of other people. And Princess D’Nadia just sponsored five other crawlers, too.”

“They must be pretty special if Princess D’Nadia likes them,” I said, reaching over to scratch Donut on the head. She harumphed.

“Well I’m probably the best one,” she grumbled.

Loita: Congratulations on the new sponsors. All three of you commanded very high fees. Both Carl and Donut had bidding wars that lasted until the final possible microsecond. Donut, you’ll be happy to know that you brought in the highest sponsorship bid in the history of the series, beating out both Carl and Prepotente.

Next to me, all signs of dejection fled as Donut did another little hop of joy.

Donut: THAT’S PRETTY MUCH WHAT I EXPECTED. HOW’S ZEV?

Carl: Lucia isn’t commanding the most sponsorship money?

Loita ignored both of the questions.

Loita: Furthermore, Donut, you will soon be receiving a benefactor box from your new sponsor. It is a product sample. We are requesting that you take it out and interact with it a few times. Carl, feel free to make some of your famous comments about it. This will appear to be a regular benefactor box, but it is in fact part of their sponsorship contract. This box is a freebie for them. It is something new we are trying with some select crawlers to attract more possible sponsors. So try not to disparage the product too much if you want Veriluxx to send you a real benefactor box. In six or seven days, assuming you’re still with us, you two plus Mongo will be going on a program where you discuss the product.

Carl: We’re going on an infomercial? Are you kidding me?

Loita: I am not Zev, Carl. Do not speak back to me like that. It will not be tolerated.

I almost told her to go fuck herself, but I held my tongue. Now was not the time to push it.

Donut: WHAT ABOUT KATIA?

Loita: Katia, I have you booked on a separate program around the same time. You will be doing it solo. This will be a one-on-one interview on a show called Dungeon Sidekicks.

Katia: I can’t wait.

Donut: HOW IS ZEV DOING, LOITA?

Loita: Zev is still in treatment. We expect her return shortly.

“A goddamned infomercial?” I said.

“I wonder what the product is,” Donut said as she dismounted Mongo. The dinosaur whimpered as he went into the carrier, but he obediently allowed her to store him. She jumped to my shoulder as we entered the Desperado Club. Donut gasped with a sudden realization, putting her paw on the side of my head. “Do you think there’ll be a script? Do you think I’ll get lines? Like a real actress?”

~

“Penis Parade? Really?” Katia said, looking about the room. We sat at our regular booth. Bomo and the Sledge stood guard nearby. With Katia’s acquisition of the Desperado Pass, we decided to add a third regular bodyguard to the team. This new guy was also a cretin. A rock creature. His name was Very Sullen.

“I like the Penis Parade,” Donut said. “They give out hats if you tip them a gold coin. Sledgie likes it too, isn’t that right?”

The Sledge rumbled.

“Where are those assholes?” I said, looking about. The club wasn’t very full. I saw only a handful of crawlers, and most of them were going straight for the Silk Road or the guild hall. Nobody had any leisure time any more. I also needed to go to the market and stock up.

A pair of crawlers entered, and I turned to see Morris the spider creature and the other human. They spotted us and hesitantly approached. I remembered I’d told them that I was going to kick their asses the next time I saw them. I waved them over and told the bodyguards to stand aside.

The first thing I did was exchange fist bumps with both, adding them to my chat. I examined them each in turn.

I’d already examined Morris Sp. His half human/half tarantula race was called an Arachnid, and he was level-23. His class was something called a Freelance Psychiatrist. It was a psionic class. Those with psionic skills had excelled on the previous floor, but Morris here didn’t seem to have leveled much.

The other was a human, early twenties with dark hair and tan skin. He had a Mediterranean look to him. Bobby D.J. He was a level-24 Spy. That was a rogue class, and the guy looked a little frazzled around the edges. He had an eye twitch, and his left hand never stopped trembling. I knew their quadrant was covered in traps. If Bobby was the only rogue in the party, he was probably their first line of defense. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes.

“Tell me about your quadrant,” I said after they got their drinks. The only one of the group who didn’t have alcohol was Donut, who was instead sipping on a regular Shirley Temple, chatting away with the Sledge, who grumbled happily in response to all of her declarations and observations.

Morris did not fit in the booth, so instead the spider stood over the table. Katia didn’t say anything out loud, but she shivered every time the arachnid moved. I wasn’t a huge fan of spiders, either.

“Our quadrant is terrible,” Morris said. “The whole place is a maze. A big, fuck-you-you’re-going-to-die maze. We start at the top, and the Crypt of Anser is at the bottom. That’s where the staircase is. We start in the village, which is really a cavern filled with these things called Nude Glabers. They’re undead mole rat creatures, but they’re naked with almost-human anatomy, and they’re hard to look at. That’s where we are now. There are dozens of paths away from town. Some of them are tunnels so tight I have to be pushed to get through. We got a quest to find one of the two maps, but we failed thanks to you.”

“I only took one of the maps,” I said. “You failed because you were set up to fail.”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me about the other map, specifically the place where you were supposed to collect it.”

Morris shrugged. “The other was a similar set up, but instead of a dirigible gnome, it was a pig. We thought it was a mob. It wasn’t until after we’d filled it with ‘nanas did we realize it’d been an NPC.”

“‘Filled it with nanas?’” Katia asked.

“We have a guy who shoots banana tree seeds from his hand. Yes, I know how stupid that sounds. But he’s a druid, and he causes the seeds to sprout really fast. They work great, but the range is really low.”

“A pig? I knew it was a pet!” Donut said proudly.

“Yeah, so we killed it. The map was in the same room, but out of reach. It was in the air quadrant. We were building a tool to take it. You can throw something through the quadrant barrier, but you can’t hold something like a giant stick or grabber through the wall. You can’t cast spells, either.”

I remembered it’d let me roll a ball through the barrier, but the clockwork Mongos couldn’t get through, nor my hands. Mordecai had explained that the barriers wouldn’t allow anything under our direct or indirect control through.

“But before we could figure it out, a two-humped camel thing, a Bactrian it was called, came in and saw the dead pig and freaked out. He upset the table with the map, and it fell to the ground, blowing closer to us. Then he ran away. We spent hours trying to figure out how to get it. But before we could, the damn room just blew up. And it said the map was destroyed. So we moved to the second map.”

“But I beat you to it,” I said. “Have you seen the castle or crypt or whatever yet? The building you need to storm?”

“No,” he said. “We need the map. It’s impossible to navigate without. Every new hallway has a different type of trap. Bobby here is good at disarming them, but it makes us slow. We just barely cleared the halls at the top, and we need to work our way down. It’s going to take a long time.”

“Do you know who Quetzalcoatlus is? Wynne—the gnome you guys killed—mentioned him.”

“Yeah,” Morris said. “I guess Anser was the emperor. He died, and when he did, they built this tomb for him. They threw his entire court and his wife in here even though they weren’t dead. Then they sealed it all up. Quetzalcoatlus is his wife, and she’s somewhere in here still. She’s some undead thing now. She’s non-corporeal. A ghost. She can travel through walls within the tomb. And I think she’s really pissed off. Every once in a while we can hear her, screaming. She sounds like a bird. After we failed the quest to get the map, we all got a quest to find and kill her. Nobody knows how to kill a damn ghost.”

“Weird,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you need magic to kill ghosts.” I was more than pretty sure, but I didn’t want to say it out loud. There were extensive instructions on how to kill ghosts in the cookbook, including bomb types that would do the trick. “There are a creatures here, on our level. They are trying to resurrect Quetzalcoatlus. They’re trying to get a spell that will give her flesh. They want to be able to physically touch her, I think. So they can gain some of her special powers.”

“She’d probably be easier to kill if she had physical form,” Morris said.

“Probably,” I agreed. “Too bad you killed the guy who knew how to cast the spell. So here’s where we stand. We have the gnomes floating over the entire world, and they bomb the shit out of everybody. On top of the temple, we have a few groups. The camels and the changelings. The changelings are pretending to be refugees, but they have some plan of their own that involves resurrecting the guardian of the subterranean level. On the ground we have somebody called the Mad Dune Mage, and we don’t know much about him yet. And then there’s one more castle in the water. From what little we know, it sounds like it’s underwater.”

“Yeah, we-we keep getting water breathing scrolls and scrolls of d-d-disarm trap, which are useless unless you know for sure a trap is right there,” Bobby said, speaking for the first time. He had a stutter to his voice.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s the deal. I can see the map, and you’re right. It’s insane how complicated it is. There are tunnels. Rooms. Dead ends. Pits with spikes. It’s nuts. Katia here brought paper and a pencil, and she’s already started mapping out a path to get to the bottom. You two sit with her and Donut. It’ll take a few hours, but she will give you the map when she’s done. I highly suggest you try drawing it in your scratchpad while she maps it out, just in case you lose it. We need to work together. I will help any way I can. If you need something built, let me know, and I will make it happen.”

Morris turned to Bobby and smiled. “And you said he was going to murder us.”

“The d-d-day isn’t over yet.”

I said my goodbyes to Donut and Katia, and I hit the Silk Road. I topped-off my explosive supplies and bought a few newly-available toys. From there, I exited the club and headed back to the saferoom. Outside, the wind whipped at the town’s covering. The storm was here. As I walked back, I received a pair of notifications.

You have received a Bronze Benefactor Box from the Valtay Corporation.

You have received a Silver Benefactor Box from The Open Intellect Pacifist Action Network, Intergalactic NFC.

Chapter 116

Time to Level Collapse: 13 days, 13 hours.

The first thing I did when I returned to base was open my two new boxes. I also had a fan box coming, but it hadn’t come in yet. Mordecai came out to watch.

“I’ve never heard of an anti-crawl group giving a benefactor box. I’ve known a few to sponsor crawlers over the generations, but that’s usually just to get people talking about their cause. They have no real investment in the crawler himself. A silver box, too. So whoever these guys are, they either have an endless supply of cash or they’re gambling a lot on you. Especially if you’re the only one they’ve sponsored.”

“We’ll see,” I said. I wasn’t optimistic. I was in kind of an odd position. If they really were a pacifist, anti-crawl group, then I supported their cause. Sort of. Being a pacifist was one of those things that looked and sounded great when you were trying to get laid. Not so much when you were literally fighting for your life. I needed bombs and weapons and armor and shit that would help me kill as many of these fuckers as possible. I wasn’t going to get that from a goddamned group of hippies, no matter how sympathetic we were for each other.

I started with the bronze Valtay box. The intricate box whirled and twirled as it opened with great fanfare.

It was another pill. It looked identical to the last one they’d given me. I examined it.

Valtay Corporation Neural Enhancer #275. Variant 35.j

This item is compatible with your Morphology and Interface.

Warning: This pill will cause a permanent change to your brain. This item cannot be unequipped or undone once installed.

Warning: You do not have a Valtay Corporation Neural Interface installed. While your current wetware system is compatible with this Neural Enhancer, it is recommended you visit a Valtay Corporate Outreach Center to discuss upgrade options. Payment and Legacy plans available. Keeping the Best of You alive.

Current wetware: Syndicate Crawl Version 47.002b.Human.

Taking this pill will install the following upgrade to your interface:

Current elevation and airspeed.

That’s it? I thought. I didn’t dare say it out loud. I felt disappointment, but then I remembered how damn useful that last upgrade had been. Hopefully its utility would become self-evident. I popped the pill, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “Thanks, brain worm dudes.”

I opened the next box. The first one had contained the logo for the Valtay. This next one had a spiral galaxy symbol with some alien lettering on it. Mordecai peered at the logo and shrugged.

The box opened, revealing what looked like a sweet potato.

“What the hell, man,” I said, picking it up.

Toraline Root Vegetable.

Alchemy Material.

This rare tuber only grows in dirt that has been covered by magma. They are very rare. Nobody ever goes digging them up, either. You know why? Because they taste like dogshit, that’s why. They’re pretty much useless. In fact, fuck you for wasting my time with this.

“What the hell is this, and why is it in a silver box and not a bronze one?”

“Its origin and value and rarity and a hundred other factors determine the required box type,” Mordecai said, snatching it from my hand with a talon. “I’ve never seen this before. I’ve seen potions that require a similar vegetable. Most are salves for scaled creatures. Specialty healing.”

“You think they want me to make a potion with this?” I asked.

“Maybe. Or maybe an explosive. Or maybe it’s an inside joke,” Mordecai said. He passed it back to me. “Some aliens have really weird customs. For all we know, it’s a traditional marriage proposal. Still, I have… a lot… of potion recipes in my scratch pad. I’ll search through them and see if I can figure anything out.”

I nodded. I would do the same thing with the cookbook. There were pages and pages of potion recipes. I’d read through the names of the potions and what they did, but I hadn’t committed the ingredient lists to memory. I tossed the toraline into my inventory. It was listed as Very Rare, but it had low value, equal with some of the unenchanted clothing items I hadn’t yet sold.

I returned my gaze to the ceiling. “Thanks for the yam, mystery aliens. Hopefully next time you can send some instructions.”

I returned my attention to the Valtay upgrade. I now had the ability to add my current speed and altitude to my UI. I dove into my interface and tried to figure it out. I clicked a toggle that only showed speed if I was moving more than six kilometers an hour. There were multiple displays showing different velocities at the same time, and I had no idea what the hell that meant. Luckily there was a toggle titled Relative Surface Speed. I clicked it, and all the other information disappeared, leaving only a single gauge that currently had me standing still.

The elevation display was equally complicated. I turned it on, and it filled my screen with a page of information I did not understand. It didn’t have feet or miles as a unit of measurement, but it did have kilometers and meters, so I selected that. There were some very big numbers in there. I tried toggling Planetary Sea-level Only, but that was a mistake. It had me at just over -92,000 meters. I realized that meant I was standing 92 kilometers under the surface of the planet. That was crazy. Was earth’s crust even that thick? Wasn’t it all magma and oil and gooey shit once you got deep enough? I’d never really paid attention in geology class.

After some adjusting, I finally found two different gauges that gave me what I needed. One was adjustable. I set it at 0.00, giving me a gauge to the surface of the tomb. The second was at 8,932 meters. It was labeled Gravitational Zone Sea Level. If I was reading it correctly, that meant we were nine kilometers above the water quadrant. That was damn high. Thankfully all the little things that came with such great heights weren’t in play here in the bubble, which seemed to be equally pressurized throughout. I didn’t even pretend to understand the science. If I was doing the conversion correctly in my head, that meant we were standing about the same height as the peak of Mount Everest. That also meant that the Necropolis of Anser was fucking huge. I didn’t know how tall the tallest building in the world was before the collapse, but it had to be way less than 1,000 meters.

We needed to give as much support to those assholes in the tomb as we could. Because if they failed, that meant we’d have to go in there once we figured out the gnome castle. And that was something I did notwant to do.

~

The storm ended, and the town survived. The camels did not retract the sails as usual. Langley told me they now had guards at the main gate, and the camels were setting up anti-air defenses all around the city. They still allowed us to come and go, but they interrogated everybody about grulke toads and gnomes, demanding to know if they’d see any.

We were now four hours from when the gnomes would know for certain the collateral was dead, and probably five from when the bombs would fall. The casual, laid-back atmosphere of the town had changed to that of a city under siege.

I now had four modified missiles in my inventory. With Mordecai’s help along with my level-four sapper’s table, I’d created a missile that might reach high enough. We wouldn’t know until we tested it. And it just so happened a perfect opportunity to test it was about to present itself. Something that would help both us and Gwen’s team down below.

Katia and Donut returned from the Desperado Club as I was standing outside of the Toe, waiting. They’d spent the entire two hours of the storm in the Desperado. Katia had a feathered boa around her neck. Mongo was free, and he also had a boa, dangling freely from his collar. He kept snapping at it, and feathers were flying everywhere. Donut and Katia had gone into the Penis Parade together.

“Really?” I asked.

“Eight more visits, and I get a free dance from Anaconda!” Donut announced.

“Wait, how much money are you guys spending at this place?”

“Oh, oh, Carl, guess what? I got another box from Princess D’Nadia!” Donut exclaimed, ignoring my question. She hopped up and down on Mongo’s back. “It’s only a bronze this time, but I bet it’ll be awesome!”

“You haven’t gotten the one Loita mentioned?”

“Not yet. She messaged and said it’ll come later today. She said the sponsor wants to make sure we survive the bombing before they send the prototype. Isn’t that exciting? I’m going to open Princess D’Nadia’s present now!” She and Mongo scrambled inside. Katia and I watched her go.

Katia looked up at the sky, which was still covered with the sails. In the twilight, the whole town was prematurely dark. “No bird yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “How’d it go with spider boy and the other guy?”

Katia had given them a general map of the entire structure and a more detailed path to another town about halfway down to the crypt. Assuming we all survived the next 24 hours, they’d meet up again to get the rest. The lower half of the necropolis featured much-larger rooms, and oftentimes the map showed the only entrance and exit to each chamber was on the ceiling and the floor. They’d need ladders and ropes to descend.

“They’re not as bad as Louis and Firas, but those subterranean guys are total trainwrecks,” Katia said. “Their stress levels are off the charts. It’s understandable, but they’re very tense. Too tense.”

I laughed. “That’s what Mordecai said about you when we first met. He called you a train wreck.”

She did not find that funny. “If something happens to that Bobby guy, the entire team is dead. He’s the only one who can detect traps, and he’s already missed a few. They make others go in tunnels ahead because he’s too valuable, and they keep dying right in front of him. They described a trap where needles popped up from the floor and injected the crawler with a potion that filled his sinuses with flesh-eating beetles.” She shivered. “Maybe you can make some really low-level explosives for them, something they can roll down the hallways to set off the traps.”

“They need a spell like Donut’s Clockwork Triplicate,” I said. “Something where they can make or control minions. The spider guy is a psionicist. He should try to find something. I bet there’s something in that town of theirs that’ll help them. Their situation sucks, but it’s not impossible.”

Katia grunted. “They kept asking when they thought we might storm our castle. I have the impression they want to hold back and wait for us to have access so we can ‘help.’”

I shook my head. Goddamnit. “We need to push them. We don’t have time for that.”

“I agree, and I did. I lied and told them that we don’t expect to complete the air quadrant until time is almost up.” She looked at me, worry evident in her eyes “At least I hope it was a lie.”

I instinctively returned my gaze to the air. The protective sail, deflated balloon, whatever it was, shimmered in the meager light. A camel on stilts walked by, turning on lamps throughout the town. I knew the Wasteland was still over the water. But right now we were waiting for something else.

“It’s coming,” Katia said. “I can see the dot on my map.”

I heard the low, angry buzz of a flying creature.

After my most recent discussion with Gwen on the land quadrant, I’d asked the Toe’s barkeep about the creature, who’d been reluctant to tell me anything. But Juice Box, who’d been asleep at the bar, was happy to tell me all about the borough boss in exchange for a gold coin.

The bird’s name was Ruckus, and she was a giant version of the more common Buzz-ard. She came to roost nearby every night after the storms.

The bird was half biological, half machine. A steampunk cyborg. Juice Box claimed she didn’t know why the mechanical birds lived around here, as everything else in the area was purely biological. She said they were either a failed gnome invention that had escaped during the first war, or it was something left over from the time before that. What she called the “treasure hunter” era. The waster patrols avoided Ruckus, but one of their responsibilities was to cull the regular-sized Buzz-ards if they saw them.

“If it flies over the city every night, why don’t they shoot it down with their anti-aircraft missiles?” Katia asked.

“Apparently there used to be a third camel city,” I said. “They tried that, and it didn’t go well for them.”

Katia went pale. “And you want to fight this thing?”

I shrugged. “We’ll be like a mile away. I have a missile I need to test. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

Chapter 117

Part of me felt bad about stealing from little Skarn and his burgeoning charge-people-to-look-through-his-telescope business, but we didn’t have time to debate the morality of the issue. I knocked on the door of his house to talk to him. I wanted to make sure Flint the adult wasn’t there—he wasn’t—and I told the kid that I just wanted to check in on him.

“If they start to drop bombs, I want you to run to the Toe, okay? Tell all your friends. Go there. Nowhere else.”

Skarn turned into the creepy human child form. “Flint says we’re supposed to go to the Spit and Swallow or the Wiggle Room.”

I knew neither of those were true saferooms, and they wouldn’t be safe.

“No. The Toe. Nowhere else. I will give you and every one of your friends a whole gold piece if they go there instead. It’ll be the safest place in town. And you can tell Flint to go there, too.”

While I talked to him, Donut scaled the wall and leaped to the roof of the home, stealing the Gnomish FarSeer telescope. She stole it in ten seconds flat. She was in and out.

I’d told Donut to leave thirty gold pieces on the roof as payment, but she told me she’d “forgotten.”

“Why don’t you tell them to go to the A.O.?” Donut asked. That was the only real saferoom tavern in town. It was in Weird Shit Alley. It stood for the Acrotomophilia Oasis. I didn’t know what that meant, but none of the other guys liked going over there. “The Toe isn’t a real saferoom either.”

“No, it’s not. But our personal space is. We can fit a lot of camels in there.”

“Mordecai’s not going to like that.”

“Mordecai can suck it if he doesn’t like it,” I said.

Donut didn’t have a response. She was still a little salty about the contents of her benefactor box, though she was putting on a brave face. The box had been empty, but then she’d received a notification that her sunglasses had received an update. An update that greatly enhanced her ability to determine the surface and the subsurface temperature of anything she looked at with precise detail.

Mordecai said that was a common tactic of benefactors. It cost a literal fortune to send exceptional items. It was more economical to send an item on one floor, and then send an upgrade for that same item on the next. And then another. Eventually, you’d end up with an item that would be Legendary or even Celestial box-worthy. The cost of four or five silver and bronze boxes was a fraction of the cost of sending a single Legendary.

Of course you’d have to survive through five floors to get the benefit. It was possible for them to send more than one box a floor, but according to Mordecai, the cost of that was even more astronomical.

In addition to its intended purpose—to help Donut root out changelings—I could see multiple useful applications of the upgrade, including the ability to find weaknesses on mobs. She could possibly use it to help me find traps and secret doors. She could set parameters and get a warning when things reached certain temperatures. There were dozens of options. Unfortunately, Donut had little patience for all of that. I couldn’t wear them, so Katia and I were baby-stepping her through customizing the glasses.

By the time we reached the town’s exit, which was now guarded by multiple dromedarians, she had figured out the overlay system.

Donut: TWO OF THE GUARDS ARE DIFFERENT THAN THE OTHERS. ALSO, ONE OF THEM IS GOSSAN. THAT WAS THE NAME OF ONE OF THE GUARDS WE’D KILLED IN THE TOWN HALL. HE’S BEEN RESURRECTED!

Carl: I bet it’s a different changeling pretending to be the same guard. It’s easier to pretend the camel never died than take over the body of a whole new camel, especially if the new dromedarian has family. Wait, see that one over there on top of the tower? That’s Flint. The one who takes care of Skarn. Is he a changeling?

Donut: NO. HE’S A REGULAR CAMEL. HE’S MEAN-LOOKING TOO.

I still didn’t know if all this changeling/dromedarian drama really meant anything. As always, there were layers upon layers of backstory, and only some of it was relevant. I knew from the last floor it was important to learn as much as we could because it usually revealed victory paths that would be otherwise obscured. But I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d already burned out any benefit we could get from this storyline when the tomb raider dudes killed the collateral guy.

I suspected that it didn’t matter anymore. But if it didn’t, why did Princess D’Nadia spend money to send Donut that upgrade? She possibly was as much in the dark as we were. In fact, considering the lack of people in this bubble, that was a very distinct possibility. She sent the upgrade because she thought she was being helpful and not because she knew something we didn’t.

We had an hour until it was fully dark. Once night descended, more mobs appeared. We wanted to get this done before then. The moment we were outside the gates, we went to work assembling the Chariot. It took four minutes this time.

The Chariot had a new addition since the last time we’d tested it. I mounted a four-chamber missile tube to the right of my seat. My seat was raised, and I could swivel 360 degrees. I controlled the Y axis of the tube with a handle on the side, allowing me to swing the launcher up and down. They were fired by me pulling a pin on the back. There was only a one-second delay between me pulling the pin and the missile firing, which wasn’t ideal. I needed to pull my hand away quickly, or it would be turned into a piece of charcoal. And I needed to be careful about where the back of the launcher was pointing when I fired. It’d be easy to accidentally blast the back of Katia’s head with flames. I had a better design in my head, but it would take too long to build. As always, safety came last.

Thanks to the neighborhood map we’d received from the dead goose, I could now also see the boss’s location. She was only about a half of a mile east of town, settled right atop a sand dune. She was just sitting there, recharging her batteries or whatever it was cyborg death birds did at night.

“She’s too close,” I said. “We’ll need to go west. See if we can get a mile and a half away.”

We wanted to see how far the missiles could go. I knew I couldn’t get far enough to test the full range, but I wanted to make sure the second stage portion actually worked. I knew in real-world conditions, the achievable propulsion distance was different between horizontal and vertical flight, but Mordecai seemed to think that didn’t matter. Especially since we were using the magical guided upgrades on each of the four missiles.

“If we move too far from town, we won’t be able to retreat as easily if the missiles don’t work,” Katia said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” She eased forward on the throttle, and we were off, moving across the desert. The chariot moved smoothly and quietly. She gradually increased the speed, the wind whipping at our faces.

“There,” I said, pointing to a raised dune near the center of the bowl. We climbed easily, coming to a stop. From our position, I had a good view of the entire area. Far to my right, the remnants of the Bactrian town continued to burn. A few of the male thorny devils lumbered about, but they were all too far away to bother us.

High above, I caught the twinkle of the Wasteland. It was on the far edge of the bubble, glowing red against the dark sky. I knew once the sun rose, it’d be back, almost directly above our position now.

“Hand me the telescope, Donut.”

“I don’t like this, Carl,” Donut said. She sat on a little shelf just behind my head. “It’s still hot out here, and the sand gets everywhere. It’s five degrees hotter in the middle of the bowl than it is on the edges. I don’t understand why the ground is still so hot now that the sun is sinking away. It is not acceptable.”

I was starting to regret the new upgrade to her sunglasses. She’d been commenting on the temperature difference of items for an hour straight now.

“Just keep an eye out for mobs and give me the damn telescope.”

She grumbled some more but then produced the large, heavy scope. It had a clamp on the bottom, designed to be attached to either a table or the gunwale of a boat or airship. I attached the clamp to the left side of the chair and swung it over. I could use the telescope and aim the launcher at the same time.

I turned the chair 90 degrees and sighted the scope, looking for the borough boss.

“There you are,” I said, zooming in.

Even in the dwindling light, the magical telescope gave me an excellent view of the beast. Ruckus. The house-sized bird sat on the ground, head hanging low like it was asleep. The body of the creature vibrated up and down, like an engine.

I was expecting it to be more vulture-like, but it resembled a colossal hawk. A hawk wearing steampunk-style body armor. A real beak protruded from a brass, pipe covered helmet that obscured the bird’s eyes. A few wheels and cogs spun along the exterior of the armored main body. The folded wings on the sides of the creature appeared to be regular, organic wings.

I moved the telescope slightly, focusing on the giant bird’s main weapon. The regular-sized buzz-ards flew around with a chainsaw-like device attached underneath their bodies. They swooped down and cut through anything that tried to fight them. I knew Gwen’s team had a difficult time with them, and even the veteran waster patrol had to work to take one of them out. They used their guided missiles on those things more than they did against gnomish airplanes.

Ruckus had something similar, but much larger. The weapon sat on the ground next to the bird. It was permanently attached to the monster by a pair of thick cables which I knew it could retract and lengthen. It wasn’t a chainsaw, but more like a twenty-five-foot-long stick with ten spinning buzzsaws on it. The weapon hung vertically under the bird as it flew. I’d seen something similar once attached to a helicopter. They used it to easily sheer through trees and branches along power lines in remote areas. Gwen had said the flying multi-buzzsaw had trashed their under construction siege towers in seconds.

I moved the telescope back to the bird. I zoomed in one more tick, and the description popped up.

Ruckus. Spring-operated Chicken Hawk Sentinel.

Level 55 Borough Boss!

This is a bereft Minion of Shamus Chaindrive.

The great bugbear treasure hunter Shamus Chaindrive was known as both a paranoid and a greedy bastard. Having been betrayed one too many times, he no longer trusted any living soul. That is why his crew was always comprised of constructs and automatons.

He dedicated his life to hunting down long-lost treasures and artifacts. He prized one item above all others.

The Gate of the Feral Gods. Said to be buried in the long-lost Necropolis of Anser.

Chaindrive set out to find the tomb. He boarded his great submarine and sank beneath the waves, vowing to never surface again until he had his prize.

It took the bugbear almost twenty years to find the tomb, poking up like a monolith from a desert island. Using his submarine, he docked it against an underwater entrance directly adjacent to the main chamber of the trap-filled tomb. He quickly learned that he was not the first to arrive. A young mage had recently landed on the island and was attempting to magically burrow into the tomb. A colony of dirigible gnomes were settled in the area. All sought the treasures held within the tomb. All had failed so far.

Chaindrive unleashed his greatest weapon in an attempt to slow the efforts of his competitors. Ruckus had been stored in stasis in the hold of his great submarine. The self-replicating, spring-operated automaton was given the task to kill all who wished to steal Chaindrive’s prize.

Now that the bugbear is long dead, the sentinel chicken hawk is content to spend its day circling around the island and being an all-around asshole. The regular residents of the island are smart enough to leave this powerful boss-level-monster alone. The fact you’re reading this means you’re not one of the smart ones.

“Strange,” I said to Donut and Katia. “It says the boss comes from the underwater guy, who is dead. I think the ‘castle’ is a giant submarine. Also, it sounds like there’s a hidden treasure in…”

System Message: Please Wait.

The world froze for about half of a second. It was like the beginning of a boss battle. But nothing happened, and the short glitch was over as quickly as it started.

System Message: Thank you for your patience. You may now resume normal activities.

“What the hell was that about?” I asked, looking around.

“I don’t know. Weird,” Katia said.

Carl: Mordecai, did you feel that? Also, do you know what the Gate of the Feral Gods is?

Mordecai: I felt it. It happens. It’s usually not a glitch, but a gameplay timeout so dueling routines can clarify or reconcile rule conflicts. But no, never heard of the gate thing. But remember what I said about the word “feral?” Stay away from anything marked that. It’s always bad news.

Carl: What about artifacts? It said the gate is one.

Mordecai: Odd. An artifact is a legendary or celestial-tier item one may find sitting around the dungeon or as dropped loot. Like I told you before, most of the best items in the game come from boxes for the first several floors. After the sixth floor, dropped loot starts to get much better and more magical. Artifacts start popping up around the eighth or ninth floor. They’re usually very powerful items.

Carl: Eighth floor, you say? I can’t help but notice we’re only on the fifth. It says it’s an item inside the necropolis under our feet. Do you think that had anything to do with that weird pause?

Mordecai: Hmm. Maybe. I’m not surprised, honestly. This is like what we discussed a while ago. The showrunners control the storylines, but the AI picks out the specific loot. The AI can, and will, adjust aspects of the story to fine-tune the difficulty level or to keep the game “fair.” If you get what I’m saying.

Carl: 10-4. Talk soon. We’re about to test the missiles.

“Uh, Carl,” Donut said, pointing with her paw. “Ruckus is moving.”

~

I leaned back into the eyepiece.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was that weird glitch. Or maybe it was just the system being an asshole. But Ruckus, who had been drifting asleep just a minute ago, was now awake and looking right in our direction. He screamed loudly into the almost-night sky. He moved from the top of the dune and spread out his wings, which glittered. Flecks of metal intertwined with the feathers. It had a wingspan of three train cars. On the ground next to the massive bird, the line of buzzsaws started to spin up. The sound was goddamn terrifying. Even at a mile and a half away, we could hear them. The bird started to pump its wings in an attempt to take to the air.

“Shit, shit, get ready to fire,” I said. I quickly pulled a missile out and jammed it into the launch tube.

~

The world once again froze. Haunting, eerie music started to play, echoing across the desert.

B-b-b-boss battle!

The boss battle sequence played out with our portraits floating high over the desert. But when they played the description of Ruckus, it had changed.

Ruckus. Spring-operated Chicken Hawk Sentinel.

Level 55 Borough Boss!

It’s a bird! It’s a landscaping tool! It’s a goddamned death robot!

Ol’ Ruckus is a left-over, anti-boat, anti-everything else security and scout automaton that has lost contact with the Akula. Lost contact, that is, until now. Having awakened and been given new orders, it is now seeking out enemies of the captain.

And you, my soon-to-be-buzzsawed-to-death-friends, are enemies of the captain.

“You woke it up, Carl,” Donut said. “The description doesn’t say anything about it being a bereft minion.”

“What the hell happened?” I exclaimed as I aimed with the eyepiece. The description had changed quite a bit. Ruckus flapped its gargantuan wings a few more times and took to the air. The massive buzzsaw started to lift from the ground.

Gwen: Hey bomber guy. Did you feel that weird glitch? Anyway, thought you might want to know. Something is happening in the water quadrant. The water is bubbling. The whole ocean is frothing like the mouth of a rabid weasel. Somebody is doing something under there. You guys find that giant buzzard yet?

Carl: Not a good time. Talk soon.

I put my hand over the back of the two-foot-long missile, and a tooltip popped up.

Target missile?

I mentally clicked yes.

Designate target.

Warning: Once locked, you may not remove this designation.

It was awkward keeping my right hand on the back of the missile and my left on the controls of the telescope. It didn’t leave my hands free to adjust the chair. I focused on the center mass of Ruckus just before he flew out of the viewfinder and clicked Target.

Target locked, bitches!

The missile started to blink.

“Fire in the hole. Watch your eyebrows,” I said. I grasped the pin on the back of the missile, and I pulled the tab.

Whoosh.

A gout of flames rushed from the back of the tube as the missile rocketed away, dipping slightly and then rising into the night air. My whole right side flashed with pain as I was burned by the exhaust. Donut yowled in surprise and scrambled to the left.

“Goddamnit,” I growled at the pain. It hadn’t done any real damage, but it had hurt. We need a better way to do this. “You okay, Donut?”

“What do you think, Carl? You know I’m flammable, right? Warn me next time.”

“I did warn you. Stay to my left.”

The bright, crackling exhaust lit up the desert momentarily, turning the deep dusk into day. I grabbed a second rocket and shoved it into the tube.

“Go!” I said to Katia, who had already thrown the Chariot into gear and was accelerating down the back of the dune.

I looked over my shoulder, watching the missile curve in midair and then swoop up toward the boss, who was still gaining altitude. The giant, multi-buzzsaw swung wildly back and forth in the air as Ruckus pumped its wings.

We’d replaced the missile’s chemical propellent with one improved by Mordecai. When it burned itself out, the back of the rocket would, in theory, drop off and continue to coast for a few seconds. Then the second stage would light the back of the rocket, effectively doubling its range.

The original rockets had a shitty payload. The warheads were the equivalent of a quarter stick of goblin dynamite, which was nothing. At first I hadn’t thought I could improve the design, but after recycling a few impact hob-lobbers, I realized I could simplify the triggering device, which gave me much more room to add the boom stuff. Each missile now packed the same punch as a full stick of hobgoblin dynamite, which was enough to kill almost any regular mob.

We needed these things to have a range of about three miles if we wanted to fire them from the surface and hit one of the knock-knocks they had parked underneath the gnome’s castle. But first I needed to see if the two-stage rocket was even viable. If this worked, and we got out of here, we could build a few slightly-longer missiles between now and morning.

The missile zeroed in on the giant boss. The flames in the back started to sputter just before the missile reached the still-climbing target.

Come on, come on.

“Yes!” I said as I saw the first sparks of the second stage belch from the back of the now-distant rocket. I pumped my fist into the air.

But then the missile abruptly blew. It detonated a few hundred feet short of the target

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck me, fuckity fuck,” I yelled, turning my fist into a middle finger. Ruckus, still climbing, flew over the explosion, unharmed. The buzzsaw cleaved the newly-formed cloud in two.

We used a tiny charge to drop the back fin of the rocket. It appeared that explosion was too powerful. Or something in the second-stage propellant caused the warhead to blow prematurely. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t know until we tested it. But that did us no good right now. I had three missiles left. Three missiles that all of a sudden had a much-shorter range.

“New plan,” I said. “Turn around and drive straight for it.” I pulled the third and fourth missiles and loaded them into the launcher. I wanted to avoid storing explosives outside my inventory if I could, but I needed all three of them now.

A second pair of eyes and mouth appeared on the back of Katia’s head. The eyes protruded from her scalp on a pair of little stalks.

“Are you crazy?” she demanded from the second mouth as we hit a bump. The Chariot sailed into the air and crashed hard into the ground. The back tread whined, blew up sand, and continued on its way.

“Holy shit, Katia,” I said, recoiling at the sudden appearance of a second face. “That’s really fucking weird. Do it.”

She grumbled but started the wide turn. If she turned any tighter, the whole thing would flip. Ahead, Ruckus screeched into the dark. The buzzsaw swung back and forth, a pendulum of death. We watched as it cleaved a thorny devil in two. The armored lizard didn’t stand a chance. Blood geysered across the desert.

I quickly went through the three remaining rockets and locked all three onto the boss. One on the joint of where the left wing met the body, one on the exposed neck of the creature, and a third on the lower area where the cable extended from the creature and attached to the buzzsaw.

The monster aimed right at us, getting closer by the moment. It’d be on us in seconds.

“When I fire, bank left and floor it,” I yelled. “Donut, watch out. I’m firing now.”

The screaming blades lined up with our path, waving back and forth. The damn thing was huge. Each blade was the size of a truck tire. The acrid stench of overworked machinery filled the air.

I pulled all three pins at once. All three rockets burst from the tubes. They dipped, arced, and then all three hit the boss at the same time as we turned away, exploding high over our heads. The Chariot rocked as we turned too sharply but Katia held out her hand in the opposite direction, and a heavy weight appeared in her hand, causing the vehicle to right itself. She dropped the extra mass, and we zoomed away.

Nice, I thought.

The buzzsaw swung wildly as Ruckus tumbled. It flew into the air, arcing in our direction. Fuck me, I thought. Donut fruitlessly shot a magic missile at the approaching blades.

Just as the triple explosions rocked the creature, its left wing blew off right at the joint. Metal showered. It screeched as it spun in the air, wrapping up in the cable for the saw. The screaming weapon suddenly jerked away and then pinwheeled through the air with the momentum of the plummeting bird. They overshot us and hit the ground with a mighty crash as Katia slammed the gear into reverse.

Ruckus broke apart in a shower of blood and mechanical parts. The giant buzzsaw, suddenly free of the bird, continued to whine as it hit and bounced on the ground. The front of the weapon started to jump up and down on the ground. The whole thing spun several times then stuck itself sideways into the rock of the tomb. The two front blades on the weapon stopped spinning, but the rest showered dirt and debris twenty feet into the sky, like a truck stuck in the mud.

The Winner! Notification appeared. I assumed the music stopped, but I couldn’t hear it over the whine of the buzzsaws. Ruckus had splattered all over the desert. There was metal and machinery everywhere.

“I feel as if I didn’t do anything productive in that battle,” Donut said. “Mordecai says I need to be doing more, not less. I’m already two spots behind you, Carl. I don’t want to fall off the top ten like Katia did.”

I reached up and scratched her on the head. “While we were fighting, I actually got an idea for something you can do the next time we face an airplane. Don’t worry. It’ll be spectacular.”

“I thought we were going to be done with airplanes after we blew up the Wasteland in the morning.”

“The missiles don’t have the range,” I said. “We need a new plan.”

“But we only have a little more than two hours,” Donut said.

“I know.”

I turned to Katia, who was staring at the shower of dirt and rock only twenty feet in front of us. “That was pretty slick what you did there,” I said. “With the counterweight to keep us from flipping.”

She nodded. She looked like she was about to throw up. “Why did you make me drive toward it? The missiles worked. They would’ve worked if we kept going in the other direction. The second stage doesn’t work, but the first stage still has a really good range.”

“I wanted to make sure they hit accurately,” I said. “Mordecai said sometimes they’re not all that precise. I didn’t want to damage the prize.”

“Prize?” she asked. But I could tell she knew what I was talking about. The still-chugging chainsaw rumbled on the ground. The thing had to be 25 feet long.

“Get your backpack ready. We’re going to bulk you up so you can lift it and stick it into your inventory.”

“Carl, you know how you’re always complaining that they portray you…”

She didn’t finish. A mighty rumble filled the world. An earthquake. I thought at first we were being bombed, but this was something different. Something deep in the bones of the world. I looked worriedly at the buzzsaw, but it remained firmly dug into the ground.

Bubble Notification. The Bridge of the Akula has been successfully occupied. The Water Quadrant has been liberated!

All give congratulations to the crawler who successfully took the throne room. All hail crawler Chris Andrews 2!

All crawlers who originated in the Water Quadrant may now freely travel to the other quadrants.

The world rumbled again as Donut and I looked at each other.

“Chris,” I said. “Chris is in here with us.”

***

Woohoo! Sorry for the long time between chapters. I was working on it the whole time, but as you can see, this update is a little longer than usual. I had to go back and adjust some stuff before it was ready for you guys. Thanks again for your support.

By the way, this floor will be the fourth book in the DCC series. I can now reveal that the current working title is:

Dungeon Crawler Carl and the Gate of the Feral Gods

Stay safe everybody and remember to kill, kill, kill!