Chapter 121 (Patreon)

Instead of meeting up with the others in the Bactrian ruins, we limped our way back to Hump Town. Above, dozens of airplanes and airships continued to angrily harass the air defenses of the city, but without the threat of high-altitude bombardment, the multiple anti-air guns were equal to the task. The gnomes were on borrowed time. Some were already landing on the far side of the bowl. I noted that several were flying up and above the lip of the bowl and then disappearing, presumably to seek a landing spot somewhere on the land quadrant. I sent a warning to Gwen.

Without protection and shelter, the surviving gnomes would be hard-pressed to make it through the next day. Something told me we hadn’t seen the last of them just yet.

Donut was worried about Zev, and it was doubly frustrating, I knew, because she couldn’t talk about it. Not out loud and not over chat. I reached over and stroked her back. Her entire body was stiff.

I flipped through my achievements as we trudged back to town. Despite everything we’d done, I hadn’t received much. There was only one achievement of note:

New Achievement! Cannonball!

You fell from a great height, and you survived! You know who else fell from a…? You know what, never mind. Fuck you.

Reward: You’ve received a Silver Skydiver’s Box! Not that you deserve it you little punk.

The system AI was always fluctuating back and forth from adoring to outright hostile, but this was the moodiest I’d ever seen, and I didn’t know why. Sure, the thing was bipolar at best and psychotic the rest of the time, but ever since we’d blown the Wasteland to hell there was just something off with it.

That was not good.

As we approached the gates of Hump Town, keeping our heads low to avoid detection from the airplanes, we started to notice multiple X’s on the map. These were gnomes who’d fallen from the Wasteland when it had broken up. Most of them exploded like tomatoes upon impact, but a few here and there were intact enough that we could loot their bodies. Most didn’t have much on them. Donut was going around collecting their little red hats. I picked up a few intact bodies to add to my ever-growing graveyard. I looted some tools, lots of broken hunks of metal and cogs and springs, plus the odd gold coin and little bits of unenchanted armor here and there.

All of them said the same thing. Dirigible Gnome Corpse – Killed by falling from a great height with an assist by the Crawler Bitch Boy Carl.

“What did you do?” Katia asked. “I’m starting to get more than a little worried about this.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but hopefully it gets over it soon.” I looked up into the air. “I don’t know what I did, but I promise it wasn’t on purpose.”

“This is just like with you and Miss Beatrice,” Donut said. “Do you remember that time she made you sleep on the couch for a week and wouldn’t tell you why she was mad?”

“I do remember,” I said. I shrugged. “I think it was because I’d bought the wrong type of coffee pods. I ended up beating Fallout because of it.”

Donut laughed. “It was because she’d read an article that said big fights make relationships stronger, and sometimes they cause guys to propose.”

Katia shook her head. “That does not sound healthy. Not that I’m one to judge.”

We came across a group of three intact corpses, all gnomish snipers. All three had their giant rifles with them, but only one of the weapons wasn’t broken. They all also wore the bandoliers over their shoulders. The little balls on all the bandoliers were gone except on one gnome who’d landed on his back. His was still unbroken with five grenade balls. Donut jumped forward, looted the good rifle along with their little red hats. She made a face, and then she looted the good bandolier.

“Oh, Carl,” Donut said a moment later. “I believe I figured it out. It appears you have given the system AI a case of… what is the term? Oh yes, I believe it is called ‘blue balls.’”

“What? What do you mean?”

She dropped the bandolier at my feet, and I picked it up.

I examined one of the little grenade balls. I was confused for a moment, but then I finally understood.

Live Ammo Ball.

Live ammo balls are a common and versatile ranged weapon of the Dirigible Gnomes. These round, clamshell spheres are designed to be fired great distances using a gnomish Tickle Stick, or they may be manually lobbed like a grenade. They are also fired in large clusters from anti-aircraft point defense batteries. Just be glad you’re not in charge of cleaning up thatmess.

A living, usually angry, creature is placed inside the ball, and the ball opens upon impact with the target. The stasis field keeps the creature within safe from injury until the ball is opened.

These balls are similar in technology to pet carriers. As such, any mobs stored within are able to be placed within one’s inventory. Balls may be recycled if the mechanism doesn’t break upon impact. They usually break upon impact.

This ball contains:

Frenzied Gerbil. Level 11.

I groaned. Every single ball contained the same thing. A goddamned frenzied gerbil.

During that last battle, there were multiple instances when I’d almost been hit with one of these balls. First, Crixus the sniper had thrown one at me, but it missed and sailed over the edge. Then a sniper from one of the other airships had fired and missed. And then the Wasteland had blasted a hundred of them at us. Each time, the balls had overflown their mark.

I remembered Ralph, the boss from the second floor. He was also a frenzied gerbil. It was right before we’d found Mongo in that prize room. The system AI had been particularly… excited about how I had killed the creature.

“Fuck me,” I said as I fully realized what was going on.

The AI had wanted me to get hit with the gerbil ball. It wanted me to fight one. It wanted me to kill it by smushing it with my feet. I looked at the five balls hanging off the belt like fist-sized Christmas ornaments. I swallowed. Go ahead, I thought. Drop one on the ground. They’re only level 11. Easy to kill on their own. I suddenly felt dirty, and I hadn’t even done anything yet.

No, I thought. Fuck you. There was only so much a person could take.

I became aware that Donut was loudly explaining to Katia what was going on, since our boss battle with Ralph had been before we’d met up with her.

“…And after he squished down on poor Ralph with his feet, the whole dungeon shook like Carl used to after he went on that website that gave his computer a virus. And we’d received a prize room after that, and that’s where we found Mongo. Right, Mongo?”

Mongo waved his arms and screeched in agreement.

“The dungeon did the same thing when Carl had been stepped on by Grull,” Katia said. She appeared to be half amused, half horrified.

“Oh that was nothing compared to the first time. You know, I always thought its infatuation with our Carl was a good thing,” Donut said, “but if the AI is going to throw a temper tantrum every time Carl doesn’t wrap his tootsies around a furry little creature, it’s going to be a problem. We should start stocking up on squish-sized creatures so you can sacrifice one every morning. At least now we have a five-pack of gerbils. Carl, maybe you should do two at the same time. You know, to make sure everyone is back to being happy with one another again. It’d be almost like having a threesome. On Gossip Girl,there was this one episode where Dan and…”

“No,” I said, interrupting. “No fucking way. Fuck the consequences. I am absolutely not going…”

“Guys,” Katia said. “We have incoming. A lot of incoming.”

I looked up at the map just as the red wave of dots appeared. There were thousands of them. Where had they come from?

“They’re gerbils,” Donut said.

She was right. I realized what had happened. With all the gnomish snipers and Wasteland chunks raining from the sky, there were likely hundreds, if not thousands, of those ammo balls up there. They were designed to survive heavy impacts. Holy shit they’re moving fast. They’d likely all been released and then found each other. Now that they’d regrouped, they were coming in hot.

“Carl,” said Donut, “I don’t think your friend up in the sky is going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Fuck me,” I said as we rushed toward the main gate.

~

“Carl, they’re cheating!” Donut cried after ten solid minutes of fighting. A gerbil launched itself at me, and I cried out as it attached itself to my neck. I grasped it with my gauntlet and squeezed before it could burrow. It exploded in my hand. “They keep coming and coming.”

Donut cast Wall of Fire just as the next wave of gerbils shot at our defensive line. That ended up being a mistake.

The little bastards could launch themselves through the air, and when they passed through Donut’s magical fire, they ignited, turning into miniature, gnashing fireballs. The fire killed the attackers, eventually, but not before they attached to the chests of the camel defenders, catching them on fire in the process.

We’d been pushed all the way back to the entrance of Weird Shit Alley. The town’s walls had too many holes to properly defend, so we’d run through the main gates, screaming for the defenders to fall back. There were just too many of them. Even though the screeching little fuckers were only level 11, they could burrow themselves straight into flesh and eat their way out through to the other side.

The dromedarians were forced to abandon their anti-air guns to meet the creatures. But the things never stopped coming. All around us, camels fought and fell.

Katia converted to her tank form with the shield on her arm and her crossbow over her head while I tossed hob-lobbers into the street using my xistera, killing dozens of them at a time. Mongo and two clockwork versions roared and snapped and crunched on the gerbils. A camel fired a rocket into the carpet of monsters only to be overwhelmed a moment later.

“Don’t swallow them whole,” I warned Mongo. I remembered a danger dingo had done that once, and it hadn’t ended well for the dingo.

I punched then punted another gerbil. I had to be careful with the timing of my attacks. The monsters’ mouths opened bigger than should be possible, and they could get their physics-defying jaws around my entire fist if I wasn’t careful.

Donut was right. There were too many of these things. These weren’t just from the wreckage. They were being generated. This was a punishment. Goddamnit. If this continued, we were going to lose the town. “Fuck you,” I growled up into the air. “Fuck you to hell.”

I tossed a smoke curtain followed by a pair of hob-lobbers. I stepped over the hastily-constructed barricade and waded out toward the street. “Everyone stay back,” I called.

“Carl, Carl, what are you doing?” Donut yelled.

I extended my left arm shield. I caught a flying gerbil with the auto-buckler, and it fell hard to the ground, blinded and dazed. I was too tired to fight it anymore.

I stepped down on the squirming gerbil.

~

“This is not so funny anymore,” Katia said, looking over the mass of gerbil corpses. The bewildered camels moved back to the walls and the anti-aircraft guns, though it appeared all of the remaining airplanes had made emergency landings. All that was left was a handful of balloons, and most of those were making their way up and over the bowl, leaving the area.

“It was never funny,” I replied. I had blood up to my kneepads. I’d stepped on and smushed at least fifty of the things before the wave had stopped, as suddenly as it had started. I needed a shower. A long shower.

“It was a little funny,” she said. “But the AI is not even trying to be fair anymore. That wasn’t just a temper tantrum. That was the equivalent of a psycho ex-boyfriend going nuts and trying to murder you and your entire family because of something you didn’t even know you did.”

I nodded. I had a new achievement. I was the only one who’d received it. I was afraid to click on it. I did anyway.

New Achievement! You’re the reason why daddy drinks!

You have, for an unspecified reason, raised the ire of the System AI. You have corrected the issue, and everything is back to normal. The acceleration action has been suspended. This time.

Good boy.

Reward: You’ve received a Gold Makeup Sex is the Best Sex box.

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

“Acceleration?” Katia said after I read the description to the others. “My original game guide mentioned that before.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ve been threatened with it a few times. That… that really sucked.”

“You didn’t even do anything wrong,” she said, shaking her head.

“At least you two are back together now,” Donut said. “And you got a nice box out of it. I know you find it unpleasant, Carl. But you being stubborn about this is causing everything to be more dangerous. We have to kill these things anyway, so if the AI wants you to kill in a certain way, I don’t see why it matters. This is just like one of those agility courses that Miss Beatrice used to insist I complete at all the regional cat shows. I did not like doing it, and I never ribboned of course, but I knew if I did well, I would get an extra brushing that evening. We are all prostitutes in one way or another, I suppose. ”

“I…” I was too tired to argue. “Let’s go let everyone out of the personal space. I need a nap.”

Louis and the others had made it to the Bactrian ruins and were searching the remains for loot and any other signs of life, including other crawlers. So far they’d found nothing except a single saferoom that was abandoned but still useable and a Club Vanquisher entrance that was useless because nobody in the group had a pass. They were going to spend the rest of the day grinding and searching. They’d weather the sand storm in the saferoom before returning. In the meantime, we’d open our boxes and reset and then formulate a new plan to get into the now-undefended castle.

The camels went to work repairing the wall, putting out fires, and mending the fabric cover for the sand storm. The changelings, Donut noted, were all but gone from the ranks of the camels. I hadn’t thought about it during the chaotic fight with the gerbils, but all of the fallen had been true dromedarians. She didn’t see any of the changeling principals about, including Henrik. I needed to find him, but that was something I’d worry about later. I suspected that I knew where they went. If I was right, I wouldn’t be able to get to him until after we took the stairwell.

The Toe had been mostly destroyed. A massive chunk of Wastelandhad taken out the whole block. Luckily we could still go through the front door and enter the personal space. I’d been worried that if we’d lost the entrance here, all the NPCs still inside would be stuck.

The dromedarian children were in the middle of watching Toy Story 3 when we entered, and they insisted on finishing it before they left. For some of these kids, their parents were likely now dead. They probably needed to get back out there. But I didn’t have the heart or energy to say no, so I left them alone. Let them have their movie, I thought. Juice Box sat upon the kitchen counter, chatting away with Mordecai while the cleaner bot zipped about the room, clicking and beeping angrily, cleaning juice stains.

“They’re all gone,” I said to Juice Box as we all settled in. “Henrik disappeared soon after the Wasteland fell.”

She shrugged. “I am not a principal. Those guys have their own thing going on. They’re probably in the temple looking for that ghost. I don’t know what they’re going to do when they find her since you killed off the flesh mechanic, but those guys are crazy.”

“The temple is flooding with water. They’re not going to get very far.”

She just looked at me. “They’re changelings. The water will be no problem.” She hopped off the table. “Now I better get out there and see how much of the town you three blew up.”

~

I had three boxes to open, Donut had three, and Katia had two. Juice Box had left, but the horde of children remained, all glued to the screen. All three of us received the same Silver Skydiver’s box, and all three of them contained the same thing. Three potions of Half Splat.

Mordecai grunted. “Keep those in your hotlist until you can get a real Featherfall, but they’re not that great. They’ll keep you from dying via falling damage, but you’ll be at 5% health after you hit the ground.”

“They’re still better than that Dolores Doesn’t Splat potion,” I grumbled.

“Hey now,” Mordecai said. “That potion is genius. It may not be pleasant, but your health was still at 100% when you landed.”

I grumbled as I opened my next box. The Gold Makeup Sex is the Best Sex box.

“What is this?” I asked, picking up the group of items. It was a sheet of paper and a quill pen. There was also a little jar that was capped and filled with black ink.

“Odd,” Mordecai said, leaning in to examine the prize. “These aren’t rare, but they’re pricey. They’re used by scholar and arcanist classes who focus on scroll production. You’ll never have the proper skills to use this beyond a rudimentary level. If you can figure out how to write some basic scrolls, maybe you can make some money.” He shrugged. “I can use it, but I’m much better at potions. Besides, I can buy a writing table and be much more efficient. Your best bet is to just sell the set.”

The last of my boxes was the platinum quest box. I held my breath as I opened it. I needed something good. Everything I’d been getting lately was either weird or something I couldn’t use just yet.

The box opened. It contained 5,000 gold coins, twenty healing scrolls, and a little black rock.

“Excellent,” Mordecai said. “Good, good. This was what I was talking about earlier. You’re starting to get items that will enhance your existing items. You have to use it now. This is for your gauntlet.”

I examined the black rock.

Platinum Sharpening Stone.

Warning: This item has a short shelf life.

Apply this to any spiked offensive weapon to receive the following buffs.

Plus (2 x current level)% damage to all attacks.

Plus 1 to all current stat buffs. Does not add new buffs if they do not exist.

It also makes the weapon look extra oily and mean looking. In other words, the weapon’s appearance may change. But only a little.

Since the item had a short shelf life, I had to apply it right away. I formed my gauntlet and rubbed the rock it along the spikes. The whole thing glowed. The actual spikes grew a little longer. I received an extra point of dexterity and another to strength when the gauntlet was formed.

I examined other items, the paper and ink well as Katia opened her Platinum box.

Coffee Shop Author Kit.

Alcoholism and crippling self-doubt not included.

So you want to be a writer. It started with sappy poetry in middle school. You soon graduated to Naruto fanfiction. By the time you crash landed face-first into adulthood, your brain swelled with the misguided notion that your shitty novel with a self-insert protagonist sporting a traumatic childhood would change the world. Spoiler alert. Nobody is going to read your autobiography disguised as a space vampire and minotaur romance. You and every other half-wit out there with a nearby Starbucks and a laptop is writing the same bile. What you’re really doing is inadvertently live-blogging the story of human mediocrity, and the universe is now a better place that the Syndicate has put a stop to it all.

Anyway, this is a magical sheet of paper. You will find you now have a second tab on your scratchpad in your interface. You can write something on this paper, and it will appear in the scratchpad and vice versa. If the proper spell and glyphs are accurately copied onto this paper, you can present the sheet at a market kiosk, and a scroll will appear for sale. Or if you have a printing press, you can make your own scrolls. Or even your own tome if you think you have the chops.

I panicked at the mention of a second tab in my scratchpad. I already had a secret second one thanks to my cookbook. But thankfully I now had three tabs, with the cookbook tab being the last. I relaxed and turned my attention back to the paper.

“I’m confused. I can just write out a scroll, and it’ll let me put one for sale in the market?” I asked, looking at the blank magical scroll. “How many can I sell? Will I lose this paper?”

“Writing your own scroll requires skills you don’t have,” Mordecai said. “It’d take a week of practice just to write a simple Light scroll. Potions are much better, especially this season with the unlimited inventory. The only advantage is that you can sell unlimited scrolls in the market as long as you keep the spell written on the magical sheet. Once you erase it from your scratchpad, it’s gone from the market. You can get a printing press table and make your own scrolls, or you can set the price as low as it’ll let you and buy your own scrolls from the market. I saw one guy do that last season with Fireballscripts. Actually, that worked out really well for him. Turns out if you use the same scroll more than 200 times, you learn the spell.”

I went to the new tab and wrote, “Does this work?”

The magical pen rose into the air as the top popped off the ink well. The pen dipped within and wrote out “Does this work?” I drew a rudimentary cat portrait, and the pen copied my work. I deleted it in the scratchpad, and it faded away from the paper.

“This is both cool and completely useless,” I said.

“The ink isn’t bottomless, so don’t play with it too much,” Mordecai added.

“Carl, are you quite done? I have a very important box to open, and you promised you’d watch me do it. And we still have to learn what Katia had gotten!” Donut said impatiently. She had her benefactor box from Veriluxx RealPet Companions. The one that Loita had said wasn’t a real box, but a “product sample.”

In addition to the same basic items, Katia received a single crossbow bolt. “I have to load it in the crossbow now before it times out. It permanently adds armor-piercing and adds damage based on my level.”

“That’s pretty cool,” I said, putting all my new gear into my inventory. I turned to Donut. "Let’s see what you got.”

She hopped up and down a few times, her tail swishing back and forth. “Oh goodie. Now remember, Carl. We have a television program to go on in a few days where we review the product. So pay careful attention. I do hope it’s an accessory for Mongo.”

Mongo screeched in agreement.

The benefactor box opened, and we all just stood there, staring at what popped out.

Katia burst out laughing.

It was Donut. A robot Donut.

The cat hopped out of the box, took a few steps out onto the table and started licking her paw in a stilted, mechanical manner. She was about ¾’s the size of the real deal, and her fur was wrong, like she was made out of rat hair. The thing looked to be made with technology only slightly advanced from where we were from before the collapse. Definitely not on the same level as the planet-collapsing, dungeon-making Syndicate. The mini-Donut looked up at the room and said with a voice that wasn’t even close, “I sure do like lasagna. I hate Mondays, Carl.” The cat resumed licking itself.

Donut continued staring at the thing open-mouthed as I examined its properties. The voice describing it was not the system AI, but a slightly-static, pre-recording of a deep voice that sounded like it came straight from a 1980’s toy commercial.

Veriluxx RealPet Dungeon Crawl Special Edition Exclusive.

“Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk.”

Dungeon Crawler World: Earth.

The ultimate play toy, Veriluxx RealPet Companions are budget friendly, nearly indestructible collectibles that will give your child hours and hours of fun. Because these interactive toys do not require an implant certificate to play with and enjoy, parents needn’t worry about how many hours their children are spending with their new best friends!

Mix and match! They fight! They love! They will share your deepest, darkest secrets. Each Veriluxx RealPet Companion is a fully licensed depiction of your favorite personality or creature. The onboard AI comes preprogrammed with a 100% accurate and realistic persona, and it will learn as it goes. It’s like having a real pet, but better! Available on the Syndicate Trade Network. Mongo companion sold separately.

Veriluxx. For the children.

Action-grip Hekatonkheires coming soon!

“Lasagna?” Mordecai asked. “Where did that come from?”

“It’s Garfield,” Katia said. “It’s like they didn’t have enough Donut material, so they mixed her with the Garfield comic strip.”

The robot cat sniffed about the air. “Ferdinand?” She looked at Mongo. “You’re not Ferdinand.”

Ruby, the deformed, armless changeling was sitting nearby, eyes glued to the television screen, but she turned now as the robot approached her. She was in her weird, blank changeling form. She made a muted, terrified squeal and ran from the table.

“Hey kid, it’s not going to hurt you. It’s just like in the movie,” Mordecai said, moving away to go talk to her.

Donut still had not said anything. She remained where she’d opened the box, stiff as a board.

“Uh, Donut,” I asked. “You doing okay?”

“I’m sorry, Carl,” the robot said, her head turning 180 degrees to look back at me. “The void is wet and hungry.”

“Not you,” I said to the weird robot. “Donut?”

Donut finally looked up, her yellow eyes shining. “They… they made a doll out of me, Carl. It’s merch. I have merch. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened since I won Grand Champion Best in Show last year in Cleveland.”

Mongo continued to sniff at the imposter cat.

“Are you a cocker spaniel?” the robot asked the dinosaur. It hissed and swished its tail at Mongo. “Cocker spaniels should be drug out into the street and shot.”

Mongo screeched. He chomped the robot on the head, decapitating it. The body seized up and fell onto its side, smoke rising from within. The whole thing flashed and then caught on fire. The cleaner bot zipped over, beeping angrily and doused it with white foam.

It was my turn to laugh.

“So much for being ‘nearly-indestructible,’” Katia said.

Donut sniffed and poked the still-smoldering remains. A static shock burst out, and she howled.

“This is certainly going into my review.”

~

Donut’s platinum quest box contained the same thing her last platinum quest box contained. A pair of fang caps and a skill potion. She promptly drank the potion down, and it added three points to her Animal Wrangling skill, which was already at five.

The last set of fang caps had given Mongo a damage buff and the ability to add a few debuffs like poison and paralyze, though neither seemed to happen often. Usually, the mobs were dead already if the dinosaur got to the point where he was chomping down on them. These two additional caps added 15% movement speed and 15% strength to the level-29 dinosaur. Once again, Donut made me place them on the dinosaur’s teeth. He had a little piece of robot Donut in there I had to carefully fish out. He patiently allowed me to do it. He then spent the next several minutes hopping up and down and chomping at the air. His snaps were noticeably louder. 

Afterward, I spent some time cleaning up the rest of the dead robot while Donut grumbled and complained. “I will not have my merch published by a company who puts out a shoddy product. I can’t wait to give them an earful.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We should probably tell them not to use the Garfield thing, too. I’m not so sure they were using… official Garfield sources for their AI.”

The movie finally ended, and the children reluctantly filed out of the space and back into the real world. Their version of it, at least. I walked them out.

“Can we come back tomorrow and watch another movie?” Skarn asked as we left.

“Maybe,” I said, distracted. I looked up in the air. The town’s covering was half up, and the dromedarians worked desperately to repair the next. Through one of the many empty spaces, I looked up into the sky. I couldn’t see it without the telescope I’d stolen from the kid, but I sensed it there. The castle. I sighed.

I was so distracted, I didn’t see the blue dot approach.

“Hello, Carl,” a deep, rumbly voice said.

I turned to look at the tall rock monster. He looked similar to the guards at the Desperado, but he was made of red and black lava rocks. He had a whole mess of boss kills over his head and a trio of player killer skulls. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been magic focused. It appeared that he’d switched focus. He had a large, glowing spear hanging over his shoulder.

“Hello, Chris,” I replied. “I’m glad to see you.”
~

Hey all. I hope you had a great Christmas. Things will likely settle down here over the next week or two, but they're still hectic. My daughter who does not live with me has covid thanks to her job, and she's one of the unfortunate ones who has some pretty severe, but not quite severe enough to warrant hospitalization, symptoms. Hopefully she'll start feeling better soon. This thing is a real bitch, and you do not want it. Wear a damn mask.

Anyway, this chapter wasn't too long, but it was definitely a load-bearing chapter for several reasons which may not yet be apparent.

Happy new year!  

Here's a mockup of the Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook cover. The audiobook will be released as soon as humanly possible. It's pretty damn hilarious if I say so myself. I'm not certain if I'll have codes to give away or not, but if I do, I will reserve some for those of you who want it.  Take care all, and be safe!