Chapter 130 (Patreon)

Chapter 130

I peered down the stairs, and I examined the slow-moving ooze. The closer it got to the top, the slower it went. I realized the thinner it stretched itself, the more difficult it was for it to move.

The thing looked like a god had sneezed over the stairwell, and the mucus pile had rolled in kitty litter. Some of the magazines that Donut had knocked off the table along with some other junk items from the lab were mixed in with the creature, hitching a ride up the stairs.

The voice of the AI’s description of the ooze was different than usual. There were no stupid jokes thrown in there, and it seemed more morose than normal, which probably was the joke. I just didn’t get it.

Mrs. Ghazi
Sand Ooze
Level 52 Borough Boss!
This is a minion of Psmanthe

Every living creature seeks the same thing. A sense of contentment. No matter what their origin story is, no matter what they are made of, the moment they first exist, no matter how dumb, how smart, how confused, they seek a place of comfort. What that comfort looks like to them can vary wildly, even amongst creatures of the same species. Oftentimes, that journey to felicity is what defines their entire lifecycle. When that creature crosses paths with another, it is inevitable that the weaker of the two will fall further away from their goal.

This is the sort of thing that might go through Mrs. Ghazi’s mind as it spends its day watching over a man it has grown to love at the behest of someone more powerful than itself. The knowledge that the man’s feelings are not mutual is like a dagger in its heart, if it had one. It wrestles daily with this realization, teetering on the edge of indecision. Do I protect him because I love him? Do I kill him because he doesn’t love me back? Do I continue with my duty? What would become of me if I simply disobeyed?

It’s a lot of stress for a creature not used to having any emotion. It’s almost too much. But even if this creature wanted to end it all, it couldn’t. Its master has the ability to bring it right back, over and over again.

“I think the AI is smoking weed,” Katia said.

“This tells us absolutely nothing new about the creature,” I said, irritated at the description. “Except that it’s a borough boss. But the music didn’t start.”

“I think we broke it when we didn’t go into the room,” Katia said.

“Are we sure it was actually talking about the ooze?” Donut asked.

Killing the sand ooze, even temporarily, was going to be impossible from where we stood. Without a sufficient burst of electricity, I was going to need to burn it. And while I had plenty of materials to make an ooze scald hot enough to shrink it away, we’d screwed ourselves by running up the stairs.

According to Ghazi, I had to drop the fire on the ooze’s core, which was always kept in the same place: directly under the recliner that sat in front of the flatscreen television nestled in the corner of the room.

We couldn’t use regular fire, either. We could tell that the ooze had already snuffed out the flames leftover from Donut’s spell, so the creature wasn’t completely fire averse. We needed something that’d burn hot. I had two boom jugs left, but I feared those would burn a little too hot. I had a better idea. Earlier, I prepared some of the “burn gel” at my crafting table. I had the recipe already from my cookbook. I’d forced a conversation a few days before that with Mordecai by telling him about how I used to set hand sanitizer on fire. He’d responded with a way to make a flammable gel that would burn better, longer, and hotter. We found when we used moonshine in conjunction with some paste he could easily put together, the resulting gel burned hot and bright with little smoke. It wasn’t too useful in combat situations because the stuff had the consistency of toothpaste and took a while to apply, but it would work here. I had a plastic shopping bag full of the gel in my inventory, already shoved into a funnel so I could apply it like a giant piping syringe for a cake decorator.

The sand ooze had stretched itself almost all the way up the stairs. If I touched it, it would overwhelm me, dragging me down and suffocating me. So I had to somehow get all the way down the stairs, around the corner, into the room and to the core without it touching me.

Donut’s puddle jumper wouldn’t work, not without an egress or suitable place to land. Same with just tossing Molotov cocktails. The most obvious solution was indeed to burn our way there. If we flamed our way toward the core with fire that was hot enough to do damage, it would constantly shrink until we were close enough to hit the core.

We didn’t have time for that.

A further wrinkle was that Ghazi said I could absolutely not use explosives. Especially not in the basement level, especially not in his lab. Ghazi insisted that a big boom would crack the walls, and the entire glass interior would collapse. We’d find ourselves buried.

That left only one quick, feasible solution. We use Donut’s Holespell to drop the fire onto the core from the level above. About four feet of sand separated the bottom glass floor and the top of the basement level. Her spell could reach that far thanks to her glass cannon class, but only barely. The problem was that Ghazi’s workshop wasn’t lined up correctly with the floor above it. We’d have to go into the large room where we’d accidentally destroyed the crystalized sex doll, move all the way to the corner, and that would overlap with the edge of the basement. The wrong edge of the basement. So we could make a hole into the chamber, but we’d still be thirty feet away.

We worked the problem, brainstorming different solutions. Katia didn’t have enough mass to stretch herself that far. I could probably pop into the hole and use the xistera to upside-down toss something at the core. Same with a few Molotovs. But I feared it wouldn’t be enough.

I needed to move the recliner out of the way, liberally douse the core with the fire gel, set it aflame, and do it without getting captured and suffocated by the ooze.

Mordecai had been particularly alarmed when I told him what the monster was.

Mordecai: Do not let it touch you. Once they get ahold, it’s like quicksand you can’t escape. And since you already used your Protective Shell, you’d be fucked. They don’t just suffocate you. It will actively pour sand into every available orifice, filling you until you explode. And since you’re only wearing boxers with relatively easy access to your… southern entrance… Yeah. Don’t let it get you.

Carl: Christ, Mordecai. You always make horrible things seem even more horrible.

Mordecai: That’s my job, kid. Have you been keeping your hair short?

Carl: Yeah. Katia cut it for me the other day. I don’t think it grew while we were away.

In the end, we went with my least favorite idea. I’d already come up with it, but I was saving it as a last resort. Donut suggested it out loud.

With all of my equipment buffs, my dexterity currently sat at 32. I’d mostly been spamming my strength and constitution stats, though I had managed to throw a few points into my dex here and there. I wished I’d thrown more.

Thanks to my newest toe ring, I had an ability called Sticky Feet. It allowed me to walk along the ceiling for my dexterity times two seconds once every six hours. I’d practiced it a few times, but not yet in combat situations. That was about to change.

Carl: How do these things sense people? Will it know I’m hanging upside down over it?

Mordecai: It will absolutely know if you don’t distract it. Oozes hunt by vibration and sound. Not heat like slimes, which is good. But you clomping on the ceiling will still be enough to gain its attention, so you’ll have to use one of those things you were building earlier.

Donut: CAN IT SMELL? CARL STARTED GETTING ALL SWEATY WHEN WE DECIDED HE WAS GOING IN UPSIDE DOWN.

Mordecai: Normal sand oozes can’t smell. But again, this might not be a normal one, so be careful.

Carl: The thing is named Mrs. Ghazi, and it’s in love with a human. I’m pretty certain this isn’t a normal ooze.

Mordecai: Probably not. Speaking of the mage, I wouldn’t trust a guy who fucked an ooze. Katia, keep an eye on him, especially when Carl is in that chamber.

Carl: I don’t trust him either. He didn’t seem too upset when I stole the winding box.

Katia: I have my Crowd Blast ability cocked and loaded. If he tries anything, he’ll be splattered like a bug against a windshield.

~

Donut and I posted up in the corner of the fountain room while Katia remained at the top of the stairs with Ghazi. The ooze was just about to get to the top step, and she was going to slowly back away as it approached.

I’d already given Katia the device. I’d earlier made five of these at my sapper’s table, each one labeled with a different purpose. Since I’d put them together at the table, I’d actually been able to pick the song. This one was simply labeled, “Bass heavy. For distraction.” It was a hollow banger sphere with an impact-detonated alarm trap inside of it. It’d taken me less than three minutes to make the whole lot. I’d quickly chosen the songs from memory.

“You’re up!” I yelled to Katia from the next room.

“Here we go,” she called back.

A moment passed, and the announcement came.

Peaking at Number 2 on October 10th, 1992, it’s, “Jump Around!”

The music wasn’t as booming as usual because the alarm module had been sealed inside a metal ball. Still, the incredibly-loud, bass-heavy tune blared enough to shake the walls, drowning out all other sounds. Katia had just lobbed the ball down the stairs. I was afraid the ooze would immediately snuff it out, but the ball appeared to protect the trap mechanism.

Katia: Oh wow. The ball is bouncing up and down on its own with the beat. The ooze keeps trying to grab it, but it’s slipping away.

Donut: IS THIS SERIOUSLY THE ONLY BASS-HEAVY SONG YOU COULD THINK OF? WHAT ABOUT LIL PUMP?

Carl: Make the goddamn hole.

Donut: THE BASS ISN’T EVEN THAT HEAVY. IT’S JUST BOUNCY.

Carl: Goddamnit, Donut. We’re on the clock.

Donut appeared to sigh and then cast the spell. We peered down into the cavity, looking into the scorched room below. The place was a mess. The body of the ooze was stretched taut, like sandy bubble gum. The television had somehow unpaused itself, and it played a scene from some anime, filling the chamber with a frenetic rainbow of ever-changing colors. I couldn’t hear it. The ooze spread to all corners of the room.

The small, glowing doorway stood next to the television. If it wasn’t glowing, it’d look like the entrance to a utility closet or something equally innocuous. Once we took care of the boss, we’d have access to the room.

I could see the set up for the boss battle that had never happened. There were multiple tables of various heights throughout the room, though most were now wrecked. Some, however, still stood. I would’ve had to jump from table to table and then figure out where the core was. Mordecai had said to look for the yolk-like dome in the ooze. I could see it now, exactly where Ghazi said it would be. The yellow glow emanated from under the chair near the door to the level stairwell.

I lowered myself into the hole. Getting my feet to touch the bare ceiling wasn’t exactly the easiest thing to do when you were coming in from above. I wanted to keep Katia—who could’ve easily lowered me—posted at the stairwell, so I’d quickly fashioned a rope system.

Carl: Don’t let this slide.

I didn’t trust anything in the room to anchor me, so I pulled the heaviest chunk of metal I had in my inventory and gently placed it on the ground. It was a piece of dwarven automaton, and even though dwarven metal was lighter than steel, this thing had to weigh at least a half ton. It was about the size of a forklift and was covered with lots of jagged, uneven, sharp pieces of broken metal. I’d been saving it to throw at something or to drop if we had to make a fast getaway. It was one of those things that I wouldn’t be able to even budge before, but now that my strength clocked in at 80, I could lift it with no problems. I tied the rope to a curved, solid rivet. It’d hold my weight easily.

I’d been thinking a lot about the nature of my strength stat. It didn’t seem correct. If the average human had a strength of four, and mine was 80, that meant I was literally twenty times stronger than the average person. But that clearly wasn’t true. I was strong. Very strong. I could literally lift a half of a ton with hardly any effort. But I also knew the world deadlift record for a single person was more than that. So that meant there had to be diminishing returns the higher a stat went. Like the difference between ten and twenty was bigger than the difference between twenty and thirty. So if the returns diminished, did that mean I was better off spending points on my lower stats, instead of racing to get my strength to 100? I didn’t know.

For now, I lowered myself upside down into the hole, entering the chamber of the ooze. No boss music started. There was no announcement. The ceiling of the chamber was low, meaning when I was attached to the roof, my head would only be an inch or two above the top of Mrs. Ghazi. If it sensed me, it’d surge up and drag me face-first into the sand.

I lowered myself enough, placed my bare foot onto the ceiling, and I prepared the special ability. The moment it activated, I’d have 64 seconds.

The song ended and then started right back up again. It would go on forever.

Carl: I’m going to activate my spell in five seconds. Send in the bozos. Donut, maybe you should put Mongo away after you make the clockworks. I don’t want him accidentally getting into the sand.

Katia: Here they come.

I activated the ability, and my feet stuck to the ceiling. I let go of the rope, and I dangled free as the countdown timer began. This was much different than the Reverse Gravity spell. That one made me actually feel like the world was upside down. Here, I was just glued to the ceiling, like I was wearing those ridiculous, ab-killing gravity boots. I had to shuffle walk. If both of my feet left the ceiling at the same time, I would fall.

Outside the door, I heard the distinctive twin shrieks—even over the music—of the clockwork mongos as they jumped down the stairs and into certain death. I knew Katia was starting to throw random crap from her inventory at the monster, all in an attempt to distract it. I turned toward the recliner in the corner, and I started to gingerly walk toward it.

I had multiple, passive, low-tier stealth movement abilities that never worked for shit because I traveled with a dinosaur and a talking cat, but I hoped it would help cover my passage now.

I shuffled quickly across the ceiling, dodging tables and other debris without incident, coming to the spot next to the recliner. I had to hunch over to get myself directly over it.

I needed to make a choice here. I could grab the recliner and stick it into my inventory, which would certainly alert the ooze, or I could pour the gel directly onto the chair and set that on fire, which would probably work just fine. That gel burned hot and was next to impossible to put out.

I had thirty seconds. I went with the set-the-chair-on-fire method. I pulled the gel dispenser from my inventory and started to squeeze the thick, cloudy gel directly onto the chair.

Donut: IT’S MOVING! CARL, IT’S MOVING! I CAN’T STOP IT!

Carl: What’s moving?

Donut: THE METAL CHUNK THING!

I looked over my shoulder to see a line of ooze had somehow discovered the rope that’d been dangling a foot off the ground and through the hole. It’d reached up and grasped it and was now yanking on the rope. The metal was significantly larger than the hole, so it didn’t really matter, but that had been my escape route. It also showed how terrifyingly strong the ooze was.

Carl: It’s okay. Turn off the hole. Make a new one next to it right away. I’m setting the chair on fire now and will make a run for it.

I pulled a torch from inventory, lit it, and dropped it on the chair that sat atop the core. I turned and started scrambling away as an orgy of flames burst forth, burning white hot, filling the corner of the room with more flames and heat than I expected.

Oh shit.

I suppressed a cry of pain. Even as I scrambled away, the heat caused damage. The back of my head felt like it’d been dipped in lava. My stomach started to burn as I upside-down crab-walked across the ceiling.

The ooze immediately reacted. The whole room vibrated. The sand rippled. The flaming chair went flying straight up like a rocket, but it slammed into the low ceiling right where I’d just been standing. It shattered into flaming hunks and fell upon the now-exposed, yolk-like core, spreading the gel everywhere.

Yes, I thought.

The ground of the whole room rose, like it was filling with sand. It folded upon itself, trying to snuff the flames, but they wouldn’t go out. Even buried, I could see the glowing, sparking fire.

Katia: It’s retracting!

A health bar appeared floating over the core, and it started to fall. It let go of the rope, which fell on its own as Donut closed the hole. The monster pulled further in on itself, piling into the corner and blocking the door to the stairwell. It buried the television, which was rapidly melting in the heat, plunging the room into a murky, half-lit darkness. The boss sparkled as the heat damaged it. The ooze started spinning, tendrils of gooey sand creating circles that caught brilliantly in the low light. It would be dead in seconds.

And that’s when the roof of the chamber collapsed, and the room started to fill with sand.

I’m not exactly certain what caused it, but it was probably the heat. Or maybe it was the way the level was designed. One moment I was running toward the new hole in the ceiling with five seconds left, and suddenly I was buried upside down in the sand, completely blind and unable to move.

Donut: Carl! Carl! Help! I fell! There’s sand all around me!

Oh fuck, this is it. I struggled to free myself, but I couldn’t move. The weight of the sand above me started to increase, pressing down. Sand filled my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. I struggled more, but the only thing I could move was my toes.

A notification appeared, quickly flashing by. The boss was defeated, and the quadrant was now open.

Katia: Carl! Donut! Where are you? The stairwell just filled with sand! The walls are starting to crack and creak. I think it’s all going to collapse! Are you okay?

I suddenly felt myself moving, rapidly sliding through the sand. I plopped unceremoniously onto the floor. I gasped for breath, coughing. It was Donut. She had bitten down onto my foot and dragged me free.

“Thanks,” I coughed, spitting hot grains from my mouth. Donut’s torch lit up the tiny sliver of a space. I had barely enough room to stand. We were in the back corner of the basement. The roof had fallen in at an angle. It would’ve given us a ramp back up to the first level, but the ceiling of that chamber had also collapsed, and what had once been the ceiling of the first floor now stood precariously over our heads, bowing and creaking.  To our right was the large chunk of dwarven metal, which helped shore up the ceiling. If I pulled it back into my inventory now, we’d be immediately buried.

We were going to be buried by three stories of sand at any moment.

“The floor broke right after I cast my hole spell,” Donut said, out of breath. “I didn’t know it’d do that. Carl, what are we going to do? There’s nowhere to go!”

“I think it was the heat,” I said. I tentatively reached up and touch the new ceiling. A crack splintered across it. “That gel burned hotter than I thought it would.”

I sent a note to Katia, telling her where we were.

Katia: I don’t know what to do. The whole place is about to collapse. The chamber where Donut was fell in, and Ghazi is flipping out about saving his love doll. He’s freaking out. I can’t tell if he’s crying or laughing.

Gwen: Congrats. Now get out of there. The storm is almost over. The door just reappeared, but I don’t think it’s going to last long. It’s flickering!

Carl: Katia, run for the door while you still can. Bring Ghazi. See if pulling him from the castle fixes the crystallization.

Donut: Kill him! That’ll fix it! Mordecai says killing mages fixes most problems!

Warning: Your oxygen levels are low. In case you’re wondering, yes, you do need that stuff.

Shit, shit. We didn’t have time.

Carl: We need him to explain the winding box.

“We’re not going to need anything in a few seconds, Carl.”

I sent a note to Gwen.

Katia: Holy shit guys, I’m not going to leave you. Hang on. I’m going to dig.

Carl: Listen. We need you to get him out of the castle. That’s how you fix it. Hurry. And do what Gwen says when you get out there.

Katia: Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you when I’m out.

To our left, the wall broke, and more sand poured in. Donut jumped to my shoulder, trembling. We could still hear the music from the trap, but it was distant and pounding, buried nearby. The bouncing and pounding ball probably wasn’t doing us any favors.

Well this turned out to be a real clusterfuck.

“I don’t think taking the guy from the castle is going to work,” Donut said, panic rising in her voice.

“No,” I agreed. “I just wanted her to get out of there.”

“Carl, I don’t want to be buried alive.”

Gwen: You mean electrify it, right?

Carl: No. Hurry.

“Donut, it’s going to be okay. How many water breathing scrolls do you have?”

“They’re called water breathing, not sand breathing, Carl.” Donut said. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to Mongo! What’s going to happen to him? He’s just going to sit in his pet carrier forever!”

“Goddamnit, how many scrolls?” I asked again.

“Eight.”

I also had eight. That was good. That would be enough.

Katia: I’m out.

Nothing had happened. I hadn’t expected it to. I suspected that I already knew how to de-crystalize the castle, and it was too late. We’d fucked it up. I’d fucked it up. We should’ve brought that electrical line in. Damnit.

Donut: Kill Ghazi. Quick!

Carl: No. Wait! That’s not going to…

Katia: Uh, I already did. We had a small fight. I looted a note from him that explains the winding box. But nothing changed with the castle. I think he’s dead. It said he was dead. His body turned to sand after I looted him. I’ve never seen that before.

I swallowed. Above, the ceiling splintered. The chunk of metal shifted. Shit, shit, shit.

Gwen: Hold onto your hats. Tran is opening the valve now. He’s only doing it part way, but it’ll be enough to blow your skirt up.

“Take a water scroll,” I said. “Do it now. Put the rest in your hot list. Fast. If your health gets low, don’t take a health potion. Take Mordecai’s Special Brew.”

“Carl, I changed my mind. I would rather be buried alive than…”

I pulled Donut from my shoulder and wrapped myself around her, muffling whatever she was about to say. Above, the ceiling finally splintered, and sand poured over us as a distant, roaring sound filled the chamber, reminding me of the sound of an oncoming train.

~

The world tumbled. It felt as if I’d been hit not by a train, but by a dozen baseball bats all at once. My health plummeted as I protected the fragile body of Donut. Complete darkness encompassed us. I spun like a ball, bouncing and hitting things both hard and soft and painfully in between. I closed my eyes. Let it happen. Let it happen. Be calm. I watched my health, and I clicked a potion just as it reached about 25%. My health moved up, and then I gasped with pain as I felt myself smash through what felt like a barbed-wire fence. Metal pierced my leg. A spear of glass pierced my hand and plummeted into Donut, who’d gone limp. She had not taken the invulnerability potion like I had suggested. Goddamnit, Donut.

I targeted her and slammed on a heal scroll as we continued to spin.

It’s not that bad. He only opened the valve a little bit. It’s like a water slide.

I cast Heal on myself. I became aware that the thing that had pierced my leg was actually a spar of metal coming from that dwarven automaton piece. I cried anew as the metal pulled away. The metal chunk spun away into the murk. The temperature plunged, and I finally realized we were underwater in the water quadrant, and we had been for a bit now. Notifications flew past, and I spun and spun.

I clutched onto Donut with all of my strength, curled protectively around her the best I could.

My health was, again, in the red. Donut’s health was also again perilously low. She’d gone unconscious. I could taste the blood streaming from her. We were no longer in the direct blast of the water current, and we were now sinking. It’d taken maybe three seconds from the water hitting us to this point, but it’d seemed much longer. Donut’s torch was dutifully following us, barely keeping pace, barely lighting up the cloudy water.

Mordecai: What is happening? Donut’s health keeps bottoming out!

Carl: Not now.

I used a second heal scroll on her, though she would remain unconscious for another thirty seconds. Thankfully she had taken the water breathing scroll, which lasted as long as one’s intelligence stat times three seconds. The scroll would be active for a total of over two and a half minutes for her. For me, it’d only last 45 seconds, and I was already getting close to needing to take another.

I examined Donut as we continued to sink. Debris from both the castle and the interior of the necropolis plunged all around us. I caught sight of multiple dead bodies of creatures, but I couldn’t tell what they were in the dark. They all trailed dark blood, like airplanes smoking as they plummeted from the sky in slow motion.

Donut looked okay. Her long hair flowed all around her, almost making her look like a sea anemone. With that last healing, she’d stopped bleeding. I turned the limp cat around in my hands, looking for injuries. She’d been pierced through the stomach by the glass, but she appeared to be okay now. I didn’t know if her cockroach spell had activated or not. Either way, it’d been much too close. If I hadn’t protected her, she’d been dead for certain.

I became aware that the pressure of the water was getting higher. I panicked for a moment, suddenly not certain which way was up. I pumped my legs, and it didn’t feel as if I was going in the correct direction, which caused me to panic even further. It was dark on the surface, so I had no frame of reference. Calm. Calm. I remembered the little indicator in my vision that gave my position relative to sea level. We were only 150 meters below the surface. That was far. Very far. But it was much less than I anticipated. I was thankful for Donut’s torch spell and that it worked underwater, and I was especially thankful the spell still worked while she was unconscious.

I pumped my legs a few times, and we quickly rose. I started to relax. I couldn’t tell how far we were from the shore, but that was okay. The quadrant wasn’t that wide. Just deep.

I took a breath, and it felt like normal air. I hadn’t grown gills or anything weird. The water seemed to dissolve as it entered my mouth. Goddamn magic.

I tried talking, and it worked. The words sounded odd to my ears, but I could hear myself. Above, I could hear the loud rush of water as it funneled out of the necropolis, across the beach, and back into the ocean. I could also hear something else, not too far away, but getting quieter. I realized it was the trap module, still playing that song, sinking away with the rest of the debris.

I had multiple, increasingly frantic messages from Katia and Mordecai, and I quickly answered them, telling them were were okay.

The castle had washed away, much the same way a real sand castle would under a garden hose. I’d hoped that since we were in the basement, we would’ve been spared getting plunged into the water quadrant, and the blast would’ve just erased the castle away over our heads, stopping the sand from crushing us. No such luck, but at least we were still alive. I clicked on another water breathing scroll.

Gwen: Hey, bomber guy. This is where I point out that if you’d simply let me open the valve in the first place, we could’ve avoided whatever the hell that was.

Carl: And this is where I tell you to shut the fuck up.

I was about to say something else when I sensed movement under me. Something large shot through the water below us. It crunched onto a falling body. The dull, box-like sound of munching bones was even more sinister in the darkness, like a large boot stomping through frozen snow. Whatever the thing was, it was big and long and cut through the water with ease. The dot appeared on my map, moving rapidly through the sinking corpses, zig-zagging. Holy shit, time to bounce. I pumped my legs again, pushing toward the surface. It’d probably been attracted to the blood. I needed to not bring attention to myself, and I needed get the hell out of there as quickly as I could.

Donut awakened in my arms.

Donut freaked the absolute fuck out.


~~

Happy March everyone. I hope you're doing well. Thanks so much for sticking around. I just posted a poll. Starting with the next chapter, we are officially in part 4 of 4(?) for this floor, and I have a few surprises in store. We also have some loot boxes they've been neglecting to get to, but first they gotta survive the water quadrant.