Chapters 134 and 135 (Patreon)

(There's yet another cliffhanger at the end of this, but that's gonna be name of the game from here on out until we're done with this floor.)


Chapter 134

I clambered toward the door of the bridge as the music started to pulse. It was quiet at first, but it rose in volume, shaking the hull. And soon enough, the music was blasting. Not quite the level of an alarm trap, but loud enough I had to shout at the others.

This was a pure, deep dubstep growl punctuated by high-pitch, ear-piercing glitches that sounded like whale song. It gave the sense of overwhelming, frenetic panic. The grates under my feet clinked up and down.

The whole vessel shuddered, and suddenly the three of us fell to our backs. The sub vibrated as whatever this was physically grabbed the submarine.

I scrambled to my feet and pushed forward. I had to get the dead bodies in the bridge. When Henrik the changeling principal had disappeared, we’d all just assumed he’d gone directly into the necropolis. When I had pinged him that first time using the watch, and he’d responded, I’d seen that he’d been underwater. I thought he was in a flooded cavern. He’d been in the form of a fish creature.

He’d actually been on his way here, to the Akula. I had no idea why they’d come here, but whatever they were trying to do, they’d failed. Six of the seven bodies in the bridge were changeling principals, including Henrik. And if Henrik was here, that also meant the watch was here.

I spun the wheel, ripped open the portal as the submarine jolted again. The portal opened toward me, and I pulled myself inside. I shouted over the pounding music for Tran and Vadim to follow. We were going to loot the bodies, and then the three of us where going to jump to the last of the three escape hatches. We didn’t have a choice. I already knew that whatever this was going to be, it wasn’t a neighborhood or borough boss, which meant we were fucked.

Carl: Katia, did you get out?

The moment I sent the message, I realized, no. She hadn’t gotten free. I saw her dot on the map, moving through the innards of the Akula in our direction. She’d fled into the submarine.

Carl: Goddamnit, Katia.

Katia: It was too late. I wouldn’t have gotten away.

Carl: Okay, get your ass in here. Why is there boss music, but the other stuff hasn’t happened yet?

Katia: I don’t know.

The needle that indicated views was buried all the way to the right.

I yelled for Tran to stay back and to close the door to the airlock so Katia could get in here. The process took almost a full minute to transfer. I prayed she’d make it in time.

The whole sub rolled onto its side. I fell inside the bridge. Behind me, both Vadim and Tran yelled out in surprise as they also fell, plummeting out of sight in the room behind me. We’d been pulled free of the hole in the side of the necropolis. Below, the rushing noise of water changed in pitch.

I spied Henrik’s body near the front of the bridge, and he was in the faceless humanoid form. I watched as he rolled toward the wall, smashing against it. Broken pieces of a robot fell with him. This was the borough boss corpse, which had been a spider carrying the head of Chaindrive the bugbear in a jar. They fell against yet another portal in the room, this one leading to the captain’s stateroom and the level stairwell.

The sub remained at a 45-degree pitch as I stood, one foot on a bulkhead, one on the deck. The hull croaked and groaned, but I felt it more than I heard it, as the music continued to pound. My eyes moved to the altitude chart on my display. We were at 550 meters and falling. We’re out of the hole. We’re being dragged down.

I took a precious moment to gawk at the opulence of the bridge. The Akula’s control center was a combination between the Enterprise bridge from Star Trek and the interior of a Victorian-era-themed restaurant that was so expensive, the prices weren’t even on the menu. At least it had been, once upon a time. Both the ravages of time and the recent flooding had ruined the place. A rust-covered chandelier dotted with random sparkles hung from the ceiling, swinging back and forth. The deck was covered with moldy and ripped velvet. The railings were made of polished wood capped with brass and covered with intricate carvings. A mighty, but peeled and faded, mural covered one bulkhead, depicting what appeared to be a bugbear getting knighted by an elf in flowing robes.

The captain’s chair sat high in the middle of the room. It was a heavily-patinaed, brass throne covered with spigots and levers, reminding me of the cockpit of the Nightmare. The seat had once been cushioned with red velvet, but it’d disintegrated with time, revealing rusted spring. Next to the chair sat what appeared to be a mini-fridge and bar. The door to the fridge hung open, revealing it be empty. The bar was empty.

But most impressive was the glass porthole giving me a wide view of the underwater world. The window was broad, about twenty-five feet across and ten feet high and framed with riveted brass. I could see a film of dust had grown over the glass, but it’d been recently cleaned off, either by Chris or Henrik’s crew.

The window had revealed been nothing but black a moment before, but now I could see movement just on the other side, bubbles and water rushing by, though it was still pitch black out there. Something tightened on the glass, and I felt my heart clench in my chest. It’s not darkness. Something is covering the port.

I swallowed when I realized what I was looking at. A sucker from a squid or octopus tentacle appeared, squeezing against the view. The oval-shaped suction cup took up half the window.

“Holy crap,” I muttered.

Katia: I’m waiting for the room to fill with water.

Carl: Okay. I’m in the bridge. One room over. Grab the map if you have time. It’s in the first room.

Donut: WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Carl: Get the depth charges ready. Don’t drop until I say.

I scrambled along the wall to the corpse of Henrik.

Lootable Corpse. Henrik. Level 50 Changeling Principal. Killed by a very pissed-off Quetzalcoatlus.

Mysterious Watch.

Torn Book Page.

I took his entire body into my inventory. The moment I had it, the world froze.

Shit. Here we go.

System Message: Please Wait.

The world unfroze as quickly as it had frozen.

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

What the hell? That was the second time this had happened. I’d been expecting that to be the boss battle.

System Message: Three items in your inventory have been placed under an administrative lock while an appeal in the Syndicate court determines if these items are…

The message appeared and disappeared in a flash, almost too quickly to read or understand. It never finished fully displaying. And then another message appeared and disappeared just as quickly.

System Message: Court determination: Lack of Standing for all plaintiffs.  Administrative lock removed. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The deck rumbled. The chandelier swung back and forth. The music continued to pound.

Donut: CARL, THE WORLD FROZE AGAIN. DID YOU DO THAT?

The submarine hit something solid and settled, righting itself, and I had to scramble to stay on my feet. The chandelier continued to swing wildly. The hull groaned and popped under my feet. We were almost exactly 1,500 meters below sea level. I was pretty sure we’d just settled at the very bottom of the bubble. Outside the, the suction cup moved away, squeaking loudly like a squeegee against a windshield.

At a depth of 500 meters, the world had been blue-hued. Down here, a green luminescence permeated the ocean’s floor. I couldn’t see any sign of the monster. I didn’t see any sign of the island, though I realized the sub had turned a full 180 degrees. The music continued.

Katia: I’m through. I’m coming up.

What was going on? Fuck this, I thought. We had to get to the escape hatch.

Carl: Get in here. Bring the other two guys.

I thought of the weird system message. Someone had sued to keep the pieces of the Gate of the Feral Gods out of my hands. That wasn’t a surprise. Neither was it a surprise that there were multiple plaintiffs in the suit.

But Henrik had something else in his inventory. It was starting to become clear that this was a common thing in this game, that the system would plant important information on corpses. I extracted the Torn Book Page from Henrik’s inventory and examined it.

Torn Book Page.

This piece of paper was mercilessly ripped from a perfectly-innocent book. Anybody who thinks to mutilate books in such a manner is obviously a terrible person. I mean, one minute this book is sitting there, minding its own business, and suddenly… BAM! It’s torn away from its home. And even if it gets returned, you can’t just repair that sort of thing. It’s irreparably harmed. Anybody who would do that is a real jerk. It’s a lot like what we did to you guys.

Anyway, this slip of old paper appears to be an extract of a cleric’s journal. One side is half of a terrible love poem for his aunt. The other is something about ghosts. Fucking clerics. What a bunch of nerds. Am I right?

I quickly read the passage.

…and she formed into a rage elemental.

Another curiosity is the She Who Wails. Or Wailing Shrieker. A rare ghost, it is formed when a grieving widow dies of her despair, in the dark, on hallowed ground, while the corpse of her affection rots nearby. These were often purposely created to guard tombs, oftentimes at the direction of the ailing pharaoh or king himself, who would ply the woman with affection in order to have ready stock upon his burial. Sometimes he would do this with a harem of women, if he was especially paranoid about keeping his treasures safe. The women would not know this was to be their fate.

If a Wailing Shrieker forms, she has the tendency to haunt her lover’s grave, and she will aggressively defend the area. She is defeated with a high-level exorcism spell, the destruction of the corpse of her lover, by varying high-degree banishment spells, or via electric shock. Beware her scream and her touch. She is intelligent and jealous. She is fully non-corporeal, and any flesh-giving spell can be used to harm her.

Henrik and his team didn’t want to kill Quetzalcoatlus. They wanted to physically touch her, but they could only do that if she was given flesh. Their original plan was to use Wynne the gnome to do it. I didn’t know why they’d come here. Whatever he’d been planning, it was plan B. Or C. And it hadn’t worked. They’d pissed off the ghost, she’d killed them all, and now we’d been dragged to the bottom of the ocean because of it.

Carl: Gwen. How long until the storm?

Gwen: Two and a half hours. And we don’t know what’s really going to happen.

I gave her a quick set of instructions and told her to hurry.

Katia pulled herself into the room, followed by Tran and Vadim.

“Loot the rest of these corpses,” I said, yelling over the music as I moved to the closest body. I pulled him into my inventory. He only had a few gold coins on him, but Mordecai wanted the brains of these guys, too. I pointed to a set of spiral stairs on the opposite side of the bridge, pushed up against the mural. Both up and down led to additional hatches. “Go up. We don’t need to turn the pump off anymore, but we need to get to the escape hatch room.”

Katia and the other two didn’t respond to my shout. All three of them stood still, staring out the window. That’s when I looked up and saw what they were staring at. A massive, glowing form approached the sub. A shark the size of a mountain. A shark? That didn’t make sense. Then I saw the tentacles flowing behind it. A sharktopus. A fucking sharktopus. Donut is going to be pissed she missed this one.

“Oh,” I heard myself say. “That’s not good.”

“That’s not the same one that pulled us down here,” Katia shouted so she could be heard over the music.

The monstrosity rocketed toward us, mouth opening wide. It turned to the side, like it was about to eat a goddamn taco.

Holy shit it’s going to swallow us.

And then, finally, did the world freeze.

Admin Notice: This Special Event boss battle is being streamed to all special event subscribers.

Admin Notice: Congratulations. You have been opted into the Beta testing program. We are testing a new format with this battle. You may be asked to complete a survey on the completion of the fight, should you survive. Thank you.

B…B…B…Boss Battle!

Bronze-colored stars and fireworks exploded on the screen, curling in the air.

Special Event twirled, trailing a rainbow of colors before slamming onto an invisible plane and exploding.

A new window appeared. Something that had never happened before. The orange, lizard newscaster guy who hosted the recap episode appeared in the screen, holding a microphone. Next to him stood an orc-like creature I’d never seen before. This was a different race than Maestro. This guy looked more like a traditional, video game orc. He was big and meaty with pig-like eyes. He wore a sports coat and a tie.

The music actually lowered in volume and became background noise, something else that had never happened.

“We are live, ladies and gentlemen! And boy do we have something amazing for you tonight!” the lizard guy said. His voice echoed as if we were in a goddamned stadium.

“I can’t wait for this one, Kevin,” the orc said, his voice that of a sports announcer. “My only regret is that Princess Donut isn’t here to round out the team.”

“Something tells me she’s just as disappointed as you are,” the recap guy, whose name was apparently “Kevin” said. He chuckled. “But we all know by now how she feels about getting wet.”

Our mugshots splattered into the air. Katia and I appeared first, teamed up together with Tran and Vadim individually on the other side. The frames around our pictures caught on fire and then exploded.

“Now, Magnificent Troy, tell me something,” Kevin said. “Can you explain to our viewers why we chose this battle for tonight’s special event?”

“What the fuck,” I muttered through gritted teeth. Was the orc’s name really Magnificent Troy? Were these assholes really going to live-comment as we fought? “What the fuck.”

“Oh, certainly. Look what we have tonight. We have Carl and Katia, both top-ten crawlers along with two guys who’ve really been underperforming until recently…”

“Hey,” Tran said, also through clenched teeth.

“And all four of them have to face such a powerful boss. Combine that with the drama regarding this particular bubble and the type of battle we’re about to face, and it’s truly a match for the ages.”

“You got that right, Magnificent Troy. And let’s find out exactly who that boss is, shall we?” Kevin took a dramatic pause. “It’s the one. It’s the only! Taken straight from the depths of the water moon Hayes 17, it’s the queen bitch herself…”

An image appeared, super small. It started spinning toward us, looking like it was coming straight from the real sharktopus’s mouth. It was a full, 3D rendition of the creature.

Carl: Depth charges. Now. Turn the little dial on the sides all the way to the left first. Set them all to maximum depth. Louis and Firas. Once you drop the charges, get out of there, land the house, and get all of your asses to a saferoom. Gwen, once you’re done at the sandcastle, get to a saferoom. Bobby, if you can hear me, get all the tomb raiders to a saferoom. ASAP. You too, Langley.

Gwen: Why?

Donut: WHAT ABOUT YOU? WON’T THE DEATH CHARGES HIT YOU, TOO?

Carl: I really hope not.

The sharktopus image slammed into the air and then exploded, revealing the real creature, still frozen just outside the sub, mouth wide. Each individual tooth was the size of a surfboard.

“It’s Lusca!” Kevin shouted.

The system AI voice provided the official description.

Lusca! Octo-Shark Brood Mother Queen!

Level 82 City Boss!

I know, I know. Sharktopus is much cooler sounding than Octo-Shark. Hey, this is a real creature, not something I made up, so don’t blame me. It’s not, I repeat, it’s not named in such a way because of Nadya Suleman, the so-called Octo-mom and her eight babies who took the tabloids by storm all those years ago.

Though it would be appropriate for you to think so.

Being the biggest, baddest, and most voracious creature in the ocean requires a lot of sustenance, especially when you’re a new mother carrying a boatload of hungry babies in your mouth. And since Lusca is a single mother, sometimes she requires a little help. She needs to keep them babies fed.

And who’s the daddy of these precious little babies? Who knows? Lusca is a whore! Every Octo-Shark playa in the neighborhood knows she offers that sweet tentacle booty of hers to any bad boy who’ll drop something juicy onto her plate.

That, by the way, is exactly what you are. Food dropped onto Lusca’s plate in exchange for some one-on-one time. The male Octo-shark who brought you down here already got his and is now long gone. Just like your real daddy!

Lusca herself already ate. But that’s okay!

Like I said, she needs to keep them babies fed.

The world unfroze.

I stumbled forward as the giant creature swallowed us. Crunch.

The sub tumbled. The minimap flashed.

The world froze once again, and the word Uh-Oh! splashed on the screen before turning into bubbles and disappearing.

A cartoon-like diagram of the shark’s mouth appeared on the screen, replacing the two commentators.

“Lusca is a mouthbrooder,” Magnificent Troy said. A circle appeared around the mouth, like Troy had a pen and was diagraming out a football play. The diagram zoomed in, and multiple, little happy-faced dots appeared floating in the mouth along with a helpful cartoon graphic depicting half of the submarine with a flashing exclamation mark over it. My eyes moved to the minimap. Sure enough, the giant shark had snapped the Akula in half. We were floating in the goddamn creature’s mouth. “Once she chomps onto something for her babies, she gives them about ten minutes to eat their fill. Anything left over goes to mama!”

The graphic showed the happy-faced babies zooming in on the sub cartoon, zipping around it Tasmanian Devil-style, and then zooming away, leaving a skeleton of a ship trailing smoke. The babies zipped away into the teeth area while the mama shark swallowed with an exaggerated gulp. The remains of the cartoon submarine bounced merrily into the shark’s stomach, where it was melted by stomach acid. And then it moved to another stomach, then a third, and then it finally depicted the massive creature pooping out a cartoon skeleton of a human wearing heart-covered boxers. And then it showed a cartoon Donut with tears flying from her eyes. The display returned to the two announcers, who both were falling over themselves laughing at the cartoon.

A ten-minute timer slammed onto the screen.

Goddamnit, not this shit again.

Chapter 135

“And here we go!” Kevin shouted just as the world unfroze. The timer started to move.

“Carl, I don’t think the escape hatch is going to work anymore,” Katia called as we tumbled again.

Something smashed against the window. Then something else. The babies. Now that we were in the mouth, it was completely dark out there. The sub continued to twist. The chandelier broke free and crashed to the ground, shattering. Suddenly the interior of the bridge was also pitch black. The only light was from the giant timer and the floating window containing Kevin and Magnificent Troy, but the light did not illuminate our surroundings.

“Vadim,” I called. “Torch!”

“Ooh, Vadim is running away, and Carl hasn’t noticed yet,” Kevin said.

“He went up the stairs,” Tran called. The moment he said it, I saw his blue dot, almost directly above my own. He’d gone up the stairs, all right. There was only one escape pod left, and it looked as if he was going to use it.

Carl: Vadim. We’re inside the goddamn sharktopus. The escape hatch isn’t going to work!

He didn’t answer.

Katia pulled a pair of regular torches from her inventory and tossed them to the corners of the room just as I did the same. A dull, red light filled the bridge, reflecting our horrified faces as we caught glimpse of the horrors pressed against the glass. Katia let out a gasp. Mouths. Hundreds of round, ravening mouths, filled with teeth. Each mouth was the size of a bicycle wheel. The entire glass display was covered with them. One whipped sideways along the window, revealing there were hundreds more, maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands, all beyond it.

“Look how hungry those little guys are,” Magnificent Troy shouted.

I examined the one that was trying to slide along the glass. The monster looked like a huge lamprey eel, but the back half was separated into multiple tentacles. The terrifying creature was about ten feet long from mouth to tentacle tip.

Juvenile Octo-Shark. Level 30.

This is a minion of Lusca.

Ah, the babies. Here’s the thing about Octo-Shark babies. The odds are stacked against them from the get-go. There’s just too many of them. Their mom is really strict and won’t let them leave her mouth. They don’t know who their daddies are, which makes them kinda sad, especially around Christmas. They need constant nourishment. So when food does arrive, they have to fight for their morsels. Only the strongest survive.

Eventually, even Lusca won’t be able to keep up with the demand. That’s right around the time the juveniles start to realize their brothers and sisters are also delicious. In each birthing of 2-3,000 pups, only one or two survive.

In other words, their odds of survival are better than yours!

A distant explosion rocked the sub, followed by a second.

“Ohhh, that was a direct hit! Those depth charges are working great,” Kevin said. “Their design is really interesting, too. He used multi-layered, gunpowder-filled barrels seeded with impact-detonated hob-lobbers designed to explode the moment the barrel crushes under the pressure. He then placed a hole through each barrel except the final one and placed a manual dial on the side, allowing him to choose the barrel’s integrity. The more holes covered, the deeper the barrel will drop before it’s crushed and explodes. It’s a design straight out of earth’s history books!”

“Did you hear what Princess Donut said? She called them ‘death charges’ not ‘depth charges.’ I kinda like that better, Kevin.”

“I do too. But it doesn’t matter what they’re called. You’re not going to knock out Lusca that easily. It doesn’t matter how well they’re designed. She’s just going to shrug them off and ask for more. She is bringing her A-game today,” Kevin said. “But she is moving out of the area. It looks like the rest of the charges are going to be duds.”

“It also looks like that display window is going to break at any moment,” Troy added. “This should be good.”

“Shit, shit,” I said. As the commentators jabbered, I pulled a fused hob-lobber and yanked out the fuse and replaced it with a piece of hobgoblin pus. I’d purchased a few sets of pus from Pustule the last time we’d been in the Silk Road, and I was burning through the expensive detonator material. I then pulled a potion from my inventory and my duct tape. I taped the potion bottle to the hob-lobber.

There was a much more elegant version of this in the cookbook, though with a different potion. I had no idea if this would work. I looked wildly about the room for a place to plant the bomb where it would be safe from the immediate impact of water rushing in here. I spied the captain’s chair and the minifridge next to it. The fridge was firmly bolted in place. I rushed to the open fridge, placed the makeshift bomb inside, and then I duct-taped the door closed. There.

The timer was already at eight minutes.

The window cracked. The mouths pounded at the glass. Kevin and Troy continued making idiotic comments.

“Guys, into the stateroom,” I cried, rushing to the door to the captain’s chambers. Inside the small room, sitting in the corner and blocked off by a forcefield was the stairwell to the sixth floor.

“Why in here?” Katia asked, lighting and dropping another torch. The three of us crowded in. As I closed the door, I took one last look out into the bridge. The window cracked again, spiderwebbing as Kevin and Troy oohed and ahhed.

“Because this is the only room that won’t break apart, and we can seal it. I just need a minute. Keep your scrolls ready. Tran, tell Vadim it’s too late to come back. Tell him to seal himself into that room up there if he can.”

Even before I’d received the second watch and final piece of the Gate of the Feral Gods, Katia and I had both started playing around with the two pieces. We found if we put the watch in the second spot and closed the top of the winding box, the watch would move on its own to a specific time. After some experimentation, we confirmed the time displayed was the watch’s current coordinates. Katia spent an hour writing down time/location combinations while I prepared for our “in and out” expedition to the Akula.

She’d already discovered several interesting things about the artifact, including a way to very roughly predict what a location’s time would be, especially if I could relay to her the exact distance of a spot from the earth’s sea level.

“If we never find that second watch, I think I can still use this as a sort of reverse compass that tells us exactly where we are relative to other locations. I just need more time to figure it out,” Katia had said before we’re set out.

But now we had all three pieces and a very pressing reason to use the artifact.

I pulled the first watch now and examined it. It always started ticking on its own if you pulled it out of the winding box. I rolled the time back, carefully dialing in the third hand to exactly where I wanted it to go. A spot just outside the Pazuzu town. If we weren’t teleporting far, the artifact would only need a few seconds to set itself. At least in theory.

The magical window with the two newscaster guys didn’t follow us into the stateroom, but we could still hear their chattering. And it was obvious they could still see us.

“It looks like Carl is going to use the gate to escape!”

“Shut the fuck up, Kevin,” I said as I worked. The sub rocked again, and I pushed the hand too far and cursed.

Seven minutes.

I didn’t want to do this. This was a terrible idea. It would save us, temporarily, but it would also screw over everybody else in the bubble. Mordecai said some of these feral monsters were literally bigger than the bubble itself. What would happen then? Until we took out that final castle, we’d be stuck with whatever I summoned.

And that, I knew, was exactly what they wanted me to do. Once again, I couldn’t help but feel we’d been steered directly onto this path. It’d been obvious that I was headed down here. The game had somehow convinced Henrik to come here first and get himself killed and to drop that final piece of the gate. They set up this boss battle, knowing we’d be placed in an impossible situation. We couldn’t fight our way out of here. There was no fucking way. This was an impossible battle. Even if we could get past the babies, then what? We’d already been swallowed.

There was no way to win. Not unless we had a magical gate that’d let us zap ourselves away.

Carl: Donut. Are you guys almost back yet?

Donut: NO! THE WIND STARTED EARLY! FIRAS SAYS IT’S BLOWING DIFFERENT THAN BEFORE, AND IT’S MAKING IT HARD FOR THEM TO NAVIGATE! WE’RE JUST GETTING HIGHER AND HIGHER. WE’RE GONNA HAVE TO GO BACK TO HUMP TOWN!

Carl: How long?

Donut: LOUIS SAYS TEN MINUTES.

Fuck. That wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want to do this. I wouldn’t do this if everybody out there wasn’t in a safe room.

There had to be a different way.

Look for the clues.

“Here it comes!” Magnificent Troy shrieked.

A colossal shattering pitched the sub, and we fell to the side, all of us smashing against the bulkhead. The world did not right itself. I grasped the door to the stateroom, and I clung to it, making sure it was dogged in place. The glass had broken. I felt the bridge getting flooded. The hull quivered as the babies flowed into the room on the other side.

Six minutes.

Already, they started pounding at the door. While I knew the room itself would be safe, I also knew we weren’t safe in here. Not for long. I had no idea what would happen if the octo-shark digested the stairwell, but I suspected it’d quickly pass through the shark’s system, and the entire room would just end up on the ocean floor. Along with a boxer-wearing skeleton.

To my horror, the wheel on the door started to turn. The goddamn things were smart. The door sat at a thirty-degree angle. They only needed to open it a little, and the water would push it the rest of the way. I grabbed it and held it closed.

“Okay guys,” I said. “Hold on. This might not go as I hope.” With one hand still on the hatch wheel, I pulled the detonator and slammed down on it. There was a ten-second delay followed by a muted thump.

I kept my eye on the map. The entire bridge was nothing but a sea of red dots. Above, Vadim remained, still alive and alone in the room above us. I could see him pacing back and forth. He still wasn’t answering us.

“Nothing happened,” Tran said after a moment.

“Wait for it,” I said. An X appeared on the map. Then another. And then ten. On the other side of the door, the pounding became even more frantic. It sounded as if thousands of hammers were suddenly slamming against the metal wall.

“What was that potion?” Katia asked.

“The potion of bloodlust,” I said. The number of Xs was increasing by the moment, but even as they did, more and more of the babies were entering the ship. “The berserking potion. I don’t know how many it affected when it spread through the water, but it looks like it worked. They may be babies. They may be half octopus. But they’re still sharks. Even if the potion only affected a few of them, once the feeding frenzy starts, they just go nuts. The description says they’ll eventually kill each other once they learn their siblings are edible.”

“Holy cow,” Katia said after a moment.

With four and a half minutes remaining, only a few of the baby sharktopuses remained. They’d torn through each other like wildfire. One of them was pinging about like a damn pinball, but it suddenly stopped and just started floating there. There were thousands of X’s out there.

“Well that was entertaining,” Kevin said, his voice echoing.

“Yes it was, but what are they going to do now?” Magnificent Troy asked. “Those were just the minions.”

Warning: Your oxygen levels are low. Plus you’re just sitting there being all boring and shit.

“Can’t argue with the AI on this one,” Kevin said.

I growled. “Damnit. We’re gonna have to go out there. Everyone take a scroll.”

The world shifted again. I looked down at my indicator, and we were traveling at a good clip, about 35 kilometers per hour, which was why only a few of the depth charges had come close. It seemed Lusca just swam in circles around the circumference of the water quadrant. I wondered if she knew that most of her babies were now dead.

“Hold on,” I said after I took our water-breathing scrolls. I only had to turn the portal an inch before water started flowing in around the seal. I spun the wheel some more and jumped out of the way as water rushed into the room.

Only it wasn’t really water so much as it was blood and ripped and shredded body pieces of dead octo-shark babies. There was a good five seconds of chaos where it felt as if I was just getting pummeled while the announcers howled with laughter. Eventually it settled. Katia formed a spear at the end of her hand and swam forward, pushing her way through the crowded mess. It was pitch dark. I tried lighting a torch, and it wouldn’t let me. I watched as Katia’s dot descended on one of the remaining babies, and she speared it, killing it instantly. Tran and I followed, pushing our way through the thick mess.

“What are we going to do now,” Katia called.

Two minutes.

I pointed at the hole in the window. They couldn’t see me, but I pointed anyway. “Out of the sub. Swim toward the teeth. We need to be in the front of the mouth when she swallows! Use the map to navigate.”

I had a thought, and I cast Wisp Armor on myself. I started to glow as swirling lights twirled around me. The magic protection spell would last seven minutes, and it filled the room with a pulsing, green and red light, illuminating the mass of half-eaten corpses. Damn, I wish I’d thought of this earlier. I could taste their blood in my mouth. Ahead of me, Katia had formed a single eye on her head, as big as a fist. The eye melded into her body as my light reached it. She swirled in the water and skewed another, killing the last of the ones in the room. Tran had a sword in his hand, and he hacked through the corpses like he was blazing a trail.

“What about Vadim?” Tran asked as we pushed toward the window.

He can go fuck himself, I didn’t say. “He’ll be safe in that room for a bit,” I said as we pushed our way through the corpses toward the exit. “Even if he’s fully swallowed, it’ll take a bit for it to break the sub down. I hope.”

“The crawlers are looking for a place to anchor themselves,” Kevin shouted as the timer reached one minute. “Mama is gonna swallow them up!”

We broke free of the corpses just as we moved into the free water inside the shark’s cavernous mouth. It was boiling hot in here, and despite the light of my body, the water was pitch black. Still, we floated high, and I could see the roof of Lusca’s alabaster mouth, a wide, smooth plane. As the shark undulated, however, I caught sight of multiple slits in the roof. As we watched, a single baby fled into one of the slits. More red dots appeared, and suddenly hundreds of the babies were in the water, all disappearing up into the holes. Most of them appeared to be injured.

This was where the babies went, not the front of the mouth like the cartoon depicted.

“Up there,” Katia cried, seeing it the same time I did. “Hurry!”

“I have a better idea,” I said. “Leatherface. Uh, also carpet bomb if we’re moving fast enough.”

“Are you crazy?” Katia called, whirling in the water. “I’m not big enough. I don’t have time to gain the mass. The move is made for the flying house.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Just hold onto the back and keep us wrapped up. I’m gonna cut a pilot hole first, too. Just hold on. And try to avoid the submarine.”

“Do you want me to use the rocket?”

I thought for a moment. We had two different methods to quickly ascend. We had the barrels, which I was pretty sure wouldn’t work at this depth, and we had the rocket, which was nothing more than a pressurized goblin steam boiler that would propel us forward for about thirty seconds. I doubted that would work at this depth also. At least not outside the octo-shark’s mouth. Might was well use it now.

“Do it.”

A fin grew out of Katia’s form, and the small tank appeared. She wrapped it in flesh. The thing was the size of a two-liter bottle of soda, but we knew from experience these things packed a punch when they went off. One of these had helped propel my long-lost copper chopper motorcycle. Thanks to the newly-added pressure valve on the end, we now had the equivalent of a redneck torpedo propeller. I’d only had time to make and pressurize two at my workbench, but we’d used one to test it and make sure it didn’t blow up.

“Uh, what is happening?” Tran asked.

“All you need to do is hold on,” Katia said as she grew wider. A pair braces grew out of her back, grasping onto the both of us and pulling our bodies against hers. In front of us, now a few hundred meters away and barely visible, the massive form of the Akula’s bow sat sideways in the back of the Octo-shark’s throat. It’d gotten completely turned around, and it faced us. We were above it, and I hoped we’d remain that way. As the timer plunged toward zero, I kept my eye on the speed monitor, making certain city boss was still moving at a good speed. She was. Not as fast as the train. But that was okay.

“Ten seconds!” Kevin squealed, his voice going up an octave.

“Okay, I cast first, you turn the valve, and then pull it out,” I yelled. I realized belatedly that as the timer was reaching zero, the music had once again risen in volume. They were also raising the volume of the commentators to compensate.

Carl: Donut, if this doesn’t work, do what we talked about before. Get to Imani and Elle once you hit the next floor.

Donut replied, but I waved it away. The timer hit zero.

Lusca swallowed at the same moment. She, as I hoped, raised her head slightly upward in order to fully get that massive hunk of metal down her throat.

At the same moment, just as we started flow downward, I slammed onto Protective Shell.

I’d done this twice before, using it to kill everything on a train. The spell’s radius was three meters plus a half a meter for every point of intelligence. My intelligence currently sat at 15, meaning the sphere that formed and then rocketed away toward the back of the sharktopus was 10.5 meters in diameter.

I was hoping that the spell would act like a bullet, punching a hole through the city boss, piercing her brain, and then continuing on its way all the way through the tentacles and out the back as her momentum propelled her forward.

Instead, it did something a little unexpected. She stopped dead in the water, as if she’d slammed into a wall. The top half of Lusca’s mouth bent back and opened, breaking as it folded open so much, it curved over her own eyes, cartilage and bone snapping, like the hood of a car that popped open while you were driving down the highway. Teeth shattered as the boss was pushed down and into the ocean floor by the floating, immoveable spell. All the remaining babies were instantly killed as the soft palate of her mouth was suddenly upside down and outside and exposed and squeezed by the pressure of the depth.

The spell’s passage had indeed grievously wounded Lusca, but despite the horrific injury to her mouth, she wasn’t yet dead.

At that moment, however, I didn’t yet see or know what the spell had done. As we moved toward the throat, Katia activated the rocket, which increased our speed. And at the same time, she pulled the giant, 25-foot, activated buzzsaw out of her inventory and held onto the back of it for dear life.

The Leatherface plan was simple. While we flew the house, if we called “Leatherface,” Katia was to drop the giant buzzsaw over the edge and let it hang free. We’d built a chain specifically for it. We’d then use the dangling buzzsaw as a melee weapon for the balloon.

The buzzsaw was heavy, but much lighter than one would think. I’d been hoping that with her forward momentum along with the push toward her stomach, we’d follow the path of destruction wrought by the protective shell, all the way through the shark and out the back. Lusca was so damn big, I didn’t know if that would actually kill her or not, but I hoped we’d get her brain, and if not, do enough damage that it’d let us flee. I had some mini depth charges in my inventory that I’d drop along the way just to help it along.

But instead of rocketing forward, we started to pinwheel.

The enormous pressure of the water pressed onto us, but we were already spinning by the time we exited the octo-shark’s mouth, actually flying in the opposite direction I’d anticipated, like we’d been ejected through the windshield thanks to the boss’s sudden, violent stop. We vomited from the shark’s mouth, still pinwheeling forward, slowed, and then reversed direction, cleaving straight through the center of the octo-shark’s now-on-the-outside upper snout. The screaming buzzsaw was not hampered by the water or the depth, and it cut through Lusca as if she was nothing more than a soft piece of calamari being pierced by a hot knife. We continued to spin, picking up speed and curving as we cut through the shark’s head.

Only when one of the massive tentacles, just as wide as the length of the buzzsaw, slammed down on us did we stop. The rocket fizzled out, the buzzsaw slammed into the rocky ground of the floor, burying itself completely, yet still screaming. Katia let go, causing all three of us to go flying.

My health was slowly going down. My head spun. I tumbled and hit the ground. It felt as if I had a dozen sandbags on my shoulders. I twisted as quickly as I could after I bounced, trying to see what damaged we’d done, but the green-hued world was a sea of upset silt and blood.

A full page of notifications flew by. I could still hear the two announcers, and they were screaming their heads off. The swirling silt cleared, and I saw it.

Lusca, the octo-shark floated on her side on the ocean floor, her mouth horrifically peeled back and split. A jagged line of red curved along the top of the massive, building-sized creature, not perfectly centered, but enough. We’d cleaved right through her tiny little brain.

Behind me, the buzzsaw was buried all the way into the ocean’s floor. It continued to hum. We weren’t getting that thing free any time soon.

Winner!

More notifications flew by. I saw a fan box notification. I waved it all away. I clicked another scroll of water breathing. The music abruptly stopped. Only one notice remained on my screen.

Warning: At this depth, your health will decrease by two percent per second.

Shit.

Tran: Help. I can’t get up.

I saw his dot on the map. Close. Katia had pulled herself to her feet about a hundred meters away.

Donut: CARL I JUST WENT UP A LEVEL, AND I DIDN’T EVEN DO ANYTHING. I SHOULD STAY BACK MORE OFTEN. THIS IS GREAT.

I didn’t have to time to revel in the sheer insanity of what’d just happened. We had to get back to the remains of the Akula. Was it still inside of the shark? I hit a health potion as I tramped toward Tran. I picked him up and pulled him over my shoulder.

“Can you see the boat? If we get inside, we won’t have to deal with the pressure,” I called.

“Yes. It’s about halfway down the shark’s throat,” Katia called, pulling up next to me. She’d reverted to her she-hulk form. We couldn’t swim. We had to walk, like we were pushing through a blizzard. She looked as if she might vomit.

“Okay,” I said, struggling to speak. We didn’t have far to go. “Let’s get back in there.”

~

As we trudged back to the boat, Vadim finally answered us.

Vadim: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I panicked. It was stupid. I sealed the room.

Carl: We’ll worry about that later. Just chill there for a bit. We’re coming to you.

Vadim: I sealed the room. I had to. The door is different. It’s not going to let me open it again if there’s water on the other side. I can’t get out, and I just got a warning about my oxygen levels. I have five minutes left, and then I must use the last escape hatch. I’m sorry.

Goddamnit.

Carl: The boat is still inside the damn shark. I don’t know if it’ll work. It might. It might not. Do you have a shield spell? Make sure you turn it on before you try it.

Katia had, in her inventory, a group of empty, reinforced barrels welded together and attached by a chain that she could pull from her inventory, and they’d rocket to the surface like a balloon. We’d designed them so we’d be able to quickly ascend from a depth of 500 meters. But we were now on the damn ocean floor, and I knew they’d crush like tin cans the moment she pulled them out. The depth charges had gone off, and they were in thicker containers than the barrels.

Maybe if she wrapped herself around them. I didn’t know. We’d have to try.

“Look!” Katia said, pointing up.

I looked. Above us, thousands of the giant jellyfish floated. They were everywhere, glowing blue. They filled the world above us.

“There’s a layer of smaller jellyfish below them, too,” Tran groaned from my shoulder. He was losing five percent of health per second. Luckily we all had literally dozens of healing potions. But even that many would soon run low.

Carl: Uh, Vadim. Maybe I should try to blow the hatch to get you out. I don’t think you should try it.

Ahead, a mighty hissing-noise filled the water. A line of bubbles appeared as the escape pod rocketed up and away, like the glass elevator at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’d popped out at steep angle, but the elevator-like escape hatch curved upward until it was headed straight up.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, following his trajectory. “He punched right through the top of the shark. We should’ve had him do it while it was still alive.”

He also punched through the line of jellyfish like they weren’t even there. He was soon gone. I knew that the elevator surrounding them would peel away once his was out of the water, and he’d land, supposedly gently, in the necropolis. I had no idea how that was going to work. I suspected it’d be through one of the entrance holes at the top, but I wasn’t certain.

“Don’t be too jealous,” Katia muttered. “He’s going to find himself alone in the necropolis.”

“Yeah, at least he’s out of here. You know what we’re gonna have to do, right?” I said. “They’re pretty much making us do it.”

“I know,” Katia said. “We’ll wait until everyone is in safe rooms.”

Vadim: Oh god, oh god. They’re in the pod with me. Oh god.

Carl: What? What?

Vadim: The pain amplifier…

Warning: This message is from a deceased crawler.

“Yikes,” was all I could bring myself to say.

~

Bobby the tomb raider guy didn’t answer me. It didn’t say he was dead on my chat, but we couldn’t wait any longer. Everyone else was in a safe room. Donut, Louis, and Firas were back in Hump Town. They were in the personal space with Juice Box and half the town. Juice Box was not taking the death of her brother well. I was having Donut and Mordecai relay to her what we wanted her to do, and Donut believed she was going to agree.

We weren’t certain enough of the coordinates to the top of the Necropolis, so we had to dial in the location just outside of Pandinus. The plan was simple. We’d use the Gate of the Feral Gods to teleport ourselves to the town and then we’d get our asses to a saferoom as the god was summoned, and then we’d see what happened next.

I was keenly aware that we were possibly about to fuck over everybody in the bubble. Gwen was pretty vocal with this fact, but even she seemed morbidly curious about what was going to happen next. I also worried about the safety of Chris and Maggie, but there really wasn’t anything I could do about it. If the mountain exploded or something, we’d all probably be dead. Not just them.

The necropolis remained half-filled with water. I’d had her turn off the drain once I read how to kill Quezelcoatus. And now thanks to the Map of the Stars I’d received from the city boss corpse, we’d be able to see exactly where she, along with every other boss, was on the map. Katia could actually see her right now, and she was right by the exit, still fully submerged.

Once the storm started in a few hours, the lightning would hopefully hit the tower and zap everything still inside the submerged parts of the necropolis. And probably the water quadrant, too, which was another reason why we had to get the hell out of here.

“Ready?” I said. I’d already dialed in the first watch and placed it in the first spot of the winding box. The second watch was also dialed to the time. We’d stepped back out onto the ocean floor.

“Let’s do it,” Katia said. Tran nodded nervously.

“Remember. Go through quickly. Don’t linger in the middle. I’ll go last.”

I placed the second watch in, closed the lip, and turned the winding mechanism on the box of the watch. It took less than a second for it to start to glow.

Quest Complete. The Gate of the Feral Gods.

I opened the box, and it rumbled in my hand. A swirling portal appeared in front of us, huge.

“Gah,” I cried as the three of us were instantly sucked through before I could even examine it.

We splashed onto the beach outside of the small Pazuzu town, surrounded by a wall of water. I hadn’t realized the ocean water would get sucked in, too. Luckily the portal had closed the moment I’d been pulled through. I looked about to make sure both Katia and Tran had made it. They had.

“Into town,” I said, “Quick.” Even though we were out of the water, I took another scroll of water breathing to stave off the vomiting that would incapacitate me. A steady wind blew across the beach. The sun had already gone down. The three of us turned and ran toward the closest pub.

New Achievement! Who Let the Gods Out?

You have allowed a feral god to enter your current realm. That is the equivalent of dropping a grenade down your pants and shouting “Yolo!”

Here’s a fun fact. Other gods don’t like feral gods. They’ve been thrown into the Nothing for a reason. They tend to react to this sort of thing, depending on who you’ve brought out.

Reward: Whatever is about to happen is going to hit the Dungeon Crawler World blooper reel for sure.

We stumbled toward the closest inn. A Pazuzu stared at us as we burst inside, sopping wet. “Follow me!” I yelled, moving toward the door to the personal space. It didn’t follow.

We fell into the room, which was packed, landing in a heap in front of Donut and Mordecai along with Gwen and dozens of others.

“We made it,” I groaned. I started to vomit seawater onto the floor.

Donut leaped down from the counter and sniffed at me as I continued to heave.

“Really, Carl. You smell terrible. And you have seaweed in your hair.”

Outside, the world rumbled.