Chapters 138 and 139 (Patreon)

Chapter 138

<Crawler Sinjin. 15th Edition> I now worship the goddess Kuraokami. Worst decision ever. The goddess is sponsored by some male soother twat who is treating it like I really worship him. They made this whole system more complicated than it needs to be. If you see a god or if you find a temple or if you find a scroll of prayer, you’re given the option to worship a god. Once you do it, there’s a pawful of benefits but also a bunch of rules you gotta follow. For Kuraokami, if you kill something, you have to touch the corpse with ice at least once a day. Why? Who the fuck knows. I don’t have an ice spell, so I need to go back to safe rooms and get more ice every day.

If I do the ice thing once a day five days in a row, I get a boon. Only you don’t know what the boon is going to be. I haven’t made it five days yet. If you miss a day, the goddess “turns her back,” and you stop getting any of her benefits. If you miss two days, you receive a debuff. If you miss three, you fall from grace and can’t worship them anymore. There’s a 50% chance you’ll get “smited.” Smote. I don’t know what that means, but it ain’t gonna be good.

You can also voluntarily leave the faith, but it comes with an automatic smite.

But worst of all, while you worship the god, the god can sometimes send you messages. The description says it’s rare, but my goddess won’t shut the hell up. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who worships her, and this rat asshole is bored or something and sends me message after message. The last note I got was, “You need to say I’m the prettiest goddess out loud.” I finally told him to fuck off. But now the twat is swearing at me in my messages. I don’t know if they have any real power over me unless he somehow gets summoned or I get smote. As soon as I get to the stairwell station, I’m going to leave the faith and then jump down the stairs. Maybe that’ll save me.

<Note added by Crawler Azin. 17th Edition> This is Sinjin’s last entry. A person in my party was smote by his god, and it made his blindness debuff permanent. Stay the fuck away from gods.

“Carl, the balloon escape hatch thing is gone. If we want to land, we’ll have to actually land it,” Donut said as we prepared for flight.

As I made sure the gas tank was topped off, Katia leaned over the engine, frantically tightening bolts.

She smashed her wrench on one of the cylinders of the radial engine over the left wing. “It’s no wonder these things have such low power. Some of these pistons are completely gummed up. This one wasn’t even attached. It’s a miracle it even flies. This is a terrible idea.”

“They’re always terrible ideas,” I said.

Above, Orthrus whimpered again. We needed to get up there and heal him as soon as possible. I really hoped this worked. We were going to have to worry about silly little details such as landing later.

Since there was nowhere to properly take off, I talked Louis and Firas to temporarily fly the house, which would allow us to drop off the edge of the Twister and hopefully pull up in time. We decided to move out and over the ocean, away from the dog and close to the edge of the bubble.

“I can’t see anything down there,” Firas said, leaning over to peer down. The water quadrant just ended, and the shimmering bottom half of the bubble rose another forty or fifty feet above the top of the water. Beyond it was nothing but darkness. I could see the blurry hints of something glowing not too far away, and I was pretty sure it was the edges of another bubble, but it was hard to see.

“This is probably high enough,” I said. “We need to figure out where the fire god guy is.”

“He’s that way,” Donut said, pointing due east. “The air temperature that way is much higher. And I can see heat wave things coming up from the distant horizon when I turn my glasses to that weird setting where everything goes dark.”

“All righty,” I said.

Down on the land quadrant, I had Gwen and Tran turn on the drain and keep it on, which would hopefully fully drain out the necropolis. I sent them back to the saferoom after that.

If things ever managed to calm down, I wanted to go in there and take a look at the defeated castle. I wanted to seek out the corpse of Quetzalcoatlus and see what, if anything, she had on her. Even though we still had over three days left, I feared we weren’t going to get the chance.

“You’re gonna have to do it here,” Louis called from the roof of the house. He was desperately mending the net of ropes together. “The wind is picking up, and this patch isn’t going to hold.” He tossed the empty roll of magical duct tape back to me. He tossed it high, and I had to jump to grab it. I caught it. Barely. I would’ve throttled his ass if it had fallen off the edge. I returned the roll to my inventory to allow it to regenerate.

Carl: Hey, is that fire god dude still melting your world?

Tserendolgor: JESUS CHRIST YES.

Carl: Okay. On our way to help. I hope.

“Louis, get this thing on the ground right after we take off.” I looked over at Donut, who was playing with the gun on the back of the drop bear. I lowered my voice. “Uh, first make sure we don’t, you know, go swimming. We might need you to pick us up out of the ocean.”

We pulled the drop bear out of the large garage, positioning it facing the wind. Louis lowered the balloon, catching onto the new breeze coming from outside the bubble. The balloon sped up. I sat behind the cockpit, and we spun up the engines, which roared. I barely knew what the hell I was doing. There was the yoke, the pedals, a fuel indicator, a gyroscope thing which I did not understand, the twin throttles, and that was it. Above, I could see Orthrus’s health, and it was deep in the red. Donut remained in the seat behind me.

She cast her Torch spell and somehow plastered the light to the underside of the top wing so it lit up the interior of both of our cockpits, solving an issue I hadn’t even realized we had.

“Ready?” I shouted over the roar of the engines.

Donut grumbled something I couldn’t hear. I gave Katia a thumbs up, and I pushed the throttle, trying to get as much speed as possible. The small biplane rumbled forward and then promptly rolled off the edge of the yard, dirt showering around us.

We dropped like a rock, but flying into the wind like that kept us from going into a full nosedive. I pulled up on the stick as the ocean reached up to us. My stomach lurched like we were on a roller coaster. I held on for dear life as we angled downward. We evened out, and then I felt us starting to rise in the air. I adjusted the rudder with the rocking foot pedal, and we stabilized. I pulled up further. Holy shit, holy shit, it’s working.

Donut: DON’T FLY LIKE THAT. YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE ME VOMIT.

We banked toward Orthrus as I ascended. I moved in a slow and steady curve, overshooting the dog and corkscrewing upward, not wanting to do anything that I couldn’t recover from. I caught sight of the Twister quickly descending back toward the Pazuzu village.

Even the slightest movement of my hand or feet had a massive impact on how the plane moved, and a lot of it was counterintuitive. The whole plane felt as if it’d break into a million pieces if I pushed the stick just an inch in the wrong direction.

My Biplane Pilot skill suddenly rose to three. These skill levels didn’t come with any new knowledge, but the stick suddenly felt less tight. Still, the whole plane vibrated ominously.

As we ascended, I could finally see the twin crowns of the enormous dog. They were like the heads of wolf puppies but with larger ears. The ears on the right head were both perked up, and on the left, one was up and one was down. A massive tongue lolled out of the left head with the floppy ear. Jesus, that damn thing is adorable.

Its health was at about 10 percent. It’d go unconscious soon. We needed to hurry.

As I carefully lined the plane up for a flyby behind the twin heads, I caught another glimmer of distant light beyond the edge of the bubble. The landscape beyond the borders of our world was like a sheet of bubble wrap. Half of them were popped, but an equal number were fully intact. This was the opposite direction from the fire god. The line of bubbles disappeared off into the darkness.

I remembered where we were, which was under the surface of our planet, which meant even though I couldn’t see it, there was a roof up there somewhere. We needed to be careful and not go too high. Ahead, Orthrus’s first mountain-sized head loomed, bobbing back and forth.

“I need to get closer,” Donut called.

I gritted my teeth and kept our current trajectory. We were small and hopefully unnoticeable. “Okay, hold on!”

I finally realized that if I put the dot in the middle of the weird, spinning gyroscope thing, that meant the plane was completely level, neither pulling up or down and straight. There was a little lock on the gyroscope. Out of curiosity, I clicked it. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but then I realized the yoke was locked in place. It was a rudimentary autopilot, designed to keep us stuck on the current trajectory. Huh. It unclicked itself the moment I pulled on the stick.

We approached the back of the dog, perilously close. I could see the individual hairs, like a forest beneath us. The world smelled of wet dog.

“Casting now!”

The whole creature glowed as its health zoomed up about 50%. Donut cast a second time just as we rocketed out of range, bringing it up to 100%, though it immediately started to dip. Both of the heads howled, and I had to jerk on the stick to avoid a collision, causing the whole plane to shudder like a bike rolling over rocks.

The damn thing was hard to fly. It always felt like it wanted to nose dive, and since there was no definitive horizon, it was hard to tell if the plane was even level without looking at the gyroscope.

“Okay, you ready?” I called.

“Don’t do the bumpy thing, Carl,” Donut said.

“Let me circle around. Get the scroll ready.”

We’d received the scroll of Meat Hooks way back on the third floor. A city elf had used the same scroll to lure Mongo away from us and into an alleyway. We, thankfully, didn’t have to be nearly as close to cast this one. The problem was once it was cast, the dog’s attention would suddenly be fully on us. I hoped we could move fast enough.

Before we’d taken off, I’d re-read the scroll’s description.

Scroll of Meat Hooks.

Let’s be real. Every pet owner already has this spell, at least when it comes to their own pets. Sometimes it’s the sound of a can opener. Or a command, such as “chow time, Fido!” Sometimes it’s the wispof a jar of peanut butter being cracked open. No matter what the trigger is, the effect is the same. You do something, and your pets come running.

Meat Hooks works on the same principal. You cast, and pets come to you. Except in this case, the resulting stench of black smoke that emanates from your hand smells like the rancid remains of the bloated corpse of a leprotic muskox after it was repeatedly violated by a randy hyena. In other words, it stinks.

But pets love it. They love it so much, they just come barreling in.

This spell attracts all carnivorous pet-class mobs, whether they are bonded or not, to the source of the stench for a duration of 30 seconds plus ten seconds per point of intelligence of the caster. This spell has a range of 100 meters plus 20 meters per point of Charisma.

Donut’s current intelligence sat at 53, but it was really more than ten points higher than that with the temporary buffs imparted by the good rest bonus and the shower. The system was still “bugged” and didn’t display the proper number, but it would apply it when the spell was cast. Assuming her effective intelligence was about 64, that meant the spell would last just over nine minutes. That should be plenty of time to entice the puppy to get out of the damn water and out of the bubble. That’s all we needed to do to win the quest.

Donut’s charisma was a whopping 120. With the bonuses, the spell would have a range of almost three full kilometers. That seemed like a lot, and it was under normal circumstances, but this monster was just massive. A single leap, and it could likely cover that distance in seconds. If we weren’t careful, we were toast.

I arced around, so I was back over the water and behind the puppy. I was continuously ascending, wary of a potential invisible ceiling. The icy wind whipped at my face. It was goddamned freezing. My new jacket was shitty protection against the cold. The plane sputtered a few times, and I feared we’d reached the plane’s height ceiling. I leveled out, praying the plane held out just a few more minutes.

“Read the scroll,” I called.

The pungent stench immediately started to trail behind the plane, like we’d just blown an engine. Behind us, the enormous puppy stopped whining. We buzzed straight out of the bubble and into the blackness, the smoke trailing us like a train..

“Carl, Carl it smells really bad! Oh my god, I’m going to vomit all over again. Why did I have to cast the spell? I don’t know how this ever attracted Mongo.”

Entering the Lacuna.

“Is it following?” I yelled.

“It’s looking at us, Carl,” Donut said. “Go faster!”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” I called.

A mighty thrashing noise filled the world behind us as the puppy pulled itself off the top of the necropolis and slammed down into the ocean on its back. I looked over my shoulder to see the creature as it howled in indignation. Rocks showered off the top of the necropolis. Paws waved in the air. Water splashed in every direction. The puppy twisted as it turned to face us. The dog yelped as it tipped over the edge of the bubble and tumbled out.

“It’s out!” Donut cried. “We did it!”

I’d been half-expecting the puppy to plummet away and disappear. Instead, it fell, landing on a floor that was much closer than I thought. When the puppy scrambled to its feet, it was actually taller now than it had been before. Both heads howled. A happy tongue continued to loll out of the left head. It made an arooo noise and scrambled after us, awkwardly bounding. The thing was terrifyingly fast.

Quest Complete! Where the Red God Glows!

You removed the puppy from danger! Hurray!

For everybody who was involved in this quest who actually didn’t do anything, shame on you. The next time you’re in mortal danger, I hope you remember this moment when nobody comes out of nowhere to save your ass. At least you all get the same reward.

Reward: You get a new quest!

“Oh fuck me,” I muttered.

Two bubbles loomed in front of us. We traveled at about ¾’s the bubbles’ height. Both domes remained intact, meaning the residents hadn’t yet completed their tasks. The impenetrable walls were opaque, though one of them glowed like a frosted lightbulb. I angled the plane toward the space between them. At the widest part of the bubble, there was about a quarter mile between the two. Plenty of space to fly, but a struggle for the giant dog.

New Quest. The Dumber of the Flunkies.

THIS IS A GROUP QUEST. All survivors of the previous group quest are now a party to this quest. And why the hell not, all Crawlers in Bubble number 18 are also added to the quest. Let’s make it a fiesta.

Your party has been designated Host of this Group Quest.

No parties may opt-out of this quest.

Oh boy, oh boy do we have a situation here. Emberus, god of fire and ash seems to believe his son’s missing puppy is inside of bubble 18. The dog is not, in fact, within that bubble. He’s just outside of 543, having been recently rescued from a painful death. The next step should be easy. You just gotta bring the two together. Once that happens, both Emberus and Orthrus will immediately return to the Celestial Halls and everything will be almost back to normal.

If something happens to the pup, you will fail this quest. If you fail this quest, you will each in turn be smote by Emberus one by one, no matter what floor you’re on. You probably don’t know what that means. You don’t want to know what that means.

Hmmm. Maybe that’s a little too easy. Do you know not a single crawler in Bubble 18 has yet died? The whole world has been turned to lava, and they’re all still alive! That’s just ridiculous. That’s no fiesta. Let me think on this for a minute.

Reward: You will receive a Platinum Quest Box!

“Carl, why is the quest called that?” Donut yelled. “And what did it mean at the end? I don’t like that.”

“I have no idea. Hold on.” I curved the plane around the edge of the bubble. My skill went up another notch. The plane’s shudder eased. A little.

Ahead, I could finally see it. It wasn’t that far. A glowing presence filled the horizon, like a rising sun. It lit up this outside world, more and more the closer we got.

This inbetween world, the lacuna, was more like an egg carton than just a sheet of bubble wrap. Each individual bubble was in a spot of its own, sunken in deep. The “land” of the lacuna, which I still couldn’t see, was only a few hundred feet below the waterline on our quadrant.

Orthrus scrambled toward us, howling happily. The damn puppy seemed to have forgotten he’d almost died a minute before and was now happily crashing through the world outside the bubbles. The thing leaped atop the intact bubbles, which were apparently slippery. It bayed and fell sideways and rolled away. Bark, bark, bark, bark.

The puppy was clearly out of range of the Meat Hooks spell, but it didn’t seem to matter. Spell or not, he had noticed us, and he wanted to catch us.

Donut was shouting insults I couldn’t quite catch. The next two bubbles in line were both popped. The bubble on the left featured what appeared to be a massive cactus. The one on the right was a curved, concrete structure shaped like a half-moon. Both landscapes were only half-lit by the red glow on the horizon.

The puppy pounced out of nowhere, landing heavily on the giant cactus world. It paused to piddle before resuming its chase. I cringed, hoping everybody within the cactus world was okay.

Carl: Jesus, everybody, if your bubble is popped, get in a saferoom. Spread the word!

“It’s going to catch us, Carl,” Donut cried. “If I get eaten by a giant, two-headed cocker spaniel so help me I will never forgive you.”

“If it gets too close, turn off the spell!”

Donut waved her paw frantically. “I can’t turn off the spell!” Her voice had gone up an octave. “There’s no button! There’s usually a button! The smoke won’t stop! The smell is just unbearable!”

It was getting warmer by the moment. Katia’s last-minute tinkering seemed to have worked. We were moving quickly, almost 400 kilometers per hour. We were halfway there. As long as the god’s presence didn’t explode the damn airplane, we’d soon get the dog close enough that the god would notice. Behind us, the dog had veered away to investigate another world. But then its left head howled in our direction, and the chase was on.

New Quest! Get Orthrus.

This is a world quest! All living crawlers will receive this message!

Now it’s a party.

Orthrus, the two-headed puppy is bounding his way happily through the Lacuna, the world that houses the bubbles. This very adorable pup is running back to his former master’s father. Don’t worry. You can’t miss him. He just drenched the folks in bubble 331, and then he knocked down the Sounder Tower in bubble 298.

What a menace!

Let’s kill it.

Reward: Any crawler who kills this cute puppy before he reunites with grandpa will receive the following:

One million gold pieces.

Five level-up potions.

A pet monkey named Jimbo.

Current participants in the “Dumber of the Flunkies” group quest are free to kill the puppy if they are sadistic assholes, but they will not receive the rewards. You know what, never mind. They get the prize, too!

“Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled. “Come on!”

I immediately moved to send out a group message, but both Katia and Elle were already on it, telling everybody they would personally hunt down and murder anybody who so much as shot an arrow at the dog as it passed by their world.

I banked left to move between two more intact bubbles. There was a line of unpopped worlds here, and I moved to fly past them, like we were diving into a ravine. Just as we plunged between the first two bubbles, Orthrus pounced, landing atop a bubble just above our heads. He made a happy arooand bounced twice before sticking a paw down to bat at us.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” I said, pushing the stick down and diving. We were so damn small compared to the monster, he probably couldn’t even see us. He was chasing the massive plume of smoke trailing behind us. The giant paw swiped at the smoke, missing us.

“Carl, this was a terrible idea,” Donut yelled, still shaking her own paw like it was on fire, which made the smoke plume even bigger. She had six minutes left on the spell.

Suddenly, both heads of the puppy yelped in surprise and pain at the same time. The sound was so loud and so sudden, I almost jumped out of my skin. I whipped my head around to look back. The health bar above his twin heads plummeted down as Orthrus fell away and out of sight. He started yelping pitifully and loudly in the darkness.

“Goddamnit,” I growled. “Somebody hit it with a spell or something. Get ready to heal it.”

“Carl, we have to get really close for the healing spell.”

“I know,” I said, pulling up and leaving the protection of the ravine, turning away from the burning horizon. The plane whined as I dared to make a tight curve.

“Someone else is out here!” Donut yelled.

I saw the blue dot on my map, rocketing through the darkness high above us, banking back toward the puppy on roughly the same trajectory as us.

You absolute fuck, I thought.

He’d flown past the dog and hit it with some spell and was now circling back to finish him off.

I didn’t have to see the crawler’s description to know who this was.

I didn’t have the ability to message him directly. I’d only been able to talk to him once, during that first group quest on the third floor. We’d never actually met. There was no group chat for this world chat thing. If that ass managed to kill the dog, he’d effectively murder everyone in both our bubble and bubble 18.

Carl: If someone has Quan Ch in their chat, tell him to back the fuck off.

Chapter 139

Tran: I have him on my chat! I said he’d kill us if he hurt the dog, and he said, “Sorry, but it’s too good of a prize. Plus, if I get that fucking cat in the process it’d be a bonus.”

“What did I do?” Donut yelled, not bothering to put it in chat.

Donut had mentioned how much she hated the “cheater” Quan no less than twenty times since he’d gotten that celestial box at the end of the third floor. I wasn’t surprised that this had somehow gotten back to him. They’d probably shown him clips during an interview.

I sent a quick, frantic question to Mordecai, and he answered with one word.

Mordecai: Yes.

“Hit him with a goddamn magic missile,” I yelled. I put my hand back, holding it out toward Donut. “And give me that potion. Mordecai’s special brew.”

Donut shot a missile, but she missed by a wide margin. At this speed, it was difficult to properly aim and fire. The potion appeared in my hand, and I pulled it into my inventory. Donut knew by now not to ask questions at times like this.

Thanks to the inventory system, it allowed me to prepare the potion without having to actually pull it out. I mentally clicked on the potion in the list and dragged it to the other item Mordecai had given me that same day he’d created the potion for us. The items combined, and a new item was created.

Orthrus was cowering, ears flattened on both of his heads. He’d shoved himself between two bubbles, one popped and another intact, The popped world was heavily forested. If there’d been any sort of raised air quadrant, it was gone now. The dog whimpered as he backed away from the approaching Quan. His health was at 20%.

We lined up behind Quan, who’d lowered and was moving in to strike again. I’d seen his main attack a few times on the recap episode, and it had a relatively short range. It was some sort of blue lightning energy strike that came from his left hand. He’d used it to crash trains on the previous floor.

He’d be in range to strike the fleeing dog again in about twenty seconds.

“Try it again,” I growled.

A magic missile sizzled by my ear as Donut shot directly at the flying man. The bolt hit him square in the back.

He staggered in the air, but nothing else happened. He recovered almost immediately. A health bar didn’t even appear. A translucent shield shimmered for just a moment. He looked over his shoulder at us. He gave a little grin.

“He’s cheating, Carl,” Donut yelled. “He has a shield!”

“It’s that goddamned robe,” I said. The celestial-tier item gave him his flying ability, the lightning attack, and presumably the shield. We’d seen hints of the shield before. Lucia Mar had something similar. Mordecai said the robe also likely added multiple other benefits we didn’t know about, like enormous stat boosts and additional special abilities or spells.

The protection was probably a level-15 Shield spell, but we didn’t know for sure. Shield was one of the spells Mordecai and I had discussed extensively. We were going to use all of our money to buy a tome of it on the next floor so we could give it to Donut.

If this was a level-15 shield, it’d last for as long as his intelligence stat times three seconds, however long that was. It protected against most attacks, including explosions and magic. However, it wasn’t a spell of invulnerability. Psionic, aural, and cloud-based attacks still worked. Blunt force trauma still staggered the caster, and the shield itself had hit points. Do enough damage and *poof* the shield was gone. The total health points of the shield went up based on level. At 15, it was something crazy, like ten times the caster’s constitution.

We’d seen Quan Ch run instead of fight multiple times, so the shield either had a long cooldown or the guy was just a wuss. He was at level 48, one higher than myself. He had an incalculable number of neighborhood and borough boss kill stars over his head. But he fought dirty, and he was like a vulture more than a true predator. He preyed on the weak and the almost dead, stealing kills from others. I was willing to bet he would turn tail the moment he sensed he was in any real danger.

We were moving faster than him and would overtake him in seconds, but he could blow us out of the sky with the flick of a wrist. I’d watched him crush the front of an onrushing train with little effort.

“Donut,” I yelled as we approached. “Set your sunglasses so you can see his heat signature! And then empty the gun into him as we pass! Magic missiles, too!” I leveled the plane and clicked the gyroscope, locking our trajectory in place. If he maintained his position, we’d pass under him by about thirty feet.

Ahead, the massive, mountain-sized Orthrus loomed.

“Carl, he’s going to blow us up!”

“If this doesn’t work, jump!”

I pulled myself up out of the seat and moved to the right, grasping onto the metal pole that connected the top wing to the fuselage. I stepped out onto the lower wing, anchoring myself to the plane as the wind whipped at me and threatened to throw me out into the darkness. The small, starboard propellor whined, right in front of me. I needed to be careful.

“Carl, Carl! What are you doing!”

“Switch your glasses now,” I yelled as I extended my xistera and loaded the hobgoblin disco ball. Quan turned his head to gauge our position, and I saw his eyes go wide at the sight of me on the wing. He banked away and flipped in midair, left hand glowing as I tossed the ball, avoiding the propellor by inches.

His shield was still intact, but the disco ball exploded over his chest anyway, knocking him back. The sticky, sand-like residue clung to the outside of the shield like mud. A rainbow of smoke started to billow from the impact. He waved frantically at it as the smoke rose. He cast a bolt, but it flew wide.

We zipped past Quan, who was still positioned above us. The gun rattled to life. Donut shrieked with joy as she fired the gun with her prey. A double-shot, full powered magic missile slammed into the cloud.

“I hit him! I hit him!”

I loaded a fused hob-lobber, designated it with my new remote detonator skill and tossed it at the growing plume of pulsing, rainbow smoke. Even with my new ability to toss these things twice as far, I’d waited a hair too long to throw it. Still, I set it off right when the ball started to dip. The explosion crackled through the air, twenty feet short of the ever-growing plume.

I knew from experience that was plenty close to do its job.

The sizzling and crackling circle of pulsing rainbow smoke plummeted out of the sky. I couldn’t see Quan himself. The disco-ball remnants were sticky, and they adhered to his chest and followed him as he fell like a comet. He disappeared below.

“Did we kill him? Did we?” Donut yelled.

“No,” I shouted, pulling myself back into the cockpit. I resumed control and banked to the right. We flew over the dog, barely 50 feet over the top of the head. If he reared up now, we’d get splattered. “But he’s gonna be mighty sore and deaf. Hopefully that ran him off. Cast your heal spell.”

Below, Orthrus whimpered. Donut healed him, and I pulled up, angling between two bubbles. We brought the health back up to 70%, which had the unfortunate and immediate side effect of renewing the dog’s interest in chasing us. The Meat Hooks spell still spewed from Donut’s paw.

The thing howled as he jumped to its feet. I turned the plane sharply, growing more confident in my ability to steer, angling back in the correct direction.

“Carl, more crawlers!” Donut shouted just as I saw the new threat.

A metal-skinned dirigible shaped like a fish emerged in front and below us. The slow-moving airship had come out of nowhere. I watched as twin harpoons shot from the flying machine, right at the dog.

“Goddamnit,” I cried.

They were flying too low and too slow. The harpoons fell short of their target, and I watched as three crawlers jumped away as the dog smashed into them, not even noticing their presence. The fish-shaped balloon exploded and disappeared against the fur. I suspected the crawlers who’d jumped out hadn’t fared much better.

“Serves you right!” Donut yelled as we zoomed forward. Ahead, I could now see the god. I could feel him, too, heat rising like we were slowly approaching a campfire.

Emberus. The humanoid god looked asymmetrical from behind. A massive, curved horn erupted from the right side of his head. His left side appeared caved-in, almost like that kid with compression sickness. The horn smoked like an incense stick. The god’s skin was made of curls of orange and red fire, licking up and down, all coming together to vaguely form a muscular human-shaped body. From the descriptions of the others, his skin was normally like gooey, molten rock, and he’d only set himself fully alight the moment he started shrieking at the dog soldier woman. The god was massive, but not as big as I thought he’d be. If he was sized as a regular human, Orthrus would be like a large horse to him. The god was leaned against a bubble, pounding on it with a giant fist, shouting over and over. The bubble wall glowed red.

Sun and Ash God Emberus. Level 250.

Warning: This is a deity. He is invulnerable on this floor.

This is a locked god. There will be no sponsors of this deity this season.

This god has been summoned to this location. Summoning rules apply.

The youngest brother of Taranis, and half of the sun duology, Emberus strongly feels he is the best-suited candidate to ascend to the Celestial Throne. Known to be stoic and indifferent to the suffering of all but those he feels worthy, Emberus can be a just god if the fancy strikes him. The problem is the fancy hasn’t struck in a very long time. He’s usually an unmitigated asshole who’ll arbitrarily burn everyone you know and love just for looking at him funny. He’s considered one of the most unhinged of all the pantheon.

His twin brother is Hellik, another sun god who is quite obsessed with killing both Emberus and big brother Taranis. It’s a very dysfunctional relationship. I guess most families are like this. You probably don’t want to get involved.

Emberus’s very presence can be deadly to crawlers, and that’s just when he’s in his regular form. When he gets emotional, things really start to heat up.

Word on the street is that since his favorite son was murdered by an unknown assailant, Emberus has been acting even kookier than usual. The dude plucked his own eyes out in his grief. It was really gross.

We were still miles away, but the heat was rising by the moment. We wouldn’t be able to get much closer. We needed the damn god to just turn around. He’s blind. That’s not going to make a difference.

He’d somehow sensed the dog soldier woman. But how?

“More, on the ground!” Donut yelled, pointing down.

This was a whole group of crawlers, maybe 15 of them. They were a line of blue dots on the floor between the bubbles, moving toward the dog. I couldn’t actually see them down there in the darkness. But right after Donut pointed them out, a fireball arced from the group and headed toward Orthrus. The spell splashed against the dog, ineffective.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Those idiots are going to get themselves killed.”

“They’re going to kill us if they get the stupid puppy,” Donut replied.

A new spell shot from the group. This was a magic missile, but Orthrus bounded up atop a pair of bubbles and moved out of range, completely oblivious to the danger. He looked in our direction and started barking frantically and jumping. He slipped off and fell forward, rolling over a popped quadrant before jumping back to his feet.

“Do you see anybody else?” I yelled. The plane whined ominously. It was getting harder to breathe the closer we got to Emberus. The wind felt like a hairdryer to the face.

Orthrus yelped once again, pained voice higher-pitched than before. Both heads squeaked and cried and then stopped abruptly. The dog crashed heavily to the ground. Oh no. No, no, no.

I turned the plane around. The dog wasn’t dead. His health was down to 2% and he was Unconscious with a one-minute timer over his head. The front half of the puppy was draped over a popped bubble with water cascading off it. It was a rocky, barren world.

Quan. Goddamn shit stain mother fucker. He’d recovered and returned. He’d hit the dog from behind. In the distance, I could see the tiny, glowing speck of him floating there in the darkness. He was moving in to finish the dog off.

The goddamned sun god was too busy shouting to even hear all of this happening a few miles behind him. I aimed right at the dog, putting the plane into a shallow dive. I punched the throttle.

“Grab the stick,” I yelled as I clicked the gyroscope and jumped onto the wing. The plane started to shudder.

“Grab the stick?” Donut shrieked. “What do you mean, grab the stick! Thumbs, Carl! Thumbs!”

“Pull up as soon as I throw!”

I loaded the potion ball into my xistera. It was filled with Mordecai’s Special Brew, which would immediately heal the puppy and make him near-invulnerable for thirty seconds. Mordecai had confirmed it’d work on the dog. I just had to hit the damn thing before Quan got close enough to cast his electrical attack.

Donut continued to scream as we dove. I tuned her out, and I put all of my strength into the throw. Far on the other side of the puppy, Quan’s left hand crackled to life. I hurled the ball, grunting with the effort. It shot through the air like a bullet. It disappeared from sight, lost as we rapidly dove toward the colossal left head.

The ball hit the puppy at the same moment Quan attacked.

“Yes!” I cried as the dog glowed. His health rocketed to the top. It did not wake him up. “That’s right you worthless… gah!”

The plane pulled sharply upward as I clutched onto the wing brace. We whipped around like in a haywire carnival ride. I immediately activated sticky feet, which momentarily saved me from flying right off the wing. Donut was in the main cockpit, screaming with her paws wrapped around the stick. She was all the way on her back against the small seat, and she had a death grip on the yoke. The plane did a complete loop as I also screamed, immediately regretting every life choice I’d ever made that led us to this moment. We looped again, this time rolling starboard. The plane groaned. Something flew off the back rudder.

“Let go of the stick!” I cried as we tumbled through the air. I forcibly pulled myself headfirst into the cockpit. I desperately held onto the seat as my back legs disconnected from the wing and dangled in the air. Donut did not let go.

I grabbed the cat and pulled myself all the way in, scrambling to sit upright and planting my feet on the rudder pedals. The plane rolled through the air, corkscrewing, centrifugal forces tossing us every direction at once. I had no idea how to correct a roll. Something had fallen off the back of the plane. Donut’s paw still trailed stinking black smoke, and it was now trailing it directly into my face, blinding me.

I centered out the pedals on the floor. They were sticky and pulled to the right. Something broke when I forced the pedals into place.

I closed my eyes, instead focusing on the controls in my interface. I gently worked the stick—which still had a screaming Donut attached to it—attempting to straighten the plane out.

We continued to spin, but less violently. I opened my eyes, and I took in the scene. I’d only managed to partially stabilize the plane. I’d stopped the barrel-roll spinning, but now we were spiraling downward, like we were going down a drain. I tried pulling up, but the plane barely reacted.

We were going to crash into the side of the puppy or land into the rock quadrant in about twenty seconds. Orthrus was still unconscious, but his health was topped off. Quan was moving in toward us, hands glowing. I could tell he was pissed off. I wondered if he still had his shield spell active. I suspected not. Below, I caught sight of something else. Someone—probably that same group as before—were attempting to kill the dog from the floor of the lacuna with a parade of spells. They didn’t seem to realize Orthrus was invulnerable for another 15 seconds.

Quan was going to kill us before we crashed. And then either him or those idiots on the ground were going kill the goddamned dog before that idiot Emberus noticed the giant battle right behind him.

I only had one choice. I went with the nuclear option.

The moment Emberus’s description popped up on my display, I received the option to “worship” him. The notes in the cookbook all warned against this. I quickly moved to the god tab. I only had the option to worship two different gods. Grull and Emberus. I clicked Emberus.

An Are You Sure? popped up. I clicked Yes. A wall of text appeared. I waved it away.

I clicked the gyroscope in place.

“Carl, what’s happening? Why are you glowing?” Donut asked.

“Get on my back and hold on. Do not let go. Use your claws if you have to. Take the half-splat potion.”

I stood up in the cockpit as Donut clung to my back shoulders, placing herself between my cloak and my jacket. Her claws clung painfully to me, even through the fabric of both the jacket and the trollskin shirt. I reached up and grabbed the back of the top wing.

“Don’t let go!” I yelled. She trembled against my back.

There was a small, gnome-sized handhold here. I used it to bodily pull myself to the top of the upper wing. I firmly planted my feet, and I stood tall atop of the death-spiraling biplane. Quan angled in, left hand glowing blue, right glowing red—which was new. I pulled the celestial grenade from my inventory, I activated it, and I threw it with all of my strength directly at him.

He immediately shot the red bolt at the grenade in an attempt to intercept it. The ball froze in the air about fifteen feet in front of him. I had no idea what the spell was or how it was supposed to work, but it had stopped the attack in midair.

And, ultimately, it made no difference whatsoever.

~

The celestial grenade had been a sponsor prize to Chris and Maggie from the Skull Empire, and it was supposed to have been used to summon a pain god to kill me. Instead, I used Prince Maestro’s gift to not only save myself, but everybody in two different bubbles.

The ball blinked once, and it seemed to wink out of existence. Quan moved to fire his main attack. I leaped from the top of the spiraling plane, plummeting out of range.

It didn’t matter. Quan never got a chance to fire his spell.

Emberus appeared, having been involuntarily summoned to this location from just a few miles over. As I plummeted out of the sky and toward the ground below, I twisted in the air to see the god manifest above us. I cringed, preparing for the heat. It never came.

He took on a strange form, different than before. He was nothing more than a massive, floating head, huge, angry, glowing red. His empty eye sockets trailed smoke and rained blood. The spiraling drop bear hit him right in the nose and exploded.

You have been imbued with Divine Intervention. You are invulnerable for sixty seconds.

I was invulnerable. Donut wasn’t.

Quan had been in there somewhere, and he wasn’t there now. I didn’t know if he’d been killed or not, but if he was still alive, he’d been knocked from the sky.

The head was huge, city-sized, but still smaller than the god had been just moments before when he’d been pounding on the side of bubble 18.

It looked as if we were going to miss hitting Orthrus. Instead, we’d land in what looked like a flat valley that was part of the land quadrant of this world. There was a level stairwell just sitting there not too far away, out in the open. I could see the light shining off of it, reaching desperately into the sky like a spotlight.

“Orthrus,” the god said, his relief-filled voice flowing into the world, filling the valley with sound. The blood pouring from the god’s eyes turned to rain. “Orthrus. There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

The god was supposed to hang around for sixty seconds. He didn’t. Even before we hit the ground, Orthrus just blinked away. I twisted, and the god was also gone, leaving a shimmering wake in the sky. The world around us plunged into darkness, lit only by the spotlight from the stairwell location.

I flipped onto my stomach. “Hold on,” I cried.

We slammed into the ground. Donut, on my back, cried out in pain as she bounced up off me. The wind knocked out of me, but my bones didn’t break. I took no damage. I jumped to my feet, breathing.

Entering the land quadrant of the Soulless Prophet.

Donut was unconscious. Her health had been knocked all the way down to 5%, and I realized her skin was smoldering, her hair singed. Smoke had finally stopped pouring from her paw. I immediately cast a heal scroll, and her health returned. I rubbed her fur, and my hands came away black. The god, even in the giant floating head form had been blazing hot. The Divine Intervention buff that came with the celestial grenade had protected me, and I hadn’t even realized it.

The only light came from the stairwell, a quarter of a mile away. It reminded me of when it all started, of that stairwell shining into the freezing, night air.

Something slammed into me. I went flying back. Quan. He’d sneaked up and hit me with his lightning attack. My invulnerability was still active for another few seconds. You goddamn idiot. I leaped to my feet, turned toward him, and I charged.

The half-elf’s eyes went huge. I punched him straight in the face with my bare fist, and he flew back. A health bar appeared.

“You murderous fuck,” I yelled as he scrambled to his feet. “I’m going to rip you to pieces.”

A knife appeared in Quan’s hand, and he stabbed at me. The knife exploded in his hand just as my invulnerability ran out. The buff was invisible, I realized. I had no indicator over my head saying I was invulnerable. There was no other explanation as to why the idiot would’ve attacked me now.

I was now able to be hurt, but he didn’t know that. I gasped, and I tried to hide it. Even though the god was gone, the air felt as if it was on fire. The ground, I realized, was burning hot to the touch. It didn’t hurt my feet, but I could sense it. The stench of burning flesh filled this world.

I growled, anger building and building. I thought of what he’d done. What he’d purposely done.

“Don’t you realize,” I said. I was unable to make a coherent sentence come out. “Don’t you realize?”

Don’t you realize what you’ve done, I was trying to say. You only care about yourself. You’re stronger than all of us, but you don’t care. Think of all the good you could do. Think of how much better we’d all be if you weren’t such a selfish prick. But that’s not what came out. “Don’t you realize,” I said again, the words a jumbled growl. “You’re a bully. You’re a bully and nobody likes you. That’s why…” I caught myself.

The man turned and tried to fly away. I grasped him by the magical robe, and I slammed him to the ground. He hit face-first into a rock, and teeth went flying. I activated Talon Strike on my foot and slammed down. But the man was quick, and he rolled away.

Stop, a distant voice cried in my head. Stop. He’s not the enemy.

Fuck you, I said to that voice. He is the enemy. He’s the worst kind.

Quan was a small guy, but he was fast. Blood poured from his mouth. He glowed as he healed himself.

I lunged, and he continued to roll on the ground. He suddenly leaped to his feet, backflipping. His hand glowed blue. I jumped forward, grabbed his glowing left arm, and I yanked it, trying to interrupt the spell and pull him off balance.

At the same moment, he tried once again to take flight and escape, only this time he used some sort of special ability that caused him to launch away like a rocket, superman-like. The crawler screamed in agony as I fell back onto my ass. He took flight, disappearing into the darkness. Stunned, I watched the trajectory of the blue dot on the map. He landed a quarter-mile away, and he stumbled into the stairwell station, disappearing.

“Coward,” I shouted, my rage bubbling over. “This isn’t over!”

Carl: Tran, send a message to Quan for me. Tell him that was just a deposit.

I looked down at the severed arm in my hand. It was his whole damn arm, all the way to the shoulder. He had three rings on his fingers.

I turned, and Donut had awakened. Her luminous eyes blinked at me. I couldn’t read the expression on her face.

I sat on the hot ground, which was rapidly cooling. Fog filled the world.

Holy shit, well that happened.

Before I could say anything else, the announcement came.

Quest Failed! Get Orthrus.

Not a single one of you was able to kill a level 10 puppy. A puppy. It’s no wonder you guys keep dying.

Jimbo the monkey is never going to get adopted now!

As a penalty for failing the quest, all safe rooms will only serve monkey soup and saltine crackers for the remainder of this floor.

I groaned, rolling onto my back. I felt as if I’d been run over.

Quest Complete! The Dumber of the Flunkies!

You saved a sweet, innocent puppy! He’s now frolicking on the twelfth floor where he will soon resume his training. Nun-defiling is back on the menu!

Reward: You’ve received a platinum quest box!

I briefly wondered who lived here in this bubble. I didn’t see anybody, mobs or crawlers. They’d likely all fled when Emberus started his rampage. I could go to sleep here. That, of course, would be a terrible idea.

Donut just sat next to me. She still hadn’t said a world since we’d jumped out of the plane.

I sent a message to Imani.

Carl: Might as well get started.

Imani: Are you sure? Shouldn’t we wait until you’re back?

Carl: Don’t have time. If a bunch of gods start popping up, we’ll deal with it when it happens.

I still had a whole page of notifications to read. I was putting it off. I now had two new tattoos, one on the back of each of my hands. Each was of a sun. Both tattoos glowed vaguely orange.

“You know what, Carl? I’ve decided something,” Donut said, finally speaking. She released Mongo, who squawked and started investigating this strange, new world.

“Yeah, Donut?”

“I think they’re right about you. I think you’re crazy. Like, not a little weird crazy. Not guy who eats cereal without milk crazy. But crazy, crazy. Straight jacket crazy.”

I pulled the cat into my lap, and then I pulled her to my chest. She purred heavily into my ear.

****
Woohoo! Happy weekend everyone! It's been a busy week. My band has their first gig in a very long time tomorrow. It's an outside, socially distanced affair, but it's still a gig. Can't wait. The book is out and is doing well. I am partially vaccinated. And best of all, we still have a surprise or two left in this book. Everyone is expecting something to happen, but will it happen like people think?

Thanks for your continued support.