Chapters 140 and 141 (Patreon)

(Too many words for one post. This is 140 and 141, and immediately after I post this, I will post 142 and Epilogue A. A total of 20K words. I'm going to sticky THIS post)

Chapter 140

<Note by Crawler Justice Light, 8th Edition> I made a mistake today. I killed an NPC I shouldn’t have. We are a strong people, the skyfowl of the white cliffs. We do not take insults without retribution. He was a proprietor of a store selling trap supplies in a large settlement here on the sixth floor. I needed what he had, but he insulted me, so I killed him. It let me take the item that was on the shelf. But he had so much more. He always said the items were in the back, but there was nothing there. I think everything was in his inventory, but it appears shopkeepers don’t drop their full inventory if you kill them. Now the town guards are after me, and the shop, which was a good source of supplies for me and many others, is just gone, and I fear the whole operation is going to fail thanks to my actions. It was the only trap shop on the whole floor.

This is something we should note and remain aware of. Do not make the same mistake as me. Killing of these innocents should be kept to a minimum, unless absolutely necessary.

Time to Level Collapse: 3 days, 7 hours.

Tserendolgor: He’s gone. The world is still too hot. Everything melted. One of us can fly, and she’s going out there to put the last crystal in place, which’ll pop the bubble. We’re gonna have to go down the stairs right after. Thanks for the platinum box, too. I got an upgrade for my flamethrower. A guy in my group got a tome of Heal Party. Everyone is getting good stuff.

Carl: Okay, good. Try to do it as soon as you can. You don’t want to be sitting around in a popped bubble for this next part.

“Carl, what in god’s name is on the back of your hands?” Donut asked. “What did you do?”

I examined the twin tattoos. They were round, tribal-style tats of the sun. The tattoos were almost identical, but not exactly. The rays coming off the sun on my right hand were curled, and on my left, they were little triangles. The difference was subtle. Each tattoo was black, but with an orange glow. I could feel them there, warm and vaguely uncomfortable.

“I’m guessing they’re a sign of my new religion,” I said as we trudged toward the stairwell. We wanted to examine it to make sure Quan really went down there. Plus there had to be a saferoom around here somewhere. Even if everything got destroyed, they would persist.

The ground was too hot for Donut, and she rode on my shoulder. We’d had to put Mongo away, too. The area was barren. “Religion? Whatever do you mean? You can’t join a religion, Carl. You wake up at noon on Sundays. I don’t even know what the ten commandments are, but I’m certain I’ve watched you break almost all of them multiple times.”

I told her what I did and why I did it. Before I could finish, we were interrupted.

Mordecai: Which one of you two idiots is responsible for this?

Carl: What?

Mordecai: A shrine just appeared in the saferoom. It’s a sun disk with a cup and a skull. It doesn’t say what god this is for, but I’m guessing it’s Emberus.

Donut: CARL DID IT. DON’T GET MAD AT ME.

Donut sighed. “Really, Carl. We could’ve avoided all this just by going down the stairs.” She examined the twin suns again and clucked with disdain. “With your new jacket and bandana and tattoos, you look like someone whose picture gets put on the news because he did something involving indecent exposure and a Wal-Mart. What does this new religion actually mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said, grinning sheepishly. “I’m kind of scared to click on the notification.”

“Don’t be a baby, Carl. Guys covered in disgusting tattoos shouldn’t be babies. Look, there’s a saferoom that way. You can find out what you did while we walk. Let’s get inside before Imani and Katia start blowing everything up.”

I sighed, and I pulled up the notification as I turned toward the saferoom. I couldn’t see it in the darkness, but it was only about a quarter mile beyond the stairwell.

Congratulations, Crawler. You have devoted your life and fate to one of service. You are now an adherent of Emberus, God of Sun and Ash!

Your ranking in the church: Acolyte.

Warning: You do not have a cleric or paladin class. As such, you may not ascend past Devotee. See the Deity tab for more information.

Emberus, the personification of a star’s destructive power, welcomes you into his warm embrace. He welcomes all who accept his core philosophy. Emberus believes power, once held, must never sit idle. It is to be used and never squandered.

Because of your newfound faith, you must adhere to the following rules, lest you provoke the god’s wrath.

· You mustn’t cause harm to fellow worshippers of Emberus.

· You must stop and offer a single drop of blood at an Emberus temple at least once a day. If no temples are found in a 30-hour period, you must make the offering at the sun shrine that has now appeared in your personal space.

· Five percent of all looted gold must also be tossed into the shrine.

· You may not own or wield any magical gear that is blessed by the god Hellik.

· You must successfully complete all issued church quests.

A drop of blood and some coins once a day didn’t seem so bad.

I didn’t know what a “Church quest” was. I couldn’t remember seeing anything like that in the cookbook, but that was the most worrisome of all the rules. Donut was going to be pissed by the 5% gold payment, but we could work around it by making her loot the majority of our kills. I didn’t have anything in my inventory that had anything to do with Hellik. I moved on to the benefits.

All adherents in good standing with the God Emberus receive the following holy benefits:

· Access to all Temples of Emberus.

· All temples of Emberus now appear on your map.

· All temples of Hellik now appear on your map.

· All worshippers of Emberus will be indicated with a symbol.

· All worshippers of Hellik will be indicated with a symbol.

· All Hellik-worshipping NPCs, crawlers, and mobs killed by you will now offer 100% more experience.

· Immunity to Burn effect.

· All physical attacks by you have a 10% chance to inflict Burn.

· Free access* to Club Vanquisher, regardless of previous and current affiliations.

· Every five consecutive days of worship, you will receive a boon from the god.

· Additional benefits and responsibilities will become available as your worship circle increases.

That was actually pretty good, especially the access to Club Vanquisher. There was an asterisk after “Free Access” without any sort of corresponding information, which was worrying. But I guessed I’d figure that out when I tried to get inside. Last I heard, however, the club was still closed thanks to Prepotente going apeshit.

The burn effect was good. It was similar to poison, where it continued to damage the target over time. I wasn’t sure what the benefits of temples were. There was very little information about this stuff in the cookbook, likely because this was all cleric territory, a class that’d never receive the book in the first place.

The only temples I could recall seeing were entrances to Club Vanquisher, but I hadn’t noticed if they were for different deities. I knew all clerics and paladins had to pick a god upon class selection, and they’d all been doing this stuff since the third floor, so temples had to be all over the place. I had one additional notification waiting for me.

Message from Emberus.

I swallowed. It was set up just like a regular chat notification, but it glowed with a golden light. I clicked on it.

Emberus: My child, you have reunited me with my son’s lost pet. I am grateful. I have granted you a boon. But our work is not done. I have two tasks for you.

You have a received a boon from your god!

Your constitution has been raised by 25% for 30 hours!

The message seemed so normal. It was odd that the message came to me this way. The system described him as unhinged, but nothing about any of the benefits or requirements seemed too crazy. If all the boons were this good, then it was totally worth it. The moment I clicked away from the message, I received two new notifications.

Unlike regular quests, these came in the god’s gravelly voice.

New Quest. Find Out Who Killed My Son.

Geyrun was murdered. Find out who did it and why. My only clue is that the most obvious suspect, my brother Hellik, was in council with the rest of us when it happened. Visit the high cleric at the Emberus Shrine at Club Vanquisher for additional details.

Time Limit: There is no time limit for this quest. However, you will receive a smite if you attempt to exit the 18th floor of the world dungeon before this task is complete.

Reward: That depends on who did it.

Based on all the previous hints at this, I figured this was coming. At least there was no hurry. I clicked over to the next notification. Emberus’s voice took on a decidedly angry tone for this one.

New Quest. Kill Hellik.

My twin brother Hellik, god of Sun and Life seeks to kill both me and my older brother, Taranis God of Thunder and regent to the Celestial Throne. He is a fool. He is a danger. He has no right to exist. As an adherent, it is your task to kill him. You will receive a bonus if his death is painful.

Time Limit: Hellik must die before you reach the 12th floor. If he still lives, you will receive a smite.

Reward: Slaying Hellik will result in a Celestial God Box.

Warning: Killing a god may have some unintended consequences for all crawlers.

I took a deep breath. If Hellik looked anything like Emberus did, killing him wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Gods were invulnerable and level 250.

Again, this was something to worry about later. The idea of a celestial box was intoxicating, but the notion of harming one of those things was absurd. Even with Katia’s special bolt that removed their invulnerability for a few seconds, it just seemed impossible.

We paused at the stairwell as I explained to Donut and Mordecai all of the god’s benefits and tasks. As expected, Donut lost her mind at the 5% tithe.

“Well you’re just going to have to immediately remove yourself from this religion. It’s as simple as that, Carl. I don’t know what you were thinking. We’ll just have to live with whatever this smite business is. Surely it can’t be worse than five percent. It’s an outrage!”

“Five percent is a lot, but it’s nothing compared to some religions. You know Bea’s parents paid twenty percent of their income to their church? They used to get mad at her when she didn’t donate, too.”

“Twenty percent? I find that hard to believe, Carl.”

“It’s true. And her dad was a lawyer. They made a ton of money.”

“Wow. It’s no wonder they were always so grumpy.”

Mordecai also called me an idiot, but he was distracted. He said we needed us to get back to the saferoom as soon as possible. Thanks to Samantha’s help, he’d figured out the yam thing. He had a potion for me.

The stairwell was placed atop a perfectly-square, large sheet of metal with a small lip around it, like a giant cookie sheet that was about 10x10 feet. The stairwell was just a magical hole cut in the center. I wondered what had happened here in this bubble.

Fresh blood splattered on the metal. That was from Quan’s passage. I smiled, looking down at the bare arm still in my hand. I hadn’t managed to rip or tear the robe, unfortunately, but I was pretty sure I’d stopped him from using his lightning attack for good. Some crawlers had a limb regeneration benefit, but the spell was pretty rare. And apparently the limb didn’t just regrow right away. Hopefully he learned his lesson.

“He’s going to try to hurt us now,” Donut said, looking down at the arm. “We already have Maggie and Maestro and Lucia after us. You should have killed him.”

“I would have, but he got away,” I said.

“Are you really going to keep the arm? Because that’s really gross, Carl.”

“Of course I’m going to keep it.” The saferoom now appeared on my map, but I still couldn’t see anything. Donut said it was a hatch into the ground.

He had three rings on the fingers. I pulled the first one off. It was a simple plus two ring of strength. These things had been pretty common on the first two floors. I put it on, making it my fifth ring. I could wear a total of ten rings, but I’d try to avoid putting one on my thumbs if I could.

The second ring was more interesting.

Rockard’s Ring of Sniping.

This amber-stoned ring is named after Rockard, one of the dungeon’s most infamous crawlers. This orcish warrior was known for his uncanny ability to swoop in at the last moment and steal glory from other crawlers, gaining the best loot and experience. Everybody hated him. It was great!

Fun fact. This guy led his season’s top 10 list until he was knifed in his sleep by his own mother. Luckily for you, crawlers can’t be killed by other crawlers in saferooms anymore. A shame, really.

Wearing this ring imbues the following benefits:

The Ripe benefit.

The Loaded benefit.

I looked up both of the benefits.

Ripe.

All creatures with less than 50% health are indicated on your map. This does not increase your map’s view, but used in conjunction with other skills such as Pathfinder, it makes being a glory-stealing asshole really easy.

No wonder Quan had received such a reputation. The description was correct. Something like this made experience sniping simple. I remembered what had happened at the end of the last floor when he’d attempted to kill the province boss that Miriam Dom and Prepotente had been trying to kill. He’d screwed it up and fled.

The next benefit probably hadn’t been too useful thus far. That would’ve changed for him starting the next floor. I grinned.

Loaded.

All non-hidden creatures wearing magical gear are indicated on your map. Particularly useful when you only want to hang out with the real fashionistas and not just the posers wearing fake shit. Also good if you want to sneak up behind someone, bonk them on their head, and steal all their stuff.

I also added this ring to my finger.

The last ring wasn’t enchanted. I blinked at that until I realized this was a ring from before. It was a gold band stuck on his index finger. It didn’t come off easily, like it was too small. I twisted and pulled. The finger crunched. “Whoops,” I muttered.

The description just said Sappy gold ring. Worthless. Toss it. I held it up to the light orb floating over us, and I could see a few faded characters carved on the inside of the band. “For Daddy.” I shoved the ring back on the finger, but it wouldn’t go all the way. I pushed it to the first knuckle and then pulled the whole thing into my inventory.

I touched the metal sheet containing the stairwell. I was expecting it to be burning hot, but it was cool to the touch. I pushed it like a sled all the remaining way to the saferoom. It moved easily.

I figured it’d be best to have an escape directly outside the safe room. I didn’t want to stay here in this weird world since we had so much to do, but we were stuck for the moment, and it was better to be prepared.

Katia: Louis just ate some monkey soup and got sick. He rushed into the personal space bathroom before I could stop him.

I cursed and immediately moved to my menu, clicked over to the second tab of my scratch pad, and I erased everything in the notes section, including the map and the coordinates. I wrote: Louis, if you see this, don’t say a word. The words underlined themselves one by one as the magical quill started to write on the paper attached to the inside of the toilet-stall door. The underlining stopped at Louis, if you see.

Warning: You are out of ink.

I suppressed a growl. Last I’d checked, we’d still had half of a jar left. The container sat on a little shelf I’d installed on the inside of the stall, and both Katia and Donut knew by now to be careful when they pushed the door open since the whole thing wobbled. That idiot must have spilled it, especially if he was rushing toward the toilet and slammed into the door.

The main bathroom in the personal space was like the bathrooms in regular saferooms. You walked in, and there was a sink and mirror against one wall. The upgraded shower was on one side in the pink-tiled room, and the stall was on the other. The metal stall door had a lock on it and looked just like any typical bathroom stall one would find anywhere from before. They were not exclusive spaces like the random ones throughout the dungeon. Inside the wide stall there was a single toilet, a stand-up urinal, and a magical litter box. Mordecai, as a shapeshifter, apparently didn’t ever use the bathroom unlike Katia.

NPCs couldn’t enter the bathrooms, or any of the other rooms like the training room or crafting room, without being escorted in. When the dromedarian kids needed to go, we sent them back out into the safe room or just told them to hold it. If that wasn’t possible, like when a god was outside trashing the world, Katia escorted them in and removed the paper, ink, and quill before they could see it and say something out loud.

Fellow crawlers were a different story. They had free access to the bathroom once they were inside—not including the shower. However, we told everyone to use the bathrooms out in the attached saferooms instead. Katia said it was because they gave us limited supplies, which was true, but it was also because the stall was now the only place we could trade messages without anybody seeing.

We’d started trading messages by using one of Mordecai’s dry erase markers against the interior metal, but the cleaner bot kept erasing it. I eventually figured out that the magical paper, pen, and quill set—the Coffee Shop Author Kit—worked even better since it was two ways. I attached the paper to the interior wall using a magnetic clip I’d looted from the Juicer’s boss room all the way on the first floor. If Katia wrote something using the magical pen, It’d appear in my scratchpad, and I could respond right away. Donut could also use it, but it required her to jump on the shelf housing the ink and to write on the paper using her mouth. She’d only attempted it once. She wrote, I AM NOT USING THIS, CARL, and that was it.

Katia had removed everything once we packed the personal space with refugees, but she’d just replaced the quill and paper to relay some information about the coordinates from her latest calculation. She had failed to remove it before Louis barged in.

Louis: Hey Carl, you didn’t tell me your bathroom was haunted! Also, don’t eat the monkey soup. It’s gross.

Carl: We’ll be inside in a minute. Why don’t you check out the magical shower? You won’t get the buffs, but I think you can still use it.

Louis: Uh, okay.

That would shut him up for a minute.

We finished positioning the stairwell by the saferoom hatch, which was a round, trap door in the rocky ground. I pulled it open, and I went down a short ladder into a standard-looking pub.

Entering the All-Seeing Spleen.

The saferoom’s proprietor was a human-sized cyclops guy who appeared surprised at our entrance. He was dressed in rags and had a homeless look about him. His name was Xander.

“Hey,” the man said. “I thought you lot left. What was all that rumbling outside?”

“Just a god,” I said. “He’s gone now.”

Xander the cyclops nodded. “At least the prophet is dead. If you want food, you’re out of luck. All of my supplies just disappeared. I just have cans of Jimbo soup. And crackers.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We’re just passing through.” I paused before the entrance to the personal space. “Hey, do you know if there are any Desperado Clubs near here?”

The man leaned back and rubbed his grizzled chin. “There was one the next crater over, but it’s quite a walk. Dunno if it’s still there. There was one in the tunnels, too, but since the Rat Queen died, the bloodworms took over, and I wouldn’t dare go in there.”

“Thanks,” I said. I tossed him a gold coin. He tried to catch it, but he missed by a wide margin. We entered the personal space.

~

Carl: We’re in the space now. It doesn’t look like we can get to a Desperado Club easily, so you’re gonna have to run it. Katia is coming over now to help with the coordination. Remind those guys that it has to be quick. How many bubbles are we doing?

Imani: Only eight bubbles have met the requirements. The eighth one only has one crawler in it. It’s just over 500 crawlers total, and most of them are in the first four groups. There’s several more begging for our help, but they’re gonna have to wait until phase two.

In order for us to help people trapped inside bubbles, they had to meet a few requirements. First, they needed someone with access to the Desperado Club. Second, all survivors of the bubble had to be in the same quadrant.

This second requirement was a tough one. We could only feasibly open one gate per bubble. It meant three of the four castles had to be taken, everyone else had to be dead, or some combination thereof. Sometimes people weren’t 100% sure if another quadrant was empty of crawlers. Those guys got put on the standby list. We didn’t do it to be assholes, but we weren’t about to unleash a feral god in a closed bubble filled with crawlers who couldn’t escape.

That rule was instituted by Imani in exchange for her helping with this. She absolutely would not help a bubble’s population escape if it meant leaving someone behind, even if it was only one person.

Elle, apparently, had a knack for telling if someone was lying. She, Katia, and Imani were conducting the interviews at the Desperado, and she’d already weeded a few crawlers out after it was determined they were lying about the populations of their quadrants. Honestly, I was glad I wasn’t a part of the process. I really wished there was a way to mass-pop bubbles, but if a god such as Emberus couldn’t get inside one, then it didn’t seem possible.

We still had three days left. We told everyone who didn’t meet the requirements to do their best. We’d help in any way we could, but there was only so much we could do.

Donut: ALSO, TELL THEM THAT IF THEY TRY TO STEAL THE GATE, CARL WILL RIP THEIR ARMS OFF LIKE HE DID TO QUAN.

Imani: Did you really rip his arm off?

Donut: ALL THE WAY TO THE SHOULDER. IT CAME OFF LIKE A PIECE OF CHICKEN. CARL KEPT THE ARM AND IS GOING TO USE IT AS A BACK SCRATCHER.

Elle: God, I hope they put that on the show tonight.

Carl: Remind them how dangerous it is. Don’t linger. Just hop right through and stay away from the open gate.

The plan was pretty simple. Everyone in each group had to gather outside the entrance of the Desperado Club in their bubble. The person in the first group would enter and obtain the gate pieces. Once outside, they’d dial into the coordinates provided by Katia, and the gate would open. Since the distance wasn’t that great, the amount of time was usually less than a minute for the portal to open. The gate would open, and they’d all go through. They would end up in Hump Town just outside the Desperado. The gatekeeper would be the last. The moment they went through, the gate would close, and a feral god would appear in their still-closed bubble. While this was happening, the gatekeeper would return to the Desperado and hand the gate to the next in line, who would do it all over again.

Once the gate was handed off, Langley’s team would escort the refugees to the stairwell, where they would descend. We didn’t want a huge crowd gathering atop the bowl—which was now a half bowl thanks to Orthrus—so we made it a rule they had to descend immediately.

If phase one went smoothly, this whole process would take about a half hour.

By the time we were done, there’d be eight feral gods trapped in bubbles and quite possibly eight real gods prowling around the lacuna looking for them.

The last thing we wanted was eight more world quests like the last one. It was a risk that could very easily backfire in a dozen different ways. Mordecai’s advice was for everybody to just stay in their saferooms if a god attacked their world. He or she would eventually go away, especially if another god started roaming around nearby.

“Gods have a tendency to either fight or start fucking—usually both—when they encounter each other outside the twelfth floor,” Mordecai had said when we started planning this. “The best way to distract a god is with another god. When that happens, they get unsummoned pretty quickly. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times.”

I had two major worries with this plan. One was that Grull—or some other sponsored deity—would get summoned and would make a beeline toward our world to screw everything up. A second was that Maggie, who was pinging around our bubble somewhere, would try the same. We’d ferried Gwen’s team up onto the bowl, and they were acting as lookouts, but so far nobody had seen signs of her.

Imani: Okay, everybody. We’re going to start the extractions. Pass it on to all of your contacts. If you’re not a part of the groups, get to a saferoom. If your bubble is popped, it’s probably a good idea to go down the stairs. If you see a god, call it out in the chat so we can keep track of them all.

“Here we go,” I said out loud to nobody in particular. There was nobody in here except the dromedarians and changelings.

I’d sent Louis out to escort Katia to the Desperado. After, he and Firas would help wrangle the refugees. He’d blurted out a few things about our bathroom being “haunted” and was about to say something else, but Katia had put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed so hard, even he finally realized to shut the hell up. Still, an observant fan would probably figure out what he was yammering about. I hoped any such revelations would get lost in the noise. I sent Donut into her room to observe her social media board. If she saw any hints that the masses suspected what we were really planning, she’d warn us.

Mordecai was back in the crafting room, working on the second potion he’d made with the yam. Each one only took about an eighth of the vegetable, and I told him we better have at least three, one for me, Katia, and Donut.

At this point, there wasn’t anything else I could do but wait. On the main screen in the saferoom, the kids were watching The Last Unicorn. Juice Box was in her human form with little Bonnie the gnome sitting on her lap. I watched the woman for a few moments as she stroked the kid’s head. I thought of all the NPCs I’d killed on this floor.

I thought of the tens of thousands we were planning on killing during phase four of the plan.

They’re better off dead. We are freeing them.

I thought of Coolie, the cookbook author who’d sacrificed everything just in an attempt to kill two admins. I thought of Priestly, who wrote the 14thedition and was the single best source of info on the ninth floor. I wondered what either would do in my situation.

Coolie would do exactly what you’re doing. Priestly would not.

But first, Donut and I needed to make it back to bubble 543. We were planning on making the journey tomorrow, after phase two.

But we weren’t going to risk it if there were a bunch of crazed gods running around out there. This next hour was crucial, and it would determine what happened next. The fact I wasn’t actively participating was driving me up the wall. I’d been purposely putting off opening my boxes so I’d have a distraction.

Everyone else had already opened their platinum quest boxes. Most everyone got great stuff. Most of it was spell books. Donut received a tome of Twinkle Toes, a cheap spell which made Mongo—or any other minion—run really fast for as many seconds as her intelligence level. She’d been pretty excited about it.

Katia also received a spell called Hanzo, which drew mobs closer to her. Louis and Firas also got spellbooks, but I wasn’t sure what. Gwen got a new spear she was pretty stoked about. Tran received a subscription box similar to Donut’s tome of the floor club, but for scrolls.

I moved to open my achievements now.

An organ played hymnal music as this first achievement appeared.

New Achievement! Man of God!

Ever since that first monkey looked up into the sky and saw something twinkling up there, you meat puppets have tried to force twenty pounds of existential meaning into a ten-pound sack of chaos.

You have found religion! You have pledged yourself to a life of worship and piety! Finally. Now there are consequences for all of your actions!

Reward: One of the greatest things about having a religion is the unshakeable certainty that you’re right and everyone else who doesn’t believe the same as you is wrong! That’s a pretty good reward. Oh, and don’t forget about the eternal life thing, too. That’s always one of their big selling points.

I grunted with amusement. A little changeling kid sat at the end of the kitchen bar and was staring at me. I looked at him and said, “The System AI is totally going to hell.”

“Okay,” the kid replied, not appreciating my lame attempt at humor. He turned back to the movie.

New Achievement! Disarming Personality!

You ripped a fellow crawler’s arm off! With your bare hands! Holy shit!

Reward: You’ve received a Silver Savage Box!

I received a few other airplane-related ones plus an achievement for sustaining a certain amount of damage while invulnerable, but each only resulted in low-tier adventurer boxes that contained nothing special except another potion of dinosaur repellent.

I only had two more boxes to open. My fan box still had another twelve hours on it.

This was my first savage box. They were meant for player killers, and I was not looking forward to whatever this was. I wanted to avoid getting a skull if I could. I cringed as the box opened.

A pair of handcuffs popped out. They were encased in red, fuzzy velvet.

Enchanted Handcuffs.

My safe word is, “Harder, Daddy.”

You know what these are. Your mom had a pair in her drawer, and your dad was probably no stranger to these things, either.

Used to lock a person’s arms together at the wrist. This set of novelty handcuffs is magically reinforced. Requires a strength of at least 200 to break. There’s no key. These are locked and unlocked magically by you. You may also institute an optional safe word or phrase that disengages.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” I said, putting the fuzzy handcuffs away.

The platinum quest box contained a magical tome. I picked the book up and turned it over in my hands. The black, leather hardback was warm to the touch and had a skull on the cover. I looked up at the ceiling and grinned. “It’s nice to see we’re on the same wavelength for once.” I opened the book, which caused it to glow. The spell added itself to my list.

Ping

Cost: 5 Mana

Also known as, “Here piggy, piggy,” or “The Night Dread,” Ping is a hunting and artillery-aiming tool for those who do not care if their quarry knows they’re coming.

The elven gunnery officers of the Dream all learn this spell the moment they hit adulthood. Anyone who sits in a trench lives in abject terror of the noise this spell creates.

Target: An area of one kilometer around the caster plus 500 meters for every ten points of intelligence. Environmental factors and obstacles may increase or decrease range.

Duration: Instantaneous. Ping travels at the speed of sound.

Cooldown: Five minutes.

Sends out an audible ping that gives the distance and location of all non-crawlers and non-red-tagged mobs in a circle around you. It will mark targets beyond the range of your map. Targets hit with Pingwill hear an audible ping noise, but they will not know from where the ping originates.

Higher levels increase the amount of information about the target.

At level 5, you may imbue the ping with Fear.

It was disappointing that the spell didn’t work on mobs or crawlers, but that was okay. This was a spell meant to be used on the sixth and ninth floor. It would find NPCs, and more importantly, it would find both elites and tourists.

Katia: It worked! The first group is coming through now.

Donut: DID THE GUY STEAL THE GATE?

Katia: No, he’s through and has already handed it off to the next group. They came through really fast.

Louis: They’re all crying, they’re so happy. A hot orc chick just hugged me.

Firas: That was totally a dude. And don’t let Juice Box know.

Carl: Okay, good. Keep me updated.

I hunkered down and waited for the hammer to fall.

Chapter 141

<Note from Crawler Priestly. 14th Edition> Larracos is like a dream. It is a living, breathing poem. A song. One that marks itself indelibly onto your bones the moment you experience it the first time. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s an inverted funnel of museums and galleries and colleges and of color. The NPCs live here. They have purpose and life. For the first time since we have been dragged into this horror, I feel awe and wonder and something other than rage. But it is a tainted and fleeting feeling. This city should not be here. It is too beautiful to be used in such a terrible, senseless way.

I still don’t fully understand the fable with the volcano and the centipede at the bottom and what sort of metaphor, if any, it’s supposed to represent, but whoever designed this wonder at the center of the ninth floor was someone who appreciates fine detail and the art of turning the mundane into visual music. It is too beautiful, too real not to be a copy of someplace that truly existed, and it is difficult for my mind to make sense of it. For the first time, I don’t know where the real ends and the nightmare begins, and it has taken my breath away.

The Semeru dwarves supposedly built it, but they don’t control the city. Not anymore. They’re still around, mostly in the pubs. They’re also the non-combatant caretakers of the inverted castle, which sits in the center of the city at the bottom of the well.

The diameter of Larracos isn’t that great. It’s smaller than some of the cities on the Hunting Grounds. But the city itself has layers, going deeper and deeper, like an inverted cone. My culture has a story of a people who built a tower to reach the gods before the gods struck it down and scattered them all. I believe that legend is what this city represents. The Semeru were attempting to reach the Celestials who live not above, but below them. This action somehow awakened Scolopendra at the very base of the volcano.

This city thrives. Each level is something new and exciting. There are districts. One with theaters. Museums. Colleges filled with bright-eyed NPC students. Temples. Stores. Tonight, before we are expelled, I plan on sitting down and enjoying a play. A play, in this place. Can you believe it?

I will draw a map for you. The one Milk drew is still good, but it lacks detail.

The alien beasts congregate in the pleasure districts. I don’t dare venture down there, lest my impression of this fantasy is tainted. That’s where one may find the Desperado Club and the brothels. It’s where they hire their mercenaries, though I hear those markets are already bled dry. It’s where they trade their wares and buy their weapons from the murderers who cleaved through us like chaff on that nightmare of a sixth floor.

The aliens get expelled when we do. Less than thirty hours until the fighting begins.

They’ll be back. Once only three armies remain, they’ll be able to re-enter the city, and it will be destroyed. They say by the time the fighting is over, none of these NPCs are left alive. None of these buildings stand. It is all destroyed in the pursuit of an imaginary prize. This makes my heart hurt. This volcano world is obviously a fairy tale. But is this city real? It looks real. It smells real. There is history here. And if so, what’s the purpose of giving this to us? To show us a wonder that once existed, to remind us that they don’t care what they destroy? To beat us further into submission?

And what of the NPCs? What of their suffering?

I fear what will happen to my mind when I see it destroyed.

After an hour, it became clear that phase one was a rousing success. It was frustrating that nobody was left to see what specific feral god was summoned, though we did manage to get info on a few of the bubbles. The second-to-last bubble was right next to Elle and Imani’s world, and Elle braved going out there to take a look. Whatever had been summoned was much too big for the bubble and had simply exploded when it appeared, filling the interior ball with gore. A minute later, the bubble automatically opened on its own—apparently because the explosion killed the remaining defenders—and it caused all the gore to slop out into the lacuna. The entire level with now filled with a horrific stench. Elle said it was absolutely unbearable in their area.

Another crawler reported that a nearby bubble had a massive turkey inside of it, about the same size of Orthrus. That bubble, too, broke on its own, and now the feral turkey god was hopping about, randomly pecking at worlds. It wasn’t attacking anything, and at last report it was sitting there near the exploded remains of the other feral god and was gobbling up the gore. Because of the turkey’s proximity to their bubble, all of Team Meadow Lark were forced down the stairs, leaving only Imani and Elle in their bubble.

Li Jun, who’d managed to finish off their last castle, reported that a nearby bubble was filled with a screaming monster covered in tentacles. All of their bubble and teammates had already fled down the stairs, but siblings Li Jun and Li Na remained, keeping an eye on their neighboring bubble for us.

As for regular gods, only three showed up. But as Mordecai said, they all went away on their own after a few hours. None were sponsored. They did plenty of damage to open worlds, but we didn’t know of any casualties. There were no more world quests. None came anywhere near bubble 543.

We were about to initiate phase two, which was the same as phase one. Only this time it was with worlds where the crawlers were uncertain if the other quadrants were empty. Two additional worlds had also managed to make themselves eligible for phase one, so we were doing those first. This second phase was a total of fifteen worlds for about 800 more people.

I looked over at the counter for surviving crawlers. It continued to fall, despite half of the survivors having already descended to the sixth floor.

99,754

We’d fallen under 100,000. This floor had already killed half of the survivors of the previous. The numbers were mind-numbing. All of this work, and for what? We were just delaying the inevitable. It was hard not to fall into that trap, not to allow the sheer horror of it all to shatter your resolve.

I thought of Priestly. In the end, he’d been broken by the system. He’d been unable to take it. Seeing that city destroyed as he marched with the bugbear army over the corpses of the NPCs, including the bodies of actors he’d watched perform in a play, had been it for him. He’d finally snapped what sanity he had left. His last entry had been shortly after that and was an incoherent jumble of words.

So much. So little. Stab, stab, stab. If I fall, if I stand. It matters not when the song is done.

A hand fell on my shoulder, and I jumped in surprise. It was Juice Box.

“Hey, are you okay, big guy? You’ve been sitting there looking all tense and angry for a few minutes. You’re scaring the children.”

“I’m okay. It’s just weird being the one who has to wait for all of this to play out.”

She nodded. “Didn’t you just crash a drop bear into a god’s face?”

“That was hours ago.”

“You remind me of my brother,” she said. “You need to be careful. He always had to be moving, always pushing toward his goal. When an obstacle popped up in front of him he couldn’t figure out, he finally pushed too hard. If he had waited, he’d still be alive.”

I had no response to that. Mordecai emerged from the crafting room to look distastefully at the mess. The kids were now watching The Goonies. The changelings were all emulating portly little humans and dancing with their Hawaiian shirts up, exposing their bellies.

Donut remained in her room, glued to the social media board. Her addiction to the thing was starting to worry me. She occasionally popped out to complain about someone who said something mean, but she and Mongo were having some much-needed alone time.

The recap episode came and went. It didn’t show anything about the gods and the Orthrus quest or the folks escaping their bubbles using the gate, but it was clear they were saving it all for the next episode. I watched Li Na and Li Jun battle a crab monster to defeat their final castle. Their world had started with barely any water, but there was some storyline where the waterline was constantly rising the entire time. By the time they defeated the last castle, their entire bubble was submerged. When it popped, water splashed all over the lacuna. Apparently that ended up killing a few crawlers who’d gotten out and were exploring the dark fog that filled the ground there.

Mordecai and Donut came out to listen to the announcement. Katia and the others remained out there, preparing for phase two.

Hello Crawlers,

What an exciting day! We never expected to have so many gods running around this early. You are all so very spunky, and we really appreciate that. The ratings have never been higher!

After some very careful discussions, some unfortunate litigation that we won, and with the input from the Syndicate, we have decided to allow this method of bubble escape to continue. However, we have been forced to block some—but not all—of the secondary summonings. The feral gods who’ve been escaping are random, and sometimes new even to us. Each feral who appears has a 66% chance to summon a corresponding deity. One of the resulting summoned gods was Ysalte, the Vinegar Bitch. That would have been an extinction-level event for this floor and the next. As exciting as that would be, we still have another floor of sponsorship bidding to get through before we can allow it. We are at 33% of the projected capacity for the sixth floor, and nobody wants that number to go lower than that. So, congratulations. Opening that gate will still unleash a feral god, but the odds of summoning an active god in the process is now much less.

Since so many of you are choosing to descend early, we’ve decided we better get some sixth floor information out of the way.

Many of you have classes that will allow you to specialize and upgrade yourselves upon descent. This process will be similar to class selection on the third floor. For most of you, specialization is optional, but it would behoove you to read through all the provided selections.

In addition, I am happy to announce the guild system will become active on the sixth floor. This will allow you to better organize parties and share personal space upgrades without forcing a person to join your party. The sixth floor Bopcas will have more information. The process will be a bit expensive, but if you sell your unwanted gear on the market, it should be do-able for most crawlers. We highly recommend you take advantage of it.

And finally, some of you may have heard by now that third-party tourists will be joining us on the next floor. And they’ll be hunting you and your gear. Isn’t that exciting?

We have a record number of hunters participating this season thanks to a generous, anonymous sponsor who was willing to pay entry fees for anyone who wanted to join in on the fun. And people from all corners of the galaxy are taking advantage. Isn’t that fantastic?

Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!

I’d been all but certain that Borant would institute some sort of patch to stop this madness, but they’d actually done the opposite. They’d apparently saved our asses.

They needed us to die on their schedule, not ours.

“I’m not surprised,” Mordecai said. “They love it when you guys do stupid, suicidal stuff, but when it involves the entire population, they start to get alarmed. Don’t expect them to cushion your fall once all the sponsorships are done.”

I watched as the number of living crawlers ticked down by one. Then by three.

~

“I don’t see why Louis and Firas couldn’t just come and pick us up,” Donut grumbled as we brushed ourselves off. A dark fog surrounded us, and the air stank like dead meat. A couple of inches of water sat on the ground, much to Donut’s dismay. Even with her Torch spell, the lacuna was oppressively dark. In the distance, I heard the screech of the goddamned turkey.

It was eerily quiet down here. And damp. I felt claustrophobic, despite the lack of ceiling and walls. It felt as if we’d fallen into a sewer. I looked up at the edge of the bubble we’d just plummeted off. It’d been pretty far.

“I don’t want them leaving 543 and risking the Twister. They’re gonna have to leave in a few days, and if something happens to the balloon before then, it’ll screw everything up.”

“They still have to leave to pick us up,” Donut grumbled.

“Yeah, but we’ll be right there. Come on,” I said as I pulled the chariot from inventory and prepared it. “We’ll be there in less than an hour.”

Phase two was now finished, and we’d managed to save about 1,500 crawlers total. We’d added a few additional bubbles at the last minute. The gate was back in Katia’s possession. Nobody had tried to steal it, much to Donut’s surprise.

I wished that number of saved crawlers was higher, but more and more bubbles were popping on their own thanks to the work of the survivors inside.

A distressing amount of bubbles had gone dark.

There were also bubbles where the people inside had no access to the Desperado Club or Club Vanquisher—which was still closed for repairs. It turned out if you destroyed the entry pub to the Desperado, or the church for the Vanquisher, it removed access to the club. For those crawlers, we could only offer our sympathies and advice.

The only feral gods we unleashed into the lacuna were the giant turkey and what appeared to be a city-sized swarm of insects. Luckily, the swarm remained in the general area of their bubble number 801, way on the far side. It’d eventually dispersed. In addition, we’d summoned five more gods. These gods did more damage but eventually went away. I never got to see any of them.

The turkey was actually the most dangerous of anything we summoned. It was now sitting on top of some random popped bubble and screaming. It had evidently tripled in size after it ate the remainder of the exploded feral god. The thing was level 150.

I heard through the chat lines that Miriam Dom and Prepotente were attempting to kill it using their debuff method.

After Phase two ended, we waited a few hours for anything else to happen. Nothing did once the five gods wandered off. Donut and I couldn’t wait any longer. After getting the chariot back from Langley and doing some repairs, we decided to make the treacherous journey across the lacuna back to bubble 543. Getting out of our current bubble was the most difficult part. Donut attached herself to me as I did a spiderman impersonation using only my feet on the side of the almost-invisible bottom half of the bubble. Once I found the lip, we both used a half-splat to fall into the dark fog of the lacuna.

The ground here was completely flat. A few red dots appeared on the edge of my vision, but they shied away from us. Donut said they were small, like rats. I used my new Ping spell to see if any weird NPCs or hidden, small-sized gods were out here, and there was nothing.

We didn’t waste time. I revved up the chariot, and we were off. I kept a lookout for the Xs of crawlers, but I didn’t see anything. Even here, there were janitor mobs at work.

The pickup went as planned, and we were soon back atop the bowl, which had broken in half. With the lip gone from the bowl, the world up here had taken on a new appearance. A nearby, closed and glowing bubble dominated the distant horizon, like the curve of a planet as seen from space.

“It’s pretty,” Donut said as we landed.

It was oddly beautiful, until I remembered each intact bubble was potentially a tombstone, a monument to crawlers who’d fallen victim to this fifth floor.

“Welcome home,” Firas said as we landed just outside of Hump Town.

A small crowd of crawlers had gathered to watch us descend. They started clapping as we alighted.

“I thought everyone had gone down the stairs already,” I said.

“Obviously not, Carl,” Donut said, stiffening on my shoulder. She waved. “People know they wouldn’t have been saved without you and me. Now wave at them and don’t look so grumpy.”

A crocodilian stood in the front of the crowd, standing with Katia as we landed. He stepped forward and gave me a fist bump.

“Hello, Florin,” I said. “I’m glad to see you made it out.”

The man rested his weight on his Mossberg shotgun. The modified and now-magical weapon supposedly had unlimited ammo. “I managed to get three of the castles on my own, but that last air one was impossible. Thanks to you and Elle and Katia, I am free.” He looked at Donut. “You, too, pretty girl.”

Donut preened. “Oh, you’re quite welcome.”

He’d been the last rescue of the first phase. He’d gotten access to the Desperado Club because he’d “killed” Ifechi. He had a golden player killer mark over his head, similar to Katia’s. They were the only two marks like that in the dungeon.

“I’m glad to have helped,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’m headin’ down the stairs since there’s no more training to be had, but I wanted to meet you first. I understand you’re going to throw a feral god onto the ninth floor to jumble them up a bit. Good for you, mate. I’m looking forward to hearing about it.”

“That’s the plan,” I said. I looked up. “We’re going to fuck those guys up. We’re going to toss a god right into the camp of the Skull Empire.”

He leaned forward and clasped me on the shoulder with his green, scaled hand. He kept his hand up there, and suddenly it was super awkward. He stared at me with his dark, intense eyes.

“I was done, mate. I didn’t have anything,” he said, suddenly emotional. “You should have met her. My Ife. She was amazing. A ray of light. She was the bravest, kindest person I’d ever met. She gave me hope. I was done until I went into the club, and I met Elle. She told me a story about this man and his cat who’d stopped everything he was doing to help a group of old people in wheelchairs and how this same man was planning on using this artifact he’d found to save people stuck in their bubbles. And it reminded me that Ife wasn’t the only one. That there is good in this world. There is something left to fight for. I might die tomorrow, but it won’t be because I’ve given up. And I want to thank you for that.”

“I’m just doing the best I can,” I said, not sure what else to say. The dude’s claw was still on my shoulder. I reached up and clumsily patted it.

He retracted his arm quickly, as if he was surprised by my touch. “If you ever need a backup gun, I’m in your debt.” Then just like that, he turned and walked away. We watched him walk away in silence. He went straight to the stairwell, and without turning around, he disappeared.

“That dude is pretty intense,” I said.

“I like him. Still, that would’ve been much more emotional if he wasn’t a disgusting crocodile man,” Donut whispered after he was gone. “He’s really dirty, too. He smells like a dead frog. And how does he get that shirt on with such a giant head?”

“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said through gritted teeth. “Don’t say that shit out loud.”

~

Time to Level Collapse: 7 hours.

“You know what, Carl?” Donut asked as we sat at the booth at the Desperado Club. She sipped on a nonalcoholic Shirley temple as the Sledge stood unnecessarily nearby. The three of us were the only crawlers here. “I’m worried the ending is going to be anticlimactic. What if this doesn’t work? Then what?”

“Then we go down the stairs, Donut. It doesn’t always have to end with a giant fight or an explosion. We’re alive. We’ve already done enough this floor.”

The last two days had been a blur. My fingertip itched with phantom pain where I'd made my daily blood offering. The mobs were all gone from the air quadrant, so all that was left was to train. I’d also spent time—too much time, really—showing the others how to dominate in the game Frogger.

The large, stand-up video game machine was not the same exact one my father had in our basement growing up. But it was similar. I’d had to rig up a dwarven battery to make it work. It’d been in my fan box. I’d mentioned the game more than once in my conversations with Katia and Donut, and they’d run with it. I wasn’t certain, but I suspected it was an attempt at trolling me or a way to block a better prize. I’d never know. In the end, it ended up being exactly what I needed.

It’d been breathing room, a way to relax. It brought me back to a distant memory of happiness, even if it was just for a moment. I’d only gotten good at the game because I’d always been locked away in the basement while my dad had friends over. Still, you could do that. You could take a terrible situation and still find moments of peace, even joy. I needed to be reminded that was possible, and the game console did exactly that.

We’d ended up performing three more rescues using the gate. Two of the three summoned additional gods, who turned on each other and both disappeared. There was no sign of Chris and Maggie. The general consensus was that they’d gone down the stairs. I wasn’t so certain.

Gwen and Tran and their team had ventured into the now-dry subterranean level and managed to loot the remains of the tomb raiders and unearth the tomb of Anser, which was just a sarcophagus filled with the skeleton of a goose wearing a golden, unenchanted crown. Electrifying the water had triggered all of the traps. Quetzalcoatlus’s corpse contained a partial map of the sixth floor that contained coordinates of multiple locations.

“It does have to end with a giant explosion! I promised Katia it would always end that way.”

Katia sat across from us at the table. She was staring down at her drink, mixing it idly. She hadn’t reacted to Donut’s explosion comment. She was in her own little world.

“Out with it,” I finally said.

She looked up, and she sighed. She’d been quiet like this for a few days now. She took a deep breath.

“I don’t want to mess up the personal space situation,” she finally said.

I just blinked.

“But?” I asked.

“But I think we need to separate the next floor down.”

“What?” Donut asked. “You’re breaking up with us? What did Carl do?” She looked at me. “What did you do, Carl?”

Katia laughed softly. She reached forward and put a hand on Donut’s paw. “He didn’t do anything. It’s because of Eva. I’ve been talking to her, and I’ve been talking to all the former daughters. She’s trying to gather them back to her. Some are actually doing it.”

I knew she’d been talking to people. But Eva? Eva had tried to kill her. Katia had tried to kill Eva.

“You want to join back up with Eva?” I asked, astounded.

“No, of course not. She has… increased her player killer marks. Do you remember Silfa? The fairy? Used to own a bakery?”

“Yes,” I said. Silfa was an older woman who’d turned herself into a healer. She had two of her own daughters with her. Hekla and Eva had used her as bait, trying to get me to kill her. It seemed so long ago.

“She’s dead, and so are her two daughters. Despite everything, they’d formed a new party with Eva. I tried talking them out of it, but they didn’t listen. And Eva got them killed. A few others are tempted to return to Eva because nobody will take them in. I couldn’t do anything this floor, but the next will be an open world. I need to gather the former daughters and protect them. Before Eva does. Before someone else realizes how vulnerable they are. We shouldn’t have just let them spread out and away. It was a death sentence, and I can’t stop thinking about it. And if Eva insists on pursuing the matter, I need to take care of that, too.”

“We’re a team, Katia,” Donut said, sounding hurt. “We can do this together. We can help you. You can just ask.”

“No,” Katia said. “I love both of you, but the path you’re on right now…. With the ring and the hunters and all of it? You two already have too much on your plate for the next floor. Not to mention that Tsarina Signet storyline. When you’re in the Carl and Donut party, you ride on the Carl and Donut rollercoaster, and once it gets going, there’s no getting off. I need to do this.”

She was right. If this was something she wanted to do, I feared my presence would be more of a hindrance than a help. But I’d come to rely on her. I’d been taking her presence for granted, and now she was leaving. But still, going at it alone? That was suicidal.

“You need to do this? Even if you end up dead?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You need to understand something. My whole life I have been in that back seat. I have you to thank for helping me realize what I can do. But you being gone for those days was also really important. It showed me I can do this without your help. I don’t want to leave the party. Like I said, it’ll mess up the personal space. But maybe this new guild system will be a good compromise.”

“What if you get lonely?” Donut asked. She was about to start crying. “And what if Mongo wants his Aunt Katia to scratch between his feathers?”

“Until we figure out how it’ll work, I won’t leave the party. We’ll see each other every night in the personal space,” she said. “And I won’t be alone. Louis and Firas, Gwen and her team, Daniel and a few of his friends, and Florin have all agreed to help me. We’re going to be a pretty big party.”

“You and Gwen are always fighting!” Donut said.

“Bautista?” I asked. “Since when have you been talking to Bautista?”

“I’ve been talking to him since that day we rescued him on the Iron Tangle. He’s… very lost, and he needs this, too. Same with Florin.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to say, please don’t leave me. But it was clear she’d already made up her mind.

“At least you’ll have the Twister with you,” I said. “And this.” I pulled the sword from my inventory. The Left Fang of the Green Sultan. The magical properties of the deadly saber only worked when it was matched with its brother. It was half of Eva’s main weapon, and she’d dropped it. “Make sure you return it to its rightful owner.”

Katia picked the saber up and examined it. It glinted with green, venomous light. She nodded, and the sword disappeared into her inventory. “I’ll make sure of it.”

We watched the timer click down. Two seconds after it hit six hours until level collapse, phase three would be implemented.

Imani, Elle, Louis and Firas, along with a whole mess of changelings were going to open up a portal to the sixth floor. This was on Imani and Elle’s bubble.

This was going to be the first feral god we summoned outside of a bubble. Even as far away as it was, it was ridiculously dangerous.

Louis and Firas had braved the lacuna and managed to actually find the proper world. The only other crawler they’d brought with them was Britney, the sole-surviving member of the water quadrant other than Chris. The Ukrainian woman had latched onto Firas for some inexplicable reason. They’d ferried a house full of changelings to the distant bubble. There were so many of the changelings, including adults who’d survived the Orthrus attack, that they didn’t all fit onto the house. They’d transformed into geese and coasted alongside the flying machine, like a caravan.

Once the portal opened, the changelings would return to the sixth floor.

The journey of the Twister from our bubble to Imani and Elle’s world was thankfully uneventful. The turkey was now dead, having been successfully killed by Prepotente, who’d gained eight levels in the process, bringing him up to 55 and making him the highest in the dungeon. The last recap episode showed him gnawing on the universe’s largest feather and screaming over and over while Miriam Dom the vampire shepherd stroked his hair.

Mordecai insisted that the portal would not allow crawler passage from floor to floor, even if it was just one floor down, so we were sending the Twister through with the changelings, but without Louis and Firas. Immediately after, they were going to go through the regular stairwell where hopefully they’d be able to recover the flying machine. Imani and Elle would return to the club, hand off the gate to us, and also go down the stairs before the portal in their bubble expired and summoned the feral god.

With the gate back in our possession, we’d then implement the final phase.

Li Jun: Carl, we’ll be going down in a minute. That other bubble with the tentacle monster is still intact. It’s not moving around so much anymore, so I think it’s going to stay put.

Carl: Okay, guys. Be careful.

Li Jun: You too. That woman is here, by the way. The one with the shopping cart. She just pulled up out of nowhere and entered the stairwell. She didn’t talk to us, and she went down before the six hour mark. I don’t know where she came from. She’s only level 12.

Carl: Yeah, that’s Agatha. We just ignore Agatha. Best of luck to you. If this guild system is what I think it’ll be, look us up.

Li Jun: We will.

A moment passed, and the six hour mark hit.

Imani: It worked. The changelings are through. On our way back to the club.

Louis: God, I hope they don’t wreck the Twister. That Skarn kid is a good pilot, but he’s a little shit. I caught him charging a gold coin to the other kids so they could fly it. Bonnie the gnome kid said she wanted to install some upgrades, so we need to find them as soon as possible before they ruin it.

Carl: You two be careful. Stay sober. The hunters will be gunning for you right away. Keep your eyes open.

Firas: Thank you, Carl and Donut. Katia, see you in a bit.

Imani and Elle rushed into the club. They both looked exhausted. We needed to hurry. Katia walked up to Elle and gave the floating woman a long hug. She pulled back. “You guys be careful, okay?”

“We always are,” Elle said. She gave me a little wink and patted Donut on the head. “I’m looking forward to being able to mix it up with you guys again. This floor was a real drag having to do it all myself.”

“Come on,” Imani said, all business. “We need to go.” She paused, then looked me in the eye. “Send me a message, one way or the other.”

I nodded.

Elle pulled the three gate pieces from her inventory and handed them to me. “Here you go.”

I took the three items and pulled them into my inventory. I turned to Katia. She had entered the Desperado on the ground level, and this was where we were going to separate. I pulled her into a tight hug. Donut was suddenly there on my shoulder, also rubbing up against Katia. Katia wrapped her arms around me, widening them like the flaps on a stingray, hugging us so completely, it felt as if I was being wrapped up like a burrito. This would be the last time we were together on this floor.

We stood like that for several moments.

Phase four had officially begun.