Chapters 165 and 166 (Patreon)

Important note! I am posting chapters 165-168 right now, but since it's 19K words total, I am splitting this into two updates. I will pin THIS chapter since it's the newest, but chapters 167 and 168 will also be posted soon after these two and will not be pinned.

Also, a few necessary retcons. I had to change some minor timing issues on a few things, especially regarding Carl's sponsorship voting, the timing of Odette airing her interview with Beatrice.

Also, the name of the party at the end of the floor is no longer named the Champion's Ball. It's now called The Butcher's Masquerade, which is also the name of book five. But like Carl's Doomsday Scenario, we may learn it has a double meaning. Anyway, on to the words:

Chapter 165


I pushed Bomo out the door into the saferoom where he’d post his note and wait for a response. Hopefully word would get to the mantis guy before Vrah did.

“The bitch lives, correct?” someone asked. “I didn’t see a notification. Lucia survived?”

The speaker was Florin the crocodilian. I hadn’t noticed him there in the back corner.

“Yes,” Donut said. “She’s a cheater just like that Quan Ch guy, and she got away.”

“Good,” Florin said. He pushed himself off the wall and went out into the guildhall common area. We all watched him go.

“We’re still in Lucia’s town,” I said after he left. “We need to get out of here before she comes back.”

“I do believe we just destroyed the town. There’s nothing to go back to,” Donut said. “But if she does dare return, I’m not one bit scared of her. Not one bit.”

“Open your boxes, reset your buffs, and then watch the recap,” Mordecai said, ignoring Donut’s boast. “I’m pretty sure I know what spell she used to get away, and she won’t be anywhere near here. But I want you gone before she gets back. After what Donut pulled, you’re gonna be looking over your shoulder for now on until you deal with her.”

“What else is new?” I asked as I turned to examine the people in the room. I felt a grin spread across my face as I took everyone in.

This is it, I thought. This is my family now. My heart continued to pound from the fight. I knew I was about to crash, that the shakes would hit me, that the river in my mind would roar. But for now, at this moment, I took comfort in the friendly faces all around me.

It was Katia, Elle, Imani, Bautista, Louis, Firas, Gwen, Tran, Britney along with several others I didn’t know as well. Mongo was also loose and moved freely about the spaces, demanding scratches from everyone like he was an attention-starved dog at a party.

“Where’s Chris?” I asked Elle after I went through and acknowledged everyone. They all greeted me back with enthusiasm except Britney, of course, whose resting I-hate-you-and-everybody face was on full display. The fur-clad barbarian sat upon Firas’s lap with one arm wrapped around his shoulder.

Everyone in the group had gone up several levels. Half of them had new equipment. I’ve missed so much, I thought.

Elle had transformed from a Blizzardmancer to a Tundra Princess, but the fairy woman didn’t look any different. She now had a brown streak of hair in her haphazardly-cut white mane, but that was it. She still wore the anti-slip socks from when she’d been a 99-year-old resident of the Meadow Lark retirement home. They were the only before-thing that remained on the woman except for a simple, gold wedding ring that now hung around her neck by a chain, because her fingers were much smaller than they’d been before. She’d ascended to level 51.

She’d also somehow gotten a glass of yellow alcohol and was sipping on it. From the couch, Louis watched the glass the same way I dog would watch a human holding a piece of beef jerky.

“Whoa, big guy,” Elle said, looking up over my head. “That’s a lot of hunter-killer daggers you have. Good job. I still need to collect one for myself. Chris is with Li Jun and Li Na along with the other two rock bodyguards. It’s a long story. That Eva woman is hooked up now with Team Cichociemni, and those guys are no joke. They’re named after some Polish special forces group, but none of them are actually Polish if you can believe that. Not anymore. They killed their leader guy because he didn’t want them to be a group of murderers. That guy was buddy-buddy with the Popovs before that Dmitri idiot accidently picked a race that combined himself with his brother. Anyway, the Popovs had them cornered, but then the brothers got whisked away to go to that convention. They’ve been gone for two days now and won’t be back until tomorrow. Must be nice. Li Na and Chris are keeping an eye on the group in the meantime. Did you know Chris can burrow right into the ground? And Li Na can turn into smoke? Man, that girl freaks me the fuck out. We would’ve been there by now if Katia didn’t insist on turning the whole circus around to come help save your ass. We would’ve been with you in time, too, if the flying house didn’t get attacked by pterodactyls. Now we’re stuck in the jungle in the middle of nowhere. How’d that go anyway? Your convention, I mean. Did you meet Dmitri and Maxim? They said you guys would be sharing a table or some shit.”

“That’s not until tomorrow,” I said, my head spinning. I was still coming off the adrenaline rush, and my brain couldn’t parse the tidal wave of information Elle had just thrown at me. All that really mattered was that everyone was safe for the moment.

Behind me, Donut was chatting with Daniel Bautista, demanding to see the mouser stuffed beanies. The orange tiger man pulled one out for her to examine while she clucked over it.

“It’s a cat,” Donut said, not sounding impressed. “Do they really have cat mobs in the dungeon? Why are they listed as common? This thing doesn’t look anything like me, but it fooled both Lucia and Vrah. Still, this shouldn’t be common. Surely it should be a province boss at least. Maybe even a country boss. It should definitely be legendary rareness.”

“If it makes you feel better, I used an uncommon variant for the ruse. It was fuzzier. With the sunglasses and fake tiara, it looked a lot like you. I had to use a tame spell on it,” Bautista said. “These guys attack when I pull the tag.”

“How many beanies do you have left?” I asked. I knew the man had looted over 1,000 of the stuffed animals on the third floor, but he had to be running low by now.

“I have about 500 left,” he said, surprising me. “My sponsor gave me a refresher kit, and I can put the tag back on them if they don’t die while summoned. I can only do it twice though. Plus, I’ve gotten a few more in loot boxes.” He thumbed over his shoulder at Tran, who stood with Gwen. “I’ve taken your advice and been training with my sword. Tran and I are both swashbucklers, and we’ve been working together in the training room. We get a bonus when we work as a team.”

Katia was in her regular, human form. She stood next to Bautista, nodding. In fact, I noticed she actually had her hand on his orange, furry shoulder. Huh, I thought. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. I was about to say something, but thought better of it. Donut would likely notice at any moment and make a comment.

“Speaking of teamwork,” Louis said, getting up from the couch. He spilled a cup of soda he’d had between his legs. Above, the cleaner bot made a shrill noise of disapproval. “Oh, my bad. Hey, anyway. Katia has been making us learn moves like we did on the last floor. Want to see my favorite one? I came up with it on my own.”

Before I could object, Louis pulled what looked like a limp ring of fabric from his inventory. Katia sighed and stepped away from Bautista. Louis tossed the ring at Katia, and it landed over her head, flopping onto her shoulder, where it promptly disappeared, either into her inventory or her mass.

“Okay...” I said. “What the hell was that?”

Louis grunted, annoyed I wasn’t mystified. “That was a potion bandolier. I can throw armor items on Katia, and it automatically equips itself as long as she has the spot open. We can do it with shoulder bandoliers, helmets, arm bracers. Pretty much anything you can think of.”

I exchanged a look with Katia, who just shook her head.

“Yeah,” I said, “But she has unlimited inventory. What, exactly, is the move? I mean, it’s cool, I guess, but how is it useful?”

“I told you,” Britney said from Firas’s lap.

“So, if it lands on her perfectly, it equips itself the moment it touches her, right? She’s got that new backpack that lets her add a bunch of mass. But what if she gets really big, but without a breastplate, right? And if we make a giant breastplate, we drop it on her from the Twister. It’ll automatically equip, and suddenly she can get even bigger. And then we can have a helmet that’s even bigger. We could just make her bigger and bigger. It’d be like the Voltron formation sequence. Well, sort of.”

“Unless the item misses or doesn’t hit right, and then she’s crushed and dead,” Britney said.

“It’s a work in progress,” Louis said defensively.

Carl: Katia. Don’t let him drop a giant breastplate on you.

Katia: The idea has some merit. I’m trying to let him build his self-confidence. We’ll figure something out. He doesn’t show it, but he was really upset when he learned those elves were hunting him. I walked in on him earlier when he thought he was alone, and he was crying. I think he’s worried we’re going to kick him out of the group.

“It’s a good idea,” I finally said, and Louis’s eyes beamed. “But be careful. It’d be really easy to accidentally hurt her with that. Keep working out the kinks.”

“That’s what he has Juice Box for,” Donut said at the same moment Firas opened his mouth, presumably, to say the same thing. They both burst into laughter.

“Okay, guys,” I said as I stepped to the kitchen counter. “I have a ton of boxes to open.” I eyed the Emberus shrine in the back of the room. I knew I was about to owe that thing a ton of money. That would make Donut stop laughing.

I hadn’t been in a saferoom since before the fight to liberate Fort Freedom from the naiad confederates, and several items had stacked up. I had over thirty achievements to sift through, from rowing across the river in a kayak to a making an appearance at the con to shoving that arrow into Vrah. A few of the achievements were notable:

New Achievement! Uprooted.

You caused a Rooted-in-Place boss monster to move. That’s no easy feat. You then killed that monster. Pretty impressive. Hope you remember how you did it.

Reward: You already got a boss box. This achievement is the reward.

Huh, I thought. The wording on this one was strange. It lacked the AI’s typical... zippiness. I’d received the achievement because I’d used my Protective Shell to eject that Eryops frog thing into the air. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, but the description had mentioned how difficult it was to get them to move once they were settled. Apparently the AI wanted me to remember how I’d done it.

The AI quickly returned to his regular, asshole self after that.

New Achievement! Bisected!

You teleported into a solid object. Congratulations. You’ve lost your...

Oh, wait! You were teleported due to an administrative action. That means your privileged ass was saved. Again. No missing arm or leg. No dungeon-style circumcision. Nothing. Boy, you must really bring in the cheddar for them to keep coddling you like this.

Teleport mishaps are funny as shit. You ever see The Fly? Anyway, you don’t have to worry about it. This time.

Reward: You’ve received a Silver Lucky Bastard box!

Holy shit. I remembered the sensation of getting smacked in the face with the door when I’d teleported back. I hadn’t even thought about it. Then again, they were the ones who’d teleported me at that moment. It wouldn’t have been fair. Not that fair meant anything to these assholes.

New Achievement! Desecrated!

You have found a desecrated temple! That means all the temple’s attendants have been murdered. The temple’s treasury has been looted. The sacred wine has probably been all lapped up, too.

And this used to be a nice town. It hasn’t been the same since you guys moved in.

If you are an adherent of this temple, you may no longer worship here. You’ve also probably just received a quest to hunt down and kill the heathen who did this.

If you don’t worship this god, just scram. Remember that time you walked in on mommy and daddy playing leapfrog? It’s just like that. Back away. Don’t touch anything. Never talk about it again.

You should also probably avoid the person who did this. Not only does society frown upon those who slaughter whole congregations, but there are real consequences for this sort of stuff.

Reward: You entered a building. You don’t get a reward for that. It’s not like you kicked it up a notch by defiling the shrine. Oh, wait.

New Achievement! Temple Defiler!

You’ve defiled a temple’s sacred shrine by breaking it with your own flesh!

Wow. I dunno, man. That’s pretty ballsy.

There are a lot of bad things people can do when they’re in church. They can swear. They can ogle the hot nuns. They can pinch the eucharist wafers and use them as poker chips. They can rip pages from the hymnals and roll them into joints. Hell, they can stab the priest and murder all the town’s adherents and put the whole thing up on YouTube.

None of that is as bad as defiling the temple’s shrine with one’s own flesh.

In case you didn’t know, the shrine of a temple is pretty much indestructible. They made it that way because you crawlers are always blowing up whole towns and submerging cities in water or burying entire populations of innocent NPCs with the guts of giant turkeys.

When a temple is desecrated, the shrine’s protection fades over several hours. Eventually, it’s able to be destroyed, but only with a direct attack.

You’re supposed to find desecrated temples and destroy the shrines. Hell, it’s a sacrament in some religions. But you can’t just do it willy-nilly. And certainly not when you’re not a member of that congregation. It’s like walking into a random ICU from off the street and pulling the plug on someone’s braindead grandma.

It's not your place.

Gods don’t like it when some punk walks into their house and kicks them when they’re already down. It’s rude. And what’s worse, when a shrine is destroyed improperly, the god loses some of their power, and all of the other gods can see this. It’s quite humiliating.

Hopefully you got some cool loot from the priests or monks or whatever because this box, while technically a prize, is sort of a good news/bad news thing.

Reward: You’ve received a Gold Apostate Box!

“Shit,” I muttered. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Apparently, that little Lucia psycho had killed everyone in the church. All I’d done was fall through the roof of the temple. I’d landed on some shrine thing, and it shattered. That was it. There wasn’t anything in the cookbook about this sort of stuff. I knew if temples were desecrated, they eventually turned “corrupt,” which usually meant there were mobs inside. But this was the first I’d heard about the shrine thing.

New Achievement! That’s not how you use arrows, dumbass.

You took an arrow, and you physically stabbed someone with it. That’s something a kid who eats glue would do. You know I’m pretty sure you have a bow in your inventory.

Reward: You’ve received a Gold Ranged Weapon Box.

I did have an unenchanted bow in my inventory. I got it from the same elf I’d looted the first gonorrhea arrow from. The last time I’d shot a bow was during archery class in high school, and I’d ripped the shit out of my left wrist doing it. With my xistera, I had no need for any other ranged weapon.

New Achievement! It itches when I pee!

You infected another combatant with a venereal disease.

Good job there, Derek Jeter. I hope you bought them dinner first.

Reward: You’ve received a Bronze condom. Use it next time.

Sure enough, it wasn’t a box. It was an actual, wrapped condom. The packaging was bronze-colored. It was unenchanted. There was a sketch of an older woman on one side who might’ve been Bea Arthur and a sheep on the other.

“The hell?” I started to mutter, but I stopped the moment I heard the breathiness of the AI’s voice when he read out the next one. I cringed.

New Achievement! This little piggy made a boom boom!

You deployed a bomb with the supple, curved sole of your foot. You took your perfectly-perfect, 30.004861 centimeter-long right foot and compressed it against an explosive device—a device named after me no less—and you gave it a naughty little shove before you pushed it out the door and detonated it.

You killed them. You killed them all for your daddy.

The AI made a deep, throaty groan for like five seconds straight, an uncomfortably long time.

Reward: You’ve received a Gold Spicy Box.

“Was that a condom?” Donut asked when the achievements finished. “Did the AI really give you a condom? Talk about a useless prize!”

“That wasn’t the worst of it,” I said.

“Well, I got a John Wick achievement that I thought was very rude. I didn’t even get a prize from it. Though I did receive something quite useful from a platinum Did-You-Really-Just-Cast-Fireball-in-a-Room-This-Small box.”

“We still need to have a discussion about that,” Mordecai said, sounding irritated.

“What was the prize?” I asked. Then, the name of the box hit me. I remembered the burnt-down tree in the middle of town, alarm rising in my chest. “Wait, what did you do to get it?”

“Oh, oh, the prize is just great,” Donut said, pointing. There was a small, closet-sized room next to the restroom in the main space. I hadn’t noticed it until now. “It’s a vocal coach! It’s a special training room! Can you believe it? There’s a little room with a microphone behind glass and a holographic NPC lady who shows me throat exercises to train my voice. Her name is Lover Illiana, and she’s just wonderful. She says I have a voice like a cygnus cloud gull. My singing has already gone up to level four.”

Mordecai sighed. “It’s actually a great prize. Next time Donut casts an illusion with her voice, the apparitions might actually have substance. Now, Carl. Get your loot.”

I told Mordecai about the apostate box before I moved to open the prizes. He groaned. We weren’t able to pick and choose the boxes we opened. It was an all-or-nothing thing, so I didn’t have much of a choice.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. His tone was not convincing. “You said the god was Diwata? That’s a weird one. She changes genders, but she’s usually referred to as her. She does some odd shit, like impregnates herself and then eats the offspring and then forms cities with her poop. Thankfully, she’s pretty rare. Go ahead. Open the boxes. We’ll deal like we always do.”

“What does she look like?”

“Her natural form is a giant squirrel-like thing with antlers. She’s covered in moss and leaves, too. You can’t miss her.”

“All righty. Here goes nothing.”

I had multiple prize boxes. Most of them were low-tier adventurer boxes, but I had a grand total of 14 Hunter Killer boxes including the one I’d received from Future Hunter the orc. This was several more than I’d been expecting. It appeared they gave me credit for the three nebs and three mantises that were killed by the other mantis while she was enraged, though I hadn’t gotten credit when she had in turn been killed by her own people.

Even though I got boxes for those six kills, I didn’t receive any experience, but I did receive a small amount of experience when the enraged mantis was cut down. Again, it was all behind-the-scenes math stuff I didn’t understand, and I wasn’t so sure anymore that this stuff wasn’t being tweaked in real time. Sometimes some of these rules seemed to change for no reason. I wasn’t going to argue about it.

I now had 52 hunting trophies, and I received a total of 637,000 gold just from those boxes. Donut made a little pained noise every time the Emberus shrine beeped.

The silver lucky bastard box contained a few invisibility potions and a useless cloak that I wouldn’t be able to wear. It added a few hammer-based attack skills, so I gave it to Firas.

The gold ranged weapon box contained a patch for my jacket. The first one I’d gotten on this floor. Donut started to inspect it as the Gold Apostate box opened.

The symbol appeared in the air and then slapped itself right onto my left upper arm. This was yet another tattoo. It appeared to be a flaming ball of snakes. Almost like a free-floating medusa wig. One of the snake heads reached down and curled around the web pattern on my elbow tattoo, the one that gave me access to the Guild of Suffering, which I hadn’t seen or heard anything about since I’d gotten that tattoo for using the Ring of Divine suffering for the first time.

Before I could examine the tattoo’s properties, the Gold Spicy Box opened.

I was expecting something ridiculous, like another toe ring or foot lotion. Instead. I got another patch.

This one was a little bigger than the first. It was a white, rectangular piece of fabric with a little, circular bomb hand stitched on it with fine, black thread. It almost looked like a pencil drawing of a bomb. Donut gasped, and she pulled it over to examine it more closely.

“Exquisite,” she said. “This is classic Spanish blackwork. This is much better than that other screen-printed monstrosity.”

She was so enraptured by the patch, she didn’t say or seem to notice my new tattoo, which was by far the largest one I’d received. With this, the spiderweb, and the goblin pass, I practically had a whole sleeve on my left arm.

“It could be worse,” Mordecai said, also inspecting the tattoo. “Diwata is a minor goddess. A nature one. Like a low-rent Apito. She’s pretty vengeful. She can make trees grow and summon animals. You’re gonna have to stay clear of the dryads from now on. I think some of them worship her.”

“That’s gonna suck,” Louis said from the couch. “Those tree dudes are everywhere.”

Enemy of the Church Tattoo

Diwata

The bearer of this symbol is an enemy of the church of Diwata. All adherents outside of a Club Vanquisher will attack you on sight. You may no longer worship Diwata or any of her allies. Eh, no big loss. She’s pretty much a hippie anyway. Always crying about her stupid trees. Always letting forest animals knock her up. It’s actually pretty disgusting.

You will receive a 25% damage bonus against all adherents of Diwata.

As an adherent of Emberus, you receive an additional 25% bonus against all adherents of Diwata, giving you a total of 50% bonus damage.

Warning: Uh, so this is a big one, so listen closely. Don’t let Diwata see you. Ever. If she shows up at a party, and you’re there, you best be sneaking out the back door. That’s all I’m saying about that.

Unlike other tattoos, this one may not be hidden with a cover-up sleeve. If you’d like to remove this tattoo and the associated effects, you must either kill Diwata or chop off your arm. One of those is a lot easier than the other.

“Carl,” Donut said, finally noticing the new ink. “Are you trying to look like Signet? Because it’s starting to work. You keep get them, over and over. You must be doing it on purpose. Disgusting. All tattoos are disgusting.”

“Hey,” Gwen said from her position against the back wall. “You said you liked my tattoos when we first met.” The Inuit woman had multiple tattoos on her face and hands.

“Oh, that’s different,” Donut said. “Your tattoos enhance your beauty and are culturally important. Carl’s tattoos make him look like someone whose mugshot would go viral.”

Gwen grunted indignantly.

“I have Bart Simpson tattooed on my ankle,” Firas added. “I did it in class in school. It looks a little smudged now. And by a little, I mean it’s just a blue blob. It got infected when I did it.”

“I was saving up for a Death Star tat,” Louis said. “I was gonna get it on my chest.”

“Who is Bart Simpson?” Britney asked as I picked up my two new patches to examine them.

My enchanted vest could hold as many patches as I could fit. I only had one patch on it right now, so I had plenty of room. Each new patch added +1 to all of my stats, plus the benefits of the patch itself.

The archery one was a small, square patch similar in size to my first patch, which depicted the planet earth. This one featured a group of about a dozen flaming arrows clutched in the hands of an eagle claw. The drawing was rendered in an old-school, traditional, Sailor Jerry style. I thought it looked kind of cool.

Upgrade Patch. Small.

This patch depicts the twelve flaming arrows the great Skyfowl hero Radiant Star shot into his grandfather in order to end the frozen time that plagued their world.

If this upgrade patch is affixed to an eligible garment, it will imbue the following upgrades:

+5% to Dexterity.

+5% damage to all ranged projectiles.

Warning: Upgrade patches are fleeting items. You may remove them, but they will be destroyed in the process.

“Hell yeah,” I said. I glanced at Katia, who’d already grabbed the sewing kit. She’d affixed my first one.

I picked up the second patch. This one was bigger. Bigger ones took up more space, though they still only imbued the same benefit as the smaller patches. However, the patches themselves appeared to give much better benefits, which made it worth it. I ran my finger over the raised bomb on the white patch. Donut was enraptured with it. What had she called it? Spanish blackwork? That didn’t make sense. How in the hell would she know that?

And then it hit me. Finally. Of course. I felt like an idiot for not seeing it earlier.

“Donut,” I said. “What was the name of that earth hobby potion you got way back on the third floor?”

“Scutelliphily,” she said, spitting the words. “Useless, stupid potion. Nobody knows what it means.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve figured it out,” I said.

“Really? What is it?”

I patted the bomb patch. “What type of thread is on this thing?”

“Oh, it’s just lovely. It’s supposed to be silk, but some people try to cheat using linen thread. But you can always tell when it’s the real deal because...” She trailed off.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure scut-whatever has something to do with embroidery or patches.”

Donut gasped. “Carl, Carl. I think you’re right!”

“Scutelliphily is a compound Latin and Greek word,” Britany said. “Scutellus is Latin, and it means ‘small shield.’ Phileein is a common Greek suffix that means ‘the love of.’ Or something similar. So it means the love of small shields. I guess that means you love little patches. If you had asked me, I could have told you this earlier.”

We all just looked at the Ukrainian barbarian woman like she’d just sprouted a hamster from her forehead.

“Dude,” Louis said.

“What?” she asked, irritated as I shook my head and examined the rectangular patch.

Upgrade Patch. Medium.

This patch is finely made from Spider Reaper Minion thread silk.

It’s a bomb. You blow shit up all the time. It’s appropriate you have a patch depicting it. This patch is finely made, which means all below upgrades are enhanced.

If this upgrade patch is affixed to an eligible garment, it will imbue the following upgrades:

+11% to Constitution.

+6% damage to all explosives.

+2 to the Dangerous Explosives Handling Skill.

+15% Discount from traveling Spider Reaper Minion merchants.

Warning: Upgrade patches are fleeting items. You may remove them, but they will be destroyed in the process.

My dangerous explosives handling skill was already at 10, so that alone was pretty good. I pulled my jacket off and handed it to Katia. She took the two patches and started mapping out the best place to sew them on. Donut jumped to her shoulder and started offering unsolicited advice.

I had one more important upgrade to deal with. With my last level-up, I was finally able to move my base strength over 100. This came with its own upgrade. I’d be given three upgrade options, and I had to pick one.

That number, 100, was just insane to me. The average human had a strength of four. Every person in this room, even Louis and Britney was now stronger than the strongest human who had ever lived.

It’s not real, I thought, having a sudden memory of my time in the production ship. Of the “zero zone” they’d called it. It’d felt like I couldn’t breathe, that I’d had all my strength zapped out of me. I had lost my ability to read Syndicate Standard. Sort of. I was pretty sure I’d lost all of my upgrades and abilities, including all of my enhanced stats.

What does that mean? How does that work in the context of the rest of the universe?

It was a question for another time. I assigned my points, bringing my strength to exactly 100.  For the first time, I felt myself get physically larger. It wasn’t a huge change, but I felt my arms swell. My chest bulged. I reached up and touched my arm. Wow, I thought. I’m jacked.

New Achievement! What big muscles you have!

Your base strength is now over 100. Rawr!

Get thee to Chippendales!

Reward: You’ve received an upgrade!

Admin Message:

You have been given a permanent upgrade. You have three choices. You have three minutes to pick. Choose wisely. Your choices are:

Swole.
Prison Bitch.
Stepson.

“Shit,” I said. Three minutes wasn’t very long. None of these were listed as the possible choices in the cookbook. Or if they were, they’d changed the names. “Mordecai, help me pick.” I quickly moved through each one, reading it out loud after I read the description.

Swole. From now on, every one point of Strength you add as a result of a level-up stat point is actually two points. This is not retroactive, nor does apply to equipment-based upgrades.

That was pretty awesome. However, I was planning on focusing on constitution for a bit now. It wasn’t clear if it worked with my Ring of Divine Suffering, but I suspected it would not.

Prison Bitch. You have an additional 20% strength bonus when fighting hand-to-hand with someone whose base strength is lower than yours.

Again, that was a good upgrade. I did a lot of hand-to-hand fighting, and this would be a solid choice. Fighting like this was where my strength was most useful, so it would be better than the first choice at first, but the first choice would eventually be better. And this was useless if I was fighting someone stronger than me, presumably when I’d need the extra strength the most.

Stepson. All kicks and foot-based attacks have an automatic 15% chance to inflict Ouch per hit.

“What the hell is ‘Ouch’?” I asked. There wasn’t a way to click on or read what it did.

“It’s a stagger attack,” Mordecai said. “It’ll stop someone in their tracks. Like kicking them in the nuts.”

“Carl did that once to an elf,” Donut said from Katia’s shoulder. “Zev, our agent said the audience didn’t like that much.”

“It is kind of a bitch move,” Firas agreed.

“Not helping,” I said. “Mordecai? What do you think?”

“Swole,” he said. “You already have multiple feet upgrades that’ll help disable a victim. Swole seems to be the obvious choice. It’s not an active skill, but it’s what I would choose.”

“Agreed,” Katia said as she sewed the arrow patch next to the planet earth on my jacket’s shoulder.

“I think you should do the one with the feet,” Donut added. “If it’s ever a question, you should always take the foot-based choice. Plus if you kick something five times fast, that’s like an almost guaranteed stun. You’re always kicking and stepping on animals and orcs and hunters. You could tap dance on someone and stun them.” She paused. “Carl, did you get bigger? Everyone, look at Carl. His arms got bigger.”

“Yeah he did,” Elle said. She reached over and touched my arm. “Imani, come touch Carl.”

I ignored her. I had a minute left to choose. Donut a compelling argument, but, again, it seemed the two-for-one upgrade was the best choice. I ended up going with it.

“Sorry, Donut,” I said. “I think I’ll go with swole,” I said. I clicked it.

Dude. You’re so big. Huge.

“I’m not the one you need to apologize to,” Donut said, still intently staring over Katia’s shoulder.

Katia had already finished with the first patch, and she’d moved to the bomb. She was placing it on the bottom right of the jacket’s front, right along the hemline. She grew a second pair of arms to hold the jacket in place.

Donut made a disapproving noise. “No, no, your stitches are off. This is a piece of fine art, Katia. You wouldn’t tape a Bob Ross painting to the wall with duct tape. Your stitches have to be perfectly spaced.”

“Donut,” Katia said.

“I’m just trying to help.”

I sat down in the chair, finally done with my boxes. I put my hand against my arm. I thought of everything that had happened over the past day and a half. I thought of that little kid with his shitty drawing of me getting eaten by the brindle grub. Was his dad right? Was I only alive because the AI wanted it? Should I have chosen the stepson benefit?

I looked down at my feet, and I felt dirty. My new tattoo burned on my swollen arm. The Emberus shrine bubbled louder, reminding me that I owed both blood and money.

That’s how it always is, isn’t it? I thought. The silence in my mind roared, louder than it had ever been.

“No, no, no!” Donut cried from Katia’s shoulder. Katia looked like she was about to murder the cat.

I smiled. At least I was home, if only for an hour or two.



Chapter 166

“Here it comes, here it comes!” Donut said, bouncing up and down. Next to her, Mongo screeched, waving his arms. “Oh, it’s going to be glorious. I wish this thing had a DVR. Mordecai, can you record it so we can play it back?” She gasped. “We can make copies, and I can autograph them, and Carl can sell them when he goes back to the stupid con thing!”

“I don’t think it works that way,” I said.

Mordecai didn’t answer. It was just me, Mordecai, Donut, and Mongo. The others had an emergency outside. Their village was being raided by death monkeys or something. They had to leave, and they were going to take the Twister back south to assist Chris and Li Na.

After several scenes of crawlers getting themselves killed, the rest of the program was dedicated to the fight. The scene started with Lucia entering the town and literally ripping the tree-like mayor in half. She was in her melee-focused, skeletal, demonic form. Her two rottweilers—the massive, pony-sized Cici and the regular-sized Gustavo 3 slinked into the village behind her, heads low to the ground, growling at anything that moved. As we watched, Gustavo barked at a dryad, and a bolt of lightning shot from the dog’s mouth, striking a monkey in the branches on the dryad’s head. The small animal dropped dead. While Gustavo moved to devour the corpse, Cici pounced on the tree creature and started biting the smoldering branches off the NPC as it cried out. Blood sprayed from each broken branch.

“Christ,” I muttered.

“Dogs. Can’t trust a one of them,” Donut said.

From there, the show portrayed Lucia as she went through each pub and safe room in the small town and sampled all of their food and alcohol. As she left each pub, she cast a spell at the entrance. It was the trigger for the teleport trap.

“How is it that they haven’t patched that yet?”

“Exploits that allow a crawler to trap and kill another crawler usually aren’t patched,” Mordecai said. “This one has been around a while. Though I think her original intention was to capture the nebs, not necessarily you and Donut. From what I gather she’d had a run-in with them before this.”

Lucia ended up settling at a raised treehouse bar in the middle of the small village. It wasn’t a saferoom, but a dungeon-style pub with an ursine proprietor. The pub had a wide picture window that looked over both of the village’s two entrances. An ornate, wooden stairwell circled up the tree, leading to a broad deck that led to the front door.

We watched, from Lucia’s point of view, as Donut and I walked into town from the north, hurrying because it was almost time for me to leave and go to CrawlCon. We paused at the entrance to the saferoom to ask the dryad NPC who the mayor was.

Both of Lucia’s dogs started to growl.

“Lunch,” Lucia said, sliding out of the chair. The effort was smooth, snake-like. They moved out the front door and leaned over the balcony, watching us. The three of them quietly and slowly descended the circular staircase, reaching the ground. We hadn’t noticed them because she’d somehow placed a protection spell over the village, blocking all the dots from appearing on the map.

“Cici, do not swallow the cat whole like you did to that fairy lady. I wish to loot the puta’s inventory,” Lucia whispered.

“Well, I never,” Donut said next to me as we watched the show. “That’s just rude.”

“So, she just attacked you straight up? She didn’t try talking to you first or anything?” I asked.

“No,” Donut said. “Not at first. Watch how I expertly handle the situation.”

“Who’s that?” Samantha said on the screen. “She looks like my type of crazy.”

Pop!

It showed me disappearing and then reappearing in my seat at the panel for the art contest, which wasn’t exactly how it happened. They also, for some inexplicable reason, digitally added a little cocktail to the table with an umbrella along with a bowl filled with what looked like strawberries and candy bars.

“Snacks? They gave you snacks?” Donut squeaked.

They quickly moved back to the action before I could object.

Samantha dropped to the ground as Donut hissed. I’d had the saferoom door open, but it started to slam closed when I’d disappeared. Donut leaped for the door, but she vanished and reappeared in the middle of the town square, switching places with Lucia.

Lucia landed in the doorway to the pub, landing with one fist on the ground in the classic superhero pose, her back to the action. Mud splattered as her fist hit the earth, splashing over the dryad and the back of Samantha’s head.

At the same moment, Donut splatted on the ground with a yowl, landing in the exact spot Lucia had just been standing.

Right between the two snarling dogs.

This was obviously a planned move, something Lucia had done before. The two dogs both lunged in the exact moment Donut hit the ground.

The dogs were fast, but Donut had a Dodge skill of 11, and she shot forward, moving lightning quick. She leapt in the air and did a rather impressive backflip, landing on the back of the larger rottweiler before launching herself again toward the second pub—the treehouse where Lucia had been waiting. A plume of blood geysered off the back of the giant dog as Donut’s back claws ripped flesh.

As she flew, Donut cast Wall of Fire behind her. The dogs both yelped and ran in opposite directions as the flames spread across the center of town.

The recap paused as a camera zoomed up into the air and then looked down on the scene. Little triangles appeared over all the combatants—Lucia, Donut, Cici, Gustavo, and Samantha. The announcer zoomed in on the smaller of the two rottweilers, giving the audience the dog’s stats before moving to the large dog, still frozen with blood splashing up off the creature’s back.

“Holy shit,” I gasped. “You almost got bitten in half.”

“I know, right?” Donut said. She made a little karate motion and a wachaw! noise. “They don’t call them cat-like reflexes for nothing.”

“What was that teleport spell. It was different than what she used on the clockwork Sledge.”

“Loop-de-Loop,” Mordecai said, his small eyes intent on the screen. “It’s a trap spell, which is different than a regular trap that you set with a module. She likely has the option to either send the victim to a default location or to switch places, and she can toggle it on the fly. She peppers every town she enters with teleport traps. It’s a smart survival technique. She likely can only set them when she’s in her other form. All of her magic in the skeleton form comes from items.”

The announcer completed his analysis of the five players, finishing with a frozen zoom-in on Samantha, who appeared to be screaming and rolling toward the skirmish with the dogs. A pop-up appeared and quickly went away, too fast to read.

The scene unfroze.

Lucia hissed in anger. In the five seconds it had taken for Donut to evade the dogs, Lucia had tossed four potions, each in a different direction. They hit the ground and exploded in a puff of yellow smoke. She dropped the last potion onto the ground in front of the saferoom door and rushed forward toward her two dogs and the wall of fire as Donut pounded in the opposite direction toward the treehouse pub.

“What are those potions?” I asked.

“Cloud of Dispel magic,” Mordecai said. “She’s looking for you. She didn’t know you’d left. She thinks you went invisible.”

Despite having two different types of legs—a skeleton leg and the leg of a goat—Lucia moved with surprising speed.

Donut didn’t bother with the stairwell that circled the tree leading up to the other pub. She jumped, landing high on the side of a tree adjacent to the treehouse and scrabbled up the trunk. She then moved to leap from that tree to the deck surrounding the raised pub.

At that same moment, Lucia effortlessly scooped up the still-rolling Samantha by the hair and swung her directly at Donut, launching the head like a rocket. The sex doll head flew true, beaming the cat in the side just as she landed on the platform. Donut yowled and stumbled, rolling. She hit the side of the pub with a mighty thump.

I cringed. That looked like it had hurt. Mongo growled with concern.

Lucia shouted a command, and the two dogs snarled and lunged directly at their owner as she slid to a stop. She dropped a round chip at her feet that I immediately recognized as a trap module.

Despite knowing that Donut survived this, my heart dropped. I knew exactly what was about to happen. Donut was going to enter the other saferoom and switch places with Lucia again. But this time, Donut was going to activate a second trap as soon as she landed between the two dogs.

Donut scrambled toward the door, but Samantha, who’d also landed on the raised deck, veered off toward the door and hit it first, pushing it open and rolling inside.

She did that on purpose, I thought, watching the action unfold.

Samantha hit the invisible loop-de-loop trap and teleported back down to the center of the clearing, on the other side of the still-roaring wall of fire. She triggered the second trap, which appeared to be some sort of snare thing that kept her from fleeing. Gustavo snapped down right onto the indestructible doll’s head, ripping her up from the ground and shaking her violently as Samantha screamed bloody murder. The larger Cici lunged forward in an attempt to pry the sex doll from the other rottweiler’s grip, but Gustavo scrambled away, shaking and growling.

At that same moment, Lucia teleported to right in front of Donut, who was still diving for the saferoom entrance. Lucia was facing the room, and Donut plowed into her back. They both flew into the treehouse pub, crashing inside and scattering tables and chairs. The ursine proprietor shouted and jumped out of the way.

This pub wasn’t a true saferoom. It was the same sort of place as the Desperado Club or where we’d killed Growler Gary over and over. There was a door to the guildhall, just fifteen feet away, but they could still kill each other in here. Before Lucia could recover, Donut lunged for the guildhall door.

“Watch for traps,” I felt myself saying just before Donut hit the snare.

“Nobody likes a Monday morning short stop, Carl,” Donut grumbled.

On the screen, Donut stopped dead, completely rooted in place. A ninety second timer appeared over her head. She could still move in a circle, but her forward paw was stuck to the pub’s floorboard. She turned and fired a full-powered magic missile into Lucia Mar, who rocketed back. Lucia was now injured, but she had some sort of magic protection which greatly absorbed the damage. I could see one of the rings on her fingers glowing and pulsing. Still, the spell had rocked the crawler, and her health went down about twenty percent.

And just as the girl-turned-woman started to recover, Donut cast a Fireball into her chest. Lucia slammed into the back wall of the pub as the ursine guy shouted in alarm. The far wall of the wooden pub burst into flames.

“Don’t attack her directly,” I said. “She has that other spell, remember? The damage reflect one she used to kill Ifechi.”

“I’m not an idiot, Carl. The spell is called Rubber, and she hadn’t cast it yet because she wanted her dogs to eat me. Plus Mordecai said he thinks she can only do it when she’s in her pretty form.”

“That’s not what I said at all,” Mordecai said. “I said I think it’s from an item she’s wearing, so she might be able to cast it in her skeletal form, but I wasn’t sure.”

“Oh,” Donut said. “Well, she never cast it.”

“Also,” Mordecai added. “Fireball is an outdoor spell, Donut.”

“Both of you, shush! This is the part where it gets all weird.”

“You should have released Mongo,” I added. “It was three against one.”

Next to me, Mongo screeched with agreement.

“I can’t help but notice I’m sitting here next to you right now, Carl. You were sipping margaritas and eating strawberries while I was literally fighting for my life. Now quit making suggestions and watch.”

I reached down and petted Donut. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

On the screen, Donut yelled, “Get back,” as Lucia peeled herself off the wall. Her health was down to about 50%. She casually patted out the fire on her body. Behind her, fire raged. Lucia stumbled toward the counter and peered over at the ursine proprietor who cowered there.

“Milk,” Lucia said.

“We’re on fire, Mayor. We have to go,” the bear said.

She slammed her fist on the counter, and the wood cracked. “Milk. Hurry.” She turned toward Donut. “Cats like milk, right?”

“What?” Donut asked.

“Two milks!” Lucia demanded. She looked over her shoulder at an empty spot. “The fight is over. It is a draw.”

“Uh, I gotta go into the back to get it,” the ursine said. He disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later, a distant door slammed. The bear man was running away. Lucia didn’t seem to notice.

“No points?” Lucia paused and looked back out the window as the flames spread upward.

“Who are you talking to?” Donut asked as the flames licked across the ceiling. She still had forty seconds over her head.

“He’s mad,” Lucia said. “He says I should finish you off, but you fought good.”

“Hey,” Donut said up at the television screen. “They cut out what she said! She said his name was Alexandro, and he was her youth assistant.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Mordecai said. “Strange.”

On the screen, Lucia continued. “Your friend ran away. What is his name? Oh, yes. Carl. He’s a coward. You should never leave your friends. I had friends, on the last floor. Bini and Abraham and Siti. It was all ice, and we finished and popped the bubble. But I fell asleep, and I didn’t tell Gus to sleep. And… He’s the bad one.” She paused. “Cici does it, too, but Gus is worse. I think they ate your head friend. I didn’t get any points for it.” She started to pound at the side of her own head, slamming her hand against her temple in a steady rhythm. Slap, slap, slap. I’d seen her do that once before on the recap after her dog had killed all the others in her bubble. “You should probably go before...” She paused.

Cici, the larger of the rottweilers entered the pub, head low. The dog’s lip curled back in a vicious snarl. Her incisors were each the length of a human hand. Holy shit, I thought. Donut was still snared for another twenty seconds.

Gustavo hadn’t come in, and I assumed the other dog remained outside on the ground, gnawing on Samantha.

Something changed in Lucia’s demeanor. I could see it on her face, almost like a shadow falling across it. What is that? She looked at the giant dog and said, “You want a head to play with, too, don’t you sweet Cici? Kill the kitty. Keep the head for yourself. Leave the rest for me.”

The roof of the pub was fully engulfed. Black smoke choked the room. The rear corner caved in, revealing the branches of the trees, which also burned. Red embers zipped through the air. A heavy, wooden beam crashed to the floor next to Lucia, showering sparks, and she didn’t flinch.

This whole time, Donut was mumbling under her breath. It finally dawned on me what she was doing. She’s singing. She’s trying to cast a bard spell.

“Don’t worry, little Donut,” Lucia said as Cici stalked forward. “Soon, you will be tossed through the veil, and you will feast with the other losers. And I will have enough points to get across the bridge and back home with my papa.”

What the hell is that kid babbling about?

Four additional Donuts suddenly appeared in the fiery pub, all in a line along the back wall.

“Holy shit, you did it,” I exclaimed, forgetting Lucia’s weird rant. “You cast Entourage.”

“Don’t act so surprised, Carl,” Donut said indignantly.

But the deception was obvious. Four of the illusions didn’t have a timer, nor were they moving. They stood still like mannequins. The center one had five seconds over her head, still counting down.

At the same moment, Cici jumped forward, snapping at the middle Donut. I cringed as the massive jaws clamped, moving right through Donut as if she wasn’t there. The dog slammed into the guildhall door and howled.

“How,” I began to say, but then the illusions all snapped off as quickly as they’d come. There’d been five Donuts, not four. She’d overlaid the middle one onto herself. She’d also downed an invisibility potion.

But that wasn’t all. She’d cast Hole under her own feet just as the dog lunged.

The view quickly changed to the outside. We watched as a translucent outline of Donut dropped straight down and landed deftly on the ground next to the burning tree. She looked up at the hole.

“I can’t believe that worked,” I said.

“The spell removed the trap,” Mordecai said, “So she got out of it. It’s a good trick.”

“I got an achievement for it, too!”

“Did you know that was going to happen?”

“Of course I knew, Carl. Wait, wait, this is the best part!”

Back in the treehouse, Cici finally discovered the round hole between her legs and peered down through it. She stuck her head through and started barking wildly down at the still-invisible form of Donut.

“No,” Lucia cried, rushing forward. She reached to pull Cici back.

She was too late.

Donut snapped off the Hole spell.

The head of Cici the rottweiler dropped from the treehouse and splatted onto the muddy ground as firefly-like embers drifted all around it.

Above, an unholy wail of anguish rocked the village.

Donut, still invisible, walked up to the head and put her paw on it, pushing it over to reveal the dead dog’s eyes.

“Stupid dog,” Donut muttered on the screen. “The only bridge you’ll be crossing today is made out of rainbows.”

The head disappeared as Donut pulled it into her inventory. A chunk of treehouse fell, and Donut bounded off. She remained invisible, and she skulked around the still-burning Wall of Fire and headed back toward the original saferoom I’d disappeared in front of. A few hundred meters away, Gustavo 3 sat on the ground, oblivious, happily gnawing on Samantha’s head while she wailed that she was going to kill Gustavo’s bitch of a mother.

Donut disappeared into the saferoom.

The scene returned to Lucia Mar on her knees, hugging the headless corpse of the giant rottweiler as the building collapsed all around her.

“She killed the wrong one,” Lucia wailed. “My sweet, sweet Cici. That cat killed the wrong one. What’s going to happen now? What’s going to happen now?” She looked over at the empty, flaming bar. “Where’s my milk?”

I could see it, even on the screen. She was constantly changing back and forth, like a child doing hopscotch from one personality to the next. Her eyes narrowed, and the corpse of Cici disappeared as she took it all into her inventory. The pub’s flaming counter dropped away as the entire kitchen half of the pub collapsed.

Lucia stood to her full height, but she’d changed from the skeletal hag to the beautiful woman, surrounded by a nimbus of flame. The transformation had been instantaneous.

“Yes. Yes. They all must die. You’re right. No more mercy. No more friends. They all must die.”

The show ended there.

I looked over at Donut, who beamed up at me triumphantly.

“I was pretty proud of that rainbow bridge comment,” she said. “Though I keep going over it in my head, and I kinda wish I’d said it in a different way. Like maybe, ‘welcome to the rainbow bridge,’ but that doesn’t seem quite right, either. It doesn’t have enough punch. Oh well, it’s too late now. I’ll have another one ready for when we take out the other dog.”

I exchanged a glance with Mordecai, whose fuzzy face looked grim.

I kept my eyes on the screen, but the show was ending. They would show the next part tomorrow. “So that bear I saw out there, attached to the upside-down cross with the word ‘milk’ carved into his chest in Spanish. I’m pretty sure that was the bartender. She killed him and every other NPC in the town after that. But I don’t understand. She sees someone invisible. And what was that point thing? What’s a youth assistant? Are you sure that’s what she said?”

“Yes, I’m sure Carl.”

“Youth assistants are new,” Mordecai said. “But they’re not a dungeon thing. Children under a certain age aren’t allowed to enter the dungeon. If they descend into the dungeon, they are taken away until after the crawl. The youth assistants are the ones who take care of them. I’m not sure what the minimum age is. It’s different each time, and it changes based on intelligence level and species. Kids shouldn’t be in here. Youth assistants shouldn’t be here. It’s really strange.”

We were interrupted by the daily announcement.

Hello, Crawlers!

What an exciting day! With just over 66,000 crawlers left, we have exactly 100 guilds formed combining almost 1,500 parties. Over 90% of all crawlers are partied with at least one other contestant, which is an extraordinarily high number. For a non-stigmergic species, you guys sure love your societal structures.

This coordination is great for survival in normal circumstances, but you make yourselves easy targets. Still, an equally amazing number of hunter-killer trophies have been collected. Tomorrow’s recap episode will feature some of the highlights of hunters falling, a first for Dungeon Crawler World.

In fact, you guys are fighting back so astonishingly well, several of the silly hunters are abandoning their hunt and hiding out in Zockau. Hopefully they stop being cowards soon. If not, we may have to change things up a little.

Your pluckiness has caused us to completely redesign the seventh floor. More on that later. Please note, however, if you go down within six hours of level collapse, you will not get a head start. You will, however, get good placement. If you go down too early, you will be placed at the back of the pack.

In the meantime, you still have a full seven days left to secure your spot in the top 50. All of the top 50 will be notified that they’ve received an invite to the Butcher’s Masquerade. Attendance is mandatory, and all invitees will be allowed a plus one. Attendance for the plus ones is optional.

Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!

“What the hell does stigmergic mean?” I asked.

“I bet Britney knows,” Donut said.

“I’m more worried about the wording on...” Mordecai began.

The door to the outside flung open. Bomo stepped inside the saferoom. The giant rock monster looked uncharacteristically tired and exasperated. Just outside, standing uncertainly in the situationally-generated space was a small, male mantis. The hunched-over, shivering creature was barely distinguishable as the same race as Vrah or Circe.

“Carl,” the creature said through the open door. “We must talk quickly. She’s coming for me.”

~~~~

Two more chapters coming in a few minutes