Chapters 167 and 168 + Cover art (Patreon)

Note: There were two two-chapter releases today! Make sure you've read 165 and 166 before reading these two!

Chapter 167

Carl: Mordecai, how safe is it to bring him in here?

Mordecai: He can’t teleport you away like Lucia does in a regular saferoom, if that’s what you’re asking. But he can and will likely report everything he sees back to his people. You can’t tie him up. You can’t hire him. You can restrict him to the main room of the personal space, but that’s about it.

Carl: Shit, what do we do?

Mordecai: You probably should have thought this through before you invited him here.

“I wasn’t expecting you to come,” I said, leaving him in the hallway. It’d been almost two hours since I’d sent Bomo out into Zockau with the note. He’d been given strict instructions not to leave the tavern saferoom. I was about to send him a message to come back. If Vrah was returning to the town, she surely would’ve arrived by now.

Well, I thought. Maybe not. I imagined flying while your genitals were on fire had to slow you down somewhat.

“He attack me,” Bomo said, grunting the words. “In saferoom, he attack me, and he get frozen for a minute. Then he said, ‘wait for me’ and he attack me again. He got frozen for an hour. Stupid bug. Lots of hunters in saferoom. Lots and lots. They scared of Bomo.”

“He attacked you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Twice? With what?”

“With hands. He tried to punch. He got frozen, and it said he was naughty.”

If he attacked any of us a third time, he’d get stripped of all his gear and teleported away to the closest monster nest.

I sighed and examined the small, quivering creature. He looked like a child. He did not have the upper, sword-like arms that the females did, which made him look even more pitiful.

Edict – Mantis. Level 50. Merchant.

The Dark Hive.

“Hello, Edict,” I said, leaning against the door. A few personal space doors dotted the situationally-generated hallway. This was one of the few, true saferooms in Zockau, so it made sense others would want to keep their spaces attached to this pub. “So, what do you got for me?”

“I’m not a hunter. Or a fighter. I’m just the accountant. They made me come here to do the trading.”

“An accountant?” I asked. “You know, you’re the second guy to say that to me.” I looked over at Donut, who’d jumped to my shoulder. “What was that other guy’s name? The elf from the Dream? He said he was an accountant, too.”

“You know I don’t remember the names of corpses, Carl,” Donut said. “Maybe if you pull his hand out of your inventory it will jog your memory.”

“Akland?” Edict asked, deflating even further. If he hunched over any more, I was afraid he’d fall to the ground and turn into a pill bug. “You killed Akland? I hadn’t heard. He’d gone out with the others. I told him it was stupid. The hunters are all returning to Zockau. It’s become too dangerous. Please. She’s almost here. She told me I have to mate with her. We must hurry.”

“What do you got for me?” I asked again.

The bug wrung his hands. “I had a lot of magical gear, but I am contracted to buy for our government. The Burrowers. They’ve already paid for all the loot I have collected.”

The Burrowers were also mantises. They were one of the nine factions that were to compete in faction wars. “There’s a Burrower rep on the floor?”

“No, no, you misunderstand. They paid in advance. I have been contracted to bring the gear directly to them upon the collapse of this floor. I’m going straight to the ninth after this. That’s who I really work for. The Dark Hive sells only to them.”

Even though the Burrowers were the same species as the mantises from the Dark Hive, I knew that they were actually two very different groups. The Dark Hive was really just a private corporation. They apparently got their money from running some sort of intergalactic amusement park. Like a fucked up version of the Disney family.

The Burrowers were the royal family and the governmental entity for the mantis system. They rarely did well in faction wars, but they usually participated. Apparently they were one of the deadliest and most terrifying forces in the galaxy, but the generated NPCs they received in faction wars weren’t fellow bugs, so they usually got knocked out second after the nagas. I had a photograph of the empress mother in my inventory.

“I don’t care who you really work for. Unless you want your praying mantis nut sack to catch on fire for a week straight, you’re going to have to hand the loot over. And then we’ll protect you.”

“Carl, do bugs even have genitals?” Donut asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bug penis. I bet they’re really gross. Like a corkscrew duck penis. Or a dog penis. Have you ever seen one of those? They’re absolutely revolting, and sometimes they just have them hanging out for no reason. They look like sweating lipsticks. Whenever Miss Beatrice pulled out that red tube and brought it to her mouth, I couldn’t help but think...”

I held up a hand to stop the cat and let the mantis answer.

“You don’t understand,” Edict said. “The contract for the gear has already been executed. If I gave it to you, the Burrowers would take the money back from me and my family. My hive. I’m of Deep Mind, and we would not survive. So I have already given it all away to another entity who has agreed to deliver the goods for a small fee. I will not tell you who.”

I sighed. I hadn’t really been expecting that part to work, but it’d been worth a try. All I really wanted was to keep Vrah away from this guy so she couldn’t pass the gonorrhea on. I already knew from the cookbook that venereal diseases were a common thing in the dungeon, and several of them had the same cure. You had to neuter yourself or you had to give it to someone else. And by “someone else,” they meant a creature with compatible anatomy.

I had no idea how mantis alien genitals worked, but I did know that once you cut something away in this dungeon, it didn’t come back. And I also knew that Vrah was next in line to be the hive’s big queen, so giving herself a space hysterectomy or a spay or whatever had to be out of the question.

As simpering and cowardly as this guy looked, he was no dummy. He had to know keeping Vrah infected was my primary goal. Still, I had to play this out.

“I guess you’re fucked, then,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “If you have nothing for us, we have no incentive to keep you safe.” I shrugged.

Edict shook his head. “If I truly wished to remain safe, I would stay in the saferoom and refuse to leave, even when Vrah orders me. She cannot force me outside. She can’t use the teleport trick or the phase trick or the Bopca ejection method or the other dozen ways they have to lure crawlers out. After your assault, they covered the tavern with protection spells. I could just stay within.”

“Then why are you here?” I asked. A distant sense of alarm started to tingle the back of my mind. This is a trap. He’s springing a trap. But what was it? Was this a distraction?

“I don’t know how you infected Vrah with that disease, but when you did, you placed my fate, perhaps the fate of my entire hive, at a split in the tunnel. If I give you the weapons and armor, my family would be financially ruined. I would be without honor, forced to kill myself in shame. If I refuse Vrah’s orders and allow her to suffer, her family would take revenge on my own. They are powerful. Almost as strong as the royal family and certainly more wealthy. But if I give in to Vrah’s demands and mate with her, I will more than just die. While she would not be impregnated within this zone, it is still forbidden for members of my hive to attempt a coupling with hers. And while the Burrower government isn’t as strict as they once were, the old ways persist amongst our culture, and we would still be deemed as traitors. Perhaps forgivable, especially considering the circumstances. But a humiliation either way, and I will not let that happen.”

“Wait,” Donut said. “They’d make you kill yourself for having sex with someone from a different family?”

“All mantis couplings must be registered ahead of time. There must be a trial and psychological counseling for the male. But my family is employed by the government, so it’s forbidden to couple with a for-profit entity without putting up a bond and paying for a license.”

“Psychological counseling?” Donut asked. “Whatever for? All the human males have to do is find someone who’s drunk enough to not find them completely revolting for five minutes.”

The creature scoffed. “Do you know what happens when a mantis mates?”

“Probably something really gross?”

“The female eats the male’s head off. I have a smaller, secondary brain in my abdomen that keeps me alive for a few hours and allows me to keep mating until I am tapped dry.”

“She mates with a headless corpse while munching on the head? Are you serious?” Donut asked. “And you know this going in? You can still get it up? Carl, did you hear that?”

I didn’t care about any of this. I’d spent the last minute searching the hallway for traps and asking Mordecai what he thought was going on. He’d said you couldn’t place traps in situationally-generated spaces. I was getting ready to step back and close the door. Still, I remained, my feet glued in place as I listened to this guy’s story. The more he talked, the straighter he stood. The more certain his words became.

“So,” I said, “you’re screwed no matter what happens.”

The bug’s hands had turned to fists. He continued to tremor, but I wasn’t so sure anymore that this was fear. He was angry, but I had the sense it wasn’t at me. I didn’t understand.

“There’s only one way to maintain honor,” he said. “To protect my family. I need to die in battle.”

“We can’t fight in here,” I said. But then it hit me. He’d attacked Bomo twice.

“I hate this place,” the man said, standing fully erect. Behind him, I heard shouting coming from the main pub. This was the pained voice of Vrah, crying out for Edict. “I hate everything about it. Finding the stars was the worst thing that ever happened to my people. It is a slow, horrific death. Expansion to the point of oblivion. The primals finally understood, but it was too late for them. The kua-tin, I think, know this, too. Some of them, at least. They call it the Great Consensus. But it’s not. There is no agreement. Their young don’t understand. Now, quickly. Allow me entrance into your space.”

The door that led back to the pub burst open, and Vrah limped into the hallway. She towered over Edict. I highlighted the smaller bug, and I gave him a one-time pass to enter through the door.

Vrah moved slowly. She hissed in pain with every step. Smoke rose from her crotch. It stank like burned cheese. There was no vent system in this small hallway, and the smoke would soon be too much.

She started to say something to the smaller man, but with a strangled battle cry, he lunged at me, punching.

He froze in place, small fist about an inch from my crotch. The words Super Naughty flashed over his head. Vrah hissed in rage as Edict blinked twice and then disappeared.

He’d just been teleported, naked, to the closest mob nest. I had no idea what that would be, but he was likely in the process of being torn to shreds.

I wasn’t ever going to understand the intricacies of mantis culture, but I suspected this was the best possible outcome for him. Or if not him, his family.

Despite his report that he’d given away all his loot, a metric ton of gold coins dropped to the floor right at my feet, splashing like I’d just hit the jackpot at an old-school slot machine. So many, I was suddenly buried to my ankles. The cleaner bot beeped with rage while Donut gasped.

In the hallway, Vrah shrieked. She pounded at the wall as her lower abdomen burned. She looks smaller, I thought. Less sinister. I realized she’d dislodged all of the heads from her back. Not just the ones Donut had reanimated. Likely in an effort to make herself lighter. The flames on her lower abdomen whiffed out, she glowed as she was healed, and then the fire raged anew.

Not even a safe room would protect her from this torment.

“You know,” Donut said through the open door. “You really should get that taken care of. Maybe you can put some ointment on it. It looks infected.”

“Catch you later,” I said. I had to physically push the pile of the coins as I slammed the door. Several of them slid out into the hallway. The majority of the gold remained with us. I immediately opened the door back up to reveal the pub in Alucarda. The place was a mess. The bopca had not returned. I knew this pub was the only thing in town still standing. That bomb had been super powerful, the biggest thing I’d built myself. The only bigger explosive was Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, which remained in my inventory.

“Come on, Donut,” I said, stepping into the pub. “We need to get out of here before either Lucia or another hunter comes back.”

“But what about the gold?” she asked. “And you pushed some of it out into the hallway. You need to be more careful, Carl.”

“I got it,” Mordecai said. He shooed the cleaner bot away as he started to pick it all up

~

“I kinda feel bad for that guy. What was his name? Edict?” Donut said much later as we approached the small Ursine village. It’d been a long day. We’d been avoiding the dryad settlements because half of the tree guys now attacked me on sight, and I’d just learned the hard way that if the mayor happened to worship Diwata, he’d immediately task the funeral bell guards to attack me, too. Also, the monkeys in their branches threw rocks with amazing accuracy. They reminded me of those asshole, undead lemurs from the third floor. “He didn’t seem to want to be here, and we forced him to play the game.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to be here, either,” I said. I was not sympathetic, though I’d been thinking about what he said all day. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I didn’t actually agree with him, or at least what I thought he was getting at, and that was what was bothering me the most. I believed him when he’d said he didn’t want to be there. And that he hated the way the universe worked. Despite everything that was happening to me and our planet, I thought he was wrong. It was stupid to let it bother me.

I heard my dad’s voice, scolding me. Why do you care, he’d said to me one day when he caught me watching the news. Knowing all that stuff rots you from the inside out. It doesn’t affect people like us.

“I wish I had been there,” Samantha said. “I’d have killed him.”

We’d found Samantha stuck under a log about a half of a mile south of town. It hadn’t been hard to track her down considering how loud she was. She was still pissed about Donut leaving her to get eaten by the rottweiler, but she was starting to get over it. She seemed to have actually enjoyed the experience of being tortured by the mantises.

We’d spent the last several hours fighting our way south. Killing mobs, collecting plants, mosses, and mushrooms for Mordecai, and just grinding. Most of the mobs in this area were venomous plant things that whipped vines at you if you got too close. They were all Level 40 whip crackers. They’d be a downright menace if we weren’t immune to poison. Because we were, they were a great source of experience, and I forced Donut to kill as many as possible. She hit level 45 while I remained at 56.

We’d also taken control of two small towns, both ursine settlements. Donut killed one mayor, and I killed the next. I’d also been attempting to get a hold of my attorney, but I hadn’t heard back from him yet. The last time we’d spoken, he’d told me they were restricting communication, and he had to get a court order each time he wanted to reply to me. My question for him was a legal one, so hopefully they’d allow him to send me a response. I’d asked Mordecai first, and he’d said he didn’t know.

Mordecai: Every day, you do and come across something that’s never been done or seen before, Carl. I’m starting to feel a little obsolete. Ask your lawyer, and if he doesn’t respond, wait until after the next recap episode. If they don’t take it away from you, install it into the crafting studio and start working. In the meantime, transcribe everything you can from that automaton book into your scratchpad.

Zev had also been in contact, reminding me I still had one more appearance to make and that we needed to make the saferoom in time. We didn’t want a repeat of the last incident, though it seemed the hunters everywhere were retreating. Once word spread about what happened to the Dark Hive, the vast majority of these guys decided their own lives were suddenly valuable.

Not a single person on my chat had seen or heard of any hunter contact all day. I’d also asked around if anyone had seen Lucia, but nobody had. Mordecai seemed to think her escape spell would’ve teleported her to the opposite side of the map, and that it was a once-a-floor spell. I wasn’t so sure about that, but hopefully she was far away from us. We needed to deal with her, but now was not the time. Not yet.

That scene with Donut had been eating away at me. It was almost like Lucia was experiencing a completely different reality than the rest of us. You killed the wrong one. What did that mean? There was someone there with her, invisible. But there was more. Were they attached to the dogs? Or, dog. I didn’t have enough info.

When I was on my panel, everyone appeared to think she was just a crazy kid with an uncanny ability to kill people and defend herself. Despite being the most followed crawler in the universe until I surpassed her, people seemed to know precious little about the nature of her existence. It seemed important. Crucially important.

But at the same time, I hadn’t changed my mind. She was hurting people. Attacking crawlers. She was slaughtering and torturing NPCs for no good reason. She had to be put down.

Donut’s confidence in her ability to take out the kid during our next encounter was alarming. At least at first. She’d gotten lucky, and I wanted to make sure she knew that. But Donut was sensitive, and if I pushed too hard, she’d shut down. I’d tried to carefully broach the matter with her a few times, but she expertly steered the conversation away. In fact, she was doing it so deftly that I finally got the hint, and it made me relax.

Donut knew exactly how lucky she was. Donut was a lot smarter than she let on, and the way she’d handled the fight with Lucia made it clear she knew what she was doing. She just didn’t want to say it out loud. Or in private, for that matter. I decided to leave it be.

The upcoming town was another small settlement. The plan was to settle in for the night. I would go on my show, come back, and we’d reset. If we could easily find the mayor without getting embroiled into some bullshit quest, we’d take him out and then move on.

Both of the new ursine settlements we’d claimed—Now dubbed Ferdinand Peak and Nipton—had been as ridiculously religious as the first one, Point Mongo. After taking out the mayor, we hit the saferoom and sent Mordecai to talk to the guards. He was currently attached to the town of Nipton and was bitching about the quality of the stores there. I suspected this new place wouldn’t be much better.

This new town was surrounded by a massive wall of living, level-10 vines called a Jericho Bush. It wasn’t one giant shrub, but literally thousands of them. Each individual branch was its own plant. The description simply said: These powerful vines are very durable. They have a strong dislike for people named Josh and ska music. They appeared as a non-hostile, so we couldn’t get experience from chopping them down, not that we needed to. The plants all near the northern entrance to the city appeared dead. There were no guards.  Mordecai said these things were a magical plant that could be used to protect a city. He wanted us to hurry up and find a saferoom so he could go out there and collect some seeds.

The closer we got to town, the more clear it became that something was amiss. There were no people coming and going. No guards. There seemed to be no activity whatsoever. Shit, I thought. Had Lucia gotten to this town, too? Was that little asshole just moving across the map, murderhoboing everybody and everything?

Mongo screeched with concern, then issued a low growl.

“Uh oh,” Donut said. “That’s his ‘I smell other Mongos’ growl.” She sniffed at the air herself. “Oh god, I smell something awful, but it’s not dinosaurs. It smells like that train car after you attached Katia to the front of it.”

“Go look, Samantha,” I said.

“I’m on it,” she said and rolled forward, bouncing merrily toward the large town. “Helllloooo,” she called out. “Is everybody dead? Are any of you lizards here?” She disappeared through the unguarded entrance, hollering.

“She’s rolling a lot faster than she was before,” Donut said.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” I said. We waited a few minutes. Donut practiced humming a song. She was still terrible, but she was getting better.

Samantha: I SAW A FEW BEARS IN A WINDOW, SO NOT EVERYBODY IS DEAD. BUT I HAVEN’T SEEN THIS MANY CORPSES SINCE IT WAS ALGOS’ TURN TO HOST GAME NIGHT. IT’S LIKE THE BEACH FROM A FEW NIGHTS AGO, BUT A LOT MORE JUICY. CHOMPED UP PEOPLE AND PINK FEATHERS EVERYWHERE. THEY’VE BEEN DEAD A WHILE. MORE THAN A DAY. WHY DON’T THEY CLEAN IT UP? THE DINO IS LONG GONE. I THINK.

I sighed.

Corpses that were more than a day old were always a bad sign. The dungeon cleaned up after itself. When it didn’t, it was always on purpose.

“Come on, Donut,” I said. “We need to get a saferoom spot established. We’ll deal with whatever this is later.” My last appearance at CrawlCon was only scheduled to last about two hours, which would probably translate to four or five hours. After, we’d rest and get the hell away from here.

“Mongo, get into your carrier,” Donut said. “Come on. Be a good boy. We don’t want you eating all the dead bodies and getting sick again.”

Mongo screeched but complied.

Donut then jumped to my shoulder and started to lick at her paw. “Don’t step in gross stuff, Carl. You know how I feel about you trailing gross stuff into the guild.”

We went through the main entrance, and the stench of rotting death hit me like a baseball bat to the nose.

Entering Prepotente Town Number Four.

“Gah,” I muttered upon seeing the name.

“My word. He definitely needs help naming things,” Donut said.

“At least we know who it is this time.”

Donut gasped. “Unless it’s a trick. I shall ask him. We haven’t spoken in a bit.”

Carl: Miriam, are you guys here in, uh, town Number Four? It looks like most of the town is dead.

She didn’t answer, but I didn’t see any sign of them on the map. It was still day outside, which meant she was likely asleep.

The town was oddly in shadow thanks to the tall hedge that surrounded it, which was probably why Miriam the vampire liked the place. There were no big trees here, but several of the buildings were three or four stories high, adding to the sense of darkness. Rows and rows of nondescript buildings spread off down the tight, cobblestone street. There was a small downtown area with a clocktower and a pair of temples before ending at the far wall. I didn’t see anyone out.

Samantha rolled up, trailing a line of blood. The doll head had already been filthy, but now she was just caked in viscera, like she was cosplaying Rambo hiding in the mud. “It’s worse the next street over. Everyone is in pieces. I tried making gore angels, but it’s too coagulated and sticky.”

Multiple X’s dotted the area, mixed in with the random body parts of creatures too destroyed to be recognizable. Samantha was right. This was worse than the beach. Before the collapse, the stench would’ve been enough to bring me to my knees. Now, it was just another day. It looked as if someone mixed chili with reddish-brown paint and splashed it over the streets. A few pink feathers flitted about, but most of them were glued to the ground with blood.

I caught movement in the corner of my eye, and I looked up. A white dot appeared before disappearing. Someone in one of the buildings. They were hiding. We needed to get off these streets.

Most of the corpses had a small amount of loot on them, but nothing too great. It was mostly junk clothing items, the occasional health potion, and a handful of coins. I set out to quickly loot the bodies and take some of the corpse pieces into my inventory, but the first head I picked up disappeared into dust.

I kneeled down and examined one of the body parts. I wasn’t certain, but it appeared all of the corpses were bears.

Fodera – Level 40 Ursine Lamplighter. Killed by Big Tina.

“They’re not letting this dinosaur quest go, are they?” I grumbled.

Zev: Carl, you need to get to a saferoom. You’re getting filthy, and you need to go to your event. Uh, also, you should probably know that Odette’s interview with you and Donut and Beatrice tunneled last night. That along with the Dark Hive business is causing there to be a lot of attention focused on you.

Carl: Wonderful. Hey, I need to talk to my attorney. Can you make that happen?

Zev: I’ll see what I can do. Now go get ready. There’s something else we need to discuss, but I’ll do it in person.

Carl: Oh, I can’t wait.

“Come on, guys,” I said as I reached down to pick up Samantha. She growled and snapped at me. An eyeball fell out of her hair and landed on my foot with a splatch.

The closest pub was not a true saferoom, and the proprietor was either dead or hiding. The inside was some standard dive bar filled with flags and framed jerseys and signs for the Ottawa Senators NHL hockey team. The center of the bar was dominated with a massive, autographed picture of some player named Daniel Alfredsson. I didn’t follow hockey too much, so I didn’t know who that was.

Just before we entered the guild, I paused, looking about the empty room. I caught sight of a bear claw embedded into the wall just inside the pub by the front door, like the proprietor had been standing there in the doorway before he’d been ripped away, and he’d tried to save himself. A puddle of dried blood sat pooled under the claw.

I had a sudden, ominous feeling about this damn dinosaur quest.

Chapter 168

“Hello, guys,” I said to the large, two-headed ogre creature sitting before me. I couldn’t examine them like I could in the dungeon, but they were really here with me. I knew this right away because they smelled like how one would expect a two-headed ogre would smell. Especially one who’d been locked in a small room for three days, only let out to perform like a monkey for various panels and events.

This was the first time I was ever physically in the same place with a crawler other than Donut.

I took stock of the room. They had a bed and a training room, but I noted it was a regular, level-one training space. The remnants of what appeared to be a greasy, cooked chicken sat on the counter without a plate. There were no other comforts. This was practically a jail cell.

I’d taken a shower, Zev made me put the badge on, and I transported away. I’d gotten the security sweep, but this time it was a low-level gnoll who barely said two words to me before I was transferred back down to the production facility. The security guy did not turn me sideways before I zapped away, and I landed hard on my side onto the floor.

The two-headed creature was attempting to play a game. They each had a set of cards in their respective hands and were desperately trying to keep the other from seeing what they had. They both looked at me in alarm as I suddenly appeared, blasting onto the green room floor like a blook being slammed to a table.

“Ow,” I said. I rolled onto my back.

The ogres both grunted as they put the cards down, stood, and moved to help me up. I allowed them to pull me to my feet as I grinned sheepishly and faced the two-headed creature. Creatures. I knew this was two distinct people, but it was hard to see them that way. Together, these guys were the number five crawler in the dungeon.

My menus were gone, but I could still see the names floating over their heads thanks to my CrawlCon badge. Dmitri had the right side—so on my left. It didn’t have his class or level, but I knew he was a mage class called a Visionary. Maxim was a melee-focused Bogatyr. The two stood about seven feet tall and were wide and solid. Their skin was a mottled gray and looked thick and callused. Like the an elephant. Maxim wore a knitted beanie, and Dmitri’s round, wide head was bare. They wore a simple tunic, with the badge around both of their necks. Their massive arms made my newly-enhanced guns look like twigs. The ogre’s right arm was covered with golden rings, one after another, and it jingled as the creature moved.

Both creatures had wide, open eyes with furrowed lines upon their foreheads, making them appear stupid. I knew this was misleading.

These guys were clearly the same sort of ogre as Areson the Wise, Signet’s bodyguard. I recalled what she said about the nodling race.

When a nodling dies, he splits into a new creature depending on how many heads the original had. These new creatures emerge as toddlers but quickly grow.

Their race basically gave them an extra life. I wasn’t certain how useful that was considering they’d turn, at least temporarily, into little kids when they died and split.

Their main melee weapon was Maxim’s meteor hammer: a flaming ball at the end of a chain. I’d seen how much damage they could do with the thing. According to Elle, they were good guys, for which I was glad. I had no desire to ever face them down.

“Carl,” Maxim said after I greeted them, reaching out his left hand to shake mine. Awkwardly. “It is good to finally meet. I hear you’ve been making a big splash at the convention so far. Thank god it is almost over, no?”

This guy had an Eastern European accent, deepened and grittier because of his race. It reminded me of Britney and Langley, but a little different in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“You do not have your cat companion with you?” Dmitri said, sounding disappointed. “I wanted to meet the cat.”

“You and the damn cat,” Maxim said. “You’re always talking about this cat. We told you, it’s just Carl. Skindle told you it is just Carl. You’re going to make him feel uncomfortable.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Donut is back in the saferoom. She wanted to come, but they wouldn’t let her.”

Dmitri sighed sadly. “I wish to meet the cat. I’ve never met a talking cat before.”

“I apologize for my brother,” Maxim said. “He likes the cat. We could never have one growing up.”

I knew these guys were twin brothers, but paternal twins. So they weren’t identical before. They weren’t identical now, either, despite sharing a body. Dmitri had a rounder face while Maxim looked much more chiseled.

“I’d just gotten a cat,” Dmitri added sadly. “His name was Kapitan Whiskers, and he was orange. I got him the day before... before it happened.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Yes, my poor Kapitan. He was all alone. You’re a good man, Carl, despite what they say. You were trying to save the cat in the cold when it happened. This is a sign of a good man.”

Pop! Pop! Two kua-tin appeared in the room, splashing water everywhere, saving me from this suddenly-awkward conversation. This was Zev and another kua-tin. I realized I had no way to determine kua-tin genders, but this one looked very similar to Zev.

“Skindle,” Maxim said, growling. “You left us here for hours. We were promised food, but all they gave was a single chicken, which is nothing.”

“Yes, yes,” Skindle said. She sounded female. “This is Zev, and she is both my boss and Carl’s outreach associate, so do as she says.”

Zev nodded. “Hello Carl. Hello Dmitri and Maxim. This is the first time you two have met if I’m not mistaken. Thank all three of you for agreeing to do this today.”

“Agree?” I asked as Maxim snorted.

“Anyway,” Zev continued without missing a beat. “You will be going out there in about a minute. The line is already at capacity, and the fans are eager to get this rolling.”

“You said there’s something you wanted to talk to me about first,” I said.

Zev gave a sidelong glance to Skindle and then said, “Yes. Your replacement sponsor. There was a small delay in the announcement as the first sponsor who won the bidding ended up unable to pay. As a result, we started a new bidding event, and your sponsor has been chosen, and they wish to award you your first benefactor box during this event.”

“Lucky,” Dmitri said.

“Who is it?” I asked. “And who was the one who couldn’t pay?”

“You’ll see at the end of the signing,” Zev said. She sounded a little reticent, which did not bode well. “As for the first winner, I actually don’t know. I may have gotten a promotion, but that’s still above my pay grade. Now we need to get out there.”

“Is this really only going to go for two hours?” I asked as we moved toward the door.

“Maybe three. Or four,” Zev said. “There’s not an unlimited supply of fans. They had to enter a lottery to get chosen for a place in line. People aren’t allowed to give away or sell their place, except the premium spots, but you don’t need to worry about that. So it’ll be a good smattering of fans. Not just rich ones. There will be press, too, at the end. I think it’s only about 300 fans. Plus 30 premiums. Plus the press. They wanted to do more, but today is the last day of the con, and there isn’t enough time.”

“We all get to leave when the last in line is done,” Skindle added. “So don’t spend too much time talking. Try to be efficient and not your usual dumb selves.”

I looked over at the twins. “Does your associate get mad when you tell her to go fuck herself? Zev gets pretty pissed.”

Dmitri looked horrified as Maxim grinned. “We shall try it later, and I will report back,” Maxim said.

~

“Was it really an accident,” the little blob kid asked the Popovs as they signed the photograph. The thing had a nasally, nerd-like accent.  “Or did you do it on purpose?” They both looked up and paused mid-autograph.

Even though we were in a production trailer, the movement of the Sharpie-like pen was mirrored halfway across the galaxy. Our “handler” was a terrified-looking soother male named Effex. He was really at the con, and he stood to the left of the Popovs, manning a display of different photographs the fans could purchase for signatures. They’d pick one or two, pay, and then Effex would place the photo on the table in front of us, where we’d sign it. They could get either me or the Popovs, and there was one photo, a video really, of me shaking hands with the brothers, taken literally minutes earlier in the green room. The fans could have that one signed by all three of us. The fans had dozens of choices of animated photos. There were also shirts we could autograph and some digital tablet thing I didn’t understand. I had the impression it was akin to a phone case.

The photograph the blob kid was getting autographed was of the Popov brothers swinging their meteor hammer while inside an about-to-derail train car as flaming hedgehog things attacked them. The picture moved in a loop, repeating over and over. Apparently if you put your finger, or blob appendage, on it, you could mentally find yourself in the scene. The nodling finished signing—each had a pen in their respective hands—and the twin autographs appeared in sparkling gold on the photograph.

Dmitri happily signed everything, chatting with everyone. Maxim was more subdued and looked bored, though he perked up at any of the female-presenting aliens if they appeared even slightly human.

If the fans paid extra—and they always paid extra—they turned around, and a photograph or short video or whatever was taken of them standing between us.

Next to me, Maxim sighed while Dmitri made an indignant noise at the little blob kid.

“For the thousandth time,” Dmitri said, “our game guide Hongrish told me the nodling was a good choice that would give me an extra life if I died. He did not tell me it would force my brother into the same body as myself. I would never do this.”

The blob quivered and leaned forward, which made him look like a gelatin mold that was about to be spilled all over the table. When he talked, his mouth opened from the very top of his head, facing upward. It was weird as shit.

“But,” the kid said, “We saw you talking about that television program from your world. The one with the conjoined twins. The two boys who were arrested for selling guns. You said you liked this program. I have watched this program and determined that you were so enamored with them, that you deliberately chose a race that would allow you to emulate your favorite television characters.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dmitri said.

“So you won’t confirm or deny my hypothesis?”

“I’m going to confirm my foot up your jelly ass if you don’t move along,” Maxim growled.

“I paid for a picture. My superior cell mass paid for it.”

“Then turn around and get on with it.”

The blob didn’t say anything further as we took the picture.

“Touchy subject?” I asked Maxim as we watched the kid slurp off.

“Don’t even ask,” Dmitri said. “Hey, at least this one didn’t ask about your ex-girlfriend or the fight with the bug.”

Sure enough, every single damn person who went through had something to say about either the Odette interview with me and Beatrice or me sticking that arrow into the throat of Vrah. Apparently, her mom had gone completely apeshit about the whole thing and was on her way right now to the Earth system to do something about it. I didn’t know what that could possibly be since it was too late for her to come to the sixth floor and join the hunters.

Vrah, in the meantime, was apparently going to attempt to ride it out. People were actively betting on whether or not she’d give in and cut the infection away, which would ruin her chances at being the next hive queen.

If it was a comment about Bea, I simply said that Donut was doing fine and that everything that needed to be said was said during the interview.

Several people also asked me about that damn gnoll kid’s drawing. I refused to answer any questions about that.

The Popov’s were peppered with questions about their fallout with team Cichociemni and what they thought about the death of Bogdon Ro. Dmitri said nothing to this, but Maxim cheerfully told them that he’d gotten what he deserved and that he was just sorry others had to die for it to happen.

The entire, grueling procession took about three and a half hours.

Finally, we only had a few guests left. Then would come the reporters.

At first glance, everything about the last fan looked human, but that was before I noticed the tentacle coming from the back of her head. I couldn’t tell if she really was a person with a parasite, or if this was something new. She walked carefully and slowly up the podium, like she had an issue with one of her legs. Other than that, she looked like a regular, brunette, human woman, maybe in her forties. Her name was Jenn’ifer. She had the word Premium after her name with little spinning stars, which meant she’d paid for this spot. We’d seen plenty of these guys already. I wondered how much it actually cost for this bullshit.

Effex slid a picture in front of me to sign. Her premium pass came with two free pictures and a photo, but she’d only wanted one. It depicted me and Donut in the Drop Bear biplane as it was chased by Orthrus, the giant puppy at the end of the last floor. I picked up my Sharpie. “Jennifer, huh? That name is really popular where I’m from.”

“It is common everywhere,” she said drily as I started to sign. I stopped dead as I finally noticed her t-shirt.

It read “The Society for the Eradication of Cocker Spaniels” in Syndicate Standard, but the word “Cocker Spaniels” were censored with a transparent line through it. Above the words was a semi-realistic drawing of an adorable, fluffy-eared dog with a big, red and flashing X over it.

I sighed. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but is that cocker spaniel shirt supposed to be a joke?”

The woman’s eyes went wide. “You don’t say the word out...”

The flesh-colored tentacle thing coming from the back of her head waved about and started to thrash, beating her on the top of the head, stopping her in mid-sentence. A little mouth opened up on the tentacle and started growling and salivating, oozing thick saliva over the woman’s head.

The tentacle itself had a little spot of long, blond hair at the very tip, and it was held together with a bow, making the thing look like a fucked-up Yorkshire terrier. The thing was quivering with anger.

“Maggie, shush,” the woman said to her tentacle as I mouthed What the fuck? at the twins. She pet at the tentacle a few times. “She gets angry when someone says the C-word. She gets so mad. she runs away. I say, ‘I’m not going to chase you, you little monster.’ But I do every time.”

The thing, still quivering, started to make a whimpering noise.

“Maggie?” I said. “I knew another Maggie not too long ago. She was also a parasite.”

“She is not a parasite!” Jenn’ifer said, indignant. “She doesn’t like people saying the C-word.”

“If you don’t want people saying it, why is it on your t-shirt?” I asked.

Jenn’ifer ignored my question and continued. “Anyway, Carl. The society is very real. We used money from our fund to purchase a premium pass so I could come and give you a message that you can bring directly to Princess Donut. I am the chapter president of the Princess Posse Inner System number 43. As you likely know, the Syndicate brings a select sampling of unique flora and fauna to a compatible biome in order preserve a sampling of the lost biology. Multiple canine variations are on this list, including the C-word. I would like for you to tell Princess Donut that, as she suggested, we have filed the lawsuit to prevent this from happening. It will be difficult to succeed, but the donations are flying in.”

“As she suggested,” I said evenly.

“Die. Die. Die!” Maggie the tentacle suddenly shouted, causing me and the Popovs to both jump.

“Wait, how much in donations have you brought in?” I asked. “How big is this Princess Posse thing?”

“Hey,” Effex called. “I didn’t see your symbiote. Your premium pass gets a free photo, but not for two.”

“She’ll retract,” Jenn’ifer said as she turned to face the invisible camera. The woman reached up and stroked the tentacle thing, and it went back into her head with a slurp. A little bit of red gore dripped from the hole in the back of her head.

“Wait,” I said, but Effex pushed the weird woman away. Before I could object, the reporters all came. They came at once, appearing in a line in front of us, like this was a press conference. The tallest one of the group was a naga, and the large, green and purple snake creature waved back and forth angrily, like a cobra about to strike. The thing was similar to Manasa the singer, but bigger with different coloring. His twin arms waved back and forth, like he was speed walking in place. The sight was strange, and the other reporters started to back away from him.

“That snake guy looks like he has to poop really bad,” Dmitri said.

The name over the snake guy read Nihit. Press. Elemental Collection Updates.

Zev: Carl. We’re doing the presentation of the new sponsor in front of the press, and then they will ask you questions.

A disembodied, female voice boomed out of nowhere, startling everybody in the room. This was the kill, kill, kill lady, but her voice had gone up a pitch, likely because she was talking directly to the reporters. “With the Valtay obtaining 51% ownership in the Borant Corporation, Crawler Carl was forced to give away his first sponsor, which led to a new sponsorship auction. The Borant Corporation is proud to present Crawler Carl with the name of his newest sponsor.”

A jet-black, red-eyed goat thing appeared in the middle of the room. It zapped into existence between us and the reporters. Maxim swore, and the nodling fell back. The thing was eight feet tall, and its long hair trailed all the way to the floor. It met my eyes and then slowly turned to face the reporters.

“The Plenty!” the woman said. “And with this new sponsorship, Carl has been awarded a gold benefactor box, which he will open upon return to the dungeon!”

The massive goat didn’t have anything over its head indicating its name. It looked more like a walking version of Prepotente’s satanic pet, Bianca Del Ciao than Prepotente himself.

The giant goat made a deep, unnerving bleat and then blinked and disappeared. The reporters all stood in a line, looking up at where the goat had just been. They appeared just as bewildered as I felt.

“You motherfuckers let these guys control all of the universe’s transportation systems?” I asked.

Nobody laughed.

Zev: We should probably avoid insulting the new sponsors, Carl.

“Carl,” an elf-like woman asked. She cleared her throat, composing herself. She’d obviously been startled by the bizarre sponsorship ceremony. “With the news that Circe Took is possibly...”

Nihit the naga angrily pushed the elf woman to the side and slithered all the way to the table, looming over me. He opened his mouth and snapped right at my head, as if to bite it off. I tried not to flinch.

“Oh yeah,” I said, grinning. “Odette said the reporter who was going to ambush us over the Beatrice thing was a naga. She scooped you, right? Is that why you’re pissed? She told me to tell you something, but I can’t remember what it was. I think she said, ‘Better luck next time, asshole.’ I might’ve added the asshole part. I can’t remember. Either way, it’s implied.”

“You’re cheating,” Nihit hissed in my face, ridiculously close. He slammed his twin arms onto the table in front of me, reminding me of Vrah’s mother, Circe. Jesus, I thought. Is everyone in the universe this angry all the time? Behind him, the other reporters started to yell at him to back off. “I will discover how you’re doing it, and I will reveal it to the universe.” He flicked a long, forked tongue out, and it pierced the illusion of my head.

“Dude,” I said, leaning back. “I already have like two top-ten crawlers after me, a bunch of hunters, those orc assholes, all those faction wars pricks who sued me, oh, oh, and some mysterious liaison guy who may or may not be associated with my newest sponsor. Plus that robot Donut toy company and likely several others I’m not even aware of. Am I missing anyone?”

“Well, I think you’re a cool guy,” Dmitri said.

“What I’m getting at is that you’re gonna have to get in line. I forgot you even existed until just this moment. You should be mad at Odette, not me.”

“She will go down as well. I will find the truth,” Nihit said. “You and your partner are cheating. You’re receiving illegal help. The timing of that interview with Odette is pretty damn suspicious, don’t you think? Assisting in system sedition is a crime.” His tongue flicked again, and he leaned in even closer.

“Good luck,” I said. “But if you really want to hurt me, you’re gonna have to come in here and do it to my face.”

Nihit hissed. “Oh, I can hurt you just fine from the safety of the inner system.”

“Did you bang this guy’s wife or something?” Maxim asked.

“You think you’re safe, huh?” I asked.

“What do you think you can do, you insignificant worm,” Nihit asked.

“We’ll start with this,” I said, and I picked up the magical Sharpie, and I slammed it into his neck with all of my might.

It, unfortunately, broke into a dozen little pieces, but a little stick of metal protruded from the naga’s neck, spurting blood as he fell over, screaming. All the other reporters shouted and jumped forward.

The room blinked twice, and the lights went on.

“In Bulgaria,” Maxim said after a moment of silence, “much of the media is not trusted. But at least they pretend to be impartial. I don’t think this is the case with that guy.”

~~

We are closer to the end than you might think. As soon as they get out of there, they're gonna have to deal with Big Tina, and then it's going to be all about the Butcher's Masquerade where multiple threads will combine and crash all at once. Hopefully I will get it correct.  My whiteboard is starting to look like that Charlie Day conspiracy meme.

In the meantime, behold the glory of book five's cover. The tattoos on Carl's arm are not complete, and technically his cape covers his first two patches, but I might add them anyway. But this is pretty close.

I will neither confirm nor deny the scene depicted in this cover will occur.

Also, here's something else. Soundbooth Theater recorded a retelling of  Edgar Allen Poe's Quoth the Raven with the voices of Carl and Donut and will release it on their platform for free (I believe it'll be free), and here is the art for the release:

If you ever had to study the poem in school, the context of this picture will make more sense. Sort of.