Chapters 195, 196, Epilogue. The End. (Patreon)

WAIT! Did you read chapters 192, 193, 194? They were posted the same time as this!

Chapter 195

We all hung, frozen in midair.

Not this shit again.

The elf castle was gone. All of Signet’s tattoo warriors were gone. The changelings were gone. Kiwi, who’d turned into a bear—a very pregnant bear—was gone. Tina, who’d remained a dinosaur, was also gone.

They’d all traveled away with the half-destroyed castle, which had just landed somewhere on the ninth floor.

None of the crawlers, hunters, pets, mobs, remaining dinosaurs, dead bodies, or elves had transferred with the castle. We remained frozen in the air in a rough, stacked cube formation.

The vast, vast majority of everything was mantis nymphs.

The brambles had completely filled the world, stopping about a 100 feet from the outskirts of the now-gone castle. Mounted elves remained on the ground, mostly on the edge of the brambles, all turned, looking up at the floating, frozen mess, still hovering in midair.

Out of nowhere, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” started playing. It wasn’t coming from a trap module. The damn AI was using it as boss music.

That’s new, I thought.

B... B... B... Boss Battle!

Cage fight Extreme!

Four teams enter! One team leaves! Four teams enter! One team leaves!

The AI’s voice shrieked the words, absolutely giddy with excitement.

“Oh, fuck,” I said.

In corner one!

It’s the dungeon’s top crawlers! Plus some other guys! These plucky adventurers have beaten all the odds to get this far! But will their luck hold out tonight?

A whole line of player portraits slammed into the air, one by one, starting with a crawler I didn’t know and moving down the line and ending, not with Prepotente, who was the current number one, but Donut. I was third from last. Bam, bam, bam. Each new portrait was accompanied by an explosion. It didn’t group us by team, but individually.

In corner two!

Whittled down from over a thousand, and now down to just 75, it’s the last remaining hunters on this floor! Most of these guys have been acting like little bitches the whole time, so they’re probably all dead. But, hey. They’re here and they have a chance.

Well, not really. But they’re here!

Several hunter portraits slammed onto the screen, roughly the same number as us. Vrah was gone and dead, but the ones who’d managed to escape the dinosaurs had only done so temporarily.

This part took a little longer. With each name, it listed off their home planet. Almost half of them were listed as homeless or living in some sort of refugee camp.

The song finished, and a new song started. This was heavy, frenetic music that started to pulse with a heavy, sub-bass beat. It was the same damn song the elf musicians had been playing at the start of the party, but turned to a thick, techno beat.

In corner three!

Queen Imogen! High Elf, Fallen Cleric Sorcerer!

Level 145 Country Boss!

The current favorite. Her forces have been whittled down to almost nothing, but her elite fighting squad is still in good shape. She may be down and shunned by her goddess because she just threw the worst party since Alexander the Great took Persepolis, but she is still strong, powerful, and really, really pissed off!

Above, the glowing form of the falling queen burst into light. She had a new symbol over her head. It was same Marked for Death symbol I still had floating over me, but it was an X with acorns dangling from it. A group of black-clad elves fell with her.

And finally, in corner four!

About twenty feet below me and to the left, a new form burst into light. It was the angry, flaming, and very conscious form of Diwata the god. She didn’t look like a goddess. She looked exactly like her true identity, Circe Took. A baby mantis was halfway out of her body, screaming and waving its arms as it was cooked alive by the flames from her blazing genitals.

Diwata! Level 250 Immortal!

It’s not only a deity, it’s also the winner of the dungeon’s worst mother and father of the year award! She can’t be killed, but if you can manage to talk her into some sort birth control, she’ll be knocked out of the ring!

Donut: CARL, CARL, DID YOU SEE! I GOT TOP BILLING! AGAIN!

Carl: Everybody spread out. Hit Imogen with blunt force attacks. Not magical bolts. Use the beat of the music to coordinate your strikes. Follow Florin’s lead. Katia, Imani, Donut, on me. We take care of Diwata, and then we assist with Imogen.

Donut: I’LL HAVE TO USE YOUR PAWNA’S TEARS POTION. I JUST TOOK A FEATHER FALL, SO I HAVE TO WAIT FOR MY POTION SICKNESS TO RUN OUT! I TOLD YOU I SHOULD’VE DONE THIS EARLIER, CARL.

Carl: I know. It’s okay. We’ll protect you.

The portraits didn’t disappear, but turned into tiny, barely distinct icons and moved into my interface, taking up the bottom of the screen. I could now see who was still alive, but the portraits were so small, I’d have to hover over it and see who each represented.

The brambles started to rise up into the air, and they formed a dome over the whole area, plunging us all into darkness. A sickly, yellow glow filled the world, coming from little flower buds on the brambles. The lights pulsed on and off with the beat, creating a dizzying strobe effect.

And here!

We!

Go!

The world unfroze. Gore plummeted along with an outrageous amount of acorns. The mantises took to the air, turning to a buzzing swam as the hunters fell like rocks. Most of us slowly started to float downward, falling in a mist of thrashing, angry bugs.

It was like we were paratroopers jumping straight into hell.

I slammed onto my magic protection spell. Lights swirled around me.

Imogen fell like an asteroid, rushing past all of us. She’d had the farthest to fall, and she hit the ground with the force of a bomb. Ferdinand wasn’t with her, having been transferred with the castle.

I grasped a mantis by the neck as I reformed my gauntlet, and its head popped off. Despite being decapitated, it savagely tore at my chest. Another was at my neck. Then another. One dropped, hit by a Donut magic missile. Another fell from a shot by Katia.

Plink, plink, plink. The icons of hunters started to get X’d out as they splattered against the ground.

When the castle had teleported away, it’d taken the subbasements with it, so we had further to fall than I’d originally thought. I savagely ripped at another mantis as a lightning bolt, thick as a tree ripped through the air, possibly aimed at me, but it dissipated before hitting home, instead crisping dozens of mantises, who all exploded into mist.

Smoke started to fill the air. This was a smoke bomb from a hunter, designed to obscure our vision. I answered in kind by dropping my custom-made, Smoke Daddy bomb, which would fill the whole goddamned area. At the same time, Donut, falling just to my right and slightly above, dropped her Fear smoke bomb, which corkscrewed away into the flashing chaos. With her charisma, the effect would sow absolute terror in everyone.

Dozens of debuffs stacked and then disappeared. This was Imani, working furiously. She was a thing of beauty, a beacon of light, her butterfly wings fully spread as she fell, counterspells and buffs flying out of her at a ridiculous pace.

The form of Bianca shot through the air, reminding me of a shark passing through the deep ocean. The demonic goat-dragon thing cut through the nymphs like a snowplow. Prepotente rode upon her back, screaming, multiple shields glowing around him as he tossed potion bottles in the fray.

“Ground coming up!” someone shouted. Through the smoke and flashing lights and mist, I sensed more than saw that we were falling below the ground level, falling into the basement. The area was huge, just as wide as the castle had been. The shadows of mounted elves dived into the deep pit as the brambles pushed further in, entombing us all. The elves fell, tumbling as their mounts screamed and crashed.

Plink, plink, plink, plink. The hunters were half gone already, but crawlers were starting to disappear, too.

My feet hit the ground, landing amongst a knee-deep pile of dead bugs. I couldn’t see a goddamned thing. A velociraptor with the bloody remnants of a lobster costume dangling from her neck sailed over me, pouncing on something I couldn’t see. With Kiwi gone, they’d all reverted to red-tagged mobs, loyal to nobody except themselves.

“Oh fuck,” I shouted, ducking as a literal wave of thrashing bugs fell at me.

I slammed down onto Protective Shell. Bugs, elves, dinosaurs, and a few hunters rocketed away as the shield formed, blasting them into the air in all directions. The shield was huge now, and it created a crater, leaving only crawlers and corpses in the center. Nearby, at the edge of the spell, Donut whimpered as she healed Mongo, who’d been injured in the fall. Imani used the short respite to move to several crawlers and heal them. We regrouped and readied ourselves to move toward the god, who was a mere 100 feet away. Another group turned and prepared to face Imogen.

A similar shield to mine popped up fifty feet away. It glowed like a beacon in the mist. This was smaller, and it had been cast by a hunter. I watched as a crawler flew up and away, screaming as she was launched by the spell. She disappeared into the dark, falling amongst the brambles.

Plink.

“There!” Imani said, pointing. We pushed our way out of the still-formed spell, leaving a wall at our back as we kicked and fought and waded toward the star on the map, which had settled in the far corner.

Blood misted in the air. I could barely breath, and I coughed as I trudged forward, tasting copper and fire. Someone had cast a poison cloud, and crawlers all around choked as those without immunity were forced to constantly heal themselves. I couldn’t hear the music any more. Only the terrified screams of elves and hunters and crawlers and bugs and raptors as we all collectively fought and died. Spells whipped around in every direction, ricocheting, exploding, and killing.

A velociraptor lay on the ground, injured in the fall. Sorry, I thought as Elle iced it. I’m so sorry we couldn’t save all of you.

An arrow suddenly burst through my left forearm, burying itself into my chest. I gasped and hit the ground. A half-dead mantis struck at me as I spit up blood. A black-clad elf swung from the darkness, curved blade in his hands. The elf rocketed away as a meteor hammer swung through the air, braining him. The round weapon cleared my head by inches.

I headbutted the mantis, caving its head in. Huh, I thought as I started to lose consciousness. I didn’t know I could do that. Just before the sleep took me, I was violently ripped awake by a mass heal. It was Donut. She rode upon the back of Mongo as she shriek-sang the song. I looked up at the Popovs, who stood over me, protecting me as I recovered. I pulled the arrow from my body, screaming as it ripped flesh anew.

“Watch out!” I tried to cry, but I couldn’t get the breath. A flaming form barreled through the darkness. It was a sambhur, one of the elf mounts, but it had somehow caught on fire, and it was covered with nymphs, cutting and screaming. The elk wasn’t running, but it had somehow been magically flung, and it spun like a wheel ejected from a wagon. This was a spell, something from Imogen.

The thing barreled right into Dmitri and Maxim Popov, the mount’s antlers ripping right through the two-headed ogre like they were made of paper. It happened so fast. Blood showered over me. The double crawler slammed into the ground next to me as the flaming mount spun away, spinning blood and fire and screams as it wobbled and disappeared.

“I miss my cat,” Dmitri said just before he closed his eyes.

A notification appeared. I waved it away.

More crawler dots blinked out. Only five hunters remained. I could hear the roar of Florin’s shotgun. It sounded so far away. Ren’s flamethrower shot out, a beacon in the dark, cutting through the mist like a flaming gash into reality. Garret, her tummy acher, was at her side. I could only see them in shadow. A pair of elf or hunter legs dangled from its massive mouth. Mantises and elves all around them went up like kindling. A flaming velociraptor leaped at Imogen, and the dinosaur exploded in midair, showering flaming gore everywhere.

“Carl,” Katia said, suddenly at my side, helping me to my feet. “I need to go back and help with the Imogen fight. Bautista and Tran are in trouble. They’re getting hammered.”

“I had to use my protective shell already,” I said, gasping. A literal wall of bugs, alive and dead, stood between us and the deity, who was hiding in the corner. “I don’t know if I can get in.”

“Here.” She pulled the beanie off her head. The one the Apothecary had just given her in a benefactor box, and she placed it on my own. It equipped itself with a little beep. “Use the spell to clear through the nymphs. Get Donut close enough.”

I nodded and called for Donut. She was suddenly beside me, atop Mongo. She was matted down with gore. She had multiple debuffs over her, but they blinked and disappeared as Imani rushed past, back toward the fight against Imogen.

A magic missile slammed into her, and she staggered, but her health didn’t go down.

“Carl, I was wrong about my charisma not working! My love vampire skill works really good when it’s this high!” she shouted, giddy with excitement. The skill had never really worked properly until now. Behind us, multiple elves waded through the fray with little heart icons over them. “A bunch of elves are in love with me! It doesn’t work on the bugs.”

Christ. We need to get her charisma that high permanently. “How’s your potion countdown?”

“I’m ready!” she shouted.

“Take it now!”

Red lightning zapped the entire area, shocking us all. This was stronger than before. More crawlers blinked and disappeared. All the remaining elves under Donut’s control dropped dead, leaving her defenseless.

Donut: IT WENT UP TO THE VERY END OF 15. I GOT A BUNCH OF ACHIEVEMENTS!

Carl: Okay, here we go.

The dot of Diwata was just over the pile. We had to get closer. We needed line of sight.

“Wait five seconds, then jump in,” I said to Donut. “Cast the moment you see her.”

I rushed up the hill of dead and dying bugs, scrambling in the smoky dark. The whole area was getting hotter by the moment. Everything was on fire. An errant arrow slammed into the back of my leg and buried itself. I cried. I crested the top of the hill just as a group of bugs lunged at me. I cast the spell from Katia’s beanie, I Need My Personal Space. It pushed them all in different directions, working like a miniature version of Protective Shell.

Mongo and Donut jumped in, and we all tumbled forward, landing before the god.

“Fuck you!” Circe Took cried from her position in the corner. The god stopped giving birth, and she started to change, turning into something monstrous.

She was running. But she wasn’t running fast enough.

Donut cast Laundry Day.

At my direction, Donut had been relentlessly training her armor-removing Laundry Day spell every day for weeks now. She’d managed to get the spell up to nine on her own. Just before we went to the party, I’d finally made her take the recently-acquired Pawna’s Cries potion, which she secretly used to raise the spell three more levels to 12.

She needed it at 15.

The note from my sponsor had stated we should use boosts from Prepotente, Imani, and Samantha to temporarily raise her spell level the last three levels. Prepotente was back there somewhere, and despite a lot of prodding, we weren’t able to coax any sort of spells or buffs out of Samantha. She was gone anyway to god knew where. That was okay. We had a backup.

It was a bit of a waste using my more-powerful Pawna’s Tears potion, which raised the skill by five additional points, but my sponsor claimed he would replace it. I really hoped so. I’d wanted to save it and wait until it was absolutely necessary.

The Laundry Day spell couldn’t hurt the god. The only way it would actually remove the armor off a god was if she trained it up to 20, which she wouldn’t ever be able to do as she was maxed out at 15.

But that was okay. She didn’t need to remove the armor off a god. She just needed to remove it from a person. The god was the armor, and it would remain intact. She just needed to remove it off the person underneath. And all we needed for that was the spell to be at level 15.

I’d been planning on using this on Grull the next time he showed himself, but we couldn’t always choose our battles.

The spell cast, the deity screamed, and little white, soapy bubbles appeared everywhere.

Diwata transformed into an antlered bear. It screamed at me and lunged before it dissipated into nothing.

Diwata has returned to the Halls of Ascendency.

The form of Circe Took, stripped of her protection, sopping wet and covered with bubbles, stood to her full height. The giant mantis woman chittered in rage.

“I don’t need the protection of the god to...”

She never finished. Before I could strike, a dozen of her own children fell upon her. The wave of bugs rushed her, slicing and cutting and ripping. They screamed as one, piling onto her, as if enraged.

Circe Took died shrieking my name.

We didn’t have time to celebrate. Yet another area attack swept through the pit, this one even stronger than before. Donut cried out and fell from Mongo, her health zeroed out. Her cockroach skill activated, saving her.

“Donut!” I cried.

She wouldn’t survive another one of those. The spell did more damage each time. As it was, that last attack had killed all the remaining bugs.

Team four, eliminated!

A single hunter remained. Forty-something crawlers remained.

The elves were mostly dead. I didn’t see any raptors. Imogen remained in the far corner of the pit, two hundred feet away, screaming at we poured arrows and rocks and shotgun blasts into her.

I saw the hunter’s dot on my map, and I moved in. It was Zabit. He pointed at me and shouted something I couldn’t hear. He blinked and disappeared, using an invisibility potion or skill. I moved to chase him, but I stopped dead, remembering his armor. The belt. Nice try, asshole, I thought.

I cast Tripper.

Bam! Multiple landmine traps went off. Zabit instantly reappeared, his body having been torn in half by his own trap, which he’d set seconds before.

Team two, eliminated!

During the explosion, the light flashed off the ceiling, revealing the twisting and turning brambles, growing absurdly fast, closing in from above. We were boxed in.

I hesitantly moved to the hunter corpse, and I quickly looted him. I didn’t get the drop shield or case of invisibility potions. I assumed they were still in a prize box. But I received multiple trap items, too many to sort through now.

“Carl!” Donut cried. “There aren’t any elves left. Just Imogen!”

We turned to help, but I skidded to a stop.

Oh no.

“No,” I said, seeing the body on the ground. It was Gwendolyn Duet. Gwen. The tattooed, first nation’s woman who’d been instrumental in our survival on the previous floor. She lay dead, surrounded by elves and bugs. At her side was the body of Cleiton, the knock-knock joke guy. Tran was there, still alive, dragging himself away, screaming. His legs were gone. I read a scroll, healing him. His legs did not grow back.

“Heave!” Florin cried, firing his gun. Imogen, atop a pile of corpses, lit up as she was pelted with arrows and projectiles.

They were coordinating their attacks, half of them firing on the two and four of the beat, the other half on the one and three. Arrows, rocks, and other non-magical bolts slammed into the insanely-powerful boss. Her health was in the red, almost gone. She had a stuttering shield spell, like a strobe light, like she kept casting it over and over again, but it kept getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of crap getting thrown at her.

Imogen stopped casting her shield as she fell to a knee. A black, sizzling nimbus shone around her, similar to Bianca’s aura. Her hands crackled red.

“Lightning attack,” someone shouted.

I spied Britney on the ground, screaming. Louis and Firas lay side by side. Both were unconscious but alive. I hadn’t had time to reinstall my xistera, but I pulled a hobgoblin disco ball.

“Your jacket!” I shouted at Britney as I tossed the ball. It arced and landed against the side of Imogen’s head, splattering multi-colored goo everywhere. She barely noticed. She was screaming something incomprehensible. Her health was almost gone.

Too slow, I thought. Too slow.

The lightning spell cast, but it came out as a single bolt, attracted to the clump of spreading butterflies. The bolt slammed into the summoned creatures.

That’s not what I’d intended to happen. I’d meant for the butterflies to seek out the disco ball and overwhelm Imogen, but this worked, too.

The mess of butterflies exploded over our heads, barely ten feet away. Donut, Mongo, Britney, and I went flying in different directions. My eardrums shattered, and everything plunged into silence. I slammed into a large, heavy corpse. A hunter. A dreadnought missing half his face. Flaming bits of stuffing were everywhere, falling like embers. This time the unconsciousness took hold, and I felt myself slipping away, as if I were falling into a tunnel. As if I was getting pulled into a rushing river.

As I passed out, I watched the shadow of Bianca the goat dragon fly right over me, Prepotente on her back, screaming silently. He jumped off the mount, a bubbling potion in each of his hands. The terrible stench of burning flesh overwhelmed the room as I finally slipped away.

...

Winner!

...

Quest Complete. The Vengeance of the Daughter.

Chapter 196

Multiple pages of achievements filled the darkness. I coughed. Everything hurt.

Fucking hell, I thought. I’m still alive.

A terrible buzzing filled my head. My hearing was coming back. But it was something else, too.

It was always something else.

Donut: CARL, CARL GET UP! THE CEILING IS STILL COMING DOWN, AND THEY’RE ALL STILL FIGHTING. BIANCA ATE GIMLI! I HAD TO PUT MONGO AWAY!

She was on my chest, bouncing up and down.

I blinked and opened my eyes. Five more minutes, I thought as my hearing continued to return. It was peaceful there in the river. It was silent.

“We’re on the same team,” someone shrieked.

My hearing fully returned, all at once. All I heard was shouting. Prepotente screamed. Another voice shouted back.

“It’s mine,” the voice shouted, a voice filled with anger and tears. “Murderer. You murdered my pet. I got it, and if you want it, you’re gonna have to loot it from my dead body.”

“That can be arranged!” Prepotente shouted. “I struck 22% of all the damage against the boss, I struck the killing blow, and I received first looting choice on her, and it is mine!”

“It was on her body, not her inventory,” the voice shouted back. “It was on the treasure map that we all got, and I was the first to get it.”

“What’s happening,” I asked, whispering the words.

“We won, but a lot of people are dead or hurt,” Donut said. Her voice was strange. A mix of adrenaline and something else. Shock, maybe. “Firas is dead. Gwen is dead. So is Horton, the Wonderwall guy. And the Popovs. Tran lost his legs, and Britney’s face is burned really bad, and when we healed it, it stayed all gross. A lot of my raptors are dead, and Mongo is really sad, but a bunch of them jumped up and ran right into the brambles. I don’t know where they went. It still says Ferdinand is in the party, and that means he’s alive. It won’t let me message him. Mordecai says he’ll automatically leave the party when we go down the next floor. No, don’t move just yet, Carl. It says you have a bunch of debuffs still. Imani is healing people in order.”

“Firas?” I asked. He’d been alive. Unconscious, but alive. “Oh. Oh no. What about Louis?”

“He’s still knocked out.”

I swallowed. I felt numb. Something was nagging at me in the back of my mind, screaming, but I could barely hear it.

“What’s happening with Pony and the other guy,” I said. I felt my own words slurring. I was tired. So damn tired.  I had a dead Dreadnought on my legs. I instinctively tried to loot him, but someone already had.

“The guy with Gimli the hawk stole something off Imogen’s body after she died, and Prepotente is really mad about it. They all got into a fight. There was a third person who tried to take it, too. The badger lady, I think. But she got hurt and went down the stairs. Prepotente says he needs the thing to defeat Scolopendra. He says it protects you from the boss’s attacks. Everyone is getting this treasure map thing that shows a lot of loot all over the place, but it’s useless because it’s all covered with brambles now. These two guys cast a spell and went through the brambles anyway looking for stuff, which is really dumb.”

I blinked. Everything hurt. I hadn’t processed anything. I still had an arrow in my leg. I could feel it. Up above, the brambles had slowed their descent. Despite Donut’s panic, we had maybe twenty minutes before we’d be crushed. And even then, the brambles would form a dome over the stairwell, leaving a wide area around it. I tried to sit up, but it was painful to move.

I saw the stairwell now, thirty feet away. We still had over 20 hours until the collapse. Elle, Chris, and Bautista were there, dragging the unconscious crawlers toward the glowing entrance. Imani was over one of them, casting a spell. A crawler I didn’t know was helping Tran, who sobbed.

“Where’s Lucia? Eva?”

“Florin says Lucia is gone! She teleported away using her escape thing the moment before the boss fight started. He says she always sets teleports at stairwell locations, and she didn’t even do the boss fight. Katia says Eva got bitten by a dinosaur and is buried over there, and she’s looking for her right now. She’s not dead yet. Eva stole all those dinosaur repellant potions, and she didn’t even take one! Li Na and her brother are helping to look for her. Zhang is knocked out with Louis. Louis also got burned, but it’s not as bad. He’s going to be really sad about Firas.”

I groaned in pain. My health was slowly seeping away. I clicked over to my health tab, and I had thirty different debuff items listed, including a nasty bleed effect. Imani would be here soon. Did we have any other healers in the group? I thought of Miriam Dom, who’d died to protect Prepotente.

So much death.

I needed to stay distracted.

“That guy who looted Imogen. What’s his name?”

“It’s Osvaldo. He looks like a person, but it says his race is a Curupira. I don’t know what that means. He’s a ranger. He’s level 60 now. You’re 63! Katia is 60, and I went up to 55! Prepotente went to 71!”

Since nobody had purchased the memorial crystal, it had returned to Imogen. This Osvaldo had taken it.

At that moment, I didn’t care. I wanted it. So did Prepotente, apparently. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

“Did you see what Prepotente did?” Donut said. “The Queen lady was pretty much dead already, but he jumped right on her and smashed the potion into her face. She didn’t see him coming because you’d hit her with the disco ball goop. When she died, Florin started sobbing like when Ifechi really died. He already went down the stairs.”

Donut wouldn’t stop talking, like she was racing to get the words out. Behind us, the shouting stopped.

“Poor Gwen,” Donut continued. “She was mean, but I liked her. Poor Horton, too. It’s always sad when we lose a fellow musician. Elle is really upset about it. I think she feels bad about making fun of him all the time. Firas is the hardest. I didn’t know the other guys very well. Do you think Britney’s face is going to stay that way because she’s not going to like that. And she’ll probably be really upset about Firas. When she did the butterfly thing with her coat, it attracted the lightning, and that’s why she’s burned, and that’s why Firas died, but it saved everybody. I think that attack was getting stronger the less health Imogen had. But did you see it? Did you? We won both the dinosaur quest and the Vengeance of the Daughter one.”

She stayed on top of me, breathing heavily. I wanted to just close my eyes and go back to sleep. The weight of her on my chest was comforting. Familiar.

A champion has fallen. A bounty has been claimed.

A moment later, Katia marched by, her face dark. She looked down at me and nodded. She now sported a second, flaming player killer skull. She looked nothing like the scared woman I’d met on the third floor.

“It’s done,” she said after a moment, and she moved on to help the others. Li Na and Jun followed her. Li Jun appeared absolutely shell shocked. He paused, as if he wanted to say something, but his sister called him away.

“Carl?” Donut asked after they left.

“Yeah?”

“That fight was terrible, wasn’t it? Worse than usual. It went quick, but it was still really bad.”

“It was pretty awful, Donut. If I’d known it was going to happen like this, I would’ve made you go down the stairs.”

She was silent for a moment, and then she asked the question I’d been dreading for a long time now.

“Carl? Why doesn’t it hurt as much as it should?”

I felt the words deep in my chest.

She took a shallow breath. “Firas. Gwen. The Popov brothers. Gideon. Even Signet and all those stupid dinosaurs who didn’t know how to dance. They were my friends, and now they’re dead, and I think I should be crying, but I’m not. Even Florin cried. And Chris cried. And Elle cried.”

I closed my eyes.

“Donut...” I began.

She cut me off, desperation in her voice. “Why? Firas was going to be Louis’s best man at his wedding to Juice Box, and he asked Katia to secretly make them tuxedoes. It was going to be a big surprise, and now it’s never going to happen. Why am I not as upset as I should be? It doesn’t feel right. I think I’m doing something wrong. I think something inside of me has broken.”

I reached up, and I put my hand on her. She was sticky with blood. So much blood.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“No, Carl,” she said. “I don’t think it is.”

“Donut,” I said, reaching up with my other hand. “Come here.”

She circled once and then settled into the crook of my arm, like we used to do so long ago. I ran my hand across the top of her bloody, matted head. Her temporary, charisma-gaining crown was gone, I realized, lost in the battle. She’d removed her sunglasses, too.

“This is important, and I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?”

“Okay.”

I stroked her head softly as I talked. “The name of that spell and party has been bothering me for a while now. The way it’s written, it means there’s only one butcher. I don’t think it was possible for Imogen to ‘win’ that boon. When I was talking to her earlier, she told me the story of the Butcher’s Masquerade. She said at the party, we wore masks so we could pretend for a little bit that we weren’t monsters. But she was wrong about that. She had it backwards. You’re wearing a mask right now, Donut, and you don’t know how to remove it. That’s okay. You don’t need to. Not yet. That mask is protecting you.”

“I don’t like it,” she said.

“I know. What we went through just now was only a taste of what’s coming, especially on the ninth floor. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. We’re going to lose more friends. We’re going to have to do some pretty horrible things just to survive. So I need you to keep that mask on. But one day... One day you’ll find yourself someplace safe and without worries and without everyone watching, and it’ll just fall right off. And it will hurt. You will cry for Firas and Gwen and Yolanda and Brandon and everybody else we’ve lost along the way, and you’ll be glad you had it on the whole time.”

She didn’t say anything for several moments.

“Carl?” she finally asked.

“Yeah?”

“You were right. That was way more like Rambo than Footloose.”

And then, she finally did start to cry. They were little, soft murmurs right into my neck, and I’d never felt so relieved in my life to feel someone else’s pain.

I suddenly realized what had been bothering me. I sat straight up, Donut still clutched in my arms. “Katia,” I called, my voice hoarse. “Katia!”

~

“There!” Katia said, pointing at the pile of gore. A dead raptor lay amongst a pile of bugs. With the smoke gone and the Light spells illuminating the area, the sight of all this death was even more shocking. Other crawlers had gone through and looted everything while I was out, but nobody had bothered digging. We only had a few minutes. Katia had her Find Crawler skill and led us to the right place. “There’s two of them! I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

“Hurry,” I said, as I dug through the bodies, tossing bug pieces left and right.

And then, there they were. Two fat, naked, baby ogres, each about a year old. Imani rushed over and picked them both up, one in each arm like she was holding a pair of turkeys. Maxim and Dmitri Popov. Both were unconscious. Both were listed as Level X. Nodling Yearling.

When a nodling dies, he splits into a new creature depending on how many heads the original had.

All the crawlers stopped bickering and looting to come surround the pair.

“What are we going to do with them?” I asked.

Zev: You don’t need to do anything, Carl. Watch.

A moment passed, and they both started to wake. The label over their heads flashed, and then the word Ineligible appeared over them both. They blinked and disappeared.

Carl: Zev, so help me god...

Zev: Relax. Children and pregnant crawlers aren’t allowed. They’ve escaped. Their game guide made them pick that race because he knew this would happen. They’ve been transferred to the kinder facility on the surface. They’re free. We’ll talk more soon, but while I have you, you’ll be going on Odette’s show right after the next floor starts. Not between the floors. All crawlers start this next one at the same time.

I relayed what Zev said.

A stunned silence followed.

“They did it,” Elle finally said. “Those crazy bastards escaped.”

Everyone broke out into conversation. There was no more fighting. Someone laughed. Imani came to stand next to me, and she wrapped me in her wings, healing me and hugging me all at the same time.

It felt as if a dark cloud had been removed from me. Despite the horror all around us, despite the death of several of our friends, we were alive. We had survived. We had won, and the hunters had not.

We were goddamned alive.

A notification appeared. Donut and I looked at each other. She’d just received the same one as me. A little mark appeared over her head. A spinning star. Co-Warlord, The Princess Posse.

“They made it,” I said.

A new tab is available in your interface.

Congratulations! You have successfully fielded your first troops. You have been assigned spot three and have inherited all (zero) mercenaries left behind by the Burrowers.

Welcome, Sponsor, to Faction Wars.

Your team’s official name is The Princess Posse, sponsored by The Society for the Eradication of Cocker Spaniels (TSECS), NFC, DBA as Princess Posse Enterprises, NFC.

You are not currently in position. Please proceed to the Dungeon Crawler World: Earth visitor center to onboard onto the playing field.

Not all warlord options are available until you reach position.

The games will begin when the Crawlers reach the ninth floor. See the Faction Wars Warlord tab in your interface for more details.

Note! This team currently has two active Warlords (Carl and Princess Donut). Both have full administrative and voting access.

Note! Co-Warlord Princess Donut is a member of the royal line of succession of another team (Team #4, the Blood Sultanate.) See the succession rules on how this will affect gameplay.

Important! You have 15 action items that require votes.

Per your contract, a new action item has been added on your behalf:

Action Item: Remove Safety Protections For Faction Sponsors.

“You see that?” I said, looking straight up into the air. I held my arms out. “The hunters are dead. Our troops have arrived. We’re still here. We have two floors to get through, and then we’re coming for you.”

“Carl, Carl,” Donut said. “Tell them about the election!”

“Oh, yeah,” I said up to the ceiling. The brambles swirled above me. We only had a few minutes left. I pulled a photo of a surprisingly-thin and elderly female Dreadnought out of my inventory and held it up. “So you’ve probably heard by now that the Dreadnoughts dropped out of faction wars. There’s no refunds, so they lost out on a lot of money.” I dropped the photo on the ground and stepped on it.

“And then the Burrowers dropped out, too, at the last minute, leaving two spots.”

“Carl,” Donut said, raising her voice. “Aren’t the Burrowers baby-killing mantises like Vrah and what’s-her-face?”

“Why, yes, Donut,” I said, hamming it up. We hadn’t practiced or planned on this little show, but that was okay. I was getting pretty good at improvising. I pulled a photograph of an angry-looking mantis queen from my inventory and held it up. “They’re a different type of mantis than poor, dead Circe, but they dropped out. They’re smart. They’re cowards, but they’re smart cowards.” I ripped the photo up and tossed it over my shoulders.

I’d received word that the Mantis government had unexpectedly abandoned their stake when I last spoke with Quasar, which ended up being a good thing as there was another entity bidding for the open spot in faction wars: Princess D’Nadia of the Prism.

Zev: Carl... They’re going to turn the feed off.

Carl: Is that any way to address a sponsor? Aren’t we allowed to trash talk the competition?

I looked around, and we were scattered across the battlefield. Louis and Britney were both awake and were hugging each other at the top of the stairs. Osvaldo, the Brazilian guy who’d taken the memorial crystal was gone, down the stairs with a few surviving members of his team.

“Everybody,” I said to the remaining crawlers. “Come here and gather around.”

Prepotente was suddenly beside me. Elle and Imani and Bautista and the others, too. Katia held back. She was sitting near the stairs, her face in her hands. Li-Na was with her, talking quietly with her. That was okay. We’d all fought multiple battles today. Tserendolgor came to stand next to me, and in an astonishing show of solidarity, Donut jumped to the dog soldier’s shoulder. Behind her, Garrett the tummy acher giggled menacingly.

I smiled up into the air.

“You guys sitting at home have also probably heard that those two faction wars spots have been claimed. One by Princess D’Nadia’s Prism Kingdom—I don’t have a picture of her. Sorry—and the second by a new non-profit corporation called The Princess Posse.”

I thumbed over at Donut, who stood proudly. Her sunglasses were suddenly back on her face.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “These hunter assholes on this floor have all died, but at least they had the balls to risk their own lives to face us. When it comes to faction wars, we’re not just observers anymore. We’re going to the ninth floor and we’re going to be one of the teams fighting for survival. But of the nine teams, we’re the only ones who can really die. How is that fair? Do you guys think that’s fair?”

“It kinda sucks, really,” Elle said.

I held up my finger. “What you guys at home probably don’t know is that we can change the rules. All nine teams get an equal vote.”

Zev: Carl. What are you doing?

“Right now the vote is two to seven against turning the safety protocols off.”

I pulled out the picture of the now-dead Queen Consort Ugloo of the Skull Empire, mother of the Maestro and Prince Stalwart. She’d died when the orcs had accidentally killed Manasa the singer, and the Valtay had responded by blowing up her yacht.

“It’s us and the Skull Empire voting yes to turn the protocols off. The orcs are crazy, and they’re all going to die, but they’re not chickens. I’ll give them that.”

I put the photo away and took out the rest. I held them up in the air like a hand of playing cards. I was missing a naga photo and one from a group called the Operatic Collective because they hadn’t filed a lawsuit against me on the previous floor. That was okay. My point was clear.

“The rest of these teams are all cowards. I’m not surprised. It’s supposed to be a friendly game, after all. Nobody wants to fight to the death just for fun. Right?”

“I don’t want to fight to the death,” Donut said. “I tried it, and it is most unpleasant.”

“Yet, how is it fair these rich assholes can just sit back and send other people to die? They sent hunters onto this floor knowing they were walking into a grinder. A lot of these guys were people just like you, struggling to survive. Do you know how much it costs to field a team on faction wars? It is a ridiculous amount of money, and my team, the Princess Posse only had to pay a portion of that fee because eligibility requires a company or government to be either a significant participant or sponsor in order to be authorized just to buy a spot. So just becoming eligible requires more money than god. This is money wasted. It only benefits themselves. It’s vanity, and where does that money come from?”

I paused. I was keeping my eyes on the view counter. We were pretty much the only crawlers left on the floor. It was either watch us or go black.

“I’m not naïve. I know these rich cowards aren’t going to change their votes. Mister Gonorrhea arrow from the Dream is certainly too much of a walking abscess to change his vote, despite sending members of his own family to die on this floor just because someone said his mom is bangin’.”

“She is quite attractive for a bald woman,” Donut said. “Not many people could rock that look, but she does it quite well.” She looked at Ren. “It’s all about the bone structure.”

I continued. “But here’s something interesting. Three of the teams, namely the Operatic Collective, the Lemig Sortition, and the Viceroys all have local populations that are allowed to vote on all governmental expenditures. For citizens of those three teams, you have the ability to change the vote here in the game. The rich...”

Zev: You’ve been muted, Carl. Congratulations. Everyone in the universe is now watching two crawlers fight their way through a group of brambles, and that’s it.

Carl: That’s okay, Zev. I got the important part out.

Zev: You’re crazy, Carl. Absolutely crazy.

Carl: And you’re still in a job. Don’t forget what risks were taken to get you there.

Ren was looking at me. “Did you really buy a faction wars spot? How? How is that even possible? First you pull the Houdini act with those dinosaurs, which I still don’t understand, and now this?”

“It’s called crowd funding, honey. Look it up,” Donut said to the dog woman. “And the trick with my Mongo and his girls was nothing, really. The attendant ballroom B was directly below the main ballroom B where the hunters were. All I did was cast a deep Hole in the ceiling when they were behind the curtain. In our room, it didn’t go anywhere because the protection locking us all in, but the hole cast on all the stages at the same time. On the attendant stage, the two rooms were pretty much attached, so...” Donut trailed off, and she completely poofed out. She hissed twice as she returned to my shoulder. “What? What? Where did that notification over your head come from... What? What is this? You’re a cheater! An experience hog and a cheater. Carl, do you see this?” She hissed again.

Surprised, I focused on Ren and the little trophy mark above her head.

Pet Show Champion. Best in Show. Garret the Tummy Acher.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh so hard that I cried.

~

I asked our new party leader Prepotente if we should wait for the timer to reach six hours before descending. We could huddle up by the stairs and be safe, but he insisted on descending now. He claimed it wouldn’t matter, especially not for us since he’d purchased that Pole Position upgrade.

“Do you really think they’re going to vote to put themselves in danger?” Donut asked as we walked toward the stairs. “I don’t see how that’ll happen.”

“Most certainly not,” Prepotente agreed. “It’s a pointless endeavor.”

“I think the Dream will vote yes,” I said. “They can change their vote right up until it’s time to start. That means we just need two more votes. Quasar says he’s certain the Operatic Collective will be forced to vote yes. The people hate the family.”

“But then they’ll just run away,” Donut said. “I’d run away if some crazy guy showed up at game night and pulled out a gun and said, ‘Let’s play Russian Roulette instead of spin the bottle.’”

“Probably,” I said. “It’ll be one less obstacle in our way. Either way, it gives us something important. Leverage. We want to get as many people to the tenth floor as possible. The Popovs were just the first. We’re going to get as many people as we can out of here.”

“Yeah,” Donut said. She didn’t say the next part out loud. She was still a royal member of the Blood Sultanate. That was a complication. A big one.

“Why do you want that memorial crystal so badly?” I asked Prepotente, changing the subject.

“Do you know what that item does?” He asked. “A memorial crystal for the goddess Apito, which is impossible. As far as anyone is aware, the goddess isn’t dead. How could she be dead when she ran that party? It’s very interesting, and I want it. I have a quest regarding it.”

Quest Update. Find Out Who Killed My Son.

Obtain the item: Memorial Crystal: Apito. See if this has any bearing on Geyrun’s murder. You still need to speak with the high cleric at the Emberus Shrine in Club Vanquisher.

“I do too,” I said after a moment, my mind reeling. The quest update had come in the voice of Emberus, startling me. “How do you know what’s going to happen on the next floor?”

“I have a brain, Carl. One that works much better than that blob of simian meat you use.” He raised his voice to the small crowd. There were only about 15 of us left huddled in the field of death.

“We need to go,” he called. “Everyone, before we go to the next floor. Be sure to stow away your pets. It will be dangerous for them.”

“Wait,” Katia said. She still looked dazed. “When did you guys form a party?”

Up ahead, a line of my friends entered the stairs. A surge of pride filled my chest. We’d all been bloodied today, but we were still standing tall. Unbroken.

“Rest assured it’s just for a little bit,” Prepotente said. “It’s simply because I need Donut’s assistance. Carl is not necessary, but she insists on keeping him with her. Apparently he’s been with her family for a long time.”

“Eat a bag of dicks, Pony,” I said.

He screamed in my face.

Epilogue

Welcome, Crawler to the Seventh floor. “The Great Race.”

Time to Level Collapse: 20 Days.

Leaderboard rank: 3

Bounty: 1,600,000 gold

Congrats, Crawler. You have received a Platinum Venison Box.

Entering Pole Position Chamber.

The race will commence shortly. Stay tuned for the rules announcement in ten minutes.

“Carl! We’re in a fish tank!” Donut exclaimed.

You have been Peace-Bonded!

Peace Bonding has been negated by AI resolution.

You have been frozen!

Freeze has been negated by AI resolution.

You have been paralyzed!

Paralysis has been negated by AI resolution.

You have been slowed!

Slow has been negated by AI resolution.

This went on for a good fifteen seconds. It was a whole line of debuffs, one after another, all followed by the debuffs getting immediately negated by the AI.

“What the hell?” I muttered. A moment passed, and a few additional debuffs appeared, including a teleport and something called an Administrative Hold. All of them were pushed back. There was a flash of light, and four figures with guns—Gnolls—appeared, but they disappeared in a crackle of smoke just as quickly as they’d come.

We looked at each other in confusion. Prepotente screamed. It echoed loudly.

None of us moved for several seconds. Nothing else happened.

Like Donut said, we were in a featureless room made of clear glass. It was no bigger than my living room from my old apartment. It was just the three of us: me, Donut, and Prepotente.

Three of the walls were solid, and the fourth was made of thick, glass bars, standing vertical like a jail cell. Just beyond the bars was a round tunnel curving downward leading off into the dark, like a waterslide. Over the jail bars was a timer counting down. It was at eight minutes.

“Oh my god, Carl!” Donut suddenly said. She was still completely covered in gore and bug parts. “I’m ranked number one! I’m ranked number one! Just wait until I tell that cheater lady. Hey! Do you feel that tug?”

I did feel it. There was a gentle pulling against my chest, pulling me toward the bars. It wasn’t too strong, but I had the sense if I went slack, I’d start sliding across the slippery floor.

Donut jumped from my shoulder and landed upon the glass floor. She did, indeed, start to slide, almost like the floor was actually ice. She returned to my shoulder and dug in her claws.

“I need to pick a new class!”

“Do it quick. Have Mordecai help you.”

“The chat’s not working! We can’t cast magic, either! It says it’ll come back when the race starts.”

“Okay, look through the choices and give me the top ones.”

She gasped. And then glowed. “I picked one!”

“Goddamnit, Donut. Did you read it at least? What was it?”

“Viper Queen! Doesn’t that sound delicious? I can shoot poison blobs! Hey, why is my health lower?”

“It’s of no consequence,” Prepotente said. He’d moved to the back of the chamber, opposite the wall with the bars. He had his hand on the glass. The yellow light of the room was coming from that direction. The world that way glowed, and when I looked directly at it, it hurt my eyes, as if I was staring directly at the sun.

My portal sense chimed while I was looking at the light.

“Carl, look!” Donut said, grabbing my attention. “Everybody else is in fish tanks, too! Look, there’s people over there. And above us!”

I looked about, and sure enough there were multiple nearby crawlers, all in similar glass rooms. To our right stood another room, curving away and maybe four feet higher than us. There was nothing below us or directly to our left, but multiple rooms appeared above us, disappearing into the dark.

The rooms were situated in a corkscrew pattern, with us at the very bottom, like we were the first step of a spiral staircase. The wide, glowing space in the middle with the portal—portals, actually—went up and down like a tube or a pole. It followed the spiral of rooms upward, and it disappeared downward into the unknown.

A quick glance at my map confirmed what I suspected.

These weren’t just any portals, but stairwells to the eighth floor. One after another, stacked vertically in a line like a string of beads. These were not like normal stairwells. There were no actual stairs. Or doors. They were just round, glowing portals one could enter from any direction. They were right there on the other side of the back wall.

This was the first time we’d seen floor stairwell exits like this, but I knew from the cookbook they were common.

“Hey, lookie up there,” Donut said, pointing at a glass room at the very edge of our vision. “Is that Agatha?”

“Holy shit,” I said, covering my eyes from the glow. “I can’t tell for sure, but that does look like a shopping cart.”

“Carl,” Prepotente said. He didn’t look up from whatever he was doing. He tapped on the glass. “Were you the one who purchased the eighth floor boon?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a book, but I haven’t had the chance to look through it yet.”

“What was the title? It said it was called Book of Lore – Random. Do you know what’s inside the book yet?”

“Like I said, Pony, I haven’t had the chance to examine it yet. But I do know the full title.”

“Don’t call me by my special name,” Prepotente said. “What’s the title?”

“Why don’t you tell us what you’re doing first?”

He turned his attention back to the wall. He knocked on it like he was searching for a wall stud. “The Borant Corporation is attempting to stop me, but as I suspected, the AI is forcing them to follow their own rules, and they won’t be able to. This level is constructed in such a way that it acts like something called a Prince Rupert’s drop, but on a massive scale. It’s based on a fairytale.”

“A prince what?” I asked. “How do you know all this?”

“This level is called the Great Race, and based on other clues, it’s clear this level is based off a well-known fairytale of the same name. I was recently interviewed on a program where they briefly discussed this floor. I was muted from hearing the level’s description, but from the subsequent discussion between the host and Cascadia, who was the other guest, I received enough clues.”

“Cascadia?” I asked.

“That woman who gives the daily updates,” Prepotente said. “She’s a nasty little woman who thinks she’s smarter than everyone.” He touched something on the wall and screamed. The timer was at five minutes.

“What’s the fairy tale?” I asked.

“It’s a tale of a boy stuck in a maze where every time he takes a tunnel, it becomes closed off,” Prepotente said. “He’s presented with thousands of paths, and he keeps taking the incorrect one, which leads to danger, and he is killed. He’s resurrected by a god and forced to start over. Donut, if you would be so kind, could I have the hammer and magical stick?”

She looked at me, and I nodded. Prepotente took them and placed the ball pein hammer and stick on the ground by the back wall and went to a knee. He pulled something from his inventory. A potion.

“I still don’t understand why they gave these items to you and not me,” Prepotente muttered. He pulled something else from his inventory. It looked like a thermometer. He held it against the wall.

“Probably the same reason they gave you the potion to give to me,” Donut said. “Our sponsors want us to work together.”

“Oh, yes,” Prepotente said. “Thank you for reminding me.”

Crawler Prepotente has left the party.

Princess Donut has been designated party leader.

“What happens in this fairytale?” I asked. “And you didn’t answer my question. How do you really know this? You didn't figure this out from an interview.”

“My mother’s boots,” Prepotente said, half-distracted. “Boots of Kiznet’s Final Flight. She’d received them from a minor boss just before you allowed her to kill herself. Their description tells the full story. It’s an odd tale that combines several different earth folklores like the stories of Achilles and Sisyphus and Wu Gang. The item description was 503% longer than the average item description, making it a curious outlier. So it was obvious it was something we needed to pay attention to. Soon after mother received the item, they started discussing this next floor, and I knew how to proceed.”

As he talked, he uncorked the potion and splashed the clear liquid on the glass. Nothing happened. He put the thermometer back against the glass. “Yes. Yes,” he said. “Carl. Please. Tell me the name of the book.”

I paused, and then I pulled the thin, hardback book from my inventory to show it to him. It was called Book of Lore – Commonwealth of the Bahamas. It had the aquamarine and gold stripes with the black triangle of the flag of the Bahamas on the cover, and that was it. I flipped it open, and the pages contained descriptions and stats of a variety of monsters. The page I flipped it to was an owl creature called the Chickcharney. Following each photo was several pages of text.

“Interesting,” Prepotente said. “You should stow that back into your inventory. I may ask you for your help later.” He returned his attention back to his thermometer.

“The Bahamas?” Donut said. “That’s where Miss Beatrice went for her vacation!”

Up above the jail bars, the timer, which was at two minutes, flickered and went straight to zero.

Hello, Crawlers!

Welcome to the seventh floor! The countdown is on!

She was talking much more quickly than usual, going so fast it was difficult to understand her, like she was trying to get through it.

Rules. The moment this message ends, each crawler pod will slide to the starting chute and open. This will happen in order. Once opened, you will be pulled through the tunnel and into the maze. All paths lead to the exit. There are no dead ends. The exit portals you see behind you are physically pulling you in, but in order to get to them, you must first negotiate the maze paths, which constitute several hundred kilometers of twisting and turning tubes. Each path leads to a node which in turn leads to multiple branches. In some cases, there are literally hundreds of possible paths. Pitstop saferooms exist in these nodes. You cannot backtrack. Some paths are more dangerous than others. Some require the solving of math equations or puzzles to proceed. All tunnels are passible. The danger level of each branch is marked, oftentimes describing what you’ll find along the way and the distance to the next node. Most major nodes contain a zero tube, or a path with no danger. You must choose your path. Once a path has been passed through by 10 crawlers or a single party, it closes for an amount of time based on difficulty. All zero tubes may only be passed once. So those of you in the back might want...

She trailed off. Behind me, Prepotente picked up the little baton. The one called The Enchanted Stick of Cascadia’s Screams. He started to push it into the wet spot on the glass. The stick pushed through like magic.

Godsdamnit, Prepotente. Don’t do it. Please. I worked so hard to make this floor happen.

The stick stopped about halfway through the wall. Prepotente screamed.

The goat looked up at the ceiling and said, “My mother would’ve been quite proud of this, I think. She would’ve called me her very smart boy. She played the piano, you know. She used to let me into the house. Only me, and she would play the piano for me and sing. She was going to do it again at the talent competition. I am never going to get that back.”

He picked up the hammer, and he whispered, “You’re a good boy, my sweet little Pony. You’re a good, smart boy.”  He gave the stick a very tiny little tap.

Crack.

A lightning pattern of fissures appeared on the wall of glass.

I reached up to my shoulder and pulled Donut into my grip.

Holy shit, I thought. No way. No goddamned way.

“Interesting,” Prepotente said, looking at the pattern on the glass wall. His voice had become distant. “I thought it would be instantaneous. According to the legend, the Kiznet boy spent years attempting to crack the walls of the impossible maze. He finally created a crack in the chamber in the resurrection chamber, and it was there at the very entrance where he finally realized...”

Smash!

The wall shattered. But it wasn’t just the wall. It was all the walls. The entire level exploded into a fine dust. All around me, crawlers appeared, all getting sucked into the portals at the same time. I held tightly onto Donut as we flipped, head over toes through the air and were sucked right into the stairwell.

The last thing I heard before the light enveloped us was Cascadia screaming over the dungeon’s announcement system.

~

Donut and I slammed into a round, dark chamber made of marble. We both hit the ground and slid. I coughed and sat up. Donut shook her head miserably. She proceeded to hack up a hairball onto the floor, which was a mix of blood and bug pieces and glass shards.

We’d stopped at the base of a small stairwell, which led up about ten steps to a platform, and atop the platform floated a glowing, car-sized, holographic globe of the Earth.

Our interface was switched off. We’d been in a room just like this before. It was between the fourth and fifth floors when we’d picked the air quadrant for the bubble level.

“Did that just happen?” I asked, wiping glass dust off me.

“Carl, he broke the whole level! That lady was really mad at him.”

“They tried to stop him,” I said. “All of our sponsors came together to make sure he pulled it off. They wanted you there, too. They’re trying to get us to work together.”

“He’s going to be in big trouble,” Donut said.

I continued to try to clean myself, but it was pointless. I pulled something from my hair. It was a mantis nymph antennae. It’d been glued there by gore. “I hope everybody got through that okay.”

Before you enter the eighth floor, you must secure your starting location.

Warning: all parties consisting of more than five members will be automatically split into squads of five or less. You will remain partied with the other members of your team, but some challenges on this level may require you to interact only with your squad.

Your party consists of two members. It has not been split.

Your squad consists of:

Crawler Donut (Squad Leader)

Crawler Carl

Six spots remain.

You may not break squads on this floor. I hope you guys get along because you’re stuck together.

Squad Leader Donut, please proceed to the platform and choose your starting location. You have ninety seconds to choose, or a random location will be chosen for you.

Donut hopped up onto the platform, skipping the stairs. She put her paw up, and the massive globe spun freely under her control. I tried to follow her up onto the platform, but it wouldn’t let me pass.

Squad leader? I didn’t like the sound of that.

“Carl, where should I pick?” Donut called.

Damnit, I thought. With everything going on at the end of the sixth floor, I hadn’t told anyone the title of that book. Only Prepotente.

This was just like the fifth floor. We were going to be scattered to the wind.

I looked up at the spinning globe. It was covered with green, selectable locations. It didn’t appear we could choose the water or Antarctica or any other location that wasn’t normally populated. Nothing was labeled, but the shapes were obvious. The blinking outlines were all the countries of the world. Some of the larger countries like Russia, Canada, China, and the United States were broken up into regions, but the map lines were clear.

“I have that book I bought,” I said. “It’s for the Bahamas, and it contains a bunch of information about the lore and the monsters there including their stats. If that pole position boon was any indication, then that book was designed to be really helpful. Still, I kinda want to pick the western United States because we’re familiar with the geography. And maybe team Meadowlark will pick it. Katia will probably pick Iceland.”

Donut hoped up to the platform. “Do you think we're going back up to the surface? Or is it going to be something weird?"

"I doubt we're going back to the surface."

"We should go with Ibiza. I’ve always wanted to go there.” She spun the globe to the Mediterranean and zoomed in on the small island. “Lots of influencers like going there. As the dungeon’s number one crawler, I have a reputation to uphold. I heard the nightclubs there are just divine.”

“Is it selectable by itself? Isn’t that a part of Spain? And how do you even know where that is?”

“I’m quite versed is geography, Carl. Miss Beatrice spent a lot of time looking at vacation locations, and I know the world map very well. Hmm. It looks like it’s Ibiza and the rest of the Balearic Islands all lumped together. Spain is by itself, but there’s a little chunk that’s separated out that’s normally part of the country.”

We only had twenty seconds to choose.

“Damnit. Let’s just go with the Bahamas. We have the book. It seems like the best choice.”

Ten seconds.

Donut sighed. “Okay,” she finally said. “But we’re not going into the water.”

She spun to the Caribbean. She reached up and clicked.

Your team’s starting location has been chosen.

“Goddamnit, Donut,” I cried. “That wasn’t the Bahamas!”

~

Katia was a woman possessed. She pulled up her Find Crawler skill, found Eva, and noted her location. She was buried over in the corner. The bitch was alive.

You’re not getting away this time.

“I’ll come with you,” Daniel said.

“No,” Katia replied. “Help with the rescues and the healing. Li Na will be with me.”

She didn’t add the unspoken truth.

I don’t want you to see this. I don’t want you to see me like this.

He paused. Uncertain, but he relented. She could tell that he knew this was necessary. Li Na was a good bodyguard. He knew how dangerous she was. Probably the second most dangerous crawler in the dungeon, only behind the woman they were about to kill.

“Be careful. Do it quick.”

“I will,” Katia said. “I love you, Daniel.”

“I love you, too.”

They’d made love before the party, both certain that they were going to die. She’d encompassed him completely, building a cocoon, keeping the eyes of the universe off them both.

He’d told her that she was hurting him.

“I do that sometimes,” she had said, devastated. She dropped all her mass and curled into a ball, leaving herself raw and naked and exposed. Almost human. All original parts but the missing fingers and the hair and the nose. The hair and the nose were the first things she’d changed, and she’d be damned before she went back.

After his comment, she’d pulled a blitz stick and lit it. Only Daniel knew. She had two big secrets in this dungeon, and this was one of them. She’d found the blitz sticks on one of Eva’s victims. Her name had been Sally. She’d worked at the airport. She was a healer, like half of them were, and she’d turned to Eva despite everything. She’d died, just like the rest of them. The only thing left in her inventory were the blitz sticks.

Eva had left them there. A present for Katia.

Show me Annie, she’d think, and the blitz stick would oblige. Every time. Nine months old. Standing in the crib. Her real mother had gone to jail. Katia had picked the baby up, held her in her arms. The little girl grabbed onto her dark hair, like it was meant to be.

I do that sometimes. I hurt those around me.

“It’s okay,” Daniel had said. “You’re stronger than you think. That’s all.”

Eva was likely unconscious. Half the people here were. Britney had saved everyone at the last minute thanks to her quick thinking with the jacket, but it had come at a terrible price. Firas was dead. Poor, sweet Firas. He’d asked her to sew a pair of matching tuxedoes.

Fifty-one player killer skulls. Eva had 51 player killer skulls over her head.

If I had killed her instead of Hekla, she wouldn’t have had the chance.

Why do you do this, Fannar used to say. You’re dumb. Dumber than you look. Do you really think I’d start a family with you? You’re a joke. Do you really think you could be a mother? Do you really think I’d let you do more damage to this world?

“She’s under here,” Katia said to Li Na, who nodded. Together, they pulled the dead bugs away, revealing the unconscious form of Eva. Katia was careful not to touch Li Na’s skin. She’d done that once, and it had almost killed her.

Eva would wake up in ten seconds. Her health was almost gone.

That snake-like face. Katia couldn’t remember her any other way.

Li Na cast a spell. Preserve Injury. It’d prevent her from healing herself. She pointed at Eva’s top, left hand. There was a ring there. One that would let her disappear and escape. Katia pulled Eva’s old sword, the Left Fang of the Green Sultan, the one she’d dropped on the train all those floors ago, and used it cut the hand free from her body. Then she cut the poisonous rapier from her top, left stub, leaving Eva with only two remaining hands, both on the bottom.

Eva’s eyes fluttered open. She gasped in pain.

“It ends today,” Katia said, lifting the sword.

“You won’t keep winning. Fuck you. Fuck all of you.”

“This isn’t winning, Eva,” Katia said, pausing in her attack. “What happened to you?”

“Heal me,” she said.

Katia laughed. Li Jun looked nervously between Katia and his sister.

“Kill her,” Li Na said, emotionless.

“Please,” Eva said. “Katia, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all I wanted,” Katia heard herself say. “I just wanted to hear you afraid for once.”

She took the sword, and she plunged it into Eva’s chest. She pierced the metal of Eva’s magical breastplate, punching right through it with the blade.

You’re stronger than you think. That’s all.

Katia leaned in. “Die, Eva.”

In the coming days, Katia would play this next instant over and over in her mind. She’d smoke one of those blitz sticks and say, show me stopping her. Or show me killing her before she woke up.

Each time, the blitz stick would oblige. It’d show her a reality that wasn’t so.

Mordecai had warned against these things. He’d said they were addictive. She hadn’t listened. She was glad for those moments, despite the fact they were shorter each time.

In those false, drug-induced dreams, Katia would catch Eva’s hand. She’d smash her head in with a fist formed out of her own chest. She would replay the moment over and over in her imagination. Each time, she’d stop her, and when she’d wake up from that dream, she would wish more than anything in this world that it was true. That she’d been fast enough.

But that’s not what occurred.

Her sponsor, the Apothecary, knew this was going to happen. She’d given Katia a hat to wear. It would’ve stopped this. She’d given the hat to Carl, leaving her head bare.

Using her left, lower hand, Eva pulled something as she died. Not from her inventory, but from the back shoulder of her own armor. It’d been there the whole time, attached to her purple, glittering breastplate. Katia had noticed it earlier, but she’d assumed it was part of the armor’s decoration.

The Crown of the Sepsis Whore.

That damn crown. A tiara, really. The first loot item Donut had received. It was a unique item that disappeared if you took it off. Donut had lost it at the end of the third floor. Katia had been there when it happened.

It had found its way to Eva. And from Eva’s hand, it found its way to Katia’s head.

Eva was dead before the crown even equipped itself. But it didn’t matter. The damage was done.

“Shit,” Katia said, reaching up to touch her head. She caught eyes with Li Jun and Li Na. It melded into her form, disappearing from sight. “Shit, shit, shit.”

With the crown on Katia’s head, it meant one thing. Only one of them, Donut or Katia, would be allowed to take the stairs from the ninth to the tenth floor.

I do that sometimes. I hurt those around me.

~

And that's all she (he) wrote.  The e-file isn't quite ready yet. I'll post it when it's ready in a separate post.  There's still quite a bit of editing to do.

We're going to jump right into the next book. THere's another short story thing I'm going to write, but I've decided to add it to the front of the next book. We'll be jumping right in.

Again, thanks for all your support. I really appreciate it.