Chapter 250 (Patreon)

Part III

The Bedlam

Chapter 250

<Note added by Crawler Ikicha. 11th Edition>

My people have a saying. “The burning Yenk needs only to embrace their enemies.” It likely translates poorly, but what it means is that some problems aren’t problems at all if you think on it long enough.

~

“Wait, before we go, I have a question,” I called after Pater Coal as we stepped from the Temple of the Dying Sun back out into the club. I couldn’t get the sight of the man sucking on my toe out of my mind.

Entering Club Vanquisher.

The tiny cleric paused, looking uncertainly off toward a mantaur guard, who stood in a corner, admiring himself as he flexed into a large, ornate mirror. “Yes, yes. I am true,” the guard was shouting at his own reflection. “Fuck the posers! Kill them with power!”

In addition to the guard, there was a desk here, guarding the entrance to the portal we just exited. Behind it and right in front of us was a mote of light with fairy wings. The white and yellow fairy thing was the size of my fist. Even though she had no eyes or face, I could feel her glare on us as we paused in front of the portal.

Yasmine. Level 75 Wisp.

Secretary of the Club Vanquisher Temple Portal.

This is a non-combatant NPC.

This Wisp worships the goddess Áine.

“You can’t block the portal,” the fairy said.

“Come,” Pater Coal said, pulling me off to the side, keeping a wary eye on the mantaur. “We need to get you to the healer. Quickly. If that guard sees you were in the temple, they’ll kick you out until tomorrow.”

“I know,” I said, putting my hand against my stomach and the now-dissipated boil there. “But what if we don’t go to the healer?”

~

Time to level collapse. Five Days and Twenty-three Hours.

It is December 26th

System Message: Stairwell Locations are now open. You must have a key to unlock the exit vestibule. Only squad members will be allowed to pass through the unlocked door. The key will dissipate upon use.

Admin Message: Your squad holds a key for El Capitolio Nacional de Cuba. The location has been marked on your map.

There are five squads within the “Cuba” zone. Two of the five squads hold keys.

Let the fun begin.

Entering Iglesia San Hilarion.

Donut and I transferred from inside our personal space to the interior of an old, empty Catholic church. The most recent recap episode had just aired, and they told us we’d get transferred, given a few minutes to orient ourselves, and then we’d get the update. There was a saferoom door right there, and we could walk right back in if we wanted. It was dark outside, just past midnight on the morning of December 26th. Moonlight shone in through the stained-glass windows of the church. We’d been dropped almost 50 kilometers from the exit stairwell, off to the southwest in a direction we hadn’t explored.

We had almost six days to get to the door.

“Welcome back to Cuba,” I said.

I’d come back from my mission to the homeless shelter, expecting a flurry of questions. Instead I found everyone awake and subdued, pacing back and forth while Elle spoke with a bloody, bruised, and sobbing Imani. The remnants of the Christmas party remained, and the cleaner bot cleaned our space while the stripper guys quietly went about and cleaned the common area of the guildhall.

Imani’s squad was dead. All four of them. She had four new player killer skulls, and they gave it to her because her own totem had killed her entire squad. I didn’t get the details right then, but the shock of it had sobered everyone right up.

Elle, Donut, and Katia spent time with her while I spent the rest of the day training and building things in my crafting studio.

I also used two of the three Cracker Jack scrolls to unlock a pair of alien shields for both myself and Donut. We had a whole pile of this tech-based stuff that we’d looted from the hunters on the previous floor, but we couldn’t use them until they were unlocked. Mine was a Valtay Perso-Shield, Platinum Edition, which was identical to the one I would’ve gotten from Paulie, and it was simply a round, pinback button that looked a little like the planet Saturn. It didn’t take up an equipment slot, but once it was clipped to me, I could turn it on and off in my interface.

The shield surrounded me with an inch-thick buffer that protected me from physical damage, and it somewhat protected me from any magic attack that cast something corporeal at me, like Magic Missile and Fireball and Lightning. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t nearly as powerful or good as my Protective Shell. I had to turn it on and off myself, and it had enough power to work for about two minutes before it shut off on its own. It took about an hour to charge up once depleted, though I could activate it for short periods before it was fully charged. It didn’t hinder me from picking objects up or tossing things away, which was good. It would protect Donut if she was sitting on my shoulder when I turned it on, but I’d have to time it correctly. If she wasn’t physically touching me when I turned it on, she’d just bounce right off me.

I knew from the last floor that these things were good enough to stop the first few hits, but after that, they burned right out. It was better than nothing.

Actual body armor worked much better than this personal shield, but it was cumbersome and custom fitted to the person. If I wanted something like that, I’d have to get it from one of my remaining sponsors.

Donut’s shield was also a small, opalescent pin that looked like a longhorn cow, and I attached it directly to her neck collar. Thankfully she liked the design and didn’t complain about it. It was also more powerful, according to Mordecai. The Bull Rush, Bespoke Personal Shield. It was made by a Taurine-owned company called Hereford War Machines, Inc., and they were known to outfit some of the most elite mercenary squads in the galaxy.

We’d taken this one off a Soother mercenary in the last days before the Butcher’s Masquerade. He’d also had an automatic pulse rifle on him that was supposedly worth a lot of money, though the gun still wasn’t as good as most of our spells. This was according to both Mordecai and some of the chatter on Donut’s social media board, which turned out to be a great resource for figuring out all the gear we were collecting. The hunter obviously had a rich family who’d spent a lot of money trying to keep him safe in those final days. That hadn’t worked out for him, but we were going to use that equipment for our own gain.

Donut’s shield worked like mine, but instead of covering her with a Donut-shaped skin, it surrounded her in a bubble that moved with her. It also had a mount option, so it would protect Mongo if she was riding him, or even an entire vehicle, though the protection would be weaker. We never got to see it in action since the moron we’d taken it from never turned it on when we’d ambushed him, but from what I gathered, the shield was much stronger than my own, though the recharge times were similar.

We hadn’t yet had the chance to test them in real battle. After unlocking the gear, I returned to the coast and looted more bodies of crabs and seals, who continued to wash up on the Florida shore. Donut and Katia remained inside, at Imani’s side.

I spent the rest of the time after that in my bomber’s studio.

When midnight came, we’d be transferred back to Cuba.

The recap episode had been almost all redacted. It appeared this one was a discussion on the quarantine along with a special on all the possible “Showdowns” they were setting up between the haves and have-nots with the keys.

The only thing we were allowed to watch was a short scene featuring Imani and her squad, and we were all still reeling from it.

Her squad consisted of former Meadowlark residents I didn’t know very well. They all died obtaining the final token for that vending machine. It all happened in a single, horrific moment when one of the totems they faced possessed two of them and forced them to fight one another. One of them was a man named Randall, who’d turned himself into a support-magic-dealing, gnome-like creature called a lutin. He tried to disarm the situation by freezing all four of them with a spell. Then, one of Imani’s own totems—a mossy, disease-dealing lizard thing called an Amhuluk—cast a poison cloud that killed them all in a single attack. They died frozen in place, their skin all melting away. The scene ended with Imani screaming while the Amhuluk finished off the enemy deckmaster and won the battle.

After that, Imani returned to the saferoom. She did not face the final battle, which was in her family home in Detroit. Elle was the only one she was really talking with. Donut said she was just staring into space, not saying anything, shaking.

The four player killer skulls was just a slap to the face. It was the same thing they’d done to Florin when Lucia Mar had killed Ifechi. It was the AI being a complete asshole, and it was a terrible reminder that no matter what the AI did to the other guys, no matter how often it occasionally “helped” me, it wasn’t on our side. It was murdering us. It wasn’t our friend. It wasn’t friendly to our cause, and there was no action it could ever take to make up for what it already had done.

That old adage—the enemy of my enemy is my friend—was complete bullshit. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to use it to my benefit when I could.

But for right now, for the next few days, all of that was going to have to wait. We had to first get to that door, open it up, and get down the stairs, and until that was done, all this crap with the AI going primal, all the posturing for the next floor, and everything I’d learned from Paulie was going to have to wait. None of it mattered. Not yet.

“Carl, look!” Donut said. “It says there’s two keyholders in the area. Does that mean Sister Ines has a key?”

“It does,” I said, looking at the map. “I don’t know where she is.” I used my Find Crawler skill, and there was nobody nearby. I hadn’t expected to see anyone. “There are three squads here without keys. We don’t know who they are. At least one of them probably just teleported next to our stairwell. They’ll be waiting for us, and we’ll have to get past them to leave.”

Your alarm trap has activated.

Your teleport trap has activated.

Your teleport trap has activated.

Your teleport trap has activated.

I took a deep breath. I’d posted those traps on the very first day of the floor by our exit stairwell. It hadn’t even occurred to me at the time to plant something more powerful. We hadn’t been back there since the first day, and now realized that had been a mistake. Whomever it was that had stepped on the traps, there were at least three of them, and they were now spread out all over the place.

I should’ve used explosives. I should’ve wired the whole capitol building. I hated myself for thinking that. Still, if I had, it would’ve been done by now.

I thought of the bombs I’d built just a few hours earlier. I’d already pre-programmed them to hunt crawlers. I felt like hypocrite.

You will not fucking break me. Fuck you all.

Elle: Everybody check in. It says there’s one other squad here without a key. They bounced us all the way to Olympia, and we gotta hoof it back to the waterpark to get through the door.

Donut: WE ARE BACK IN CUBA, AND THAT NUN LADY IS HERE TOO SOMEWHERE WITH A KEY. THERE ARE THREE OTHER SQUADS WITHOUT KEYS.

Katia: We’re here, back in Iceland. We’re the only ones with a key, but there’re two other squads here. Some of the former daughters didn’t get their key, and I know they’re in Turkey. I don’t know who else is there. They say they only had two choices. I thought there were supposed to be three?

Li Na: We have twenty teams with keys and twenty without them in my area, but one of the squads rigged the entrance with animal traps, and they’ve already killed several of them. It’s going to get worse from here.

Florin: I’m here alone. I also had claymores set up by the entrance, but thankfully I didn’t have to use them. I don’t have to face anybody. I just gotta walk right to the door. Lucia Mar isn’t here, which means she didn’t get a key. Somebody chime in if they see her.

Prepotente: I am back in the Bahamas along with four squads, which is quite unfortunate for them. If I set it up correctly, they are currently all asleep and will remain asleep for the remainder of the floor. I am going to finish my training and proceed to the exit when it is time.

Jesus, I thought. Everybody had set traps, but nobody had mentioned it before this. That said something. It felt important, and not in a good way.

Elle: Imani. Where are you?

Imani: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. They only gave me two choices.

Elle: Where are you?

Imani: I’m in Cuba.

I felt cold. Next to me, Donut stiffened.

Imani: It was Cuba or back to face you, Elle, and I just couldn’t do it. I’m sorry.

Elle: Well, fuck.

Imani: Yeah.

Elle: You said that crazy nun is still there, right?

Carl: We’re on the same page, Elle. Imani, did any traps go off? Was there an alarm? Are you in the Capitol building or are you in a church?

Imani: It was a church. No traps.

Carl: Okay, good. Sit tight. We are coming to you. That’s Sister Ines’s doorway. Don’t let her through.

Imani: Guys, there’s more. I had to jump into the saferoom. There’s another guy here, and he was about to attack me. He tried to initiate a card battle, but I went through the door first. It’s that Quan Ch guy. He’s alone.

I exchanged a look with Donut.

Carl: Stay put. We’re on our way.

~

I returned to the saferoom long enough to grab Samantha. We didn’t wait for the announcement. We had to hurry. If Sister Ines got there before we did, Quan would kill her, take the key, and immediately bounce to the ninth floor. We had to get there first and take out Quan.

Donut freed Mongo and jumped into the saddle while I pulled out the motorcycle.

This was a small town named Guanajay. There wasn’t anybody out as far as I could tell. It was past midnight, after all. Just to the north was a huge pileup of cars, and I could see some red dots. Duendes. They hadn’t noticed us, and I didn’t want to waste time on them.

“Really, Carl,” Donut said, looking the Harley Davidson up and down with distaste. “I didn’t realize you’d actually get that thing to work. Are you planning on growing a mullet as well? Are there any Waffle Houses between here and there? Maybe we can stop and get into a brawl, but only after you bounce a few child support payment checks first.”

“You know, most bikers were just normal people with normal lives. I never rode a motorcycle, and my dad was a dick, but that doesn’t mean all bikers are assholes. You shouldn’t stereotype people.”

“I watched Sons of Anarchy, Carl.”

“That was a TV show, and I watched it, too. There are plenty of normal motorcycle riders.”

“We obviously were watching two very different shows.”

“You liked the goblin copper chopper. I don’t understand what the difference is.”

“That was a custom-made, handcrafted vehicle built especially for us by Rory and Lorelai, and it had a sidecar attachment with a personalized, tailor-made seat. This is a metallic penis extension that comes with a free probation officer and a traumatic brain injury.”

“I think it’s sexy,” Samantha said.

I pulled her up and put her on the handlebars, lashing her in front of me. She started making vroom, vroom noises.

“You’re gonna have to get used to it,” I said. “Katia already looked at it and tuned it up for me.”

Donut continued to look unimpressed. “How do you even know how to ride it?”

I shrugged. “I got a bunch of skill levels in riding these things from the goblin copper chopper. It’s not hard.” I didn’t add I’d gone up to level nine in the skill during my journey back to the safe room.

“What about gas?”

“I have gas in my inventory.”

She harrumphed. She was about to say something else when we were interrupted by the announcement.

Hello, Crawlers!

Welcome to the third and final phase of the floor! I am glad to report that everything is back to normal, and we no longer have to worry about our good friend the system AI from doing anything unexpected. We do not anticipate any further interruptions between now and crawler extinction, which is fabulous news for everybody!

As you undoubtably saw from the announcement, the level stairwells are now open! If you don’t have a key, you have been placed in front of a stairwell location where someone else in the region has a key. If there’s more than one of you at the location, that does not mean there’s more than one key to steal, so be careful! You might have to duke it out before the keyholder even gets close. Good luck to everybody!

Since both sides will have decks, these final battles will be card battles. The rules all remain the same with a single exception, and that is the Flee card. Pay careful attention, everybody.

If you do not have a key, the Flee card works as it always had. You can use it to exit a battle that’s not going your way, and you will teleport away from the battle to a random location nearby. That might not be in your best interests if you’re guarding a door.

From this point forward, however, keyholders who use a Flee card will automatically lose their key to their opponent. If there are multiple opponents, and only a single key, the key will go to the ultimate victor. Isn’t that great? You still get out of the battle, but now you’re the one without the key!

One last note about the key itself. You may not voluntarily give up or drop your key unless you have more than one. If you want to show some of that famous, human altruism, then you gotta do it on the battlefield.

I must say, I am looking forward to these battles. We have some interesting and exciting matchups, and some of the top crawlers are being forced to face off against one another. It’s going to be just amazing. I just cannot wait.

Now get out there and kill, kill, kill.

“Go fuck yourself, Cascadia,” I said out loud as I kicked the engine into life.

It roared.

Donut: THIS IS MUCH TOO LOUD, CARL. YOU’RE UPSETTING MONGO.

Carl: It’s a motorcycle. Come on. We have a one-armed crawler to take care of.

We headed east.

~

Less than a minute after we hit the road, I received an ominous message.

Warning: Your location has been pinpointed using the Eye in the Sky skill.

Donut: CARL, CARL DID YOU SEE THAT?

That was a new one to me, so I immediately sent a message to Mordecai.

Mordecai: That’s a really powerful spell, and it probably was a scroll. I’ve only seen them maybe once or twice. Like a mix between Find Crawler and Ping, but it covers the whole area. The scrolls are really rare, and they come in levels five, 10, and 15. That was a level 10. If it was a 15, you wouldn’t have gotten the notification. If it was five, it would’ve given you info on the caster. Whoever it was, they now know where you are and what your level is, so keep moving.

There was nothing we could do about that now. I suspected and hoped it was someone from that third squad using it to find their fellow, teleported-away teammates. Either way, they now knew where we were. I rolled the throttle, speeding up.

Quan could fly, so I was keeping a wary eye on the air above us.

I had several instructions for Imani. The plan was originally for me to do all this, but her presence in the area complicated everything. That, and we needed to know who the other crawlers in the area were, and we needed to know fast. There were at least three of them, and they were likely spending this time trying to get back together with one another.

Imani: I peeked my head out, and he’s not in the church anymore. There’s also something going on outside. Lots of loud noises, like fighting.

Carl: Out in the street?

Imani: Yes. The walls are shaking. It’s a big battle.

Donut: IT’S THE CRABS AND THE SEALS.

Carl: Okay. Listen up. Don’t worry about that right now. In our saferoom leaned up against the wall there’s a small, wheeled cart. It looks like a big skateboard with a bomb on top of it. If you run in there and grab it, you can push it out the door and hide it somewhere in the church. It’s a seeker bomb, and I just made it using the automaton table and my bomber’s studio. I’ve already made it so it won’t explode anywhere near anybody in our guild. You can activate it, choose crawler, and it will zoom over and explode the moment someone goes inside that church. It has a few additional tricks, so if it goes off, wait at least thirty seconds before going out there.

Imani: Christ, Carl. Is this what we’ve become?

Carl: Don’t think like that. We didn’t make this happen. They did. Nobody is going to survive the next floor if we don’t work together in Faction Wars. We know of two other crawlers in the area. They’re both mass murderers. Quan has it coming. I don’t want to hurt Sister Ines, but if I have to choose between you and her, there’s no question. We’ll try to avoid fighting the last squad, whoever they are. Listen, there’s something else I built. It’s another type of trap. I wanted to put it by our door, but I think it’ll work in your area, too.

I spent the next few minutes explaining what I wanted her to do.

After, we spent the next few minutes driving in silence. Donut and I were both on high alert the whole time, on the lookout. Mongo kept easy pace with the motorcycle, weaving in and out and around me as we rushed down the empty road, heading toward the coast. Red dots appeared and there, and we avoided them all.

Donut: Carl, what are we going to do if Imani doesn’t get a key?

I’d been thinking on this.

Carl: Then I’m going to force her to fight us, and you’re going to use the Flee card, giving her our key. I have my jacket with the mysterious bone key benefit. I can use that to open the door. I’ll lose my jacket, but we’ll both still get out of here.

Donut: You need that jacket. I’m pretty sure you need your bones, too.

Carl: It will only take one. Maybe it won’t be an important one.

Donut: They're all important, Carl.

Carl: We’ll all still be alive. It’ll be okay.

Donut: What about the other people? I know that jacket-stealing cheater and the Havana Brown need to go, but what if those other crawlers are people we like? Are we going to fight people we like? I don’t want to do that.

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.

Carl: We’ll do what we have to do to survive, Donut.

~~

Uh oh. Who’s that other squad? We know it’s not Lucia Mar. There’s at least three of them. Will it be someone new? Someone we know and love? Someone in between?

Thank you everybody for your continued support. This weekend I will be at Norwescon here in Seattle. I will have a table, and I will be there all four days, so if you’re in the area, please come and say hello! It’s kind of a sleepy con, so I’ll be at the table typing away trying to finish this thing. I still have a couple major announcements on the horizon, but I can’t say anything yet. Y’all are awesome.