Chapter 148

I had boxes to open and a ton of other stuff to do, but all of that could wait an hour. I sat down on the counter and just rested for a few minutes.

I’d run out of books to read. I needed a new outlet. But more importantly, I needed to rest. Not sleep. Rest. Like, really rest.

Most of the time while I was idle, I was actually writing in my third scratchpad, composing thoughts for the cookbook. I’d figured out how to separate individual scratchpad pages even further and to create drafts. I’d been putting a lot of stuff in there recently, and it’d just dawned on me that I was spending every free moment “working.” Even when I was playing Frogger, I was really just on autopilot and writing stream-of-consciousness words straight into the draft section of the scratchpad. Planning. Scenarios. Theories. Recreating other’s recipes and comments from memory as an exercise to make sure I could recall them. Coming up with alternatives. My brain was always working, turning everything over and over.

Recently, I’d been noticing something hidden in the back of my mind. It was difficult to explain. Almost like there was a bubbling, meandering stream hidden back there in my brain, nestled deep, deep down. It’d always been there, which meant I was so used to the quiet murmur of the stream, I never noticed it. But recently, that sound was starting to get louder. Only it wasn’t a sound, not really. It wasn’t even a physical feeling. Just a sense of flow, and that sense was changing, rising in volume. It’d gone up just a hair, but it was enough for me to finally notice.

I’d only found one way to mute it. Only when I was completely calm. Fully at rest. When we were in the heat of it all, like when we’d been fleeing Zockau, it was right there, the stream in the back of my mind.

The recap would be on in a few minutes, and we waited for it. Mordecai and Donut talked about some of the new upgrades that were available for our personal space, including a bed that would refresh us after thirty seconds of sleep.

“No,” I said. “We’re not getting that. It’s too much.”

Mordecai was about to object, but he thought better of it. “We’ll revisit it.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Donut asked, rubbing up against me. I reached over and rubbed her back.

“I’m okay, Donut. Just trying to decompress a little.”

Mongo was curled up on the other side of the room, leaning up against Britney, who was sitting on the ground. She’d tried pushing him away a few times, but she was in his spot. He ended up putting his head on her lap, and she was now petting him like a dog.

“Does decompressing mean you’re not going to open your prize boxes?”

I sighed, and I pulled up my boxes. I needed to get this over with anyway. Donut sat next to me, excited. She also had a Hunter-Killer box to open, but she wanted me to open mine first since I had thirty-four of them, and she thought it would be more “dramatic.”

The first box was a Gold Junkie’s box. This was an odd one. Since this was from using the ring of Divine Suffering, I’d been expecting to receive a Savage box, which was what one normally received for any player-killer themed achievement.

The gold box opened and then puffed away. A spiderweb pattern appeared in the air and faded. Nothing came out. I cringed.

“Oh no,” Donut said. “Not again.”

“Goddamnit,” I muttered before the new tattoo appeared.

“Carl, you keep getting disgusting tattoos. You might as well grow a beard and knock over a liquor store now. That’s your third tattoo in a week. You’re going to scare Mongo.”

This was the biggest one yet, and it formed on my left elbow. I didn’t have time to examine the tattoo’s properties, but it was a spiderweb pattern. The individual strands of the web were segmented, worm-like. It was faded and green-tinted and poorly drawn.

“I think it looks sick,” Louis called from the couch.

“My uncle had the same tattoo,” Firas added. “He got it in prison.”

The 34 Hunter Killer boxes lined up, all in a long row that floated all the way down to the wall where our rooms were located. It was so many boxes, everybody stopped what they were doing to watch. I was afraid these boxes would also contain tattoos, which would really suck. I took a deep breath as the first one opened.

It was two items. It was 1,000 gold coins and a claw. A mangled, severed claw of an insect-like creature. This was the claw of Xindy, the mantis I’d blown out of the sky with my rockets. Before I could wonder what the hell that was all about, the next box opened. It was 2,000 gold and another claw, this time a lizard-like, bloody and scaled appendage. It was the hand of Chin’dua, the drunk draconian I’d marked then killed. The third box was 3,000 gold and yet another hand, this one of an orc.

None of the hands had any sort of rings or any other adornments. But they just kept popping out, one by one. Each time the amount of gold increased by 1,000. It ended up being a total of 528,000 gold. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Donut watched all of this with revulsion.

“Well, this has been a huge letdown. All that, and it’s a bunch of horrible hands? This is a rip off! At least it’s not tongues,” Donut said. “Lucia Mar collects tongues, and that’s much more disgusting.” Behind us, the bubbling Emberus fountain made a chime, and the amount of owed gold, which I’d just zeroed out, changed to 26,400.

Donut made a pained noise.

I had one last box before I could examine all this crap. A platinum asshole’s box.

It ended up being a skill potion that I had to immediately drink. I flipped off the stopper with my thumb and chugged it down manually. It tasted like strawberry juice.

Your Fear spell has been upgraded five levels! It is now level 10!

“Woah,” I said. “That was great. Five levels? And I wasted all that time working on it in the magic training room earlier.”

Mordecai grunted. “That spell should already be that high if you’d been practicing it like I told you. It’s less of a bonus and more of a corrective measure. They do that every once in a while. Now you can work on Ping instead.”

At level ten, the Fear spell also had a 2% chance to paralyze my targets, and I could cast it in a wide area. Mordecai was right. I needed to push hard on Ping now, which was only level two. Once I trained it up to level five, I’d be able to combine the two spells. But for now, I could imbue smoke curtains and certain explosives with Fear. I had instructions on how to do it in my cookbook, but I would need to practice. The act of enchanting items added a high probability of giving them the “Dud” status.

Plus, Fear caused my targets to run away. Paralyzing them was good, but it was only a 2% chance, and in my experience, anything below 10% actually translated to, “whenever the dungeon thought it would be beneficial to the narrative.” I didn’t want them running away. I eyed Louis sitting there on the couch. He had a spell I could really use. Too bad he’d already pledged himself to Katia’s team.

I sighed and put my hand on the spiderweb tattoo on my elbow.

The Night Wyrm’s Nasty Little Web of Suffering.

Bearers of this sigil are given access to the Guild of Suffering.

“Guild of Suffering?” I said, looking at Mordecai. I couldn’t recall reading anything about it. “What is that?”

Mordecai frowned, which looked absurdly adorable. “It’s a cult,” he said. “Not a real guild and not a real church. Similar to the city elves from the third floor. They have outreach centers, but I’ve never been in one. They worship a demigod, the Night Wyrm, who is not a regular member of the pantheon. Similar to Samantha. It’s a long story. It’s all tied in with that precious ring of yours. A few seasons back, the entire seventh floor was centered around them raising their god. Everybody who uses a divine suffering artifact gets marked like you have.”

Donut sniffed. “Well, it’s absolutely revolting. If I had known Carl was going to be marked even further, I would never have allowed him to use that ring. I never noticed the mark on Frank or Maggie, but they looked like the sort to have filthy tattoos like that.”

I sent out a message to the group to see if anybody had run across one of these guilds. Then I pulled the mantis claw from my inventory and examined it. As I did this, Donut finally opened her own box. She made a disgusted little noise as a gray hand popped out, followed by a squeal of outrage when she only receive 1,000 gold.

Hunting Trophy.

It’s the hand of a hunter. Gross.

You own 34 of these items.

You ever go to one of those arcade pizza joints as a child? You’re usually there because it’s some other kid’s birthday, or worse, because your parent hates raising you so much they’d do anything just to keep you distracted for ten minutes in exchange for a pitcher of watered-down beer. The whole place is chaos. There’s flashing lights, blaring music, a colorful carpet that hides the vomit stains. Not to mention the norovirus-infested ballpit, the rickety merry-go-round, the workers with dead eyes, and the pizza that tastes like it was cooked in a Soviet-era microwave? All the while an animatronic rodent holds court on stage, blinking and rotating and telling you that he is now your god.

Within this orgy of grease and unchecked consumerism is the arcade. Barely-functioning games gobble up tokens in exchange for mere seconds of entertainment. And every once in a while, one of these games will spit out something special. A ticket. A prize ticket.

Once you have a sticky handful of these hard-won paper tickets, you must make a pilgrimage to the fabled prize counter.

Here, you squeeze yourself in with the other pilgrims and press your face up against the glass and spend an inordinate amount of time deciding how to spend your newfound riches. In the end, you trade forty dollars’ worth of tickets for five cents’ worth of bubble gum and a filicide-inducing whistle. But that’s okay. It’s an important life lesson. Perhaps the most important one of all, only you’re not sure what that lesson is.

This hand you have savagely removed from a third-party interloper is the ticket in this scenario.

The prize counter where it may be exchanged will be open during The Grand Masquerade Ball near the end of this floor.

The cheapest award in the prize case will cost a single hand. The prizes only get better from there.

If you transfer or sell this item, it will revert to just being some dude’s appendage.

“What the hell?” I said, turning the claw over in my hand.

As I examined the item, Donut examined her own trophy. She gasped as she read the description.

“A prize counter? A masquerade? Well, this changes everything,” Donut said. “Carl, I only have one hand. We need to go get more!”

There was nothing about any sort of “Grand Masquerade Ball” in the cookbook. There was mention of a giant party at the end of the ninth floor if it was won early, but nothing of the sort for the sixth.

“I don’t know what that is,” Mordecai said after Donut showed him her hand. “That’s… they don’t usually actively encourage the crawlers to kill the sponsors.”

Before we could discuss it further, the screens flickered. It was time to watch the show.

“It’s the Hunting Grounds!” the newscaster announced. Because of our earlier boss battle at the bottom of the ocean, we now knew this orange lizard guy’s name was Kevin, which was an absurdly normal name for an alien. “This season is bigger, badder, and more extreme than any sixth floor we’ve ever had. The humans may be whittled down, the timer may be shortened, but this season we are on a whole new level. This season we’re going…”

“Redacted” abruptly appeared on the screen as Kevin the lizard breathlessly described whatever hidden horrors we had in store for us.

While we waited, I put the trophy claw away and turned my attention to the three newcomers in the space. Britney remained on the floor, petting Mongo. Before, the Ukrainian woman had been a class called a Pit Fighter. She’d raised her level to 30, and she had upgraded to Pit Champion. Since she refused to say anything to me, I had no idea what was different.

Firas’s class remained Hammersmith, and he’d ascended to level 35. He hadn’t been able to specialize. Louis was also level 35, but his class had changed from Pest Exterminator to Extermination Professional. He said he’d gained a .5% insta-kill bonus on mobs his level or lower, but that was it.

“So, how are the changelings doing?” I asked him while we waited for the show to return.

Louis shrugged. “They have some village deep in the woods they were all headed to. It’s in the Liana district, so the elf side of the river. One of the adults said he’d leave a message for you at the Desperado Club in a few days.”

“That’s good,” I said. I didn’t want to know exactly where their village was as long as I had a way to contact them.

“And Bonnie?” I asked.

“The little gnome kid went with them,” Firas said. “Did we tell you what she did to the Twister?”

“No. What?”

“She built a giant crossbow thing. A ballista. She affixed it to the side of the yard. She made it out of the mechanism for the garage door opener. Katia test fired it, and it blew up a tree.”

Katia, sitting at the end of the table, grunted with amusement. At first I’d thought she was mad at me and was giving me the silent treatment. But then I noticed the constant flashing in her eyes. She was doing the same thing I was. Talking. Planning. Working. She’d been forced to stop for the show.

“How elevated can you get the Twister?” I asked. The ceiling on this level wasn’t very high compared to the previous floor.

“Not very,” Firas said. “The roof is higher on this side of the river, away from the bigger cities, but we can’t even get over the trees. The balloon is just too big. So it’s not very useful. Hopefully you can figure out how to get it down another floor. Maybe the seventh floor will have another sky.”

“We’ll see,” I said.

“So, Louis,” Donut said, sidling up to the large man. “I understand congratulations are in order. Tell me. When are the nuptials? I’m assuming it won’t happen until we all reach the ninth floor. Since Carl has recently found religion, he’ll probably be able to officiate the wedding. Don’t worry, I’ll make him get pants for the ceremony. And we’ll cover-up his prison tattoos. Wait, do you think I could be maid of honor? Oh, oh. And Mongo could be ring bearer!”

Mongo looked up from Britney’s lap and squawked.

Donut suddenly gasped. “I could sing. I’m a professional musician now. I’d have to charge you of course, but wouldn’t that be amazing? Think of the ratings!”

Louis’s cheeks burned red. “Juice Box told you, huh?”

“She didn’t have to tell us. Love makes a person just glow,” Donut said. “I must say, I am not surprised you’re the first of our group to find true love. We all knew it wasn’t going to be Carl. And I’m already in a long-distance relationship with Ferdinand.”

“Ferdinand?” Louis asked. “Who is that? Another cat?”

“Oh, yes,” Donut said. “It’s a relationship even more unconventional than yours. We are star-crossed lovers and…”

She was interrupted by the show coming back on.

“…Murderer!” Dmitri or Maxim Popov screamed on the show. The screen was now showing things that had happened at the very end of the last floor, and it’d returned in the middle of a scene. The two-headed crawler fought with another human I didn’t recognize in the final moments of the last floor. The guy they fought was a big guy, leather clad with a shaved head and a war gauntlet similar to my own. The two-headed creature that comprised Dmitri and Maxim, a Nodling, apparently, spun their magical meteor hammer, and they would’ve brained the guy, but they suddenly all flew off their feet as a giant foot crashed into their world and then jumped away. The target of the Popov brothers’ ire used the distraction to run into a stairwell.

The god foot, I realized, was Slit, one of the feral demons we’d summoned at the end of the last floor. She’d been on her way back to our bubble, chasing after Samantha the sex doll head.

“I simply don’t understand why two different people would choose a race like that,” Donut said. “They must really like each other. Plus it has to make shopping for clothes a real chore. Carl, can you imagine sharing a head with one of your friends? You’d murder each other after a day.”

It then showed Katia opening up the portal to the ninth floor. It didn’t show the actual destruction, but we were given a shot of a half-flooded Larracos with the water churning as a gaggle of shark mobs fought each other over the corpses of NPCs. It portrayed Katia’s stoic face at what she’d done and then cut in a shot of me laughing from some other time.

The Redacted screen appeared again, but only for about thirty seconds, before returning.

We were then treated to a quick rundown of the top 10 and how each person on the list had changed during specialization. They started with me, showing my Agent Provocateur stats. From the wall, Britney grunted with amusement when they showed it, but I didn’t know why.

Next, they showed Lucia Mar, who hadn’t changed. Prepotente changed to a Profane Vitiate, but it didn’t explain what that meant. Dmitri changed from an Illusionist to a Visionary, but the other half of the two-headed monster remained a Bogatyr, whatever that was.

We watched Elle transform. I hadn’t spoken with them except for a quick check-in, and I hadn’t even thought to ask how they’d changed. I knew Imani had a big change coming, but I wasn’t certain about Elle. We now watched her transform from Blizzardmancer to a Tundra Princess. It was some sort of earth class combined with ice. It also said she’d get to pick yet another class on the ninth floor.

“Interesting,” Mordecai said. “I hadn’t realized she was going for a four seasons build.”

“Four seasons?” I asked.

He shook his head. “It’s never been completed before. Plenty have made it to three, but never four. It requires you to survive to the twelfth floor to complete, and the handful of people who’ve made it that far never had that sort of class. It’ll be tough for her because it means she has to strictly control how she distributes her stats. Her race is a frost maiden fairy, which makes it even more difficult. It’s complicated stuff. But she’ll be quite powerful if she hits the ninth floor and levels enough to have the stats for a triple class.”

“She already is pretty powerful,” I said.

We watched a one-armed, pale, and sick-looking Quan Ch switch from Imperial Security Trooper to Sergeant-at-Arms.

“Well, that’s a lie, now isn’t it? It should just be Sergeant-at-Arm, not arms,” Donut quipped. “The next time we see him, I hope you rip his other arm off, Carl. Then he’ll just be a Sergeant.”

From there, the show went onto even more Redacted stuff, but I recognized the streets of Zockau before it disappeared. It remained that way for the rest of the show.

I sighed once the show ended. The top ten list populated, and it hadn’t changed from the end of the previous floor.

1. Carl – Primal – Agent Provocateur - Level 54 – 1,000,000 (x3)

2. Lucia Mar – Lajabless – Black Inquisitor General – Level 48 – 500,000 (x3)

3. Prepotente – Caprid – Profane Vitiate – Level 55 – 400,000 (x3)

4. Donut – Cat – Former Child Actor – Level 41 – 300,000 (x3)

5. Dmitri and Maxim Popov – Nodling – Visionary and Bogatyr – Level 44 – 200,000 (x3)

6. Miriam Dom – Vampire – Shepherd – Level 52 – 100,000 (x3)

7. Elle McGib – Frost Maiden – Tundra Princess – Level 47 – 100,000 (x2)

8. Bogdon Ro – Human – Legatus – Level 44 – 100,000 (x2)

9. Eva Sigrid – Half Nagini, Half-Orc – Level 40 – Nimblefoot Enforcer – 100,000 (x2)

10. Quan Ch – Half Elf – Sergeant at Arms – Level 48 – 100,000 (x3)

“I can’t believe Quan is still up there,” Donut said. “He doesn’t deserve the top ten list. I feel Katia should be back up there, especially after what happened at the end of the last floor.”

“I am perfectly content to hover outside the list,” Katia said.

“Yes, but Eva is ranked, and it’s not fair!” Donut said.

“Don’t worry about that,” Katia said. Her voice was uncharacteristically cold. “She won’t be on there for much longer.”

I caught Mordecai’s eye, and he looked worried. I felt it, too. It wasn’t just what had happened at the end of the last floor. It wasn’t just her being mad at us for raiding Zockau. There was something else going on there with her. Something had changed. I opened my mouth to ask, but then I shut it. I didn’t know what to say.

Hello, Crawlers.

We hope you’re all doing fantastic. Many of you are settling into your new classes, and that is great. We only have a few hours left before the hunters emerge, and we know they’re itching to get in on the hunt. As predicted, the number of participants keeps growing and growing. We are just overwhelmed. We now have a total of 1,002 hunters alive in the dungeon. That number was slightly higher, but a few managed to get themselves prematurely killed.

The audience just can’t wait for them to get unleashed on you guys!

We have several important announcements, so please pay careful attention.

Your final sponsors will be coming in soon, so be on the lookout for that.

Effective immediately, the subscription-based system where the viewers may listen in on the private messages of Crawlers will be discontinued. However, please note, Borant reserves the right to take your conversations and play them during any and all non-live broadcasts.

“Oh thank the gods,” Mordecai said. “I didn’t think that one would stick.”

I’d asked Quasar if he could sue on my behalf about this, and he’d told me there was already a case making its way through the courts regarding this issue. He’d given it a 50/50 chance of succeeding. I was glad it had.

There was another part to this problem, and he promised he'd work on it from his end, but in the meantime, I needed to bitch out loud as much as I could about the hunters getting fed information from outside the dungeon. He was much less confident about anything happening in regards to that.  

As soon as this message ends, the guild system will be live!

As you know, party members share certain quests and will share experience. All personal space upgrades are shared. Party members may examine each other’s properties. But sometimes people will want to work with someone without having to actually party with them. And sometimes, as we’ve seen over and over again with you humans, you very much like working together in large groups. Such massive groups are not feasible when it comes to parties. Oh, by the way. Parties are now limited to 30 crawlers. Larger parties will be automatically broken up at the end of this message. Sorry about that, guys!

“Oof,” Mordecai said.

“Assholes,” I muttered under my breath.

But that’s okay. We are implementing the guild system this season, so your larger parties can stay together. You’re welcome.

Here’s how it works.

A crawler must purchase a guild charter from a Bopca. These start at 500,000 gold. The basic membership will allow up to five separate parties or individuals to join together to form a guild.

At least one member of each party must own a personal space in order to participate. Once joined together, each of the personal spaces will be expanded to include a common area. Your own personal and party areas will remain off limits to non-party members unless you give them access.

There will be guild-only upgrades available for purchase. Some of these are pretty spectacular, so you’ll definitely want to check it out.

Also, for a small licensing fee, you may share most pre-existing environmental upgrades with one another. This will be a great way to combine power and work together and will allow for a wide variety of upgrades.

The guild leader will have control over who may join the guild and will have power to kick them out. They will have control over who may edit the common area and purchasing of the common upgrades. They may institute dues and create a treasury.

Guild members will not share experience by default. There is an option to change that, for a fee.

There are many more rules and exciting upgrades. The Bopcas will have all the information you need to get started.

Next to me, Donut was quivering with excitement. The whole thing was an obvious cash grab. People were forming massive parties so they could share in personal space upgrades, and this was a way to break that up and squeeze more money out of them. But I was curious what the guild-only upgrades were.

And finally, we have an even more exciting announcement. At the end of this floor, when there are 12 hours left, we will be having a party! Isn’t that exciting? Only the top 50 crawlers in the dungeon will receive an invite, but all invited crawlers will also be able to bring a plus one. The hunters will also attend the party, along with a few intergalactic celebrities, but do not worry about your safety. How it will work will be explained later. All you need to know now is there will be music, dancing, a costume contest, a pet beauty contest, and prizes available to all who attend! It will be great fun for everybody involved, so you really want to get one of those invites. The best way to guarantee a spot is to get out there and kill, kill, kill!

Donut gasped and started hopping up and down. “A pet beauty contest? A pet beauty contest? Oh my god, oh my god. Mongo!” Mongo looked up from Britney’s lap. “You’re going to follow in mommy’s pawsteps!”

Mongo leaped to his feet and started to also hop up and down, feeding off Donut’s excitement. Britney let out a shriek and scrambled away.

“We’re going to need to start training immediately. We’ll need at least an extra hour a day. We need to find a seamstress. A walk coach. We’ll need to purchase the pet shower to get all the blood stains off. It’s going to be a lot of work. Mordecai, how many more NPCs can we hire? Also, I just must see the standards manual immediately. Carl, message your attorney and see if he can pull a few strings.”

“Standards manual?” Louis asked.

“Donut,” I said. “We are not…”

“…And don’t even think about saying, ‘We’re not doing this, Donut.’” She paused. “I have very little, and this is something we aregoing to do, and you’re not going to stop me.”

I just stared at her. “Look,” I said, trailing off. Goddamnit, Donut.

Mordecai: Don’t worry. I’ll talk to her. We’ll come up with a compromise.

“Donut,” I said. “This party thing, whatever it is, is over two weeks away. We need to focus on the task at hand. We’re not going to make it to the party if we don’t.”

Donut sighed dramatically. “Very well, Carl. But we’re going to need to collect more hands. And we’ll have to get this guild thing immediately, too.”

I was already moving back to my bomber’s studio. “That, I can agree with. Bomo, come with me. I’m gonna need you.”

I could hear it again, that river in my mind. Rushing, tumbling, crashing, getting faster and louder by the moment. It was starting to hurt. Just a little. That was okay. I’d rest later.

~

Hello everybody! Sorry this is a few days late. I had my first in-person art show in well over a year this past Friday, and it was really bizarre jumping back into the saddle. Next up will be the Washington State Summer Con in Pullyalup in a few weeks. I will have copies of the books available if anyone wants to come down. I'll post more about that next time.

Hopefully this chapter stickies itself. The last one didn't want to no matter what I did. Thanks again for all your support.