Chapter 40 (Patreon)

We still had some cans of Agatha’s spray paint, and I painted “Mother of All Bombs” on the side of the contraption. 

It took us about five hours to finish building the launcher. Brandon had pointed out MOAB actually stood for "Massive Ordnance Air Blast," but his brother said, “Don’t be that guy.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Brandon said. “The name is still wrong. When they say ‘Mother of all bombs,’ they mean one giant bomb. Not whatever this thing is. You should call it the Bomb Chicken or something.” 

“It’s too late,” I said, indicating the spray paint. “I’ve already named it. Besides, I like the name. It’s a play on words.” 

“Well I’m going to call it the Bomb Chicken whether you like it or not,” Brandon declared.     

I’d discovered something interesting while building the device. This should’ve been obvious earlier, but it hadn’t even occurred to me. In the safe room, all of my sticks of dynamite were harmless. I could pull them out, and under status they had Inert While in Safe Room, followed by a parenthesis stating their real status. Their status still ticked down while being handled, and I didn’t want to tempt fate enough to find out what would happen when that status reached zero, but I was relatively certain they wouldn’t blow.

Brandon stepped back now, admiring our work. 

“Do you really think this is going to kill it?” he asked, suddenly serious. 

“Not a chance,” I said. “That thing is level 93. It ain’t going to like this too much, but there’s no way it’ll be enough. The babies will slow it down, though.”

Brandon gave me a sour look. “If it’s not going to kill it, then why are we doing this?”

“It’s all part of the plan,” I said. 

“Wait. What, exactly, is the plan?” he asked. He waved at my contraption. “I thought this was the plan.”  

“Like I said, it’s part of it, but it’s not all of it. I can’t tell you the rest,” I said, pointing up at the ceiling, which had become the universal gesture for “The assholes are listening.” 

Since this scheme involved using a dungeon exploit, I wanted to keep it in my head. Even Donut didn’t know the full extent. Mordecai told us that the viewers couldn’t see our private chats, but Borant and the dungeon AI could. I didn’t want to risk them changing the rules on us at the last second. 

Because that would really suck. Not that I’d live long enough to complain about it. 

We needed to get safely into the hallway. So the first component of this insane scheme was also one of the most terrifying parts. 

My first suggestion was to wait for the grubs to regroup and get close enough for the rage elemental to go hunting them again. But the grubs were painfully slow, and more and more of them were hitting the pupa stage, meaning they were no longer moving around. 

Imani came up with a bold solution. “Why don’t we just open the damn door?” she said. 

This was hours ago, right when we started building the MOAB. 

We all looked at each other. I immediately grasped what she was saying. The idea was horrifying, but she was right. We were in a safe room. Mobs would teleport away. Not far away, according to Mordecai, but they would still be ejected. 

“Well, shit,” I said, putting down my goblin riveter. “Maybe we don’t need to build this thing at all.” 

So we tested it. We moved everyone to the other side of the restaurant, near the entrance to the sleeping chambers. I didn’t know what was trembling more, me or the door. If we were wrong about this... 

I walked up, and I hesitantly reached for the exit. The moment I turned the handle, the door burst inward, and a giant claw raked at me, coming at my face as I flew back into the room. 

Thwum. The sound of the monster teleporting away was odd, like that of an electrical generator turning on. 

“Holy shit, that worked,” I said, sitting up. My eyes searched the map, looking for it. I didn’t see it anywhere.

But a moment later, my relief turned to dread as I saw the dot rocketing toward us. It’d come from the main hallway. “Shit, it’s really booking it. It remembers where we are.”  

“Keep the door open,” Imani said. “See if the dungeon sends it further away this time. Or if it learns.”  

It was maybe 90 seconds before it entered our hallway again. It killed any grubs it passed, but it seemed to ignore the ones in the pupa stage. It roared and shrieked, came to the door, and once again tried to swipe at me. 

Again, it teleported away. This time it came from another hallway down, but it appeared to have still been teleported out into the main hallway. We tried it several times. Each time, the elemental took anywhere from 75 to 120 seconds for it to return. It was clear the monster was unintelligent, nothing more than the single-minded embodiment of rage. We eventually closed the door, not wanting to create any more grub corpses. 

I sighed, going back to work on the MOAB. 

Now, hours later, it was finally time to put my idea to the test. I was less confident about this than I was with the whole portable fortress idea. That time I knew we were facing a mob meant to be killed. This was different. This was something meant as a punitive action, a punishment. It wasn’t meant to be fair, to be survivable. 

The chopper hummed merrily away, aimed directly at the exit to the chamber. With Donut’s sidecar, it was too big to get through the door. We’d been forced to remove it. Instead, we added the newly-built bike trailer, affixing the tall MOAB to it and adding the equally-tall seat for Donut behind the launcher. She sat there now, facing backward, a look of grim determination on her fuzzy face, like a tailgunner in a WWII bomber.  

“I think I like Bomb Chicken better, too,” Donut announced. 

“Too late,” I said. I nodded at Imani, who stood at the door, ready to pull it open. 

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll count down from three.” 

Donut: EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE IS WATCHING THIS. I JUST HIT ONE TRILLION VIEWS, CARL. ONE TRILLION. 

“Focus, Donut,” I said, not bothering to use the chat. 

“One!” Imani yanked the door open. The massive, terrifying rage elemental lunged, and as always, teleported away. The space where it had occupied shimmered, crackling like superheated air.

I pushed hard on the pedals of the bike, and we rushed into the hallway. Everything out here was blackened and turned to ash. It smelled like burning garbage, reminding me of the Hoarder’s chamber. There was no sign of the train cars or the remaining wheelchairs and walkers that had been abandoned. The only thing that had survived was the long, 300-foot length of glittering, magical chain, which I had grabbed earlier.  

Behind me, Imani slammed the door. I pedaled down the hall, turning the throttle. The trailer was built using broken hunks of wood, and the spare chopper wheels we’d looted from the goblins. I could barely feel its weight. It squeaked loudly, but it didn’t bounce under the weight of the MOAB. We passed the nearby intersection and furiously increased speed until we reached the next one down, another two hundred meters or away. We angled ourselves so we faced this new hallway, and we waited. 

“Here it comes,” Donut said a moment later. The dot appeared, and the elemental rushed down the distant hall, moving like an earth-destroying meteor sent from the heavens. 

“As soon as it rounds the curve, we go,” I said. We had to make sure it saw us. If it stopped at the door again, we’d have to loop around to gain its attention, using the closer hallway. I didn’t want to do that. The less corners we had to take with this trailer, the better.  

Far down the hallway, a little more than a quarter of a mile away, it appeared, running full tilt.

I didn’t have to worry about whether or not it was going to see us. It saw. The giant badger skidded to a stop, looking in our direction. It shrieked with indignation and resumed its gallop, headed straight at us. 

Holy shit that thing is fast, I thought as I pumped my legs. 

“Go! Go!” Donut cried. Thanks to my Chopper Pilot skill and the help of the throttle, we could reach top speed in seconds. It still felt as if we weren’t moving at all. The bike could about 25 miles per hour before it got too hot. The elemental was like a cheetah. Unimpeded, it would run us down in seconds. 

We hurtled down the hallway. “Fire the first baby!” I cried. 

Brandon was correct that the title MOAB was misleading. 

The apparatus wasn’t a bomb at all, but a device designed to launch bombs. Multiple types of bombs.

“It’s the bombs’ mother,” I’d said. “Get it? And we can name the bombs its babies.” 

None of them had been impressed. 

“You need to stick to punching things and blowing them up,” Donut had said. “Leave the creative to me.” 

The device wasn’t complicated, but it had to be preciously built, especially here with the bumpy hallways. It was little more than a curved, ski-jump-like ramp made from a pair of spare-part chopper wheel wells, with a pair of half-pipe channels at the end to keep the “babies” steady, and tiny, shock-absorbing front-wheelchair coasters for the very end of ramp, keeping the end of the conduit inches from the ground.  

As a kid, I’d had something similar for my matchbox cars. You dropped the cars into the top, and gravity took care of the rest. They’d plummet down the waterslide-like ramp, gaining speed, hitting the ground at full throttle. If you built the ramp correctly, especially the part at the end, the cars would ease onto the flat surface, still accelerating by the time they were halfway across the room.

It’d taken us several hours to get this correct. We had very little space to test this in, but thanks to the know-how from Brandon and Chris, I was confident that the babies would work as intended.       

We knew this monster had at least two attacks. The claws and the reverse-gravity spell. We also knew that the gravity spell had a somewhat limited range. So in order to get to our destination, we needed to keep the elemental far away long enough to get there.  

“Bombs away!” Donut cried. She pulled the wheeled, back-heavy bomb from her inventory. It fit perfectly into the grooves, and she gave it nudge. It rocketed down the ramp, hit the ground with a bump, and continued straight. From our perspective, it zoomed away. It didn’t rear up like I had feared.

“Brandon, you beautiful son of a bitch,” I yelled as I watched, over my shoulder, the first bomb roll away.  

I’d wanted to put the weight in the front, but Brandon had insisted that was a mistake, that the bombs would flip. Instead, he drew with his finger on the table, explaining how to weigh them down. 

He’d then gone off on some Isaac Newton math bullshit. He’d said the babies wouldn’t go as far back as they would’ve if I’d been sitting still. He talked about some Mythbusters episode where they shot a soccer ball out the back of a moving car, and the ball had dropped straight to the ground. I told him I didn’t care as long as the bombs were far away from the chopper when they went off.  

After several frustrating, failed attempts to automate the launching process, we’d come up with a solution. Once Donut was seated at the correct height, she could pull the “babies” out of her inventory, and they’d emerge right on the platform. Each bomb was the size of a snowboard, but it was shaped and weighted like a champion pinewood derby car. Wheels had suddenly become a precious commodity, but we had something almost as good: free weights. A lot of free weights of different sizes. When tightened and greased properly, they became very effective wheels.  

This first baby—“Baby Uno”—was different than the others. It was heavier and bigger. It contained three boom jugs, a clay jug filled with nothing but goblin oil, and a small jar of gun powder. The last of my hobgoblin pus sat in the middle of the bomb, and I held the magical trigger into my hand now, waiting for Donut’s signal.

We had four types of babies: baby uno, boom jar babies, shredder babies, and, finally, oh shit babies. 

The oh shit babies consisted of two boom jars with a full-sized gunpowder satchel wrapped in dynamite. Those remained in my own inventory, too dangerous for Donut to touch. They were a last resort, and I prayed we wouldn’t have to use them here.

I watched the red dot stream down the hallway, approaching the corner. Behind us, the heavy bomb coasted to a stop.    

“Hang on,” I cried, and I jammed on the detonator. There was a maddening five-second delay. I turned my attention forward. “Oh fuck.”  

We hit the first intersection, filled with the grub pupae, a dozen of them. “What the hell man,” I cried, dodging the giant mounds. I wasn’t expecting them to be this damn big. Donut cried out as the trailer bumped ominously. Each mound was about the size of a human, standing erect. Red and yellow lights flashed underneath the wet, pulsating sacs. 

“Drop the bola!” I yelled. 

We had two levers next to Donut’s chair. The red one and the black one. We’d originally designed these as bomb launchers before we gave up, deciding to just use the more-stable inventory system. But we’d still built two chambers on either side. Donut pulled the black lever, and the bottom of the chamber slid away.    

The chain, with heavy weights at either end dropped away, snaking through the chamber. The monster, hopefully, would get its legs tangled in the thin, unbreakable chain. It probably would only impede it for a second or two, but every second counted.  

Behind us, the bomb detonated with a ripping, screaming roar. Dust cascaded off the ceiling. It had blown a half-second too late, hitting the monster in the back. I didn’t dare look behind me, but I could see on the map it had propelled the monster halfway down the hall, even closer to us. But the red dot of the elemental rolled to a stop. 

“Drop the boom babies,” I cried. This next hall was filled with grubs, mostly level threes, which I hadn’t yet fought. These were larger, about twice as big as the regular grubs. They had long, pointed tails that they whipped ineffectively up at us as we passed. The level threes were too big to just run over with the chopper, and I had to dodge them.    

Cow-Tailed Brindle Grub. Level 3.

The final form before they hit the pupa stage, the Cow-Tailed Brindle Grub is finally able to defend itself, kind of like the way a toddler holding a plastic baseball bat is able to defend himself. 

“The cars are going to hit the grubs,” Donut cried. “They’re in the way!” 

“Do it anyway,” I yelled, increasing speed. Below me, the chopper became dangerously hot. 

“Bombs away,” Donut cried. I heard the distinctive clack of the bomb’s wheels locking in place. The torch sizzled as Donut activated it, and it rolled away. 

Sure enough, the wheeled bomb hit a group of grubs and flipped, crashing and then detonating. Thankfully this was just a boom jar and not something with a larger blast radius. Still, I felt a wave of heat wash over me. The entire hallway lit with blue flames. 

“Yes!” Donut cried. “Burn, baby, burn!” 

Further behind, the elemental started moving again. It stopped again a moment later. It’d been ensnared by the chain. The monster roared in anger, shaking the very foundation of the world.  

“Away,” Donut called, dropping another boom baby. Then another. Then a third. We continued to carpet bomb the hallway behind us. If the jugs didn’t ignite on their own, Donut hit them with a low-powered magic missile. She only had to do that a couple times. Most of the cars hit grubs and flipped. 

“Whoa!” Donut yelled. 

The whole back of the trailer flew up into the air, almost knocking me from my seat. But it crashed down a moment later. A just-launched boom baby flew into the ceiling and exploded. 

The elemental had cast its spell, but we’d been too far away. Behind us, the top of the chamber erupted in flames.

“Hold on,” I cried. We were almost there, but I had a sharp left coming up. I could see this hallway was filled with more of the pupae. “Like we talked about! Drop a shredder, wait a second, then do another boom.” 

We screeched around the corner, the trailer skidding. I had to jerk around a set of pupae, rising like stalagmites. We’d only made a few of the gunpowder babies, but I’d made them for this part of the stretch. I had no idea if this would work, but I figured it couldn’t hurt. 

Donut released the gunpowder and shrapnel-filled bomb. “The shredders.” For the shredders, we used a long length of wick. I had to light wicks using a lighter, but thanks to Donut’s quadruped status, the system allowed her to light them the same way she lit torches, with a mental click. She launched the massive shrapnel grenade, sparking wick trailing. It crashed into one of the pupa mounds and fell on its side. A moment later, it blew, ripping the pupa to shreds. 

I hazarded a glance over my shoulder, just long enough to see human-sized, wasp-like creatures vomit out of the pupa sacs. The uncooked monsters hit the ground and started convulsing. 

I was hoping if I injured the sacs, the monsters would come out, and the elemental would waste a precious second or two ripping them to shreds. It looked like we ripped open the pupae too soon. 

We filled the last stretch of hallway with moonshine and fire. The elemental seemed to be moving more cautiously, but it continued to follow. Ahead, the stairwell materialized. 

“I thought we were going to the other safe room!” Donut cried. “We’re not going down the stairs are we?” 

We entered the large, round room. The stairwell loomed before us, a hole in the ground with a bright light shining directly up into the air. All around us, pupae pulsed, most of them ringing the walls. There were dozens of them now. All had timers over their heads, some of them only at a few hours.. 

The actual stairs were facing the wrong direction, but that was okay. There was no railing or barrier. This was nothing but a hole in the ground, as wide as one of the tunnels, just like it had been on the surface. A pair of rocks stood by the stairs on the far side of the hole, each carved with a kua-tin.  

“Oil slick! Then jump,” I cried. 

“Jump? Are you crazy!”

“Goddamnit, Donut. Do it!” 

She pulled the red lever, and the bottom of the second chamber fell away. Champagne-colored oil sprayed onto the floor. 

“Jump,” I cried. Donut and I both leaped from the fast-moving vehicle. It continued its forward trajectory, spilling oil onto the rocky ground, plummeting into the stairway hole. The chopper disappeared from view. It crunched, followed by a loud hissing as the boiler breached. It didn’t explode, but black smoke billowed into the air. 

“What did you do that for?” Donut yelled as we both scrambled to our feet. 

“Get your Puddle Jumper spell ready,” I said. I pointed behind us, at the far end of the distant hallway, the opposite direction we’d come. Mordecai’s guild room was just around the corner from there. “Send us there. Cast it when I tell you.” 

“Okay,” she said, her voice filled with uncertainty. “Don’t forget, it’s ten seconds!”  

The elemental had, indeed, stopped to eviscerate the wasp creatures in the hallway, giving me just enough time to think about how much of a crazy asshole I was. The stairs are right there. We can just go down and be safe. If this doesn’t work, you are dead. 

I stood right at the edge of the hole. 

“Cast now!” I cried. 

Why not, I thought, and I pulled one of the oh shit babies from my inventory and gently placed it down on the ground in front of us. It sat there like a giant skateboard. Two boom jars, gunpowder, and a ring of dynamite.  

Nine seconds.

“It’s coming!” Donut screamed, her voice more terrified than I ever heard. She leaped to my shoulder.  

Eight seconds. 

In front of us, the rage elemental emerged from the billowing smoke of the hall. It was a beast from hell, huge. Terrifying. A length of chain was still attached to its back leg. To my surprise, the monster’s health was in the red. Barely in the red, but it had been more hurt than I expected. It saw us, and it paused. 

Five seconds. 

It bellowed, long and hard. 

I looked up, for the first time, and I realized the ceiling of this chamber, like the borough boss room on the floor above, was very, very high. If it cast Reverse Gravity now… 

Three seconds. 

It charged. 

Two seconds.

“Stay with me,” I said. 

It passed the threshold of the room, and the moment its six legs hit the floor, it started to slide on the oil slick. It barely seemed to notice. It roared as it rocketed toward us, forward legs ready to slash. I remembered what it did to Yolanda, unraveling her. 

We disappeared, reappearing 150 meters away, down the hall. A horrific, indignant shriek filled the dungeon, followed by the distinctive whoosh of a big ass explosion. I hit the ground and covered Donut, but it was okay. The bomb was deep in the hole when it went off, protecting us. 

A moment passed. I watched the minimap, looking for signs that it had survived. 

It had not. The dot was gone. What followed was absolute silence. My stomach heaved, an aftereffect of the sudden teleportation. 

Relief washed over me. I sat down right there on the floor. My heart, which had been oddly calm throughout, was now a jackhammer. My arms felt numb, tingling with the overdose of adrenaline. My entire body trembled. 

A moment later, Donut cried out in outrage. “We didn’t get any experience! Carl, you broke the game!” 

“We didn’t get any experience because we’re not the ones who killed it.” 

“What?” Donut said. “I don’t understand.”  

I remembered what Rory, the goblin shamanka had told us. It’d only been a few days ago, but it felt like a lifetime. If we climb down the stairs, we die. You get halfway down, and your body just dissolves. I’ve seen it myself.

Mordecai had said something similar once, too. Mobs who dared to attempt to descend didn’t teleport away. They died. We’d tricked the monster into the hole. Once it was in there, the dungeon followed its own rules, and it dissolved the monster. 

Unfortunately, the system didn’t look too kindly on what we’d done. We hadn’t been awarded experience for the kill. I’d received a couple achievements, but not many. 

But that was okay. We were still alive. I took in the mass of red grub dots and Xs littering the map. I felt as if I’d been awake for two days straight. I groaned, pulling myself to my feet. We had still had a lot of work to do. 

Carl: Brandon. Get your people to the stairs. Do it now. The way is safe, but it won’t be for long.