Chapter 65 (Patreon)

Chapter 65

Time to level Collapse: 3 days, 16 hours.

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“We’d like to see Magistrate FeatherFall please,” Donut said, using her sweetest voice. 

Getting to this office had been a chore. The town’s administrative buildings had no first or second floor, and we’d had to utilize Donut’s Puddle Jumper spell to teleport from the rooftop of a knife shop to the landing entrance of the town hall. She’d recently hit level five with the spell, which had solved the line-of-sight issue. It basically added support for jumping up to a higher elevation when you couldn’t see the ground above you. It was a minor addition to the spell, but one that made it much more useful. The casting delay was also much shorter, now only two seconds instead of ten. Still, hitting level five hadn’t decreased the five-hour cooldown, which was the worst issue with the spell.

But we did it. We zapped into the building’s third-floor entrance only to come face-to-face with two of the village swordsman guards. They stood stoically, ignoring us as we proceeded deeper into the building. 

“How did they get up here?” Donut asked. 

“I have no idea,” I said. “Weird.” 

Donut had protested, but I talked her into putting Mongo into his carrier for this excursion. We were headed into the legislative chamber of this town, and the last thing we needed was the murder chicken to go a’murdering when all we wanted to do was talk. “We’ll keep him in reserve,” I’d said. “Our secret weapon in case we have to fight our way out.” 

That seemed to appease both of them.  

Mordecai had said that every one of these towns had a different type of leadership structure. Before the cataclysm, the Skyfowl were in charge of the whole Over City. Now, their settlements were scattered, but the remaining eagle-controlled villages such as this one still maintained a similar structure as before, but without the previous oversight. 

As a result, this Magistrate Featherfall guy was the big boss man of this village. In the old days, he would have answered to a regional governor, who in turn would answer to the royal chancellor, who in turn would answer to some dude in some sprawling capital city that was on the ninth floor.

This third floor was actually a high-end shopping mall of sorts, catering only to Skyfowl. The administrative building and home to the magistrate was directly above this floor, but anyone visiting had to first walk through this section. The shops reminded me of the type of stores one would find at the airport. Filled with expensive crap, like silken robes and fancy hats and scrolls. And even though the sparse customers were all the eagle folk, the clerks and assistants were all non-eagles, most of them harried-looking young women human and elves, rushing about, being snapped at and verbally abused by the Skyfowl shoppers.   

We walked down a long, wide hallway, flanked by the shops. A red carpet stretched from the landing to a stairwell at the end of the hall. I was relieved to see it was stairs and not another vertical flyway. But as I watched, a human carrying a blue folder filled with papers rushed up the stairs.

“They have to have stairs so the help can get up there,” I said. 

“That still doesn’t explain how they get up here in the first place,” Donut said.   

Paintings of eagles fighting elves and other oddities adorned the walls. This particular building was one of the largest in town, second only to the Desperado Club. From the outside, it was camouflaged well. The exterior walls of each section were shingled in a different manner, making it look like a group of medieval buildings pressed against one another. This higher-end, more opulent interior made the whole façade seem like something one would find at Disneyland. 

We passed multiple guards, a couple eagle shoppers who startled at our appearance, and a handful of other bird-like creatures called Chickadees, whom I’d originally mistaken for juvenile Skyfowls. These guys only came up to my waist and were like dwarven versions of the larger birds. 

We approached the stairs without being stopped or questioned. As we ascended, the human who’d rushed up earlier rushed back down, almost running directly into us. 

“Pardon me,” she said. I looked at the name over her head. Burgundy. The woman had an odd look about her. She was young, dark-haired and pretty. But she had one pale blue eye and a brown one, like a Siberian husky.

“No worries,” I said. 

She paused. “Are you lost? We don’t see too many of your kind up here.” 

“We’re on our way to see the magistrate,” I said. 

She snorted. “Good luck.” Then she continued back down the stairs.      

We continued up and walked straight into a reception area. 

A large desk sat in one corner, pressed against the far wall, which contained another door. On the desk were piles of papers, what appeared to be an oversized bento box filled with sushi, more papers—including the blue folder Burgundy had just dropped off, and a colorful line of small, stuffed animals, from bears to goblins to eagles to sharks. Behind the desk was a row of shelves containing more of the colorful collection. These things were the dungeon version of Beanie Babies, I realized. There had to be a 300 of them line up upon the shelves. Most of them still had tags on them. A few from the top shelf were protected by individual glass cases.   

Behind the desk, instead of a chair, there was a perch. And upon that perch was an elderly, female Skyfowl. Her feathers were tinged gray, and her large beak was cracked and crazed like brittle, old pottery. She smelled like Icy Hot. She glared at the intrusion with a who-the-hell-are-you-and-what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here? look upon her sour face. I examined the NPC’s properties. 

Miss Quill – Skyfowl. Level 30. 

Assistant to the Magistrate. 

Cerberus. Heimdall. Aniketos and Alexiares. Qin Shubao. Lev Yashin. Some of the greatest gate guardians of both history and mythology. But none of them, not a one, was as dedicated to their work as Miss Quill. 

If she doesn’t want you to see the magistrate, you ain’t seeing the magistrate. 

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked Donut. 

“We don’t,” Donut said. “But we have a matter of great importance to discuss regarding the safety of this town.” 

“And what is that matter?” she asked. 

Donut leaned in. “Murder. Murder most foul.” 

Miss Quill did not appear impressed. “Was it a Skyfowl?” 

“The suspect?” Donut asked. “We don’t know yet, but…”

“No, not the suspect. Put that down!” I quickly placed the lemur Beanie Baby back on the desk. The little stuffed creature wore a bandolier of knives, just like the real version. “Were any Skyfowl murdered?” 

“No,” Donut said. “Not that we know of.” 

“Then he’s not going to care,” Miss Quill said. “And if he’s not going to care, I’m not going to disturb him. Because he will care about being disturbed.” 

Donut: MY CHARM ISN’T WORKING ON HER.

Mordecai: There’s probably an anti-charm spell working in the area. 

Carl: Plan B it is. 

“Is that how it is in this town, then?” I asked. “As long as the victims aren’t Skyfowl, they can just go screw themselves?” 

She looked at me as if I was something she’d just regurgitated. “Do you want the short answer or the long answer to that?” 

“The long answer,” I said. 

“Yes,” she said. “That’s how it is in this town.” She looked down at her bento box and sighed. “But please, feel free to leave a note describing the situation, and if it warrants further investigation, we’ll get back to you.” 

“And what about the evidence we collected? Should we leave that here, too?” I asked.

“If you must.”  

I pulled the dead hooker from my inventory and splatted her on the eagle’s desk. The corpse’s legs, still stiff with rigor, upset the line of Beanie Babies, tumbling them off the edge of the desk one by one, like a line of synchronized swimmers diving into the pool.     

I’d been afraid the system wouldn’t let me pick up and store the corpse, as it wasn’t something we’d tried before. I’d been surprised to find it did let us. It had even helpfully labeled the body as Quest Clues in my inventory.

The eagle made a strangled noise, leaping from her perch. Her back hit the wall, and it upset the bottom two shelves, cascading more of the beanbag creatures to the floor. For a moment the only sound was the plop, plop, plop of the figures as they slid and tumbled. 

“Guards,” Miss Quill croaked. “Guards!” 

The two swordsmen at the base of the stairs clunked their way up toward us. They both unsheathed their swords as they emerged, rising up like metallic beasts. I remembered the announcement from a few days earlier, that their strength had been “slightly” increased. I really hoped this worked. 

“Capture these two! Do so immediately,” Miss Quill demanded. 

The mute suits of armor looked back and forth about the room. Neither of them moved.

“Oh for the sake of the gods,” Miss Quill said angrily. “Look at my desk, you fools.” 

The moment we found the dead prostitute this morning, with that gruesome note scrawled onto her flesh, I’d called one of the swordsmen over. I pointed to the corpse, I pulled the Gate Pass—the get-out-of-jail-free pass from the town magistrate—and showed it to the guard. Then I took the corpse into my inventory. I hadn’t known for certain that actually did anything. But I knew if we were going to be waving a dead hooker around, odds were good the town guards would get involved. Mordecai said they had a collective mind. And if they’d already seen me with the body and had, in their odd way, endorsed my ability to have a dead hooker in my possession, then the act of me simply tossing the corpse onto the desk wouldn’t be considered a crime.  

Hopefully. 

Without a word, the guards turned and walked back down the stairs. 

“You useless, worthless, piles of junk,” Miss Quill called after them. She returned her gaze to us. 

“How do they get up here anyway?” I asked. “Also, how do all those workers in the shops get up here? Is there a secret elevator? We looked for like an hour for an easy way up and couldn’t find one.” 

“Take that with you right now,” Miss Quill said. “What is wrong with you?” She squatted and began gathering up the fallen toys in her wings. But she had nowhere to put them. Not until the shelf was fixed and the dead woman was removed from the desk. 

Donut leaped from my shoulder and sniffed at the ground. “This one is getting really dirty,” Donut said, looking at a rat-faced beanie that looked suspiciously like Mordecai’s first form. “And I think the label tore on this one. Carl, stop stepping on them!”   

“Stop! Stop it right now! Please, just take it away.” The elderly eagle appeared to be on the verge of tears.

“Take her away,” Donut corrected. 

“Let us talk to him, and we’ll bring the evidence to him directly,” I said.

“He’s not here, okay,” Miss Quill said, frantically piling the toys in the corner. She picked one up with her talon and frantically rubbed non-existent dirt off it with her wing. “Look what you’ve done, look what you’ve done.” 

I glanced at the closed door near her desk. The door was large, metal, and foreboding. 

“He’s really not here?” I asked. 

“No,” she said. “He only comes out at night nowadays. Oh my gods, what is that liquid?” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not blood. They’ve all had their blood sucked out of them. But their bodies still leak. And smell. It’s really gross.” 

Her wings were full of beanies. “Please, please,” she said. “Just take it away. Take her away. I’ll tell him you were here. I promise.” 

I reached over and picked the dead woman back up, returning her in my inventory. A milky-white stain of fluid covered Miss Quill’s desk. 

“I’m going to be sick,” the receptionist said. 

“You better get some paper towels or something,” I said. “My grandma collected these things, and they sucked in moisture like you wouldn’t believe.”  

“Don’t you touch anything,” she said. She gently placed the beanies held in her wings into the corner pile. She rushed toward the stairs, yelling that she needed a shirt or a towel. 

We only had a minute, maybe less. I rushed to the door to Featherfall’s chambers. It was locked. The moment I touched the door, a notification popped up. 

This door is locked. Magically locked. It’s almost like they don’t want you going in there. 

“Shit,” I muttered, looking around. 

My eyes focused on the top, undisturbed line of beanies sitting above her desk. 

~

“Just tell him we came by,” I said to Miss Quill as we went back down the stairs. “And you’re welcome for fixing your shelf.” She ignored us as she frantically cleaned off her table. 

“That was disappointing,” Donut said. “Do you think he was actually in there?” 

“I don’t know. Mordecai seems to think he lives in there, but who knows?” 

“We don’t even know for sure he has anything to do with it,” Donut said.

“Nope,” I said. “That’s why I wanted to talk to him when he was in his office. I figured if he’s some evil, crazy boss, he wouldn’t go all Freddy Krueger on us in public. And if he’s not the bad guy, surely he’d be able to point us in the correct direction. But I don’t think it’s that complicated. This quest is only a silver one. Plus look at the clues. He’s a black cleric? He only comes out at night now? It has to be him.”

“So we’re coming back tonight, then?” Donut asked. “Or did you want to find the 201st Security Group headquarters first?” She paused in front of a store selling robes made for Skyfowl. “Would you look at how pretty that is.” 

“It’s magical silk,” the young, elven woman said. “It allows Skyfowl to stay aloft almost indefinitely.” 

“It’s beautiful. I’d love to learn how to fly. Can you imagine that, Carl? Me flying?” 

“We’ll be back,” I said, turning to look over my shoulder. I pulled the rope from my inventory. It’d only cost five gold for a thirty-foot length. We’d have to use it to get back to the street. “We’ll talk to him one way or another.” 

~

We still had two hours before our interview. Zev said if we were fighting or in the midst of something, they wouldn’t allow us to get transported, which was why she preferred us to be in a safe room when it was time. Still, we had two hours, and I decided we should use the time wisely. 

So we left the city and traveled west, searching for mobs to kill. A few other crawlers were about, but we avoided them. I kept a wary eye for those with player-killer skulls over their head. I hadn’t forgotten about Frank Q and Maggie My. I wondered what race they’d chosen, or if they were even still alive. 

I didn’t yet have any proper non-explosive ammo for my xistera, but I had two dozen hob-lobbers. The fuses on the bombs were between six and seven seconds, which was perfect when I was tossing them like they were grenades. But when I was hurling them at 250 mph at a mob, six seconds was a little too long. So instead, I pre-lit ten of them, which took two and a half seconds off the fuse. Both Mordecai and Donut were mortified by the idea of me walking around with lit bombs sitting in my inventory, but it was pretty much the only way I could properly do this with the equipment I had. 

We walked past a row of especially-decrepit buildings. This particular neighborhood appeared it might’ve been slums before the cataclysm. Donut sat upon my shoulder, and Mongo walked beside us, randomly growling. I’d been alarmed at first, but there didn’t seem to be anything out there. We hadn’t seen anything for fifteen minutes. Then I saw the X on the map, and I realized it was the corpse of a neighborhood boss. This area had already been cleared by someone else, probably a few days earlier. 

“Damnit,” I grumbled. “What a waste of time.” I sighed. “Let’s go get the neighborhood map.” 

The attack came just as I was about to descend into an abandoned, used-to-be indoor swimming pool. This building had been the Over City’s version of a YMCA, though half of the structure was gone. The empty swimming pool sat mostly outside, exposed to the air. The rotting corpse of a two-headed sea creature sat within. The thing had the body of a whale, but with two long, Lochness-monster-like heads. Apparently the street urchins steered clear of boss corpses. The boss was a level-17 monster called The Divider, and it had been killed by a crawler named Daniel Bautista 2. The boss had multiple, manhole-cover-sized holes in it. The monster’s body was massively bloated, despite the multiple holes in it. It looked like a balloon from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. 

Just as I stepped into the shallow end of the empty pool, the world around us went dark. A dozen red dots appeared on the map. The dots were pretty far away, two sets on either side of the street. They started to close in.      

We’d left the inn at sunrise, and we hadn’t yet hit whatever this world’s version of noon was called. The virtual sun blazed directly above us just moments before. We’d gone from day to night so quickly, I thought I’d been struck blind. I stepped back from the pool, putting my back against the wall. The dots remained out there on the street. They creeped slowly and cautiously, almost as if they thought they were sneaking up on us.  

Donut immediately cast Torch, shooting the light high above the street. The bright light was like a star in the sky. The torch blazed, but it didn’t fill the darkness like it should, as if the murk was resisting it. 

A moment later, a green bolt shot from one of the red dots, and it crashed right into the torch, snuffing it out.

“Well that was rude,” Donut said. 

“Shit, they have an anti-magic attack,” I said. We needed to come up with a plan, and fast. I pulled two regular torches from my inventory, lit them, and tossed them ahead of me. They skittered out onto the street. The darkness did not budge. It pushed in on the twin torches, surrounding them like the very air was made of ink. 

Down the street, something moaned. It sent chills through me. Mongo let out a half growl, half whimper. 

Still, the darkness wasn’t absolute. I could still make out shapes in the gloom. I couldn’t see the mobs, which were still a good 100 feet away, but I could sense the outlines of buildings. A wall of rubble blocked our exit through the gym and to the next street, and there was no passage across the other way. We were boxed in. 

Still, the monsters moved slowly. That made me nervous. Slow mobs were usually the type you didn’t want anywhere near you. 

“Two of them are city elves,” Donut quickly said. “The furthest dot on each side. I don’t know what the rest are, but they’re big. Should we do Slimy Boy?” 

Of all the predetermined plays we’d come up with so far, Slimy Boy was Donut’s favorite. And for good reason. It was fucking awesome. But now wasn’t the time. Plus, I wasn’t so sure it’d work. Not now.

“Negative,” I said. “Wait one second. Let’s see if this does anything.” 

I stepped away from the wall and pulled a lit hob-lobber into my hand as I extended my xistera. I couldn’t see the mobs, but I could sense them there. Moaning and shuffling toward us. Were they zombies? Jesus. That was a terrifying thought. I spun and tossed the bomb as hard as I could directly at the far dot of the city elf, the one who had cast the anti-magic spell. 

The sizzling bomb flew with satisfying speed, rocketing out of my xistera like a cannonball. It hit something fleshy, about twenty feet from the city elf. I’d aimed so it would fly over the slow-moving monsters, but apparently I hadn’t aimed high enough.   

Bam! The presumed sound of raining gore slapped into the street. 

One of the dots turned into an X. But only one. My bomb had seemingly sunk into the monster. I now had a clear line to the elf. I spun, hurling a second bomb at the fucker. 

This one hit home, perfectly timed. I really wished I could see it. The hob-lobber blew just before it reached the elf, but the fragmenting explosion ripped through him. There wasn’t even an X left after that. 

The other monsters groaned, now only forty feet away. 

The darkness didn’t flee. 

I could now hear the sound of shuffling, like feet on the floorboards. Holy shit, these were zombies. They had to be. Giant zombies.

No more screwing around. I retracted my xistera and pulled two sticks of goblin dynamite from my pack. “Run into the pool,” I called as I lit them both, tossing one in each direction. 

The moment I tossed the second stick, the line of red dots surged forward, rushing at me. I watched, in horrified slow motion, as the flying stick of dynamite bounced off a massive shape, at least twelve feet tall. The stick didn’t yet blow, but it bounced, hissing and spitting and rolling toward me, much too close. 

I hopped backward into the empty pool, not bothering to gauge exactly where I was standing. I had no time. I just jumped. I prepared to press my Protective Shell spell, but I wanted to be closer to Donut and Mongo before I did it. 

Unfortunately, I stopped falling much sooner than I anticipated. I landed directly on the spongey, rotting corpse of the Divider. 

And that was the last thing I remembered. 

What happened next was later relayed to me by Donut, who was the only one of us to stay conscious for the remainder of the fight. 

Both sticks blew, killing most of the remaining monsters and the remaining city elf. I’d fallen far enough to be protected from that blast. However, I was not protected from the bloating corpse of the boss monster, which in turn blew like a goddamn potato in the microwave, either from me falling into it, or from the shockwave of the dual explosions. 

The moment the second elf died, the lights snapped back on. The first thing Donut saw was me sailing up in the air like I’d been ejected from a catapult, spinning like a pinwheel. I landed upon the roof of the building across the street. 

The detonation of the Divider’s corpse did no damage to either Donut or Mongo, though it showered both of them with a blizzard of stinking, gooey gore. Donut grabbed the neighborhood map, leaped out of the pool, and she finished off the last three of the monsters, all of whom had barely survived. She hit two with magic missiles, and she set Mongo on the third who went about his task with practiced glee. 

She then leaped to the roof of the building and used a heal scroll to bring my health back up. I remained unconscious for another three minutes, despite being healed. 

I awakened, staring up at the sky. I’d gone up a level to 19. My brain took several moments to reboot. I’d landed on a pile of rocks, and they dug into my back. I groaned, rolling over, and I almost plummeted through a hole in the ceiling into the floor below. I had no idea where I was. What had happened?

I heard the thwump of Donut’s Magic Missile, and I abruptly looked up.  

“Good morning, Carl. I haven’t seen any more of the elves, but the meat bags keep coming,” she said. She fired another missile. “They’re pretty easy to kill if you hit them in the right place. Mongo is having a field day. He’s already gone up to level 12.” She leaned over the edge and yelled. “Good boy, Mongo! Mommy is going to kill the next one, and you get the one behind him.” She fired once again.

“What is happening? How did I get up here? Whoa, Donut. What the hell happened do you?” 

I’d seen Donut covered in gore before. But this was the next goddamned level. After we’d fought the Juicer on the first floor, she’d been caked in blood and guts. I’d never thought we’d get her clean. That was nothing compared to this. She had to have three inches of red, stinking viscera attached to her fur. She was covered like a piece of extra-crispy fried chicken.

“Later,” she said. “They keep coming from that direction. They’re really slow until they get close, but then they get fast. Watch Mongo kill this one.”

I was also covered in gore, but mostly on my back. I felt it slide off of me as I sat up. It was as thick as mud. 

I peered over the edge and gaped at the sight. I swallowed. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d had porridge for breakfast, and I regretted it now. 

In every direction was splattered, sticky blood and body parts. The swimming pool was filled with red, and much of the viscera was currently spilling into it, filling it deeper and deeper. Hunks of flesh, some pretty big, lay strewn about like boulders. The white shock of bone stuck up everywhere, giving the sense I was looking at the zoomed-in view of a wound, and the bones were actually grubs. 

And the smell. Oh god, it hit me all at once. It was the stench of a sewer and the contents of a refrigerator, cracked open after an extended period with no power. My head swam. 

“Fucking hell,” I said. “What the hell happened down here?”

“You did it,” Donut said. “You really need to be more careful, Carl.”  

My eyes caught movement, and I finally saw one of the monsters we’d been facing in the dark. 

The beast was a thirteen-foot-tall pile of body parts, all sewn together haphazardly as it shuffled forward. It was like Doctor Frankenstein had dropped acid before he made his creation. I saw legs and arms and torsos, all smushed together. But there were heads, too. Lots of heads, all human. The thing moved and was shaped like a giant slug. Tentacles made of arms and legs twirled above it, waving in the air. The heads all groaned in unison.

The thing was terrifying to behold, and I was glad I was now up here and not on the ground facing it.

Shambling Berserker – Level 12

If you weren’t fortunate enough to face one of these neighborhood boss monsters on the first level of the dungeon, fret not! Now’s your chance to get in on the fun! 

You know how you sometimes buy something from IKEA, and after you’re done putting it all together, you have a few parts left over? It happens to the best of us. What you see here is a Shambling Berserker, the smallest iteration of this creature. Also known as the Mini Grinder or the Shrilling, this creature consists of extra parts we found after creating the World Dungeon. Waste not, want not. 

This undead abomination is oftentimes found in groups, summoned as a slow, but very tenacious assassin. Once you’re targeted by these guys, they don’t stop. The good news is, they’re mostly harmless. Unless, of course, you face one in the dark. Their power is quadrupled in the dark. And once they go berserk, there’s no putting them down. They ain’t so slow after that.  

So, yeah, actually, you’re probably fucked.

I thought of Mrs. Parsons, my downstairs neighbor before all this started. She’d been beheaded in the collapse. Her head had fallen at my feet, but the rest of her had gone down into the depths with the rest of the building. Had they used her headless body for one of these things?

As I watched, Mongo emerged from a pile of gore, where he’d been having a snack, and he squealed, running at full speed toward the monster and leaping, feet first. The shambling berserker tumbled back and fell apart, groaning as it died.

“They’re really easy to kill,” Donut said. “They just fall apart.” 

“That’s because it’s not dark anymore,” I said. I felt as if I’d been hit by a damn truck. I still didn’t know exactly what had happened. “I’m pretty sure our friend sent these dudes after us.”

“Probably. Also, I think we should have a new rule,” Donut said. 

“What’s that?” 

“It’s quite evident we shouldn’t be throwing explosives when we’re blinded.” 

I laughed. “That sounds like a good rule.”  

Below, Mongo screeched with victory as he eviscerated another pile of the slow-moving body parts. 

“I got the neighborhood map,” Donut continued. “I can see there’s about ten more coming. Let me and Mongo kill them, and we’ll head back. This has been a great day for experience. I’ll hit 17 before we’re done. But we need to hurry. There’s a safe room around the corner. I need to take a shower before we go on our interview.” 

I thought of us zapping into a production trailer looking like we did now, and I suddenly felt myself grin. I couldn’t help it. I just started laughing. It even sounded a little crazy to my own ears. 

“Okay,” I said. I pulled a hob-lobber out, tossing it in the air and catching it. “But let me kill a couple, too. I want to see how far I can really chuck these things.”