Chapter 101 (Patreon)

The second cart for the Mindaro line never arrived. That was Bautista’s, leaving his group stranded at the end of the line. So without any further fanfare and very little discussion about how terrible of an idea this was, the four of us loaded up onto a rapid response cart and dialed ourselves onto the Mindaro line and headed down the track in an attempt to find the source of the problem. 

“What color is Mindaro, anyway?” Donut asked as I pushed the throttle forward. We had to remain in the small, raised cockpit with the windshield, otherwise Donut would get blown clear off the train. We were going insanely fast. The cart moved smoothly over the track, making very little noise. We kept the portal tuned to the abyss in case more mobs came at us. The line’s power was out, so we had to run on batteries. 

“I have no idea,” I said. “I don’t know what any of these colors are. Ask the art professor.” 

Katia shrugged. “I think it might be a shade of chartreuse.”  

“What the hell color is chartreuse?” I asked. 

“It’s between yellow and green. It’s named after a French liqueur. Actually, there’s some controversy on what the exact shade should be. It’s very interesting.”

“I’m sure it’s riveting,” I said. 

Katia stuck her tongue out at me. And then her tongue formed into a little hand with a tiny middle finger pointing up.

I laughed. “Holy shit, that’s weird. You’re getting fast at that.” 

“It still hurts to make big changes, but little stuff like that I can now do with very little effort.” 

The cart plan had worked as intended for the other two lines. For the Sinopia and Grullo line, the abyss cart appeared, still blasting its music (“Mack the Knife” for the Grullo line), and the trainyard cart appeared soon thereafter. In both cases, the portal-to-the-trainyard carts arrived just minutes after the first, which suggested that the carts sometimes slowed down if they hit something big, allowing the second trains to catch up.

Which, we realized, was what had probably happened with the Mindaro line. It was a stupid mistake. If the second cart had caught up with the first, the portal in the front would have tossed the whole abyss cart back to the train station. So when Bautista’s crew only saw one cart—this one playing “Rock of Ages” by Def Leppard—it was actually the cart they needed to jump in front of, but they had no way of knowing that. 

I shouldn’t have put delays on those alarm traps. I should have known what song went with what cart. It would have saved us this trip. 

That cart had been tuned to trainyard Q. I warned my contact there that we may have accidentally hurled a bunch of monsters in their direction. That plus a cart with a dangerous portal attached to it. 

When the carts hit the portals at the edge of the abyss, they didn’t plummet over the edge like I’d been expecting. Instead, they worked like engine cars and punched right through back to the trainyards. 

Since the abyss gate at the end of the Sinopia and Grullo line did not line up with the associated trainyard track of the rapid-response carts, those who got transported through never saw the carts again. Instead they joined up with the defenders at the closest nearby station 36. It was 800 people between the two groups, and we had gotten them all to a stairwell station. That was the best I could do for them. 

At first I worried that the rogue carts would now start looping up and down the tracks. But a group happened to be grinding their way through yard M when the first cart—the same one playing “Physical” by Olivia Newton John—appeared. Because of the way the switching stations worked, the cart was automatically routed into a dead-end parking space intended as a holding area for the train engines. The cart reached the end of the track and flipped. It caused the entire awning system to be sent into the abyss. But the portal automatically shut itself off a moment later. The cart remained on its side, wheels still spinning. 

A few minutes after that, the second cart showed up and also flipped over.

That group at yard M then managed to get enough people together and physically flip one of the two carts back over and then bring it to a track. They managed to get the thing turned back on, giving them a new weapon to keep at least one of the nearby tracks clear. 

The tunnels were eerily quiet and empty as we rode up toward Bautista. I kept the portal on in case something else was on the track. I tuned it to the abyss, but I kept an eye out for the tell-tale blue dot of crawlers on the track. I could switch it back to station E, but we had to be careful. It took the portal a good ten seconds to make the switch, during which time it wasn’t on at all, making the cart vulnerable. 

Katia’s fan box became available while we rode down the line, but we didn’t dare stop. We now had less than two days left, and every second counted. Seven hours in, and we still saw nothing on the tracks except the occasional exploded corpse of a post stage-three monster. The baby krakarens were nowhere to be seen. 

Back at the front of the line, Elle’s away team, with the help of Tizquick the dwarf, found the correct colored line, making their way to the exploded station 72. Loads of other crawlers had the same idea, and she found a group of people waiting there. The ceiling had caved in, but the circle of stairwells remained, and people had cleared the rubble. We sent out word that it was a place to descend without fighting, and people were now flocking to the area. The crawlers who’d died blowing the soul crystal had, at the very least, not died in vain. 

Others, like Imani and Li Jun, thought it was best to remain put. The monsters approaching station 36 were trickling to a stop, and the crawlers had built a solid, defensible position. So far the Krakaren babies were staying put at all the station 24s. The wrath ghouls, it turned out, formed a similar boss to the one parked at stop 48 if they were allowed to congregate. This one was also a province boss. 

Our plan was to get Bautista’s crew, get everyone to trainyard E, and then work our way to station 60. From there people could decide to go wherever they wanted, either to one of the many heavily-defended station 36 stairwells or to the free station 72. A few people were also putting together raiding teams to take on the station 48 boss. Nobody else was braving station 12, 24, or the other occupied station 72s.

As for us, we’d decide what we were going to do when the time came. 

“People on the track!” Katia suddenly yelled just as we passed station 432. 

“Shit,” I said, flipping the switch to change the portal. The cart was like a boat and didn’t have brakes. I cut the throttle just as the blue dots appeared. The train slowed. I mentally calculated our trajectory, and I saw we’d make the switch in plenty of time. The dots were moving fast, probably running away from us once they saw our light. Poor guys. They had to be terrified.  

“Get ready,” I said. “If they don’t know who we are, they might shoot at us.”

Sure enough, the crawlers appeared a moment later. They were a group of five people running full speed down the track and away from the cart, and one of them had presence of mind to shoot an ice bolt directly at us. It hit the portal and disappeared. I didn’t know if the bolt went through or what, but the poor guys didn’t have a chance. We plowed right through them, teleporting them to train yard E, which had to be a serious shock. They all probably thought they were about to die. 

“Sorry,” I called back over my shoulder as we continued down the track, approaching station 433, which appeared much more quickly than I anticipated. This was where the mimic lived. As far as I was aware, nobody had killed one of these things yet. Dozens of Xs appeared on my map, all of them on the platform where the previous portal cart hadn’t been able to scoop them up. 

God, so many dead. Every time I saw something like this, I felt the anger start to rise in my chest. 

“What is that?” Katia asked, pointing ahead. There was something on the tracks right outside the platform to station 433. Whatever it was, it didn’t appear on my map.

A red and white wooden crossbeam appeared to be sitting across the tracks, blinking. It had a stop sign attached to it. What the hell? This was like a regular railroad crossing, though usually these things went across the road, not the tracks. I just stared at it, confused for a good two seconds, not sure what to make of it. The track beyond the barrier appeared to be fine. There was no cross traffic. Where had it come from? 

“Fuck,” I said the moment I realized what it was. It had only fooled me for a pair of seconds, but it was enough. You idiot. I moved to flip the switch back to the abyss, but I hesitated. Too late. Too late. We were going to hit it. A long, fleshy appendage snaked from the end of the crossbeam, leading up into station 433. 

We hit the crossbeam a moment later. There was a mighty thwum as the portal sucked it away.

We’d just accidentally teleported the entire station mimic city boss to trainyard E.  

“Whoops,” I said. 

~

“Bautista,” I said, stepping off the platform. I shook hands with the hairy, orange tiger man. He’d reached level 28. We’d stopped about 100 meters before the giant, swirling portal that led into the abyss. There was a wide space on either side, along with a small doorway that led to the now-collapsed interior walkway. A pair of crawlers, both human, stood guard. One had an enchanted, old-school sling. The thing crackled with purple and black energy. He twirled the weapon and shot a rock, likely aiming at one of the lizard monsters who crawled up and down the pit’s interior. The crawlers both cheered, presumably after scoring a direct hit.

“Hello, Carl,” Bautista said, clasping me on the shoulder. “You have saved us. Again.” 

“We ain’t done yet,” I said, looking over the ragtag group. There were about 600 people gathered here. I quickly told him what had happened with the station mimic as I shook hands and traded fist bumps with dozens of crawlers, who ranged in level from the distressingly-low 18 to 30. Most were human, but there was a scattering of orcs and elves and other oddities. 

“So we have to fight that thing again?” Bautista asked, sounding sick. “Carl, it’s a city boss, and it’s really strong. I don’t know how to kill it. If you chop a part off, it turns into a spider and crawls back to the whole. Bashing weapons don’t do anything. It’s magic resistant. Maybe blowing it up will work, but you’ll have to go big. Like really big.” 

I stepped in front of the portal attached to the front of the cart and took a screenshot. 

“Holy shit,” I muttered. 

The station mimic was so large it took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at. It was significantly larger than I anticipated. The monster had taken up residence in the middle of the trainyard and hadn’t yet changed shape into anything. It looked as if the wall of the trainyard had moved, swallowing half of the station. Only after staring at the image did my brain start to figure it out. It was a potato-shaped blob the size of a neighborhood block. The damn thing reached all the way up to the ceiling, taking a huge portion of the yard. It seemed much too big, like the total mass was enough to mimic five or six or more stations. 

The blob looked disturbingly like how Katia looked when she was not formed into anything.

I thought of that group we’d accidentally teleported to yard E. They were probably dead. We’d sent them to the yard, and less than two minutes later, we’d sent that thing through the same portal. Maybe they’d gotten away. I hoped so.  

It seemed much too big to be only a city boss. Which begged the question, how strong were those things at the stairwell stations? The province bosses? For fuck’s sake. 

Carl: Elle. Do me a favor and ask your manager if there’s a secret way to kill a mimic.

I’d already looked it up in my book, and there wasn’t much in the monster section. There was a warning that mimics were all over the place on the 8th floor, but I had the impression they were more of a nuisance than a real threat, implying that this huge mimic was a new thing, or something no previous cookbook-owner had come across. 

Elle: Are you about to do something really stupid, or have you done it already?  

Carl: Both. 

Elle: Hang on. Let me ask. Don’t get your hopes up.  

I looked over at Donut, who was preening at the attention of the other crawlers. She was mounted on Mongo while a group of people surrounded her and the dinosaur. She talked animatedly, telling them about the ride up here. 

Katia held back shyly, leaning up against the side of the cart. People kept looking at her. Everyone by now knew exactly what had happened, but that golden, shining skull over her head was hard to ignore. I watched as Bautista approached her and held out his hand. They shook and started talking. 

I walked up to the massive portal that overlooked the abyss, and I took a screenshot. The cart behind me with the much-smaller portal led to yard E. This one led to yard H. There was no mimic here. I could see the interdiction cart, the one that had been playing the Def Leppard song. This one hadn’t flipped and was sitting stopped a short distance away, having gotten itself wedged against the wall. The portal appeared to still be on. It’d jumped the track at the service bay but remained upright until it hit the cavern wall which, thankfully, hadn’t teleported the entire cave system away. I didn’t see any mobs, though there were dozens of corpses spread throughout the abandoned trainyard. 

Elle: She says you don’t fight giant mimics. Little ones are easy to kill if you know what they are, but this thing is a whole different story. If you slice part of them off, the pieces grow legs and return to the main body. If you can get more than 50% of the mass off the main body at once, it’ll no longer be able to heal or transform. And then it’ll be vulnerable. But the separated pieces, unable to return to the main body, will instead attack you. They only die when the mimic dies. 

Carl: Well that’s terrifying. And that’s only a city boss. 

Elle: Yeah. I’m on my way back to the crew now, but I just talked a group out of attacking the province boss at station 48. One day we might be strong enough to fight one of those things, but it ain’t gonna be on this floor. Fuck that. You can hear it screaming from here.

I walked back to the cart and took one more screenshot. The mimic appeared to be forming into a large building, though it was still in mid-transformation. It was taking the shape of an Iron Tangle administrative structure, though it had so much mass, it had to make the building huge. A mouth that had to be 300 feet wide comprised the entire first floor. Each jagged tooth was the size of a person. A red, lumpy, train-sized tongue lolled out of the mouth, reaching off screen.  

The entire building and mouth was faced directly at the portal. I knew if I took another screenshot in a minute, the mouth would be gone, and only the building would remain. 

It’s waiting for us. 

Carl: Sorry, Donut.

Donut: WHAT DO YOU MEAN? 

I climbed back into the cockpit and turned the switch. The portal to trainyard E shut off. I looked down at Bautista where he stood next to Katia. “New plan. We go through the abyss portal instead of the cart portal. I have enough hats in my inventory for everybody here, so we don’t need to worry about fighting this mimic thing. It’s expecting us, and if we go through that portal, we’d be like pigs walking to slaughter. 

Bautista looked relieved. “Thank god for plan B.”

“That was actually plan C,” Katia said.  

~

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I said to Donut as we watched the last of the group make their way through the portal to yard H. 

“You have to tell them to give the hats back after we go through,” she said. “Millions of gold, Carl. Millions!” 

“They weren’t ours to begin with,” I said. “People gave them to us to help others.” 

“We only have 83 of them left,” she sniffed. “I really want to buy the social media board. So we can see what people are saying about us.”  

“Actually, it’s less than that.” I pulled thirty of the hats from my inventory and started tossing them onto the ground behind the cart. “In case there are any stragglers.” 

Donut looked at me like I’d just slapped her. She made an incredulous, scoffing sound. “You know, it’s no wonder you were always so poor. There’s a fine line between being helpful and being a dumbass, Carl.” 

“We still have over fifty of them.”

Katia laughed as Donut glowered. The cat looked back over my shoulder, as if she was contemplating jumping off the cart to go retrieve them. I put my own hat on my head. Donut didn’t want to remove her tiara, so instead she sighed and held an engineer’s key in her mouth. Mongo went into his carrier. I suspected that since the cart was allowed through the portal, we didn’t need either the hat or the key, but there was no sense risking it, especially since there was a cliff on the other side of the portal. Katia pulled the hat and plopped it on her head. It disappeared into her mass. A moment later, it reappeared as she did something to make it visible. She really was getting better at the doppelganger stuff. A lot better. 

I eased the cart through the portal, and just like that, it was done. 

Our plan was a success. There had been just over 1,400 people trapped at the end of the line, and we’d gotten them if not to safety, to a place where they at least had a chance.   

The cart clunked loudly as it changed tracks. I eased off the throttle. Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” continued to blare from the immobile interdiction cart, but the song stopped a moment later after the guy with the sling scored a direct hit on the small trap. 

There was this moment, right after the music abruptly ended, where our slow-moving cart coasted to a stop right behind the other cart, and we just faced the large crowd. The silence hung for a good few seconds, and then the 600 people broke out in applause. Bautista walked up and gave me a hug as we jumped off the cart, then he did the same to Katia. He patted Donut on the head. 

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” 

“We still have a little more than a day and a half, my friend,” I said. 

“I know,” he said. “But we couldn’t have made it here without your help. And for that I’ll be forever grateful.” He gave me a wink and pulled the hat off his head. He put it on the ground in front of Donut, who looked up at him with wide-eyed surprise. “For you, Princess Donut.” 

“It’s not necessary, I’m sure,” she said, suddenly switching to her imperial voice. “Please, keep it. I insist.”

But suddenly there was a line of people, all of them putting their hats in a pile of front of Donut. Her eyes shined, and her jaw trembled, revealing her two lower fangs as the people, one by one bowed in front of her and dropped the stupid train hat on the ground in tribute. “Thank you, Princess,” they said, one by one. 

“Of course,” she said to each person. “It was nothing. Our pleasure.”

Carl: Was this your idea? 

Bautista: Your partner, Katia, suggested it.     

I looked over at her, and she grinned. 

Donut gathered all the hats up into her inventory, tail swishing with pleasure. I suspected now that most of the crawlers were all at the front of the lines, shopkeepers would be less likely to give us money for these things. But we held onto the moment. I didn’t know what was going to come next, or if we’d even done anything here today other than delay the inevitable, but it felt good. 

By god, it felt good.

~~

'Ello everyone. I'm actually pretty much done with chapter 102 also, but I wasn't done polishing it, and I didn't want to leave you guys hanging another day. Thanks for all your support, and thanks to all the new patrons. I really appreciate it!

The Dungeon Crawler Carl book 1 is now out on Amazon. I know a few of you are here directly from the book, and that's awesome. Please do me a huge favor if you haven't already and leave an honest review on Amazon. It really helps.

Next chapter we see the result of the fanbox poll + we get a hint at what Princess Formidable's angle is in all of this. And this floor has one more nasty trick up its sleeve for the remaining crawlers, and then before you know it, we'll be on our way down to the fifth floor, which will be very fun. Hopefully everyone makes it there.