Chapters 103 and 104 (Patreon)

Chapter 103

The first thing we did was walk out to the main restaurant. Mordecai, who was somehow even more soaked with gore than I was, approached the counter with the Bopca.

“We are purchasing a personal space upgrade,” Mordecai said. “A cleaner bot.”

The upgrade cost 25,000 gold, making it one of the least expensive environmental upgrades we could get. That was still expensive as shit, but none of us complained. Donut didn’t even try to negotiate. Katia wordlessly paid for it, and we marched back into the personal space. The moment we stepped into the room, the new upgrade went to work. It was a frisbee-shaped robot, similar to the Mexx-class robots we sometimes saw in production trailers, though this thing didn’t look as if it could talk. It was basically a flying Roomba. Donut had to admonish Mongo not to attack it. It hummed like a muted drone as it buzzed about the room, blinking disdainfully at the mess.

It went to work cleaning up all the stinking, congealed blood, hovering over it and magically zapping it away. It cleaned quickly, but it was still going to take a long time. We all decided to take showers and meet back in the main room in five minutes. We returned to find the blood was still everywhere, but the cleaner bot was working as quickly as it could. It’d thankfully started at the kitchen counter, leaving the area habitable. Katia sat there eating a pineapple she’d gotten from the Bopca. She used her hand to form a knife to cut and core it. She offered me a piece as I approached. I declined.

“Okay,” Mordecai said, holding up his hands as he emerged, clean, from his room. “Before you say anything, I know it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that at Chaco. It won’t happen again. And, no, we are not going to talk about it.”

“Someone told us if you do it again, you’ll be gone for good,” I said.

“I assure you it won’t happen again,” Mordecai said. “You have my word. Now what did you pick from that prize carousel anyway?”

“He got a stupid recipe book,” Donut said. “It was a joke prize.”

“Really?” Mordecai said. “Can I see it?”

“Later,” I said, trying to change the subject. “We don’t have much time, and we still need to sleep. We need to catch you up, but then we need to get back out there.”

“Did you see my sunglasses?” Donut asked. “Aren’t they just the greatest? I got them from Princess D’Nadia. If I hadn’t gotten them, we wouldn’t have known Hekla was trying to kill Katia. Oh, oh, and I have over 100 in charisma now, and I got the Love Vampire skill. Just like you told me to get. I’ve cast it a few times, but it never triggered.”

Donut’s love vampire skill allowed her to basically reflect any damage to a mob that was a lower level than her. She hadn’t used it yet because we’d been careful to keep her from getting hit on this floor.

“Okay,” Mordecai said. His eyes got huge at the mention of Hekla. He once again zeroed in on that golden skull floating over Katia. “That’s great, but slow down. We have a lot to go over, but we don’t have to do it all at once. First explain the circumstances regarding the player-killer skulls you two have, how Katia is the highest level of all of you, and then we’ll go over all of your new skills and…” he trailed off, his eyes fixed on my left hand. He took two steps toward me, grabbed my wrist and held it up so he could look at the ring I’d gotten from Frank. The Ring of Divine Suffering.

“Take this off,” he said. “Take it off right now.”

“I’m not going to use the Marked for Death skill,” I said. “It gives a five percent bonus to my stats.”

“If I wasn’t afraid I’d be kicked out of the game for good, I’d smack you into the next floor. Even if you were a player killer, you’d be an idiot to keep this on you, let alone on your finger. Every season, several of these rings are generated, and every season, the crawlers who own them are the first to be tracked down and killed by the hunters on the sixth floor. The bonuses for this ring work both ways. One of the reasons why those idiots flock to the hunting grounds is to obtain one of these things.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because in the hands of a sadistic bastard, a combatant can raise his power exponentially. Once it is charged up enough, its owner gets massively stronger each and every kill. I don’t think there has ever been a faction wars where the victorious army isn’t led by a champion who doesn’t have one of these rings, amongst several other items. And those rich assholes who fight it out on the ninth floor will do anything they can to win. This sort of item can’t be brought in from the outside. But the factions can collect them if they can convince an idiot to go hunting on the sixth floor. And if there’s one thing this universe doesn’t lack, it’s idiots. You need to sell this ring. Otherwise you’ll have a huge target on your back. Bigger than the one you already have.”

I just stared down at the ring on my finger. I didn’t want to take it off. “So the faction wars winner always has one of these?”

He smacked me, then. Thwap, right on the side of the head. He did not freeze or teleport away.

He looked at his hand, just as surprised as I was. So much for promising to hold his temper.

“Out of everything I just said, that’s what you’re holding on to? Crawlers don’t get involved in winning or losing faction wars. They ride out the ninth floor like it’s a tornado passing by overhead, and they keep their heads down, and they pray it doesn’t sweep them away. We already have one impossible task to deal with when we get to that floor. You attempting to hold onto a Divine Suffering artifact when the entire universe knows you have it is just another level of idiocy we don’t need.”

I started a retort, but he held up his hand, interrupting me.

“Plus, don’t you remember the magic pulses on the third floor? Events that activate magic are a real danger. There will be traps that activate your spells and items. Triggering something like that could be devastating. Despite what its description says, this item is not meant for crawlers. It’s meant for tourists, designed to get them to gather up combatants by the hundreds and farm them for power. It is evil, and if you don’t get rid of it, gods help me, I will tell Donut to stay the fuck away from you the moment you hit the sixth floor.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said, pulling the ring off. I felt my strength lower, which pissed me off further. “We’ll talk about selling it on the fifth floor. Before we get to the sixth.”

He looked like he was going to object, and insist on me ditching it now. He opened his mouth, as if to say something, but Katia interrupted. She had the map out, spread onto the counter.

“What was it?” she asked. “You said you knew how to get to the lower train stations. We figured it out, but there’s a bunch of different ways, and I want to know what you saw.”

Mordecai looked down at the large paper, worn and blood splattered and filled with many more marks than when he’d started working on it over a week earlier. He blinked a few times, staring at the mess of circles. I still couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t imagine how anybody could make sense of this confusing bullshit. I had the sense whoever designed this let it get away from them. I hoped the same asshole wasn’t in charge of the next floor, too.

“You see this?” he said, pointing to the circle that was the Nightmare’s loop. “And this, and this?” He indicated several other named lines. He grabbed the pen off the table and drew a symbol in the corner. It was a group of overlapping circles, similar to the Olympics logo, though the rings were all a different size. “It’s the logo for the Syndicate, at least from the top down.” He pointed to the second circle of the logo, then tapped the  Nightmare line again. “See here, it matches up perfectly. The named trains make a specific pattern. That means there is a train that has to loop to the front. Probably at this station here. Yes, look, you discovered it already. The Escape Velocity line. Yeah, that makes sense. Escape Velocity is the name of the ship that discovered the worm hole to the first system where a Gleener scientific crew investigating a Primal ship graveyard came across the Vog Generation Ship. A few hundred cycles later, the Syndicate was formed. So it’s obvious once you know what you’re looking for.”

“What?” I said. “How in the hell were we supposed to spot that? How would we even know what the Syndicate logo looks like?”

“Isn’t it etched on the doors to the next floor down?”

“No,” I said. “It’s a massive kua-tin.”

“Huh,” Mordecai said. “When I did it, it was the Syndicate logo. Odd.”

“You said this is from the top down?” Katia asked. “What does it look like from the side?”

He drew again, but this time it looks like a lopsided mattress spring. The circles were actually all connected together. “Honestly, I don’t understand how these wormholes work, and that’s what the logo is based on. It’s not usually portrayed in 2D, but in a twisting, 3D shape. Sometimes they show the rings fly together, but when it rotates, it’s one piece. It’s like one of those optical illusion things.”

Katia snatched the pen from him and started re-drawing the logo from several different angles.

“Anyway,” Mordecai said, “that’s how I knew. The abyss here represents the center of the galaxy. You really filled this in well, Katia. The tracks probably represent the worm paths.” Mordecai leaned in. “Yes, I see it now. The whole thing is a simplified map of the galaxy, and the trainlines are the original worm paths.” He paused, reading some more. “Does that say station mimic?” He laughed. “They really went all out. There’s a story about the early days of the Syndicate where the H’lene system set up six waystations near the center. They were traps. The H’lene were robbing and eating all the travelers and then stealing their tech. The H’lene don’t exist anymore, and they weren’t really mimics, but they’re oftentimes represented as them. They got wiped out by the Valtay and the orcs.”

“Jesus,” I said, looking it over.

“What about all these Krakaren bosses and the ghouls?” Katia asked, looking up from her sketches. I had no idea what she was doing, but she was now drawing lines from the logo to different parts of the map.

Mordecai returned his gaze to the map, frowning. “Oh, wow. I see it now. The Krakaren is a real creature. It is a collective mind, and it is spreading throughout the universe. Its proliferation causes a lot of anxiety. A better translation of its name is the Apothecary because of its ability to synthesize elements. When they call it the Krakaren, its them deliberately bending the translation into a negative. What we have here in the dungeon is a caricature.”

He pointed to one of the stations where Katia had written, “Drug dealer.”

“They have the Krakaren making the drugs and the Pooka are the ones handing it out. I think the Pooka are supposed to represent the Plenty. They are a caprid race. They look like goats.”

We hadn’t seen or fought the Pooka, but I remembered that Elle and Imani had. They were the ones who gave the addictive “vitamin shot” to the mobs. Elle had described them as goblin things that turned into giant goats when you fought them.

Mordecai continued. “The Pooka invented the modern tunneling system. It’s only been around for a few hundred seasons, but it allows near-universal, real-time communications. The technology is proprietary, and nobody knows how it works. There’s a ridiculous conspiracy theory that they use Krakaren technology, and it’s all a ploy to get everyone into the Krakaren collective. Previously, everything had to be filtered through the wormholes. Borant had a stake in the communications relays that are now obsolete. It’s a long story I barely understand. Before, even in my season, the crawl would get just as many views as it does now, but most everyone in the universe would receive it on delay. Maybe an hour. Maybe a year, depending on where you lived. Only the center system would get it live. It’s only a recent thing that the outer systems are able to follow and favorite crawlers in real time. The breakthrough changed everything. The Plenty are responsible for so much prosperity, but some, like the Bloom of the kua-tin, think of it as some insidious plot. They’re like a telegram company protesting the invention of the telephone. Or a typewriter company protesting the invention of the word processor.”

“Wait,” I said. “So when they have the Krakaren manufacturing drugs and giving it to the pooka to distribute to everyone else, what they are really doing is making some sort of bullshit metaphor? To make a political point?”

“That’s what it looks like. This whole floor is a racist political cartoon, telling the universe how shifty the Krakaren and the Plenty are. Borant has been very vocal about this for a while now. They say the Plenty are selling everybody this technology just so everybody will become addicted to it. But one day they will take it all away, and that will, somehow, allow their overlord, the Krakaren, to I don’t know, absorb the entire universe. It’s a bit ironic if you ask me, considering how Borant are actually using the tunneling technology to spew their hate everywhere.”

All of this was interesting, but I didn’t really give a shit who was racist against who when all of them were stepping all over us. As far as I was concerned, they could all go fuck themselves. But the story itself was important to know.

“But anyway,” Mordecai said. “Now that we know how to get to the front, we just need to wait out the timer and hop down the stairs. Oh, and then give me your table upgrade coupons so I can boost up my alchemy table before we go down a floor.”

I exchanged a look with Katia. We’d both already spent the upgrade coupons. “Okay, I said. We’ll give you a quick recap. But you gotta promise not to smack us again.”

“Wait until you hear about how we stuck Katia to the front of a train and then killed Hekla,” Donut said.

~

We took our naps and reset our buffs. By the time we were ready to emerge out into the world again, we had one day and 10 hours left. Mordecai had been busy while we slept. He’d rearranged the crafting room. He’d installed that repair bench I’d found and bought three more benches. Two with our coupons and then one with gold. He bought a second alchemy table, which he said was necessary because he could specialize one of them. He bought a metalworking table, which he said he’d explain the purpose of later, and he bought something called a Bolt-Thrower’s Workshop, which would eventually allow for the mass production of explosive and other magical crossbow bolts.

“Once we get that sapper’s table up a few more levels, you can build Katia some great ammunition,” he said.

We hadn’t yet told him about the bolt she’d gotten from her sponsor. There was just so much to talk about. I’d bring it up soon.

He’d been aghast with some of the chances we’d taken over the past several days, and we had argued quite a bit over some of the expenses, but he’d been particularly impressed with the progress Katia had made plus some of the items I’d manufactured, including the landmines and the heal-infused smoke curtains. Both of those items I’d actually gotten from the cookbook, but if he suspected anything, he said nothing.

We still had a lot to talk about. We hadn’t talked about the Kimaris figure nor the PVP coupons nor a dozen other small items. I wasn’t finished with him regarding that bullshit with Chaco, either, but we simply didn’t have the time.

I finished my daily training to find Katia leaning over the map, chatting with Mordecai.

“But if these railways represent paths to the center of the galaxy, are they really all on the same plane?”

“All I know is what I’ve learned from years of watching Syndicate programs,” Mordecai said. “When my world was taken, we weren’t much more advanced than your world was. We’d colonized a few planets in our solar system, and that was it. I was more interested in plants than the stars. But you’re right. I think maybe it’s, I don’t know, squished.”

“I put it all together, and we’re still missing half the system,” she said. “Plus that symbol only works from above.” She trailed off. She started scribbling furiously.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, coming to look over the table. “We know where the stairs are. We just have to defend it.”

“Wait,” she said, drawing a line. “Are they able to make things upside down? Like make you think you’re right side up when you’re really upside down?”

I thought of the fight with the rage elemental. He’d cast a spell on us that had turned the hallway upside down.

“Yes,” I said.

“They have done that before,” Mordecai said. “They’ve done it several times, actually.”

She took the paper, and she folded it in half. She held it up to the light. She ripped it a little and rearranged it again.

“I figured out how to make the logo work,” she said. “Also, I think I know why there were only six station mimics. And why they’re so big. They’re really occupying two stations at once. At least.”

~

“Wait,” I said. “So right below our feet, like if we dig down far enough, we’ll come to another train station, and you’re saying it’ll be upside down?”

“It could be right side up,” she said, “but I don’t think so. If it’s upside-down and mirrors the tracks above it, then the map works. We are at station 59 on the zomp line. If we dig, we’ll end up at station 59 on some other line. Probably whatever the inverted color is on the color wheel. Plus I think there might be an empty chamber between the two levels. Remember that room from the recap episode? With the stairwell and the ladder? I think that’s the space in-between.”

“These tracks are twisting around and over and under each other already. A mirror world doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t think it’s a mirror of the entire tangle. Just each individual line.”

“What? Katia, what the fuck? How does that make sense?”

“Just think of every line as a noodle, and the track is on the outside of the noodle. And there’s another track on the opposite side of the same noodle. And think of the abyss as a fork stuck into the middle of the bowl that has been turned a few times. It’s not so much a spirograph pattern like we originally thought, but a chaotic mess. And in the middle of that giant bowl, the named lines make a pattern, spelling out the logo of the Syndicate. Actually, they do it either 12 or 24 times. Or maybe 48. I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, not helping. Jesus fuck. Nobody can follow this.”

“Just pretend like you half understand.”

“Sure. Why not. That’s wild. And weird. And it just makes everything more, not less, complicated. Which goes back to my original statement. It’s amazing that you could figure this out. Really. I don’t want to come across as a dick. But how does this information affect us now other than giving me a bigger headache than I already have?”

Katia shrugged. “I don’t know if it will. But this double-sided noodle thing is a lot of trouble to go through for it to not make any difference. Maybe it’s just extra fluff to appease the nerds. But it’s been bothering me for days, and now it makes sense. It feels like a trap to me. The announcement said we’d have our hands full, but unless something new happens, that’s not true.”

She was right. But what was the purpose other than to be confusing as shit?

“Hey, Mordecai,” I said. “When you first said you figured out the map, before your time out, you said this was something you’d seen before, just on a smaller scale. What did you mean?”

“There was a floor once that was like a rat maze, and it had rooms that were like giant, sliding puzzle pieces. It was also a fourth floor. The pieces of this one area slid together to make the Syndicate logo, and it opened up the exit. Actually,” he said, eyes going wide. “I forgot about this part. Once the pieces were together, the whole thing spun on the center axis, flipping everyone upside down into a hidden chamber below them.”

Carl: Hey Imani and Elle. What do you know about the province boss that’s hanging out in some of the station 36s?

Imani: It’s a bunch of wrath ghouls tied together. It forms a giant monster covered with mouths. It fills the whole station. It’s pretty much the same thing as the boss at all the station 48s.

I thought for a moment. If the floors flipped, it wouldn’t make a difference. Unless… Holy Jesus.

Carl: Is the boss attached to the ceiling of the chamber?

Imani: I don’t think so. But I don’t know for sure. What are you getting at?

Think, think.

Elle: The fuckers sound scary as shit. You’re not thinking about fighting one are you? Because I’m pretty sure we talked about this already, cowboy. Nobody can even kill one of those city boss mimics, let alone a province boss. Did you watch the recap? Those poor bastards fought that boss and were wiped in about thirty seconds. Also, that was pretty fucked up. What you did to that poor hyena. I know the show is exaggerating things, but I worry about you sometimes.

Carl: Do you know if the ghoul generators at 12 and 72 hang from the ceiling?

Imani: I think they just float in the middle of the room. Carl. Speak to me.

I returned my gaze back to the circled station 24, where the Krakaren babies were gathered. They were getting bigger by the hour. By all accounts, they weren’t ranging far from the area. But if there were so many of them, getting bigger by the moment, where were they all going?

“You know,” I said. “If this whole thing is a metaphor like you say, about how bad the Krakaren monsters really are for the universe, about how they’re using the tunnel system to spread their influence or whatever, then I’m guessing they’ll want them to be the final blow. The exclamation point to their stupid political cartoon.”

“But how?” Katia asked.

I think there might be an empty chamber between the two levels.

I thought back to the time Katia and I entered the empty stairwell station. It’d been a group of stairwells, all closed. They were in a circle in the middle of the room. How big was that empty space in the middle of the circle? Pretty big. About the circumference of a railway tunnel.

Carl: Fuck me. I think I’ve figured it out.

Chapter 104

Immediately after the revelation, we jumped into action. I frantically sent out a notification for everybody to abandon all stairwell stations. Any other place would be safer. We didn’t know exactly when it was going to happen, but I suspected it would be soon.

A few groups thought I was full of shit, and they happily said so. Thankfully I talked Bautista over at the crowded station 72 to get out of there. They mostly fell back to station 60, waiting to see what would happen. Several other groups retreated to the tracks and the platforms. They still had ghouls to contend with there, but not so many. For now the Krakaren babies were staying put and only attacking if you got near station 24. The little fuckers were getting bigger by the hour. Last report was they were mostly monkey-sized and covered with tentacles.

Elle took a team of fighters, including Katia and Donut, to range down to the outskirts of station 24 to fight and grind on the things, which were now all level 14-17 Krakaren Juvenile Clonelings. Katia was trying out her new crowd control techniques while the others experimented with different types of attacks to see what worked best against them. Fire worked well. Crossbow bolts took them down, but only if you hit center mass. Chopping off their tentacles caused them to retreat, but only temporarily. Spells like Magic Missile worked, but not too well. Lightning did nothing. Elle’s freeze attacks did nothing unless it was an icicle through the body. Bashing weapons only worked if you hit really hard. Psychic attacks worked really well, causing them all to stop for a moment, but it didn’t do any real damage. We only had two people who could cast that type of magic.

The monsters were fast and had round, teeth-filled mouths that worked like living garbage disposals. Their tentacles burned on touch. Their blood was caustic, like with the xenomorphs from Alien. Plus they screamed, Katia said, which was really unnerving.

While Katia and Donut killed Krakaren children, I went to work. It took a good five hours to get the two interdiction carts back to station 75 and then dialed into a colored line that intersected with the correct station 36. From there I gathered 20 high-strength crawlers, and we went to work transporting one of the two carts—we chose the Def Leppard cart—from the rails to inside the main chamber of station 36. We physically lifted it off the tracks. I was worried 20 guys wouldn’t be enough, but once again I underestimated our extreme strength. We lifted it easily and with little effort. After some experimenting, I found it only took six guys to lift the cart.

When I first came up with the idea, I hadn’t thought it through. Each rapid response cart was about the width and height of a cargo van, and maybe one and a half times longer. While the station platform, and the stairwell itself, was just wide enough to carry the cart, there was no way to get it through the tight hallway system that led to the main room of station 36. In my head, the caverns had been much bigger, but when I arrived, I realized the plan was DOA. The hallway walls were practically indestructible, and we didn’t have time to fuck around trying to figure out how to widen them, go around several bends, and then get the train cart into the room.

Salvation came in the form of Zhang, Li Jun’s best friend. He emerged just as I was directing the crawlers to put the cart back on the track. I examined the bald, Chinese man’s properties as he came jogging up. He was still human. He was a level-28 Earth Mover. Li Jun had said he was a mage-tank combo. He now wore glowing, black and gold, segmented armor.

“Stop. Wait,” he said. He bent over, breathless. “Sorry. I ran here from the safe room. Li Jun told me what you’re attempting, and I’ve come to help.” He held up a stick. “I got you guys.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a magic wand. It shrinks. It only has one charge left. It doesn’t work on living things, but we still used it get past a few bosses. Once we shrunk the monster’s collar, and it choked him to death. And once I used it to stop a train that was going to run us down. I was saving the last zap for an emergency. It’ll work on the train cart, make it small for five minutes. But it’ll still be as heavy as before.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “That’s amazing. How small will it make it? If it’s still heavy, we’ll still need it big enough that we can push and turn it.”

“Size is easy,” he said. “It starts shrinking once I zap it, and it keeps getting smaller until I turn it off. Otherwise it stops on its own when it’s about the size of a button.”

“And you did it on a train before? You know it’ll work?”

“Yes,” he said. “It worked on the whole train and killed everybody on board. I jumped six levels all at once. I even got a boss box and a multi-kill box. It saved our lives.”

“Well, shit,” I said, turning to the other crawlers. “Let’s get this thing back up the stairs.”

After a harrowing four and half minutes rolling the much-smaller cart through the twisting hallway, we rolled the cart into the main chamber. We quickly pushed it to the center of the room, stopping it between the inactive stairwells so it sat on the circle in the middle of the room. The floor had a faint etching on it: a side view of the Syndicate logo that I’d never have noticed if Mordecai hadn’t shown us the night before. We all quickly backed up as the cart returned to its regular size, making a popping noise like a balloon being inflated.

“All righty,” I said, slapping my hands together. “Now comes the fun part.”

Imani came to stand next to me. She regarded the cart suspiciously. I knew she wasn’t a big fan of this idea, especially the next part. Still, she’d used her spell like I’d asked. Several piles of magical chain sat coiled and ready.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked. She had her colorful butterfly wings fully extended, and every time they touched me, they gave me a constitution buff that lasted ten minutes. The buff didn’t stack, but the timer reset every time the ethereal wings brushed across me. Each brush felt soft against my skin, like a sudden, pleasant breeze.

“No,” I said. I started pulling large, metal pieces from my inventory as the others started attaching the chains to the cart. “No I’m not sure. But nobody else was coming up with any other ideas.”

She nodded. “What about everybody else? At the other stations.”

“I warned them what’s coming. That’s the best we can do. Some people are sending folks to the Desperado to buy smoke curtains and hobgoblin dynamite to get ready. Others are forming outside the rooms and waiting to see what happens. If it happens like I anticipate, it’s about to get crazy. Everyone is going to have to fight. They’ll have to carve their way to the stairwells and then keep that path open while everyone goes down.”

“And you really think this cart will keep us from having to fight?” Imani asked.

I grinned. “Oh, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of fighting. I just want to even the odds a little.”

Across the way, a man with a spell that worked like an arc welder joined up two pieces of metal that had been too big for me to work at my engineering table. I’d already attached the two train wheels to the top, which were part of the pulley and lever system that we’d use to lift the cart. When they were done putting all the pieces together, the crane would have five legs, one placed between each of the five stairwells. Each piece would arch up and meet high above the center of the five stairwells. It would look like some bullshit college campus art installation, or a half-finished jungle gym when we were done, instead of what it really was: a crane.

Less than an hour later, we used Imani’s magical chain to lift the back end of the interdiction cart into the air. The cart lifted easily, and the magical chain did not break. Once it was pulled all the way up and about a half of an inch off the ground, we locked the chain into place. The entire cart hung vertical in the room, like it was a prize fish on display. The front of the cart faced downward. The small scoop that represented the bottom of the portal scraped against the marble floor. With a group of us holding the cart in place and several others leaning against the crane’s five legs, we made a few slight adjustments. Once we had the cart where we wanted, we used additional chains to anchor the front in place so it wouldn’t swing.

From there, I used my handmade ladder to climb up and to the cockpit. I patted the two Growler Gary left hands to make sure they were still firmly in place, and then I turned on the portal, and I tuned it to the abyss.

The portal crackled to life, facing downward. It was almost the exact same size as the circle of marble in the center of the room.

Katia and Donut returned to the chamber. Katia was still 37, but Donut had raised a level to 33. Mongo had gone up a few levels to 26. Mordecai had insisted that we used Mongo as much as possible before the level was done, and I was glad to see the dinosaur had done well against the octopus monsters.

“I think it’s going to happen soon,” Katia said. She was in her she-hulk form, about eight feet tall and wide. She had her riot shield on her left arm, and she’d chosen to keep it in its original form. It made her look especially imposing. “They all started heading back into the station a few minutes ago.”

“They’re quite easy to kill,” Donut said. She jumped from Mongo’s back to my shoulder and gave me a side headbutt. “You should’ve been there. It was fun.”

“I bet it was,” I said. I pointed to the dangling interdiction cart with the crackling shield. “God I hope our theory is correct.”

“Well,” Katia said. “If the entire floor disappears, and not just the center, then there’s nothing we could’ve done anyway. The clock is going to hit one day left in ten minutes. I bet it’ll happen then.”

“Okay, guys,” I called. I looked nervously down at the floor beneath my feet. “Everybody out of the station. Quick.”

~

The clock ticked down to one day left. We’d all left the station, spreading out to the several different platforms that led up to the main room. We stood upon the Vermillion line platform, where my sole remaining interdiction cart waited. This was the same cart we’d ridden all the way up to the end of the line to save Bautista and crew. This one was tuned to station E, the same station where the mimic still waited for crawlers to munch upon. No monsters had approached for a while now, but we didn’t want to gather everybody in the same place, nor did we want to get sneaked up upon. So we dispersed. Donut stood on my shoulder while Mongo leaned up against me. Katia and Elle chatted while Imani moved about the others, making sure they were all okay.

And just like that, it was on.

System message. Attention. Attention. The management of the Iron Tangle would like to warn all customers and employees that the system has broken down. No more lines are running. You are no longer safe. We have been betrayed by the Krakaren, whom we thought were benevolent. We have been forced to initiate the self-destruct sequence. Throughout the system, the emergency escape tunnels are opening. Please be aware of possible gravitational shifts when you enter the escape tunnels. All employees are urged to use the tunnels to proceed to station 60 and await further instructions. All customers please use the escape tunnels to proceed to the stairwell portals at stations 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, or 433 on any of the lines. These stairwell portals are powering up now and will open in exactly 18 hours. They will only be open for six hours before the self-destruction charges will blow.

This is the Iron Tangle, signing off. May the gods have mercy on you. Thanks for riding with us, and have a great day.

“They’re laying the story on a little thick,” Donut grumbled. “I mean, really. Are we supposed to be cosplaying as terrified commuters now? Do I look like someone who would use public transportation?”

A mighty screeching noise filled the entire dungeon, like a rusty, old door being forced open. I felt a rumble under my feet.

My chat was suddenly filled with people screaming for their lives.

Ronaldo Qu: a round section of floor disappeared in the middle of the station. It fell away and then it shot up and out of the hole. The octopuses are pouring in. They’re falling into the room, but from below. They’re big now. Human sized. Jesus. Jesus. They just keep coming. We have to run. We need to find another stairwell. There’s too many.

Gwendolyn Duet: The bomber guy warned all of you dumbasses. Fall back to the train lines. Hold them at the choke points.

Ronaldo Qu: He didn’t say it would happen this bad.

Gwendolyn Duet: Are you on crack? This is exactly what he said was going to happen. It’s literally the exact thing he warned you about. Now clear the chat.

Ronaldo Qu: Fuck you bitch.

Several iterations of this conversation filled my screen. All over, the center of the stations were falling away, and then the Krakaren monsters were pouring into the rooms. I felt an odd mix of terror and pride that we’d accurately predicted what would happen. But that pride was short-lived as I realized how many people, despite our warnings, had chosen not to protect themselves. I couldn’t believe people could’ve gotten this far and still remain such idiots.

We were ready for an onslaught of the monsters to pour out of our own stairwell station and come at us. We all waited, weapons ready. Imani barked at the flamethrowers, telling them to be on the lookout. Nothing happened.

“Holy shit, Carl,” Elle said after a minute. “You crazy sonofabitch. I think your stupid idea worked. Let’s go check it out.”

We cautiously returned up the stairs and through the tunnels. The flamethrower squads uprooted their defensive positions and followed. We entered the station. The interdiction cart remained hanging upside-down, directly over the hole. Monsters poured into the portal. We could see it through the haze of the portal’s backside. The Krakaren monsters fell headfirst, feet first, and sideways into the portal, like the hole in the ground was actually in the ceiling. Thousands of them. They kept coming and coming, getting sucked directly into the portal and to the abyss.

We all stood and stared. The portal crackled like it was getting hit by hail.

Imani was the one who snapped us back to reality. “Secure the entrances. Set the flamethrowers back up like before,” she yelled. “I want a ring of flamers and mages around this portal in case something happens to Carl’s cart.”

Behind me, someone cried out in surprise. I turned to see a pair of juvenile Krakaren beasts slinking into the chamber from one of the opposite entrances. They weren’t coming into the room from the newly-opened “escape tunnel” but from one of the main railways. The things had likely been filling the secret tunnels between the tracks, the center of Katia’s “noodle,” and once the hatches all opened, they were being spooged all over the place. If they were also going into the regular, empty stations, then me plugging the hole here was only a temporary fix.

We jumped into action. Katia rolled forward, turning into her sentinel gun. She took out both of the octopuses while the others set up their perimeter defensive positions. Donut leaped to Mongo and rushed to defend one of the chokepoints while I stood sentry over the portal.

Once the defenses were set, Katia returned to her humanoid form and stood next to me and Imani. A few more monsters approached, but it was quiet for now, except for the constant smacking of Krakaren juveniles into the portal. I imagined the giant abyss pit filling up with the monsters, so many of them together that it overflowed. The pit was much too big for that to really happen, though I suspected the majority of these monsters were surviving the high fall from the portal to the bottom of the abyss. These things were squishy and resistant to blunt trauma. The pit was probably a writhing mass of these monsters by now. I wondered if they got along with the hordes of ghouls that lived in the bottom of the abyss. Or with the wall monitor lizards who lived on the edges.

It didn’t matter, I decided. As long as they remained way over there.

In fact, I realized as I watched the constant stream of creatures, it was probably a good thing for everybody if they did survive the fall into the pit. These were living, non-undead creatures, which meant every time one of them died, a ghoul was generated at a nearby ghoul generator.

“Some of these guys we’ve had to kill three times,” I said. “Once when they hit the stage-three DTs, then again when they’re Krakaren babies, and then again if they turn into ghouls.”

“It’s a lot more than that,” Imani said. “The stage-three monsters were each birthing thousands of these octopuses. Octopi? What’s the right word?”

“We got incoming,” someone shouted. A mass of red dots appeared on the map, though it wasn’t so many. Maybe twenty of them. I felt the hot whoosh of the flamethrowers even halfway across the room. The mobs were killed in seconds.

“Hey, don’t be an experience hog!” Donut shouted at a crawler at the front defensive position.

“Yo, Donut,” I called over my shoulder. “Play nice. We’re all on the same team here.”

“Carl, I said I had the monster on the left, and he shot him first with the flamethrower!”

“You did not call the target,” the crawler said. “And I am not a ‘he.’” I looked over and saw what the problem was. The crawler operating the flamethrower was a Level-27 Dog Soldier. Her class was something called a Crisper. She looked like a walking, talking German Shepherd. She had a Vietnam-era helmet on her head with little holes cut out for her ears. Her name was Tserendolgor. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how to pronounce that name, nor guess what nationality she originally was. But the fact she was a dog-themed race meant Donut would have an instant dislike of her.

“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said. “Go to a different position and leave her alone.”

“Yeah, go to a different position, cat,” the woman said.

Donut hissed but led Mongo to the other side of the room.

“And I thought she was getting better after all that business with Growler Gary,” Katia said.

“That is better,” I said. “You should hear her talk about cocker spaniels.”

“Oh, I have,” Katia said. “She’s told me all about Angel your next-door-neighbor’s dog.”

“They’re still coming, but maybe not as many,” Imani said, leaning over the portal to get a better look. “I wish it wasn’t so blurry so we could see into the hole.”

“It’s definitely getting less thick with monsters,” Katia said.

“You know,” I said to Katia. “If your whole double-sided track theory is correct, then there’s a straight line through that hole to the other chamber 36, and there’s probably one of those province bosses in there. Super close. That’s what I was originally worried about when you said the tracks were mirrored.”

“Yeah, me too,” Katia said. “If we didn’t have your portal, I’d be worried about it spreading into this room.”

Behind us, another group of mobs approached and were quickly dispatched. Then another. Soon, we had red dots all around us. There were four chokepoint entrances to the chamber, not including the secret one to the employee line, which we kept closed and guarded. The Nightmare was down there, still parked a few stations down. I’d poked my head into the line a bit earlier to see if the train was still there. We’d last used it to ferry Brynhild’s Daughters to sixty, and that’s where it remained.

Donut and I had walked down there earlier to see if Fire Brandy was still kickin’, and she was. We’d found her leaning out of her hole in the cockpit, talking with a pair of dwarven engineers who’d apparently climbed in through the broken side window. One of them had wanted to take the train to I-don’t-know-where, but Brandy had refused. “There’s nowhere to go, you fool,” she’d been saying when we walked up. The dwarf had argued, and I’d thought maybe we’d have a fight on our hands. But they quickly left upon our arrival.

The train was still on and idling. I could tell right away that something was wrong with the demon woman. Her usual, matter-of-fact, southern belle persona had shifted to something more melancholy. She was still giving birth regularly. I didn’t know if we’d get another chance to see her before the floor ended, and I’d wanted to collect more of the sheol rocks. I’d shown one to Mordecai and he’d practically jizzed himself and told me to retrieve as many as possible. I’d asked her if she could part with any, and she allowed me to take several hundred still-burning pieces along with a few dozen that hadn’t yet caught on fire.

“I’d give it all to you,” she said. “But I need to keep the fire burning nice and hot. Keep my babies happy, for as long as it will last.”

“Brandy, are you okay?” Donut asked.

“I talked to that dwarf friend of yours,” she said. “Tizquick. He told me about his daughter. They killed her, you know. Once word spread, they started to get angry.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who is they? And who did they kill?”

“The dwarves and the gremlins. They killed Madison, the human you brought up here. The human resources woman. They built a stand and a noose, and they hanged her. I didn’t see it, but they brought her body to me. I took it into the fire.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

“Only those ManTauR creatures are holding the faith. I guess a few tried to fight the dwarves, but they all got chased off. I don’t know about those guys. There might still be some out there, so be careful.”

“That’s… that’s crazy,” I said. Madison hadn’t deserved that. Well, her character deserved it. That was the thing, wasn’t it? All these NPCs were playing characters, and only a handful were starting to realize it.

And that, I realized, was the problem with Brandy.

“We gotta get back there,” I said. “If I don’t see you, take care of those babies, okay?”

The demon woman didn’t answer. She just nodded and returned to her fire.

~

An hour later, and the number of monsters coming through the hole in the center of the room had trickled to a stop, but the mobs were now approaching us from all the other angles. We were starting to see blister ghouls mixed in with the octopus monsters. I moved to stand next to Donut. We let the flamethrowers do most of the work, but I tossed smoke curtains and the non-explosive bangers at the incoming monsters while Donut hurled Magic Missiles at them. She occasionally cast Second Chance on one of the corpses and then Clockwork Triplicate. The zombie Krakarens wreaked havoc on their fellow clones for several seconds before they were torn down. Katia returned to her gun form. She towered over the group, choosing to sit high and fire down into the throngs. We stood amongst hundreds of other crawlers all throwing fire at the mobs. We held them back, but sometimes the waves were so thick, so frenzied, I feared we’d be overwhelmed.

Our only respite came when the dead filled the hallways so much, it created a clog. It’d remain that way for several minutes until the acid blood broke down their own bodies, and the corpses started to melt. Sometimes the corpses exploded for no reason, showering acid at the defenders. We lost several people that way.

We’d had to form barriers to keep the caustic liquid from pooling into the chamber, which would in turn burn the feet of the defenders. The acid didn’t burn away with fire, but we found it could be frozen. The acid would eventually melt, but it lost its acidity after that. That became Elle’s job. She zipped from one chokepoint to the next, freezing the pools of acid.

I worried about the others. I sent a message to Bautista, asking him for an update.

Bautista: We couldn’t get back into 72. There are both ghouls and the Krakaren monsters, and they’re coming from everywhere. We’ve fallen back down the line. We got chased to station 60, but we couldn’t get in. There’s a big group of those ManTauR things guarding the platform. Each one is a neighborhood boss. They’re super strong. One of them has gotten his hands on one of those alarm traps, and it’s playing some heavy metal song over and over. I think the song is giving them a buff, and it’s making everybody’s ears bleed. We had to fall back. We’re stuck between the two groups.

After that, I started to receive even more dire messages from several other groups. One group was pinned in the area between trainyard E and the monsters all pouring from the tunnels. They’d thought to switch over to the employee line, but they couldn’t get close. And the station mimic at the trainyard was sending pieces of itself out to hit them from behind. They were getting squeezed.

Everywhere, groups who’d stayed in the stations had taken heavy losses, but those who’d fallen back were unable to get back in, and now they had a province boss in the room when there hadn’t been one before.

“We need backup!” a voice cried behind me. It was the dog soldier woman. She was falling back. A human to her right abruptly had tentacles wrapped around him. His body exploded into mist. These new Krakaren monsters were suddenly all level 20 to 23 and about seven feet tall.

“Donut, Katia! Ludacris!”

“Mongo, stay!” Donut yelled as she jumped to my shoulder.

We detached from our spot and ran toward the hole in the defenses. “Get back! Let them through!” Elle cried. I pulled the boom jug from my inventory. I only had five of these things left.

“Ready?” Katia asked, widening as she moved. She rotated her riot shield 90 degrees and pushed it forward, like a literal battering ram.

Ahead, the hallway was full of monsters, crammed tight. They screamed and rushed at us.

“Go!” I said.

She activated Crowd Blast. She rushed forward, exploding into the crowd like a wrecking ball. The Krakaren monsters and ghouls rocketed back like bowling pins. Acid misted into the air, and Katia cried out in pain.

I was already running, following her. She’d gone far, all the way to the first intersection. This junction was like a T, going left and right, both with short stairwells leading down, which in turn led to a dozen other chambers in each direction. I made a split-second decision as I ran, and I pulled a second boom jug.

Katia, dazed, but still on her feet, pulled her crowd-control baton and swung it in one direct as the crossbow flipped upside-down and fired in the other.

We came running up.

“Let me know when you’re ready!” I yelled.

“Go,” Donut said. “Counting down from three now.”

I tossed the boom jugs in both directions just as Donut puddle jumped us back to the main room.

Twin fireballs erupted at the end of the hallway. The three of us stumbled backward, having been teleported back into the main room.

Only then did I feel it, the acid burning my face and legs. Donut cried out in pain, also burning.

But Imani was right there, and all three of us glowed. She’d cast something to negate the acid, and a moment later, it was as if nothing had happened. Though my jacket, my only non-magical clothing item, now had a huge hole in the left arm. My cloak and other magical items were unharmed.

The dog soldier and the others quickly reset their defense while Imani shouted for backup at the chokepoints.

“That was pretty awesome,” I said, breathing heavily. “Katia, you okay?”

“I hate that ability,” she said, wheezing. “But wow, it works well. Did you see them all. There were like fifty of them at the bottom of both stairs, and you hit both groups.”

“We just wasted my last Puddle Jump of the floor,” Donut said. Mongo came rushing up and sniffed worriedly at Donut. “I’m fine. Mommy is fine.” She looked over at the dog soldier woman. “You’re welcome.”

The woman just grunted and reset her magical flamethrower.

Boom. We all felt the ground shake. A huge explosion rocked the chamber. A moment later, a second explosion also rocked the walls. Everyone paused, looking about.

I looked worriedly over at the crane, but the device held. The chains groaned, and the cart trembled, but it remained hanging there.

“What was that?” Katia called.

I shook my head. “It was nearby. I think that was maybe the soul crystal over at station 12. The second explosion was maybe the one on the other side of the noodle.”

“Fucking hell, Carl,” Elle said, floating up. “Did you do that?”

“Why is it every time there’s a big explosion, you immediately think I had something to do with it?”

“Because it usually is you,” she said.

“She does have a point, Carl,” Donut said.

“Was there somebody over there? Why did it blow?” Imani asked.

“I didn’t see anybody on the map,” Katia said.

Imani pointed. “Elle, take a team and check it out. Be careful. We might have to fall back to station 12 if the ghoul generators on either side are gone.”

“On it,” Elle said. She shouted at a pair of crawlers, and they headed toward the employee-line exit.

I had a thought. I sent a quick message to Mordecai.

Mordecai: I think you’re right. I’m guessing the soul crystals they use for those ghoul generators are a little smaller than the one you have in your inventory, so they can’t handle so much simultaneous stress. I know this because you’re still alive. Too much local stress, and they pop, like fuses. Luckily when they go that way, they’ll only kill everything in the room and maybe a block in each direction. And not an entire quadrant.

Carl: Holy shit I have a glorious idea.

Mordecai: No.

Carl: You don’t know what it is yet.

Mordecai: I don’t care what it is. If it’s a Carl idea, it’s probably a brilliant idea that’s going to get you killed. Donut told me about how you captured the Nightmare train. I bet you thought that was a glorious idea, too.

Carl: No, that was a dumb idea. This is much better. Though it’s funny you mention the Nightmare.

~

We have either one more really long chapter, or two more chapters left before we are done with this floor. Either way, the next update will finish out the Iron Tangle.