Chapters 205 and 206 (Patreon)

Chapter 205

After we collected that second card, adding Geraldo the monk seal as our first squad member, we abandoned the coast and started to move into the city in hopes of finding a safe room. It didn’t take long. Donut spotted one a few blocks deeper into the city. This was a less touristy area, filled with homes and small shops. We all traveled together. After that last fight, everyone was more comfortable with each other. Donut even seemed to have eased off on her distaste for Sister Ines.

We passed through an intersection filled with a pile of crashed cars and bicycles and mopeds, but the circle of cars wasn’t very big. No cars came from any direction, but there were still people out and about with clothing on. A few bicycles still appeared. We squeezed between a wrecked, classic Chevrolet and the wall of a building as Zev messaged.

Zev: Hi guys.

Donut: HI ZEV! HOW ARE YOU?

Zev: So, I have some news. You were scheduled to go on Odette’s show tonight, but she has decided to take the week off.

Donut: OH NO. IS SHE OKAY?

Zev: She’s fine. She usually moves to the system’s orbit for faction wars, and Prepotente’s little stunt accelerated everyone’s schedule, so she’s traveling. We moved your scheduled interview to toward the end of the floor. Plenty of Plenty wanted you on, but I turned them down on your behalf. We have multiple offers on the table, but we wanted to get you on something quickly since it’s been a while. I have you two scheduled on a program called Shadow Boxer. It’s an interview about your lives before the crawl. You’ll be going on tomorrow after the recap.

Carl: Yeah, I’m not interested in rehashing all that bullshit with Bea again. Nobody wants that.

Zev: I’ll tell them Beatrice is off-limits. That won’t be the subject anyway. This is more like that Earth Beautiful program you went on a few weeks back, but this one is exploring the tale of Earth through storytelling and vignettes about the lives of some of the contestants. It won’t be live, and it’ll be a documentary-style interview. They want to focus on your life, Carl, when you were 15 to 18 years old. So the time when you were left without a guardian until your age of majority when you joined the Navy.

Donut: WHAT ABOUT ME?

Zev: They want to talk to you about how certain television programs shaped your perceptions. You two will go up to the show together, but your interviews will be split into two different programs. You’ll be together the whole time.

Carl: I was in the Coast Guard. Not navy. And, no. All that crap is nobody’s goddamned business. Pick something else. We can just do the Donut interview, but that’s it.

Zev: They want to interview both of you. I should note that this program is also listed as an NFC, and it is owned by one of your sponsors. The Open Intellect Pacifist Network. I’ll be required to be there, and because it’s a program own by a sponsor, a liaison will also be present to make certain the sponsor doesn’t give you an unfair advantage. They really want you on that program. The both of you.

Goddamnit. I considered this for a few moments. A liaison? I remembered what Orren the liaison had said to us near the end of the previous floor. He’d been trying to warn us about something, but I still didn’t understand what it was. Still... if this program was put together by the Open Intellect Pacifist Network... There had to be something to it.

Carl: Okay.

Donut: YAY! I CAN TALK ABOUT GOSSIP GIRL AND RIVERDALE AND THE VAMPIRE DIARIES.

She audibly gasped on my shoulder as she realized something.

Donut: ZEV, THEY SHOULD INTERVIEW YOU, TOO!

Zev: Sorry, Donut. I’m not allowed to make media appearances. But that reminds me. You two also have a preproduction meeting in a few days. I’m not certain of the exact time yet.

Carl: What does that mean?

Zev: It’s for the ninth floor. A team of reps from all nine faction wars participants will attend. Usually the meeting is relegated to lower-tier executives from each team, but your army currently consists of you two, your lawyer, a bunch of NPCs, and Donut’s fan club. Since policy items for the game will be discussed, I took the liberty of assuming you’ll want to be there. You’ll be getting a glimpse of something very few people ever will. And yes, Donut, before you ask, these events are usually catered.

Carl: Wait, will this be in-person?

Zev: Don’t get too excited, Carl. They’re insisting your presence be virtual. You’ll be at the production facility.

Donut: BUT IT WILL STILL BE CATERED, RIGHT?

Zev: Yes, Donut.

“Is everything all right?” Sister Ines asked as I stepped to avoid a man riding a bicycle rickshaw. The bike slammed right into a crashed car, and the ghost of the rider disappeared into the mess. I moved to grab the bike, but the front tire had bent in the crash. I left it.

“Yeah,” I said. “We’re dealing with our interview schedule.”

“It must be a lot of work,” she said. I held up my hand as another message came in, this one from Bautista giving an update on Tran. The man, who’d lost his legs and good friend Gwen at the end of the previous floor, was finally out and about, learning how to use his new floating wheelchair. Anton let out an exasperated breath.

~

As we made our way to the saferoom, both Donut and Sister Ines sensed a group of small monsters a few streets over, pinging about. We went to investigate, and found a mass of hairy, gnome-like creatures crawling over a pile of wrecked cars. These were common, level-20 monsters called Duendes. They were all over the place. There had to be at least a hundred of them, and those were only the ones we could see.

I quickly pulled out the Book of Lore. I remembered seeing these guys in the first section under common monsters. Each one was about a foot tall and dressed in rags. They all looked like tiny, angry, homeless men.

I didn’t have time to read the entire entry, but it said they didn’t have any special or magical attacks. The portrait in the book depicted one of them holding what appeared to be a giant pair of nail clippers. None of the ones here appeared to be armed with anything at all except their sharp teeth.

They were small, but they were big enough that if they got hit by a bike or a moped, it would knock the bike over. Which meant these little assholes were likely the cause of most of the car crashes in the area.

As we approached, I watched a pair launch themselves at a ghost riding a bike. They tackled through his clothes, causing the bike, his pants, and his shoes to go flying off his body. The oblivious ghost continued on his way. The little monsters emerged from the wreckage, each holding onto one of the man’s shoes. They both ripped the shoes up, growling like dogs with a chew toy. I saw another duende had amassed a whole pile of shoes and was upside in a boot, legs dangling in the air, like he was dumpster diving for something. He emerged, angrily chittering.

The AI’s description on the mobs was strange. It was unusually short. I examined the one in the boot.

Mordecai. Duende. Level 20

Screw these guys. Kill them.

“Carl, look, he has the same name as Mordecai!” Donut said. “We should put him in our squad!”

I laughed. “I don’t think these guys are squad worthy.”

A moment later, one of them spied us, and combat initiated. Screams rose up and down the street. The monsters growled and charged, but they were physically weak and didn’t coordinate with one another, some of them even fighting each other for the chance to get to us first.

We moved into three separate groups. Sister Ines’s squad moved across the street, Donut and I posted up near the line of buildings, and Mongo rushed out, gleefully ripping them to pieces.

He ate Mordecai the Duende first.

Killing them was not difficult.

As we fought, my new essence bar quickly filled. It only took about ten kills to fill it all the way to the top. The bar itself took on a sickly, brown hue that swirled oddly with yellow and green flecks, reminding me of sewage with oil spilled in it. Just looking at the bar made me feel a little ill.

Once the essence bar became fully charged, I received a notification.

The Scavenger’s Daughter has been fed. Unleash her wrath.

A new skill appeared in my interface. The Daughter’s Kiss. Once activated, it would completely drain my essence bar and make my next melee attack extra powerful. I needed to use it as soon as possible because it was apparently dangerous to walk around with a full essence bar. I still wasn’t clear on how it was dangerous, but I wasn’t about to wait around to find out. Each time I filled and then drained the bar, the bar itself grew, requiring more souls to fill for the next attack, which would also be more powerful.

Donut spit a glob of poison at a screaming Duende. She hadn’t yet tried any of her new telephone psychic skills, but she was oddly obsessed with her poison spitting skill, almost as much as her Fireball. The green, sticky poison blob stuck to the monster’s face, causing him to fall over. The consistency of the stuff reminded me of the slime from the Ghostbusters movies. The mob’s skin started to bubble, and he quickly died. It was a skill, not a spell, and it was currently at level five, but with low-level monsters, it was especially effective. She had a short cooldown for it, too. Like fifteen seconds.

“Carl, that awful back patch on your jacket is glowing. What did you do? Mongo, no! You’re going to ruin your dinner!”

Mongo flew through the air and landed atop a bus, metal screeching against his claws. He had a squealing duende in his mouth. He crunched down and swallowed.

“It’s probably because my new essence bar thing is full. What does it look like?”

“Those weird stitches all around the pile of skulls are glowing, but they’re glowing brown, and I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. Not all of them are lit up. Maybe an aardvark. It looks just dreadful.”

“It’s not an aardvark,” I said. I zeroed in on a single duende. It was rushing down the street away from Mongo. He was looking over his shoulder at the dino atop the bus, screaming. The creature dragged a shoe with him as he fled. I activated the Daughter’s Kiss skill. I jumped toward the fleeing monster, and I crushed down with my foot. I was expecting to knock him over with the attack, as he was just a little too big to simply smush.

The creature exploded into nothing. There was no resistance at all. The concrete sidewalk under my foot shattered into dust and rocks. A small shockwave burst forth, throwing all the remaining duendes to their backs. Mongo screeched in outrage as the crashed bus he stood upon rocked. A window in a nearby building shattered.

Across the street, the three other crawlers stopped fighting to look at me.

I just stood there for a moment. A bolt of something whipped through me, like an aftershock of the souls leaving my body. That ill feeling I’d momentarily felt was gone. Mostly.

“Wow,” Donut said, jumping up to my shoulder. “Now that was impressive. And the aardvark image on your back went away when you did it.”

“It’s going to get stronger each time I do it, too,” I said. I lifted my foot, and it wasn’t even gory. I’d vaporized the damn thing. There wasn’t anything left to even loot. The shoe it had been dragging was scorched and flattened, like it’d been crushed with an industrial press.

“Carl, are you okay? You have a weird look on your face.”

“I... I think so. I just wasn’t expecting it to feel like that. Come on, let’s mop the rest up.”

~

After it was done, Donut and I collected a total of three common utility cards. Two of them were Time Extend cards, which doubled the amount of time a summoned totem would last, and the third was a Stout card, which added 25% to a mob’s health for the duration of combat. The cards were not one-time consumables like our combo card.

Team Sister Ines also received three cards. Two were the same Time Extend cards. They also received an uncommon “special” card titled Flee. That one could only be used once, and it teleported the whole squad away from combat. It didn’t say how far or where it teleported them to.

We still weren’t sure how deck combat worked. Donut said she’d tried to summon the monk seal when we were fighting the duendes, and she got an error message. I knew we’d receive an explanation soon during the next announcement.

We made our way to the saferoom, which was a small coffee shop name “Cuba Libro.” A street over was a park with dozens of more mobs within. Donut said these were more human-sized. We’d check it out later.

“So, are you guys in a guild?” I asked Sister Ines as we entered the shop.

“No,” the nun said. “Team Flamenco wants us to join up, but we’ve decided to stay alone.”

“You should definitely join with us,” Donut said. “We share in all of the upgrades, including this really nice shower. And beds that make it so you hardly have to sleep at all. You get the training room upgrade, and there’s a really nice Bopca in the common area. Also, you can meet Katia and Bomo and Mordecai! The real Mordecai, not the duende that Mongo just ate.”

“We like it the way it is,” Ines said. “We have the upgraded bed already.”

“What about the upgraded litterbox? I bet you don’t have the upgraded litterbox.”

“I don’t use a litterbox, Donut.”

Donut made an outraged noise and mumbled something under her breath.

We moved into the situationally-generated hall leading to our personal space doorways. We agreed to meet up again after the recap. We’d clear out the park and start moving out of the city and into the rural areas in search of more powerful mobs to hunt and capture.

We watched the three enter their personal space. As they opened and went inside, I could see they had one of the smaller-sized ones where everyone slept in the same room.

Donut: I LIKE PAZ, AND I THINK ANTON IS OKAY EVEN IF HE’S GRUMPY AND IS COMPLETELY UNEMPLOYABLE WITH THOSE TATTOOS, BUT I DON’T TRUST THE WOMAN. AND IT’S NOT JUST BECAUSE SHE’S A CAT GIRL. THERE’S SOMETHING WEIRD ABOUT HER.

Carl: I’m still on the fence. I think they’re okay, but they’re scared of us. It doesn’t help that they’d been told you were going to kill them.

Donut: SHE DOESN’T EVEN USE A LITTERBOX, CARL. IT’S HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.

Chapter 206

Almost the entirety of the recap episode was redacted. We watched a group of crawlers get attacked and gored by goddamned Santa Claus riding a sleigh with his reindeer. Santa appeared to be some sort of undead creature, and he ripped the limbs off the poor crawlers and fed them to his reindeer after. We watched another group in Tokyo running while getting chased by what looked like a sentient umbrella, only to get wiped out by a bus. Then we watched Elle beat the living shit out of the same sasquatch she was talking about earlier and then stick it with her flag. Prepotente single-handedly flagged and captured a giant bat. After that, it flashed to a studio setting with several faces in little boxes before it all went blank. It remained that way for almost a full hour.

“Did you see that soother next to Kevin the announcer?” Mordecai asked. “I can’t remember his name, but he’s a Syndicate councilmember. The main council. It’s very unusual for them to appear on the show. I’m going to get that bopca in the coffee shop drunk and steal his newsletter. Also, see if you can find a Desperado Club. We need supplies.”

Once the show finally ended, the top ten list repopulated. It remained nearly the same with Prepotente at the top, Donut at number two, and me at number three. Lucia Mar was number four. The next were Elle, Katia, and Florin. Osvaldo was number eight, making his first appearance on the list. He was a level 60 Curupira ranger. I had no idea what the race “Curupira” meant, and neither did Mordecai. He looked human.

Number nine on the list was Li-Na, and number ten was a woman named Burcu, also a newcomer to the list. I’d met her briefly during the Butcher’s Masquerade, and I had her in my chat. She was a level-59, badger-headed Porsuk, which was the same race as all the bartenders at the Desperado Club. Her class was the ominous-sounding Forty-Eyed Martyr. Mordecai said he was pretty sure it was a paladin-style class.

Burcu, Osvaldo, and Prepotente had all gotten into a fight after we’d killed Imogen at the end of the previous floor. I’d been knocked out during it.

A moment later, Cascadia started her announcement. She was back to her annoying, condescending self.

Hello, Crawlers!

This is going to be a long message, so sit down, shut up, and listen. Here’s the card system. Most of you aren’t ready to use this yet. These instructions and rules also appear in your deck tab on your interface. Make sure you familiarize yourself with these rules. Your life depends on it.

You will not encounter mobs that utilize a card system in your current location. However, as a squad leader, you will still have the option to summon your deck to use during battle. This functionality will become active at the end of this message and can be activated by removing the full and activated deck from your inventory during combat.

Also, if you wish to practice deck-to-deck combat, you should consider attacking another squad. Doing so might give you some much-needed experience with the combat system. Plus, if you kill another squad, you may claim all of their cards. Isn’t that great?

“Go fuck yourselves,” I muttered up at the screen.

Gameplay is quite simple. Each squad must have six totems active in their deck. You may activate your deck with as little as six cards total. You may have as many utility, mystic, snare, and special cards as you want. However, if you have too many, you risk pulling a hand with no totem cards at all, which will leave you exposed.

There are five types of cards: Totems, which are the summonable monsters. Utility cards, which can only be played on one or more of your summoned totems. Snare cards, which can only be played on an enemy’s totem. Mystic cards, which are similar to regular magic spells, and special cards which are usually one-time use. These have many varying effects.

Combat is engaged when a nearby monster’s aggro is activated, and they are actively hunting you. Combat disengages when the mobs are dead, rendered neutral, or one of the parties has fled. If the squad leader dies during deck combat, the deck will transfer to the next in line. Overlapping combat with multiple mobs will count as a single session. Keep this in mind when entering a target-rich environment as most totems cannot be reused once the monster is knocked out.

If an opponent owns enough cards to make a deck, deck-to-deck combat is initiated. Using your deck is no longer optional in this case, so it’s in your best interest to keep your active deck in the best shape as possible. Deck-to-deck combat comes with a few additional rules that I’m sure you’ll figure out as you go.

Once deck combat is initiated, the Squad Leader loses access to their regular magic abilities and their inventory system. They may still fight using melee attacks. They may use potions, scrolls, wands, etc. as long as the items are physically available to them.

Most summoned totems may NOT directly attack the opponent’s squad leader if any enemy totems are present. That doesn’t mean the squad leader will be safe. It will be the responsibility of the other squad members to keep the squad leader safe during deck combat. Once all six totems are discarded or knocked out of play, the squad leader’s abilities will return, even if they still have other cards, such as a snare card, in play.

“Goddamnit,” I said out loud.

“What? What does that even mean?” Donut asked. “All I hear is blah, blah, blah, nerd squeak, blah, blah, blah.”

“I’ll explain in a bit,” I said, reaching up to scratch her.

The moment combat initiates, four random cards from the deck will be drawn. The squad leader may use any or all of them as they wish. If you pull four totems, you may summon all four totems at once. The monsters will appear, and assuming you have proper control over them, they will attack your opponents.

All totems are summoned for a specific amount of time as indicated on their card. If the totem is killed, they are knocked out for the remainder of combat. If the totem is still alive when they time out, the card will return to your deck in most cases, and not the discard pile. Injured and debuffed totems do not heal between summonings.

Utility cards may only be played on an actively summoned totem. Most buffs will remain on the monster for the duration of combat, even over multiple summonings.

Snare cards may only be played when an opponent has an actively summoned totem. These debuffs will remain persistent throughout multiple summonings of the same card.

Mystic cards usually have a direct effect on squads, squad leaders, or the squad leader’s deck.

Special cards have varying abilities.

When a card is used from your hand, it will be replaced by the next card in the deck at the rate of one card every ten seconds.

You may discard any card in your hand. You start combat with the ability to discard a single card. It will move to the discard pile and will be unusable for the remainder of combat. This ability resets once every thirty seconds.

And that’s pretty much it. It’s simple enough even you dry monkeys will figure it out. Just a reminder, this is not a turn-based environment, so speed and squad synergy are important. Don’t forget, we’re trying to entertain the viewers. Make sure you pick the most powerful, colorful monsters and abilities you can.

You’re gonna need it for part two of this floor.

Starting at the end of this message, all saferoom locations will also include a practice arena where you may, for a fee, enter and summon your totem cards in a limited mock battle environment. You do not need a full deck to utilize this service. The opponent monsters summoned by the system will not have their own decks nor can they harm you directly.

Warning. You may use your consumable and other one-time use cards in the practice arena, but they will not return. Consumable cards may only be used once, ever. Even in a practice environment. If you have cards with cooldown restrictions, such as the once-a-day Grand Finale card, the cooldown will not reset at the end of the practice session. So keep that in mind.

There are lots of amazing cards out there. Use these remaining 13 days before the assault to collect as many as you can. If you share an area with another squad, feel free to murder them for their cards. Only the teams with the best decks will survive. Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!

“Carl,” Donut said. “This is just like that nerdy Pokémon game you used to play. Or that one with the guy with the spiky hair that didn’t make any sense. What was it called? Yugoslavia or something?”

I grunted. “It’s not really like either of those. Like she said, most of those games are turn-based. This is going to be more complicated, especially if we don’t know what cards our opponents have. You’ll be without your magic or inventory until we use all six monsters, and we won’t know how strong the monsters we face are until combat is engaged. It’s going to suck. We need to make sure we have some of those flee cards that other squad got. And hopefully we can find some good snare cards, too.”

Katia was already in the chat organizing a list of all the known card types. The list was painfully thin so far.

“I’ve seen them use the cards before, but it’s never been anything quite like this,” Mordecai said. “It sounds like the enemies in part two will all be intelligent mobs carrying decks. You’ll likely have to fight your way to a boss who’ll have the key to get to the stairwell, and then you gotta somehow get yourselves back here to use it.”

“Let’s get to the practice room and see how well Geraldo the monk seal can fight,” I said. I moved toward the door, but I was interrupted by a message from Samantha.

Samantha: SO GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS.

Carl: What is it?

Samantha: I FOUND A BIG BOSS MONSTER. SHE’S A MAGE. THE RIGHT KIND OF MAGE TO GET ME INTO MY BODY, TOO. I TOLD YOU I’D FIND ONE.

Christ, I thought. She’d found something a lot more quickly than I’d anticipated.

Carl: What’s the bad news?

Samantha: SHE ATE ME. YOU HAVE TO COME GET ME. IT’S VERY SQUISHY IN HERE.

“My word,” Donut said out loud. “She sure gets herself into a lot of trouble, doesn’t she?”

Carl: Goddamnit, Samantha. You were supposed to stay away from the monsters, remember? Observe and report. How do you know she’s the right type of mage? She needs to be a pulpmancer. Mordecai says they’re pretty rare.

Samantha: SHE’S VERY POWERFUL. SHE CAN DO IT. SHE TOLD ME.

Carl: She told you?

Donut: DID SHE TELL YOU BEFORE OR AFTER SHE ATE YOU?

Samantha: IT WAS DURING. SHE IS VERY TALKATIVE. I THINK SHE IS LONELY. YOU NEED TO COME TALK HER INTO HELPING YOU.

Carl: How are we going to do that with you in her stomach? We’re gonna have to kill her to get you out.

Samantha: I DON’T KNOW WHY I HAVE TO COME UP WITH ALL THE SOLUTIONS.

Donut: WHAT KIND OF MONSTER IS SHE?

Samantha: SHE WON’T BE A PROBLEM.

Carl: That’s not an answer.

Samantha: SO, DO YOU KNOW WHAT A SPIDER IS? SHE’S KINDA LIKE THAT.

An involuntary shiver washed over me.

Carl: How big of a spider? And where are you?

Samantha: I AM ALL THE WAY AT THE SOUTHERN COAST OF THE ISLAND, NEAR THE MOUTH OF THE BIG BAY.

That had to be at the very edge of the zone.

Carl: What the hell? How’d you get there so fast? You said you couldn’t fly yet.

Samantha: I HITCHED A RIDE! IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. YOU GOTTA COME GET ME!

Carl: Okay, but it’s going to be a few days. And you didn’t answer my question.

Samantha: HOW BIG IS SHE? SHE’S NOT TOO BIG. SHE’S A LOT SMALLER THAN MOST MINOR GODDESSES.

I took a deep breath.

Carl: Samantha.

Samantha: WHAT?

Carl: Minor goddess? You’re in the stomach of a god?

Samantha: NOT A REAL ONE. WELL, OKAY MAYBE HALF A REAL ONE. THAT’S HOW I FOUND HER. I FELT HER PRESENCE. SHE’S A DEMI-GOD. PROBABLY NEVER EVEN GOT AN INVITE TO A PARTY. NOT A GOOD ONE, AT LEAST. SHE LIVES HERE IN THE SWAMP. YOU CAN’T MISS HER. SHE HAS A WEB OVER THE WHOLE AREA. IT’S DISGUSTING AND STICKY. HER NAME IS MARIA SOMETHING. SHI MARIA, I THINK. WE HAVE A LOT IN COMMON. SHE SAYS SHE’S LOOKING FOR HER HUSBAND. HER FANGS HAVE A VERY LOVELY SHIMMER TO THEM.

I pulled out the Bahamas book, turned to the index, and I found her listed. “Shi Maria” was listed in a sub-index as one of the monster’s alternate names. She was listed in the very last section of the book, under unique monsters.

“Yikes,” I said. I turned the book to show Donut and Mordecai.

Donut peered closely at the image of the screaming spider woman. “My word. That lady really needs moisturizer.”

“So the plan is to abandon Samantha, right?” Mordecai asked. He shook his pointy head.

“Nope,” I said. “Though she might be stuck in the thing’s stomach for a while. I’m thinking maybe this is a great candidate for one of our squad member spots.”

“Are you crazy?” Mordecai asked.

“Is that really a question?”

“It says one of her special attacks is permanent insanity,” Donut said. “And another is permanent blindness.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna have to plan this one out ahead of time.”

Donut continued to peer at the page. “Why does she have so many names? She has like twenty different ones. The Screamer. That sounds like a porn name. The Reviled. Kwaku’s Love. The Corrupted Paramour? That one does not roll off the tongue. Ooo, I like this one.”

She looked up at us, eyes big. “The Bride of Chaos. Now that’s a proper name.”

~

Hey everybody. Busy week. I had Norwescon, which was fun. I sold a lot more books than I was expecting. I ended up having to order more DCC book ones because I'm low on stock. My dad is still hanging in there. It's one of those no news is good news things. I will spend this next week catching up on orders, assuming I get my books like I should.

This card system is really simple, but it's a little difficult to introduce. I didn't want to have to write something with loads of rules and card types like Magic. I still wanted something that's easy to learn but has dozens of possible strategies. Don't worry if you don't get how it works just yet. We're going to ease our way into the rules with battles that get more intense/complicated as the floor gets deeper.  The trick is to make something that works during running, moving battles with mixed opponents that may or may not have cards of their own. I'm gonna try not to, but I might end up retconning some of the rules as we get deeper. I am planning on using artwork more in this book, depicting the actual cards if I can.

If there are any mythological creatures you'd like to see, let me know in the comments. This can be anything from ancient monsters to more modern things like the Easter bunny or slenderman. I most definitely won't get to them all, but I'm hoping to create something pretty epic/bonkers for this floor's finale.