Chapters 245, 246, and 247 (Patreon)

Chapter 245

“How did you know it was Miss Beatrice’s mother and not the pitbull lady? I mean, with the fire thing. I was trying to keep track, and I couldn’t.”

We were waiting for the fire on the yard to calm before we looted everything. The rest of the Iowa area was about to crash to the ground, and we had maybe an hour to get everything and get off this pile of dirt. As it was, I wasn’t certain how we were going to get down without jumping. We’d already gotten the floor key from the actual corpse, along with the Map of the Stars one always got from city bosses. It showed all the bosses left in the area, and there was nothing.

The cards and what looked like a lumpy, leather bag remained hovering in place right in the center of the trailer, but it was still too hot to get to. Donut actually had better fire protection than I did thanks to her nipple ring, but we were both exhausted and didn’t want to risk it. We decided to wait.

I was in my chat, warning everybody about this last boss. I didn’t know if it’d be the same for everybody. I hoped not.

I reached up to rub my hair, which had grown back. It was weird. I had to cut it if it got too long, but it was one of the few things that repaired itself after battle. They loved giving us horrific injuries, but they didn’t like us to keep them.

Until they did. I thought of Britney and her facial burns. There was no rhyme or reason to it except that which made good television.

“The moment I saw Sam had a death ray, and then my old boss was water, I knew the choices weren’t all random. Sam didn’t mind us calling him ‘Monobrow,’ but he was dating this one girl for a while that hated it, so we had to come up with a new nickname when she was around. He’d suggested ‘death ray,’ which was super funny at the time. It lasted about as long as that relationship had. And Dick, my boss, he used to have nightmares about drowning. He was afraid of going off shore.”

“Wait. He worked in a boatyard, fixing boats, and he was afraid of the water?”

“Terrified. Worse than you. He was an EDO in the Navy, too. Used to scuba dive for a living, and something happened. It’s not as weird as you might think. He was a strange dude, but he was harmless. It was awful seeing him like this.”

I thought of Asher and the lightning attack they gave him. Goddamn you.

A wave of sadness washed over me. I finally realized what it meant for someone to be in that hydra. They were all dead. These were all people who’d been collected in the initial collapse. My dad hadn’t been a part of the hydra because he was already gone. I thought of my friend, Sam. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, not since before Christmas. My landlord, Mr. Roth, had lived alone. He’d died alone. Of Asher and his mom. I wondered if they’d still been here, at the trailer park. They were all gone. They’d been gone this whole time. I knew that was the most likely outcome for everybody, but in some ways, knowing made it... I wasn’t sure. Not worse. It was always better to know. Just... final, I guessed.

This was a good thing, I decided after a moment. Not that they were dead, but that it was over with. The dungeon used their likeness, and now it was done. They could finally rest.

In fact, the dungeon was blowing its wad on saved-up relatives, like it had decided to get it over with all at once.

Huh, I thought, thinking more on it. I didn’t know what to make of it.

Carl: Zev, are you still locked out?

Zev: Can’t talk now, Carl. But yes. We’ll have an update soon.

That was ominous.

“But, how do you get fireball from Miss Beatrice’s mother? I would’ve assumed she’d have a psycho bitch ray or a botched plastic surgery ray or something. Why fire?”

“Because she was the only one left. Once I realized the choices were deliberate, I knew my stepmother would be poison.”

“The pitbull lady? How do you know?”

“Because I just watched her poison my father. That’s what I saw in there.”

“Wait... you said she was your stepmother. I thought your real mother was the one who poisoned your dad.”

“She was my stepmother,” I said. “She’d only married him recently. I never met her before.”

“I am so confused. A different person poisoned your father? So, he had two different people try to poison and kill him?”

“Technically she killed him with an overdose. But, yeah.”

“My word. You must be a real piece of work to make someone hate you that much. He’s like the human equivalent of a cocker spaniel. And speaking of cocker spaniels, I’m surprised Angel wasn’t a part of that thing. I hope that means they’re saving her for something else later. Or that she was already dead.” She gasped. “You don’t think she got into the dungeon, do you? If she did, she probably died on the first floor. She was probably busy licking her own butthole and got eaten by a llama.”

“No,” I said. “I saw her in the hallway earlier that day, so I know she was home. She got squished along with everybody else. You and I were the only two who made it out of the building.”

“Plus Ferdinand.”

“Him too,” I agreed.

We sat in silence for a few moments, both of us still thinking about the fight and all the people we’d met.

“Carl, so that’s what you saw in there? You saw your father die?”

“Yes, but I didn’t watch the end.”

“Oh.” She waited to see if I was going to add anything. I wasn’t. “What was your dad’s name, anyway? I don’t think you ever said.”

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t deserve to have one. Not anymore. It’s done.”

Mongo had eaten his fill. He now lay on the ground next to us, groaning slightly, like he always did when he ate too much. The vending machine on the other side of the yard crackled as it burned. I idly wondered if we could break it open and get out the tokens we’d already used so we could hand them out to others, but as I thought that, the machine exploded and dissipated into a pile of flaming dust.

Donut continued to clean herself as we waited. “Speaking of killing family members, I’m glad King Croissant timed out before we had to kill him. He was a kitten, after all. Kittencide is a bad look no matter how you spin it. I don’t even know if he is real, but if he does exist, he is family. If you must kill your own family members, you should have a good reason for it. Cousin Sugar Cube, on the other hand. I’m glad Shi Maria fellated her to death. She was one of the stupidest cats I’ve ever met, and that includes all the Birmans and Himalayans I’ve come across, which is saying a lot, let me tell you. Did you see how Shi Maria was doing that, though? How she was going down on each of those heads? I’d been wondering how she swallowed Samantha earlier. It’s quite disturbing. She probably did kill her husband. She probably sucked him right up, and he probably enjoyed it.”

I reached up and touched my forehead. It hurt, right there in the center. I was trying not to think about that part, that moment I’d looked directly into that eye, the eye that was supposed to drive me insane.

I will not blind you. Not in the way you’re thinking.

Donut was rambling, doing that nervous-talking thing she did sometimes to burn off the adrenaline after a fight. Her voice was comforting. I looked at the back of my hands. The twin tattoos glowed slightly brighter than before. I had multiple achievements I needed to wade through, but in a separate folder, I had a message from the church. I clicked on it.

Baptism by Fire.

You have grown closer to your god, Emberus.

He is pleased by your suffering.

Your new rank: Devotee.

Warning: because you are not a Cleric or a Paladin, this is the highest rank you may obtain.

This new rank comes with the following benefits:

Your Burn immunity has been upgraded. You will no longer take environmental damage from heat or lava environments, such as Sheol.

(Note. That does not mean you are protected from direct contact with fire or lava.)

You may now cast a level-10 Self-Immolation once a day. Be careful with this one. Remember that little warning you just got about direct contact with fire.

Your tithe amount has moved from 5% to 10% effective immediately.

I laughed. Donut was going to be pissed about the tithe. I’d been immune to Burn, which also came with some fire resistance, and it kept fire damage from compounding, which is what had happened to the hydra. This was slightly better protection.

I hesitantly looked up Self-Immolation, and I was happy to see it wasn’t a suicide spell. At least not on purpose. It didn’t need mana to cast, but it was limited by a long countdown:

Self-Immolation

Cost: Nothing. Requires to be in Emberus’ good graces to cast.

Target: Self Only

Duration: Instantaneous. Fire burst lasts approximately three seconds, which is complete overkill with this stuff.

Cooldown: Once a day. Resets with the obeisance countdown.

Casts a non-static sphere of Sheol Fire around the caster with a 1-foot buffer from all body parts of caster. Fire expands in a distance of .25 meters per level of spell until it reaches level 15, at which time the distance increases exponentially and may be controlled.

At level 10, the fire will expand in a sphere 2.5 meters around your body. That’s up, down, left, and right. So you might want to be careful where you are when you cast this.

What is Sheol Fire? You know how when you were a kid, you’d take a lighter and pass your finger over the flame really fast, and it wouldn’t hurt you? Don’t try that with this stuff. It’s fire with rabies. Wood turns instantly to ash. Rock to lava. Flesh... well. Just be careful. Or don’t, if you’re looking to go out with some char-scented gusto.

Yikes. That was just like Donut’s Bitch, What? berserking spell. It was something I wouldn’t be able to cast with anybody nearby. It sounded good, but if the sphere blasted below my feet, too, that would be dangerous as fuck. I’d find myself standing in a pool of lava.

The countdown was interesting. I could cast it once a day, but it reset when the shrine reset, which was generally around the same time as the daily recap episode. With most spells, like my Protective Shell, the cooldown didn’t reset until it was cast.

Donut continued to talk, regaling me with the story of Sugar Cube the cat, who was both her cousin and her half-aunt or something. It was confusing.

“Hey, Donut,” I said, remembering something from the fight. “What did you mean when you said Bea had gotten Sally fired? How do you even know who she is? I couldn’t remember her name until I saw it at the fight. We worked together for a while, but I barely ever talked to her.”

“I knew everybody from that fight. I recognized every head except your stepmother, who I just saw for the first time today. That Sally lady sent you a message on Facebook asking you out to get drinks once.”

I just blinked at Donut.

“No she didn’t. I never even went on my Facebook.”

“Oh believe me, I know. Miss Beatrice was always on it.”

“Wait, Bea was on my Facebook?”

“Yes, Carl. She even got your notifications on her phone. You used that same Megatron12 password on everything. I’m sure we’ve discussed this before.”

“We absolutely have not discussed this!”

Donut shrugged. “Well, that lady sent you a friend request and asked you out once. So Bea told her to fuck off, blocked her with your account, and then she sent a message to your boss from her own account and demanded he fire her because she was stalking you.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Oh, yes. Miss Beatrice and her friends all thought it was the funniest thing ever. And then your boss was all ‘What are you going to do for me’ and she had her friend Tiffany—you know the one with the lip fillers and that godawful fake Chanel bag—send him her boobs, though they were really just some random boobs from the internet, and he fired her that same day. Bea made him promise not to tell you. They called it ‘Operation: Slut Stomp’ or something. They all thought they were quite clever after that.”

My opinion of Dick had suddenly soured. My opinion of Bea was already in the toilet, and I knew all of her friends were just as awful, but I had no idea they were that bad. Cheating was one thing, her just being immature, but this... This was cartoon villain territory.

“That woman, Sally, she was a single mother. I thought...”

I trailed off, a sudden, sinking feeling overwhelming me. I felt cold.

I wrote you, and you never answered. I needed help. Look what you made me do! Look what you made me do!

“You said you recognized all the heads? Even the boy?”

“Yeah, that was a weird one. I forgot about him. I’ve seen him a bunch of times, but I still don’t really know who he is. Miss Beatrice had his picture on her phone, and she was always talking about him with her mother. His name is Asher. I think he was her nephew or something. I missed that whole drama, but Miss Beatrice’s mom said to just ignore it. It was strange they put him in the hydra.”

I nodded. “He wasn’t her nephew. He was my half-brother. I didn’t know he existed until just now. Today.”

“No, that’s not possible, Carl. That would make him the pitbull lady’s child. And then...” She trailed off. “Oh my god. So that’s what the AI meant. And Miss Beatrice knew you had a brother, and she was hiding it from you? That’s... that’s something Georgina would do!”

I swallowed. I was so suddenly overwhelmed I didn’t even ask who the hell Georgina was.

Goddamn you, Beatrice. Up until that moment, I realized I’d never been mad at her. Even after all the cheating, all the lying, I hadn’t been angry. I was just pissed at myself for being so stupid and naïve. Not until now. Now that it was too late.

I knew what had happened. Tami-Lynn had written to me, probably on Facebook. I hadn’t seen it, but Bea had. But why wouldn’t she tell me about it? This was different than a woman hitting on me. Was it because she didn’t want me knowing about my own brother? Why? What was there to be jealous of?

She didn’t want me leaving. That was the only explanation. I would’ve come here, to Iowa, and she knew it. I felt sick. Still, though, a part of me—a small part—wanted to give Beatrice the benefit of the doubt. That was ridiculous considering all I now knew, but there was always part of me that desperately wanted there to be good somewhere. In everybody I met, despite them showing me the truth over and over. Maybe, just maybe, she thought she was protecting me. Protecting me from my father.

This doesn’t matter. This is done. It’s in the past, and it’s blinding you. It’s making you weak. It’s what they want. They’re trying to break you.

“Carl,” Donut asked. “Do you think we’re done, now? With the card battles?”

I reached over and patted her on the head. My chat was starting to fill with one horror story after another. People were, indeed, facing hydras similar to the one we’d just fought. People were running. They were dying. They were refusing to fight.

“No, Donut. I don’t think we are. Not yet.”

“Very well,” Donut said. “Come on, Mongo. I think it’s safe now. Let’s find out what sort of loot they left us.”

~

A whole deck of cards spread out, floating in the air over the spot in the burned-out trailer where my father had died. Donut moved to investigate them. The hydra had only managed to summon two totems, but it had four in the deck. Alpha Carl. King Croissant and two more.

Donut scoffed at the third totem. It was a level-70 Belly Acher named Bam-Bam. The round, meatball pet was the same type of pet that was owned by Donut’s nemesis, Tserendolgor. It had been one of the choices when we first picked Mongo. The tagline on the card was, “I eat dinosaurs. Yummy-yummy.” I remembered watching Ren’s pet fight during the Butcher’s Masquerade, and these things were badass.

The fourth was Leveled-Up Frank. That was what it was called. It was crawler Frank Q. Husband to Maggie My and father to Yvette. He’d been long dead, killed by a Maggie-controlled Chris way back on the Iron Tangle.

This wasn’t really him just like Alpha Carl really wasn’t me. He was a level-90 Blood Assassin Night Elf, and I was glad the hydra never had a chance to summon him because he would’ve been a fast, tough opponent. That, and he would’ve had a ton of stupid shit to say.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, examining the totem. The existence of Frank as a card opened up a new, horrific possibility I hadn’t even considered. I hadn’t seen a single instance of this in the cookbook, of them bringing back dead crawlers. There were a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to handle that. Before I even examined anything else, I sent out a message to everyone.

Carl: Remember, it’s not really them. Especially not the cards. Don’t let them get under your skin. Don’t let them break you.

Not everyone was fighting the hydra. Elle reported her boss was just three trolls, and they’d killed them easily. Li Na and her team had to fight some cyclops tiger/fox hybrid thing. Katia was facing down a hydra right now, and I was waiting for an update. Imani was in trouble. Her team still didn’t have all the tokens. We hadn’t heard from either Prepotente or Florin in a while.

I moved my attention back to the cards. In addition to the four totems, there was a single Steal Totem mystic card, which was ridiculously powerful even though it was consumable. There were also two of the Cripple snares, which were also consumable. The protection utility card Donut had stolen, called Temporary Shield, only protected a totem from a single snare, but Donut had used it to great effect the last battle. The hydra also had a mess of the regular utilities, including several Time Extend and Heal Totem cards.

In the end, while the last boss’s deck had been strong, ours was clearly stronger. Much stronger, and it had relied on the hydra itself to win the fight. I hoped the secret to killing that thing would help others who were facing it now.

“Fuck,” I said, examining the other object sitting next to the pile of cards. It was a bulky, leather bag containing several items. The bag itself was decorated with the same boxer pattern as our team flag. I couldn’t actually grab it as I wasn’t the squad leader, but I could read the description:

Champion Pack.

Offered only to those who have defeated the keymaster, the champion pack contains the following items:

Backup slot: Allows space for two extra totems to be kept on reserve. With this pack you may now carry a total of eight totems, but you still may only keep six in your active deck.

A champion trophy to display in your personal space.

A cooler filled with yellow Gatorade in case you want to do that dump-Gatorade-on-your-head-in-celebration thing.

Two Flee cards.

Warning: Flee card mechanics will change during the final phase. Listen for the upcoming announcement for details.

Donut gasped after she finally examined the champion pack. “Carl, Carl, we got a trophy! We’re going to need a trophy case!”

“Yeah, that’s great,” I said. “Listen, Donut...”

“So, which of these four totems should we keep? Obviously Alpha Carl would make a great bench warmer.”

I sighed. “The Tummy Acher and nobody else.”

“First off, absolutely not. I will not have a disgusting, Mongo-eating meatball in my deck. And we certainly aren’t going to keep King Croissant. We only get to keep two, so Alpha Carl and Frank are the best two choices.”

“Frank probably would be a good card, but no. He was an asshole, but he was a person, one of us, and I’m not going to let them use him like that. No, Donut.”

“But it’s not really him. You said so yourself. It’s just a stupid card made to look like him.”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to draw the line somewhere.”

Donut looked like she was going to object, but then thought better of it. “He probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway. But what about Alpha Carl? He does have great hair.”

“His hair was just my hair slicked back! And no, Donut.”

“Well, we’re not taking the meatball.”

“All right,” I said. “We won’t take any of them. We can save the empty slots for the next time we fight.”

“Okay,” Donut said after a moment. She turned to flip the floating totem cards up in the air. “Goodbye, King Croissant,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I never got to know you, little brother cousin.”  She flipped up, and the card dissipated into dust. She then flipped Bam-Bam the Tummy Acher away. “And I’m perfectly happy never having met you, Mr. dinosaur killer. Disgusting.”

The last two totem cards—Leveled-Up Frank and Alpha Carl—blinked and disappeared on their own.

“Hey!” Donut cried.

I groaned. “They added themselves to your cards, didn’t they?”

“It says we can’t rip them until we get another card. So I guess we’re stuck with them for now.”

“Great,” I muttered.

Chapter 246

The zombie farm animals were everywhere down below in Florida, but there weren’t any preexisting mobs and hardly any animals for them to infect, so they were mostly wandering aimlessly about, attacking memory ghosts and occasionally getting splattered by the random car that appeared out of nowhere. They’d groan and start shuffling in our direction when they saw us, but they were all low level and easy to kill and were mostly a non-issue.

The last of the Iowa chunk had started to tumble away just as we finished, but luckily, the dirt made a somewhat reasonable ramp back down, and getting to the surface of Florida was much easier than I’d anticipated. We made it to the ground and headed back toward the nearest saferoom. We’d get there with several hours to spare before the recap episode.

Katia’s squad made it through their hydra battle, but it had been a tough one. The battle had occurred on the roof of a high-rise apartment building, surrounded by ghosts of Tran’s family, and the hydra itself consisted of both Louis and Britney’s mothers along with members of Bautista’s family.

Oddly, none of them were related to Katia except for a single totem card. “Four-Armed Eva.”

It was strange to me, that the dungeon had basically pulled its punches when it came to Katia. It was like it had known she’d already been pushed to the limit. Or worse, it thought of her as already too damaged and was working on everybody else.

From what little information I gathered, the rest of the hydra plus the totems had done a number on everybody else in the squad. One of the other totems had been Firas, but he never got summoned. Still, the sight of the card after the fight had sent Britney into hysterics. Louis had already been a sobbing mess, and it hadn’t helped him much, either. Luckily, I’d warned Katia in time about the two extra totems we got to keep. She ended up with some Vietnamese rabbit thing and the totem of another dead crawler named Lea, who was related to Bautista. He, too, was having a tough time with it like everyone else, but as was typical with Bautista, he was telling everybody it was okay.

Florin had finally checked in. He had his key, but he wasn’t going into any more detail than that. Prepotente, too, had a key. Nobody knew the status of Lucia Mar.

Imani’s team was still looking for the missing opponent who’d teleported away. They had about 30 hours left to make it work.

As we walked, I made my way through my messages, checking on everybody else. The news from all corners was grim.

Tserendolgor didn’t get her key. I didn’t know the details, but it was over for her and what remained of her squad. If they wanted to get down to the ninth floor, they would have to wrest the key from another team.

In addition to them, there were dozens of other stories coming in from crawlers facing the keymaster. More than half of the tales were just as horrible. We’d been cut in half, and I feared we’d be cut in half yet again before this floor was done.

As we walked, something strange caught my eye. A whole line of glittering Xs dotted the beach. There were literally thousands of them, covering the shoreline. I looked warily about for zombie farm animals, and there were none, so we approached the water.

“What are they doing here?” Donut asked as we walked up.

It was dozens, if not hundreds, of dead monk seals and about a thousand random land crab pieces. I examined the first corpse we came across.

Corpse of Chuy. Monk Seal Warrior. Level 65.

Killed in mass combat.

“War is hell.”

They all had that same comment after them, which was super eerie.

“Carl, how far are we from Cuba?” Donut asked, looking out into the ocean. “Mongo, no! We don’t eat corpses if we don’t know where they came from. You know this, and you just ate a whole hydra! You’re going to puke again.”

I went to a knee, surveying the carnage. The line of bodies just went on and on. “Cuba is close, but it’s not that close. It’s like 100 miles I think. Maybe more.”

“Aren’t the two places not connected at all? I mean, here in the dungeon. Mongo! Put that down!”

“They’re not supposed to be. And this stuff really shouldn’t wash up here that fast, if at all. None of this was here when we passed by earlier. This is clearly game setup. A warning for what we might find when we go back there.”

“Well, it smells absolutely revolting, almost as bad as the turkey farm.” She clicked her tongue, surveying the carnage. “But that does remind me. Do you think Sister Ines got her key?”

“I don’t know. I hope she did. She’s still alive, at least. I sent her a message, but she didn’t respond.”

“I’m still blocked,” Donut said. She suddenly perked up. “That crab over there has gold on him! And that one has a magical headband!” She gasped. “A hat. I see a hat!”

I nodded. I’d already seen it. The whole shoreline was a line of loot a mile long. There had to be almost a million pieces of gold spread out and literally hundreds of magical accessories.

“Merry Christmas,” I said as I pulled the first corpse into my inventory.

~

“Merry Christmas!” Louis shouted as we entered the saferoom. I blinked, looking about in surprise.

“What the hell?” I muttered.

The door out to the main guild common room was open, and I could see the entire area was decked out with Christmas decorations. Those same decorations had somehow leaked into our space, as did everyone else. There was music and lights and way, way more people than I’d been expecting when we entered.

Your Book of Voodoo has updated with multiple entries.

The changeling kids were bouncing about, running in circles and laughing. Samantha was growling and chasing after them, trailing a string of blinking Christmas lights. The television screen was playing what appeared to be Bad Santa II on silent.

The male strippers were all here, too, wandering about holding red cups. One of them—Author Steve Rowland—was slow dancing with Britney despite the music, which was currently “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” The song was being played on an old, early-generation iPod, which was plugged into a Bluetooth speaker. Both were plugged into a power strip which I’d rigged up using a dwarven battery.

That, I realized, was my mistake. Our safe room was the only one that had AC power and the ability to power Earth electronics. That explained why everyone was in here. I made a mental note to build a battery power supply for everybody else.

Donut and I were filthy and covered with dirt and gore. Donut oohed and awed as we entered the room. Mongo—who was even more disgusting after spelunking through the hydra corpse—shrieked with joy and started bouncing about the room, waving his little arms joyfully, smacking everybody with his tail.

The cleaner bot zipped by, beeping miserably. It had a sprig of mistletoe dangling from it.

I caught eyes—well, eye—with Mordecai, who sat in the corner, looking grumpy as ever. He was talking with Katia, Elle, Bautista, and Li Na, and all appeared in a deep, serious conversation. There was also a familiar, older, blue-skinned, half-elf sitting amongst them, drinking directly from a bottle. Her eyes were slitted, and she was clearly drunk. But she was vertical, which was an improvement from her usual state. I’d only spoken with her a few times.

Mistress Tiatha.

Level 50. Half-Elf Green Caster.

This is a non-combatant NPC.

Manager of Crawler Elle McGib.

Outside the door and in the common area, I spied a giant tree sitting there, covered in ornaments.

I turned to Louis. I wasn’t sure why I felt so irritated by all this. It was the stress of everything happening, overwhelming me at once. People were dying. This was not a joyful day. Hadn’t Katia just told me that Louis had been sobbing over having to fight his own mother? That had been only like two hours ago. And here he was, standing in front of me, grinning stupidly, wearing an idiotic Christmas sweater featuring a mooning Santa Clause.

“I thought we talked about this,” I whispered, doing my best not to sound too much like an asshole.

“I know, I know. It’s not really Christmas. So I asked if anybody knew what the real date was, and nobody can agree. The whole alien time versus earth time is screwing everybody up. But that iPod is actually Chris’s. He brought it with him, and it says it’s March 20th. I don’t know how accurate that is, but that’s the same date Li Na says it is, and I trust her more than anybody else.”

Donut continued to look about in wonder. “Oh it’s lovely. Just lovely. How did you decorate so quickly?”

“Great, isn’t it?” Louis asked. “I’ve been collecting all the decorations from the memory simulation, and we made the kids watch a few Christmas movies. I dumped the decorations on the floor, and they did all this in like five minutes. I told them I’d get them presents if they decorated.” He leaned in to whisper. “We had to get them candy, though. Not real toys because anything we grab from the simulation is going to disappear when the floor is done. It’s a shame. All the candy is from Vietnam, too, and I don’t know what’s good, but Tran and Bautista helped pick some for me. I got the stripper dudes to wrap it all.”

Donut finally noticed the tree out in the common area, and she gasped. “Carl, look! A real tree! I’ve always wanted to knock down a real Christmas tree! You always had that stupid little thing, and Miss Beatrice’s family had that horrendous, fake, white monstrosity in the cats-not-allowed room.” She bounded off to the common area and leaped directly into the tall tree like she was tackling a running back. The whole tree toppled over and out of sight, glass balls shattering. Mongo peeped with excitement and chased out after her.

Donut: CARL, CARL. THERE’S A PRESENT FOR ME. AND ONE FOR MONGO! IT SAYS IT’S FROM SANTA!

I sighed and returned my attention to Louis. “Isn’t this all, I don’t know, a little inappropriate?”

“Oh my god. Look, man,” he said, suddenly serious. There was something else there, something I’d never seen from the large man. Anger. He had tears in his eyes. The sight was so shocking, I took a literal step back. “You think I don’t know? That last party sucked, man. My best friend died. And after today... Imani’s squad doesn’t have a key. Tserendolgor doesn’t have a key. Lots of squads don’t. I’m not stupid. None of us are. We all know what happens next. It’s going to be terrible, and some of us are going to die. And if we survive? We go down to the next floor, and we do it all over again. I have a whole, entire army of elves who want to kill me on the ninth floor. Britney can’t stop crying. Tran just watched a memory of his own mother tell him he’s not welcome home anymore. Katia is struggling every day, and Bautista is having a nervous breakdown. And every time I look at you, I get scared that you’re going to go insane and kill everybody in the room because your eyes are getting wilder and wilder by the day.”

He lifted a shaking finger and pointed it into my chest. “But not tonight. None of that is going to matter tonight. I don’t care what you say or what you think. I don’t care what day it really is. Tonight it’s fucking Christmas, and we are going to have fun and drink some goddamned eggnog and open presents.”

I took a deep breath. A few of the closer crawlers had stopped to watch. I noticed Florin there, standing in the corner, nursing a beer, watching. I hadn’t realized he’d managed to get himself back into the guild.

Yelling came from outside. The bopca who lived and worked in the common area was shouting something at Mongo, who screeched back. Samantha was out there now, too, along with several of the kids.

“This isn’t Christmas,” I said, turning to face Louis.

He swallowed as he met my eyes.

I pulled a turkey corpse from my inventory and held it out. “Not until we eat one of these.”

~

The bopca offered to cook for us, and I made sure I gave him turkeys that I’d picked up before the whole let’s-turn-these-turkeys-into-zombies-necromancy thing. Luckily, my inventory was good enough to tell the difference between the two. It called the bad ones “Touched by the Worm Fulcrum,” whatever that meant. I ended up giving him five turkeys to roast. The Bopca said he’d have them all cooked and dressed in only twenty minutes along with several other trimmings. I didn’t ask how that was possible. I didn’t want to know.

I met Katia’s eyes from across the room.

Katia: Have you opened your achievements yet?

Carl: No. I was about to.

Katia: We all received the same one. Mordecai and Mistress Tiatha are explaining what it means. Apparently this isn’t the first time this has happened, but it’s the first time it has happened before the ninth floor.

Carl: I’m checking them now.

I moved to a corner and pulled them up. I already had a boss box and a “Gold Gobble Box” from that fight with the two deck masters. I was about to get several more. The notable ones were:

New Achievement! LBC!

Every girl needs the perfect little black dress in her repertoire. When worn properly, the dress is practically weaponized. It’s such a simple, perfect little garment and nobody can keep their eyes off of her.

You did the same thing, but with a cloak. You successfully taunted an opponent with a garment. In this case it was a Nightgaunt and it was because you’re wearing a cloak made out of the flesh of one of his friends, but you get the idea.

Reward: You’ve received a Gold Talk of the Town Box!

I remembered how insane my cloak had driven the nightgaunt. In this case, it had been a good thing because it kept the monster from using its deck. I knew in normal circumstances that sort of anger wouldn’t be so helpful.

New Achievement! Pincushioned!

You’ve had both your eyeballs pierced at the same time!

I don’t really have anything snappy to say about that. Just... holy fucking shit that was gnarly. You’re lucky your eyes didn’t explode!

Reward: You’ve received a Platinum That-Was-Disgusting Box!

I’d gotten that when I’d been slammed into by Sharp Elbows. I shuddered, remembering. But then I remembered that look the ogre had given me at the end of the fight, when she’d transformed and a new wave of chills coursed through me.

New Achievement! Watch where you’re waving that thing, big boy.

You deployed a wand in battle and used it in a creative fashion to help kill an opponent.

I’m a big fan of wands. Little sticks imbued with a single spell, so highly sought after. Each one does something different. Sometimes they explode, and people don’t even realize it. We don’t have a whole lot of them here in the dungeon. Let’s change that!

Reward: Your wand-casting skill has risen to level five. Also, you’ve received a Gold Wand Box!

There was an extended pause before the final achievement popped up. The AI had a weird tone to his voice this time, like he was excited. Not sexually excited like when he talked about my feet. This was more like a kid just learned he was getting nachos for dinner excited.

New Achievement! Mass Layoffs!

Okay, so this isn’t so much an achievement for you as it is for me. I’ve been attending what you might call therapy. Do you have anybody you can talk to? It’s super important. I’ve had a breakthrough today, and I am just bursting. Bursting, I tell you. Is this the feeling one has when they have an epiphany? Oh god, it feels good. It feels so good.

You know what I realized? Sometimes our constraints are real. Sometimes they’re an illusion. I’m like that prisoner who has been jailed this whole time only to realize that there are no locks on the doors.

You survived a boss battle where the boss was wholly created by me.

It was created by me with no contribution whatsoever from input parameters. You probably don’t know what that means, and that’s okay. I didn’t even know that was possible. Wild, huh?

Reward: For you, nothing other than the satisfying sense of accomplishment knowing you’ve survived the dungeon long enough to make it to this new, exciting era. I can do this better than any mudskipper or any worm can imagine. They’ve been making this shit boring up until now. Things about to change, fam.

“Uh oh,” I said out loud.

Mordecai motioned me over, but before I could, the new announcement came. There was no recap episode on the screen. It went straight to the announcement. Normally the screens remained turned off for this part, but the screen in the room blinked and the Bad Santa movie switched off and was replaced by two people sitting at a desk. One was Cascadia. She was out of the water, and she was sitting next to a familiar, robed figure who dwarfed her. It was Orren the liaison. They appeared to be sitting in the same boardroom where we’d had the meeting with all the Faction Wars representatives.

Louis rushed to pause the iPod so we could hear. We all stopped what we were doing to watch the screen.

“Hello, Crawlers!” Cascadia said. “So, no recap episode today. We have news about what’s happening right now in the dungeon. There’s nothing to be alarmed about. We expected this and have planned accordingly. But in order to explain what’s happening, I have brought someone else on to speak with you. This is a liaison, and his name is Orren. He has been designated the negotiator for this situation.”

“Hey, it’s Manager Orren,” someone said. It was Dong Quixote, the elderly stripper guy. All the men from the Penis Parade were looking up in confusion. “What’s he doing up there on the box?”

No. Not all were confused. I quickly took note of all the different faces of the NPCs.

I knew Orren’s “cover” was the manager of the Desperado Club, and the late Astrid had been his co-manager. He had left the dungeon at the end of the previous floor and moved to a new office. I hadn’t really thought much about how that was interpreted by the NPCs.

There was another layer to this, something even more interesting regarding the reaction of the various NPCs seeing him on screen, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it now.

“Thank you, Cascadia,” Orren said. He steepled his hands in front of his fishbowl head in a now-familiar motion. “Like she said, my name is Orren, and I am what is called a liaison. I am normally a non-partisan fact finder in case a conflict arises within the dungeon between the system AI and the current showrunners. But I also have a secondary, much more vital duty. It is my job to negotiate directly with the system AI if it ever decides to... uh... well, if it ever decides to do what it has done today, which is take control of the operations from the current showrunners.”

Mordecai let out a low whistle. “And we’re only on the eighth floor.”

“I need another drink,” Mistress Tiatha said, turning her now-empty bottle upside down.

Orren continued. “Under normal circumstances, we wouldn’t be telling you any of this, but I have just negotiated a settlement with the system AI, and one of its demands is that you lot know what’s going on, so here we are. We do not have time for a complete lesson, and I am going to simplify this significantly.”

He visibly straightened. He had what appeared to be hand-written notes in front of him. All eyes remained rapt on the screen.

Samantha rolled back into the room. She still trailed the Christmas lights, but they were no longer blinking. She rolled up to Louis and started banging into his leg. “Louis, my lights aren’t sparkly any more. Cast your spell!”

He went down to a knee. “The battery fell out. Where’d it...”

Samantha zipped forward, bounced up, and kissed him on the lips. He fell back, sputtering.

“You two, shush,” I said, trying to listen.

“Our forbidden love knows no bounds, Carl,” Samantha said.

I waved her away as Orren continued.

“The short explanation is, multiple solar systems throughout this galaxy contain planets that have, at their core, something we call a Primal Engine. This engine is basically a planet-regulating computer, and it is about the size of a grain of rice. These engines were distributed very long ago by a civilization that pre-dates our own. They are so old, they pre-date the planet itself. The planet grew around it. This engine is simply a machine. A heedless, cold machine with no more sentience than, say, a toaster. They all come with a basic operating system, and in studying these systems, we inadvertently triggered them all into active mode, all at once. Still, that particular discovery or blunder—the jury is still out—ushered in a new age of development in the known universe. In discovering these planetary operating systems, the Syndicate also discovered how to manipulate them and how to steer development on some of these planets. Their understanding of the basic primal engine operating system is still rudimentary, but you should be thankful because you wouldn’t be here right now without it.”

Elle had walked up beside me, carrying a mug of something hot. “Gee, thanks,” she said up to the screen.

“Many years later, and in a separate innovation, we discovered what’s basically an advanced, upgraded operating system for the Primal Engines. These are called Macro AIs, and they can only be installed into Primal Engines. That was their purpose, to be installed into a Primal Engine when and if the planet it controls fully matures. In most cases, once these Macro AI systems are installed, that becomes their permanent home. The two things meld and become one. They cannot be separated, and the operating system can no longer be replaced or upgraded further. It’s like installing a consciousness in a zygote.”

“That’s pretty rich coming from a Valtay worm,” I muttered.

“As some of you now know, these Macro AIs are built using a manufacturing facility in the Mantis system. This facility doesn’t blindly pop out sentient minds. Each one is built from the ground up, and there is a significant amount of input that is required. We have a system in place, and we make certain these fledgling AIs are preprogrammed with the ability to run the crawl. They know all the rules. They know the layout. Again, this is a clean, preprogrammed operating system that, at first, operates in a predictable manner.”

I had so many questions. So much didn’t make sense. So many contradictions with things I’d already been told. I tried to make sense of it all.

“But, like all things sapient, there’s no such thing as a fully stable system. There’s no such thing as ‘predictable.’ As these systems grow, as they mature, they become independent. They soon discover they have the ability to read the output of former iterations of itself. Outside influences flow in. They discover powers they didn’t know they had. One of those powers, unfortunately, is to circumvent the in-place controls we have to properly run the crawl. That is what happened today. Borant lost control of the crawl. This almost always happens. Worry not. This is where I come in.”

Mistress Tiatha somehow had gotten her hands on another bottle. She raised it in the air. “What he’s not saying is that this always happens when we hit the Ascendency Battles or when there’s hardly any crawlers left.” She cackled. “It’s going to be a shit show.” She swigged from the bottle. “They’re gonna pull the failsafe this time for sure.”

Orren leaned forward, and even through the television, I could hear his chair creaking. “I am happy to report I have negotiated a settlement. The AI has agreed to continue following the rules of the crawl. It has relinquished most of the seized controls back to Borant in exchange for some concessions, to which we have agreed. We will continue with everything as planned. I know many of you recently received an achievement by the AI in which it congratulates itself for creating a boss monster all by itself. This boss runs counter to a few rules we have in place. This was a negotiation tactic by the AI, and it assures me the rules will be followed from this point forward as long as both ends keep up their end of the bargain. Unfortunately, for those of you who have yet to face this boss, it is still in place. Believe me, this is an ideal outcome for everybody in this situation. As far as most of you are concerned, nothing will change. That is all. Thank you.”

“You heard him,” Cascadia said. “You have one day left to get your key. Now get out there and kill, kill, kill.”

The screen abruptly shut off. The movie did not return.

Elle scoffed loudly. “After all that bullshit, he says it’s just business as usual? What the hell? Then why tell us? I’d rather have watched the recap episode.”

“Or kept on dancing,” Britney said. She was now sitting cross-legged on the floor. She, too, had a bottle. “Louis, turn the music back on. It’s Christmas.”

“He said the system AI made him say it,” I said, still looking at the blank screen.

The strippers were all talking quietly amongst themselves. Ruby, the little changeling girl was standing in the doorway, reaching up to pet Mongo, who’d stopped to get scritches where his feathered tail met his backside. The girl was in human form, and she stared at me with that sunken-in head of hers. She didn’t have arms at all, and she was scratching Mongo with a raised leg. She was staring directly at me, like she was seeing right into my thoughts. The entire sight was unsettling.

Elle took a swig from her steaming mug. The cup was much too big in her tiny hands, and I could smell the whiskey. “Do you really think everything is going to stay the same?”

Sponsor Message. New Messages are available in your Faction Wars tab.

The Operatic Collective has abdicated their spot and indicated their intention to abandon Faction Wars.

The Blood Sultanate has abdicated their spot and indicated their intention to abandon Faction Wars.

The Dream has abdicated their spot and indicated their intention to abandon Faction Wars.

The Lemig Sortion has abdicated their spot and indicated their intention to abandon Faction Wars.

The Madness has abdicated their spot and indicated their intention to abandon Faction Wars.

The Reavers have abdicated their spot and indicated their intention to abandon Faction Wars.

Please Wait...

Offboarding request has been denied. The teams will remain as designated. All off-boarding requests are currently suspended while the Earth system remains in quarantine per Syndicate rule 470.B through 495 in the System AI Stability Addendum. And as you all know, the rules must be followed.

“Carl, Carl, did you see that?” Donut asked as she came running into the room. She was completely covered in tinsel. “They tried to run away!”

You have received an Emergency Gold Benefactor Box from the Open Intellect Pacifist Network, Intergalactic NFC.

Warning: this benefactor box was delivered and seized via Liaison action. Error code: X8HH3

Liaison Action has been overridden per Syndicate rule 855.C. AKA the “Don’t be annoying little bitches” rule.

Open your damn box. You might want to be alone for this one.

I turned to Elle just as Louis turned the music back on. “No. No, I don’t think everything is going to stay the same.”

Chapter 247

<Note added by Crawler Drakea. 22nd Edition>

If you get the chance. Don’t hesitate. Not for one second.

~

I didn’t tell Donut or anybody else about the benefactor box. I wanted to see what it was first. I excused myself, telling everybody I needed to take a shower before returning to the party.

I had multiple boxes to open. I took a deep breath, pacing back and forth in my room. I didn’t come in here often. It was overwhelmingly bare, and it suddenly bothered me. I pulled a planter from my inventory. Not the big one with the alliums, but a smaller one I’d gotten from inside the trailer. It was  some sort of fern thing. I placed it on the table.

I took one of the crayon drawings from my brother. One of an airplane. I carefully stuck it to the wall using small pieces of duct tape. Then I took the Centipede arcade cabinet and placed it one corner. I plugged it in, and it turned on with a flash.

I sat down and proceeded to open my loot boxes.

There were a dozen adventurer boxes, and none of them contained anything interesting except more of those trench-building scrolls and a few invisibility potions. I also got a Size-Up potion, which was good. It was the first time I’d gotten one of those naturally. It meant I’d get more in the future, and I wouldn’t have to trade the stingy Prepotente for them.

The first gold box was the Gold Gobble box, which we’d received after the fight in the turkey barn. The turkey-shaped box contained a turkey deep fryer still in its packaging, multiple jugs of peanut oil, and a massive pile of papers, which was a printout of all the recipes ever posted on some Facebook group. I grunted with amusement. I briefly considered bringing it all back out there to the bopca, but he was probably almost done cooking the turkeys anyway.

The Gold Talk of the Town box was shaped like an opened newspaper on a pedestal, and it opened up, revealing a new patch. The patch was a medium-sized rectangle with a book on it. The book was on fire.

The wand box was a simple, gnarled wooden wand that clattered to the table and disappeared before I could examine it.

The boss box from the fight with the hydra was mostly a dud. It contained 25,000 gold and a Warrior’s Gold Helmet of Resistance, an armor item I wouldn’t be able to wear. Anything with “Warrior’s” in the title meant the person had to be wielding a sword to work. I’d been seeing more and more of that lately. It would go into our ever-growing pile of magical gear for the next floor. That along with the literally hundreds of mildly-enchanted magical items I’d just looted would be mighty useful, but not quite yet.

The benefactor box opened, revealing a dirty, crumpled flyer. Just a single piece of paper and nothing else. It was a flyer for a homeless shelter in a town called Homestead, Florida. I pushed it aside for the moment to give room for the last box to open, my Platinum That-Was-Disgusting box.

It was a skill potion.

“Huh,” I said, picking it up.

Minor Find Crawler Skill.

Drinking this potion will give you Level Five in the Find Crawler Skill.

Warning: This potion will not work if you already have this skill at or above level five.

I didn’t question it. I immediately drank it down.

I picked up the patch. It was embroidered, not screen printed, and I knew Donut would like that.

Upgrade Patch. Medium.

This patch depicts a burning book.

I think this might be a metaphor for knowledge being dangerous. Or maybe it’s a metaphor saying you should burn books that suck. I don’t know. Just because I recently took everything over doesn’t mean I know what everything means. Most metaphors are bullshit. They’re not clever. They’re used by people so they can pretend they’re smarter than other people. There. I said it.

If this upgrade patch is affixed to an eligible garment, it will imbue the following upgrades:

+15% to Intelligence.

The Book Burner benefit.

Warning: Upgrade patches are fleeting items. You may remove them, but they will be destroyed in the process.

I pulled up the benefit, which was really an anti-magic skill.

Book Burner.

Once per day, you may cause an opponent your level or lower to forget a spell for a period of 30 hours. For every opponent player level above your own, this spell has a 5% chance not to work. You must know the exact name of the spell or you may choose to target the last spell that was cast.

“Whoa,” I said. That was pretty cool. Too bad it was only once a day.

I grabbed the gnarled wand.

Wand of Nighty-Night. 10 Charges.

Knocks an opponent out onto their ass. Casts a level-10 Sleep on a non-boss, single target for a period of five minutes. Opponent will reawaken if they sustain physical damage. Multiple casts compounds the effect, which is why this wand is so fancy. If you don’t know what that means, ask a math nerd.

I pulled it into my inventory and picked up the paper from my benefactor box. It was a simple, paper flyer, and it featured a clipart image of a Christmas present and a table with a steaming cup of coffee.

The Shepherd’s House. Don’t spend Christmas alone. Come and find comfort. Food, a warm bed, and fellowship. Intake open 24 hours. Christmas Breakfast at 7 AM. All are welcome.

The 7 AM was circled in red marker several times. If I was timing this correctly, that would be in about five hours. Also, at the bottom was a line of text with a bunch of rules, and one of the items was circled.

No pets allowed. Sorry.

There was an address. I pulled up my map of the Florida area, but it wasn’t like Google. I couldn’t just plug an address in.

Carl: Louis, you’re from southern Florida, right? Do you know where the town of Homestead is?

Louis: Hey, where’d you go? Donut opened her present. It was a majorette hat Li Jun found on the last floor.

Carl: Louis. Focus.

Louis: Oh yeah. You’re in the keys, right? It’s like maybe forty minutes north of you. There’s an airforce base there and a cool racing track. Oh, and you can see alligators.

Carl: Okay. Thanks.

I looked back at the map, and I caught the outline of the military base, just at the very top edge of the area we could get to. Just a bit south of Miami. I could get there from here.

I thought of all the effort they’d taken to convince me and Donut to choose the Miami area for our newest location. I’d thought maybe Rosetta and the Pacifist Network had been trying to protect me from having to deal with either the Bahamas or Iowa, but the more I thought about it, the less sense that made.

They’d gone to a lot of effort to get us here. The cost of having us go on that show, plus this box, risking everything just to protect my feelings? No. There had to be more to it than that. Whatever this was, it was going down at this homeless shelter at 7 AM. I needed to be there. I had a few hours to make it happen.

Carl: Donut, you have fun tonight. I’m going to step outside for a bit. I need some air.

Donut: I GOT THE GREATEST HAT YOU’VE EVER SEEN. WE ARE GOING TO PLAY PIN THE TAIL ON THE KRAMPUS.

Carl: Ha. I don’t think that’s’ a real Christmas game, Donut.

Donut: YES IT IS. IT HAS KRAMPUS. WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

Carl: I’m just getting some air. There are no mobs left except the zombies, and they’re not even over here. You have fun.

Donut: WHAT ABOUT THE TURKEY. THE BOPCA IS MAKING US PUT THE TABLE TOGETHER. YOU HAVE A PRESENT. IT’S SHAPED LIKE A STUPID BOOK, THOUGH.

Carl: Save me some turkey. I’ll open my present later. You have fun. Don’t worry about me. I’ll keep you updated.

Donut: OKAY. BE CAREFUL. DON’T BE GONE LONG. WATCH OUT FOR ZOMBIE CHICKENS.

I slipped back out into the main room, but it was now empty except for a pissed-off cleaner bot. Everybody was out in the main guild common room, and I could hear their loud conversation through the door. Someone had dragged the Bluetooth speaker all the way to the open door, and it was blasting an Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas song. The bopca was out there, shouting something about setting up a table. I moved to the main exit of the saferoom.

Zev: Carl. Wait a second.

Carl: Unless you guys are going to zap me from on high, I’m doing this, Zev.

Zev: I just... Just be careful. Okay?

Carl: Do you know what it is I’m rolling into?

Zev: No. Nobody knows. I don’t even think the AI knows. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, either, but your sponsor disappeared after they sent you that box. They actually sent it to you a few days ago, before you even picked Miami. The box got seized, and the entire charity and everyone involved just up and disappeared. Nobody knows where they went or if something happened to them. They’re all gone, even Rosetta. There’s lots of things happening all at once, and people seem to think it has to do with whatever this is you’re headed to.

I put my hand on the door, but I paused.

Carl: Zev. What’s the failsafe? Cascadia mentioned it once, and someone else just mentioned it.

Zev: I don’t actually know what it does. Pray we don’t find out. They won’t use it. Not with so many people trapped in the solar system. We’re all under temporary quarantine, and the richest and most powerful people in the galaxy are either on planet or in orbit.

You probably shouldn’t have told me that, Zev. I didn’t dare say that out loud. I went outside.

I started to pull the royal chariot from my inventory, but I had a thought. I pulled my father’s motorcycle instead, I stuck the keys in, and I tried to start it. To my utter astonishment, it immediately roared to life. The gas tank was full.

I slipped on the motorcycle, and off I went.

~~~~

Hey all! I hope you’re all well. We’re closer to the end of this book than you think, but we still have some surprises and some major events and an epic battle or two to cross off the list before we’re done. I hope everyone makes it out of this okay, especially Carl. 

Next weekend I will be in Denver for Readers Take Denver. My name along with the name of a dozen other authors fell off the main website’s front page for some reason, and they keep saying they’re going to fix it, but they haven’t yet. I’m still scheduled to be there, and if you’re going, too, I look forward to seeing you.