Chapters 258, 259, and 260 (Patreon)

Okay guys. As we approach the end, there’s going to be several minor and a handful of large-ish retcons in order to make things fit better. Most of these aren’t absolutely necessary for y’all to read and understand the upcoming chapters, but some of this stuff is gonna come out of left field without some setup, so here’s a change log.

Changes/Additions:

*Before going down the stairs, Florin noted the stairwell was the round portal style, not the actual, physical stairs.

*Louis attempted to make sure everybody ate one meal a day together. Carl was missing it constantly because he was so busy, but he wanted to try better. His breakfast food box was stuck giving him only sausage breakfast sandwiches. Louis’ was stuck giving him only Captain Crunch. Added more about Bautista’s backstory. He ran a tea shop with his family. Katia would cook for everyone and Bautista would make tea. Elle and Imani especially love his tea. Carl is not a fan.

*Added several mentions of the Ring of Divine suffering throughout. Carl contemplated using it on Ren or Khulan, like he did with Miriam Dom, but decided against it for several reasons. It’s cumbersome to use on this floor, but he noted he’d be able to tag multiple marks at the same time on the next floor with it.

*Added things about the bard patron system. Most bard classes have patrons, similar to the cleric/god system, but much less dangerous. (Donut didn’t have a patron last floor because she was a ‘legendary’ diva. She didn’t need it.)

*Added several passages regarding the mercenary barracks and training arcade. Discussion of Donut’s Minion Army spell. Actually, I will add that entire section below.

(This is an excerpt from Chapter 250 that has been added in. I was going to add it as a flashback, but it’s not really necessary to do it that way and stuck it back in its proper spot)

Excerpt:

I spent some time in the Mercenary Arcade, the training room where the strippers were spending their time, working out, honing their fighting skills, and practicing with the myriad of weapons we’d collected from the hunters. The room was significantly larger and could do a lot more than I had anticipated. The AI drill sergeant was the same guy from the regular training room, and multiple instances of him appeared across the room. The difference was, the AI guy was literally killing them sometimes, only for them to regenerate a minute later, just like it had been with Growler Gary. They were also practicing fighting each other to the death, which was ridiculously fucked up, but I imagined it was a great way to train yourself up if you ignored the trauma of dying over and over. I wouldn’t be safe in here, the system warned, but I could spar against them if I wanted. That was probably a bad idea, so I just watched them beat the shit out of each other.

There was a magical healer on hand also, but again, the healer wouldn’t work on myself. Just the mercenaries. I watched each of them in turn. They were all pretty efficient with their weapons of choice. Dong Quixote, of course, was walking around with an actual lance, which was ridiculous because he didn’t have a horse. He asked me more than once to get him a mount. I told him I’d try. Author Steve Rowland, the troll guy, insisted on using a club. Gluteus Maxx, who was a short, hairy muscle man, insisted on using twin war gauntlets to punch things.

But not all of them were melee fighters. Splash Zone, the hair metal-looking lizard guy, appeared to be a powerful water mage. Doctor Bones, the skeletal creature who hadn’t been a stripper but the club’s announcer and DJ, actually had several crowd control spells. I watched as he practiced against a horde of miniature versions of the AI trainer. He cast a spell, and one by one, they turned into minions. I walked up to the talking skeleton and watched him for a bit. The system listed him as a Level-90 Skin Skellie Bard.

“What’s the difference between a regular skellie and a skin skellie?” I asked.

He shrugged, and it sounded like a bunch of drumsticks being clacked together. “A skin skellie can grow flesh and organs. It all eventually falls off, and it makes me more vulnerable to certain types of damage and diseases, so I don’t do it too often. Mostly when they needed a backup dancer at the club. Or if I needed to entertain my patron. She was more comfortable when I had flesh.”

His regular talking voice was not what I was expecting, especially after hearing him announce the dancers and chastise the patrons at the strip club. That was his stage voice, I realized. His real voice was almost that of a soft-spoken college professor.

“Patron?” I asked.

“I’m a bard. Most bards have a patron. They give us money and supplies in exchange for entertaining them every once in a while.” He took a finger and made an in-and-out sliding motion. His finger bones clacked together.

Donut had been a bard on the previous floor, and she hadn’t had to choose a patron, but I did remember Mordecai talking a bit about that previously. Some regular bard classes used the patron system. It was a bit like the paladin or cleric/deity system, but a lot less dangerous. You couldn’t get smote by a pissed-off patron.

“Who is your patron?”

“She was Astrid. Now it’s you.”

“Oh,” I said. That actually gave rise to more questions, but I wasn’t going to pursue it. It was suddenly awkward. “So, anyway, I was watching you practice that mind control thing you were doing.”

“It’s a type of military charm,” he said. “It only works on the weak minded. That is why I am training with it.”

“It’s really impressive. How long does the effect last?” I asked.

“It depends. If they’re weak, it pretty much lasts forever. I am attempting to hone it so it can work against stronger subjects.”

“What is the spell called? Donut has one that’s similar, but she hasn’t tried it yet. It’s called Minion Army.”

“Minion Army is a battlefield sabotage spell, and it’s quite effective, but it has a long casting time, and it is temporary,” Doctor Bones said. “This one is simply called Conscript.”

A sudden sense of revulsion ran through me. I read about that spell, more than once. It was used quite a bit against crawlers on the ninth floor. It wouldn’t work if they’d already pledged themselves to a specific army. Most factions spent a lot of resources making sure they had somebody who could cast that spell at level-15. Part of the reason why we bought the Faction Wars team was to negate their ability to basically enslave crawlers to their cause.

“What else do you got?” I asked.

“I have some of the same spells as you, actually, at least according to Princess Donut.” He straightened. “Some are even more powerful than yours.”

“Really?” I asked, intrigued. “Tell me about it.”

~

Carl: Elle. I’d ask this of Imani, but I don’t want to bother her right now. How many mercenaries can we hold?

Elle: You should ask her. She could use the distraction. But the barracks can hold 20. Between your strippers and Mordecai’s day care, we’re pretty full up. Each individual party can hire more, too, and they can get housed in each individual safe space, like you did with the rock monster guys. But they gotta be housed in the communal barracks to be allowed to train and gain levels in the mercenary arcade.

Carl: Is there an upgrade that’ll let us expand the barracks?

Elle: We can up it to 100, but you gotta sell a kidney to get it. It’ll cost almost five million gold, and that’s with Donut’s discount. Between all these upgrades and everyone spending all their money in the card training arena, we’re pretty tapped out. I think it upgrades on its own when we go down a floor.

Carl: Okay. Thanks for the info. Listen. I’m gonna, uh, lock the door to the mercenary arcade with the strippers inside. Don’t let me forget to let them out. We’re gonna release them in a few days, but in the meantime we need to buy that upgrade before the floor collapses. I’ll try to get the money somehow. Make sure every individual team has as much space as they can. We’re gonna fill every spot if we can.

Elle: What the hell are you up to?

Carl: It’s a team building exercise. The DJ guy is in on it. Don’t be alarmed if you see him. He had to give himself flesh, so he looks a bit different.

Elle: You know what. I don’t even want to know. I’ll make sure we all have space.

(Okay, on to our regularly scheduled chapters.)



Chapter 258

<Note added by crawler Milk, 6th Edition>

Even though you can sometimes move the platforms upon which the stairwells sit, you cannot put the exit portal into your inventory. You can’t bring a stairwell into your saferoom. I watched one get hit by an Utter Annihilation wand, and it remained unscathed. I believe that means they are indestructible.

<Note added by crawler Herot, 16th Edition>

Milk is correct here about the stairwells. It states in the rules manual that while stairwells may be gated until certain conditions are met, the stairwells themselves are not allowed to be removed from the playing field.

<Note added by crawler Rosetta, 9th Edition>

The only way for a crawler to move from one floor to the next is via a stairwell. That’s it. It is an unbreakable rule. There is no skipping floors. At the end of Faction Wars, after the viceroys pulled out their last minute victory, a portal appeared, and several of the remaining fucks stepped within. It was all of them. The orcs, the viceroys, the operatics, even the nagas, all together, laughing as if they weren’t just bathing in each other’s entrails the day before. It appeared it was taking them to another part of the dungeon. Some sort of nightclub on a different floor for a victory party. They dragged several unwilling NPCs with them, including the librarian elves from the college, whose help was instrumental in our survival. A crawler tried to jump through the portal to save the NPCs, and he was stopped like it was a wall of glass. He tried casting a spell through the portal, but it did not work, though the attempt did catch the attention of the orc prince. The orc stepped back through the glass into the smoldering remains of Larracos, lassoed the crawler, and returned to the portal. The rope pulled itself within, and it cut the crawler in half. We watched as the orc and his friends laughed, just there on the other side of the glass. It was the last crawler they killed, of the thousands who fell during that pointless game.

Tonight, I will dream of watching them burn. Tonight, I will pretend I was smart enough to find a way to lance them from afar.

Comrades, I hope you help me realize my dream one day.

~

“It’s absolutely ridiculous they can just break the doors,” Donut said as we ran. Samantha, having sent the zombies wandering off in the wrong direction, was looping back to meet us one street over. “How can they even break the stairwells anyway? One of them was on a submarine that got eaten by a shark and then blown up, and it was just fine. It’s not fair! I thought it was always supposed to be winnable. If they make it impossible, what’s the point? It’s cheating!”

We were running toward the church. We would have to skirt past the demon atop the building. We didn’t have time to go the long way. The building loomed. The demon, after being forced to beckon us, had resumed shooting fire straight up into the air. The tornado of demon seagulls grew by the moment. The ground immediately around the building was a sea of red dots, all possessed zombie demons.

I was in the chat with Sister Ines, insisting I was on my way, but there was no way I’d voluntarily walk into that trap. We had to get to the church before she set her demons to trash the doorway.

I stomped heavily onto a zombie fish, splattering it. We continued on our way, crossing over a massive pileup of cars. Ahead, Samantha appeared, lowering into an alleyway. She’d stolen a shawl thing from a vendor’s booth, and it hung over her head.

I grunted as I stomped another zombie fish. The things were everywhere, flopping all about. “Ines isn’t threatening to break the stairwell. Just the doorway to the stairwell, and the only reason she hasn’t done it yet is because it’s in a church. It’s not a portal, and we know the stairwells are actually right there. We can see them on the map. Just the doors themselves are magical, and the walls surrounding it, too. It’s confusing, but the stairwell chambers themselves are fine. We’re not the only ones this happened to. Did you see Katia’s message in the group chat?”

A group of former daughters who’d ended up in Turkey had managed to kill another crawler and take the key, but the same thing had happened. They’d fought their battle right in front of the door, and it’d damaged the exit. Their key had disappeared right after they’d gotten it. There were several instances now of crawlers threatening to destroy the doorways if an opposing team didn’t give up their key. Those who’d already gone down had the right idea. It was getting uglier by the moment.

This whole floor had been designed to turn us against one another, and it was working.

The event with the zombies wasn’t just happening here, either, though it seemed we had the worst of it. The demon eviction event was worldwide. My entire chat was filled with people dealing with zombies all over all the coastal regions, which in turn meant they were having to deal with demons, too. Donut said she’d already received a string of swears from Prepotente, who blamed me for this.

“Does that mean we can dig through the rubble, and the stairwell might be down there?” Donut asked.

“Maybe. I doubt it, but that’s what I’m hoping. The daughter team are digging now, looking for it. If they find it, they’ll let everybody know, and we’ll do the same thing if we can. Maybe we can blow up the building ourselves, and the stairs will just be there, open. Like when we couldn’t get through the magical door during the Remex quest on the third floor. We just blew up the building to get inside.”

“If that does work, I bet Ren would feel really stupid about bowing out early.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” I said.

“I suppose you’re right. It took literally dying for her to finally admit she was wrong.”

I had serious doubts digging for the chamber would work. That seemed too easy. The keys were the way out, and losing them was pretty much the same as dying. Donut had a point about it not being fair, but like Mordecai had said so many times, the dungeon was self-balancing, and it messed with the rules to keep the drama ratcheted up. We’d skipped an entire floor. There were more crawlers alive at the beginning of this floor than they’d been expecting. This was a way to cull us down.

It was an uncomfortable thought. When we’d started this floor, there’d been over 38,000 crawlers left alive. Mordecai hadn’t said anything about it, but sometime in the past few weeks he’d turned off the surviving number of crawlers from displaying in the personal space. I deliberately didn’t look at it when we entered regular safe rooms. I didn’t want to know.

We’d been dying off faster than usual up until the start of the sixth floor, which was usually one of the deadliest. That was when we’d really started working together and had turned things around. Without anyone actually dying on the seventh, the dungeon had some catching up to do.

I wasn’t certain what our survival count was at the moment, but I did know what the numbers were for several instances of previous seasons at the start of the ninth.

The average number of crawlers who stepped onto the ninth floor was just south of 8,000. I knew of one where it was only 500.

What was worse, less than 1,000 crawlers usually made it to the 10th. Sometimes, it was zero. For the 11th floor, the average was less than 10 crawlers. Very few chose to push on instead of making deals.

There was an essay on this in the cookbook, written by Herot, who posited the focus of the fans shifted once Faction Wars finished. While top tier crawlers would have diehard followers, much of the attention shifted to the intrigue and scheming and positioning of the individual elites preparing for the Ascendency game. The crawlers themselves were treated more like sands in an hourglass. The moment the last one died or took a deal, the Ascendency game would start, and the timing of that moment could change everything.

No, I decided. Those of us without keys were pretty much already dead. All of this stuff with the demons and zombies was just a way to make those deaths interesting.

The temperature was now sweltering. We were only two blocks from the tall, wide building that housed the snake atop it.

“What is that thing doing?” Donut asked. “Isn’t that snake thing supposed to be a water goddess or something?”

“No clue,” I said. I leaped past a street vendor cart, but my foot caught it, and it tumbled over, spilling what smelled like coconut cookies everywhere. “Samantha, do you know what he’s casting?”

“He is fighting the charm spell,” Samantha said. “He’s not as strong because he’s in the body of that snake lady. He’s probably really embarrassed that he’s being controlled like that. The ladies in the harem will probably make fun of him. It’s a bad look. Do you like my new headband?”

“It is quite lovely,” Donut said. She shot a magic missile at a zombie crab, and it exploded before it could warn the others.

“So, you don’t think Sister Ines has full control over him?” I asked. “The fire is because of the charm spell?”

“He is casting a spell to get home. It’s a portal. They try casting it a lot in the Nothing, but it doesn’t work there because he needs to suck a lot of souls in for it to work. It’ll probably work here, though.”

Oh, shit. “A portal spell? Like the ones the other demons cast when they touch people?”

Samantha was suddenly chewing on one of those coconut cookies, and she had crumbles all over her face. “Yeah. Same sort of thing, but he’s a big boy and big boys need big doors and lots of souls. Plus it’ll be in the sky above, not the ground, and it’ll suck everything up like that cute but sad metal guy you have floating in your house that slurps up bags of potato chips and cleans when Mongo tinkles on the couch.”

I looked up at the sky, and the red cloud from the fire was right above our head and was growing slowly. Uh-oh.

“He’s trying to cast the spell, but Sister Ines is controlling him also? I don’t understand. Is she making him cast this?”

“No. I think the Donut-looking lady isn’t strong enough to control him. I think she’s trying to stop him, but he’s casting it anyway. She’s not strong enough to even be doing what she’s doing now, so she’s gotta have some help. She probably worships another god.”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “We just fought her, and I would’ve seen if she worshiped a new god. She’s not going to willingly do that. It’s a thing for her.”

Imani: Holy shit, Carl. One of the ram guys and a mantaur just came out of the temple and tried to fight one of the pleasure demons. I watched the whole thing. The demon cast something, and it pulled all three of them down and away. The demons have a ranged hell portal attack. It left a hole in the ground the size of a hot tub. The portal is still there. It’s sucking everything around into it like it’s a black hole. It’s a one-minute portal, and it says “Entrance to Sheol, Floor 15.” It’s literally pulling bricks off the walls of the building. Wait, something is happening.

Carl: Fuck me. Keep me updated.

“We need to be extra careful,” I said to Donut. “The full-strength demons don’t need to touch you to drag you to hell. They also have a portal attack. It sounds like it’s wide, too, so they don’t have to be super precise. The hole hits the ground and sucks everything in.”

“Oh my God, Carl. So we have holes flying around everywhere? Holes on the ground and a giant vacuum in the sky? How are we supposed to fight against that?”

“We can’t. We have to get them to suck other NPCs or mobs away first. The demons go away if they also bring something down with them.”

“All the NPCs are dead! It’s just zombies! Do those count? I haven’t seen a real NPC since we got into the city!”

“I’m pretty sure regular zombies and undead don’t count. They have to be corporeal NPCs or crawlers. We gotta find some somewhere.”

“What about the ghommid village?” Donut asked. “It’s just two blocks over!”

“They’re undead,” I said. “It won’t work.”

Imani: Okay. Another ram cleric came out and avoided the first hole, but another demon attacked. That one opened a second portal and sucked the new cleric in, but the demon is still here. He’s shouting at the entrance of the temple, demanding someone else come out and face him. It says “One of Two” over the second portal. He hasn’t seen me yet. He’s waiting right outside.

Carl: It sounds like the bigger demons need to banish two souls in order to return. Don’t risk it. Stay in the saferoom.

Imani: I wonder how many the giant one needs?

I was just wondering the same thing.

Carl: How many demons are left in the church?

Imani: Just one inside, and there’s more outside. They’re congregating in the area outside the church, and I can only see so much from my position here. I can’t tell how many. It’s not a whole lot, but it’s more than five. It still says they’re minions of Sister Ines, but they’re obviously jumping at the chance to use their portal skills to escape back down to the 15th floor.

Carl: Okay. I have an idea, but you gotta do it away from the exit. A while back I, uh, locked the stripper guys in the training arcade. They’re probably pretty pissed about it by now. They’re helping me with something for the next floor. Mordecai will catch you up, but as soon as you see what I did, you’ll understand. That should get rid of the demons. It’ll hopefully clear up the church area.

Imani: I’m on it.

While I waited, I pulled up the group chats, and they were full of people dealing with an influx of demons. This was even happening to people away from coastal regions. In typical dungeon fashion, it’d spread over everything faster than really possible. I scanned until I saw the information I was looking for.

Rezan: By god. Masoud is dead! He got touched by a zombie polecat that was possessed by a demon! It just touched his foot, and it tried to pull him away through a portal. The demon went through the hole, but Masoud exploded when he touched it! He blew up just like my mother did when she went into the bathroom on the first floor!

Mandla: If it’s like the bathrooms, you don’t explode when you touch the portal. All of your equipment is sucked through, but you aren’t allowed to pass, and everything you’re wearing passes through you to get into the hole. It’s like a portal trap. If it’s caught in the portal’s pull, it’s going through. But it’s a portal to the 15th floor, and we’re not allowed to go down there, so we get stopped, and everything behind us gets pulled through anyway, hence we explode.

Rezan: I wasn’t asking for a science lesson, you potato. It doesn’t matter how you explode. You touch it, and you’re dead.

Mandla: Not if you’re naked.

Rezan: So you’re saying we fight the zombie demons naked?

Mandla: That’s what I’m doing.

I stopped dead in the street. I didn’t really know either of these crawlers, but I had met them both once long ago. Their conversation triggered something. A memory of Katia and Louis and Firas, and something that had happened on the fifth floor aboard the Twister. That plus a few entries from the cookbook. I jumped into the conversation.

Carl: Rezan. What happened when the portal closed?

Rezan: What do you mean what happened? He blew up like someone shoved a dynamite stick up his ass. Some of him is in my teeth. He was a prick, but what a way to go. He’s everywhere. All his gear got sucked into the hole, and he exploded so much I can’t even loot his inventory. He was the squad’s deckmaster, and it gave me his card deck, and the key thank god, but that’s it. Just the current deck and not the extra cards, which really fucks me over if I have to fight those assholes guarding the exit. He had most of our gold, too. The rest was in the saferoom. He was the one who bought the saferoom, and now it’s gone. I’m really in trouble here.

Carl: But the demon still went away? And the hole went away immediately?

Rezan: It sure did.

Carl: It only took the stuff the guy was touching?

Rezan: Yes. Holy shit, any more questions? I’m running for my life here.

I looked up at the giant demon. If they were zombie demons, they only needed one soul. They touched a person, a portal opened, and the demon returned home. The portal closed immediately. If they were the full-powered, level 140 demons, the portal lasted a minute or two, sucked in everything nearby, and they needed two souls in order to punch their ticket home.

The demon stuck in the body of the possessed city boss loomed over us, still pouring fire upward, several hundred, perhaps a thousand feet in the air. I still didn’t know what Sister Ines had to do with any of this, but an idea started to percolate.

“Carl, can we not just stand in the middle of the street?” Donut asked as she fired another missile, this time at a zombie seagull.

“Hang on,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

“Think faster!”

Sister Ines: I am losing my patience, Carl.

My heart thrashed. What had Ren said? Three out of four teams hadn’t gotten a key? I’d been wrong before. The game was trying to balance the unfairness of the doorways breaking. I saw it now. It was just doing it in a really, really fucked-up way.

Carl: Everybody who can hear this. Quick, let me know if you’ve been getting any of those Build Trench scrolls in your inventory. I’ve gotten like 50 of them.

Mandla: I have a ton of them, too.

Louis: They’re like the bandages and torches on the first floor.

Carl: Katia, I don’t have a direct line to the former daughters stuck in Turkey. Is there an update?

Katia: They said they found the chamber, but the stairwell is contained within. It’s just a big, rectangular, room, and they can’t get inside. It’s almost like a shipping container, but when the magical door broke, it just left a straight wall and no way to get inside. One has a Hole spell like Donut’s, but it didn’t work. Another tried a Phase Through Walls spell, and it didn’t work, either. It’s like the walls are made of the same stuff as the magic doors.

None of this matters. Quit wasting time. Imani is going to get rid of the demons, and you can send her down the stairs. Then you can run back and use your bone key benefit. It’ll be done. You can be through.

Three out of four teams. Thousands of people.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Imani snapped me out of it.

Imani: Carl, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?

Carl: Yell at me later. How many are there?

Imani: You infected over a dozen mercenaries with a disease that causes them to leak punk rock slugs every few minutes, and you locked them all in a room for a day. You locked them in a room where they die and get regenerated. How many do you think there are? There’s hundreds of them, including some slugs that are as high level as the mercenaries themselves. The entire room is filled with blood.

Carl: They’re not punk rock. They’re Sluggalos. And I only infected one of them. Doctor Bones. He has the same Super Spreader spell as I do, but his is better. He infected the others all at the same time, and he casts a spell on the slugs so they’re not so hostile after they come out.

Imani: Yeah, that part doesn’t work so great. They’re still pretty aggressive, especially the big ones. I opened the door just in time to see one swallow Steve whole. There’s way too many here to keep for the next floor. Carl, some of these things are huge! One of them has a goddamned hatchet growing out of its head.

Carl: The Conscript spell is far from perfect. It makes them fight on our side, sort of. It doesn’t really change their attitude, and they can be rebellious. It’s kinda like turning them into totems. We’ll probably have to kill the highest level ones, but the rest are going into our infantry. For right now, send the lowest level ones out the door toward the demons. Keep sending them until the demons are gone. If I can make it to a saferoom before the floor collapses, I’ll buy the barracks upgrade so we can keep the most powerful ones we can control. In the meantime, Bring Doctor Bones with you if you have to. Don’t let him go outside. And don’t let the rest of the sluggalos out into the main guild. They’ll teleport away if they attack anyone outside the mercenary arcade.

Imani: I had to cure the mercenaries of the disease. The room healer said you told her not to.

Carl: Wait, you can cure that stuff?

Imani: Yes, Carl. I am a healer. It’s what I do.

Carl: Good to know.

With that problem settled, I moved back to the messages I was composing. I sent out two separate ones. The first went to Prepotente, who was back in the Bahamas, meaning he was the closest crawler to us outside of Cuba.

Carl: Prepotente. Answer me fast. Please. Has the sky changed color over there? Is anything happening to the environment?

Carl: Mordecai. Quick. Give me the short, fast version of the Sheol storyline.

Mordecai answered first.

Mordecai: It was set up a long time ago, but nobody has ever gotten that far, so it’s been running on its own for seasons and seasons with very little input from the outside. The demons get pulled out and used for quests and fights all the time, but we never get to see Sheol itself. There’s no tourist activity at all on that floor. From what I understand, there’s a queen, who’s in charge, and she has four sons, the princes, one of whom you’re dealing with right now. The queen and four sons are pretty much the same as gods. The four princes used to share a massive harem of demons, but one of the brothers banished them all to the Nothing, and there’s a bunch of intrigue going on within there, as you’ve already seen. And below them, there’s a whole local culture of demons with a multitude of other storylines we hear about but never see. That’s it. We’ve never met the queen. That guy you’re looking at is one of the biggest bad guys in the whole dungeon. He shouldn’t be here this early.

Carl: Okay. Thanks.

Prepotente: There is a red, sunset-like tinge to the sky coming from your area. Are you attempting to screw things up even more? The zombie event ended up killing all of my opponents before I could even get to them, I’ll have you know. That blood is on your hands.

Carl: Let me know if the sky changes. I’m trying to figure out if what’s about to happen is just here or if it’s going to be global.

Prepotente: If you’re involved, I’m quite certain it’ll be global. And not in a good way.

Carl: Eat my ass, Pony. Just let me know if the sky gets redder or if it starts to get hotter.

Prepotente: I will let you know if I notice any changes.

Carl: Actually, you’re the smartest guy I know. Let me run something by you really fast. Here’s the thing. I don’t want it to be local. I want it to spread over the whole world. I need ideas.

Chapter 259

<Note added by crawler Herot, 16th Edition>

I’m starting to believe I have the ability to manifest my own destiny, after a certain fashion. The more unstable the AI running this system becomes, the less predictable it is. Yet at the same time, it’s even more predictable in certain ways. I made a quip about being hungry, and I suddenly received a random achievement notification about my hunger level. I discussed with my friend how I wished we could kill more ghasts, because they often drop knowledge scrolls, and not one hour later, I received a quest to hunt down a certain number of the very same monsters. Beware, however. That same quest killed my friend. The AI is always listening, thinking, plotting, changing the game to suit its desires. At the higher levels, it is not nearly as rigid as it once was. That pliability can be an asset or an extreme danger.

~

“Okay,” I said. “Come on. To the church!”

Donut gazed up at the massive demon. “Finally! We could’ve been running this whole time, Carl! Where’s Sister Ines?”

“I’m not sure. Hang on!”

I stopped again as Donut let out an exasperated sound. She shot two more zombie birds.

I consulted my Find Crawler skill, and sure enough, I could now see the nun. I wasn’t expecting that. She was in the Fosca building, directly underneath the snake, maybe three or four floors below it. Not riding it like last time. Okay. That was good.

I dove back into my chat. I prepared a message with Elle, Katia, Donut, Li Na, and Mordecai. I left Imani out, who was still corralling the sluggalos. I resumed jogging as I messaged everyone.

Carl: Guys. I know a way to get into the stairwell chambers. Pony and I came up with the idea together. I need you to start spreading the word. We need to stop fighting each other. Do everything you can to convince people. Everybody who has lost keys needs to start clearing the stairwell chamber of debris. I know most of these rooms have a whole lot of infrastructure around them, but we gotta get them to isolate these chambers as fast as possible. If you can, you want nothing on it or above it or even around it. Don’t be gentle. Blow that shit up, and do it fast. Find one of those Build Trench scrolls, and use it to tunnel underneath the chamber. You need to be able to fit everyone in your party underneath the room. Mordecai, go into my bomber’s studio and take the pile of satchel bombs and stick them on the market. That’ll help people with the demolition. I’ve been making them in preparation for the next floor, so they’re safe for regular crawlers to handle.

Katia: Carl, what are you talking about?

Carl: Do whatever you can to make people understand. Those with keys need to get out as soon as possible and clear the way for the people left behind. Tell them not to waste their time fighting. There’s no point. We can get out. All of us.

Elle: What the hell, Carl? Are you blowing smoke up our ass? Is this a sure thing, or are you working off a Carl theory?

Carl: It’s a theory. It’s a Carl and Pony theory, though, if that means anything. What choice do we have? People are fighting and making it so one team is dead and the other can’t get out anyway. It’s not a sure thing. It never is. But I think I’m right, and Prepotente thinks it’ll work, too.

Katia: I wish you’d come up with this earlier. Louis just got his first player killer skulls, and he’s not happy about it. He got five, all from one attack.

Elle: That’s the whole message? Don’t fight? Isolate the stairwells? You’re gonna have to give us more than that, cowboy. People are terrified. They’re gonna need a solid reason. Also, Imani just told me why you wanted to upgrade the barracks. Of all the fucked up shit you’ve done to NPCs, I’m pretty sure this is the worst. Worse than what you did to that gnoll guy.

Donut: WHAT DID HE DO?

Elle: Oh, so Donut doesn’t know about the sluggalos?

Donut: THE WHAT? IS THAT A PUN? YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT PUN-BASED NAMES, CARL.

Carl: Okay, here’s the plan.

“Carl!” Amayon boomed a few minutes later as we started to approach the neighborhood with the church. The voice knocked me out of chat, and I tumbled to the ground. The distant demon growled with anger. We scrambled back up as the ground shook. “Let me go you fucking bitch. Ahh! Ysalte, I will flay you again. I will get free of this shell and...” He growled. “Carl, come now!”

Li Jun: Guys, you will not believe what just happened here at the stairwell.

I barely registered Li Jun’s message. Ysalte? Where had I heard that name before?

“Ysalte is here? Where? Where?” Samantha asked. “I don’t feel her here. Believe me, you’ll feel it when she’s here.”

“Is that a god?” I asked. “There are no other gods here. Just Amayon.”

Imani: Okay, Carl. Sending them out now. Gluteus Maxx is tossing the small ones out toward the demons. It’s already working. The first two slugs attacked a demon, and he portaled them away. There’s another one. That guy needed three. I don’t know why. Holy cow. It’s working! And the damn slug things are all excited about it, too. Christ, they’re aggressive.

Carl: Let me know when the demons are all gone by your area, and we’ll come to you and get you our key. We need to do this before Sister Ines figures it out and sends backup.

I took a deep breath. We still didn’t have a perfect messaging system. I watched as Elle, Katia, and others started spreading the word of the plan. It wasn’t taking. People were telling them they were full of shit. People weren’t willing to risk it, and I understood that. It was asking a lot.

We paused in an alleyway, waiting for Imani to finish with her sluggalo.

“Damnit,” I muttered, after seeing someone tell Katia to go fuck herself. I was going to have to convince them myself.

We still mostly relied on a relay system to send out mass messages. I pulled up the largest chat group I had, and prepared the note.

Here we go.

Carl: Everybody. Please be quiet and listen. We are all getting out of here. This will work. So if you have a key, you gotta get out of the way and go now. Everyone else. Don’t fight people with keys. Just let them go. We’re all getting out of here.

Rezan: There’s no way that’s gonna work.

Jurgen: It sounds like you just pulled all of that out of your ass.

Carl: Prepotente. Tell them what you told me.

Prepotente: Everyone. As much as it pains me to say this, I believe Carl is correct. We have seen gated stairwell encasements break before. I once watched Lucia Mar attempt to teleport a stairwell to another location, and I saw the why and the how it didn’t work. In addition, I have seen first-hoof what such portals can do. I believe Carl’s theory is sound. I’m certainly not going to risk it myself. I am going to make my way down the stairwell using my key in just a moment, but I am reasonably certain there’s at least a fifty percent chance this will work. Maybe forty percent. And that’s only assuming the demon really does cast his spell over the entire world and not just a portion of it.

Next to me, Donut muttered, “He’s not the best motivational speaker, is he?”

Goddamnit, Pony. Way to be helpful.

Carl: Look, everyone. Here’s the thing. You’re right. I’m not positive this is going to work. It’s a long shot. But for lots of us, this is literally our only chance. Those of you who are fighting each other, what’s the point? If there’s not enough of us alive on the next floor, we won’t have a chance to make it to the tenth, where we can start earning our freedom. The more of us who set foot on the ninth, the stronger we are. I will take a fifty percent chance to survive with all of you over a 100 percent chance to survive alone any day.

Prepotente: Remember, I amended it to 40 percent, Carl. But during Katia’s fumbled explanation of the plan, she did bring up a good point about the potential for spin while you’re being sucked upward. So maybe I should have said 35 percent.

I had the urge to reach through the messaging system and strangle the goat.

Mandla: I am going to hyperventilate. This is insane.

Donut: PREPOTENTE DON’T BE MEAN TO KATIA.

Rezan: Why does that cat always type in all caps?

Donut: WHY DIDN’T YOUR MOTHER DRIBBLE YOU BACK OUT ONTO THE TRUCK STOP BATHROOM FLOOR, REZAN?

Carl: Look. Everyone is stressed. I get that. We need to breathe and chill. Follow the instructions, and it’ll be okay.

Yvonne Hu: Our stairwell is in a subway station! There’s like a hundred meters of rock above us!

Louis: Oh god, another subway?

Carl: I will delay as long as I can. Do your best. In theory, it should work even if the room is buried, but it’s not ideal.

Yvonne Hu: So when is this going to happen? Will we have a warning?

Carl: I’m working on it. I’m not sure. You need to get moving, but make sure everybody with keys is out first. No sense in risking them, too.

Jurgen: No, man. I’m breaking the door now. If we gotta clear this shit away, we’re gonna need help.

Osvaldo: So help me god, Jurgen. If you break that door before we get through, I will end you.

Jurgen: Whoopsies. Too late. I guess you’re stuck down here with the rest of us. Now come help us dig.

I took a breath.

Carl: Goddamnit, everyone. Stop it. Earlier, I was thinking about how hopeless all this is. That they’re whittling us down to nothing. That there’s a death quota they have to meet, and no matter how hard we fight, we’re stuck inside that box. No. Fuck them all. I was wrong. We are not like those who came before us. This is our chance. This is our chance to show them how hard it is to kill us. We will not die on their schedule. Every person who gets through this will be one more the real assholes will have to fight on the next floor. We need each other. I need you. So stop fucking fighting.

There was a long pause.

Katia: I’m with you, Carl.

Katia had a key already. She didn’t need to say that, but I appreciated it.

Elle: We are, too.

Li Na: We as well.

A multitude of chats came in, all of people agreeing to help. Relief washed over me.

And then, finally, what I’d been hoping for finally happened. Confirmation.

A timer appeared in my interface. It was at two hours and started counting down.

New Quest. Falling Up.

This is a regional quest. All crawlers within the area of Cuba have been added to this quest.

Your squad has been designated as host of this quest.

Oh, all right. For fuck’s sake. I’ve been debating on whether or not to allow this, but now that so many of you are hell bent on dying in such a spectacular manner, we might as well make it official.

Amayon, one of the four princes of Sheol has been betrayed by one of his brothers. After being unceremoniously expelled from the kingdom of Sheol, the demon prince has managed to just barely hold on long enough to pull himself onto the equivalent of a very, very small ledge. The level 250 demon lord now inhabits the body of a lesser deity, a once-worshiped sea serpent who went by the name of the Madre de Aguas.

In order to return home, Amayon simply must cast a spell. But nobody, not even a prince, rides the river for free. A tithe of souls is required to pass back downward. And for a demon of his power, even as weak as he is right now, that tithe is pretty steep.

So he has cast his spell, a wide-area portal that will inhale all the souls within the Cuba area. This will be enough, barely, to send him home.

Unfortunately for Amayon, his expulsion has not gone unnoticed. Other entities have noted that he is far from home, and they are doing what they can to keep him from returning. He is being thwarted. But even in his weakened state, he is still strong. He is still pushing the spell through.

Here are your options.

·  Option 1. Do nothing.

Reward: In two hours, the portal will cast, and all of the Cuba region will be sucked upward into the Sheol portal. This may or may not be a good thing depending on where you’re standing when this happens. This portal will remain open for the remainder of this floor. Translation. Get the fuck out when you can.

·  Option 2. Free Amayon from his shell

Reward: This will cause Amayon to take his true form. The timer will reset, and this quest will reset into a World quest. We’ve never had a full-powered, untethered hell prince unleashed on a lower floor before. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

·  Option 3. Kill Amayon.

Yeah, good luck with that, especially since he is invulnerable on this floor.

Reward: You will receive a Celestial Hell Boon.

I took a deep breath. It was on.

Carl: Pony, holy shit you were right. We got the quest, just like you said we would.

Prepotente: How many times must I tell you not to call me by that name?

~

Donut remained unmoving in the alley. She was staring up at me.

“Carl, if we do this, it might ruin our own chance to go down the stairs.”

“I know, Donut,” I said, taking a knee next to her. “If you want to go down now, I can make sure that happens. But I started this, and people are counting on it, so now I have to stay.”

“But, how do you know the demon spell will cover the whole planet?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Donut. It’s only a hunch, but I think I’m right. The way the quest is worded seems to confirm it. The stronger the demon is, the bigger the spell needs to be in order to get himself home. I’m gonna make him as strong as possible. I’m not positive it’ll cover the whole world, but we’re gonna do our best to make it close.”

“But how?”

I dodged the question because she was not going to like the answer. “You were right earlier, Donut. We should have killed Sister Ines when we had the chance. We don’t have a choice now. First I take her out, then I free the boss of his shell, and then I buff him as much as I can.” I swallowed. “And then I get my ass underneath the stairwell chamber.”

“But if you do all that, you won’t have time to dig out the room. One is inside a big church and the other is buried under that entire capitol building. You said it yourself. People need to free the building around the chamber if they can.”

I took in a breath. This was the part of the plan I was stumbling on, too. “I can only do my best. But the demon is here, in our area. I’m the only one who can buff it up. Donut, I don’t want to be in this position.” I waved my hand. “But all of this has been manufactured to force this on us, to force me into this. I’m the only one who can do it. If I don’t, we’re going to be in real trouble on the next floor. This is our chance to get as many of our people as possible down.”

She headbutted against my leg. “Don’t be stupid. We can only do our best. If you don’t go down the stairs, I don’t go down the stairs. We are the Princess Posse, and the Princess Posse doesn’t leave anybody behind.”

I reached over, and I picked her up and cradled her in my arms. A few streets over, a building collapsed as flames reached high in the sky. Amayon rumbled again. Samantha floated at the end of the alley, oohing and ahhing at all the destruction.

“That line was really cheesy,” I said as I pushed my face into her fur.

“Yeah, I’m still working on it,” she said. “I stole it from some movie. Now let’s go kill that nun.”

Chapter 260

<Note added by crawler Milk, 6th Edition>

If you have to fight a demon, and you have access to Sheol fire, do not use it. It makes the creature exponentially stronger.

<Note added by crawler Ikicha, 11th Edition>

Gods, I am so lonely.

~

I peered around the corner, looking at the church. I didn’t see any more demons, but I did spy a group of level-30 to 35 pox slugs eating the corpse of a ram cleric. The things were the size of wolves. They all had white dots. There were no zombies in the immediate area, though there were a few zombie birds circling above down the street. Just past the church was the road and then the coastline, and there was a ton of red dots down there, too

Sister Ines had not yet made good on her promise to send more demons to the church. I suspected she couldn’t. With each passing minute, she was losing her grip over Amayon. I wondered if that two hour timer would change if she gave up. In fact, I wondered if she could give it up. There was clearly something else going on with her.

Donut looked upon the slugs with disgust. “Carl, I feel as if I should have been consulted before you infested my strippers with a slug-leaking disease. Splash Zone is very particular about his skin care regimen, and I imagine he’s quite upset about all this.”

“We’re going to need all the soldiers we can get if we make it to the next floor. We can build a lot of fighters fast with this method.”

Two of the slugs appeared to be literally having sex atop the pile of gore. The girl slug kept loudly whooping the whole time.

“We need to have a conversation about quality versus quantity, Carl.”

Carl: Imani, I think it’s clear. We’re going to move in. We’re in the alley on the other side of the grass square.

Imani: Stay put. We’re coming to you.

Carl: We? Who is we?

I blinked as a blue dot appeared on my map. Then another. Then another.

A large group of crawlers appeared, walking from the church. The slugs started to scatter, but Imani yelled something at them, and they all lowered their heads and turned back toward the church compound. One had a little hatchet attached to the side of its neck, and it started waving it threateningly at Imani, and she pointed a stern finger at it, and it backed off.

“Louis!” Samantha shouted and zipped off. She zipped across the distance and hit him like a tossed football. She clearly knocked the wind out of him.

Donut gasped. “Carl, Carl, what’s happening? How did they get here?” She freed Mongo from his cage, and he started bouncing all around. He turned and saw the group and rushed toward them, screeching and jumping. He almost bowled over Britney.

Elle came floating up, looking around. “You know, I always wanted to go to Cuba.” A distant crashing punctuated the air as another building collapsed. “Gotta say it’s a little hotter than I was expecting. A little more run down.”

Imani fluttered up next to Elle. Her skeletal face and eyes had taken on an even more hollow glaze than usual. Still, she grinned down at me. “Surprise.”

“I told you,” Elle said. “The look on his face makes this suicide mission all worth it.”

It was Imani, Katia, Bautista, Louis, Britney, Tran, Li Jun, Li Na, Zhang, Chris, Elle, a few Meadowlark crawlers I didn’t really know, and a handful of others, most of whom were Asian. It totaled over twenty people.

“It’s too bad Florin already went down the stairs,” Louis said. “It would’ve been the whole gang otherwise.” He was looking around, suddenly sad as Samantha orbited around him in circles. His five new player killer skulls looked unnatural above his head. “Wow, this place really sucks.”

“How...” I began, looking about.

“Yeah, you don’t like it when people leave you out of the planning phase for this sort of thing, don’t you?” Elle asked.

“I don’t like it when my friends put themselves at an unnecessary risk,” I countered. “Seriously, how did you get here?”

Li Jun stepped forward. He, too, had a pair of player killer skulls he didn’t have before. “It was Lucia Mar.” He swallowed. “They’re calling it the Battle of Beijing. Lucia, she never really collected any cards. She refused to play it. She got the six totems they automatically gave her, but they were all low-level monsters. And whenever a battle started, she discarded the first one, and she played the rest until her hand was empty which allowed her to use her spells and magic and inventory. She and her dog went in and killed everything. When she showed up at the Soho building, it turned into a big fight amongst all the people without keys. There were monster traps set up, too, and it was chaos. I didn’t see it, but I saw the aftermath.”

He paused, rubbing his arm. “She killed so many people. She set up a teleport trap, and Fang’s team got caught up in it. He had a key. She killed him and his wife and took it. After that, we thought she’d already gone down the stairs, but when we got there, she was waiting for us. She can hide her presence now. She said Florin had messaged her before he’d gone down the stairs and told her to help us.” He pulled something from his inventory and handed it to me. “She dropped five of these on the ground and then went down the stairs. We already installed one of them in Imani’s room. We don’t know how she got these, where she got them from, or why she had so many.”

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Yeah. She was really friendly, too, which was unsettling. My sister wanted to fight her.”

I examined the item. It was a personal space upgrade module. If you bought one of these from a bopca, they just installed it directly into your room, but if you got one from a box, it’d come like this. You had to put it in your inventory and then enter your personal space tab on your interface to use it.

“She shouldn’t have had one, let along five of them. It’s a tier-3. Mordecai says these shouldn’t be available until the ninth floor,” Katia added. “He thinks Lucia stole them when she went on a show or something.”

Personal Space Upgrade.

Tier 3 Doggie Door.

So, you’re out adventuring, and you suddenly have a hankerin’ for those sweet pancakes you had two weeks back at some dive that’s now over two hundred kilometers away. What are you gonna do? Travel for several hours in the wrong direction just to get another taste? Psshh. Okay, loser.

The cool kids use the doggie door.

Upgrades the door in your personal space to allow a selectable exit via any door you have previously utilized on this same floor, effectively creating a fast travel waypoint system. Allows shared gated access amongst guests and party members.

“Holy shit,” I said. “So you gave it to Imani, and she installed it in their room, and now anyone in the guild can go out that door into the church?”

“That’s right,” Katia said. “Or into Washington or into Detroit. Or into Belgium, where Elle’s squad went during the key phase. It works for the whole Meadowlark party.”

“Can we upgrade the entire guild to use it, so it works on my door, too?”

“We can,” Imani said, “but it’s pretty expensive. It’s a tier-three. Twenty-five million to give it to everybody. In the meantime, we still have four more and can install them on individual doors as needed. By the way, we already pooled all our money to buy that barracks upgrade.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I got almost five million off Quan.”

Elle spit on the ground. “You should’ve beaten him to death with his own arm.”

“That’s what I said!” Donut quipped.

“I still have the key for the door,” I said. “I was going to give it to Imani. You all have keys. You shouldn’t be here.”

“That’s not how this works, Carl,” Elle said. “You were right, what you said in your little speech. We’re all in this together. We’re all screwed if we don’t all make it to the next floor. If things really go south, most of us can still go back and use our keys. But until that time we’re here, and we’re helping.”

“And I’m not taking your key,” Imani added. “Donut told me about your bone-headed idea to use one of your own bones or whatever to get out. People have bones for a reason, Carl. No. Like Elle said. It’s all or nothing.”

I looked again at the module and sighed. “These sure would’ve been handy a few days ago.”

“Tell me about it,” Elle said, looking pointedly at Imani. “It’s would’ve changed everything. I wonder how long that crazy kid has been holding on to these things. I also wonder if Florin knew about them. I already chewed him out just in case. We’ve been chasing a fast travel system since the whole guild system opened.”

Li Jun: This is just for you, Carl. There’s more. Lucia dropped the upgrades, and she said she was helping us because Florin had asked, but before she went down the stairs, she went from really friendly to mean again, and she said she was saving something special for herself because she had a score to settle with Donut and that she would be seeing her on the next floor. She said she was going to kill both Donut and her pet dinosaur. That’s why my sister wanted to fight her.

Carl: Holy shit. Okay, thanks for not saying that out loud.

I looked nervously at Donut, who stood on the edge of Tran’s flying wheelchair module for his missing legs. She laughed with delight, switched into her dragonfly tiara, and then cast Hover, showing them all her new skill. I had to hold myself back from chiding her for wasting her five-times-a-day skill.

Tran, too, was smiling as he reached over and pet Donut. Britney was on the ground, on her back as Mongo snuffled against her. She was laughing as well. It was the first time I’d seen either of those two, Tran or Britney, so much as smile since the end of the Butcher’s Masquerade.

I felt it, too. The change in the air. It was an overwhelmingly welcome feeling.

Things were not looking up for us, but somehow that didn’t matter. Despite Lucia’s new threat. Despite the overwhelming odds against us. Despite all the death and pain. Still... still...

Ever since the horror of the Butcher’s Masquerade there’d been this feeling coming over me. It was like an extra layer of darkness on top of everything. It was an overpowering sense of futility that I hadn’t even realized was there. This was in addition to the hopelessness that permeated everything. Our humanity was slowly, slowly being siphoned away. With each passing challenge, each new death, each new twist we were becoming less of who we were.

I thought of Ren, and of the hopelessness that had broken her. Of all these crawlers who’d been forced to confront their own personal nightmares on this floor. Of my mother, who’d drowned in her own sorrow. Of the stepmother I’d never met, and what’d done. Of the goddamned river that was so loud it was the only thing I could hear.

It was loneliness. It had always been loneliness.

That veil was ripped away. Nothing had changed about our situation. We were likely fucked, yes. But we were all together again. And there was hope. Finally. Clarity filled me for the first time in a long while. It was isolation that would break us. We couldn’t let it happen.

I thought of Lucia, the most isolated crawler in the dungeon, yet she’d held onto something that could literally bring us all together.

I looked at Katia. I thought of that flower in her inventory, and of all the potential outcomes.

We have to find another way.

But right here, right now, I’d never felt so grateful to know these people standing in front of me.

Elle clapped her little hands together, showering flecks of ice everywhere. She gazed at me.

“Okay, warlord. This is your shitshow. What do we gotta do?”

~~~~~

I am sitting in a coffee shop in Everett, WA getting ready to head over to a bar to play a gig, and I am late for setup so I can get this out. Ya'll worth it. I love you all.


The end is nigh.