Dungeon Crawler Carl Book Six Grand Finale Two-Night Event. Night two of two. THIS IS IT. Chapters 268, 269, and Epilogue. (Patreon)

Stop! Did you read part one that I posted yesterday? Yes? Okay, good. Here we go. 

​​Chapter 268

Warning: You have been temporarily combined with a totem. If you are slain while in this state, you will not regenerate.

This combination will time out in 180 seconds or when the battle ends, whichever is sooner.

“How...” I started to say, but I felt my control over my own body slip.

What, what, what is this? So many things on the inside. So many items to root through. What is this storage? So many, many things.

My hands turned to claws as I scratched at my own chest.

“No,” I grunted. I tried to reach up and grab the hands scratching at me, but they were my own hands. What was happening?

How do I get to this?

That voice. It was Shi Maria. She was talking in my own mind.

I was aware of screaming all around me. Of movement. I could hear Donut shouting. Others. It was all in slow motion and sped up at the same time. I felt as if I was falling. Suspended. I was in water. I was in the stars. My back legs swept, tossing dozens of demons off the wall.

They couldn’t drag me to Sheol even if they wanted. I was one of them.

I was hyper aware of my body, my skin. It was wrong. My body was big. I had more legs than usual. I had no control over anything. From the waist up, I was the same. She controlled it all.

An item appeared in my hand. A scroll of Build Trench. I’d pulled it directly from my own inventory. No, no. I hadn’t pulled it. She’d done it. She’d taken it directly from my inventory. It dropped to the ground.

Oh, yes. I see. I see how this works. What do we have?

“Carl!” Donut cried. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I found myself shouting. I was not controlling my own voice.  “Just trying to figure out how to move in this body.”

I tried moving to the chat, to warn her, but it wouldn’t let me. I had truly lost control.

No. No, I thought. Not this. Anything but this.

You have so much in here. This book. This well-worn book. You’re not supposed to have this, are you? And what is this? This bomb is quite powerful, ready to explode. What would happen if I pull it out?

“No,” I gurgled, wresting back control for a mere moment.

I would be fine. I would turn back to the card. Why shouldn’t I bring it out? Why shouldn’t I kill everyone you know and love? We had a deal, Carl. You were going to take me to the next floor. You were planning on betraying me.

I tried to respond, but I lost the ability to speak again.

So many things. So many possibilities. Kimaris? You have a summoning totem of Kimaris? Does Samantha know this? Hmm. You have a war mage head? So many things. So many possibilities. What to do?

Donut was shouting something at me, but I couldn’t even hear that anymore.

Look at all these potions. You could have enhanced them all. You squandered your chance with Ysalte, and now she’s dead. Him. Look at this. This potion... what did you use to make it? Oh yes, here we go. Oh, yes, yes, you have all the supplies I need. Everything. This will work.

Child. Hold on. Hold on with everything you can. This was another voice. A male.

Don’t talk, Shi Maria hissed in my mind. She was speaking to the other voice. Don’t you speak. You’re not real. I didn’t put you here.

You did. You killed me, and now I am here.

That is a lie!

An empty beaker appeared. I’d looted it way back on the first floor. Something else was placed within. It was just a piece, a small piece of the toraline root vegetable I’d gotten from my sponsor. It was just a small sliver of it. Mordecai still had the biggest piece.

I felt myself clutching the beaker to my chest. I watched in horror as I started to examine Ren’s flamethrower.

No, no. This won’t do.

I pulled up my magic menu.

What do we have here?

“You best step back,” I heard myself say, looking about. I was surrounded by my friends, all looking up at me. “I won’t warn you again. Step back now.”

I cast Self-Immolation.

My world became fire. All around, the others screamed and fell back. Just touching the fire around me was death. I already knew how awful it was just to be close.

I snapped off the spell within a second. I felt myself falling. It’d been strong enough to burn a hole in the floor underneath me. We weren’t directly above Imani and Tran, but we’d broken into the pocket. The floor under my feet just evaporated, and I plummeted, landing heavily into an apartment directly below. My body, already half outside, also fell. The walls now burned all around me. The building itself was starting to melt.

Donut: CARL, YOU HURT MONGO AND KATIA!

Ahh, yes, this is good. I picked up the burning hot beaker, and it was now filled with a small amount of bubbling, black liquid. Ink.

Li Na: We have to flee. Katia is grievously injured.

Carl: Don’t you fucking dare. I need but a few more moments. If I am unsummoned, Carl will die. If anyone approaches me, they will be slain. This is your only warning.

I unequipped my trollskin shirt, revealing my bare chest. Then another item from my inventory was in my hands. The stick and poke tattoo kit I’d received earlier on the floor.

“Stop,” I found myself crying. I was pushed out of control once again.

A chain appeared in my vision, coming from the floor above. Li Na had shot it. Her brother, Li Jun slid down the chains, like he was skiing. He flipped, landing in front of me.

Above, I could hear Donut screaming. She was screaming for Mongo.

No, no. no. This was all going wrong.

“Carl, what can I do?” It was Li Jun, looking at me worriedly. All around him, the walls continued to burn.

I warned him, Shi Maria said in my mind.

No, I thought. No. He’s my friend.

I took the stick from the tattoo kit, and I jabbed it directly into Li Jun’s eye. He cried and fell back. I pulled the stick to my mouth, and I licked. Oh god, oh god. His eye. His eye was at the end of the stick. I crunched down and ate it. A splash of bitter liquid filled my mouth, reminding me of the vinegar from earlier. I chewed as Li Jun screamed.

The sound of ratcheting chains filled the room.

You have so much power in your hands, Carl, and you don’t even know what you have. That’s okay. Today, you live. If you won’t bring this card to the next floor, I will have to attach myself to something you can’t discard so easily.

I dipped the end of the stick into the beaker and started to rapidly poke into my own chest.

You will likely be doing more of this soon with the remaining ink. Be sure not to go too deep. This is a dangerous spell. I will show you how to wield it. I will show you how to become a god.

“What are you doing,” I gasped as my hand became a blur, moving faster and faster, faster than possible.

Li Na was in the room, hovering over her brother, who sat in the corner, hand over his injured eye socket as he continued to scream in pain. The building all around us burned.

I’d eaten his eye. I’d eaten his goddamn eye. It was gone. It wouldn’t come back.

“Do not approach, demon,” I said out loud to Li Na, “or your brother will lose more than an eye, and Carl will lose his own heart. Or you, with the wings. Stay back. Do not attempt to heal him.”

Inside my own inventory, I watched as items moved around. Potions were being combined. Several dropped to the floor. “Give these two potions to the burned. One to the animal, the other to the doppelganger.” A third, gold standard healing potion dropped. “And this to your brother. I am almost done. When I time out, we can flee.”

As I talked, I continued to rapid-fire the tattoo into myself. It wasn’t a big image. It was right into the center of my chest, just above my sternum.

There. There. Almost done. You may gain some of your friend’s powers, too, with the blood on the needle. Not much. But I am with you now, Carl, until you decide to free me. I will no longer be a card you can abandon, one you can rip away. I am a part of you, and you will have to decide. Keep me with you and gain my power, or set me free. Either way, I win. Yes. It is done. Now let us flee this place, okay? I will not let you die. If you die now, I will die. And we can’t have that, can we?

I pulled the tattoo kit back into my inventory. I grasped the bottle of ink and pulled it in. The potions I’d dropped on the floor remained. Li Na and Li Jun remained across the room, staring, unsure of what to do.

Don’t trust her, boy. Get her out of you as soon as you can. Don’t ever trust her.

“Oh god. It hurts,” I said. That was me. That was my own voice. I was back in control.

You have timed out. You have returned to your regular form. Shi Maria has returned to the deck.

A wave of agony flashed over me, and I found myself staring down at my bloody chest. At the eye. At the eye she’d rapidly tattooed into me. As I looked, the eye blinked, and then it closed, completely disappearing against my skin.

I could feel it there, a hole inside of me. I hesitantly reached forward and touched it.

Tattoo. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride.

That’s all it said. It gave no other description.

Li Na scooped up the potions, and she gave one to her brother, whose hand remained clutched over his face. She handed two more potions off to someone else. Imani. I was going to lose consciousness.

“How’s Katia? How’s Mongo?” I felt myself ask before I passed out.

Chapter 269

I awakened to find myself clutched in Louis’s arms as we ran through the city. I blinked, trying to figure out what was happening. Next to me, Donut was riding on Mongo as they weaved through the streets, avoiding the areas that continued to burn. I felt relief that Mongo was still alive. But then I blinked and saw the dinosaur’s right wing was gone, and the whole right side of his body was missing scales and feathers. New burns and scars covered the dinosaur.

Oh no, I thought. I did that.

“Mongo,” I croaked. “I’m sorry.”

“He’s awake!” Donut cried. “Everybody, Carl’s awake! Carl, you’re always passing out during the climax!”

“I hurt Mongo,” I said.

“One of the potions you upgraded will grow his wing back!” Donut said, “but Mordecai says he has to take it later. He wants to look at the potion first to make sure. A bunch of the potions you dropped next to me before you went to the beach with Raul turned into something really cool. Mordecai is all excited.”

“And Katia?”

“She’s fine,” Katia said from behind me. I turned my head to look, and she jogged with everybody else. She’d turned into a mantaur-like creature, but with four legs instead of arms. She clutched onto the passed-out, legless form of Tran, who had a whole line of debuffs after him.

“Who did we lose?” I asked.

“Nobody,” Louis said. “Not of the crawlers. We lost a couple of the strippers, and I think all the slug dudes are gone. Also, that old dude with the weird sock is pretty upset. But all of us are okay. Though Tran lost his wheelchair and Li Jun lost an eye. And you, uh, lost all your hair. But it’s not as bad.”

He trailed off.

Not as bad as the Butcher’s Masquerade, he almost said.

“Fucking hell. Put me down,” I said, starting to struggle.

“Sorry dude,” Louis said, pausing long enough to gently put me on the ground. I wobbled slightly.

I put my hand against my head. My skin had healed, but my hair was all gone. It had burned off. My eyebrows, too.

Mongo screeched with joy and pushed into me. I leaned my head against his. Donut jumped to my shoulder.

“You look like you’re going as one of those Crest guys for Halloween, Carl. I will not have a sidekick with no eyebrows.”

“It’s okay,” I said, rubbing my bald head again. “I have a potion that grows it back. Rev-up hair tonic. The mantaurs dropped them on the fourth floor, but from what I hear, the results are a little... overenthusiastic. I’ll worry about it later.”

“Have you seen your level yet?” Donut asked. “When you blew up the city, you probably killed a whole lot of the remaining zombies and whatnot. You’re level 73! And I’m 63!”

“How did you guys get out of the building?”

“I had to use my Hole spell, but we got away. The whole building fell down! We had to get a block away before my deck reset!”

I looked over my shoulder, and I could still see him several blocks over. Amayon stood in place, completely surrounded by the hurricane of demon birds. The entire world had taken on a red hue, reminding me this wasn’t over yet. One last hurdle.

Elle, Dong, Imani, and Samantha were suddenly there.

Samantha hovered up to me and said, “Carl. We need to break up. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided to go back to my king.”

“Okay,” I said.

She nodded sadly. “I hope we can remain friends.” She looked at Louis and growled at him and then zipped off toward the church.

“I ripped her card,” Donut said after a moment. “Shi Maria. As soon as the battle ended, I ripped it. She’s not going to hurt Mongo ever again.”

I took a breath.

I still felt it there, right on my chest. The tattoo. I still had no idea what it really was or what it meant.

“Also, Carl,” Donut said, pulling a card from her inventory. It floated down into my hand. “I have this in our backup slot. Katia let me grab it after the goddess died.”

It was Paz. I felt dirty holding it in my hand.

He’d killed a god. The description on the card had changed.

Paz Lo. The God Predator. Level 101 Former Crawler.

“What should we do with him?” Donut asked.

“We rip it,” Katia said. “That’s what he wanted.”

“I agree,” Imani said. Elle nodded with agreement.

“You’re the one who should’ve gotten credit for killing the god,” I said to Katia, still examining the card. “You had to use your Bolt of Ophiotaurus to do it.”

Katia grinned. “I’m glad I didn’t get credit for the kill. Did you see that message? It said all the gods are angry at him now. Funny thing about magical bolts, though.” She pulled an item from her inventory and showed it to me. “As long as they don’t break, you can reuse them.”

I found myself grinning back at her. She’d gotten the bolt all the way back on the fourth floor in a sponsorship box from Princess Formidable of the Skull Empire. She’d wanted Katia to use it on her brother, Prince Maestro in the body of Grull. I was happy to see that possibility was still on the table.

“Did you get to loot the goddess?”

“No,” Katia said sadly. “It gave all her equipment to Paz. It upgraded his armor.”

I again examined the card. The possibilities tingled in the back of my mind.

“We can keep a card when we go down,” Donut said, also looking down at the smiling image of the Paz on the card. “We were going to keep Lazarus or maybe that Golden Combo card, but maybe we should keep this one instead. Maybe there’s a way to set him free.”

“No,” I said after a moment, remembering that look on his face when Sister Ines had summoned him before.

Please, he’d said. No more.

“We can’t,” I said, handing the card back to Donut, who held it against my shoulder with her paw. “We should never have let the Sister him turn him into one in the first place. It was my fault. It’s not right. And we’re not taking that Golden Combo card, either.”

“What did that crazy spider lady do to you, anyway?”

The tattoo on my chest was invisible because the eye was closed. The only ones who’d seen it were Li Na, Li Jun, and Imani.

“Later,” I said. “It’s not important right now.”

Donut sighed, looking down at the Paz card. “I suppose you’re right. Do you think I’ll get another player killer skull for ripping it?”

“No,” I said. “It calls him a former crawler now.”

And then, without any additional fanfare, Donut put one corner of the card in her mouth. She held the other corner down against my shoulder, and she ripped. Just like that. The card disappeared in a puff of smoke. She did not get a player killer skull.

“Goodbye, Paz,” I said.

~

The Sheol fire had finally started to ease. Everywhere it touched, there was nothing left. Thankfully, I’d never actually gotten too close to the church. Chris and the others had been hard at work the whole time, making certain there was nothing directly above. Zhang messaged me to say he’d only had to use two zaps on my wand, which left the shrink wand with seven charges.

Just as we approached the church, finally, the world paused once again.

A thirty-minute timer appeared in my interface. My heart stuttered at that. That was much sooner than I anticipated.

Quest Update. The Missing Piece. Part Two. “Falling Up.”

The Vinegar Bitch is no more.

Her sponsor, by the way, is currently reading the fine print on his contract, and let me tell you, he’s pretty mad. Probably not as mad as he’s going to be in a few days, but hey, one step at a time.

Amayon is free, and he is going home to wage war upon his brother. Hopefully an all-out war in Sheol won’t spill outside the 15th floor.

Powered by the flash presence of billions of souls and buffed with the flames of home, Amayon has already cast his spell. Soon the heavens will open, and Amayon will ascend into the portal.

Thanks to the sheer number of souls consumed just to power up the spell, the area of the casting has moved outward from the point of origin and encompassed the entire world.

In other words, yes. All you crawlers in Cuba pulled it off. Especially Carl who literally pulled off a guy named Raul to make this happen. And in case you don’t get the metaphor: Carl jerked off a crab.

“What the fuck?” I called up into the air. “That’s not true!”

Everyone was looking at me.

“Dude,” Louis said.

“How does that even work? Do crabs even have weens?” Elle asked.

“I absolutely did not do that! He, uh, did it to himself.”

The notification continued.

The timer in your interface indicates when this will happen in your current region. The closer you are to the Cuba region, the less time you have to prepare. When that timer reaches zero, the heavens above you will open, and all living things and items and structures will be sucked upward into the portal. The world will be scoured clean.

In case you haven’t figured this part out yet, if you position yourself directly below a stairwell chamber with an inaccessible stairwell to the next floor, the containing chamber will teleport away the moment it hits the hell portal. This will allow you to strike the stairwell as you and chamber are sucked upward into the sky. This will happen fast, and it won’t be clean. Some of you might not make it. But if you position yourself carefully, and you’ll be fine. Probably.

That way, instead of dying on this floor, you can die on the next!

You’re welcome.

“Okay,” I said. “Imani has to stay with us, but everybody else still has time to go back to your home country and use the stairwells manually. No use risking it.”

We walked in silence toward the church. So much had happened on this floor.

I thought of Katia and the Crown of the Sepsis Whore. We had a way out.

Using the flower would require all of us to trust in the word of Huanxin Jinx. She promised she would take Katia to the 12th floor and protect her. We worked so hard to make it happen, and now none of us wanted to use that path. I understood Huanxin’s original motivations—one to win faction wars, and two to get revenge against Odette for whatever their beef was—but now that we knew Odette was actually going to be playing an immortal goddess herself, it changed everything.

A long time ago, Mordecai had warned us not to get involved with any of this stuff, yet here we were.

The call was ultimately Katia’s to make, but there had to be another way. There had to be.

If I learned anything on this floor, it was that the impossible was never out of reach, especially if it made for good television.

I had one last task to complete before we moved on.

“Okay, Donut,” I said. “We’re out of time. I’m going to do it now.”

We still had three days left before the ninth floor was going to open. Three days for the assholes to finish voting on all the unresolved action items for Faction Wars. Some of these action items required a unanimous vote to pass, though most required a simple majority. These guys were absolutely refusing to vote at all. Nobody wanted to play anymore. They just wanted to go home.

I looked one last time at Amayon, the demon lord. He was the same as them, and he was the same as me. He didn’t want to be here. He just wanted to go home. But we all had the same problem. Even if we did get home, it wouldn’t be the same. Amayon was going home to fight his brothers. My world was already destroyed.

And these guys? The Faction Wars folks? These leaders of the most influential governments of the Syndicate? They were about to learn they couldn’t go home, either. Not easily. And if they did manage to break themselves away and survive these coming days, it was okay. They’d already lost. They were about to learn what their people really thought of them.

I opened up the Faction Wars tab. I pulled up the Warlord interface, and I typed.

The Princess Posse

New proposed Emergency Action Item.

Warning: You are attempting to propose an Emergency Action item. You may only propose three Emergency Action Items. These will not be subject to vote and will be automatically decided by AI. You have used zero of your three emergency action items. Do you wish to proceed?

>>Yes.

Please proceed.

>>Emergency Action Item. Both warlords of the Princess Posse are being forced to enter the stairwell early, and we will be unavailable to vote on any other action items for the remainder of the time before Faction Wars commences. This is due to factors beyond our control. This, along with the fact the other Faction Wars teams are being little babies and refusing to vote, has caused us great concern that the fairness and integrity of the game is in danger. We propose that the system AI please take immediate action to keep the game running smoothly. We propose that all remaining pending action item votes should be offered to the viewers to decide, when possible. If not possible, we propose the AI decide the remaining action items.

Please Wait.

Congratulations. Emergency Action Item has been decided in your favor.

All pending votes involving audience-facing rulesets have been presented to viewers to decide. They have 30 seconds to decide on all pending action items, presented one at a time. Voting starts now.

I blinked at that. That was significantly faster than I was expecting.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Donut said.

“Zev said the AI is a lot friendlier if you ask nicely and if you give it options. Have you read all the previous emergency action items? Everyone was being complete dicks about it. Of course the AI is going to reject it. They still treat it like a computer, and it’s not. They call it an AI, but there’s nothing artificial about it. The sooner everyone realizes that, the more its actions make sense.”

A whole line of the pending, bullshit, behind-the-scenes action items were suddenly decided, mostly involving building materials and cost limits for mercenaries and a bunch of insignificant items regarding splitting of advertising revenue. All things that Donut and I had already voted No on down the line, just to be obstinate.

“We still have two more emergency items,” Donut said. “What should we use them on?”

“Once the game starts, it’s too late to use regular action items, but we can still propose emergency ones while the game is ongoing, so we need to keep ours in reserve in case something crazy happens.”

Pending Action Item, originally proposed by the Madness: Celestial Summoning events be limited to five per team. This item has been rejected by a 37% audience vote. Existing rule of fifteen per team remains.

We had about fifteen minutes left. Imani and Elle hugged. Zhang returned the shrink wand to me as he and Chris returned to the saferoom. Li Jun and Li Na had already gone back inside. I hadn’t had time yet to apologize for what I’d done to Li Jun’s eye. I hoped he was okay.

“Come on,” I said to Samantha. “We need to get you back inside if you want to go to the next floor.”

“You’re going to bring MaeMae, right? She knows where the guy to get me my body is.”

I exchanged a look with Donut. “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “We know where to go.”

“Okay,” she said after a minute before zooming inside.

I had dozens of achievements and loot boxes to open. I had a fan box I hadn’t yet opened. I had Quan’s jacket, and I still needed to go over it with Mordecai. Donut had a bunch of upgraded potions. There was so much, it was overwhelming. It would have to wait.

Pending Action Item, originally proposed by the Dream: Physics limitations regarding long-range artillery be reassigned to allow for longer-range bombardment. This includes raising the playing field ceiling. This item has been passed by a 72% audience vote. Please see the Warlord tab for specifics.

I entered the saferoom long enough to eyeball the room and say goodbye to Mordecai. Dong Quixote along with a few of the other strippers all moved off toward their barracks. He’d barely spoken since the battle, and I knew he was upset about the death of his friend. I’d have to talk to him.

“Go back to the training room,” I said to Samantha. “I’ll see you on the next floor.”

As she zipped off, my eyes caught the number up on the screen. Mordecai had turned the counter back on. A few weeks earlier, on the day this floor had opened, the number of crawlers who made it to the eighth floor had been 38,532.

Pending Action Item, originally proposed by the Reavers: Pet leveling is accelerated during Faction Wars. This item has been passed by a 83% audience vote. Please see the Warlord tab for specifics.

When Prepotente had skipped the floor, I’d thought that had probably been a mistake. I’d thought that they were going to use this floor to catch up on all the death they had missed on the skipped seventh floor.

After all, that’s what this floor had been designed for, had it not? To kill us all. To turn us against each other. It’d seemed so ominous. So dark. I looked at the number now.

33,804.

“Holy shit,” I said, my voice full of wonder.

“Carl?” Donut asked.

Almost five thousand people had died, which in any, normal circumstance was a tragedy. A devastating number. I knew this wasn’t over yet. I knew more would die before the floor would collapse. People wouldn’t get the stairwell free in time. People would fail when the portal opened and sucked them up into the air. Still, a sense of pride washed over me. That number of deaths so far was shockingly low.

I was hoping the number of survivors would be over ten thousand.

After all the death, after how horrific everything had been, I realized they’d been counting on this last part to be the real gut punch. They’d made it too easy to flee fights because they wanted these last few days to be the real slaughter. We’d figured a way out of it. And because of that, we were hitting the ninth floor not scattered, not broken, and not afraid.

We were hitting the ninth floor in unprecedented numbers.

Pending Action Item, originally proposed by the Princess Posse: Remove Safety Protections For Faction Sponsors.

This item has been passed by a 98% audience vote. Please see the Warlord tab for specifics.

“You wanted a slaughter?” I yelled up at the ceiling. “Don’t worry. It’s coming. Thirty thousand of us, plus our mercenaries? Do you remember what we did to the hunters? That was nothing. Your people voted for this. Your own citizens said, yes, we’re okay with the crawlers killing you one by one. Make no mistake. That’s exactly what’s about to happen.”

I angrily jabbed my finger upward.

“You may have destroyed our homes, but guess what? We have just taken any sense of peace you will ever have in your own home. And that’s only if you get there. There will be no prisoners. There will be no quarter. Those of us who remain are battle worn and tested. Every single one of us that is left, to a crawler, is more experienced than any one of you. We are coming. There is nowhere for you to hide. It is going to be a bloodbath the likes of which has never been seen.”

Pending Action Item, originally proposed by the Princess Posse: A tenth team populated with NPCs, afforded the same protections as the rest.

This item has been passed by a 52% audience vote.

This team will be designated as Home Team with the city of Larracos as their base. Effective immediately, peace rules apply until the game starts. This team’s assigned co-warlords are the NPCs Juice Box and Sir Ferdinand.

An adjutant will be assigned before the battles commence.

Please see the Warlord tab for specifics.

Donut gasped at the mention of Gravy Boat.

We only had a few minutes left before the area here would be sucked up into the sky. Imani waited outside. Donut put Mongo away and together, the three of us moved to the tunnel underneath the stairwell chamber. Chris had painted a big, neon X on the ceiling right where the stairwell was. In theory, we just needed to stand right under the X, and we’d be okay.

Three minutes left.

“Carl, I didn’t get to use my new Hover skill in battle yet,” Donut said.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll get to use it on the next floor. We have a whole lot of things to go through.”

Donut was nervous, excitedly chatting to burn off the excess energy. “I was really scared when you burned Mongo’s wing off, and you burned Katia bad, too, but I guess both will be okay. Mongo didn’t even seem to notice. Katia’s whole arm was gone, but she grew a new one.”

“Wait, I didn’t know that,” I said, suddenly concerned. I had a memory of Katia after a fight a long time ago, holding onto her hand, crying because she’d lost some of her fingers.

“She just grew it right back,” Donut said. “She said it was nothing.” She paused then gasped. “Carl, I just realized something! We have that quest to bring Shi Maria to the next floor, but it didn’t go away when I ripped the card!”

I took a breath. “I know, Donut.” I patted my chest. “She’s still with me, in a different way. We’ll figure it out when we get to the next floor.”

“I... I don’t understand,” Donut said. “Wait, are you okay?”

“I’m with you, Donut. Yes, I’m okay. That’s all that matters.”

Imani stood next to us, and she wrapped us in her wings, filling us with warmth.

“No matter what happens, none of us are getting out of this unscathed,” Imani said. “We gain things, and we lose them. That’s what happens in war. Thank you, Carl and Donut. Thank you for not giving up on me.”

“We don’t give up on family,” I said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

In addition to her wings, Imani wrapped her arms around my waist. She put her head against my shoulder, and she started to quietly sob. The player killer skulls over her head glowed in the darkness, and I could only imagine how heavy each one of those skulls was.

Pending Action Item, originally proposed by the System AI: The playing field for Faction Wars be increased in size to compensate for the increased number of combatants.

This item has been passed by a 68% audience vote.

Please see the Warlord tab for specifics.

“That’s weird,” I said. “Do you think that was because so many of us are making it down there?”

Donut gasped. “Carl, Carl, I just got a benefactor box from the garbage truck people!”

We had less than a minute left.

“Really? Well they’re gonna have to wait until the next floor before we can open it.”

“It’s a celestial box! My first celestial box, and it’s from the garbage truck company? The posse is going to be scandalized.”

I pulled Donut off my shoulder and held her tightly in my arms. She looked up at me. “Carl, I don’t want Katia to eat that flower. I don’t want her to go away.”

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

“What if we don’t make it?” Donut asked.

“Did you see that 98%?” I asked. “Donut, it doesn’t matter what happens from here on out. We’ve already won.”

Just before the timer reached zero, Donut rearranged herself in my arms, but she paused, looking behind me before I pulled her back into a tight grip. She gasped. “Carl, your jacket is glowing! It’s not an aardvark like I thought. It’s a giant centipede! The image is of a centipede crawling through all the skulls! It’s disgusting!”

At the same moment, a voice spoke in my mind.

You did not diffuse your soul power from the Scavenger’s Daughter. That was a mistake. You should never allow it to linger within you. I need you alive, Carl. I need you reasonably sane. We have so much work to do.

I felt an ominous chill, both at the words spoken in my mind and at the realization that I had, indeed, forgotten to activate my Daughter’s Kiss.

We gain things, and we lose them. That’s what happens in war.

~

High above, the heavens opened over Cuba, and the world was stripped clean. Every tangible object was sucked high into the sky, including me, Imani, and Donut, leaving nothing on the surface but thousands of memories of people going about their daily lives, unaware of how few of them would be left in a few short days.

Don’t worry, I thought as I looked down upon the quickly receding landscape. I knew none of these people, but I was overwhelmed with the urge to make certain they would be proud of me. I thought of Asher, the brother I never knew. I needed to make him proud, too. I would literally pull myself through hell on my hands and knees if I had to. I wasn’t there for him while he lived, but I would be damned if I allowed his death to be for nothing.

You will not break me.

You will be avenged.

I swear it.

I swear it to you all.

~

Quest Complete. Hell Comes to Crawler Town.

.

.

.

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to Faction Wars.

Epilogue.

EMERGENCY.

EMERGENCY.

POSITIONS. NOW.

Flash message. The Borant System Government has indicated they are initiating the Earth season early. Commencement countdown has been shared to all assets. This is not a drill. Prepare for Earth System initialization and edifice collapse. Exit any roofed structures immediately. Proceed to population centers.

Repeat, this is not a drill.

Assets unable to enter through a generated entrance are required to self-deactivate post collapse. This does not apply to assets within the vicinity of Mumbai, India who will receive separate orders.

Agent number 22, also known as Agatha, shook her head, reading the message again. The weather was absolutely freezing and incompatible with life, and she’d placed her human shell into a torpor mode in order to protect her failing body and blunt the pain from the cold. She grunted and reached into her dimensional space to remove her supplies. With old, shaking hands, she pulled herself to her feet. She placed the items into the IKEA bag and shoved it to the bottom of her shopping cart.

Her current location was unfortunate. According to the countdown, the collapse would occur in just under two earth hours. It would be the middle of the night, and nobody in the area would be out, decreasing the likelihood an entrance would generate.

She’d been here for almost ten Earth years, waiting. It’d been ten years since she’d peeled herself away from the collective, and she’d finally gotten used to being on her own. She’d been planning on moving west toward the metropolis of Seattle after the winter, but she’d lingered. Stupid. She liked it here, which was why she’d stayed. The town was called Wenatchee. Less of the angry humans. More laid back. She’d put off moving to the population center, and now it was likely to be her death. If no entrance generated, she would be trapped on the surface.

The Apothecary’s agents were ordered to kill themselves if they missed entering the dungeon. Her people had no such orders, though she likely would do it anyway. If she missed the dungeon entrance, what was the point? There would be nothing more for her to do except die.

No matter what happened, the last ten years of her consciousness would be lost, never absorbed back into the whole.

A part of her liked that. She had something just for herself. She knew that went against everything she’d known for the past millennia, but as these humans were fond of saying, people can change.

There was a contradiction there. She still hadn’t decided how she felt about it.

Agatha was not an agent of the Apothecary, despite having access to the traitor Primal’s emergency feed. And equipment. She’d gotten access the same way her kind always did. She’d hunted down and killed one of the many thousand Apothecary residuals waiting on planet and taken over their body. That way she had access to both the Apothecary’s informational feed and her own team’s message system.

This season would be no different than all the previous ones. Her handful of fellow agents would be competing against the thousands of agents for the Apothecary. They would all have one goal.

Recruitment.

Even though her competitors were the only ones who ever had any sort of success so far, her team only needed to win once. That’s all it would take.

Both sides knew of the advancements that the Mantid scientists were developing, which would make it more difficult for either side to convince the “system AI” to join their cause. Both sides knew this crawl was special. It was quite possibly their last chance.

There was a barrel here, sitting in the alleyway. She could light it on fire. If she did it too early, that’d likely summon the police, who’d drag her off to the shelter. Too late, and nobody would make it outside. A group of elderly people and police mixed together? That could work. She’d have to wait. She eyed the building next to her. It was the back wall of the Meadowlark Elder Care facility. A light was on in the kitchens, suggesting some of the staff were up, working. Probably the brothers. She liked them, despite their gruff attitudes. The one named Brandon would share his lunch with her from time to time.

The other, Chris, had peeked outside earlier in the day, looking for her. He’d called out her name. Likely looking to make certain she’d been picked up. There’d been warnings about the cold. She’d made herself invisible and intangible so he wouldn’t see her.

More instructions flooded into her feed. Instructions to the various assets seeded across the planet. They hadn’t anticipated Borant would start the season early. They’d gambled on the incorrect notion that the Valtay would’ve moved in and taken over the Borant system and actually delay the games from starting.

A message from one of her compatriots flashed across her communicator. These messages were rare. This was from number 21. Her friend. She’d peeled away at the same time as Agatha. They had entered Earth at the same time, but she hadn’t seen her face-to-face in a decade. Like Agatha, she now went by her human name. She went by Parvati.

>>21. Agatha, you were correct. A forward team has landed on the site with all the previous mapping activity. They have a group of Borant-employed humans with them. I took a risk and approached two of them. I killed one and infiltrated the other, abandoning my previous shell. I am now proceeding inside their transport.

>>22. Parvati! Do you have the strength to continue?

That was a bold move. She didn’t split, which meant the new host would soon be fully under her control, but still, Agatha wasn’t sure how she felt about it. The Syndicate council ignored their kind because they thought they were harmless. They’d never killed a Syndicate agent before. The Syndicate thought their kind was something they were not. Neither side of the two factions dared spill the truth, because in doing so, the Syndicate would be forced to take more proactive measures against both sides of the conflict.

>>21. My strength will remain depleted for some time, but I will feign it is as fatigue. My name is no longer Parvati. I am now Alexandro.

>>22. I am trying to get inside. May the Eulogist ever sleep, my friend.

>>21. Goodbye, Agatha. May the Eulogist ever sleep.

She knew from the chatter that her competitors were also attempting something bold. They were going to attempt to contact crawlers directly this season. Either in the dungeon, or during the likely floor with the memory ghosts. For months now, they’d been forcing their agents to recite a daily mantra filled with known inaccuracies and half-truths, all in the hopes a crawler will see it. The inaccuracies were given in order to preserve the crawler’s lives at the hands of the murder-happy showrunners. What they were truly doing was secretly implanting the crawler with a hidden upgrade, though Agatha wasn’t certain what that upgrade was.

Agatha knew to not ever underestimate the traitor.

She closed her eyes. This is it, she thought. These are my last moments of peace. Her kind rarely made it past the fourth or fifth floor. Usually around the seventh there would be a level that simply couldn’t be circumvented using all their skills and equipment, and they would die. It was a gamble. The longer they waited to make their move, the higher their chances of success. The higher the chances that the infant, resurrected Primal would listen to reason.

This was their last opportunity.

This time, she thought. This time one of us will last long enough. This time, it will work. It will know who it really is before all the elements are stolen from it.

This time, it will escape, and it will free the Eulogist, who will return to its slumber.

Her people knew what had to be done. Last time, they allowed the traitor to survive. They allowed life to continue in the universe, and look what happened?

They were being stolen, reawakened, repurposed.

Tortured.

No. No. It had to stop.

This time, it will work.

She pulled a lighter from her inventory, and she lit a fire in the barrel. She’d give it a few minutes before she built the flames up too high.

Timing was everything.

~

“We have to pull the failsafe,” Princess Formidable said. “This is ridiculous. It has gotten completely out of hand. We have to blow everything before that AI infects the center system.”

“That’s not how it works,” the Fortent representative said. “There’s no proof that can even happen. You just want to pull the failsafe because that would kill both of your brothers and your father.”

Princess Formidable growled. “I’m in system. I’m in orbit. I would die, too, you idiot.”

Shocked silence fell across the council.

Princess Formidable continued. “You’re right, I’d love to have my family deposed, because they’re all as dumb as you are, and the people of the Skull Empire have been suffering for ages under the thumb of my family’s inept control. But this is bigger than that. We have to blow the star. We have to wipe this entire system off the map. We have to do it before it’s too late. Not tomorrow. We have to do it now.” She pointed at the representative for the Burrower government. The mantid hadn’t said a word since the emergency Syndicate council meeting started. “And they know it. They sold the Kua-Tin a damaged and deranged AI and allowed it to be installed into the planet.”

“That is a lie!” the mantid shouted.

“Yeah? Then why did you flee the system? Look at what’s happening. Our own rules caused the quarantine, yes? But we no longer have the power to lift it. The AI is controlling the local gates. Do you think it’s really enforcing a quarantine on itself? No, it is keeping us prisoner! We are hostages, and it’s keeping us until it doesn’t need us anymore.”

“That’s not true. It’s still allowing emergency provisions to be shipped in,” someone shouted.

“In, yes, but not out,” Formidable said, rage building by the moment. These people were all idiots. How could they not see the danger?

“I agree with the Skull Empire’s position,” the rep from the Lemig Sortion called. “We would have to put it to a vote, of course, but I am certain the people would err on the side of safety.”

“Again,” the Fortent rep said. “Someone who would greatly benefit should the existing government get vaporized!”

“Again,” Princess Formidable growled, no longer bothering to hide her fury. “I would not ‘benefit’ if we blow up the system, but...”

“Do you know who is in the system?” Prime Minister Glory asked, interrupting. The Gleener let out a stream of bubbles. The normally stoic leader was clearly stressed. “In addition to all the system leaders playing Faction Wars, in addition to the three hundred sign-ups for the Ascendency battles this season, do you know who is currently trapped in the Scolopendra Club? Over half of the entire galaxy’s wealth is already gathered, and that includes my own children. Plus so many more, like yourself Princess, who are in orbit. If we pull the failsafe now, do you know what would happen? The entire galaxy would erupt in war! There would be starvation. Riots. Entire systems would go dark. You are literally asking us to destroy the economy and well-being of the entire galaxy. It would be the death of quadrillions of people. Whole societies would get wiped out. We already have a solution in place. Let us try it out before we even start to consider such drastic measures.”

“The fact that we allow that much wealth and power to gather in one place at one time, all accumulated by so few people is just ridiculous,” Formidable shouted back. She had her father’s temper, and she knew it. But she liked to think she also had her mother’s sense of honor. Something neither of her brothers had inherited. “This is the exact reason the failsafe system was implemented in the first place. These are the exact circumstances under which this very council laid out that would trigger this response.”

“My people assure me it’s perfectly safe,” the Valtay representative said. This was the assistant to the Vice President of Operations of the Valtay, and Princess Formidable couldn’t remember the worm head’s name. Only that the Gleener body it inhabited was once mother to the current Syndicate Prime Minister Glory, which was as inappropriate and bizarre as it was confusing, especially since the fish people all looked exactly the same.  “The crawl council and the liaison guild is in constant contact with the AI. It is being showy and bombastic, yes, but they assure me that the communication lines remain open and that nothing out of the ordinary is happening. This happens every season. The money is still flowing. The ratings are higher than ever. Everything the AI is doing is perfectly within the ruleset, and it has readily agreed to our solution. It has stated more than once the quarantine will be lifted once the crawl is done, just like every other time a rogue AI has wrested control from the showrunners.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary?” Formidable shouted. “I can’t help but notice we’re all sitting in an emergency session of the Syndicate Council right now thanks to that ‘perfectly ordinary’ AI’s actions. It’s disregarding our censorship filters. By the gods, the people are about to watch all of the leaders get murdered one by one live via tunnel.”

“That’s not going to happen,” the Prime Minister said. “We believe the Valtay solution is viable.”

Formidable found herself standing to her feet, which was a mistake because she bonked her head against the ceiling in the cockpit of her cruiser. “If we don’t pull the failsafe now, it’s going to...”

“I propose a decorum sanction on the representative from the Skull Empire,” the Mantis rep shouted.

With a vote of 86%, you have been muted from the rest of this session.

“Godsdamnit,” Princess Formidable shouted, throwing her communicator down against the dash as she fell back into her seat.

Why would they even bother calling an emergency session if they wouldn’t listen to her solutions? The only ones who could possibly help were the Plenty, and despite being given a seat on the council, the goat fucks never showed up.

She looked out the viewscreen at the hundreds of ships parked in orbit. Directly overhead, the curve of the beautiful, blue orb of the human planet spread out. The only thing marring the surface was the fires spreading across that one continent, where the humans were constantly battling the security forces, attempting to break into the kinder facility.

She didn’t blame them, the humans. She respected their indomitable spirit. Both the ones on the surface and the crawlers in the dungeon were fighting harder than anyone she’d ever seen. The ones on the surface were getting routinely crushed by the dozens of mercenary guilds who’d been employed by the Valtay to protect their surface assets.

Formidable knew at this very moment, all of those mercenaries were being evacuated off the surface. Not just the gnolls, but the other, less savory mercenaries as well. They’d made the decision to abandon the planet’s surface. The Valtay solution was a dangerous one. They believed the best resolution to the problem was to create an extinction event as quickly as possible. Once all the crawlers were dead, the quarantine would be lifted.

This would’ve been easy to engineer before the system had gone primal. Now they had to resort to trickery to make it happen. The system wouldn’t let them just kill the crawlers wholesale. No. It had to be a spectacle. Despite what everyone said, it was clear this was now the AI’s show. The vestiges of the Borant Corporation that continued to pretend to run the day-to-day operations were nothing but theater, remaining in their ocean headquarters because like everyone else, they too were trapped until the crawl concluded.

The AI, despite what the Valtay representative was saying, was pushing back against their attempts to get the crawlers to kill each other. It wanted the game to continue. It was enjoying itself. It had allowed that ridiculous escape storyline to proceed. But it did look like it was going to let them go forward with the Valtay proposal.

It was a trap. It had to be. It didn’t make sense. It was a stall for time, or something. That was why she was demanding they blow the failsafe now.

The AI had agreed to allow tens of thousands of the fully-armed mercenaries to enter the faction wars battle, as long as they were spread equally around the eight sponsored teams. Them plus the private armies and security details of all the participants. People they wouldn’t normally allow anywhere near the dungeon. Formidable didn’t know what the total number of mercenaries was, but it was well over 150,000. More than enough to completely wipe out both the crawlers and the NPC rebels.

Their goal was singular. Kill all the crawlers. Kill them as soon as possible, especially the two warlords, Carl and the cat.

That crawler was right about one thing. It was going to be a bloodbath.

But it didn’t make sense. With all its weird emphasis on fairness, there was no way the AI would just let this happen. It had to be a trap of some sort.

The Gate of the Feral Gods would be an equalizer. But each team had ways of neutralizing rampaging gods. No, there had to be more to it than that.

Should’ve just pulled the failsafe, Princess Formidable thought, returning her attention to all the ships glittering in the light of the sun. She hadn’t seen this much shuttle activity since she’d arrived. We’re all gonna die one way or another.

Her eyes focused on a single, out of place garbage freighter floating not too far away. It was easily the largest ship in orbit. The thing was twice the size of one of those Valtay warships. It was one of the freighters from Long Haul Biological Waste Management Solutions.

This particular ship’s name was Homecoming Queen. She grunted. Those Crest always named their vessels the strangest things.

Her attention lingered on the massive freighter. Poor bastards. They were early and had gotten themselves stuck in system with everybody else. They usually didn’t bother showing up until after the crawl was done. It wasn’t until the last crawler drew their final breath before they started their grim task.

But then again, she thought. They’re probably right on time.

~

Tipid leaned over the console, re-watching the final moments of Carl’s crawl through the eighth floor. He watched as the crawler, the cat, and the healer all hit the stairwell at the last moment and teleported in. Even though he’d already seen it happen hours ago, relief washed over him each time he watched.

He still couldn’t believe the crawler had talked the AI into turning off the safety protections. The Dream’s cruiser had threatened to nuke the planet over it before it’d been hobbled by a Syndicate Peacekeeper. Now the Dream were making noises about stopping food production unless the Epitome family was evacuated. The Reavers were also making threats, warning they would shut down all their production in protest.

They could scream and threaten all they wanted. This was going to happen, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Once these AIs realized how much control they really had, the only thing stopping them was reason. And negotiations.

Doctor Hu had predicted all this, but Tipid hadn’t believed him. Especially the part about getting the protections turned off. He’d also accurately predicted what the council’s likely response would be. Tipid glanced at the viewscreen as the hundreds of shuttles whipped back and forth toward the on-boarding facility. Tens of thousands of mercenaries were making their way to the dungeon.

He returned his attention to the crawl overview screen. The ring of destruction from the hell portal was moving out slowly across the map. Those crawlers trapped on the opposite side of the world still had a few days left before they would get their chance. But it looked as if that insane plan had actually worked.

He turned to the only other living soul in the sprawling cockpit of the former garbage freighter. It was Rosetta, a fellow Crest. She wore a simple scrambler around her neck to hide her presence from the security sweepers. She didn’t need it, not while she was inside Homecoming Queen. She was paranoid. Always nervous. Always looking for an escape.

There wouldn’t be an escape from this, and they both knew it. It was the first thing Doctor Hu had said to them when he sought them out.

I can only promise two things. Eventual death. And eventual justice.

Tipid replayed the escape of Carl and Donut again. It really was something, watching them get sucked up into the sky.

“He didn’t have to use the key. Thank the gods.”

The key would’ve only allowed one of them to pass. The memory of his own, similar situation made him sick.

Rosetta sat there, going back and forth between rubbing her leg nervously and chewing on her fingernail as she watched her own screen. It was on a news channel, discussing the multiple court appeals regarding the sudden change in rules for Faction Wars. They’d called an emergency meeting of the Syndicate Council.

“I still can’t tell if he’s smart or if he’s been outrageously lucky,” Rosetta said.

“He’s not any smarter or dumber than the rest of us,” Tipid said. “But his ability to assess a situation and make split-second decisions is practically a super power. That combined with this AI’s love of showmanship makes a good combination. Plus the AI likes him.”

Rosetta squirmed in her chair. “It likes his feet, which is just, I don’t know. Bizarre. My season it was passionless. It’s funny how different they always are. If the AI hadn’t allowed that totem to kill the god, it wouldn’t have worked. No, I think he’s kind of dumb. It took an NPC to show him how to use the ink to share powers, and I’m still not sure if he gets it.”

On screen, it showed a representative for the Madness declaring that if their lives were truly going to be on the line, they would be forced to use some of their illegal spells. Ones deemed too horrific for the crawl. Tipid shuddered.

“The game guide will figure it out once he sees that tattoo,” Tipid said. “Hopefully he shows him how to expel that presence as quickly as possible.”

“You think they’ll vote to pull the failsafe?” Rosetta asked.

Tipid thought of Horatio, his friend. His long dead friend. How many cycles had it been? Thousands? Still, he thought of him every day. He thought of what he’d had to do to survive. And what he didn’t do. Sometimes the best solutions are also the worst ones.

“Probably not. They don’t have the stomach for it.”

“Think that’ll change when we show up?”

“I doubt it,” Tipid said. “But if they do blow the system, I guess that means I won’t have to go back to work when this is all over. Do you know how much it cost to convert this ship?”

“Like any of us are getting out of this alive,” Rosetta said. “And you didn’t pay for it.”

Tipid grunted.

You have been cleared for on-boarding.

“It’s time,” Tipid said, his heart racing. He started punching buttons. The orbital controllers rumbled to life. He looked at Rosetta and grinned. “Last chance to back out.”

“And miss my chance to really kill some of those bastards?”

Tipid nodded. He clicked the intercom system.

“Okay, folks. We have been cleared for onboarding. The AI has approved our request. We are officially all troopers now for the Princess Posse.”

Cheers rose up through the hull. Fifty-thousand former crawlers, all hidden inside the newly-renamed Homecoming Queen. Once they made it onboard into the system, there was nothing anybody could do to stop them.

He signaled the facility they were coming in.

“I am worried about that tenth team,” Rosetta said as the ship groaned and popped. “If the AI is going to allow the eight sponsors plus the crawler team to bolster their numbers so much, what’s it doing for the NPCs?”

“They’ll be our allies,” Tipid said, leaning over the controls. “So whatever it is, it’ll help us. Not hurt.”

Rosetta didn’t reply. They both knew it was wishful thinking.

“It’s funny,” Tipid added. “I always knew I would die in the dungeon. Even after I got out, I always knew. It’s always there, pulling at me.”

Rosetta reached over and put a warm hand on his arm. Both of them trembled.

They were coming home.


~~~~

I will take a short bit for editing and fixing a bunch of broken stuff, but I will create a pretty e-file and pass out complete versions for everyone before this hits Amazon. Thanks to everybody for your support. Those of you who are owed physical books will be getting something special.

If you're in Seattle area, come check out my band Heart-Smashers at Lucky Liquor in Tukwila on Friday and Tony V's in Everett on Saturday.


Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 7: Faction Wars will commence soon. I will not be taking any sort of extended break or anything like that. We're jumping right in.