Book 7 chapters 6 and 7 + Donut Holes Official Unofficial Art (Patreon)

Chapter 6

Louis’s celestial box came with a pair of items.

The first was a tier III guild upgrade called an Airship Portal, which was basically just an elevator that went up to the ceiling and allowed us to enter Louis’s new vehicle as long as it was docked to the base.

The rules for the portal were fairly straightforward. The guild leader, Imani, could designate up to three different personal spaces on the map as airports. There were some rules about suitable locations, but basically any saferoom with open air above it would work. The saferoom in the college of Larracos was, apparently, suitable.

These airports would be visible on the map to anyone in the guild piloting an airship. The airship could park itself directly above the space, and the ship could be “hangared,” meaning it disappeared from outside and was stored in a literal dimensional hangar. This room changed size to accommodate the airship, and it worked like a regular airplane hangar. One could repair the ship in the room or add upgrades, and one could purchase additional upgrades for the hangar itself. That included hiring maintenance crews. The ship was always locked to the base to which it was parked. That meant if it was hangared here in Larracos, and Louis entered the guild from somewhere else, and he decided to exit via the airship elevator, he’d take off back from Larracos. It was yet another fast travel option.

But it also came with some caveats. The system basically added what amounted to a trap door to the ceiling of the guildhall. This was a physical door that appeared on the roof of the designated saferoom. Unlike the saferoom itself, this doorway was vulnerable to damage, just like the magic doors to the stairwells on the previous floor. If the doorway was destroyed while an airship was in the hangar, the ship would be unavailable until the doorway was repaired. It was the equivalent of losing a runway at an airfield.

People trapped inside the hangar could still exit via the elevator as long as the guild hall was still standing.

“There was a weird warning when we installed the portal,” Louis said as he showed us how the elevator worked. “It said no airships would be allowed on the tenth floor.”

“Really? Huh,” I said.

“That seems like a dream, doesn’t it?” Elle said, suddenly sounding wistful. “Getting to the tenth floor? I’ve never felt as if the next floor was so far away.”

On my shoulder, Donut stiffened. I reached over and gave her a reassuring pat.

We hadn’t talked about it yet, about the most difficult task that lay ahead of us. But it was always there. Always. It had been since the moment she put that goddamned tiara on her head.

“So, since it’s my ship, and I have the controller, you can’t get to the hangar unless I give you access,” Louis said. “I just gave everybody a pass to the hangar, but you still can’t get inside the ship itself without me. The elevator takes a minute to work, so we all gotta just stand here.”

We all stepped into the circular spot against the side wall in the main space. Katia remained in our crafting room, and Imani had gone back to her own crafting room. It was me, Donut, Louis, Elle, Florin, Britney, and Bautista. Splash Zone and Samantha had also tagged along. We left Mongo and Rend playing in the main guild with Ruby and some of the other kids. I tried to get Mordecai to come, but he begged off. He, too, was in the crafting room with Katia, working on his own stuff.

As Louis messed with the elevator controls, my eyes caught the sparkle of something on the floor. It was just a few pieces of tinsel from the Christmas tree that had been standing here not too long ago. I blinked a few times, contemplating. The tinsel wasn’t supposed to be here. The strippers had cleaned most of it up, and I knew the rest of the decorations had dissipated when we got to this floor because the decorations had come from the memory simulation. Yet, this tinsel remained. There was a simple explanation. It meant this tinsel had come from outside the memory simulation. Someone must have looted it on an earlier floor. The strippers had missed it when they were cleaning up. The cleaner bot didn’t clean the main guild room.

I wasn’t sure why, but that sight of the tinsel on the floor... It triggered something in me. As I sat there, wondering from which reality the tinsel originated, I had a sudden, strange reaction. It was like I’d taken a mental step, and the ground was just a few inches lower than I was expecting, and I stumbled just a little bit.

I marveled at our situation. I allowed myself a moment, just a tiny one, to ground myself. To wonder at how strange it was that everything seemed so normal to me now. Every person. Every place. Even every object. They were all either real, imaginary, or someplace in-between, and the consequences of interacting with these things wasn’t necessarily congruent with their own reality. We were living in a simulation of a simulation. Reality mixed in with play acting. Real situations with real consequences colliding with make-believe, and the consequences of the make-believe portions were oftentimes more dangerous than reality. All the lines were blurred by this point.

I remembered Pater Coal, the high cleric of the Emberus temple at Club Vanquisher, about how he’d been taken over by the AI. He’d seemed to be having issues separating the story of the dungeon with the reality of what was happening to us.

We all have our limitations, he’d said.

That was terrifying. Goddamned terrifying.

I thought of Lightning Lou. The old dog at the gas station in Florida, left to spend Christmas Day all by himself. I’d curled up next to him on the floor and contemplated my options. I’d come so close. It was right there, the edge of a precipice so deep it almost broke my mind just to think about it.

If you make this decision. Be sure. Be sure it’s your only option. This is more than just a failsafe. It’s the end of everything. If there’s time to do something else, don’t be so quick. So you must be absolutely certain.

On my chest, I felt the eye blink, and a new wave of fear washed over me.

“Carl, are you okay?” Donut asked just before the world flashed.

~

The elevator teleported us into a large room.

Entering the hangar of Party Planner.

All of us stopped to stare at the sleek, silver tube sitting on the floor on a pair of chopper-like landing skids. All the intrusive, contemplative thoughts were instantly forgotten as I gawked at the thing.

Florin made a noise that sounded like he was trying to whistle. He started to walk around the vehicle.

“What the shit?” Elle asked. “You got this in a celestial box? This makes Carl’s backpatch look like something he picked up off the street.”

“I know, right?” Louis said, grinning. “I haven’t tried flying it yet. Once we make certain there’s a place to park it at the new base, I’m going to fly it over. Gotta make sure I don’t fly over bad guy territory. It says I’m not allowed to while the ceasefire is in effect. The controls are pretty easy from what I can tell.”

“Party Planner?” Donut asked. She jumped off my shoulder and walked the length of the silver tube. Her voice echoed in the high-ceiling hangar. “You named it Party Planner? And this is an airplane? Are you sure? It looks like a submarine!”

Louis moved toward the front of the vehicle. The entire, rounded nose of the thing was made of heavily tinted glass, and I couldn’t see within. It reminded me of the nose of a b-29 bomber, though not nearly as big. “Yeah, that’s what Katia said. It’s not an airplane, but more like a drone thing. It calls it a tilt rotor, but it’s not like those Osprey things. It has four propellers on either side that pop out the top and to the side when it’s flying. I got an instruction manual and everything.” He pulled a small soul crystal encased in silver. “It runs on this thing. Just like the Twister.”

“Yes, but why’d you name it Party Planner?” Donut asked.

“That’s what Firas had suggested we name the Twister.” He paused, suddenly sad. “I’d told him it was stupid.”

“Wow,” I said walking in a circle around the thing. The metallic cylinder was about fifty feet long, about the length of a medium-sized private jet. The fuselage wasn’t a perfect tube, but more like a squished oval. When it sat on the skids, the bottom of it was only about a foot and a half off the ground, and the whole thing was about eight feet tall, meaning the interior cabin was probably just a hair too small for me to stand fully upright within, depending on how thick the hull was. There were no visible wings or tail or rudder or any sort of navigational aid at all. I didn’t see the four propellers, but the top of the oval fuselage did appear to have four, rectangle-shaped protuberances on the top. Multiple windows dotted either side, and the entire bottom appeared to be made of glass.

It didn’t remind me of a submarine. More like a smaller-sized bullet train car.

“What sort of protection does it come with?” Florin asked, still walking in circles around it.

“It’s similar to the Twister,” Louis said. “I still have my Protect Aircraft shield, plus it comes with an anti-flak shield, and I can upgrade the stealth mode of it. There’s a bunch of upgrades we can buy, too. But first we have to upgrade the hangar and hire a mechanic gremlin.”

Florin ran a hand along the silver fuselage. “How big of a crew do you need?”

“Just one to fly it, and I can program a button to open the bomb bay, but there’s room for five crew total. Pilot, co-pilot and navigator, a tail gunner, a ball-turret gunner, and bombardier.”

Samantha was on Louis’s shoulder again. “I call the ball-turret!” She turned to Louis. “What’s a ball turret?”

“Bombardier?” Florin asked, ignoring Samantha. “So, it’s a bomber?”

“That’s what it says. The middle part is filled with racks, and the bottom can open so they all drop out.”

“Are there door guns?” Florin asked. “It looks pretty vulnerable from the sides.”

“It’s an upgrade,” Louis said.

Florin nodded. “It’s like a half-sized, half-crew B-17 had a baby with one of those next-gen stealth bombers.”

“Jesus, Louis,” I said, a sudden sense of alarm filling me. “This thing looks like a death trap.”

“Yeah, Katia said that, too. Especially after she read the description.”

“Why can’t I examine it?” Florin asked just as I opened my mouth to ask the same question.

“Wait, I have one of the stealth things turned on,” Louis said. “Katia says I should keep it always turned on. I just turned it off for a second, so examine it now.”

Casket in the Sky. Party Planner. Tilt Rotor Stealth Light Bomber.

Vehicle.

This vehicle is classed as tier III Tech armor for the purposes of Faction Wars and counts against your limit.

This vehicle is assigned to The Princess Posse.

This aircraft is owned by crawler Army Air General Louis Santiago 2.

You may only use this vehicle if you hold the controller.

If one studies the history of all the societies who managed to wipe themselves out before they reached the ability to flee into the stars, there are a few remarkable similarities in all of them. There’s a roadmap that contains multiple waypoints along the way, from certain types of religions to the mass production of projectile firearms and usually culminating in either nuclear winter or uncontrolled biological warfare. It’s almost always the same. Sad, really.

Anyway, one of the final waypoints on the this-is-how-they-killed-themselves list is almost always the thing you’re looking at right now.

A lighter-than-air, long-range death delivery system.

This usually evolves into something unmanned before the fun really starts, but in the meantime, we have this thing. This is a low-ceiling, light bomber that’s designed for fast in-and-out surgical raids against enemy forward positions. It flies fast and low and relies on speed and its multiple stealth options to keep it safe. The base model includes some forward and aft anti-air guns, but that’s pretty much it. That plus some rudimentary shields.

Seriously. It would take a pilot with gonads the size of bowling balls to fly this thing into a heavily fortified area.

But what this flying one-way-ticket lacks in self-defense, it makes up for in pure, passionate, offensive skill. The multi-use bomb bay can be modified to hold all manner of armament, and all bombs dropped from the main model are given a 50% increase in yield. This could be enhanced even further if you happen to know anybody who can build you even better, custom-made bombs.

Warning: Different dungeon floors have different rulesets regarding the use of airships. It is possible airships will not be allowed at all during future floors. So use it while you got it.

“Casket in the Sky?” Donut asked, her voice incredulous.

“That’s the name of the type of airplane it is,” Louis said. “There are a bunch of models you can buy or build. But that’s this one. There’s another one called a Dumbassmobile.”

I exchanged a look with Elle, who had her trademark are-you-kidding-me? look.

“Yeah, I’m glad you got this, but I’m not so sure it’s a good idea,” I said. “I’m thinking an artillery-style offense might be better.”

“Yeah, no, you’re right,” Louis said. “But remember what the Sledge did at the end of the Butcher’s Masquerade? He flew the thing remotely and crashed it into the castle. I can do that if I have to. We can do either or. As long as I can see it, I can use it like a drone. I can open the bomb bay doors from afar. That way if it blows up, I won’t die.”

“It’s pretty great,” Florin said. He was on his knees at the front, rubbing his hand across the glass. “But it makes me wonder what sort of hardware the other guys will have. I didn’t realize this sort of stuff would be on the table. We need to get to that base and start working on our defenses ASAP.”

“The Party Planner itself is pretty high tech, but the bullets it fires and the bombs it drops are still, like, dungeon-style tech,” Louis said. “They said those worm guys that control everything now usually use high-tech stuff when they run the dungeon. I wonder if this is the compromise.”

“Either way, this counts as tech armor,” Donut said. “I don’t know why they call it armor when it’s an airplane, but we can only have ten of these things at the start of fighting. But if we steal other’s after the fighting starts, we can keep it. So that’s what we gotta do. Steal all the other airplanes.”

I just looked at her.

“What?” she asked. “I’ve been reading the rules. There’s all sorts of stupid rules about what we can and can’t have. There used to be a rule about guns, too, but it looks like it went away. I guess when they say tech armor, they mean airplanes.”

“It means magical airplanes and certain types of vehicles,” Florin said. “When you made me general, the rules popped into my interface. We can’t see everything that’s available until we get to the base. We need to figure out straight away what the other groups have and how one pays for this stuff. If it’s straight up money, then we gotta assume they’re all maxed out. Also, have you looked at the timed restrictions for when the cease-fire stops? We gotta plan appropriately.”

“I haven’t looked at anything yet,” I said. “But our adjutant should know. Baroness Victory. She’s an orc, so be careful with her.”

Florin nodded as he pulled himself to his full height. “Elle, Imani, and I gotta head out. Louis, we’ll let you know as soon as you can drive it to base. Everyone else, you better finish up what you’re doing and get recruiting. Carl, what’s your next move?”

I grinned at Louis. “A reunion.”

Chapter 7

Ceasefire remains in effect for 56 hours.

“Carl, I feel as if Florin is letting the general thing get to his head,” Donut said as we prepared to leave. We were headed to Katia’s personal space. Thanks to the new Doggie Door upgrade, we were going to leave out the college entrance which was several rings higher. This would give us a chance to recruit along the way. Katia and Elle were working the chats, and most everyone was already on board, but we needed to physically touch people to get them officially recruited. People knew we’d be out, but in a hurry, so they would meet us along the way.

It would be me, Donut, Louis, and Britney. Tran and Bautista were with Katia, who was helping Tran with his new conveyance, which I hadn’t yet seen. I had the impression it was inspired by Odette’s crab.

We left Samantha inside with strict instructions not to leave on her own again. We also brought Mongo and Rend, who were already best friends, much to Donut’s dismay. Despite not having arms, Rend had figured out how to get onto Mongo’s back and was riding the dinosaur, his giant mouth hanging open in awe every time he saw something new.

“We don’t really know Florin’s story,” I said. “He obviously has some military leadership experience. He prefers to work alone, but it’s clear he knows his stuff. Did you see what he did on the last floor? He made a beeline toward all the military hardware he could get his hands on. We need that sort of expertise. Imani is good with people, but he’s good with soldiers, and those are two very different skills. This sort of fighting is different than what we’re used to.”

We entered the saferoom to find Louis and Britney waiting for us. Louis was pulling his usual leather jacket on as we entered. I saw Louis’s shirt the same moment Donut did. I prayed she wouldn’t notice.

She noticed.

“Louis, what is that?”

“Uh, what?” he asked a little sheepishly.

“Your shirt.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, hastily zipping the jacket all the way up. “It was a prize we got for going on that Dungeon Sidekicks show last floor. It’s enchanted. It increases the range of my cloud attack.”

Donut let out an angry scoff. “Louis Santiago Two, I must insist you take your jacket off this instant and show it to me.”

Britney grunted with amusement. “I told you not to let her see it.”

He shot a glare at Britney. “Yours is worse.”

“She is not wearing a t-shirt depicting an unauthorized fan club, Louis.”

“No, she has panties with a picture of Elle on them.”

Britney smacked Louis as he pulled the jacket off, showing the hand-drawn picture on the large, white t-shirt.

I barked with laughter as Donut scoffed again in outrage.

It was a graphic t-shirt featuring a hand drawn picture of a cat that was clearly supposed to be Donut. The image was a caricature of a fat, fluffy cat’s backside. The cat was turned around, looking over her shoulder. The words “Donut Holes” in English spread across the cat’s butt. The “O” in Donut and Holes were both images of pink donuts.

There was a tiny, drawn X in the hole of the first, round donut, which was placed right under the cat’s tail, implying that the X was a cartoon version of a cat’s butthole. It was subtle, but once you saw it...

“Oh my god, Carl. It’s porn. This is unauthorized derriere porn! The Donut Holes are an unauthorized fan group, and now they have merch! Merch that exploits my backside! Carl, do something!”

Donut: ZEV, THIS IS AN OUTRAGE.

Zev: They paid the license fee, Donut. It’s a perfectly legitimate brand, and their Donut merch is doing quite well.

“Carl, this is all your fault,” Donut said. “You were the one who came up with that name! Mongo, look away.”

I continued to laugh. Donut turned her ire toward Louis.

“And, you. This is bootleg fan club merchandise! Where did you say you got this again?”

“The show Dungeon Sidekicks. Uh, apparently every time one goes on that show, they get an item that has someone else on it. And they make it magical so you gotta wear it.”

Donut scoffed. “Katia went on that show, and she doesn’t wear anything like that!”

Britney and Louis looked at each other.

“Well, you’re going to have to take it off immediately. I’m sure we can replace it with something proper.”

“Donut,” I said. “It’s enchanted. He’s wearing it because it helps him. You can’t even see it.”

“How would you like it if someone was wearing a shirt featuring your butthole, Carl?”

“I don’t stick my butthole in everybody’s face when they’re trying to sit down and eat.”

“Well, excuse me for showing affection. I mean really.”

“Donut, you are always telling me about snicks or whatever they’re called of you and all sorts of other people. Just a few days back, you were talking about one with you and Samantha and Louis.”

“What?” Louis asked.

“That’s different, Carl. That’s fan art, and it’s beautiful. This is a for-profit organization exploiting my likeness for their own lurid reasons”

“It’s just a picture of your behind,” I said. “It’s a cartoon.”

“And you know who buys it? Perverts, that’s who.”

Donut: ZEV, AM I GETTING ANY OF THIS ILLICIT BUTTHOLE MONEY?

Zev: Uh, well, no. If you hit the tenth floor, you do get a stipend, and you can negotiate a small percentage based on your licensing fee. Like, a really small percentage. Though if it goes over the threshold, you do get a percentage automatically.

Donut: WHAT’S THE THRESHOLD?

Zev: I don’t actually know. I don’t think anybody has ever gotten close. Not even Remex or Odette or Ntumba. Your stuff sells great, Donut, but they anticipate crawlers getting popular and set the bar pretty high.

“Donut,” I said. “This isn’t important. We need to go find Ferdinand and Juice Box.”

She stiffened at the mention of Ferdinand. She shot a glare at Louis, who’d already zipped his jacket back up.

“Don’t you dare let anybody else see that shirt.”

~

Entering The Larracos College of Magic.

I took in a breath as we stepped outside. Before, we’d been in the lower level and hadn’t really gotten a chance to see the city. Or smell it. The scent of recently-drained ocean was still in the air here, but the aroma of flowers drowned it out. I thought of Priestly, the cookbook author who’d loved this city so much it’d driven him mad to see it destroyed. Now, finally, I could see what he was talking about.

This was like something out of a Tolkien novel. We were in the campus of the college, which took up about a quarter of a ring about ¾’s up the funnel of Larracos. The saferoom was atop an alabaster-colored, medieval style tower. Like a Rapunzel tower. Green, fragrant vines grew up the side. We were surrounded by dozens of other, multi-colored towers, all reaching up into the sky like crystals, growing out of the side of the ring. I caught sight of an observatory with a large telescope. Another, wider tower featured a stained-glass, cathedral-like ceiling. Louis said they told him it was a lecture hall.

Our tower included dorms for professors, apparently, and the room we’d just left at the very top was a cafeteria of sorts. It’d been a small, round chamber with a draconian proprietor. It had not been a true saferoom, and we’d passed right through before I could fully examine it. Stairs led downward, circling until they reached a courtyard far below. We started to descend, letting Mongo go first.

These towers, I realized, rose up past several other rings. We could see some of the other rings as I descended. These were homes and suburbs, filled with NPCs, going about their day, living in the shadows of the towers coming up from below.

Actually, no. These NPCs weren’t going about their regular lives. The second time I passed, I saw them. A male dwarf stood on his balcony, a home on the edge of a ring. He leaned over another, younger dwarf, and he was showing the boy how to stab with a sword. Another balcony featured a bugbear woman repairing what appeared to be chainmail.

This would all be destroyed before we were done. Traditionally, once the fighting started, enemy teams weren’t allowed to enter the city, but the city itself wasn’t protected, and wayward spells, artillery fire, and rampaging gods usually did a decent job of flattening everything before the area was finally opened back up.

And when it was opened up, there would usually be two teams left who would fight their way to the castle. The NPCs would—sometimes—finally start to fight back at this point, plus all sorts of different “events” happened at the end, such as a demon eviction or more gods joining in on the battles. All of that culminated in the two remaining armies bulldozing their way downward toward the castle at the very, very bottom.

My eyes caught movement. Several fairies fluttered around the outside of one of the towers, placing a large, red jewel atop it. The whole tower glowed with light.

This time it would be different. The NPCs were fighting back from the beginning.

Donut continued to grumble about the t-shirt and the Donut Holes fan club. She asked Britney about her underwear, and she said it featured a pin-up version of Elle along with the caption “Stay frosty, boys.” But the panties themselves increased her dexterity by 10% and enhanced all berserking skills. She hadn’t told Elle about them.

As we went down the stairs, I could see the college was also active with NPCs. Elves, draconians, and fairies, along with a smattering of several other races moved back and forth into various buildings and towers. They all had the white dot with green outline as soldiers for team Retribution.

“Right outside the college is the arts district,” Louis said, trying to change the subject off his shirt. “You can watch plays and stuff, but they said all the performances are cancelled. And there are restaurants, too. And shops. Lots of shops, but it’s not good stuff for what we need. It’s mostly clothes. All the adventuring stuff was down below and got ruined when you guys flooded the city. And anything that was left already got bought up by the other teams or is now being used by the NPC team.”

As we descended, a dwarf in strange armor came to stand at the base of the stairs, looking up at us. This guy had the same dot as all the others, but he also had a star floating over his head, which indicated him as an officer. Mongo reached him first and started sniffing at him, and the dwarf reached forward to pat the dinosaur on the head. He fished his other hand in a pouch hanging across his chest and pulled out what looked like two small pieces of beef jerky. He gave one to Mongo, and he broke a smaller piece off and handed it to Rend. They both gobbled it greedily as we approached. By the time I got there, Rend was bouncing up and down grunting excitedly.

“Carl, look at his hat!” Donut said from my shoulder. “It’s fantastic!”

This was the first time I’d gotten a chance to really examine a Semeru dwarf. All the dwarves we’d met so far were more like the traditional, angry Scottish variety. His body was squat and wide, but that’s where the similarities ended. This guy was darker complected, Asian looking, with a round face and flat nose. Thick, black hair peeked out from under his large hat. He did not have a beard, though he did have a long, thin mustache.

His armor was almost samurai-like, but not quite. It was like a wide, open-chested metallic vest with flared shoulders. The bottom of the metal vest moved outward, like a bell, ending just below his waist. His squat legs were covered in what looked like chainmail with loose, flowing, red and yellow fabric strips along the sides.

His helmet was a rounded skull cap, but it was decorated with multiple feathers of various kinds, reaching straight up into the air. In the front of the helmet was a metallic ornament, featuring a wide-leafed fern, which curled at the tip, making the helmet look a little ridiculous. His whole getup made him appear as if he was getting ready for a parade, not a battle.

The wide sickle slung over his shoulder was no joke, however. And everything the dwarf wore was enchanted. Everything, including the individual feathers in his helmet, all let off a glow of various colors.

I was surprised at how young the dwarf looked. He appeared to be around my age. He smiled broadly up at us, despite the Despondent debuff blazing over him.

“Honored Generals Carl and Princess Donut,” the dwarf said, bowing deeply. “It is an honor to have you within our borders.”

His accent was not like a traditional dwarf, either. It was short, clipped Asian-sounding. Not like Tran or Bautista, but similar.

“Hello,” Donut said. “I just love your hat.”

He beamed. “I am glad you approve, Warlord Princess. It was owned by my great, great grandfather.”

Up until this point, most everything I heard about the Semeru dwarves suggested them as a drunk, defeated people who did nothing but keep the castle clean. They rarely fought against their invaders. Something had, clearly, changed. I examined the dwarf.

War Leader Arief. Level 80 Semeru Dwarf.

Commander of the Larracos Defense Force Infantry.

This is an ally. As you are both officers, attacking him will automatically negate your peace treaty if there are witnesses.

The Semeru Dwarves have a pretty fucked-up history.

In case you haven’t figured all this out yet, this whole fable with the Scolopendra levels is based on a fairytale. But what is that fairytale based on? I think it’s pretty obvious, but sometimes you guys need a little push.

Anyway, of all the peoples in this story, there’s an argument to be had that the Semeru had it the worst. This land, the volcanic level in which Larracos stands, was once a haven for their people. Unlike the Over City and what eventually became the Hunting Grounds, these fertile lands here, the lowest level where mere mortals could survive within the great volcano, was once a paradise. The Semeru people lived here in relative peace. They farmed. They mined. They learned. They lived, laughed, loved. Yeah, fuck you. I like that expression.

But they knew of the gods just below their feet, and like all of us, they wanted to know them more. So they dug, trying to reach them. This was a long, arduous process. A city formed in the pit. Scholars from all over came. Some to help the dwarves. Some to beg them to stop. All, however, came to learn. Soon, Larracos became a rich, cultural paradise. Still, the dwarves persisted. They loved their goddess, Ysalte. They wanted to know her. So, they dug.

Eventually, they found not gods, but something else. Roots. These roots traveled through everything, and they were attached to something they called the All Tree. A great tree that is so vast, it connects everything. And there, once they hit the roots of the tree, they paused. A lot of people don’t know this part. Or they ignore it, because it doesn’t make for the best story. The dwarves were seeking the gods, yes. But in the end, it wasn’t the Semeru who are to be blamed for what happened next.

They built their castle at the very bottom, along the thick roots. But it’s more than a castle. It’s a monument. An apology. In discovering these roots, they had an epiphany. This, too, is new to even me. Some things are best left alone. Some things should never be woken up.

When Scolopendra’s nine-tier attack came, the Semeru got it the worst of all. It wasn’t their fault. But they were there, and they were mortal, and they were devastated. They numbered in the millions before that day. Today, there are less than 1,000 left.

And in the ultimate irony, their great structures weren’t even touched. Not the ones inside the pit. The great city of Larracos remains. The remaining dwarves, defeated, took it upon themselves to be stewards of the great, empty city. Eventually, it started to fill again. New scholars moved into the college, finding the old research intact. The halls, the museums. It all still stands.

It would sure suck if something happened to the city Arief loves so much.

Warning: This NPC is Despondent because his goddess is dead. He is unable to worship another deity, and all of his stats have taken a 15% hit. In addition, those who worship other deities inflict 10% more damage against him.

Christ, I thought. That despondent debuff was pretty brutal. Still, it didn’t seem to bother him too much.

Donut: CARL DOES THIS GUY KNOW YOU AND KATIA ARE THE ONES WHO FLOODED THE CITY IN THE FIRST PLACE? HE’S BEING REALLY NICE.

Carl: I don’t know. Juice Box knows, obviously, since she was a part of it. Don’t bring it up.

Donut: WHAT ABOUT KATIA AND PAZ KILLING THE GODDESS? SHE DOESN’T KNOW THAT PART.

Carl: And they’re not going to know if you don’t say anything.

“Hello,” I said. “We’re looking for Juice Box and Ferdinand.”

“That is why I am here, Warlord. We NPCs would like to talk tactics and strategy with the crawler team. Also, Warlord Juice Box requires some help and has requested your private presence before we attend with her co-warlord.”

I felt my eyebrow raise. This was the first time an NPC had actually called himself an “NPC” out loud.

But before I could question it, Arief turned to Louis and bowed again. “Also, General Louis. I am glad you are present. Warlord Juice Box would like to solidify our great truce in the traditional manner.”

“Uh,” Louis said.

“Traditional manner?” Donut asked. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Yes, warlord. Through marriage. We’d like to get it over with right away. We already have a cleric prepared.”

“Uh,” Louis said again.

~

Thanks everybody! I actually wrote that scene with the t-shirt for the previous book but decided to take it out and rework that storyline into this one. When I did so, I figured I should probably draw what everyone is talking about, so here it is. This is the official, unofficial Donut Holes fan brand logo. Do NOT ever let Princess Donut see you wearing this. 

And in case you're wondering, yes, the Princess Posse has official artwork, too. Feel free to share this. 

I've included an EPS of the Donut Holes artwork for anyone who wants to put it on unlicensed NOT FOR SALE stuff. After all, that's what unofficial fan clubs are for.

Also, on the audiobook front, here's what the cover is going to look like. I wish I could tell you who the two guest voices are, but you guys are leaky little bitches. Please don't share even this image, but here it is. Audiobook is coming September 1st. The preorder should be up in a week or two. All the recording is done. I can't wait

Thanks again all for your support.