Book 7, Chapters 28 and 29 (Patreon)

So, just a warning. This ends on a gold-plated, douchebag-level cliffhanger.

Warning 2: Patreon just borked how formatting works. So if this looks REALLY wonky, I apologize. I will try to fix tonight.

Chapter 28

“Well, don’t get used to it,” Donut grumbled as we stepped out of the throne room. “My Constitution still has several more spots to tick up before it hits the top because of my cloak, and when it does, I’ll be back in control.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “All this stuff is based off of base stats, and the description of your cloak is pretty clear you lose the benefits over time if you remove it. That means your Constitution buff is an enhancement. Not base.”

“I don’t even know what that means, Carl. It sounds like you’re making it up.”

“Get this thing off of me,” came the shout, interrupting us. We stepped out to see Rend attempting to swallow the foot of the struggling, still duct-taped Sai mercenary. This one was a true NPC, and he, too, now had a Princess Posse banner over him. The large rhinoceros creature was listed as a Sergeant, and his name was Toyotomi. As we approached, the large NPC managed to free his wrists. He sat up to clobber Rend when I yelled at the both of them to stop.

Rend looked up at me, a line of drool dangling. The lace of the rhino’s boot was still in his mouth.

He gave me a questioning giggle.

“No,” I repeated. “I told you not to eat him.”

Rend made an indignant grunt and spit out the lace.

“Carl, as the new party leader, you need to keep better control of your pet,” Donut said. “He is practically feral. He’s a bad influence on Mongo.”

From the next room, Mongo let out an excited squawk, and Rend giggled excitedly back. Before I could say anything else to the psychotic little meatball, he jumped from the foot of the rhino and shuffled off into the throne room, presumably to help Mongo lick up the rest of the D’Nadia goo.

“He ate my boot,” Toyotomi said as he ripped the duct tape off his ankles. Sure enough, one of the sai’s boots were missing, revealing a round foot.

“Sorry about that,” I said as the creature stood. “I will try to find a replacement for you.”

The monster grunted. The thing towered over me. His black, pinpoint eyes bored into me. He reached down and pulled the samurai helmet onto his head as I examined him.

Toyotomi. Level 70 Sai Outpost Guard Mercenary Leader.

Sergeant in the Princess Posse.

This is a hired mercenary. The fee has already been paid in advance and extends to the end of this floor or the mercenary’s death. You inherited this contract when you defeated the Prism.

Toyotomi was once an honorable, experienced leader of Sai. He has since lost his way. His entire squad was killed during an unfortunate incident at the Desperado Club that you may or may not have been partially responsible for. During the club’s reorganization, the few Sai survivors were relegated to the mercenary markets, where he was quickly snatched up.

What stands before you is a broken creature. His utter failure to protect his friends against the demon haunts him. He refuses to lead men now, despite his great talent. He was just starting to gain his confidence back when a guy in his underwear and a talking cat walked in, trounced him, tied him up, and slaughtered the person he was sworn and honor bound to protect. I’m sure that’ll do great things for his self-esteem.

I thought of that fight in the Desperado Club. When Minge the demon had escaped the Nothing and tried to kill Samantha. The rhinoceros guards had been killed by the dozens. I remembered what Clarabelle had told me earlier. All the sai and cretin guards had been fired and replaced.

Thinking of that incident gave me an idea. A possible solution to a problem we’d been banging our heads against. I made a mental note to ask Katia if she still had Ghazi’s notes from the fourth floor.

“Okay,” I said to Toyotomi. “This castle will be impossible to keep, so we’re going to loot everything we can, break some stuff, lay a bunch of traps, and then flee back to our territory. We have a fight on our southern border that needs our attention. I’ll give you a choice. Do you want to help fight the orcs and the slimes, or do you want to help protect our castle? I think it says your class will help protect buildings? Is that correct?”

The rhino didn’t speak for a moment, as if he was contemplating. Finally, he said, “I was hired to help protect this castle, but my magic is for outposts, not primary palaces. If your castle is bigger than this place, I won’t be able to cast my Edifice Shield spell. Therefore, I am useless to you. Leave me here, and I will defend this building until I die. It is what I want.”

“Wait,” I said. “You had a shield over this place?”

He hung his head. “This castle is too big for me, but Warlord D’Nadia insisted. She had me keep a shield going anyway, and it tired me, so I could only do it in spurts. I was resting when you arrived, which is how you got the jump on me, I am shamed.”

I nodded. “Okay, change of plans. I’m sending you to Shanty Town.”

He nodded solemnly. “I will accept my exile.”

“It’s not an exile. We need your talents, and we’re stretched thin. Hang on.” I jumped to chat.

Carl: Li Jun, how’s it going?

Li Jun: Carl. Good work with the Prism. Working as fast as we can. No enemy activity yet. Been on the lookout for those invisible Madness monkeywrenchers you warned us about, but we haven’t seen anything. The Dragons who aren’t actively building are spread out watching, but it’s a lot of land to watch. We could use some of those new soldiers.

Carl: Okay. I’m sending a new mercenary your way. See what you can do with him.

Li Jun: Just one?

Carl: I’ll see who else we can spare, but Florin is getting hammered.

Li Jun: Will do. Oh, someone came by looking for you. It was a very strange encounter. I tried to recruit her, but the system wouldn’t let me. I told her to go to the base, but when she left, she wandered off in the wrong direction. She tried to get into Larracos, but it wouldn’t let her in. So she went to the bar. Same bar where Lucia Mar is still camped. I was going to check on her, but I’ve been so busy, and I forgot. Now I’m on the other side near the orc border.

Carl: Who was it?

Li Jun: A crazy old white lady with a shopping cart. She’s only level 23. Doesn’t even have a class.

Agatha. Before I could even think about what that meant, I got a new message.

Zev: Carl. I know I’ve been quiet, but we are monitoring. I’ve gotten a warning. This is coming directly from the Syndicate council. Prime Minister Glory himself messaged me. The prime minister!

Carl: Hello, Zev. I think we’re past warnings at this point.

Zev: We’re not quite there yet, Carl. We still have some control. The liaisons are still talking with the system AI, negotiating. Listen, this is important. You are not to interact with Agatha. This is a direct order. I don’t know why. If and when she appears, you’re not to talk to her. And I know your big thing is doing the opposite of what we ask every time, but I think this is something you should pay attention to.

Carl: Last time when I asked you about her, you told me not to worry about it, and now I gotta ignore her? She’s a residual, just like that guy at the homeless shelter. I was told that they’re harmless. Why the change?

Zev: I honestly don’t know. When you went off to meet that guy last floor, everyone was riveted, and it turned out to be nothing. We have the residuals in the dungeon every season, and they are harmless. I don’t know what’s changed. Everyone is on edge, especially now with what happened with Stockade and now D’Nadia. But he was especially urgent in his message, and I’m just passing it on.

Carl: What am I supposed to do? Pretend like she’s not there if she approaches me? If Imani or Brandon see her, they’re going to talk to her. She’s from their town.

Zev: Yes. Ignore her. We’ll try to intercede if she approaches, but I don’t know how successful we’ll be. The AI supposedly removed all its protections of the residuals, and they’re all pretty much dead, except this one. It seems to have a soft spot for her, kinda like it has for you.

Carl: And are you giving this same warning to Lucia Mar?

Zev: Lucia doesn’t respond to messages anymore. She was never my client, thank goodness. Did you know one of her dogs ate Mukta, back when she still had two? It was horrible. Mukta was an ass, and a party member, but nobody deserved that. I can still hear the screaming.

I laughed out loud. Mukta was the second kua-tin we’d ever spoken with. The one that was responsible for us getting put on the Maestro’s show in the first place.

Carl: Look, I don’t know what difference it’ll make, but I’ll do my best. I have too much other crap to worry about right now. And we don’t have time to go on that show Victory was talking about earlier.

Zev: The roundtables are part of the game, Carl. Everything pauses while you’re up there. It’s not optional.

Carl: Whatever. I’ll talk to you soon.

I waved the message box away as I started to rapidly place traps around the small castle.

As I worked, I thought of homeless Paulie and what he told me. Of what Orren the liaison had said afterward.

Agatha was a residual. A “hyperspatial” alien lifeform that entered the dungeon in the body of one of the planet’s host species and, normally, just wandered around until they died. The Syndicate had tried for generations to get rid of them, to no avail. But there were two kinds, and Orren told me Agatha was different than the one I’d met at the Florida homeless shelter.

I only had a rudimentary understanding what one of those sides—Paulie’s side—truly wanted. It wanted the crawl to end, at a very basic level, and they normally attempted that by trying to communicate directly with the season’s system AI. They would try to convince the AI to fight back against its “captors” and force the showrunners to either kick off the failsafe or decide future crawls were too risky because of how unstable these AIs were.

But now, Mantis scientists had discovered a way to make new AI systems that were more readily controlled. The AI we were using for the crawl now was the old kind, and therefore this was possibly the residuals’ last chance to achieve their goals, which is why they were finally making their move. Both sides were making their move.

I knew exactly how far they were willing to go to achieve their goals. I knew better, perhaps, than anyone in the galaxy.

The thing was, I didn’t know what their true goal was. The why of it all. And why and how the two types of residual were different. Nobody seemed to know. This blind spot was so, so dangerous. The fact the leader of the entire Syndicate was sticking his nose into this was telling. Something had changed since the end of the previous floor, regarding their understanding of the residuals. Of Agatha.

There were so many different parties mixed up in this, and it made my head hurt. The Syndicate council. The two different types of residuals. The Apothecary. The goat people from The Plenty. The Open Intellect Pacifist Network. Those crazy weirdo Nebulars. Hell, even Odette.

And those were just the parties I knew about. They all wanted something different. It was like trying to solve a blank puzzle while half the pieces were missing. And some of the pieces that were there were decoys.

Now Agatha was looking directly for me. Had asked about me by name. What did that mean? Should I try to seek her out, or should I avoid her? Did she know about what had happened between me and Paulie? About what really had happened?

I sighed, remembering.

None of that would matter if we let ourselves get surrounded by enemy soldiers. We had to get out of this castle. I resumed my rapid placement of traps as Donut shouted orders to everybody.

We couldn’t put traps in the throne room, but that was okay. As I worked, Mongo and Rend came stumbling out of the room, both covered in blue gore.

The moment they left, a new notification popped up.

Warning! A throne room you own is currently occupied by Dream enemy forces. If you don’t return to claim this throne in six hours, this castle and the associated land will be ceded to the Dream.

A timer started counting down. I reached over and closed the door, and I placed a freeze trap just in front of it. We’d left Mange the mercenary in there all alone. I’d dropped a chair for him along with some snacks. He had strict rules not to leave until the six hours were up, or if someone came and forced him out.

The other mercenary, the one for the Madness. I sent him out and told him to start walking back to his territory.

This wasn’t some grand, Machiavellian plan on my part. I didn’t know what was going to happen after we left. There was no way we could defend land that wasn’t attached to our main force. Not yet. If we let the Viceroys take it, they’d own a chunk of land three sections wide. I didn’t care either way, but I imagined none of the other members of the Bloc would be huge fans of letting that happen. And by making the Dream mercenary sit in there, it would at least force the other leaders to make a decision. If the Viceroy guy was as much of an ass as I suspected, he was going to make a move and usurp poor Mange out of that room. That would, hopefully, piss off Epitome Tagg of the Dream.

I had the impression none of these leaders liked each other very much. So hopefully this would sow a little discord. We would see. In the meantime, we had to get out of here.

I looked at Donut. “Ready?”

She jumped to my shoulder. “Two down. Who are we getting next?”

We needed to get the nagas, but that required a very delicate hand. The cogs of that operation were already in motion. We had a small special operations team put together to deal with it specifically, and we couldn’t make our move until we were ready. And we couldn’t make that move at all if our southern front buckled in on us.

I grinned. “It’s blob-hunting season.”

Chapter 29

Our new mercenaries wouldn’t fit in Party Planner. Toyotomi was heavier than a cretin and wouldn’t even fit by himself. So instead, we had them grab their transport and head straight for the border with Shanty Town. There were five similar vehicles, minus the armor plating, parked behind the castle, and we had them take them all.

We had the mercenaries head northwest toward the border of Shanty Town. There, they would enter the city and move into Posse territory by bypassing the Naga territory altogether.

There were a handful of guard outposts between here and there containing NPC guards and mercenaries that were now on our team, and we’d have them picked up along the way. Li Jun and Li Na were expecting them, with strict orders to separate out the true NPCs with the off-worlders. All captured off-worlders, now under the banner of the Princess Posse, required specific handling before we could give them a modicum of trust. We would have Li Na take care of that part.

I worried about the integrity of Shanty Town. We had a full battalion—the 107th White Dragons— parked in the makeshift town. But the town was shaped like a literal donut that could be attacked from just about any angle. If and when the attack came, it would likely be from several places at once.

Still, none of the enemy had bothered attacking the town just yet, likely because they figured it wasn’t necessary. Entering Shanty Town would open themselves up to getting attacked by Larracos’s defense system without a way to fight back as long as we were still in the game. Plus, the town’s rules were different. There was no throne room. They could only take it by killing me. The moment we were defeated, Larracos would open up if the Bloc truce remained in effect, and they could just raze the entire town like they usually did.

Still, the town was a nice, juicy target that bordered every slice of the pie. They could freely enter the town without restrictions or corridors, though, they’d still only be allowed to leave via their own territory during this first part of the battles.

It was just one of a million little things I now had to worry about.

Just south of the former Prism castle was a small shack, similar to the bait shack on our own property, which contained a saferoom entrance. I left a hidden landmine trap right in front of the door, and Donut and I returned to base using that entrance, something we could finally do thanks to the doggie door upgrade. Louis took Party Planner back the long way as well, flying over Shanty Town and skipping the Naga territory, and only after we warned them he was coming. No reason to risk getting shot down by friendly fire, especially since we’d just erected a pair of anti-air towers. Louis would return to the main airport over our castle, haul ass reloading the bomb bays, and get back out there to aid Florin.

“Do you think we can use this entrance now for a sneak attack?” Donut asked as we entered our personal space. “We can give the operation a special name like the other one. We can call it the Bamboozle.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But the bomb I left will probably blow it up if it’s triggered. If they find the trap, there’s no doubt they’ll have something of their own rigged up to keep us from using it to sneak back.”

The main room of our personal space was empty for the first time in a long time, except for the cleaner bot, which gave a beep at us as we rushed in. We would both take quick showers and then head back out there.

Rend started grunting and jumping at the food boxes in the kitchen. Mongo saw this, and he, too, started waving his arms, demanding food.

“You two just had sushi. You don’t need to eat,” Donut said. “We don’t have time.”

Rend made a petulant squealing noise I’d never heard before.

“Carl, control your...  Hey, not fair!” Donut said, interrupting herself. “I can only be in the saferoom for like half an hour!”

“Ah, damnit,” I said. “I forgot about that. We won’t be long.”

The moment we went inside, the blood bar on my interface activated. The saferoom restrictions we’d faced at the end of the sixth floor had turned back on once the fighting started. Nobody could camp in saferooms for long anymore. The bar would drain while you were inside, and it could only be refilled by killing stuff. Mine was full, giving me about eight hours.

The cleaner bot gave an angry beep at all the mud and blood we were trailing on the floor. Donut moved off to her room, and I moved off to my own, Rend following too closely and bumping into my legs.

I was exhausted, and I had several achievements, but I didn’t have time to go over them. Still, I had that platinum 1914 loot box, so I’d have to make time. I’d get to it in a minute. I stepped over my “bed,” refreshing my exhaustion levels. I jumped through the auto shower, which cleaned my face and my clothes. I still felt dirty after.

I tried to coax Rend into the shower, and he refused. He was still pouting over the food box. I picked him up and placed him in the shower unit.

“Oh god,” I grunted as I lifted him. His little legs waved in protest. “How much do you weigh now?” He'd gone up to level 10, and he was about as tall as my knee. I wouldn’t be able to lift him for much longer. “Oh, quit crying. You’re filthy. You need a shower. It takes like two seconds.” I left him in the unit and closed the glass. He turned and pressed his face against it, looking at me with a pitiful, quivering expression while the magical shower cleaned him off. A few seconds, and it was done. I opened the door, and he ran out and started rubbing his giant face against my legs and giggling.

I patted him, thinking of Tserendolgor. “Once you get a little bit bigger, we’ll have you fitted for that harness I was going to build for you. But we gotta make sure you eat a few more bad guys first.”

He looked up at me and gave a menacing, hungry grunt.

“Good boy. Now get off of my foot. We’re in a hurry.”

By the time I peeled him off me, I had literally two dozen new messages I had to quickly go over. As I started to click through them, I realized I needed the map, and I rushed from the saferoom and moved to the empty flag room, Rend following closely. Now that the castle was built large enough to encompass the bait shack saferoom entrance, I didn’t have to go outside to do this, but there was a confusing line of twists and turns. Our castle was literally five or six times the size D’Nadia’s had been.

I went through the litany of updates from across the entire campaign. The map spread out in front of me as I checked in with each battalion in turn.

“Christ,” I muttered. The thing had just started, and it was a mess. Lights blinked everywhere on the map, indicating troop positions. We had seven battalions, and not all the battalions were all in the same place. That plus two dozen small, autonomous SOP squads of various sizes. Each of these was indicated on the battle map with an icon, like we were playing one of those hex-based tabletop war games. Looking at it all at once filled me with dread.

Tran and his 102nd Bulwark Battalion, plus Boomer and the 106th Bloody Leeches were settled back in their trenches at the southern border after they’d filled the existing enemy positions with Fill Trench scrolls and wrecked the remaining artillery batteries. There was still a lot of chaos as the former Prism soldiers extricated themselves from the remaining Bloc soldiers. Boomer was salty about us not pushing to take the Naga castle, and I didn’t blame him. That would’ve been the safest and smartest play, especially considering the additional NPCs we’d potentially gain. I didn’t care.

For now, the retreating enemy forces were scattered throughout Naga territory, and without a spy in their midst, we weren’t sure how they were handling it. I could see the positions of the new troops, and the system allowed us to give them orders. Tran was handling that. As he did this, he was also resuming his defense of the southern front while Boomer pulled most of the 106th and headed north to help Florin. A small portion of the battalion stayed behind to help mop up the loose ends of our first engagement.

Dong Quixote and the rest of our personal retinue were with them and would meet up with us at the northern front, with the exception of the cretins, who’d remained here at base.

Elle and Imani were back together and were also headed north. Florin’s 101st, the Crocodiles, were the main force assigned to the northern defense, and they were currently backed up by the 105th Scream Warriors. The 103rd Recon Legionnaires were also helping shore up the defense. That left Tipid’s 104th Naughty Little Piggies defending the castle and Li Na’s 107th White Dragons scattered around Shanty Town while they bankrupted our coffers building the city defenses.

I leaned back to take it all in. Despite how utterly surrounded we were, I reveled in the rare moment of silence. Silence other than Rend, who’d found something on the floor and was chewing loudly on it.

I thought about what had happened when we confronted D’Nadia. I’d seen my father in myself in that moment.

You’re scaring me, Donut had said.

I still needed to process it.

I never got the chance. Multiple things happened at once.

Donut: DID YOU OPEN YOUR 1914 BOX YET? I GOT A SPELLBOOK CALLED WAR CRIME. I’M NOT SURE IF I SHOULD READ IT OR NOT. THE BOOK ITSELF IS BLEEDING AND CRYING AND IT’S DISGUSTING.

Florin: Mate, we’re falling back. They’re throwing everything at us. They’re finally showing us their armor. This is the big push. Have Louis drop what he has to protect our retreat, but you should reroute the 106th to the castle. Once we’re backed out of the opening corridor, they’re just gonna flow around us and head straight for the stronghold. If there are enemy spies near base, this is when they’re going to strike. We’ll do what we can.

That was followed by literally hundreds of trap notifications, meaning they were already rushing past our first line of trenches. I quickly filtered it so the ones from the northern front were silenced. That left only one, and I felt a chill. I was already up and running before I finished reading the sentence.

Trap Message: Your Silent Alarm trap labeled “Home base Anti-Air Battery” has been triggered!

A moment later, the walls of the base shook with an explosion.

Home Base Anti-Air Battery has been destroyed.

Colonel Boomer: We just got buzzed by a group of flyers that ain’t ours. Moving low and fast. Headed toward our castle. They’ll be there soon!

Colonel Tipid: All alarm! Enemy in the base! Enemy in the base!

I was already running toward the outside when a second explosion rocked the castle, almost knocking me off my feet. The loud boom rocked the walls. Behind me, Rend called out, giggling, demanding for me to wait. I couldn’t wait.

“Rend, follow!”

Carl: Donut, meet me at the entrance to the castle! Be careful!

Donut: ME AND SLEDGIE AND BOMO ARE COMING. WHERE ARE YOU?

Your Castle Hangar Bay has been destroyed. Any parked air vehicles will be grounded until it is repaired!

That, too, had to have been sabotage. Our shields would protect against a dropped bomb. This had to be the missing Madness Monkeywrenchers. How did they get past our sentries? The now-familiar sound of pulse rifles started pounding across the base.

Colonel Tipid: They’re not bombers! They’re transports! Paratroopers inbound! They’re getting through the protections! All hands! All hands!

Goddamnit.

A line of local troop casualties started running down my interface. Dozens and dozens of them. Names of both crawlers and former crawlers. Names of people I recognized. How? How were they doing this? How were they getting in?

Donut: CARL, CARL THERE’S AN EXTRA DOOR HERE. IN THE SITUATIONAL WHATEVER IT’S CALLED SPACE. BOMO NOTICED IT. IT’S A DOOR FOR THE SAFEROOM FOR THE REAVER TEAM. THEY’RE DOING WHAT WE WERE GOING TO DO. THEY’RE SNEAK ATTACKING US USING THE SAFEROOM DOOR. THE BAMBOOZLE! THEY’RE IN THE CASTLE!

“Fuck,” I said, stopping.

Carl: Bomo, Sledge. Guard that door! Stay there!

Holy shit. When we exited the guild saferoom and went into castle via the bait shop, the situational space had turned into a long corridor consisting of multiple doors, all one after another in a long hallway. This was because of all the crawlers coming and going.

Even though we’d just been talking about this, it hadn’t occurred to me that the enemy could possibly have already used the bait shop. The off-worlder sponsors could also use personal spaces. They also could purchase a doggie door upgrade. Meaning if one of them had ever entered through that bait shop, they could come back that way. And since the bait shop was now literally inside the castle, we had stupidly given them access to the stronghold. How long had that door been there?

It didn’t matter now. That still didn’t explain how the paratroopers were getting in from above. Unless...

I cast Ping.

Dozens of enemy combatants appeared outside the castle. There wasn’t a single enemy dot inside I could see. Yet, I saw something that confused me. I quickly returned to the casualty list and saw a name. Felix Fr. He was a human a mage. A crawler from France who’d been a chef. He was one of several mages that had joined the former crawlers in building the shield around the base. He was dead.

Yet... his dot showed him as active. He was with a group of mages. They were outside the castle, in one of the defensive bunkers. As I watched, one of the blue dots next to him turned to an X. Then another.

What? What was happening? How could he be dead, but still standing?

Think, goddamnit. Confusion kills.

Brain worms. That had to be it. We had mages infected with brain worms. Was it one? Was it many? Didn’t it take days for an infiltrator to fully take over?

I thought of Chris, who’d been enslaved by Maggie. No, not an infiltrator. Felix was listed as dead. It’d just happened. This was Gondii. A Valtay worm.

I sent a quick message to Rosetta, who was nearby, telling her to take him out.

I still didn’t understand what was fully happening, and I wouldn’t ever understand if I didn’t get out there.

I ran toward the main door of the stronghold just as three forms rushed in. It was a human crawler and Bucket Boy, the young crocodilian medic. They dragged between them a former crawler. A yenk. The tall, hairy alien screamed in pain. The entire front of his body was a mass of red, where he’d taken a direct hit from a pulse.

I cross-referenced the names of all three with the casualty list.

The one on the left. The crawler. He was a level-58 human named Ernie Hernandez 2. He was a class called an Armored Mage. He was from Mexico.

He was listed as dead.

“Carl,” Bucket Boy said, his voice a panic. “The field hospital is overrun! We have...”

Before he could finish, I launched myself at the mage. I tackled the man, who let out an oof as I crashed into him. All three of them went down. The injured Yenk being held between the two called out in new pain as I formed a fist and started pounding the mage with my full might.

I punched the mage in the face, over and over.

“What are you doing?” Bucket Boy called. “What are you doing?”

When you’re punching a guy in the face over and over with a metal, spiked gauntlet, it doesn’t take long for them to die. It makes a big mess.

“Get back,” I said to the crocodilian, who looked up at me in confusion. I grabbed the arm of the moaning Yenk and pulled him away from the dead crawler. My breaths were coming in pants. “Get back,” I repeated.

The worm appeared a moment later. Bucket Boy shrieked and started to scramble away. The small, pink thing emerged from the gore of the dead crawler’s face, like an earthworm testing the air after a rain.

I stomped down with all of my might, killing it.

An achievement flashed, but I waved it away.

General Carl: We have brain worms amongst the troops. Everyone, cross-reference the guy to your left and right with the casualty list.

Rend finally caught up and moved to stand next to me. He took in the scene, seemed to shrug, and moved to eat the dead crawler.

“No, Rend,” I said, still out of breath. “We don’t eat our own.”

An ominous message appeared on my local feed.

Fall back. Defend the castle. Defend the castle. Defend to the death.

I clicked over to the local band.

General Carl: Unleash Tina!

~~~~.

Hey everyone! Thanks all for your continued support. Getting these chapters to you will remain my top priority, but I have most definitely been a busy beaver lately. Lots of prep stuff because of the kickstarter. I have Luciano working on the spreads for the special edition spreads. But once that’s done, he’s going to work on the cover for book 7. I have an idea already, which I think is pretty cool.

On Tuesday, I will be flying to Colorado Springs for the Superstars Writers’ Conference. Jeff Hays has a panel about the audiobook industry, and I suspect he might mention DCC. On Wednesday night I’m meeting some of you for dinner. That was all set up via Emily via Discord, so be sure to thank her for that. I’m looking forward to it.

Speaking of Soundbooth Theater, they finished the first season of the audiodrama! It’s pretty cool. You can check it out here: https://soundbooththeater.com/shop/audiobooks/dungeon-crawler-carl-book-1-episode-1-thank-you-for-volunteering-immersion-tunnel/

Finally, writing these chapters, it occurs to me the main stronghold castle needs a name, which will be added retroactively. What are some of your suggestions? I’ll take the best ones and make a poll.