Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2

by DoctorHepa

  There was no easy way off the roof. Donut’s Puddle Jumper wouldn’t reset for another four hours, and we needed it for the next part of the evening’s investigations. I sighed as I pulled out my rope, reflecting on all that had changed since we’d woken up this morning. It had been a crazy long day, and it wasn’t over yet. We wouldn’t be able to casually walk around town anymore. We’d be fine at night, but while the sun was up, we’d be attacked by the guards, which really sucked. There were other nearby towns, but this was the largest one in the area. And with just about three days left until collapse, it was getting too late to venture far from the only exit we’d discovered so far, which was a half-day’s walk from here, in the ruins of Grimaldi’s circus.

  Donut pulled Mongo into the pet carrier and waited for me to climb down the rope. I had to carry the protesting Ricky Joe under my arm. I ended up accidentally dropping him the last ten feet, but he was mostly fine. He belly flopped hard onto the ground, losing his weak grip on the severed arm and salamander corpse. He started wailing. “Oh, you’re fine,” I called as I climbed the rest of the way down. “Walk it off, kid.” His health had barely blipped.

  The moment we hit the ground, Donut casually leaped off the building like it was nothing. I grasped the rope and pulled it into my inventory.

  “You need to work on your jumping, Carl,” Donut said as she released Mongo. “Or figure out how to fly.”

  An ear-piercing scream from within the next-door building reverberated through the street.

  “That’s me mom,” Ricky Joe said. “She’s in labor again. She’s going to be really mad if I miss it. I’m in charge of holding her left leg. Bye, Princess Donut! Bye Mongo!” He rushed toward the door.

  I exchanged a look with Donut and shook my head.

  * * *

  We made a quick stop at the Silk Road before returning to the One-Eyed Narwhal. Our funds were starting to run low. I’d picked up three more boxes of hob-lobbers, all of them the impact-detonated version. Pustule had also brought a ten pack of the hobgoblin smoke curtains, which were round, fused bombs that would supposedly work much better than the goblin smoke bombs. I purchased all ten.

  Mordecai was already in the Narwhal when we arrived, which meant he’d walked there on his own from his guildhall. The recap show was about to begin, and he sat at the table chatting with a strange woman. A crawler, I realized, seeing the blue dot on the map.

  “It’s Hekla’s friend,” Donut said. “Yay! She found us!”

  Shit. I’d completely forgotten about that. As we approached, the woman turned to look at us, and I stopped in my tracks. She was… odd looking. I couldn’t tell her age. The blond-haired woman’s eyes were too big, too high on her face. Her nose was crooked and sideways, and her chin appeared to be lumpy. Also, I could see that the individual hairs on her head were much too thick. She appeared to be wearing a poorly-sewn tracksuit and blocky snow boots. I examined her properties.

  Crawler #9,077,265. “Katia Grim.”

  Level 9.

  Race: Human.

  Class: Monster Truck Driver.

  I blinked a few times, trying to wrap my mind around it. She clearly wasn’t human. And what the hell was a Monster Truck Driver class?

  My eyes focused on that level 9. She was 10 levels below me. She had a pair of stars by her name. A neighborhood and borough boss. Still, level 9. That was going to be a problem.

  “Hi Katia,” Donut said, jumping on the table. “Are you Hekla’s friend?”

  “Hello,” she said shyly, nodding her head. “Yes. Thank you so much for meeting me. Hekla said you’d be here.”

  Mongo approached her hesitantly, sniffing at her. Seeing that she wasn’t a threat, he made a few circles and then curled up on the floor.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello, Carl,” she replied. “Hekla told me everything that happened during your interview. It’s… crazy. She wants to talk to you, but in a minute. She and the daughters are fighting a boss right now. I won’t get any experience because I’m too far away.”

  When she talked, her mouth moved oddly, like her voice was overdubbed. Strange.

  I wouldn’t be able to talk to Hekla directly. I could talk to other crawlers over chat, like the way I talked to Brandon, but only after we both initiated the chat handshake, which had to be done in person.

  “Anyway,” she said when I didn’t respond, “Mordecai was giving me a few tips.” She smiled. “It’s much appreciated. My game guide isn’t very helpful.”

  “Hekla is so cool,” Donut said. “She’s like Xena Warrior Princess, but better.”

  “Yes, she is,” Katia said. “She’s amazing. She saved my life.”

  Mordecai: If you can train her up, she’d be a good addition to the team. Good enough to maybe poach her from this Hekla. But she is very, very far behind. Probably too far behind.

  Carl: Can we trust her?

  Mordecai: I don’t know yet. She seems genuine. She’s also a bit of a trainwreck.

  Carl: What the hell is she? She’s not really a human, is she?

  Mordecai: Let her explain.

  “What sort of tips was Mordecai giving you?” I asked out loud.

  She sighed heavily. “Bannon, that’s my game guide, talked me into picking this race and class, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “What race are you? It says human, but you don’t look it.”

  “Easy,” Mordecai said. “She’s trying.”

  I finally sat down at the table. Over the bar, the recap show began.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m a Doppelganger,” she said. “It says human when you look at me because that’s what I’m trying to emulate. Before Mordecai helped me with my ears, it said my race was ‘What the f-word?’ so we are making progress.”

  “A doppelganger?” I said. I looked at Mordecai. “Is that the same thing as what you are? A changeling?”

  “They are similar,” he said, “But not exactly the same. A doppelganger is a very difficult race to master, and her guide should have talked her out of it. As a changeling, I can switch to any race that I have physically touched, with a few caveats. At least that’s how it works for crawlers. As you know I lost my ability to choose my shape when I became a guide. Anyway, a doppelganger is different. She is like clay. She once had a regular form, and she is wearing gear. All of that, her body and gear adds to a certain amount of mass. With that mass, she can shape her body into anything she wants of equal mass.” He looked over at her sadly. “She doesn’t gain the non-physical abilities of the shape she is forming, unlike a changeling. She just looks like it. The problem is for miss Katia here is that she can’t just say, ‘make me into a human.’ She has to shape it herself.”

  “It hurts, too,” she added.

  “And it hurts,” Mordecai agreed. “She has to mentally chisel her appearance herself. And since she isn’t yet a master sculptor…” He let it hang, indicating her face. “But I have some experience in this subject, and I am helping her obtain a more natural appearance.”

  “It’s really tricky,” she said. “I only return to my regular appearance when I am asleep or in the bathroom. And it doesn’t let me shape myself when I’m in the bathroom. I’ve been using the reflection off a health potion as a mirror.” She waved her hand over her face. “With obvious results.”

  “Wait, this will help,” I said, rummaging through my inventory. I found what I was looking for and placed it on the table. It was a hand-sized chunk of broken mirror. I’d looted it on the first floor from the remains of the gym after our fight with the Juicer. I had enough broken glass in there to form a wall of mirrors.

  “Oh wow, thank you,” she said, picking it up. She had a timid way of moving. She reminded me of a rabbit. Skittish and furtive, like she would bolt if I raised my voice. How is this woman still here? How is she alive?

  She tentatively looked into the mirror. “One of those stores had a handheld mirror, but I couldn’t afford… Oh my gos
h, I look like a Juan Gris painting.”

  I didn’t know who Juan Gris was, but I imagined he was someone who sucked at painting faces.

  As I watched, her face twisted and heaved, like something was underneath it, moving things about. Her eyes changed shape and moved into a more correct position. It was like watching someone model clay with invisible hands.

  “I gotta do clothes, too,” she said. I’m wearing a magical leather jerkin right now, but once it’s equipped, it disappears and adds to my mass. The only thing that doesn’t disappear is my weapon.”

  “You’ll get better and faster at altering your appearance as you practice. It’s a skill like any other,” Mordecai said patiently.

  “So what’s with that Monster Truck Driver class?” I asked.

  Mordecai answered for her. “I can’t look these up any more, so I’m not certain on the exact details, but from what I can gather, it’s an earth version of the Staunch Barrier class mixed with a Jouster class. It’s a relatively common combined class called a Juggernaut. In other words, she’s a straight-up tank that gets an increasingly-massive Constitution bonus the faster she is moving. And based on her current Constitution while she is standing still, she is quite the powerhouse.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  On the screen, the crocodilian guy with the shotgun had teamed up with a human who looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen him before. They jumped off a burning building together while being chased by three-legged insect things.

  Carl: What’s the catch?

  Mordecai: Massive Constitution and good Dexterity. She sucks at everything else, especially Strength, which seems counterintuitive. She is not a fighter. And her level is low, so despite her ability to absorb a lot of physical and magical damage, she’s still far behind the curve. I once fought an indestructible wombat thing on the eighth floor. The monsters could absorb a direct hit to the face with a Celestial Warhammer. But they were small and weak. So instead we just picked them up and dunked them head first into buckets of water. They quickly drowned.

  Carl: Jesus, Mordecai.

  Mordecai: My point is that the strongest, most indestructible wall in the world isn’t that tough if you can pick it up and toss it aside. It’s just like with your shelf plan later tonight.

  Katia looked up. “Okay, Hekla is done with her fight. She says, ‘Hi Carl and Donut. I am glad you haven’t been assassinated. Please help Katia.’ That’s me. ‘I think it’ll be best if you let her join your party to get experience. The farther away they are, the less shared experience they get. Please keep her out of too much danger. I really appreciate your help, and I promise to make it up to you.’”

  Carl: We letting her join our party? Won’t that dilute our experience pool too much?

  Donut: WE HAVE TO WE PROMISED HEKLA.

  Carl: No, YOU promised Hekla.

  Mordecai: As long as you button up this quest tonight, you can spend the last two days grinding, and you’ll be on track, even with her tagging along. Before you got here, I talked Fitz into letting me look at his herb stash, and I managed to steal last night’s newsletter. There’s something in there we need to talk about. But get her in the party first.

  “Tell Hekla we said that we’ll take it from here and to stay safe,” I said.

  We spent the next few minutes getting her to join our party. I took a look at her stats.

  Strength: 11

  Intelligence: 8

  Constitution: 51

  Dexterity: 30

  Charisma: 8

  “How did you manage to get your Constitution so high?” I asked.

  “I have a ring that adds 15 to Constitution. I got it in a loot box when we first started. Then I got a couple other constitution buffs, and then when I picked that class it added even more.”

  “What else can you do?” I asked, examining her properties.

  “I have an ability called Second Fuel Tank, which absorbs damage and reflects some of it back. It triggers randomly, but it’s limited to only one time a fight. There’s my Rush ability, which uses my body as a battering ram. I can only do that once a 30-hour day. I also have something called Pathfinder which helps me find stairwells really easily.”

  I exchanged a look with Mordecai.

  “I don’t have any useful spells. Oh, and I’m immune to wind spell damage. Also, I’m good at fixing engines.”

  “Were you a mechanic?”

  “No. I’ve never actually fixed an engine before. But I got my Earth Hobby Potion. I am a ‘gear head.’ I was an art teacher before all this happened.”

  “An art teacher?” I asked, looking dubiously at her poorly-sculpted face.

  She smiled sheepishly. At least I think that’s what she was going for. Instead, it looked a bit ghoulish. “What is the saying? Those who can’t do, teach?”

  “Okay, listen up,” Mordecai said. “Now that you’re in the party, we need to have a discussion about experience and something I just learned.”

  “Hush, hush!” Donut said, pointing on the screen. “Look! It’s me!”

  “Oh fuck,” I said, looking at the headline.

  It was a graphic of Donut, her eyes slit. It was an image from last night when she’d been drinking at the bar. A lightning bolt appeared, and on the other side of the screen an image of two rottweilers slammed into place. It was purposely reminiscent of the boss battle graphic.

  Princess Donut Versus Cici and Gustavo 3!

  “It’s a feud of epic proportions! Princess Donut has thrown the gauntlet down, directly challenging Cici and Gustavo 3, the two beloved pets of current front-runner, Lucia Mar!” The orange-hued lizard announcer breathlessly intoned.

  “I have done no such thing!” Donut said, incredulous. “They’re lying!” She turned to me. “Carl, I do not like this. Since when has the news been allowed to lie?”

  Donut’s image appeared on the screen, her leaning over her cocktail. “Those dogs sound just awful. Bitch-ass rottweilers. Almost as bad as cocker spaniels. Think they’re so smart.”

  “Lucia Mar appeared earlier today on Knuckle Cracking, and this is what she had to say.”

  The screen flickered, changing to a shot of Lucia Mar. She sat on the couch next to a wolf-headed host. Lucia was in the strength-based, skull-faced cycle of her Lajabless form. She and the wolfman laughed cruelly as Gustavo and Cici ripped apart some small, fuzzy animal while the audience howled encouragement.

  “What the hell is this bullshit?” I asked.

  “It’s an arena fight show,” Mordecai said. “I already told Zev to never let you on one. The fights aren’t real. It’s complicated.”

  The scene cut to Lucia Mar’s face, zoomed in super close. Her skull eye sockets teemed with bugs.

  “What do you say to the challenge? Will you come back to this show? We could make it a main event. Donut versus one or both of your boys,” the wolfman asked off screen.

  “No,” Lucia Marr said. “This show is a waste of time. Every moment spent not gaining experience is a waste of time.” Her voice came out raspy with her thick, Spanish accent. “I will find this Donut in the dungeon, where her death will be forever. Cici and Gus will tear this puta apart. And then I will rip Carl to pieces and take all of his shiny toys.”

  “She seems nice,” I said.

  I had to remind myself that this was a little kid. What kind of fucked-up childhood did she have?

  “This is an outrage!” Donut said. “That wasn’t a challenge! Carl, we need to tell them that it was a mistake. I don’t want to fight those two stupid dogs. We’d kill them easy, sure, but I don’t want those ugly skulls after my name.”

  “Goddamnit,” Mordecai said, looking up at the screen. “Goddamnit to hell.”

  “They’re going to bring us together somehow, aren’t they?” I asked.

  “Of course they are,” he said. “But not yet. They’ll want some buildup first.”

  “Will it happen on this floor?”

  “No way. It won’t be u
ntil after the third round of sponsorships, so on or after the sixth.”

  “Does that mean they’ll go easy on us until then?”

  “Maybe,” Mordecai said. “But probably not.”

  “So whatever happened to them trying to kill us off early?”

  “They’re still trying to end as early as possible. But they need money, so you high performers are going to be treated differently. All of this ties in with what I need to talk to you guys about. Borant is warning the shopkeepers and pub owners to be extra careful not to anger crawlers. It doesn’t explicitly say this in the newsletter, but I can read between the lines. Some of you guys are getting much stronger than you should. That kid trashing the Desperado Club two nights ago is proof of that. Most loot boxes are controlled by the system AI, and it appears the system is attempting to compensate for the shorter time limits. Borant controls the mobs and the experience earned, for the most part, but the System AI is still the ultimate arbiter and is using that strength to even out the odds.”

  “Is that why you didn’t have a fit when we decided to take on this quest?”

  He shrugged. “You were already snagged in that quest’s net. It happens. I could tell this was a good one from the get-go. Usually you have to just bring something from point A to point B, and it’s done. Or you just have to kill someone. These more elaborate quests are also a symptom of the shorter floors.” He paused as the announcement came on. It was nothing new. “Now, you two get a couple hours of sleep. Once Donut’s Puddle Jumper resets, you’ll go back out there. And since you’ve pissed off the guards, we need to make sure you finish this before the sun is up. In the meantime, I’m going to help Katia train her face. She’s not going out with you tonight. But when you’re done with the quest, you’ll spend the rest of the time on the floor grinding together.”

  Mordecai: Try to keep her alive. But if she does die, make sure you get those rings off her finger.

  Carl: You are stone cold, Mordecai.

  * * *

  This late in the evening, the entire town was asleep. The pubs were all closed. Nobody walked the main streets. The only light was from the sign of the Desperado Club a few streets over, towering over the city. An eerie silence punctuated the night, broken occasionally by horrific, unearthly screams that seemed to come from everywhere.