by DoctorHepa
In order to break into the magistrate’s home, we first needed to get into an alleyway, scale the exterior of a small building we’d scoped out earlier, and then use the Puddle Jumper spell to hop over to the roof of the magistrate’s building.
The alley contained a group of level-14 monsters called Shadow Leaks. They were smoke-like, ghost-class mobs that swarmed at us as we approached the side of the building. They utilized a stinging cold attack, which I was resistant to thanks to my Nightgaunt Cloak. Thankfully my magical gauntlet was able to damage them just as easily as if they were made of flesh, and Mongo’s magical teeth caps could also hurt them. The ghosts gave off an unusually high amount of experience and were easy to kill. Mongo hit level 13 and got noticeably larger, rising to the height of my chest. He’d gone from dog-sized to pony-sized just like that.
Donut leaped from my shoulders to the back of Mongo to see if she could ride him. But the dinosaur got so excited that he started jumping up and down, tossing Donut away. She poofed all her hair out in anger and returned to my shoulder. “We’ll work on that later,” she mumbled.
This residential building was ringed by a series of conveniently-placed trellises on the exterior that made for easy scaling. Mongo went into the carrier as Donut leaped from window to window, quickly reaching the third-floor roof. I followed, scaling the trellis, which creaked ominously. But I quickly made it to the angled, shingle-covered roof, my heart thrashing.
The long magistrate building spread before us. Earlier, we’d come in from another side, using a different building’s roof to enter through the main entrance and into the mall below. This building we stood upon now was a full story higher than the last one, and we were going to jump straight to the magistrate building’s roof.
That was assuming if anything was left after I blew the three sticks of dynamite. I had hidden them inside the shelves that held up Miss Quill’s beanie babies. When I’d reattached the shelves to the wall, I’d found that they were hollow inside. I’d placed three sticks and a glob of Hobgoblin Pus, the remote detonator, in the second shelf. We wouldn’t be able to blow through the magical door that protected the next room over, but just by knocking on the wall, I could tell we could easily breach directly through the wood.
I spent a moment examining our surroundings, searching the air for flying mobs. I didn’t see anything. Just one building over from this one, directly across the opposite street was the large, warehouse-like building that held all of the inactive swordsmen guards. I could feel it there, an ominous presence, sandwiching us between the equally-imposing magistrate’s building. I hoped the guards remained within like they were supposed to. Mordecai insisted they’d remain inactive all night, but I was worried. We were about to cause a very large, very loud ruckus.
We’d originally had a different plan, but after my test earlier with the hobgoblin dynamite, we’d had to rethink how we were going to proceed.
“Here we go,” I said to Donut. “Get ready.”
“Wait, I have to remember my lines,” said Donut. She shook her paw and cleared her throat.
I sighed and pulled the Mysterious Letter from my inventory.
It was Mordecai who’d figured out what the Mysterious Letter really was. We’d found it within GumGum’s inventory after she’d been killed. We figured it was something she’d pulled off the dead body of a prostitute. It turns out it was likely planted there on purpose in the hopes it would be picked up by whomever was in charge of investigating the deaths.
Earlier this morning, as we stood outside of the Narwhal staring at the dead corpse with the words, “No you won’t” carved into her body, which had been a response to me saying we’d hunt down and kill whoever was responsible, I had been horrified.
“Whoever this is, is listening to us talk. He can hear and see us,” I’d said to Mordecai.
“That’s unlikely. You were in a safe room.”
“Yet, here we are,” I said. “He’d done it fast, too. She’d dropped just a few moments after I’d spoken.”
“Tell me exactly what you were doing at the time when they dropped this girl on the building.”
It was only then I realized I’d been clutching onto the mysterious letter as I’d told Donut that we’d get revenge for GumGum.
“I should have realized,” Mordecai said after thinking on it for a moment. “Don’t take it out. It won’t work while it’s in your inventory. It’s a necroscript scroll all right, but it’s also covered in blood. I thought that was from the dead body it was found on. But I think it’s actually the blood of the caster. The scroll has already been used. Scrolls usually disappear once used, but not always.”
“Well, what is it?” I asked.
“Suppurating Eye,” he said. “A common lich spell. It’s usually not in scroll form, but it’s not unheard of. The caster reads the spell then leaks a bodily fluid onto a surface. The caster can then see and hear anything happening near the spilled fluid. It’s like placing a spy camera. He spilled it directly on the scroll, which he knew would be picked up. So as long as it’s out of your inventory, he’ll know where you are and can hear you talk. You probably won’t be able to sell it to anybody, so you should get rid of it.”
“Or we can use it!” Donut said. “We can talk to him and tell him what a jerk he is, get him mad enough to come to us.”
“That’s actually a great idea,” I said.
“Of course it’s a great idea, Carl. I always come up with great ideas.”
I now gingerly placed the scroll on the roof tiles.
“I still don’t know what this is,” I whispered. “When we’re done here, we need to sell it.”
“Do you think there’ll be more scrolls in there?” Donut asked. She was overacting, but it was too late now. “It looks valuable. We should find one without blood on it.”
“After we finish looting that filing cabinet in the reception area, we can look through the office for more scrolls.”
I added, “We should probably steal all of those stuffed animals on Miss Quill’s desk, too. Especially those ones on the top shelf in the little cases. I bet those are worth something to somebody. And if they’re not, we can always use them to light campfires.”
“Good idea. Plus Mongo needs a chew toy.”
“Okay, we’re going to wait another minute to make sure nothing is flying around above us, then we’ll zap over to the roof, hammer our way through the ceiling, and drop into that office. The key to that door has to be in there somewhere.”
“It’s a full-proof plan,” Donut said.
I put the letter back into my inventory.
* * *
“There!” Donut said, pointing into the sky. A group of four krasue emerged, coming from underneath the building. It appeared they’d been on the first, unoccupied floor, waiting for us. They emerged now, heading toward our position on the roof.
“Go,” I whispered.
Donut zapped Mongo back onto the roof. Before the dinosaur could screech, she hissed, “quiet!”
The dinosaur grunted angrily, then realized he was on an angled roof and started scrambling. Donut quickly cast Clockwork Triplicate on the dinosaur and then pulled the original Mongo back into his carrier. We’d need him again in a minute, but not right now.
The two clockwork Mongos both squeaked with disappointment as Mongo disappeared. I pulled the lit Hobgoblin smoke curtain into my xistera and tossed it onto the opposite roof. I then lit a second one and wedged it into a roof tile at our feet.
Donut gave a quick set of instructions to the two dinosaurs, and they both howled as the heavy smoke started to billow into the night air. I quickly pulled the mysterious letter out.
“We’re jumping onto the roof now,” I said. I crumpled up the letter and tossed it up in the air. One of the Mongos grabbed it and swallowed it whole. They then turned and leaped from the roof to the top of the magistrate building, soaring up through the air and landing easily. One of them howled, the sound carrying heavily into the night.<
br />
“Holy shit,” I whispered. They’d leaped across the alley and up an entire full story. “You were right. I didn’t think they’d be able to jump that far.”
“Mongo has the same pounce ability as I do,” Donut said. “And he’s a lot bigger.”
“Maybe I should ride him instead of letting you have all the fun,” I said as the smoke completely filled the night air. Pustule had been correct. These things were much better than the traditional goblin smoke bombs. It was like a heavy fog had filled the entire area. The two pets disappeared from view.
The swarm of red dots indicating the krasue turned back toward the roof of the building. The dinos had jumped before the fog had completely filled the area, and the floating women heads had seen the motion. I hadn’t been certain the fog would work on ghosts. Mordecai said it wouldn’t on most kinds of non-corporeal ghost entities, but it would on these guys because they had a physical presence. I still didn’t know how he kept all these rules in his head.
My attention moved to the map. “Okay, the clockwork Mongos are on the roof right over that office.” If the guy was listening in, hopefully he’d been fooled into thinking we were now on the magistrate building, and his crew had moved to the office to intercept. “Get down.” We moved to the back of the roof, crouching down. We should be plenty far away at this distance, but every time I said that, I was proven wrong.
“I feel bad about ruining Miss Quill’s collection,” Donut said. “She really loves those things.”
“Something tells me she’s not going to care anymore.”
I pulled the hobgoblin pus out and jammed on the detonator. A clockwork Mongo howl filled the air in the moment before night turned to day.
A note from DoctorHepa
Happy weekend everyone! Things are finally starting to open up here in WA state despite the virus not yet being defeated. We are officially in the "fuck it" stage of the pandemic.
FYI for those interested, starting in October I will be releasing Dungeon Crawler Carl as books over on Amazon in three-month increments. I will NOT be removing it from this site, and RR and Patreon will be the place to get the latest material, up until the story is done. If I do decide to enroll the first book (floors 1 and 2) in Kindle Unlimited, that would require I remove the first several chapters from RR. The subsequent chapters will remain. In other words, if you've read up to this point, and you keep semi-current, you will never need to worry about having to pay to read. I still haven't decided on a good title for book 2 (which will be this third floor). The first will be simply Dungeon Crawler Carl. I think I will do Indiana Jones-style titles. So the next might be something like Dungeon Crawler Carl and the Ruined City, but something less (or more) stupid.
* * *
Chapter 69
“Nice,” I said, examining the gaping hole in the building.
Below, the entire town had been jarred awake by the explosion. Lights turned on throughout the village. Cries and shouts rose. The dark shadows of Skyfowl burst into the air all around us, but most stayed back from the destruction. The magistrate’s quarters burned. We’d blown up half of the building. But not all of it.
Admin Notice. A new tab is available in your interface.
Admin Notice. Your title has changed. This change will revert upon collapse of this floor.
A wall of notifications scrolled by, surprising me. I jumped up two levels to 21. Donut also jumped two levels to 19.
“Well that was easy,” Donut said as she cast her Torch spell, filling the rooftop with brilliant light. The smoke bomb sputtered to a stop, and the light reflected off the remnants, pulsing. It reminded me of the dance floor of the Desperado Club.
I was expecting the krasue to swarm at us, which is why we waited until now for Donut to cast her light spell. They should’ve been immune to the explosion. But I didn’t see them anywhere. We’d probably blown them halfway across town. I kept a wary eye out for red dots.
“Oh shit,” I said, examining the notifications. We had not received the one I’d hoped for, but I still had several interesting ones.
New achievement! Assassin!
You have killed a ranking NPC town official. *Sniff* It seems like just yesterday you were nothing but a scared, level-1 crawler with beautiful feet, pissing yourself as you faced down a rat. Look at you. You’ve moved all the way up to political assassinations. What’s next? Killing a god?
Reward: You’ve received a Bronze Assassin’s Box!
New achievement! Ultimate Extreme Power!
Easy there, Charlemagne. This is only a medium settlement. It’s not like you’ve conquered most of Europe. But you have killed this town’s acting Magistrate.
You know what that means? Welcome to the wonderful world of public administration.
Reward: You’ve received a Platinum Tyrant’s Box! You have also gained control of the Medium Skyfowl Settlement. Good luck, Magistrate.
New achievement! CockBlock!
You have assassinated an NPC whose existence was required to complete another crawler’s quest. (NPC Killed: Miss Quill – Skyfowl. Level 30.) Who was that other crawler? What was the quest? Who fucking cares! You get the reward they were promised!
Warning: You may only receive this award once. The next time you do it, we tell them who you are. And then they get a new quest to kill you. Nobody likes cockblocks.
Reward: You’ve received a Silver Quest Box!
So it appeared we had killed both Miss Quill and Magistrate Featherfall in the blast.
“Are we jumping over there or what?” Donut said. “We’re supposed to be jumping!”
“Hang on,” I said. Every instinct I had told me to wait. “Something’s not right. Let me think for a second.”
“Hey,” Donut said a moment later. “Why did you get the fancy name change and I didn’t? This is an outrage!”
I looked at the menu. My title had changed from Royal Bodyguard to Magistrate Carl of Medium Skyfowl Settlement.
I didn’t laugh. Mordecai had already warned me that one of us would likely win the town if we killed the magistrate. But he’d also said when you killed the quest’s head boss dude, you either auto won the quest or it failed, depending on the situation. Given the mysterious circumstances of this quest, he’d given us a 50/50 chance of winning that quest box. And that was okay with me as long as the quest went away. Either way, we’d get a ton of experience since the guy was also the head of the town. But nothing had happened with the quest. It still sat there in my menu. Did we kill an innocent NPC? We hadn’t even met the magistrate, and we’d just blown his house to bits.
“Listen, we have a problem. I think we screwed up. Magistrate Featherfall is dead, but the quest is still there. That means he wasn’t the head bad guy. And it looks like Miss Quill wasn’t the bad guy either like I was suspecting. And to top it off, we fucked over some other crawler’s quest.”
The plan had been simple. Using the Mysterious Letter as bait, we were going to make Featherfall think we were about to breach through the ceiling, drawing him to the area to face us. After Ricky Joe had claimed that a female SkyFowl was visiting the city elves, I thought perhaps Miss Quill was really the bad guy. That was just the sort of thing the AI would pull, which was why I’d mentioned something about burning the stuffed animals. Either way, whomever was listening in would hopefully be there. Mordecai said a lich would get blown to bits just as easily as a human. The only monster we’d have to worry about post-detonation would be the krasue, which wouldn’t be hurt by the explosion.
After the blast, if there was anything left, we’d storm the Magistrate’s office and mop up the remaining bad guys and hopefully figure out what the hell was going on over there.
“If Miss Quill was there to get blown up, then she had to be in on it. Why else would she be there this late?” Donut asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “She said he only came out at night now. Maybe she altered her schedule to match. Or maybe she lived there.”
“Or maybe she was a
blood-sucking pawn of the lich. We don’t know, Carl. Let’s go look. Quit being a wuss.”
“Okay,” I said after a moment. “But let’s be cautious. I have a bad feeling about this one. Turn off your Torch for now, but be ready to snap it back on.”
“Wait, wait, look,” Donut said. “Look at our notifications again. There’s a bronze boss box in there. I told you one of them was a bad guy.”
I looked, and she was correct. I hadn’t noticed it buried there with the others. So either Featherfall or Quill had been a neighborhood boss. That made me feel a little better. But which one was it? It didn’t say.
The dynamite had blown a massive hole in the roof, peeling it up like it had been drilled through from below. Thankfully the building wasn’t fully engulfed in flames. Not yet. Smoke continued to rise from the hole, but it was minimal for now. I tried to remember if the interior walls were made of wood. The boom jug from earlier this afternoon had managed to burn a building to the ground in a matter of minutes. The effect of this blast appeared to be much more powerful, but also much less incendiary. If I was going to be blowing shit up more often, I needed to know what to expect. This particular blast, while huge, was not what I’d anticipated. The physics surrounding this stuff was still beyond me, and that was dangerous. I needed to learn, and fast.
Donut used Puddle Jumper to get us over to the roof across the way. We went from the angled tiles to the flat beams, but the ground below us suddenly felt unsteady, ready to break.
“You there,” a voice called. I looked up. A pair of Skyfowl NPCs had grown brave enough to fly closer to the explosion. They hovered over us now. “What are you doing?”