Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2

by DoctorHepa

  “Wait, Carl,” Donut said. “Doesn’t it only stop the trains behind it? What if we get the key, jump onto the Nightmare Express or one of those other super-fast loop trains and jump ahead on the line and catch one of the trains that were already ahead?”

  “That’s brilliant,” I said to Donut, scratching her on the head. She beamed. I’d also come up with that idea, but I wasn’t about to say that now. “I think he actually revealed two different ways to get to the stairwells. We can also use the employee portal. Maybe. It sounds like people who take that path lose time and suffer memory issues. And they have to fight the Kravyad, whatever that is. Probably a boss guarding the portal.”

  “It seems so complicated,” Katia said. “How many of the 300,000 crawlers are going to find out about this?”

  “Hopefully all of them,” I said. “With all of our contacts, we’ll start spreading the word. I doubt there’s only one or two ways to get out of this. There’s a lot we’re missing. Like what’s at stop number 436? And I still need to talk to Elle and Imani about…”

  “Vile traitors! Saboteurs!” Gore-Gore shouted as he burst out of Club Vanquisher. “Posers! And I thought you were true! In the name of the exalted Grull I will slay thee! Hail and kill!” He raised his arms and once again produced the metallic claws. His face was a mask of rage. His dot was now red.

  The ram-headed cleric peeked out of the door and waved before disappearing back inside.

  Music started to play. Ah fuck.

  “Grull?” Donut said. “Isn’t that…?”

  “Yep,” I said just before the world froze.

  B-b-b-b Boss Battle!

  Our avatars appeared floating in the air.

  You’ve enraged an NPC. But not just any NPC! It’s a neighborhood boss! It’s…

  VERSUS! Clanged onto the floating text, with simulated blood splattering everywhere. Gore-Gore’s screaming portrait splatted onto the virtual screen.

  GORE-GORE THE MANTAUR! TRAIN ENGINEER! ADHERENT OF GRULL THE WAR GOD! BERSERKER EXTREME! LEVEL 40!

  The world unstuck, and Gore-Gore galloped directly at us, screaming and frothing at the mouth.

  “Oh, this should be fun,” I said.

  * * *

  “Position three,” I called. I formed a fist, causing my gauntlet to appear. In this formation Katia remained close, but Mongo moved far to my left. Donut remained on the ground, falling back and to my left in the space between me and Mongo.

  “Carl, I think that cleric guy told him we crashed the train! What a jerk!”

  “Ya think?” I said. “Fire!”

  Donut launched two magic missiles at him. They bounced harmlessly off the charging man’s chest.

  “It says magic missiles are ineffective!” Donut screamed.

  “Okay, we’re doing this the hard way,” I said. “Doozy!”

  I dropped a smoke curtain as Katia and I moved three steps to my right. Donut cast Hole on the ground in front of the charging ManTauR. At the same time, I cast Fear.

  The hole was only an inch deep, and the creature barely stumbled. My fear spell seemed to only have a small effect. One of these days that was going to be a great move. I cast Bang Bro on my gauntlet, which now glowed with electrical fire. I downed a mana refill.

  “Further treachery,” Gore-Gore squealed. “Magic and wizardry. Die in Grull’s name!” He leapt and blindly swung his blades at the space I was just standing. He turned and swiped again, this time at Donut’s location, which I hadn’t been expecting. She backflipped out of the way. Mongo screeched in anger. Katia and I rushed forward. I pulled back and punched him as hard as I could, smashing him in the kidney of his lower torso. He grunted. His body felt solid and strong, like a sack stuffed with gravel. He howled in rage as a health bar appeared, down maybe five percent.

  1.5

  The notification appeared out of nowhere and hung persistent on my interface.

  I recognized what it meant, though I was puzzled why it remained on the screen. I had to be careful with my punches. Because of my magic gauntlet’s special ability, each successful punch had a 1.5% chance to summon Grull the war god, which would probably be a juiced-up, almost immortal version of Prince Stalwart of the Skull Empire. That was the last thing we needed.

  Mongo shrieked as he leapt through the air, claws out. Gore-Gore reacted with lightning speed, backhanding the dinosaur and knocking him aside with the top, dull part of his blades. Mongo squealed in pain and hit the ground hard, his health alarmingly low despite the glancing blow.

  “Mongo!” Donut cried, jumping toward her injured pet as Gore-Gore whirled again, leaping toward me.

  I could tell the smoke curtain was doing a good job of keeping him blind. But he was a smart fighter with whirlwind reflexes. Before I could jump back, he sliced viciously down at me.

  Katia leaped forward, blocking the blow with her arm. She tumbled, crying out in pain. I looked down in horror to see part of her arm spin away. It hit the ground with a clang.

  It’s just metal. Not flesh.

  I leaped forward, getting close to his chest and punched four quick times.

  3.0

  4.5

  6.0

  7.5

  Oh shit. The description never said it was a cumulative chance. But what choice did I have? I was in tight and too close to kick. I kneed at him with my spiked kneepad, but I could tell the power just wasn’t there. I have to get back. I had to punch again two more times to get away. With the last blow, I felt something deep within crack. He howled in outrage and pain.

  9.0

  10.5

  He swiped again as I reared back. The tips of the blades scraped across my face. I screamed as the three razors tore flesh. Gore-Gore grunted in surprise as my damage reflection hit him. A hand from his lower torso wrapped around my throat, catching me before I could get away. Then they were both around my throat, squeezing. I looked up to see him raising his upper right hand in the air to pierce down.

  I mentally slammed on Protective Shell.

  He cried out as he was ejected from the area, flying to my right, pushed away toward the stairwell, down into the smoky, flaming wreckage of the ochre station platform.

  Unfortunately, the static nature of the spell that worked so well for me before worked against me this time. While Gore-Gore was tossed away, he still had a firm, double-handed grip around my throat. So when he shot away, I was pulled with him like a dog on a leash.

  I gurgled as I felt myself flying and spinning through the air. Somewhere in there, his grip on my throat went slack.

  We bounced off the stairs once, his body cushioning my own, but when we hit the floor, he landed on me, knocking the breath out of my chest. I felt an ominous crunch within myself. He continued his forward, tumbling momentum as I slammed onto a healing potion, even before I stopped moving, coming to rest against a red-hot, burning hunk of metal. I cried out, scrambling away. I screamed again as my broken ribs and arm healed themselves. Holy shit that hurts.

  I turned in time to see him fall off the edge of the platform, his body plummeting into the space between the third and fourth cars, which had been smushed further together by the subsequent crashes, causing the two cars to form a massive teepee shape, with the junction between the two touching the ceiling.

  I clambered to my feet as Gore-Gore, dazed, stood all the way up to his full height on the track between the cars, as if he was standing underneath an awning. The top of his head brushed the mangled wheels of the train cars. He’d lost his engineer’s hat somewhere along the way, revealing a massive bald spot atop his head. His health was down to about 20%. Christ this dude is tough.

  “I feel it in my chest,” Gore-Gore said, his voice odd. “I have been blessed by the gods.”

  That’s when I saw that 10.5 was now blinking, and Gore-Gore had a timer over his head.

  Ten seconds and counting.

  Holy shit I summoned the god. I had seconds to finish this or we’d all be dead.

  “Carl! Carl! We�
��re coming!” Donut cried from the top of the stairs.

  This is a terrible idea, I thought as I rushed forward. I activated my Talon Strike skill as I ran, leaping over debris. I bounded one more time, and I executed a drop kick right at the solar plexus of the lower chest of Gore-Gore.

  He rocketed back on the tracks as I dropped into the channel like a sack of hammers.

  Zzzzzt.

  It wasn’t a loud sound. I barely heard it over the sound of the music. But I felt it. Anyone who has ever been close to high-voltage lines knows the feeling. You can sense it. Death, right there rushing by.

  As the electrified corpse of Gore-Gore crumpled and hit the main tracks, I more than sensed the current rushing through the third rail. My entire body ripped in pain as the tracks were electrified by the short circuit caused by Gore-Gore’s body. Thankfully, the grounding was enough that the shock was disbursed. I hopped backward, stumbling and hitting the back of my head on the edge platform. I felt jaws bite onto the back of my jacket and cloak as Donut pulled me from the channel. She cast a heal scroll on me as she shouted my name.

  The world froze again as the Winner! notification appeared.

  “That wasn’t very fun,” I said up at Donut a minute later. I groaned, sitting up. “Let’s try to loot his corpse without getting electrocuted and then go get some pho. I need to rest before I can handle any more excitement.”

  Admin Notice. Congratulations, Crawler. You have been sponsored!

  Viewers watching your feed will now occasionally see advertisements produced by your sponsor.

  Sponsor’s Name: The Valtay Corporation.

  Additional details available in the Sponsorship Tab of your interface.

  A note from DoctorHepa

  Woohoo! Two chapter day! Thanks, as always, for reading and writing and reviewing. I love all of you, and if it were physically feasible, I would have all of your babies. You all rock. Hail!

  * * *

  Chapter 85

  Ochre Line. Station 149.

  “Carl, Carl, I hit level 28 and I got a sponsor!” Donut said as I pulled myself to my feet. She gasped. “Carl, guess what? It’s Princess D’nadia of the Prism Kingdom! I love her!”

  I shook my head. I still felt disoriented. Below, a clockwork Mongo was gingerly pulling on Gore-Gore’s loincloth in an attempt to get him away from the electrified rail. We needed to hurry this up. Once the next train came and crashed into the back of the line, it was possible these two cars could come crashing down. Plus every one of these other trains presumably had more Gore-Gores driving them. The last thing I needed was to have to fight another one of these guys. “D’nadia? Who was that again?”

  Donut glowered at me. “Carl, she’s probably watching right now. Tell her you’re sorry!”

  “I’m sorry Princess D’nadia of the Prism Kingdom,” I said. “Now who is she.”

  Donut sighed. “You sat right next to her when we were on Ripper Wonton’s show. She’s a Saccathian. A Sac. Really, Carl.”

  I remembered, then. It’d only been a few days. She was a tentacle-faced creature. Her country, planet, solar system, whatever, the Prism, was supposedly small but powerful. Princess D’nadia was very outspoken and seemed to spend most of her time traveling from talk show to talk show. I remembered she’d kept trying to grab my virtual hand. When the Skull Empire had accidentally killed Manasa—who had really been controlled by a brain parasite from the Valtay Corporation—in their attempt to assassinate us, D’nadia had been very upset. Huh, I thought. Two parties that were there during that incident had sponsored us.

  “Who’d you get?” Donut asked.

  “The Valtay Corporation,” I said.

  Carl: Not a word about them out loud. Borant hates them. They’re the ones who are trying to invade the Borant system. They’re the reason why the show started when it did.

  Donut: IF BORANT HATES THEM, THEN WHY DID THEY LET THEM SPONSOR YOU?

  Carl: Borant probably doesn’t have a choice.

  Donut: DOES THAT MEAN YOU’RE GOING TO GET REALLY GOOD STUFF?

  Carl: I don’t know. I hope so. But it might mean the opposite. It might mean Borant is going to try to get me killed much faster. The good thing is we make them a lot of money right now. We need to make sure we are worth more alive than dead.

  The last thing I wanted was to be a pawn in some intergalactic pissing match. I had enough to worry about already.

  “Did you see the thing that said people watching our feed get commercials from our sponsors?” Donut said. “I hope Princess D’nadia has lots of different commercials. There’s nothing worse than the same ad showing over and over and over. When you left the TV on the old person channel, and I got stuck watching Matlock all day, it was the same help-I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up ad every commercial break.”

  “We get another sponsor when we hit the fifth floor. And another on the sixth. So let’s make sure we get through this floor, and your fans will have a bit of variety.”

  “I think my fans should have a name, wouldn’t that be great? Like the Princess Patrol or something.”

  I grunted. “How about the Donut Holes?”

  “Don’t be crude, Carl.”

  Below, one of the Mongos exploded as he accidentally touched a hunk of metal attached to the third rail. The second automaton grunted and pulled the Gore-Gore corpse harder, bringing the large body up against the wall of the channel. I reached down and looted him, receiving 498 gold and three items. An Ochre Line Engineer’s Key, a bottle of Rev-Up Magic Hair Restoration, and the neighborhood map. The moment I accepted the map, it populated my interface, not with the immediate area like it usually did, but with a map of the complete Ochre line, including all the stops and the current location of all the trains.

  “Oh, wow,” I said, zooming in and scrolling up and down the map. The info started at station 11 and went all the way up to 435. “Make sure you grab the neighborhood map. This is way more than we usually get.” This particular train line was shaped like a squiggle. Up the line, the trains continued to move. I could see all the dots on the trains, including the white dots of the conductor and engineers and grapples, along with the red dots of the Jikininki janitor ghouls and other monsters. I didn’t see any blue dots of fellow crawlers. The last train to get through station 149—the one I’d spray-painted with an X—appeared to be continuing its way up the tracks unhindered. It was just about to hit station 160. A traffic jam of trains appeared behind the one we’d crashed. If there was an “interdiction team” coming like Gore-Gore stated, I didn’t see any sign of them.

  I did see a few oddities on the tracks. Since 151 was another transit station, the next station after this one that would have monsters was station 152. The tracks outside that station, along with 153 and 154, had monsters on them. I watched as one monster—something called a Drake Bitch—hit the electrified line and turned itself into an X. But more monsters appeared by the minute.

  The monsters are jumping on the track and walking up to station 155. The trains had stopped coming, and the creatures weren’t waiting any longer. It was going to take them a long time. There were miles between each station. That would soon start happening behind us, too. In fact, I could see the red dots of monsters moving between the crashed train cars behind us, though it didn’t appear they could get past the tangled wreckage. The ones ahead of us would have a long walk. The stations were pretty far apart, especially further up the line.

  The early stations were much closer, easily walkable. In fact, stations 11 through 72 were each about a city block or two apart from one another. We could walk that distance unhindered in a few hours. That was good to know. By comparison, stations 300 and 301 looked to be about 40 or 50 miles apart.

  We went up the stairs to find Katia sitting on the ground, crying silently. She’d returned to her normal shape. She cradled her right hand in her left. I noted she’d gone up a level to 24. I was still at 29.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, rushing up.

 
; She chinned at the hunk of metal on the ground. It was the chunk of armor that Gore-Gore had sliced off when she’d been protecting me. Only then did I see the splash of blood.

  She held up her right hand, which looked like a normal, unharmed hand. But as I watched, her palm reshaped and her four fingers disappeared. “He chopped my fingers off. When I healed, they didn’t come back.”

  “Oh no,” I said, sitting down next to her. “I’m sorry. I thought it was just part of your armor. We would’ve come back up sooner if we’d known you’d been injured.”

  She sniffed. “It’s stupid. I can build fingers from other parts of me. He didn’t really chop off my fingers. I’m like clay. All I lost was a bit of flesh. I had to take a ring off of my severed finger and put it on my new fingers. But part of me is gone. I’m losing myself.”

  “That’s not true.” I gently tapped her forehead. “Look. The real Katia is still there. They can cut everything else off, but you’re still you. Don’t let them break you. No matter what they do. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, getting to her feet. She did not sound convinced. She kept opening and flexing her hand. She swallowed and seemed to take a moment to steady herself.

  We needed to get her more armor. Much more armor. Her class and race was a perfect combination for the ultimate tank, but we weren’t taking advantage of it. I was worried how she’d react to the idea, but we needed to figure out a way to completely sheathe her in metal. She needed to be 90% metal, 10% flesh, not the other way around.

  “Have you ever had pho before?” I asked, pointing at the saferoom. Now that I had access to the map, I could keep a lookout for more of the boss monsters, but it didn’t appear any were headed this way. “Let’s take a minute to refresh ourselves, and then we’ll hit the purple line and spend the rest of the day grinding as we ride up to 283.”