Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2

by DoctorHepa

  Katia: I altered the backpack and made it wider using your engineering table while you were gone. I have more metal in there now. I can make myself even bigger. I’ve also added rubber to the mix. If I layer it between the metal and flesh, it absorbs the impacts. I just need help with the design for the front of the train. I need to be careful of that third rail.

  Carl: I don’t like it, no matter what the design is.

  Katia: This is just like when Donut wanted to climb up the chain and turn the roundabout. You’re a… a backseat dungeon driver. You only don’t like the idea because you didn’t come up with it.

  Ouch.

  Carl: I don’t like it because you’re going to fucking die, Katia. I don’t understand. You used to be scared of fighting just regular mobs.

  Katia: You’re right. You don’t understand, Carl. They came back for me. She brought the entire team to pick me up. That is more than anyone has ever done for me.

  An awkward silence hung in the room. It was clear to everyone that we were having a private conversation. Katia rubbed tears from her eyes.

  Zev: Goddamnit, Carl. You need to be having these moments out loud.

  “Go fuck yourself, Zev,” I said up to the ceiling. “How’s that for talking out loud?”

  Hekla barked with laughter. “Zev sounds like our Loita.”

  Zev: I’m serious, Carl. You’re one of the most popular feeds, and half of your conversations are inaccessible to the viewers. What do you think is going to happen?

  I ignored the question. The tension in the room had eased with my outburst. “Okay, okay. If we do this, Donut and I will ride in the engineer’s car. And I would like Katia to stay in our team until we’re done. All this transferring around will take too long.” I turned to look at Katia. “As long as that’s cool with you.”

  To my surprise, she walked up to me and hugged me, long and tight. “Thank you,” she whispered in my ear. I had no idea for what.

  “That’s fine,” Hekla said after a moment, though she seemed irritated. “You can ride with me and Eva. She knows how to drive the subway cars.”

  * * *

  When we left the personal space, I paused, confused. Before, the door led straight into the attached restaurant, but now there was a vestibule similar to the one at the Desperado Club. A second door was attached to a wall next to ours. It was a subspace portal that I couldn’t enter or screenshot. After a moment, I realized it was the entrance to Hekla’s team’s headquarters. That was how the system dealt with multiple, non-attached personal spaces being accessible when crawlers had the ability to enter into more than one. I know that this is. This is a temporary, situationally generated space. I remembered there was a note about them in my book.

  I half-expected Eva to turn and attempt to saber me in the face the moment we left the saferoom. She didn’t. We went through the trap door down onto the dark, employee line. It appeared the ghouls were leaving this track free. That was good. The Nightmare remained where we left it, happily idling. I briefly wondered what Fire Brandy did to pass the time. But then I remembered her babies, and the fact she was constantly giving birth. She probably had no time to get bored.

  “If you want to ride, your team will need to hang onto the outside of the train. There’s not enough room in the cab. There’s room on the back platform, though.”

  “We will ride,” Hekla said. Me, Donut, and Katia climbed into the cab while Hekla, Eva, and a few more daughters stood on the back platform by the door. The rest moved to the front and clutched awkwardly onto the railings, standing on either side of the Nightmare’s boiler. A few of the smaller, fairy-like daughters alighted onto the platform out front, just above the cowcatcher. I imagined we looked like a parade float with so many colorful women attached to the outside.

  “It’s too bad we can’t move this train to the Vermillion line,” I said as I flushed the brake line. This train would be perfect for clearing the track of ghouls. I stuck my head out the window. “Ladies, watch out. The boiler gets really, really hot. Only hold onto the rails. And watch the walls. We’ll go slow, but if the walls hit you, it’s game over.”

  I eased the train forward.

  “I just realized you’re the only boy here,” Donut said. “All these people, and there’s only one penis. You could start a harem. Like the guy on that Sister Wives television show.”

  I laughed. “Nobody is starting a harem.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Donut said. “You couldn’t even keep one woman interested.”

  I laughed. The train hissed, and we started to pick up speed. We’d be at Station 60 in just a few minutes.

  “Why does your friend have so many skulls?” Donut asked Katia as we lurched forward.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I knew she had gained a few on the third floor, but I hadn’t realized it was that many. She says she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  I bet.

  “How do you know her anyway?” I asked.

  “Eva? She’s an economics professor at the university. We eat lunch together sometimes. We were friends before, but not great friends. She actually knows Hekla, too. From before, I mean. Hekla has known her longer than I have. Reykjavik is a small town.”

  “Was Hekla a professor, too?”

  “No,” Katia said. “She was Eva’s psychiatrist.”

  * * *

  Like Madison from human resources had predicted, A small colony of NPCs had gathered at station 60.

  We didn’t stay long at the station, which was too small already to house the group of NPCs gathered there, but as we passed through, I noted Madison sitting in the corner glaring at us sullenly. She was being berated and threatened by an angry mob of dwarves and gremlins. Rod, her ex-husband, was nowhere in sight. I wondered if he was even real.

  As we left and entered into the long, twisting hallway that led to a confusing series of portals which in turn led to additional platforms, we had to step past a dwarf huddled on the ground, his head hanging low.

  According to the tag, the creature’s name was Tizquick. A conductor for the Mango line. A puddle of tears had formed underneath him. Hekla stepped over him as if he wasn’t there. Donut and I paused. I kneeled. I knew there was nothing I could do for him, but I felt compelled to acknowledge him, if just for a moment.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re going through, but it has to be hard. It’ll be over in four days when the level collapses.” Only to start all over again for you, I didn’t add.

  The dwarf looked at me, and it struck me, as it always did, at the life there in his eyes.

  “She was never real, was she?” the dwarf asked, tears streaming down his dirt-colored face. They left rivulets of clean skin through the grime. “My little girl was never real. I just don’t understand.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, and I leaned in. “No, I suppose you don’t. And that really sucks.” I thought of Frank Q killing people so his daughter could have a chance. I thought of my own mother, and what she did. This is my birthday present to you. I am giving you a chance at life. I’m sorry it took me so long.

  Both of them had failed miserably. But this guy had it even worse. He’d been tricked into believing something that just wasn’t real. He never even had the opportunity to screw it up.

  Before this was done, people like him would kill people like me by the thousands. And people like me would cleave through his kind, wreaking even more damage. All the while the real culprits sat back and watched and laughed.

  “One day, this pain you’re feeling right now will matter,” I said. The conductor looked up at me, eyes sparkling with confusion.

  I straightened, and I left the man on the floor.

  Hekla remained there at the edge of the portal. She’d watched the exchange.

  “You are going to give yourself an ulcer,” she said. “Focus on what you can accomplish, not that which is beyond your control.”

  I grinned. “How much do people normally have to pay for that
advice?”

  She just looked at me. “We need to hurry. The main horde of ghouls will be upon them soon, and they’re starting to see mobs suffering from the third stage.”

  A note from DoctorHepa

  Hello everyone! I hope you're having a good weekend. I have yet another dog in my house for the weekend, and the barely-controlled chaos has bubbled over into no-longer-controlled chaos.

  Schedule for the next three chapters --->

  95 Tuesday, September 29 @ 6 p.m.ish PST.

  96 Thursday, October 1 @ 6 p.m.ish PST.

  97 Friday, October 2 @ 5 p.m.ish PST.

  Chapter 95 is going to end on what some might consider a minor cliffhanger. Chap 96 is another cliff, though maybe not quite as, uh, cliffy. I am warning you of this in advance. If that's the sort of thing you dislike, you might want to wait until chapter 97 hits next Friday. I'll toss a warning in front of chapter 95 on Tuesday.

  * * *

  I had 25 new illustrations done by a talented dude named Erik Wilson. All of them will appear within the final version of the DCC book and in various advertisements for the book.

  Chapter 95

  A note from DoctorHepa

  If you dislike cliffhangers, you might wish to wait until chapter 97, which appears on Friday, October 2nd. You have been warned.

  “For a while, the horde of ghouls coming from 72 were stopped right at station 75,” Hekla said as we watched Katia form in front of the subway car. I nervously kept an eye on the third rail, just nine inches from the lower left of her plow shape. She’d consulted with me and one of the daughters, an architect, on the design. I’d had her place her new rubber layer between herself and the front of the train, along with a coating all along the left and bottom side of the scoop. That way if she did touch the rail, she wouldn’t—in theory—complete the circuit. But the last thing we wanted was to test it.

  “But they just kept coming and coming,” Hekla continued, “and they broke through whatever barrier there is, and now they’re moving quickly up the track. There are hundreds of corpses on the tracks already. They mostly avoid the electrified line, but there are so many of them. Every once in a while one of them hits it, and the ghoul kills all the ones around him. There are just piles of dead bodies up there.”

  The engine car of the Vermillion line was like most of the subway cars. It had a flat, window-covered front section. The controls were simple, especially compared to the Nightmare. It was a simple throttle switch and an emergency brake, along with a few lights indicating electrical connection status and an indicator telling the driver that all the cars were still attached. I briefly inspected the second engine car, attached backward at the end of the train. It had a slave mode where it added power to the train, even though it was facing the wrong direction. It would be more efficient if it was right behind the first engine, but this worked, too.

  As long as we didn’t get into an accident.

  The stock “cowcatcher” attached to the front of the subway car was just a metal shield welded underneath the front, designed to push debris away. It looked like a forward-facing trailer hitch. It’d work fine for a few bodies here and there, but it was clear we needed something much more robust.

  After some discussion, we decided a traditional, wedge cowcatcher design wouldn’t be enough. Katia had to make something that combined the low, forward comb with a bulldozer-like scoop.

  “A plow is an easy design,” I said. “The problem is the train fits so tightly in the tunnel that there’s nowhere for the debris to go. It’s not like the Nightmare line where there’s a thin channel between the train and the ceiling and the sidewalls. These trains are packed in tight, otherwise we’d go with a wedge design. Even with just the scoop, the tunnel will get clogged like a drain.”

  “That is a concern,” Hekla said.

  “That’s why we came up with the kebab plan.”

  “Katia,” I said as I watched her form. I couldn’t even see where her head was. “Extend the lower scoop a little further. Yeah. Damn, I wish I’d had time to make train wheels to stabilize it. You’ll need to be careful not to clip the ground. If you do, don’t let it pull you off the train. They’re going to be heavy.”

  Katia: I know, Carl. I’m anchored to the top.

  We’d broken out the windows in the engine car so Katia could reach inside. This is where most of her biological flesh would remain, though I worried that this was the wrong design. Nobody in the group was an engineer, and that was a problem. She’d built herself almost like a toggle bolt, affixing herself to the flat front of the subway car, reaching in through the window and then making a small, vertical hunk of Katia that was bigger than the window hole and pulled flush against the wall. It’d work well, I hoped, but if she gathered too much weight onto her scoop, I feared she’d rip the front of the train off. I cushioned the top and bottom of the metal parts where she attached with a pair of yoga mats to make it more comfortable and to help with insulation—both for herself and those of us in the cab. None of that would matter if she gathered too much weight. If the bolt pulled free, she’d get dragged down, hit the track, be ripped off the front of the train, and then run over. She’d be splattered all over the tunnel along with everyone in the engine car.

  After the scoop was formed came the spikes. Multiple, thick, sharp, and metal spikes protruded out from the scoop, like a sea anemone, or one of the street urchin mobs from the third floor. We kept these mostly at about chest level and above. This was a gamble. We expected the spikes to break if they hit armor or ghoul mobs with tough skin. But the faster we went, the higher Katia’s constitution, so it was crucial if we wanted to maintain speed. The moment a mob was impaled on the spike, or caught in the scoop, Katia would start the process of sticking the body into her inventory. That would only work if the monster was truly dead, however, so Donut and Hekla would stand at the windows and would—carefully—shoot anything caught in the spikes or scoop.

  With the spikes, we hoped they’d die more quickly, especially if the train moved as fast as Eva said it could go.

  Katia finally finished forming. I marveled at how much area her body took. But that also worried me, as I knew the larger she was, the thinner the metal, the weaker the joints. She was literally stretched thin. A pair of eyes and mouth sat in a little divot, looking out near the top of the scoop. I’d wanted her to face inside the cab, but she still didn’t trust her ability to grow new eyes.

  “Last chance to back out,” I called as we climbed onto the train.

  She didn’t answer.

  The engine car was much roomier than the Nightmare engine. This was an entire train car with an apartment attached to it. It was meant to house a ManTauR engineer. Eva stood on the right side at the controls. Hekla stood next to her, crossbow ready to fire through the missing windshield. Donut and I stood on the port side. Katia’s body snaked in through both of the two windows, and she’d formed a thick, metal plate there, bolting herself to the front of the cab. If it wasn’t flesh-colored, she’d look like a feature of the train. I put my hand against it before I realized what I was doing, and I could feel her heartbeat, fast as a jackrabbit. Until that moment I hadn’t realized she even had a heart. I quickly pulled my hand away.

  Katia: That tickled.

  One more of the daughters rode up front with us. A level-25 Wisteria Fairy named Silfa. She was a “Holistic Healer.” I hoped her healing abilities were more effective here in the dungeon than the holistic, snake-oil stuff from the real world. The plump woman appeared to be about fifty years old and was half the size of Donut. She quietly hung back.

  “Speeding up,” Eva said, pushing the throttle.

  This was the first time I’d heard the cobra-headed woman speak. I was a little taken aback at how normal she sounded. A little tongue flicked out.

  “I wish you’d let me take Mongo out,” Donut said. “He’d love this.”

  “It’s too dangerous for him right now,” I said. “I’m pretty sure we’ll need him soon.
Besides, he’d eat that fairy lady right out of the air.”

  “That’s not true, Carl. It only takes him a minute to get used to people. And then he’ll love them for life.”

  That was the problem. I wanted to keep Mongo away from them as much as possible in case something happened. If we had to fight, I didn’t want Mongo stopping to roll over for a belly rub from Hekla.

  I eyed Silfa the healer nervously. Since I’d never fought with her before, I didn’t trust her. I had eight scrolls of healing ready to go, and Donut had another six.

  My stomach dropped as the train picked up speed, barreling down the tunnel. The sickly headlamp wasn’t nearly as bright as the light on the Nightmare.

  “Donut.”

  “On it,” she said, reading my mind. She cast Torch, setting it to travel ahead of us. It lit the tunnel brightly, revealing the uneven, rocky walls.

  A group of red dots appeared on the map. It was just three of them. I barely had time to bark a warning before we mowed them over.

  There wasn’t even a thump or an audible splat. Only a small spray of blood over Hekla and Eva’s faces. I tried not to laugh. There wasn’t even a body. It was like we’d hit a bug with the windshield. We’d completely liquified the mobs, and the train was still accelerating.

  Katia: Hey, I got experience for that.

  Carl: Did it hurt?

  Katia: It was like a little bee sting. No big deal. There was a head on my spike, but I pulled it into my inventory. Also blood. It lets me add liquid to my inventory if it’s in my scoop. There’s a new tab called “Gross shit.”

  My mind started to race with the implications and possibilities of that.

  “Coming up on 72,” Eva called.

  “Faster,” Hekla said. “Speed it up.” She had to shout the words now. The wind whistled through the two open windows of the subway car.

  Katia: Whoa. I just got a fan box! It’s for having the most new followers in a 30-hour period. I can’t believe it.