Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2

by DoctorHepa

  Donut: CONGRATULATIONS.

  That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but I wasn’t about to say that now. I swallowed, seeing the wall of the red dots rushing toward us like missiles descending on a target.

  There was a constant stream of ghouls coming off the platform. Most were traveling up the line, but a handful were turned toward us. Most of the mobs were now sticking to the right side of the tunnel. They were running, too, running fast. Terrifyingly fast. There was a pile of X’s along the track where the ghouls had barbequed themselves on the third rail. I was worried that the pile of electrified bodies would still be intact enough to give Katia a shock as we plowed through. Hopefully her self-insulation would be enough.

  “Here we go,” I said, bracing myself.

  * * *

  “Jesus fuck,” I cried, raising an arm to block the shower of blood. Gore and bits of bone and hair blasted into the engine like it was being sprayed at us through a firehose. A hundred mini, fleeting shocks rocked me, giving me a small amount of damage. The train shuddered, but it didn’t slow as we plowed through the screaming mass of ghouls. We cut through the bodies like a goddamned wheat thresher.

  “Katia,” I cried, getting a mouthful of guts.

  She’d been fine, but she was suddenly unconscious, and her health was at about 50% and dropping. I put my hand against her flesh and felt a tingle of electricity. She was getting shocked by something. Probably a body part wedged between her and the line.

  “Faster,” I yelled at Eva, who was choking on a splatter of guts. Where the hell was that healer? I cast my heal scroll on Katia, and her health returned to the top, though she remained unconscious, and it continued to drop.

  Something in the cab hissed, and I turned in time to see a monster head on the floor, growling. It was an almost-human head with green, rotting skin, pulled tight over the skull. I stomped it down with my foot.

  There was another, a torso with a head attached. It growled as it reached for Silfa, who had buzzed to the top of the cab, screaming for Hekla to help her. These were different than the festering ghouls. These were the monsters being generated at stop number 72. I quickly examined the creature before I crushed its head with my foot.

  Blister Ghoul – Level 20

  The thing with the Blister Ghoul is that it is so damn tenacious. This undead creature is created and unleashed into the dungeon using a device called a Ghoul Generator. There are multiple types of ghouls and generators out there, but the bad boy that spits these suckers out is top of the line.

  For every non-undead mob that dies within this floor, one of the soul crystal-powered ghoul generators will birth a single Blister Ghoul.

  It’s rather unfortunate, then, that every mob on the entire floor is suffering from something that will eventually kill them.

  Soul crystals. Goddamn soul crystals. That’s what they’d used to power the swordsmen guards on the third floor, and it’s what Miss Quill had been using to cast her spell. The soul crystal had become overwhelmed and turned itself into a massive bomb. That bomb—now dubbed Carl’s Doomsday Scenario—still sat in my inventory. I hadn’t even dared take it out at my sapper’s table yet. These things were always bad news.

  The chaos of this entire floor was starting to form into something a little more cohesive than I’d originally suspected. This wasn’t just a maze. It was an almost-perpetual engine. In the next day, these things were going to be everywhere.

  “That group was small compared to the main horde approaching stop 101,” Hekla said. “It has many times more ghouls.”

  The mobs had thinned out, but we were still hitting a handful every few seconds. Katia had a dozen heads and other body parts attached to the spikes. Some of the body pieces were still alive. The gore was starting to fill up her scoop. Donut was carefully shooting them through the window while Hekla did the same. Donut was soaked in dripping, steaming guts. Absolutely soaked. Her massive sunglasses protected her eyes, but she had to keep washing the blood away.

  Katia’s health continued to move downward. She hadn’t once been healed by the so-called healer.

  “Heals, goddamnit!” I yelled at the fairy, who remained at the ceiling, looking down at the blister ghoul’s corpse. I kicked it. “It’s dead. Come on!”

  “I’m supposed to wait until she’s at 25%.”

  “You will heal her now. And can you wake her up?”

  The fairy looked at Hekla, who nodded. The fairy had over two dozen boss kills by her name, but she acted as if this was her first foray into action.

  Katia glowed, and the unconscious debuff faded just as she hit another group of ghouls. More blood splattered into the train, soaking Silfa, who shrieked.

  Katia: Ow. That hurt. It’s okay now, but I was shocked really bad.

  Carl: Be careful of things getting wedged under there.

  Katia: Not much I can do about them now.

  I watched as the massive pile of body parts lowered, zipping away into her inventory. She did it again. And again. All that was left was a pile of chattering heads. Donut and Hekla went to work.

  Eva sputtered as more gore splattered across her face. “Coming up on 75,” she cried out.

  Corpses dotted the tracks here, including a pile of bodies on the platform. As we rushed past, I caught sight of several dead hobgoblins and jackal-faced gnolls. Multiple tracks spread out from the main line here, too, with a long line of small cars sitting idle, ready to hop onto the main track. These were tiny platforms, each about the size of a Mini Cooper. A long group of portals and switches remained here, too.

  But the station passed quickly, and I’d only gotten a quick glance. Hobgoblins meant this was where the crash interdiction teams were stationed. They’d been overrun by the ghouls. I knew that gnolls were often used as security. I wondered if they were the transit security forces Madison had been babbling about.

  After that, the stations were much further apart. Ghouls remained on the tracks, always jogging forward. We also started seeing other mobs, but only in ones and twos. They shouldn’t be on this track at all since this line only stopped at transit stations. But nevertheless, they were here, all mobs suffering from the DTs. They came and died so quickly I never got a chance to examine them.

  But some of these single mobs were bigger and armored, and Katia started losing spikes. We passed through a pair of rhino-sized, metal-clad troll creatures, and her spikes were left all broken and bent. The train bucked, and I thought for certain we’d derail. But we remained on the tracks. Katia fixed her spikes the best she could, but she needed the metal to maintain the scoop’s integrity. Thankfully the monsters died instantly upon impact.

  A moment later we hit a small group of ghouls mixed in with some fist-sized fairies who exploded. When we hit the flying creatures, they detonated in a mix of sparkles that covered the front of the scoop with rainbow-colored luminescence.

  Hekla leaned back from the window, rubbing the blood and gore from her face. She suddenly grinned big and said, “There are many wonders in a cow’s head.”

  “Indeed,” Eva said.

  I had no idea what the hell that meant.

  * * *

  For the next hour and a half we zoomed up the tunnel, moving toward station 101. Hekla tried talking to Donut, but I kept myself between them. I tried to strike up a conversation with Eva, but she just grunted at me. I could tell everybody in the room was talking to one another via chat. Just a few minutes before we got there, I received a message from Elle.

  Elle: Hey, good news.

  Donut: HI ELLE. HI IMANI!

  Carl: Oh yeah, what’s that?

  Elle: We now know what happens when too many of the festering ghouls get together.

  Carl: You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?

  Imani: She is. It looks like this type of ghoul’s goal is to get to stop 48. We used that stop 60 to move to your line. It took us a minute to find the right portal, but we found your train sitting there. We ranged downward to the stairwell at 48 and
found it full of the festering ghouls. We watched them transform. These worm things come out of them, and then they pull themselves tightly together, making a giant frankenmonster. It’s too big to leave the room, but it fills it completely. It’s a province boss, Carl. We all got achievements just for discovering it. Thankfully it let us get the hell out of there.

  Elle: It’s really gross, too. It makes a slurping noise when it moves, and it’s covered with mouths that are always screaming.

  Holy shit.

  Carl: That sounds like the shambling berserkers from the last floor. But bigger.

  Donut: THOSE GUYS WERE REALLY SCARY.

  Imani: I didn’t see those, but the monster has completely filled stop 48. And the wrath ghouls are stopping at station 36. Who knows what they’re going to do. All the ghouls coming from the trainyards are that kind now. They’re going to do the same thing. Or worse.

  Carl: Okay, we have jikininki ghouls at stop 12, nothing yet at 24, the wrath ghouls at 36, the province bosses at 48, and these blister ghouls at 72. It sounds like we need to pick one. Assuming whatever ends up happening at 24 is going to be awful, The jikininki and the blisters are probably the easiest to kill, but they both have generators, which means they continuously spawn.

  Elle: Can’t you just pull a Carl and blow the shit out of the room? That was one of Mistress Tiatha’s suggestions.

  Carl: I keep forgetting you guys have a manager, too. I think that’s what they want me to do. The generators are run by soul crystals, and they don’t take too kindly to being blown up. Station 12 still might be our best bet, but we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.

  Elle: Miss T isn’t all that helpful. She spends most of her day drinking and smoking blitz sticks. Then she cries about her space pony or whatever it was when she was in the dungeon. She was really excited to be our manager, but she’s treating it like it’s a spring break. She’ll throw a suggestion out every once in a while, but mostly she steals gold from me to buy more booze.

  Imani: We’re going to post up at 36 and kill the wrath ghouls as they come in. If we kill enough, maybe we can stop them from doing whatever they’re going to do. There are no soul crystals in that room. We could really use some of your boom jugs.

  Carl: That’s a great idea. Once we rescue these folks, we’ll have a lot more people to hold the line. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.

  Elle: Okay. Stay frosty.

  Donut: IS THAT YOUR NEW CATCHPHRASE? I LOVE IT.

  Elle: Yeah, I’m throwing a few out there to see what sticks.

  “Coming up on the main horde,” Eva said. “Look at all of them.”

  “Speed up,” both Hekla and I said at the same time.

  I turned to the healer. “Heal her about five seconds after we hit the crowd. I don’t care what her health is. Just do it. How many times can you cast before you run out of mana?”

  “Five times. But I got mana potions.”

  “What’s your potion cooldown?”

  “Twenty seconds.”

  We rocketed down the tunnel. The line of dots appeared at the edge of my map, closing fast.

  “Okay, good,” I said. “I want you to heal Katia, count to five and heal her again. Keep doing it until we say stop. Keep an eye on her for any other conditions. Do you understand?”

  Silfa looked at Hekla, who nodded.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “We’re just in time,” Eva said. “The horde is going to hit 101 in a few minutes.”

  “How does the track look behind us?” I asked Hekla. I knew since she had the route map, she could see down the entire line.

  She frowned. “Not bad yet. Hopefully it’ll stay clear for our ride home.”

  “Here they come!” Eva called.

  Smack. Smack, smack, smack. We plowed through the first few ghouls. The train shuddered. And then we were in it. The train bucked and lurched. The tight tunnel was actually keeping us on the track, I realized, as ghoul pieces showered into the cab. I went to work killing everything that continued to move. I smashed at a gnashing head with my fist, and it exploded. More came, one of them chomping painfully onto my leg. I pushed it down. My kneepads activated, the spikes killing it.

  The train whined ominously as we plowed through. We noticeably slowed. A few notifications appeared. Donut was screaming and slicing with her claws as more and more living ghoul bits showered into the cab. In moments, we were waist-deep in body parts, more than should be possible, and a lot of it was still alive. Something bit me. Then something else. I had to step back from the window. The pile of gore reminded me of the piles of chum dumped by boats by the docks. It angled down from the window, reaching halfway through the car and growing by the moment. The actual liquid was up to my knees. Holy shit, this was a bad idea. Donut was suddenly on my shoulder. She had a severed hand clutched tight on her tail.

  Katia: Help!

  I looked up to see Katia’s health at about 10% even as my own health started to plummet. Where was the fucking fairy? My damage reflect was doing a good job at hurting the monsters when they attacked, but there were so many. I slammed my Heal scroll, topping off Katia, and then I had to heal myself with a spell.

  I activated Talon Strike and cast Bang Bro and waded back toward the window. I started smashing the heads all around us. It was like trying to fight while buried in oatmeal. The gore continued to shower into the train. Hekla had a physical shield spell around herself. Eva had one of her four hands on the throttle while she sliced down with her sabers. She was up to her chest.

  Body parts just kept coming and coming. The parts were getting bigger and bigger as we slowed, including full, living ghouls who weren’t quite dead. I ducked as a fully intact ghoul flew into the car. The green-skinned monstrosity got up and charged at me. Donut blasted it with a missile.

  The exterior of the train was completely covered with crawling and moaning and scrabbling monsters. The whole, front cab groaned ominously. Katia was spiking them mercilessly, clearing the gore by pulling the bodies into her inventory. But there was just so many, and she wasn’t moving fast enough.

  “Station coming up!” Eva cried. “I’m going to slow down!”

  “Not until Katia is healed again,” I yelled. “Where the fuck is Silfa? Is she down?”

  “She ran,” Donut said, breathless. She’d raised a pair of clockwork ghouls to fight for us, but Hekla killed them both in the confusion. “She ran away into the apartment!”

  Katia: Carl. Where am I? Why isn’t Eva answering me?

  I whirled back to Katia. Fucking hell. How was her health so low?

  We’d almost pushed through the horde, and only a few ghouls remained on the exterior. I dodged and swung, punching over and over, killing monsters while keeping an eye on Katia’s constantly dwindling health. Was she getting shocked again? There was so much gore and bodies out there, surely she was getting blasted. But it was going down even faster than before, and I didn’t feel anything. It was like she’d been hit with a debuff, but it didn’t show on her status. I read another heal scroll, then another. I’d soon be out.

  Donut: CARL! CARL! HEKLA SHOT KATIA WITH AN INVISIBLE ARROW! I SAW IT WITH MY SUNGLASSES! SHE DID IT EARLIER, AND I THOUGHT IT WAS A MISTAKE BUT SHE DID IT AGAIN. IT WAS MIXED IN WITH HER REGULAR ARROWS. IT WENT INTO HER SCOOP. THE ARROWS ARE STILL STUCK IN HER! I THINK SHE DID IT ON PURPOSE!

  Carl: Katia! Disengage! Lose your mass! Now! Now!

  The train continued to slow, the brakes screaming. We were free of the crowd. Eva was also screaming. She’d been injured, blood spewing from one of her four hands. Hekla continued to kill the ghouls in the cab. She’d fallen back from the window, standing, thankfully out of reach. She’d slung her crossbow and had a short, curved blade in each hand and was twirling about, slicing and killing. Her shield was gone, and she now had Enraged flashing over her head. The tall woman screamed as she fought. While this subway car was a little wider than usual, it wasn’t that big, and I had to duck several times to avoi
d her frenzied slashes. I stayed back the best I could.

  The scoop at the front of the train vanished. Blood and guts showered onto the track. A lump of flesh plopped onto the floor of the cab, disappearing into the gore. A moment passed, and Katia reappeared, her health still plummeting. She popped up gasping. She started to collapse again, and I grasped her with my arm, pulling her up. Unconscious reappeared over her.

  “The arrows are still there! They’re sticking out of her shoulder!” Donut cried. “Pull them out!”

  There was no visible wound on Katia’s shoulder. She appeared to be wearing her regular, red leather outfit. I unsummoned my gauntlet and reached over, scrabbling until my hand grabbed onto something invisible.

  “That’s it! Pull it! Pull it!”

  I yanked, and Katia screamed in her sleep. Only then did the hole in her leather appear. Donut healed her. I pulled the invisible bolt into my inventory and grasped until I found the second one. I could feel that the shaft was splintered. I yanked. I quickly examined it.

  Dirty Little Phased Bolt.

  This item is broken. It must be repaired before you may use it.

  This is a Phased item. It is invisible. It will hide its entry point and will only be discovered if it is physically touched.

  The perfect ammunition for the discerning crossbow assassin. This item will cast both Temporary Amnesia and Suffering Bleed onto its victim, draining them of health until they are at 10%. A second bolt will lower the victim’s health to 1%. Victims who subsequently perish will be listed as dying from an alternate source. You will not get credit or experience for the kill. Nor will you get one of those nasty skulls by your name if you happen to kill a fellow Crawler. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

  What the actual fuck? Why was she trying to kill Katia?

  Out on the platform, a mass of crawlers surged toward the now-stopped train. On the periphery of my map, I saw what had to be 500 red dots pushing the mass of blue dots back.

  Hekla finally looked up from the gore. The Enraged buff blinked a few times and disappeared. She had a wild look to her eyes. She focused on the still-unconscious Katia hanging on my arm. She frowned. It was as if she hadn’t even noticed that we’d saved her until that moment. Eva had healed herself, but she had lost a hand. She stared at it stupidly, as if she was surprised it hadn’t grown back.