by DoctorHepa
I stomped down on one last ghoul head.
Everyone just looked at each other, not sure what to do next.
Carl: Donut, be cool. This doesn’t have to turn into a fight. She was trying something, and whatever it was, it didn’t work. We don’t want to fight her.
“You tried to kill Katia you fucking bitch!” Donut cried. She blasted a full-strength Magic Missile right into Hekla’s face.
A note from DoctorHepa
Happy Tuesday everybody! I have no idea if today is really happy or not because I'm scheduling this post well in advance. For all I know, I could be dead right now, but this will post anyway. Hopefully I don't die before the next one.
Schedule for the next two chapters --->
96 Thursday, October 1 @ 6 p.m.ish PST.
97 Friday, October 2 @ 5 p.m.ish PST.
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Chapter 96
A note from DoctorHepa
This chapter *also* ends on a cliffhanger. Next chapter tomorrow at 5 P.M PST.
Hekla flew back, eyes registering shock as she slammed into the sidewall of the car. At the same moment, Eva flew at me—or Donut, who was perched on my shoulder—swords swirling in the air. The back of the cab opened, and two more daughters rushed in, hands glowing. Silfa rushed from the apartment, eyes wide as she took in the scene.
I dropped Katia and dodged back as I re-formed my gauntlet. My feet scrambled through the slippery muck, and my back slammed against the train wall. I caught a vicious slice of the saber with my armored hand. I need more fucking armor. I kicked up into Eva’s stomach, and she rocketed back. I cast Wisp Armor on myself just as a magic missile and an electrical bolt slammed into me, one each from the two newcomers.
“Hold!” Hekla cried, pulling herself to her feet. She’d been fully healed by Silfa. “Everybody hold! Cease!”
I’d dropped Katia, but her health had stabilized. Her head remained above the line of body parts and gore, like she was treading water. She remained unconscious. She’d awaken on her own in thirty seconds. Eva stood and hissed and lunged at me and Donut. Hekla held her back. Then she grabbed Eva’s wrist and pulled it up, eyes going wide at the injury.
“Did I do that?” Hekla asked.
“Yes, you did,” Eva growled. “I have three more hands. That little bitch shot you. Let me kill her.”
“You tried to kill Katia,” Donut yelled. “I saw it! You used invisible arrows! I thought she was your friend! We don’t shoot our friends!”
“Bolts,” Hekla said. “They’re called bolts when they’re from a crossbow, Donut.”
Donut spit and growled. Her claws dug into my shoulder. I was painfully aware of how small this train really was.
“What’re we doing?” I called. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but everyone needs to calm the fuck down. This is bullshit. We’re all on the same goddamn side.”
Hekla turned to the two mages. “Out. You too, Silfa.”
They started to protest. “Out!” she yelled. The three crawlers reluctantly fled. They remained right outside the door. It was me, Donut, Katia, Hekla, and Eva.
Outside, the crawlers continued to swarm onto the train. They didn’t all fit into the passenger cars, so they were moving to the cargo containers. A group of crawlers were at the top of the stairs to the platform, making a stand, protecting everybody else’s escape. We didn’t have much time. An ungodly roar filled the platform. A group of five blue dots at the top of the stairs turned to Xs.
“I made a mistake,” Hekla said once the others were gone. She shrugged, as if it was nothing. “I can’t take it back, but there’s no reason for it to snowball. We need a pause and a reset. We can discuss this after we get out of here. We need to work together.”
“Never!” Donut cried. She was shaking with rage. “I’ll never team up with you! Traitor!”
“Donut,” Hekla said, calm as can be. “We need to be practical. There’s no time for this. You need to breathe.”
But Donut would not stop shaking. “I used to think you were awesome, Hekla. But you’re just like all the rest! You pretend to be good, but you’re not! It was a lie, all a lie. Why? Why can’t we trust anyone? You told Katia you wanted her. You made her feel special and loved, but you just wanted to use her and trade her in.”
Katia finally awakened. She sat up, eyes wide. She took in the room. “Carl? Eva? What’s happening?”
“Hekla tried to murder you, that’s what’s happening!” Donut yelled. “We don’t even know why. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Control your fucking animal, or I will shut her up,” Eva growled.
I put my hand on the side of Donut’s head in an attempt to calm her. It was starting to dawn on me why Donut was having such a visceral reaction to this. The monumental revelation hit me like a goddamned truck, but we didn’t have time to deal with it now. “We need to stay calm, okay?”
“She didn’t do anything wrong, Carl. She did her best. It’s not fair.”
“I know, Donut.”
“Guys, please,” Katia said. She stood on wobbly legs. “What is going on? I can’t remember…” She trailed off. “Everything hurts.”
Hekla sighed and leaned up against the wall of the train. Her knives disappeared into her inventory. She pulled a pack of cigarettes, popped one into her mouth, and lit it. “Well this backfired. God, I need a shower. Anybody want a cigarette?”
At that exact second, that exact moment, I wanted nothing more in the universe than to take her up on that. But Donut remained on my shoulder, and I didn’t dare move closer.
“Look, we’re all adults here,” Hekla said. “We need to get to the other engine. The track is clear. So you three can hang back, if you want. Or just take this engine and go the other way. I don’t care. It’s over. What is the American phrase? No harm, no foul? But you’re right, Carl, we don’t need this. It was a stupid risk.”
“I don’t know what ‘this’ is,” I said. “I thought for sure you were going to try to kill me. But Katia? Why?”
Katia, eyes still huge, was looking back and forth between us. “Eva?” she asked.
“It’s nothing. Go outside, Katia. The others are waiting for you.”
“Don’t do it,” Donut said. “They tried to hurt you, Katia. You can stay with us. We’ll get out of here. Okay? We won’t ever abandon you. And we won’t be filthy liars, either.”
“Can we just take this down a notch,” Katia said. “For god’s sake. I don’t know what’s happening. Why don’t I remember?”
“Because Hekla shot you with a scary arrow that was going to kill you.”
Hekla laughed, and it sounded unhinged. “Bolt, Donut. It was a bolt.”
“No,” Katia said. “You were both shooting. You hit me with a magic missile, Donut. You were aiming at the ghouls. I remember. It was an accident. That’s okay.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Hekla said. She flicked her cigarette away and pushed herself from the wall. “Come on, Eva. We need to hurry.”
“No, wait,” Katia said. “Please. We can’t…”
“Damnit, Katia,” Eva said. “Quit being stupid. Come with us. You’re always fucking like this. Just do what I say.”
“I’m just trying to figure this out. Hekla, you hurt me on purpose? Why? Did I do something?”
Eva growled. “You were always saying you felt useless, Katia. You were being useful. We weren’t really going to kill you. We just wanted Carl’s famous temper to flare. Now shut the hell up and come.”
“I… what?” Katia asked. “You used me? For what?”
“Oh, Katia,” Eva said, voice dripping with mock concern. She impersonated Katia’s voice. “For what? For what?”
“Eva,” Hekla said. “Drop it. Remember your anger. Let’s go. It’s done.”
Eva did not drop it. She continued to mock Katia. “What? Fannar left me for one of his students? What? They’re not going to let me adopt. Why me? Boo hoo. For fuck’s sake,
Katia. Open your goddamn eyes. Quit being so naïve. Look where we are. Look at what we need to do to survive. This is why I left you behind on the third floor. This is why you’re such a damn fuck up. This is why nobody likes you. Because you’re so damn confused all the fucking time. Now for once in your pitiful life do the right thing and get away from those two.”
Katia had a special ability she didn’t like to use very often.
Rush, it was called. It turned her body into a battering ram. When activated, she blasted forward, shattering everything in her path. She could only use it once a day, and when she did use it, it knocked all the wind out of her, even if she didn’t actually hit anything. As a result, I knew she abhorred the skill, despite Mordecai’s insistence that she use it as often as possible.
Also, the skill wasn’t predictable. Sometimes when she used Rush, her body flew forward five feet. Sometimes it flew forward twenty, and there didn’t seem to be any sort of rhyme or reason to the discrepancy.
In addition, the angle in which she rushed forward wasn’t always perfectly straight. Mostly her body dashed straight forward in the direction she was facing, but sometimes, every once in a while, she flew slightly off-center.
And that’s what happened this time. Katia screamed something incomprehensible, and she activated Rush. She was aiming at her former friend Eva. She missed her by inches.
Instead, she inadvertently became the first crawler on this season of Dungeon Crawler World to kill one of the top 10 and claim a bounty.
In this case it was Hekla the Amazonian Shieldmaiden, the current number two in the game, whom she splattered against the interior wall of the train, thus earning herself a bounty of 500,000 gold.
And in that moment, just before all hell broke loose all over again, I finally noticed Katia’s level. She’d been level 24 when she’d formed herself into a cowcatcher at the front of the train. When she fell back from the wall, skull forming over her head—a special, golden skull—I saw that she was now level 37.
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A note from DoctorHepa
Just a head's up, I am going to spam the shit out of this book in the end notes for a couple of chapters, and then I will stop annoying you until book 2 comes out. Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 1 (Floors 1-2) comes out tonight at midnight! Depending on where you live, it might already be out. The paperback version dropped early:
https://mybook.to/dungeoncrawlercarl
Real talk. If you were one of the folks who downloaded an ARC copy a few chapters back, please do me a huge favor and leave an honest review over on Amazon. This year has really sucked ass for someone who makes part of their living traveling to comic cons, and this book--if it does well--will allow me to keep writing this story here much more quickly. And reviews help a lot. They really do.
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Chapter 97
Hekla’s body peeled off the wall and collapsed into a heap.
System Message. A champion has fallen. A bounty has been claimed.
The second door to the train flew open, and the two mages and healer burst in. More of the daughters crowded in behind them, screaming and crying.
“Katia, what did you do? What did you do?” Eva cried.
Carl: Mic Drop. Platform. Get ready. Wait for my signal. Katia, grab her crossbow!
Donut: WON’T WORK. TRAIN WALL IN THE WAY. WE NEED TO GET OUTSIDE FIRST!
A magic missile blasted me in the chest, and I fell back against the open window. I almost tumbled outside. It felt as if I’d been hit with a sledgehammer. My Wisp Armor spell was still active. Still, the spell had taken almost a quarter of my health away.
At the same moment, Eva lunged at Katia, swords flashing. Hekla reached up and caught one saber in her hand. The sword sunk into the soft flesh, splitting her palm in two. The other sword bounced off the Amazonian’s breastplate as she pulled herself to her feet, ghoul gore showering off her. Eva was so shocked that she recoiled back in surprise, dropping that first sword, which splashed onto the train’s floor. A second Hekla appeared and picked up the cowering snake woman by the neck and tossed her through the window just as a third Hekla rose to her feet. Eva cried out as she disappeared. I heard her crash onto the track below.
The other daughters scattered back, confused and crying out.
“Holy shit, Donut,” I said, scrambling forward. She’d cast Second Chance on Hekla’s corpse, and then she’d cast Clockwork Triplicate on the minion, creating three Heklas. It was brilliant. It was fucked up, but it was brilliant.
“Don’t, don’t hurt them,” Katia cried, finally recovering. “Not the other daughters. They don’t know what’s going on.”
“Push them back,” Donut yelled at the three Heklas. The daughters started to recover from their shock, howling in outrage at Donut’s desecration of Hekla’s corpse.
“Clockworks first!” I yelled at Donut. “Keep the real Hekla back. We need to loot her damn corpse!”
One of the clockwork Hekla’s heads exploded. Sparks and little electronic pieces showered as it was hit with a second electrical bolt, cast by one of the daughters. The other two Heklas continued to push the others back and out the door into the gangway and then to the next car. In addition to the remaining daughters, at least a hundred other crawlers filled the car, which was packed to the brim. They yelled as one, confused and afraid at the sight of one of the dungeon’s most famous crawlers lurching toward them. I chased after the minion. I tried to pull the crossbow off Hekla’s back, but it wouldn’t come. As I pulled, I looked down and saw the square access panel in the gangway’s floor.
“Katia, we need to get the Vermillion key from Hekla’s corpse. It has to be you since you killed her. Get the key first. And then everything else you can grab. Hurry.”
“Why?” Donut asked. She shot a magic missile past undead Hekla’s legs. One of the daughters fell back, crying, grasping her knee. “Why do we need the key?”
Katia, to her credit, recovered quickly. She rushed forward. “Where’s Eva?” she cried as she reached for the undead Hekla.
We’d placed blocks so the doors to the two engine cars could close, but not lock. That way we didn’t need the keys, but if I wanted to disengage this car, I still needed it. My first instinct was to take this engine and get the fuck out of here. Hopefully somebody else would have presence of mind to get to that other engine and pull it out of the station.
A part of me screamed, this is a douche move. You’re abandoning 1,000 people. They needed to know how to disengage the slave mode to pull the train. Surely someone would figure it out. It was just one button. Still, I thought. What if they didn’t?
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“It doesn’t let me loot from her while she’s a minion,” Katia shouted.
The second clockwork Hekla exploded after it was speared in the chest. Donut leaped to my shoulder.
Out on the platform, the last of the crawlers retreated into the train. A trio of monstrosities leaped down the stairs. Holy shit, what were those things? They had blinking, red exclamation marks over their heads. Those are stage three monsters. We needed to go.
“Katia, the very moment that minion dies, get the key. Then get her crossbow. Then loot the shit out of everything you can.”
One of the monsters jumped at the train, bouncing off the wall of the passenger car. It looked like it’d once been a skull-faced, bear-sized monster. The DTs had transformed it. Tentacles erupted from its back, reminding me of the mold lions from Grimaldi’s circus. But those tentacles had been thinner, parasitic. This was different. The tentacles were a part of the creature. Very… Krakaren-like.
Fuck. We don’t have time for this.
The original plan was to disengage the drive on this first engine car, walk all the way to the back of the train and re-engage that second engine, turning it into the primary one. In theory, however, with that second engine still in slave mode, we didn’t need to do that. The train would work fine from this cab no matter which direction we went, though we’d be drivin
g blind.
I didn’t have a choice, not with a thousand people suddenly on the train and in imminent danger. We needed to stay here and drive the train backwards. That’d be difficult if we were dead.
“We need to close the door!” I cried.
At that moment, the Hekla minion collapsed, having been hit with a spell. She tumbled in the gangway, blocking the door. Donut fired another missile at a woman, who rocketed back, health halfway down.
I jumped forward and grabbed the Hekla corpse by the legs and pulled it back into the cab. “Close the door! Close the door!” Katia grabbed the sliding door, kicked away the block, and slid it closed, locking it, just as it rocked with a pair of spells. I knew from experience nobody would get in without a key, not in an engine car. Hopefully none of the other daughters actually had keys.
I looked down with horror to realize Hekla’s body had been ripped in half. All we’d dragged into the car was her legs and half of her torso. Her glowing breastplate, and more importantly, the crossbow that’d been slung over her back, was on the other side of the wall.
The train rocked again as one of the monsters slammed against it. The creatures’ tentacles grasped at the doors to the passenger cars. I jumped up and to the controls. I pushed the train into reverse mode, and I added power to the throttle. The train vibrated ominously, and I feared it wouldn’t go, or the back cars would smash together like they had during that last crash, but the train started to move. Slowly at first, but then it gathered speed. We left the station, moving back down the track. Behind me, the door banged and crashed as the daughters desperately tried to break it down.