It was time to jet. Both Rory and Lorelai had disappeared while the goblin engineers worked. They reappeared now. Both of them were blitzed. Rory’s eyes were noticeably slitted, and Lorelai danced seductively toward me as we prepared to leave.
“Wanna have some fun before you go?” Lorelai asked, grasping the front of my tattered jacket. Her breath smelled of rotten fish. She’d removed her bone necklace.
“Uh,” I said.
“Oh, sweetie,” said Donut, “as amusing as I would find it to watch Carl here disappoint yet another woman, we’re on a schedule. Banging monster girls is not the narrative we’re going for with this story. Maybe next time.”
“Sure, but you look me up later, okay?” the goblin said. She reached up and booped me on the nose. “It’d be nice to fuck someone and not have to eat them afterward.” She sighed and turned toward one of the Bomb Bards.
“You,” she said. “Meet me in my chambers after lights out. And take a bath first.”
Rory handed me a bag. I examined it, and it was filled to the brim with dynamite and several types of small bombs and grenades. Remembering how dangerous this stuff was, I quickly added it to my inventory. I’d examine the items from there.
Rory turned to Donut. “Okay, we had a deal. Where’d you find the stuff?”
“The drugs?” Donut asked. “It’s just one neighborhood over, on the other side of the road. We got it from one of those llamas.”
“I knew it!” she said. She turned toward another Bomb Bard. “Gear up. They’ve been holding out on us. We’re rolling on them in five.”
I stood, bewildered as all around me, the goblins—from the level two standard goblins to the engineers to the bomb bards—burst into a screeching frenzy of activity. The murder dozers growled like dinosaurs as goblins piled on. Four copper choppers similar to my own roared to life. The bomb bards all donned metal helmets with a German-style spike at the tip. The tips glistened, shooting sparks. The goblins could light their dynamite sticks and bombs just by raising them over their own heads.
One by one, the choppers and dozer transports rumbled away, filled with screaming goblins. A minute later, and we were alone in the room.
“Did that just happen?” I asked, spinning to see if we truly were alone. We were. “Did we really just start a meth war between the goblins and the llamas?”
“Yes, we did,” Donut said. “Just like I planned. It went pretty well, don’t you think?” She indicated the door at the far side of the room. “So, you want to go in there and kill their chieftain? I could really use another boss box.”
I examined the large room we were in. The goblins had abandoned a ton of stuff. Just like that. I didn’t see any weapons or armor. But there were piles of engineering supplies. Wires, cogs, dynamite, gunpowder—or as they called it, “funpowder.” Barrels of it. I eyed a simple cart used to transport the barrels from one area to the next.
“We need to loot everything we can,” I said, looking around. “Everything.”
“And then we kill the chieftain, right?”
I looked at the door. The last time we’d fought a boss, I’d had to pummel a scared woman to death. I could still feel her face crunching under my fists. We had no idea what was behind that door, but the support creatures of this area were significantly stronger than the ones guarding the last boss room. It’d be dumb to go in there. Really, really dumb.
Besides, it’d be the ultimate dick move after they’d helped us.
“Yeah, and then we kill the chieftain,” I said.
Donut hopped up and down, her tail swishing. “This is going to make exquisite television.”
17
My inventory had about 10 new tabs by the time we were done clearing out the goblin workshop. I took another five piles of coal. We looted tons of tools from shovels to wrenches to hammers. Most of them were much too small to use as weapons, but I would examine them all later to make sure. We had engineering supplies, coils and coils of wick, multiple types of explosives, about fifty gallons of various alchemical liquids, and a pile of those black discs they used for chopper tires. I even took all the tables I could lift. By the time we were done, all that was left were some of the bigger tables, the giant steam engine, a greatly-reduced pile of coal, and a set of barrels with XXX on them, all placed neatly on the cart and tied down with a length of rope.
I’d managed to take almost a ton of the black powder, but it required me using the discarded leather sacks they had lying around. This stuff was distinctly the old-school, coarse black powder, not the more refined smokeless powder used in modern firearms. I wasn’t quite strong enough to lift the barrels until they were less than half full. But when they did get that empty, I didn’t put them in my inventory. Instead, I lifted the barrels and placed them on the cart.
We placed the cart in front of the door to the boss room. On top of the powder, I placed shovelfuls of nuts and bolts and other metal odds and ends. Then I placed the tops back on the barrels before an errant spark from the still-humming steam engine blew us all to hell.
Donut “directed” the action from the seat of her sidecar. I would put the chopper into my inventory before we proceeded.
“Do you think Rory and Lorelai will be mad at me?” Donut asked as we prepared the trigger. Unlike last time, I wasn’t going to use plain goblin dynamite, which was inherently unstable. I found a blob of a C4-like explosive called “Hobgoblin Pus” that was detonated with an actual trigger. There was only a small amount of the material, but the description said it caused a big explosion. I had the sense that it was valuable, probably the real prize of this room. I was going to use it all. Next to the hobgoblin pus was a set of magical triggers. There were only three of the mechanisms, and I had to waste one in order to test it, to see how they worked.
The triggers were both genius and foolproof. You broke the tip off of the mechanism, which looked like a stick of underarm deodorant. You stuck the broken-off part into the explosive, and you pressed the button to set it off. Easy. The detonators were single use, but you could break off up to 10 pieces for each stick, so you could simultaneously blow 10 different bombs. It had a five-second countdown after you pressed the button. The description said the trigger had a range of about ten kilometers.
“Will they be mad? Probably,” I said. “But Rory doesn’t seem to like this boss guy too much, so who knows? I hope we never find out.”
“Do you think this is enough?” Donut asked, looking over the four barrels. “I feel as if it’s not enough.”
I shrugged. “Black powder isn’t really meant for blowing stuff up. But it’s good at throwing metal. If he’s in there and out in the open, we’ll turn this guy into a pincushion for sure. But I doubt the explosion itself is going to be bigger than when that murder dozer blew up. Either way, if this doesn’t kill him, more probably wouldn’t either.”
The plan was a more refined version of what we had done with the Hoarder. From what I could see, the room that this war chieftain occupied was identical in size and shape to the one from the last boss battle. This was still the first floor, after all, so I doubted the guy was that powerful. We were going to open the door, push the cart in, close the door, run until we had several walls between us, and hit the trigger. If we killed the boss, we’d get a notification and a star by our names. If we didn’t, we’d keep running. We’d pull out the chopper and put some distance between us and the whole neighborhood and forget this ever happened.
I’d put a hunk of the hobgoblin pus in each barrel, and I added the last of it to the top of the first barrel. I placed the detonator into the pus, sticking half out of it. I tried to make it look obvious, but not overly obvious. If the goblin chieftain had time to react, he’d hopefully spend his last moments digging the detonator out of this chunk of explosive, not realizing we had four more ready to go buried in each of the barrels.
It was a chickenshit way to do it, but I didn’t care. Not when one got locked in the room with the boss otherwise.
&n
bsp; “You ready, Princess?” I asked.
I stood directly behind the cart, poised to shove. I’d pulled it back a good ten feet, just enough to give me momentum. Donut would open the door using her menu, eyeball the room to make sure the path was clear, tell me to go, then slam the door after I heaved. Hopefully the floor would be flat enough for the cart to travel a good distance.
“Ready,” she said. “I’m opening the door now.”
From my vantage, I couldn’t see into the room, but I heard the heavy creak of the door yawning open.
“Do it!” Donut cried.
I kicked my legs, and I crashed into the cart like it was a football sled. I’d greased the wheels, and the heavy cart moved quickly and easily. I shoved with all my might and watched the cart rocket into the room as the large door slammed.
Donut had already turned and was bolting for the exit on the opposite side of the room.
I scrambled up and followed. We’d practiced this part. We turned three times, making sure we were out of any line of direct blast. I didn’t want to wait too long, but we had to put a few large rooms between us in case there was a shockwave that needed to be disbursed. We stopped at the prearranged spot, and I leaned against the wall, my heart thrashing. I pulled the detonator trigger from my inventory.
“Did you see him? Was there a giant goblin in there?” I asked.
Donut heaved for breath. “Yes. A huge. Ugly. Goblin. My word. I do not like running. He was sitting down, reading a book. Blow it, blow it good.”
I jammed the button.
“There sure were a lot of babies in there, too,” Donut said in that last moment before the blast.
18
“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said.
We’d both been knocked over, but unhurt, by the shockwave. It’d been big, bigger than I’d expected. Dust cascaded from the ceiling. A terrible hissing noise followed the explosion. I suspected it was from the boiler of the giant engine. The whistling noise eased over the next several minutes. Occasional, smaller blasts went off. But eventually even those stopped. An entire wall of notifications appeared, most of them achievements. But we had, indeed, killed the neighborhood boss. There was no fanfare this time, but another bronze star appeared by both of our names.
“Were there really babies in there? Like goblin babies?” I asked.
“Oh yes, there were a bunch of them. I only saw them for but a moment, but they were quite cute. Some of them were wearing little oversized jackets, like Baby Yoda. Adorable. I think you hit one with the cart. There were old ones and pregnant ones, too. Did you see your level? We’re both level eight now. You’re welcome.” Donut looked up into the air. “We didn’t get to see our faces all big. I suppose they don’t do the boss battle graphic thing if you’re not locked in the room with them. That’s too bad. It’s quite entertaining.”
“Goddamnit,” I said again. I was all about killing as many goblins and monsters as I could, but killing babies? That was pretty fucked up, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Actually, I knew exactly how I felt about it. It made me feel like an asshole. I didn’t like feeling like an asshole. I stared at that blinking box of achievement notifications. I sighed. I didn’t even want to click on the box.
“What?” Donut said, looking up with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. “It’s not like they didn’t have it coming. You didn’t ask to be here. They’re goblins! What kind of vile monster sticks babies in the boss room anyway?”
I shook my head. “We need to get back over there, grab the neighborhood map, and get our asses out of Dodge before the others return. They’re probably on their way now. There’s no way they didn’t hear that. We’ll go north, heading into the next neighborhood over.”
The workshop had been completely obliterated. All that was left was blackened rubble. The lights on the walls were all out, but the entire north side of the room was a fifteen-foot wall of fire. The smoke billowed. I absently noted that the smoke was being sucked away into the ceiling. The dungeon masters were cheating, offering some sort of ventilation system. Otherwise this entire area would’ve been filled with black smoke by now. We could only take a couple steps into the room before it got too hot. I looked about. The large tables were just gone. Large chunks of stone had fallen from the ceiling. Donut jumped on my shoulder as I examined the room.
The boiler on the enormous steam engine looked like a baked potato that been peeled open with a bunch of copper sticks coming out of it, like tentacles. A steady cloud of angry steam still hissed from the interior of the wreckage, mixing with the black smoke. The room was ankle-deep in water, and the water sizzled and steamed as it came into the contact with the burning wall.
“We probably should have taken all of the coal from that pile, not just half of it,” Donut said. “We’re not getting to that dead boss now.”
She was right. The coal had ignited, and now our only way into the boss chamber was blocked off.
I was relieved. I wanted that map, but not as much as I didn’t want to go in there. I didn’t want to see the dead babies and other goblins. I felt sick thinking about it.
I noticed the line of white dots on the edge of my minimap headed in our direction. The dots wouldn’t be white for long. Donut’s charisma had ticked up to 39 once she hit level eight, but I doubted even that would be enough to save us once they saw what we’d done.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. I plotted out a quick escape, leading us into unknown territory. We’d have to fight through a quadrant we hadn’t explored yet before we could get to another artery. Hopefully it wasn’t filled with slimes or some other mob I couldn’t handle. Maybe there’d be a safe room to rest in, to sit back and figure out all of these new achievements. From there we’d take the chopper and try to find a set of stairs.
“I must admit,” Donut said as we jogged away. “I do like it when you blow stuff up. I like it a lot.”
19
Time to Level Collapse: Two days and 18 hours.
New achievement! You Monster!
You have killed an infant! An infant!
Okay, okay. Unless you’re a complete psychopath, we know you probably didn’t wake up this morning and tell yourself, “Today is the day I’m going to slaughter a child.” Well let us put your mind at ease. All children mobs who die within this dungeon don’t actually perish. They’re transferred to a holding area where they’re safe and treated nicely and gently until they can be reunited with their loving parents at the end of the season.
Feel better? Good.
Reward: These past twenty seconds, when your conscience started to ease? That was your reward. It was also a lie. That baby is dead, and it’s dead because of you. You’re totally going to hell.
You’ve also received a Bronze Asshole’s Box.
New achievement! War Criminal.
You have killed more than 20 non-combatants in a single attack!
Question: What’s the only thing standing between an innocent child and a happy, fulfilling life?
Answer: You. The answer is you.
Reward: You’ve received a Gold Asshole’s Box!
We’d found a safe room halfway through the neighborhood of the rot stickers. The monsters were small and round. They looked like little, black-hued raviolis that ran on the walls and ceilings and suicide bombed themselves against you. All the ones we’d seen so far were only level one and two, but if they managed to stick themselves to your body, they’d explode. Each blast felt like getting hit with a sledgehammer.
The attacks also inflicted Take Down, an effect that was supposed to knock you on your ass. Once you hit the ground, I guessed, they’d swarm at your head and take you out. The little monsters were everywhere. Thankfully my troll skin shirt negated the Take Down effect.
Donut remained on my shoulder, shooting missiles at the creatures. A single blast took out several at a time. So far none had managed to get to her. She was quick that way. Despite all that happened, she was still a cat, able to jump ou
t of the way at the last second. But just in case, I made her drink one of my Iron Skin potions, which upped her natural armor for several minutes. I drank one as well.
The rot stickers usually focused on me anyway, the bigger and slower target. One landed directly on my inner thigh and detonated before I could get it, the effect equivalent to being kicked in the nads by a horse. I did fall down that time. If I hadn’t quaffed the potion, my leg and balls might’ve been blown clear off. I was only saved because of a well-timed missile blast from Donut.
Thankfully the raviolis made a loud, chittering noise when they approached, and it took them about three seconds to detonate once they attached to your body. Once we figured out how they worked, it was easy to smash and crush them before they did too much damage. As long as we didn’t get surrounded by a giant group of them, we’d probably be okay.
This safe room was nothing like the last one we’d entered. This was more like a small waiting area at a dingy bus station or maybe a DMV somewhere. We still had the three screens and the larger bathrooms with showers. Plus a water fountain. A set of five cots with curtains around them lined one long wall. Two empty, curtained areas appeared at the end of the row, and I wondered on that. Had they run out of cots? Or were they privacy areas for those who didn’t want a cot? There was no attendant, so I couldn’t ask.
My eyes immediately moved to the number flashing on the first screen.
3,594,517.
It had slowed its mad descent toward human extinction, but it hadn’t stopped. It made a low, barely audible noise every time it went down. Clink. Clink. Clink, clink, clink, like water fast-dripping from a faucet.
I wondered how many of my fellow people had found a place like this and had given up. They were just hunkering down, eating, sleeping, waiting for it all to end. I shuddered.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Page 13