“It’s not a pyramid, though. It says so right here.”
“Come on,” I said. “These things are hostile toward us, so it wouldn’t work anyway. I think these pamphlets are for other mobs on this floor, not crawlers. Besides, we can just kill them and take it all for ourselves.”
Donut put the pamphlet away. “Yeah, that does seem easier. We won’t have to pay our upline or make the initial seed investment when we do it that way.”
As we finished our circle of the outer ring of the quadrant, I was forced to kill one of the clurichauns with a punch to the head. Donut missed a shot, and the little monster came running right at me, impossibly fast. It didn’t bother with its slingshot, opting to grapple. It gurgled, sounding pug-like, clawing at me with little, pocked hands. I formed a fist, but it happened too fast. My gauntlet took two seconds to form, which was a long time when one was having to react. My first, bare-knuckle hit stunned it. I hit it a second time, this time with the gauntlet, and the monster went flying, his head caved in. When I opened my hand, my fingers were covered with a lime green, oily residue.
Warning: You’ve been infected with the Taint.
“Fuck.”
A blinking, five-minute timer appeared. In a panic, I pulled up my health screen to see what that was.
The Taint.
Having the Taint is like having the giggles. Or like having the time of your life. But instead of it being a good thing, you are balancing on the precipice of death. You may not heal your health using any method while you are inflicted with the Taint.
Receiving the debuff scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I could deal with poison and several other attacks thanks to my armor, but we had no protection against this type of assault. Our heal spells, potions, and scrolls didn’t help. We needed something to ward off stuff like this. In those five seconds before I could read the description, I was genuinely scared I had received something that was going to kill me.
On its own, the debuff wasn’t a big deal. I simply had to wait it out. I suspected it was part of a one/two punch. They first inflicted you with the taint, then they hit you with something else that seeped your health away. If that was the case, it didn’t matter if these guys were only level three. They were dangerous.
“We’re not fucking around with these guys anymore,” I said. “Let me think a minute.”
We’d collected 25 jugs of the moonshine. Donut gave me one, and I examined the large, clay container.
Rev-Up Toilet-Grade Moonshine
Type: Accelerant.
Effect: Highly flammable liquid. Explosive fumes.
Status: Will not activate until introduced to flame.
At 180 proof, this moonshine will take the hair off your chest and then put it back on. The Rev-Up version is distilled using two types of sugars: the slime trails left behind by the passage of the Brindle Grub, and a secretive, proprietary source. Created exclusively on the dungeon’s second floor by the Rev-Up company, jugs of this concoction are highly sought after by the drinking establishments that populate the third, sixth, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, and eighteenth floors. Drinking a swig (defined as 1.5 ounces) of this “potion” will immediately cause you to gain the Shit-Faced debuff, has a 50% chance to render you Blind for a period of 30 hours, a 5% chance to immediately kill you, and a 45% chance to permanently raise a random stat by two points.
“It does say they’re valuable,” Donut said. “Do you think we can really sell them if we don’t become consultants?”
“That’s what it sounds like,” I said. “Other than that tiara of yours, this is the first time we’ve really seen anything that clues us in about the deeper floors.”
Donut indicated the tattoo of the dagger on my neck. “The Desperado Club,” she said. “Maybe it’ll be on the next floor. I bet they’ll buy them all from us because we’re members of the club! We’ll be rich!”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see if we have any jugs left when we’re done.”
“What do you mean?” Donut asked. “What are we doing with them?”
I grinned. “I don’t suppose you have any extra torches?”
* * *
Carl’s Jug O’ Boom
Type: Incendiary Tossable
Effect: When lit and tossed, results in a small explosion, followed by burning splash damage over a wide area. Flames will burn for 15 seconds per level of attacker’s level of Incendiary Device Handling.
Status: Inert until torch is activated.
Created by an unstable, pantsless man who talks to a cat, Carl’s Jug O’ Boom takes the bigger-is-better approach when it comes to hobgoblin fire bottles. Burns hotter, bigger, and faster than your normal Molotov Cocktail. The use of a standard torch instead of a cloth wick makes these devices much more stable. Just don’t drop it once it’s lit, lest you find yourself doing a Joan of Arc impersonation.
I received a host of achievements after I finished the bottle. I read the description again and sighed.
“Carl, look, they named it after you!”
“Yeah, Donut. I see that,” I said.
“Do you think everybody will see it like that?”
“I don’t know. I hope not,” I said.
My Incendiary Device Handling skill had jumped up to five immediately upon the construction of the “device.” All I had done was open up the jug, pour a splash or two out until it was about 3/4's full, added a couple ounces of goblin oil from my inventory, and then stuck a torch in the hole. The short, tapered torch fit perfectly into the mouth of the jug, sealing it like a cork. It was almost like it had been made for it.
We tested one just to see if it would actually work. The clay moonshine jugs seemed pretty solid, and I was afraid they wouldn’t break. The bottles had “Rev-Up” written on the side of them.
The cool thing about torches was that I could just look at them and mentally select Activate, and they would start burning. No lighter required.
I lit the torch, grasped the jug by the little round handle, and tossed it high in the air, arcing it toward a group of three, dead clurichauns.
Whoosh! The jug shattered easily. The explosion itself was insignificant, but the angry flames splashed like water over a wide area, crackling and hissing angrily, glowing blue. We had to step back.
“Wow!” Donut cried, hopping up and down. “Would you look at that!”
The flames reached the ceiling, and we had to step further out of the room due to the heat. When it finally died out a minute and fifteen seconds later, all that remained in the room was blackened, crumbly husks of bodies and ash.
“Well, that’s pretty damn cool,” I said.
We sat down and made ten more of the devices. After the fire, the room smelled oddly of whiskey and toast. Most of the jugs were already about 3/4's full, which was good. I didn’t have to waste any of the moonshine.
Out of curiosity, I examined the jugs in my inventory and compared their value to my other explosive devices. The jugs were pretty high on the list, just above the smoke bombs.
The full, unaltered jugs of moonshine were more valuable, however. In fact, they were near the top of my list, just above the Engineer’s Table I still had, the only intact table I had left after our construction of the redoubt.
These things were much less dangerous—to me at least—than the sticks of goblin dynamite. But they were a little too good. We lost the ability to loot the corpses when they burned away, meaning we lost our ability to get more jugs. We moved toward the staircase. We decided to incinerate every other room, which would keep our jug supply stable. We continued our pattern of Donut raising the dead and me practicing with the slingshot which slowed our progress but gave us some much-needed training. My slingshot skill remained constant. However, I received a few other skills, including Aiming and Steady Hand. Donut’s skill in Second Chance ticked up to level four.
We finally came across a new type of mob just outside of the boss room, which was thankfully separate from the stairwell. This room was big, and
like the goblin workshop, filled with dozens of the little assholes. There wasn’t any sort of giant machinery, but a tube ran along the ceiling from the far boss chamber to the center of the room, curving down into what looked like a filthy, aluminum bathtub. There were piles of the bottles, both empty and full in the room. The snot-covered level threes were taking the jugs and tipping them into the tub to fill them up. At the far end of the room was a doorway guarded by a pair of small, floating creatures. These weren’t clurichauns, but small, fat fairies who buzzed about with a pair of hummingbird wings. They looked like miniature, winged soccer moms. I peered around the corner and examined their properties.
Laminak Rev-Up Consultant Elite – Level 6
The second tier of the Rev-Up empire, these Laminak consultants don’t need to speak to a manager. They are the managers. They run their business with a brutal efficiency. It is said if one of their underlings falls behind on their sales quotas, they punish them by requiring them to take a sip of their own product. Those that survive are repurposed as workers for the filling room, or worse, as still engineers, working directly under Krakaren herself.
These mobs do not have any special abilities other than immunity to most health-seeping attacks. Having survived years drinking their own product, it is said their essence is especially valuable, prized as a shield against disease.
In a dusty corner of the room stood what appeared to be a pair of child-sized stationary bikes, the kind gyms used for their spinning classes. There was some sort of goblin-style pulley system attached to it, but I couldn’t tell what was going on from here. A banner hung from the ceiling in the same corner, but it was only attached by one end, and it dangled vertically, forgotten. The banner read, “Rev-Up Smoothies! Invigorating!”
“Okay,” I said. “We need to kill everyone in the room, but if we want to keep those jugs and that moonshine, we can’t blow them up or burn them out. Plus it sounds like we can get something good from the corpses of the laminak things.”
“Goodness me,” Donut said. “How can we do that?”
We peeked again around the corner, keeping low.
“Do you think you can jump over there?” I asked, pointing at the far wall with the two fairies. “Using your spell, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. Definitely.”
I nodded. “Good. Here’s the plan.”
33
The two biggest problems with Donut’s Puddle Jumper spell was the cooldown and the mana cost. Once cast, she couldn’t do it again for five hours, which meant once she was in that room, she couldn’t teleport out.
Secondly, it cost 20 mana points. She only had 26 mana, and while she had plenty of mana restoration potions, she still had that awful two-minute cooldown between potions. Her points were restoring themselves more and more quickly, but it was still too slow to count on it for combat. She was going to be woefully underpowered, so if something went wrong—and something always went wrong—the only thing she had going for herself was her speed.
We decided I would stay behind during this part of the assault. With my extra fairy aggro, we weren’t certain what would happen if we both showed ourselves. The plan was simple, but it made me nervous, mostly because I didn’t have any control. This was my idea, but the cat was doing all the heavy lifting.
“If you get in trouble, I’ll toss a smoke bomb,” I said. “Just jump and run, okay?”
Donut nodded. She was putting on a brave face, but I could tell she was also anxious.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she said.
We moved back to the corner, peering around the edge. Donut cast her spell, which had a ten-second countdown. She flashed, her form starting to fade until she disappeared with a loud, wet pop.
She reappeared at the far end of the room, right between the two laminak fairies. She started rapidly speaking with them as all the clurichauns in the room jumped to their feet and turned to attack.
The soccer mom fairies were winged, therefore Donut had the ability to turn their dots white, removing their hostility. The problem was that only two of them were the airborne-type fairies. The other 40 or so were not. We were hoping Donut could talk to the two fairies, using her charm like she did with the goblins. The fairies would then tell their subordinates not to attack Donut.
From my side of the room, I could see that the two fairies had, thankfully, fallen under Donut’s charm. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but like the goblins, they’d been turned right away.
One of the fairies yelled at the clurichauns, speaking in Syndicate Standard. “Get back to work!” she called. “This is a client, not an enemy.” The dozens of monsters looked at each other and reluctantly returned to their stations, but all of them kept their eyes on Donut, all grumbling and looking uneasy.
Donut: CARL THEIR DOTS AREN’T TURNING WHITE ONLY THE TWO FAIRIES.
Carl: Okay, we planned for this. Don’t wait. Go for plan B.
Donut: IT IS CALLED PLAN PIED PIPER NOT PLAN B.
Carl: Goddamnit, Donut. Just be careful.
Despite her charisma being an outstanding 43, we still didn’t know how well this whole charm thing worked. It was clear she wasn’t some sort of walking mind control goddess, at least not with monsters that were programmed to dislike her. As with everything else, there was more to it, a hidden balance I couldn’t see. It worked great with white dots, but getting the dots white was still a mystery.
But that was okay. We’d prepared for this contingency. Instead of talking them into giving us all the moonshine, we had plan B. Plan Pied Piper.
Donut confidently stepped into the room, walking in my direction. She kept a wide distance from the toxic clurichauns, but she headed toward me. The two fairies followed. Sparkles trailed in the air as they bobbed up and down.
“It’s just horrible,” Donut was saying. “It’s like someone came in and slaughtered them all. I, for one, was devastated. At first I thought it was one of those filthy crawlers, but then I saw one of those dogs with the painted faces. The dingoes.”
“The kobolds?” one of the fairies said, sounding perplexed. “Why would the kobolds attack us? We get along fine with the kobolds.”
“Come, come see,” Donut said. She looked about the room. “All of you should come.”
“They need to stay and work,” the fairy said. The pudgy fairy swept her hair out of her eyes. Both of them wore an inverted bob haircut. The one doing the speaking wore what looked like a pantsuit made out of leaves. The other was in a dress made of the same materials.
Donut stopped and looked directly at the fairy. “No, they should come, too. All of them.”
“Everybody come on! We’re taking a break!” the fairy said.
“A… a what?” one of the clurichauns asked.
“Just come, the princess wants to show us something.”
I pulled away from the corner and rushed down to the next chamber. In the center were three dead clurichauns. We hadn’t firebombed this room, though one of them had been zombiefied. I moved into the next hall down, just outside of the room. Like with most of these rooms, the entranceway was a small room of its own, like a foyer with a raised, rounded ceiling. A pair of brindle grubs were in the hall further down, inching their way toward the corpses. Jesus, I thought. These things were everywhere. I rushed over and stomped them both down and returned to the foyer. I waited for Donut to Pied Piper the group into the chamber.
Carl: Donut, I am in place.
Donut: WE ARE COMING.
“Look at this, just look,” Donut was saying a minute later as she strode into the room. She gave the dead monsters a wide berth, walking into the chamber. “Come, everybody, gather around. Take a look.”
I could hear them crowding into the room as I leaned against the wall, hidden behind the entrance to the next hallway down. I pulled two boom jugs from my inventory and held one in each hand.
“This was not a dingo attack,” one of the fairies was saying. “One of them has been hit with necromancy magic.”
“Okay,” the fairy said. She started shouting orders at the crowd of grumbling clurichauns.
A moment later Donut and the two fairies floated into the dark foyer, moving past me. Donut stopped just as the two fairies noticed me standing there.
“What’s this?” the pantsuit fairy said, floating away with surprise. She was smaller than I realized, no bigger than a crow. The laminak looked just like a miniature, 40-something woman. She carried no weapons.
“Carl, I’d like you to meet Caroline and Max. It’s okay, ladies. Carl needs to show you something.”
They were looking down at the pair of jugs in my hands.
“Where did you get this?” the other fairy asked. “And what did you do to our product?”
I grinned. “Let me show you.” I mentally clicked Activate on both the torches, stepped to the side to the room’s entrance, and I tossed both jugs in at the group of 40 monsters stupidly staring back at us.
The hands of the pantsuit fairy started glowing red just as Donut leaped into the air and snagged the laminak like she was catching a bird. The cat’s crupper jingled and poofed out like a skirt as she fell. Donut clasped the fairy between two claws as she chomped down. She shook her head, breaking the fairy’s neck.
The second fairy zipped up to the ceiling of the entrance hall, lightning fast, out of reach, screaming as I swiped at her, trying to catch her in the air. Damnit. I wanted to kill them without hurting their fragile little bodies.
“Not fair,” the fairy screamed. The air crackled with her passage. She sounded desperate, on the verge of tears. “Not fair! We were going to move down to the third floor.” Her hands also glowed red, and she fired a magic missile right at me.
It hit me square in the chest, and I flew backward, slamming onto my back, sliding a few feet into the room with the raging inferno. A note flashed. Warning: Damage Enhanced. It felt as if I’d been kicked by a damn horse. My vision flashed red, this time a health warning. I felt broken bones in my chest just as the searing heat threatened to catch my hair on fire. I clicked a healing potion as I scrambled to my feet. My chest crackled as it mended itself. I pulled myself back into the hall, out of the raging heat, the breath still knocked out of me.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Page 26