Dungeon Crawler Carl

by Matt Dinniman

  The plan, plan B at least, had gone off without a hitch until now. The fairy remained up on the ceiling, screaming down at Donut, shooting magic missiles down at the cat, who was doing a much better job at dodging them.

  After a moment, the fairy seemed to run out of mana. She continued to scream down at us. She was trapped as long as Donut and I each guarded one of the doors to the foyer.

  “You can jump that high, can’t you?” I muttered.

  “Probably,” Donut said, out of breath. “Or I can hit her with Magic Missile. I have much better aim than she does. I can hit her with a three power, and it probably won’t hurt her body too much. She’s level six, after all.”

  “Missile her if she runs,” I said, pulling the slingshot out of my inventory.

  It took ten shots before I hit her. The rock caught her in the wing, and she dropped a few feet before recovering. Her health barely went down. She was a quick little fucker. She kept screaming for someone named “Damien” to come help.

  Damien never came.

  “She’s going to regenerate her mana before you get her,” Donut said. “Hurry up, or I’m going to do it.”

  I aimed and fired, trying to anticipate where she was going to be. The rock clipped her in the wing again, and she cried out in pain, dropping again.

  Donut leaped into the air and caught her before she could recover. They hit the ground with a crunch.

  “Honestly, Carl,” Donut said, spitting the dead fairy onto the ground next to the other one. “Must I do all the work?”

  “I’m training,” I said. I indicated the room behind me, where I’d received experience for killing 40 monsters all at once. “Besides, I just hit level 11.”

  “Me too, actually,” Donut said.

  My Slingshot skill remained at three, but my Aiming skill went up to four.

  Both of the fairies dropped 25 gold pieces, and each had five brochures in their inventory.

  The description said their “essence” was valuable, but the only thing that remained was their bodies.

  Laminak Rev-Up Consultant Elite Corpse (Alchemy Material)

  “Damnit,” I said. I’d been hoping they would just drop potions, something to protect us against the Taint disease.

  Donut didn’t want the corpses in her inventory, so I took them both. When I pulled them in, their bodies disappeared, but their clothes and wings remained on the ground. I took those, too.

  “We didn’t get a good potion, but that was still pretty awesome,” Donut said as we headed back toward the filling room. “My first solo mission. I bet I’d be fine crawling this dungeon all by myself.”

  I nodded. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like an asshole. The feeling wasn’t as bad as I’d felt after the whole thing with the goblin babies, but there was something inherently distasteful about using Donut’s charm ability to kill things. Yes, these were monsters that wouldn’t hesitate about killing us. But like with the goblins, once Donut turned them neutral, we saw a part of their personalities one didn’t normally see with monsters.

  We were going to move down to the third floor. Jesus. Her voice had been filled with such longing, such despair.

  I remembered what Mordecai had said, that the mobs in deeper levels weren’t going to be as sympathetic. I really hoped so. I needed to remember who the real enemies were. The Syndicate. Borant. The kua-tin. I felt bad about killing monsters who were nothing more than pawns, but the fact was we needed to get as strong as we could. It was us or them.

  “You’re not going to break me,” I whispered. It’d become a mantra.

  “What?” Donut asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  We walked into the large room. I went to work grabbing all the empty and full jugs I could. I grabbed another two tables, including one called an “Alchemy workstation.” By the time we were done, we had 80 empty jugs and another 60 full ones.

  I decided against filling the empty jugs with the moonshine from the tub. The metal container was bolted to the ground, so I couldn’t take the whole thing, and I feared just touching the liquid would have some sort of nasty effect, like blinding me. Or worse.

  The liquid continued to drip in from the next room over.

  The door to the boss chamber looked like the entrance to some sort of community center. It had “Live, Laugh, Love” written on the top of the door in little cutout, wooden letters. Under that was a schedule of events. The next event scheduled was for noon on the day after the collapse. It read, “Good news, everyone! Little Breannlyne has the chickenpox! Potluck Pox party here at noon. No peanuts. Let’s get that immunity!”

  “I think we should probably just leave this boss alone,” I said. “There might be more kids in there. And if there’s a moonshine still, it’ll probably blow up just as easy as that goblin engine. We only have one hobgoblin detonator left, and I don’t want to waste it if we don’t have to. If we just toss dynamite or a boom jar in there, we might not get away in time. I bet the explosion will be big. It’s not worth it to just go in there and fight face to face, not when we don’t have a real defense against that taint debuff. We don’t know how many of those things there will be.”

  I was afraid Donut was going to protest, but she didn’t.

  We moved to the corner of the room. I pulled the “Rev-Up Smoothies! Invigorating!” banner off the wall. It was made of a cotton-like cloth. I put it in my inventory as I moved to investigate the two stationary bicycles.

  A pully ran from the tire to a small, flat platform welded onto the front of the bike. A little, black, segmented wheel, no bigger than a half-dollar coin sat in the middle of the platform. Weird.

  I noticed a pair of dust-covered, wooden boxes tucked away in the corner. I picked one up, and the top slid off. I examined the contents. It was filled with empty, clinking glass containers with screw-on lids. The box held twelve of them. Also shoved into the box was another, similar black lid with little blades on it.

  I examined the little lid using the tooltips.

  “Oh,” I said. “I see. It’s a blender. A bicycle-powered blender. It looks like it hasn’t been used at all.” I pulled one of the glass tubes out and unscrewed the cover. I could screw the bladed cover onto the glass and pop the whole thing onto the platform. If I turned the pedals on the small bike, it’d turn the blades, supposedly blending whatever was in the glass. Then I could flip it over, remove the bladed cover and replace it with the original top, leaving me with a glass bottle of whatever I decided to blend.

  Like a smoothie.

  We had something similar, though not bicycle-powered, in our apartment.

  I peeked in the second box, and this one only held six glasses instead of twelve. The bladed part of the blender was missing. A sheet of paper sat in the box, and I pulled it free.

  Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie Recipe.

  “Holy crap,” I said. The recipe only required two items. “No wonder they discontinued this. Gross.”

  “What, what?” Donut asked.

  “This is all game setup,” I said as I started putting all the items into my inventory. One of the bikes was bolted to the ground, but the second wasn’t. I picked it up and pulled it in. “You’re supposed to find this and make the recipe. If you make the smoothie, you’ll have immunity from the Taint debuff and something called the Vigorous Measles. And then you’ll have the proper protection to fight the boss.” I swallowed. “It’s really gross, though. I don’t want to go in there. I think we should just take these…”

  I never finished the sentence.

  The door to the boss room blasted open. A pair of pink tentacles, each at least fifteen feet long, reached out, swaying into the room. A terrible, ear-splitting screech filled the air, followed by a second screech. Then a third and a fourth.

  Each octopus-like tentacle was covered with mouths. Dozens of them. Each mouth was wide, big around as a frisbee, but human-shaped with bright, red, human lips. There were no eyes or other facial features. Just a cacophony of screaming voices,
saying nothing. Just screaming.

  Familiar music started to play, barely discernable under the constant shrieks.

  At the far end of the chamber where we’d walked in, bars dropped down, locking up the room.

  “What the hell?” I cried, backing against the wall. “This isn’t a boss chamber!”

  A new achievement appeared, and it announced itself before I could wave it into the folder.

  New Achievement! Wait, Bosses Can Leave Their Rooms?

  Welcome to the second floor, bitches.

  Reward: This shit plays great on the recap episode. If you scream loud enough, maybe you’ll make the show.

  34

  Krakaren Clone!

  Level 10 Neighborhood Boss!

  First off, this isn’t the Krakaren. This is a Krakaren. For every one that is killed, Krakaren Prime births two more.

  Part of a collective mind intent upon destroying any semblance of scientific progress in the universe, the Krakaren is the only communal brain entity in the galaxy who actually gets stupider as time moves on. Consisting of multiple, shrieking tentacles, members of the Krakaren cooperative spend their days birthing their disease-laden minions, creating and selling harmful products, attempting to debate scientific experts, and proselytizing to the weak-minded, all in an attempt to… Well, nobody knows what the hell their end goal is.

  Even Eris, Goddess of Chaos, doesn’t want anything to do with these crazy assholes.

  The moment the description ended, a portion of wall above the door broke open, and a third tentacle burst into the room from the next chamber over, swinging blindly about.

  “Carl, Carl, what are we going to do?” Donut cried, pushing herself into the corner. “It’s huge!”

  The first two tentacles retracted, and a pair of clurichaun consultants came out of the door, looking wildly about.

  “Shit,” I said. “Keep them away! I need to make a goddamned smoothie!”

  “What about the tentacles?” Donut cried.

  I eyed the tentacle sweeping about the ceiling of the room. It kept smashing into the pipe that led to the tub of moonshine.

  “Don’t attack the boss yet. I don’t think it can see. Focus on those guys.” I pulled a glass smoothie container into my right hand. I pulled a jug of unaltered moonshine from my inventory into my left. Donut leaped onto my shoulder and shot a pair of magic missiles, nailing both of the clurichauns, who dropped dead at the doorway. A third hesitantly peeked out, looking for us. Donut got him right in the head, and he also collapsed.

  I pulled the cork with my teeth, and I filled the smoothie container a third of the way with the moonshine. Thankfully it had a little line on the glass. I didn’t know how exact this had to be.

  Directly above us, the cinderblock wall broke apart, showering us with rock. A tentacle burst forth, screaming. It scrabbled, swinging at nothing, swaying just feet over our heads.

  Above, the mouths dripped with goo. I jumped out of the way as snot splashed near me. Moonshine sloshed out of the glass, and I had to pour a little more in.

  Jesus fuck. I tossed the jug toward the entrance, and it shattered, splashing moonshine. A moment later, another tentacle once again burst from the door hole, sending the three dead clurichaun flying.

  I pulled the corpse of the laminak from my inventory. I held the limp, naked, wingless body in my hand. It was still warm. Her little, dead eyes stared up in her final shock at having been snatched out of the air by Donut. The sensation was odd, like holding an anatomically-correct doll of a pudgy, middle-aged woman. I didn’t have time to think about it.

  I shoved her, headfirst, into the glass container. Her shoulders were a little too wide to fit, so I had to push. The shoulders cracked, and I used my finger to ram her all the way in there, like trying to stuff a Cornish game hen into a thermos. I produced the blender top with the blades, and I had to push hard to get it to screw into place.

  “Carl, what in god’s name are you doing?”

  “It’s the recipe,” I cried. I screwed the container onto the blender platform. It attached with a click. I sat atop the much-too-small bicycle, my knees as high as my chest. I prayed the bike wouldn’t break. I prayed my spiked kneepads wouldn’t activate, impaling my own chin.

  I recited the recipe out loud. “You fill a third of the glass container with moonshine, add one corpse of a laminak fairy, blend until pink, drink warm or chilled. Each smoothie contains ten doses.”

  “If you think I’m going to drink that…”

  Across the room, yet another tentacle appeared, this one on the ground. The next tentacle to break through would be right here. I spun my legs. The bike protested at first, but it quickly gained steam, spinning like a regular blender. Within the little glass container, the dead fairy stared back at me, spinning until she was sucked away, the concoction first green, then red, and then pink. After a moment, it started to sparkle.

  I pulled the glass bottle off the top just as another two clurichauns entered the chamber, squeezing past the single tentacle that still reached about the room. The tentacle wrapped around the metallic tub and squeezed. It crumpled like a beer can.

  Above, a glob of snot fell, splashing off my head and oozing onto my face.

  You have been inflicted with the Taint.

  “Damnit!” I really need to start sticking my hood up.

  “Run,” I said. “Toward the back of the room.”

  Behind us, the wall exploded, sending the lone bike flying. It shattered into pieces when it hit the floor.

  As I ran, I examined the smoothie in my hand.

  Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie.

  One part moonshine, and one part fairy, this smoothie offers 10 doses for the price of one! Each sip of this delicious concoction imbues the following effects:

  Temporary immunity to all health-seeping conditions and debuffs.

  Temporary protection against all communicable diseases.

  Inflicts the Buzzed debuff. (Plus 3 Charisma. Minus 1 Dexterity. Plus Shaky Cam debuff. Plus Truth Serum Debuff.)

  I didn’t have time to think about it. I took a sip.

  It tasted as if I’d taken a drink directly from the diseased asshole of an incontinent skunk. It took all of my strength not to vomit.

  “Stick it in your hotlist and drink,” I cried, shoving it at Donut as we reached the end of the room. It disappeared from my hand. She didn’t argue. She glowed as the potion took hold.

  A pair of icons flashed, indicating my immunity. The taint debuff didn’t go away, however, which meant I couldn’t heal myself. But at least now I couldn’t be inflicted with the death measles or whatever it was called.

  “Death measles,” I heard myself say as I ran. “Now that’s funny.”

  It wasn’t funny. I laughed again. What the hell is wrong with…

  “Ow,” I cried as a rock bounced off my head. My health flashed, my bar moving further down than it should’ve. I’d been hit with a damn slingshot, and the damage was enhanced because of my stupid goblin tattoo.

  I was woozy, and I realized it was the Buzzed debuff. Whoa. I had to consciously keep myself from falling over. If this was Buzzed, I’d hate to see what the Shit-Faced debuff felt like.

  I pulled an angled, still-intact section of the redoubt from my inventory, putting the shield up as we reached the back corner of the room. Five tentacles smashed about, and a pair of clurichauns rushed at us, both of them shooting rocks, which pinged off the steel table.

  “What’s your mana?” I asked.

  “Sixteen,” Donut cried, her voice slurred. She popped up and fired a missile at a clurichaun. She hit him in the shoulder, but he still went down. “Now twelve. Die motherfucker! Die!”

  I barely had time to parse that Donut was also drunk as a screaming tentacle smashed against the table, rocketing us both against the back wall. My health, already in the red, moved further down. The monster didn’t seem to realize what it hit. I watched as it grasped on the last standing clurichaun, wrapping around hi
m. The mouths stopped screaming, all revealing long, sharp teeth as they pulled the shrieking monster back into the boss room, chewing. It returned a moment later, blood dripping from the mouths, which resumed their caterwaul.

  Four more clurichauns rushed into the room. Another tentacle emerged, pushing through yet another hole in the wall.

  This tentacle was different. Instead of mouths, it was covered in hundreds of tiny, little orifices. The longer, thinner arm reached into the room and made a psst, psst noise, like a spray bottle. A fine, green mist filled the chamber.

  You’ve been infected with the Vigorous Measles!

  Infection negated due to immunity!

  “Don’t fire any more missiles,” I said. My head swam.

  “If we die, I want you to know that I love you, Carl,” Donut said. “I don’t love you as much as I love Miss Beatrice, because she’s, you know, she’s my person. Or as much as I love Ferdinand. But I love you.”

  “Focus, Donut,” I said. I tried not to let what she’d said sting. But it did. Who the fuck was Ferdinand anyway? Bea was giving you up, Donut. She was giving you up, trading you in for a younger model. But I didn’t say it. Not out loud. Now was not the time for that conversation. Never was the time for that conversation, not anymore. But especially not now. Not when Bea was fucking dead.

  “See that Clurichaun there,” I said, pointing a shaking hand. “Raise him from the dead.”

  Two of the clurichauns running at us cried out as they were picked up and crushed by their own boss.

  I leaped up, stumbling away as yet another tentacle reached for me. I ducked, and it sailed past.

  I was suddenly on the ground. When I’d ducked, I just kept going down. I pulled myself up and kept running.