“Yes!” Donut cried. “Burn, baby, burn!”
Further behind, the elemental resumed its pursuit. It stopped yet again a moment later. It’d been ensnared by the chain. The monster roared in anger, shaking the very foundation of the world.
“Away,” Donut called, dropping another boom baby. Then another. Then a third. We continued to carpet bomb the hallway behind us. If the jugs didn’t ignite on their own, Donut hit them with a low-powered magic missile once we were far away enough. She only had to do that a couple times. Most of the cars hit grubs and flipped.
“Whoa!” Donut yelled.
The whole back of the trailer flew up into the air, almost knocking me from my seat. But it crashed down a moment later. A just-launched boom baby flew into the ceiling and exploded.
The elemental had cast its spell, but we’d been too far away. Behind us, the top of the chamber erupted in flames. My head and back burned, and I took a small amount of damage. Donut cried out in pain. She healed herself a moment later with her spell.
“Hold on,” I cried. We were almost there, but I had a sharp left coming up. I could see this hallway was filled with more of the pupae. “Like we talked about! Drop a shredder, wait a second, then do another boom.”
We screeched around the corner, the trailer skidding. I had to jerk around a set of pupae, rising like stalagmites. We’d only made a few of the gunpowder babies, but I’d made them for this part of the stretch. I had no idea if this would work, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.
Donut released the gunpowder and shrapnel-filled bomb. “The shredders.” For these, we used a long length of wick. I had to light wicks using a lighter, but thanks to Donut’s quadruped status, the system allowed her to light them the same way she lit torches, with a mental click. She launched the massive shrapnel grenade. The long wick trailed sparks, like the tail of a rat. The baby crashed into one of the pupa mounds and fell on its side. A moment later, it blew, ripping the pupa to shreds.
I hazarded a glance over my shoulder, just long enough to see several human-sized, hornet-like creatures vomit out of the sacs. The uncooked monsters hit the ground and started convulsing.
I was hoping if I injured the chrysalis sacs, the monsters would come out, and the elemental would waste a valuable second or two ripping them to shreds.
We filled the last stretch of hallway with moonshine and fire. The elemental seemed to be moving more cautiously, but it continued to follow. Ahead, the stairwell materialized.
A warning appeared, blinking ominously just below the handlebars.
Goblin Copper Chopper – Boiler Breach Imminent.
“Goddamnit,” I growled. I’d pushed it too hard. We had 15 seconds. I tried to remember which of the valves to turn to release the pressure. I couldn’t.
“Fuck it,” I said, increasing the speed.
“I thought we were going to the other safe room!” Donut cried. “We’re not going down the stairs, are we?”
We entered the large, round room. The stairwell loomed before us, a hole in the ground with a bright light shining directly up into the air. All around us, pupae pulsed, most of them ringing the walls. There were dozens of them now. All had timers over their heads, some of them only at a few hours.
The actual stairs faced the wrong direction, but that was okay. There was no railing or barrier. This was nothing but a hole in the ground, as wide as one of the tunnels, just like it had been on the surface.
“Oil slick! Then jump,” I cried.
“Jump? Are you crazy!”
“Goddamnit, Donut. Do it!”
She pulled the red lever, and the bottom of the second chamber fell away. Champagne-colored oil sprayed onto the floor.
“Jump,” I cried. Donut and I both leaped from the fast-moving vehicle. It continued its forward trajectory, spilling oil onto the rocky ground, plummeting into the deep stairway hole. The chopper disappeared from view. It crunched, followed by a relatively small explosion. Black smoke billowed into the air.
“What did you do that for?” Donut yelled as we both scrambled to our feet.
“Get your Puddle Jumper spell ready,” I said. I pointed behind us, at the far end of the distant hallway, the opposite direction we’d come. Mordecai’s guild room was just around the corner from there. “Send us there. Cast it when I tell you.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice filled with uncertainty. “Don’t forget, it’s ten seconds!”
The elemental had, indeed, stopped to eviscerate the hornet creatures in the hall, giving me just enough time to think about how much of a crazy asshole I was. The stairs are right there. We can just go down and be safe. If this doesn’t work, you are dead.
I stood right at the edge of the hole.
“Cast now!” I cried.
Why not, I thought, and I pulled one of the oh shit babies from my inventory and gently placed it down on the ground in front of us. It sat there like a giant skateboard. Two boom jars, gunpowder, and a ring of dynamite.
Nine seconds.
“It’s coming!” Donut screamed, her voice more terrified than I ever heard. She leaped to my shoulder.
Eight seconds.
In front of us, the rage elemental emerged from the billowing smoke of the hall. It was a beast from hell, huge. Terrifying. A length of chain was still attached to its back leg. To my surprise, the monster’s health was in the red. Barely in the red, but it had been more hurt than I expected. It saw us, and it paused.
Five seconds.
It bellowed, long and hard.
I looked up, for the first time, and I realized the ceiling of this chamber, like the borough boss room on the floor above, was very, very high. If it cast Reverse Gravity now…
Three seconds.
It charged.
Two seconds.
“Stay with me,” I said.
It passed the threshold of the room, and the moment its six legs hit the floor, it started to slide on the oil slick. It barely seemed to notice. It roared as it rocketed toward us, forward fingers ready to slash. I remembered what it did to Yolanda, unraveling her.
We disappeared, reappearing about 500 feet away, down the hall. A horrific, indignant shriek filled the dungeon, followed by the distinctive whoosh of a big-ass explosion. I hit the ground and covered Donut, but it was okay. The bomb was deep in the hole when it went off, and we were far away.
A moment passed. I watched the minimap, looking for signs that the monster had survived.
The dot was gone. Absolute silence followed. My stomach heaved, an aftereffect of the sudden teleportation.
Relief washed over me. I sat down right there on the floor. My heart, which had been oddly calm throughout, was now a jackhammer. My arms felt numb, tingling with the overdose of adrenaline. My entire body trembled.
A moment later, Donut cried in outrage. “We didn’t get any experience! Carl, you broke the game!”
“We didn’t get any experience because we’re not the ones who killed it.”
“What?” Donut said. “I don’t understand.”
I remembered what Rory, the goblin shamanka had told us. It’d only been a few days ago, but it felt like a lifetime. If we climb down the stairs, we die. You get halfway down, and your body just dissolves. I’ve seen it myself.
Mordecai had said something similar once, too. Mobs who dared to attempt to descend didn’t teleport away. They died. We’d tricked the monster into the hole. Once it was in there, the dungeon followed its own rules, and it dissolved the elemental.
Unfortunately, the system didn’t look too kindly on what we’d done. We hadn’t been awarded experience for the kill. I’d received a couple achievements, but not many.
But that was okay. We were still alive. I took in the mass of red grub dots and Xs littering the map. I felt as if I’d been awake for two days straight. I groaned, pulling myself to my feet. We still had a lot of work to do.
Carl: Brandon. Get your people to the stairs. Do it now. The way is safe, but it won’t be for
long.
41
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I still had plenty of moonshine left, and Donut and I spent the hour torching all the pupae in the large room. I looked up at the map. There was no way we could get to them all. We were going to have to hightail it out of here.
With the unfortunate destruction of the chopper, our travel options were now limited. I had enough crap in my massive inventory to probably build another one, but I didn’t know what I was doing with the boiler part of the mechanism. Hopefully we could find another set of goblins to help us. Or better yet, find something more reliable.
About forty minutes after we killed the elemental, the tattered remains of Meadow Lark entered the chamber. Brandon, Chris, and Imani had built a second, less elegant transportation system. There were 36 residents left, and they were piled into three separate shopping-cart-like contraptions, built with chopper wheels and hunks of wood. Chris and Imani pushed the two larger “people buckets” as Brandon called them. This time, both of them strained with the effort. Brandon, whose strength was nowhere near the other’s, also awkwardly pushed a group of six people into the room.
“We didn’t need your directions,” Brandon said. “There’s a long trail of scorched hallway that leads directly to this hole.” He paused. “There are a lot of those chrysalis things out there. You sure you don’t just want to come with us?”
“I’m sure,” I said. I looked into the smoking hole. “Do me a favor, though, and pick up anything you find down there. There probably isn’t much left.”
He nodded. I reached out to shake his hand, and he pulled me into a hug. “You two take care of yourselves, okay?”
I grinned. “You do the same.”
I said my goodbyes to Chris and Imani. I found Donut on the lap of Mrs. McGibbons, purring away.
“Barry?” she asked as I walked up. “Barry, where are we?”
“We’re in the dungeon, Mrs. McGibbons. It’s me, Carl. You’re going down to the next floor.”
She looked at me, her eyes registering confusion. Once again, I felt a wave of doubt wash over me. Was this the right thing? What else could we do?
“The dungeon?” she asked. “Like a sex thing?”
“I don’t know if I’m ever going to see you again,” I said, kneeling down. She sat in the people bucket, looking about, eyes wide. “I wanted to say goodbye.”
She reached up and touched my cheek. At that moment, she looked every day of her 99 years. Her hands were worryingly cold. “We should have had children, Barry. I wish I hadn’t talked you into working so hard.”
I grasped her hand. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” I remembered my mom saying the same thing to me the day she had left. It had been a lie then, and it was a lie now.
“I think I’ve had too much to drink,” she said. “Or I’m having another one of those acid flashbacks. This cat keeps talking to me.”
I smiled. “Goodbye, Mrs. McGibbons.”
* * *
Imani was the last to go down the ramp. It’d gone quickly. She waved, unsmiling at us. I waved back, and we turned away.
“Do you think we’ll ever see them again?” Donut asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
We angled toward the quadrant with the kobolds, killing all the grubs and burning all the pupae we passed. Earlier, I had noted a safe room deep in the kobold quadrant, along the back side of the area. We would grind our way toward it and try to get a nap before we had to do this next interview.
Hopefully the hornet monsters, when they hatched, would remain in their area.
* * *
Kobold Rider – Level 5
Here’s an interesting fact. The DNA of a kobold and the DNA of a chihuahua are almost identical. That should tell you almost everything you need to know about these yappy little assholes.
Small, angry, think they are bigger than they really are, there is nothing more terrifying than a pack of these little bastards charging at you across the battlefield, at least in their own minds. But don’t underestimate them, either. They are fearless, they are intelligent, and they bite first, ask questions later.
Their mounts, the Danger Dingoes, should probably worry you.
The last time I’d played Dungeons and Dragons had been aboard the USCGC Stratton. I remembered kobolds as little, lizard-like monsters. In the game I’d played, the dungeon master had them as minions of a small dragon. Here, they were different. They, indeed, looked like goddamned armored chihuahuas. They were about the same size as the barking little dogs, but they stood upright and wore chainmail armor that seemed to be made out of beer can tabs. Each wore tiny metal caps with a spike on them.
Most of them were armed with long, angry-looking spears with feathers hanging off the end. They wielded them like lances.
“Dogs riding dogs,” Donut spat as the pair of Danger-Dingo-riding kobolds charged at us. “I’ve had nightmares like this.” She hissed and fired a pair of magic missiles, hitting the mounts. The level-five dingoes stumbled, rolling forward. I formed a fist as the two kobold riders went flying. The first one crunched onto the ground, breaking his neck. The second bounced up, yapping, teeth frothing. It charged at me. I punched it, and it splattered against the wall. The things were more solid than they looked.
I fell back as one of the dingoes lunged at me. This one had a Septic debuff blinking over its head. This monster’s snarl and bark was deeper, more terrifying than that of its rider. Their white face paint made them appear even more frightening. Donut leaped onto the back of the dingo, ripping with her rear claws as she hopped high into the air and fired a third magic missile at the still-recovering second mount, killing it. The dingo on top of me shuddered, then fell over, dead. Stinking blood and gore washed over me as I pushed it off.
Donut landed deftly next to me and started licking her paw.
“That was pretty slick,” I said, brushing myself off. My entire front was soaked in gore. “You’re getting a lot better at that.”
“I think I have a bonus to damage against canine creatures,” she said. “That reminds me, I saw something weird earlier, and I forgot to tell you about it. It was a new tab that said ‘Racial benefits,’ but it was only there for a second. It blinked and disappeared.”
“That is weird,” I said. Instinctively, I pulled up my own menu, and I didn’t have anything like that.
The safe room was just around the corner. After we obliterated the kobold and dingo corpses, we headed toward it. This was another one of the non-manned rooms. The room appeared to have once been some sort of industrial kitchen, but with all the appliances removed except a large, walk-in freezer that still was in working order. We inspected the giant refrigerator, but it was empty.
A stainless steel counter stood underneath the set of screens, and on the counter was a plain, metallic toaster, surrounded by a pile of crumbs. It didn't seem to be plugged into anything, but I couldn't lift it up, either. Up on the screen it read, Free Mana Toast! One per Crawler!
I pressed down the little handle, and a moment later it popped up. A burned triangle of toast jumped out, landing on the counter. I picked it up and smelled it. I examined its properties.
Mana Toast.
This is toast.
It refills your mana. That’s it. Nothing more. Fuck you.
“Well, that was unnecessary,” I muttered. I gave my piece to Donut, who tucked them both away into her inventory.
The room also contained a drinking fountain, a couple chairs and cots, and a set of bathrooms. As had become our custom, we checked both of the bathrooms out. They were empty, but someone had clearly been here before us. The toilet paper had all been taken, and the shampoo dispenser in the woman’s shower had been emptied. The floor was wet, like someone had recently taken a shower.
Mukta (Admin): Crawlers Carl and Princess Donut. You are to be tr
ansported to your interview in ten minutes. Prepare yourselves.
Mukta?
Donut: WHO ARE YOU? WHERE IS ZEV?
Mukta (Admin): Your Outreach Associate has been put in a time out. She will return to you tomorrow. I am her substitute until then.
I glanced up at the clock. We had eight hours until the next episode. That wasn’t right.
Carl: We weren’t supposed to go for another couple hours.
Mukta (Admin): Administrator Zev had you scheduled on a program called Dungeon Crawl Tactics. I have overridden her decision and picked a better program for you. This one is paying a higher fee. Do not worry, it is similar to the other one. It is still round-table style. Close enough at least. They still offer gifts to the participants.
Carl: We were promised the right to refuse interviews. I don’t want to go on this one.
Mukta (Admin): You seem to be under the impression that you have a say in this, crawler.
Donut: WHAT DID ZEV DO? WHY IS SHE IN A TIME OUT?
The message clicked away, and the chat disappeared from our log. There was no way to respond or initiate a new message.
“Carl, I’m not ready!” A brush appeared in front of her. “Brush me, quick!”
The front of my jacket was still covered in dingo gore. I moved to the bathroom to clean myself off the best I could. “I’ll get to you in a minute.”
“I don’t like this,” I said a few minutes later as I brushed a knot out of Donut’s fur. This was my first time doing this since we’d come to the dungeon. I had a quick memory, of Bea teaching me how to properly brush the cat. The first time I’d ever done it, Donut had yowled and tried to disembowel me. Bea and I had fallen over ourselves laughing at the indignant look on the cat’s face. It had taken months before she’d sit still and let me do it.
We only had a couple minutes, and I spent it looking at the handful of achievements I’d received from our rage elemental gambit. Donut actually had several more than I did, all of them bomb-themed ones I’d already received. She didn’t waste time opening the associated boxes just yet, instead opting to use her precious few minutes cleaning herself.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Page 33