As I expected, Frank’s entire backstory was complete, made-up bullshit. I still didn’t know if they were cops or not. I suspected they were. Either way, Rebecca W hadn’t been some sort human trafficker. She’d been someone like me. Afraid, and at the end, alone. She’d been betrayed and hunted down by a fellow human. I thought of the woman’s naked, stripped-bare body. I shook my head in disgust.
The two had received multiple loot boxes from being player killers, including a ring that gave Maggie an area-of-effect stealth ability and a potion that imbued Frank with the ability to track down nearby crawlers.
I noted that Maggie’s stealth ability worked like my Protective Shell. It cast in a static, semi-circle area. It didn’t move with them. That was good to know.
I watched as they hunted several other crawlers, most of them people wandering about on their own. Most of them appeared to have been homeless, some elderly. All of them were afraid. All of them had been so happy to see someone else before they were murdered. Yvette was in some of these scenes. She wasn’t in others. The girl never participated in the killings.
“The best part is coming up,” the Maestro announced.
The video, finally, showed a much abridged version of Donut and me coming across Frank Q in the saferoom and of them attacking us, of them getting frozen. It showed me putting the dynamite in the rat corpse.
But then, I saw something unexpected. My heart sank the moment I realized what was happening.
“Mom?” Yvette asked, coming out of the bathroom. The girl stopped in horror upon seeing both of her parents frozen in the safe room.
Oh. Oh no, I thought. She’d been there. Yvette had been there the whole time. She’d been hiding with her mother under the stealth field.
I see you didn’t find the present I left for you. Now I knew why the Maestro had smiled so big when I said that.
I held my breath as the two murderers and their daughter approached the rat corpse. Maggie yelled at Frank not to loot it. He did it anyway. If I remembered correctly, we’d left five items in its inventory: a hunk of rat steak, a skin, a lit smoke bomb, a lit stick of dynamite, and an unlit, unstable stick. Frank only pulled out one item. The lit dynamite stick. He dropped it in surprise, and all three turned to run. A moment passed, and the dynamite went off. Shrapnel blasted the three crawlers. Yvette went down, and so did Frank. A hunk of dislodged rock sheared the man’s hand right off.
A llama hadn’t given those horrible injuries to the teenaged girl.
I had.
The scene ended, the lights switched on, and Maggie and Frank emerged to our right.
Donut hissed. The crowd’s response was mixed. Half cheers, half insults and screams, as if they weren’t sure whose side they were supposed to be on. I spent the moment observing the two crawlers. Frank was missing his right hand. But that wasn’t all that had changed about him. The man had a hollowed-out, 1,000-yard stare. He looked as if he’d aged ten years in just a few days. Do I look like that? His missing hand wasn’t a rounded, healed stump like one would expect. It was a straight cut, like he was a mannequin whose hand had been removed.
The woman, Maggie, glared directly at me.
I returned her stare. “You didn’t have to kill her,” I said when the audience finally silenced. “Why did you do that? To get the experience? She would’ve healed. Your own daughter? Jesus fuck, lady.”
“You don’t know,” she said to me, spitting the words. “You don’t know anything. You didn’t get the whole story.”
“She wasn’t dead yet,” I repeated. “She would’ve healed.”
“Fuck you,” Maggie said. “You don’t know what we’ve had to do to survive.”
“Survive? Your daughter is dead. But it’s okay, because you got credit for the kill. I’m sure she’d be so fucking proud,” I said.
Maggie leaped from her chair, pulling a black dagger that glowed with a purple halo. She lunged at me.
I didn’t flinch. Her jab passed harmlessly through my throat. The dagger dropped away as Maggie cried out in pain, clutching her hand. She’d likely just stabbed the invisible wall of their production trailer.
“Children, children,” the Maestro said, plainly enjoying this. He was back on familiar ground. “Clearly you guys have a beef with one another.”
Frank whispered something to Maggie, who returned to her chair. He tried to put an arm on her shoulder. She pushed him away.
“As far as I’m concerned, any business I’ve had with these two has already been transacted,” I said. I turned toward Frank and met the man’s eyes. The man had changed significantly since the last time we’d seen each other. He looked away and down. “I’m sorry about what happened to your kid. But fuck you. Fuck both of you. She deserved better. We all would’ve been stronger together. Your game guide is a piece of shit.”
Maggie growled. “I am going to find you, and I am going to watch you die. You and the fucking cat.”
“Oooooh,” the crowd said, like we were on an episode of the goddamned Jerry Springer Show.
“Don’t bring me into this,” Donut said, raising a paw in defense. “I’m not the one who went all danger dingo on my own kid.”
The crowd screamed with laughter. I had to hand it to her. Donut was oftentimes caught off guard, but she was highly adaptable. She knew how to read a crowd, that was for sure. But as much as I disliked these two assholes, they weren’t the real enemy. We needed to end this. This bullshit didn’t serve any of us.
I turned to the Maestro. “Congratulations. You’ve reunited us. We all know how she feels about the matter. I’ve said my piece. If that’s all, we’ll be going now.”
“No, no, why so quick to leave?” For the next several minutes, the Maestro attempted to ask us leading questions. So why did you kill your own daughter? Carl, how does it feel to know you’re partially responsible for the death of another human? Maggie said nothing but, “Fuck you.” Frank hadn’t said a word this whole time. Donut would only talk directly to the audience, and I just grunted responses.
It was obvious that the orc wasn’t good at asking interview questions, especially with a group of hostile guests. The crowd grew restless.
Donut started making wisecracks. The Maestro tried to ask her something, and she just ignored him. She looked directly at the audience and said, “I once watched a cocker spaniel lick her own butthole for thirty minutes straight. That was more insightful than that question.”
Eventually, the Maestro threw his large hands in the air and gave up. The orc had a panicked look to him. He knew this entire episode had been a dumpster fire from the start. But then the orc’s eyes sparkled with one last glimmer of hope. I braced myself for whatever bullshit was coming.
“Well, I have parting gifts for each of the teams,” he said. “Are you piglets excited to see what we got for the crawlers?”
The crowd responded half-heartedly. A few of the audience members had already flickered and disappeared from the stream, leaving empty spaces in the crowd.
“Hopefully it’s a door so we can get back to the dungeon,” Donut muttered. The audience laughed. But she wasn’t fooling me. The cat was shaking with pleasure. Even now, Donut couldn’t contain herself. That damn cat loved her presents.
“Let’s give our VIPs their gift first, shall we?”
A box appeared in front of me. This was a literal cardboard box. I hesitantly reached forward, and it was really there.
“This is just a present for Carl. Sorry about that, Donut,” the Maestro said. He leaned forward expectantly. I could feel Donut deflate next to me. I realized I’d been stroking her back without thinking about it. “Carl, I know this is something you want really bad. We paid a lot of money to make sure you have the very best.”
I opened the box. You asshole. I had to laugh. It was a perfectly-chosen gift to troll me. I probably would’ve laughed even if we’d been on another show.
“Carl. You have boots now!” Donut said.
It was a brand-new pair of
Bates zip-up tactical boots. They were identical to the service boots I wore on active duty. I picked one up. Sure enough, they were in my size.
“We even got you socks,” the Maestro said. “They’re in the box!”
“Thanks!” I said, pulling the box onto my lap. “These will be really comfortable when I’m in a safe room!” I put the lid back on. There was no way I was going to wear these things.
Now that my soles had fully acclimated, me wearing shoes would put me at a massive disadvantage. I had several buffs and skills that only worked if I was barefoot, and the orc knew it. The gift was just him being a dick. He was expecting me to react, to rant and rave. He should’ve known by now that wasn’t the sort of bait that would snag me. The audience barely reacted at all. They either didn’t understand the intended troll or didn’t care.
“I love them,” I added. I tapped the top of the box, smiling. “I hope they weren’t too expensive.”
The Maestro took a deep breath and gave me his best fuck you glare. He turned to Frank and Maggie. “And now, you two. Frank has a skill called Find Crawler, which shows you any crawlers within five square kilometers.” The Maestro waved his hand. “I don’t think that is good enough.” A potion appeared in front of them. Maggie snatched it up, looking at it. “That there is a Legendary Skill Potion, taken from my clan’s own stock. Either of you drink that fucker down, and it will upgrade your Find Crawler skill to level 15.” He turned to look at me, smiling again. “That means you can put in any crawler’s name, and it’ll tell you exactly where they are, no matter how far.”
“Wait, can I drink this? Frank is the one with the skill,” Maggie asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’ll take you all the way to the top level of 20 if you have the right class. But if you take it now, it’ll take you up to 15 no problem.”
I sighed. “So, are we done here?”
The Maestro seemed to be at a loss for words, pissed his gifts hadn’t gone over well with the audience. “Uh, thanks to my piglets. You know the Maestro takes care of you fuckers. You know what to do!”
The audience lukewarmly glurp-glurped.
“Well, we probably won’t be coming back on this show, pork boy,” I said, standing up. Donut jumped to my shoulder and waved vigorously at the audience. “But I imagine we’ll see each other again soon enough. I look forward to kicking your ass all over again on the ninth floor. That is, if you’re not too much of a puss to face me.”
Now that. That garnered a reaction from the crowd.
As the show ended, and the crowd cheered, finally happy to have something to holler about, I turned my attention to the two crawlers sitting next to us. Frank continued to stare straight down, a shell of a man. Maggie clutched the skill potion to her chest, staring at me.
For the first time, the woman smiled.
44
Time to Level Collapse: 3 Days, 14 hours
Views: 1.7 Trillion
Followers: 439.9 Billion
Favorites: 42.4 Billion
“I don’t understand why she killed her daughter,” Donut said after we returned to the safe room. She immediately started opening the loot boxes from the earlier battle. She received nothing new except two “Trap Modules” from her gold sapper’s box. One was called a Spike Module and the other an Alarm Module. These were ready-to-go traps, no tinkering required. We could upgrade and reconfigure them, but it required the use of our sapper’s table, which wouldn’t happen until the fourth floor.
Despite Mukta’s warning that we’d have a discussion after the show, there was no sign of the admin. The program ended, and we’d immediately transported back to the room. I still clutched the shoebox in my hands. I sighed and put it all in my inventory. I pulled out my pedicure kit and started to work on my feet as Donut continued to talk, rapid fire. She’d been like this after the last interview, too. She got some sort of adrenaline rush from being on camera, even when the show was a disaster. “She had a pretty name. Yvette. I like that name. Did you see? She didn’t want to kill people. But then her mom killed her. It’s really sad. But I’m also kind of relieved, you know what I mean? Since her mom killed her, that means you didn’t kill her. It would’ve been an accident, but still.”
“Aren’t you tired?” I asked. I was exhausted. I rubbed the bottom of my foot with the little stone thing. I could just feel the AI watching me. The recap show would air in a few hours, and I wanted to get some sleep before that. Afterward, we needed to head out.
Donut plopped herself on my shoulder, settling in to sleep after I finished with my feet.
“He was kind of a jerk, huh? The orc guy, I mean. But do you remember what he said? We broke the record.”
“Yes, Donut,” I said. I closed my eyes.
“Carl?”
“What, Donut?” I said, trying not to let the exasperation sound in my voice.
“I heard what he said to you, about the ninth floor, I mean.”
“Don’t let that idiot bother you.”
“No, not the orc. I mean Mordecai. When he told you that you should leave me when we get to that floor. I heard him.”
“Let’s worry about getting to the third floor before we even think about something as far away as the ninth. We don’t even know what the hell that is all about.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice small. She finally settled next to me, and she was asleep before I was.
* * *
I slept through the first part of the recap episode. I awakened to find Donut sitting on the chair, her attention on the screen. She looked back at me. “They haven’t mentioned us yet. But they showed those guys from Africa, Le Mouvement. They found a city boss. It was a just a see-through blob the size of a house! It killed all of them. There was one guy on the outside of where they were locked in, and now he’s all alone. Everyone died except him. They showed him sitting on the ground just crying for like a minute straight. The blob looked like it was made of Jell-O. They couldn’t figure out how to hurt it. I bet fire would’ve worked. They didn’t have much room to run around, though. The boss room was a series of tubes, like a sewer system.”
“Christ,” I said, looking up at the screen. It now showed Lucia Mar smashing a Brindled Vespa into pieces with her mace. She had some sort of personal, magical shield I’d never noticed before. The hornet spat at her, and the white glob hit the shield, sizzling and floating in the air a good two inches from the side of her head.
“No wonder,” I grumbled.
The last ten minutes of the show were dedicated to our escape. The recap was almost identical to the one they’d showed on the Maestro’s show, but with added music and better production values. They showed close-up freeze frames of the MOAB and spinning, 3D renderings of the individual bombs.
It showed the rage elemental tumbling into the hole, and the oh shit baby exploding right next to it. We watched as the monster’s health bar plummeted, almost hit zero, and then the monster dissolved.
Experience Denied. Slammed onto the screen.
“Hey, that wasn’t fair,” Donut cried. “We would’ve killed it if it hadn’t dissolved!”
“Maybe,” I said. I was suspicious about how easy it was to do damage to the elemental, considering its high level. Either my bombs were overpowered, or the monster was especially weak for its level.
I suspected there was something else we were missing. The monster probably split in two or blew up on death or something equally horrible. It was almost as if the game was daring us to summon another one and to try kill it fair and square this time. We’d probably rocket up a dozen levels if we managed it. I could already think of a dozen ways to summon one and have something waiting for it, something that’d kill it for sure. Once you knew how the monster worked, it wasn’t so difficult. It had to be a trap.
The show ended with Imani pausing at the scorched entrance to the third floor. She looked up into the air and raised a middle finger before going inside.
The show ended, and I suddenly felt very al
one. The feeling came out of nowhere. I thought of that last member of Le Mouvement, of being locked outside the boss area, only to find everyone he knew was just gone. What a nightmare.
I looked up at the ticker. 990,303.
We’d gone below one million, and I hadn’t noticed. For every person that ticked away, I felt I was losing a part of myself, a part of my humanity. I thought of what Donut had said before we’d fallen asleep, and of the unspoken question she had asked and of the answer I hadn’t given her.
The announcement came, and even though I knew it was coming, the sudden, booming voice surprised me.
Hello Crawlers,
Keep up the good work. Everything is running smoothly. Now that we’ve reached the halfway point of the level, game guides are now able to instruct you upon some of the intricacies regarding the third floor and how the race and class selection process works. Be sure to visit your game guide prior to descending in order to make the transition more smooth.
Effective immediately, any non-sapient mobs who happen upon a stairwell will not be disintegrated. Yes, we all just watched that rule get exploited on the recap episode. It was very clever and very exciting. But it’s not going to happen again.
The System AI has determined the proliferation of the Brindled Vespas is too aggressive, and we have halved the number of these mobs currently in the dungeon. In addition, the damage from their spitting acid attack has been adjusted down. Slightly. Please note, new Brindle Grubs will continue to generate upon the creation of a corpse, but each one now only has a 50% chance to proceed to the pupa stage.
That’s it for now. Now go out there and kill, kill, kill!
Dungeon Crawler Carl Page 36