“It’s not roulette like you know it. Go get some sleep. Tomorrow night I’ll take you both to the club and show you how that place works.”
“Can you get in?” Donut asked.
“Don’t you worry about that,” Mordecai said, grinning. “They know me there.”
14
The moment we stepped outside of Mordecai’s guild room, I pulled up the town’s map. I looked for the smallest pub I could find. I found one a few blocks away that didn’t appear to be along any main roads, so we headed toward it. I had been so desperate to find other people when we first arrived into the dungeon, but for now I just wanted to sleep. The way the other crawlers pointed and gasped when they saw us, it wasn’t something I could deal with. Not tonight.
Mongo kept biting at the air. Getting the two chompers on him had been easier than I had expected. The way the system had described it, I thought it would be a difficult procedure, but both of the golden fangs had resized themselves and snapped easily into his mouth, clicking into place like they were Legos. He’d patiently allowed me to do it, whimpering like a dog getting his nails clipped. It’d only taken about five seconds. Now when he snapped his teeth, little tendrils of electricity exploded from his mouth. It’d scared him so much at first he’d actually peed himself, which had caused Mordecai to devolve into a torrent of arm-waving shouts and swears. But once Mongo realized the electric bites didn’t hurt him, he spent every moment afterward chomping the air and grunting with excitement at the little sparks.
It wasn’t quite dark yet, but we stuck to the center of the street. Skyfowl continued to sweep through the air above us. Most of the buildings in town were at least two levels, and many featured large, open windows so the fliers could come and go as they pleased. In fact, some buildings appeared to be completely empty on the first floor while businesses and restaurants filled the higher levels, all catering to the eagle folk.
Most of the shops were now closed, curtains tight, so we couldn’t even window shop. Before we left, Mordecai reiterated his warning to stay out of the alleys when it was dark. The guards remained on patrol, but I knew they would soon disappear. The city became a free-for-all at night. I wanted to be settled well before then. I could only handle so much drama and violence per day.
The pub was called The One-Eyed Narwhal, but the logo was of a fat, bald human unzipping his pants, grinning lewdly.
“Carl, this place looks disgusting,” said Donut. Most of the buildings on this street were in various stages of disrepair. I didn’t see any eagles here, either. It was mostly orcs, ogres, and humans. “There was a place back there called the Hot Schnitzel. It looked much more inviting. It had flowers out front.”
“This place will be fine,” I said as I opened the door, looking about. The pub was almost empty. A single orc NPC sat in one corner, drinking. The place was set up similarly to the last pub. There was a bar and the three televisions. It smelled of beer and grease. My eyes caught the player countdown and I sighed.
649,433.
That was tens of thousands of people dead since the last I’d looked, but at the same time, that number had slowed profoundly. The people who’ve made it this far mostly know what they’re doing now.
The pub only had four rooms available, and they cost 20 gold each, much more expensive than the last place. But we had plenty to spare, and I still had no idea whether or not we were being ripped off. To my surprise, the proprietor wasn’t a Bopca, but a human. He was a large, bald, level-30 man named “Fitz.” He was the person depicted on the exterior sign, though the real-life version was twice as fat.
“Your majesty,” Fitz said as we approached the counter. “What a pleasure. What an absolute pleasure. I’ve never had royalty in the Narwhal. Not once. Are you just dining tonight, or will you require a room as well?”
“Why, hello, Fitz,” Donut said, jumping on the counter. She rubbed her paw along the wood and then looked at it, a sour expression on her face. “We require two rooms. One for Carl and myself, and one for…” Mordecai popped into the room, right on cue. The incubus said nothing and immediately moved to the bar. He leaned over to gaze at the line of bottles. “And one for this gentleman. What are your fish selections this evening?”
As Donut and the human discussed our dinner, I sat down at a table. I watched Mordecai as he waited to order his drink. We couldn’t get away from him, and he couldn’t get away from us. I hadn’t really thought too much on the implications of the manager benefit from that angle. That was going to get really old really fast.
I’d thrown ten of my stat points into strength and two into constitution. My strength without the gauntlet was now 30. I was literally as strong as six regular humans, and that had a way of messing with your mind. I grasped the edge of the thick, wooden table. It felt solid, like any normal hunk of aged wood. I squeezed, and I felt the possibility there. I could rip a hunk of wood off the edge if I wanted. I felt the potential of my power. The whole thing was just so surreal.
“Now don’t be giving this guy any of your potions,” Donut said as they sat at the table. Mongo ran across the room and started sniffing at the orc in the corner, but the large creature—a woman orc, actually—ignored the dinosaur. He grunted indignantly and returned to us.
The recap show came on just as our food was delivered. Donut received some sort of halibut thing, Mordecai a bowl of soup, Mongo a plate filled with raw meat, and I got a hamburger that tasted suspiciously like it came from Burger King.
The recap didn’t show anything too interesting, though they were now focusing on a few crawlers I hadn’t before seen. One was a guy with an alligator head and what looked like a Mossberg mag-fed shotgun. He never seemed to run out of shells, and I wondered what the story was there.
“I’m more concerned with how he gets that T-shirt on and off with such a giant head,” Donut said.
They also showed the goat lady that Mordecai had told us about a while back. She’d entered the dungeon with 15 goats and managed to keep them all alive for a while. Now it appeared she only had five left. She remained human, and she’d clearly chosen some sort of mage class. Three of the burly brown and white goats remained unchanged. In my late teens, before I’d joined the military, the home had made us all get jobs, and I’d spent the summer working on a small farm that had multiple types of goats, including these guys. Boer goats. They were bred for meat, not dairy, I remembered. The bucks were heavy fuckers, heavier than they looked. It had taken three of us to lift one of them.
The other two remaining goats had changed.
“It looks like she got two of those enhanced pet biscuits,” I said. I remembered the description had said that eating the biscuit could have varied results.
“Three, actually,” Mordecai said. “They showed what happened last night. The third biscuit didn’t go so well for her. Or several of her goats.”
One of the goats was decked out in armor and walked on two legs alongside her. It appeared the goat had undergone a similar transformation as Donut, though I wasn’t sure if it talked or not. It wielded a double-headed axe and occasionally screamed for no reason.
The last goat had transformed into a satanic monstrosity straight from the depths of a nightmare.
“My word,” Donut said. “I could’ve turned into one of those?”
Mordecai grunted. “That’s a hellspawn familiar. Carl probably would’ve been better off if you had.”
I laughed and Donut made an indignant cat sound.
The thing was a horse-sized, multi-breasted, pitch black goat monster that looked like it belonged on the cover of one of those 1980s heavy metal album covers, one where if you played it backward, the words would tell you to murder your grandma. The face still had the distinctive shape and horns of a male boer goat. It continued to walk on all four legs, but the thing was huge, and a group of six human-like breasts grew down the front of the creature. The entire thing had turned black, except the eyes, which glowed red. A constant wave of steam rose from it.