After a few initial questions to Katia, which she answered with deer-in-the-headlights, one-word responses, Odette sighed and turned back to me.
“So, guys,” she said. “You were only gone for two days, but a lot can happen in two days. Isn’t that right?” The audience laughed, almost nervously, which made me nervous. “So, what do you think happened after you hit that detonator?”
I shrugged. “I was hoping for an explosion at the warehouse, but I know the hobgoblin pus is a magical detonator, so I suspect maybe it was fried and nothing happened.”
She clapped, nodding her bug head vigorously. “Smart, smart boy.”
The audience had grown dead quiet. An electric feeling of apprehension washed over me. Uh-oh. What is this?
“Believe it or not, you’re supposed to be dead. You’re right. Hobgoblin pus is a magical trigger. By all accounts, it should have been rendered inert by the initial precursor burst. And if by chance it hadn’t, that second burst, which activated all magical weapons, should have set it off, which would’ve exploded the dynamite, which would have killed Remex the Grand, triggering that final, cataclysmic explosion.”
Remex the Grand? “But that didn’t happen,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “It did not. The Borant Corporation immediately filed an appeal against the AI’s decision to rule the detonator exempt from both of those blasts. Just before you came on today, Borant was overruled by a Syndicate court. In addition, and even more importantly, the court ruled the achievements you received as a result of the explosion are also just, and the rewards must be paid.”
“Achievements?” Donut asked, perking up. “Rewards?”
“But,” Odette continued, “per Syndicate rules, the host is allowed a single veto each season. This is important. It’s almost always used to throw an appeal in their favor on the tenth or deeper floors. It has never been used this early. And Borant was forced to use their free veto on the prize decision, which reversed the ruling. So, unfortunately for you guys, you won’t be receiving what you should. Still, everybody saw what happened. Everybody saw what you were rewarded. Sadly, you won’t be getting it.”
“What?” Donut said. “I don’t understand. What are we not getting?”
“Okay, first let’s watch what really happened after Katia pressed that button.”
The screen changed to a view of a news-like program I’d never seen before. It was a news desk setup, similar to the recap show, but with an alien-like Soother host.
The Soother spoke with the practiced ease of a seasoned newscaster. “And while the tragic, controversial tale of Remex the Grand finally comes to an end, a new controversy has erupted in Borant’s Dungeon Crawler World. A last-minute decision by a trio of trapped crawlers ended in an unexpected result. A result with potentially disastrous, real-life consequences for Borant. Watch this.”
I bristled at the newscaster’s use of “real-life.” The screen showed Katia pressing the button. The scene switched to the view of the warehouse, and of the pus detonating. Multiple Swordsmen guards, all with their health in the very deep red, tumbled to the ground. The view switched to the second floor, to the pitiful, curled up form of Remex hiding in the corner. He’d become nothing but a silhouette of pulsing yellow. In the two seconds before that final explosion, the light disappeared. He cried out in pain just as he was overwhelmed with the blast from the dynamite.
The newscaster continued. “A controlled blast at the last second, which caused a mass soul crystal release from the fallen swordsmen, greatly tempered the resulting wild magic explosion, causing it to be much less destructive than originally intended. In the end, thousands of NPCs and several dozen crawler lives were potentially saved by the action.”
I groaned. “Does that mean we didn’t have to go down the stairs?”
“Nope,” Odette said. She waved her hand, and the screen paused. She looked at us, feigning sympathy. “Do you know how many Celestial prize boxes have been given out in the history of Dungeon Crawler World?”
Donut leaped to her feet. Mongo also jumped up, tail waving in excitement.
“Oh my god, shut up, Odette,” Donut said, eyes huge. “Are you saying we’re getting screwed out of a Celestial box?” She turned to the audience. “This is an outrage!”
Odette nodded. “The answer is 2,145. That’s how many Celestial boxes of any kind have been given out. I myself was the recipient of three. The record to a single crawler is four. And before this crawl, the most that have ever been given out in a single season is 18. That was a naga season, long, long ago. You might not be aware of this, but the host company is required to pay taxes to the Syndicate on each and every non-sponsored box given out. They are given a handful of free Celestials each season, but anything above that comes with a pretty hefty bill for the showrunners. And each one is more expensive than the last. That’s usually offset by a million other line items that flow into the production. For example, we pay an exorbitant amount to get your butts in that chair.”
“As you should,” Donut said, her voice still filled with anger. The audience laughed.
“It has been over 250 cycles since the Blood Sultanate of the Naga ran the first Crawl to actually lose money, and they are still recovering from it. They haven’t run a season since then. They only have a place in Faction Wars because they purchased a permanent spot early on.”
“For just 18 boxes?” I said. “That seems over the top.”
“That season was cursed for multiple reasons, but we don’t need to get into that. Anyway, the game is supposed to be difficult. Legendary boxes are handed out like candy because they’re cheap, but Celestial boxes are an order of magnitude better. The prize in a single box can render an underperforming crawler almost immortal, practically unbeatable until they reach the tenth floor. If they capriciously hand them out, more crawlers will make it to the deeper levels, and the showrunners can drag the season out and earn much more money. So the Syndicate places a heavy premium on such items. And while the AI usually chooses the prizes, the writers running the show are responsible for creating the circumstances in which the boxes are earned. It’s a careful balance.”
I was trying really hard not to break the golden rule, which was Thou shalt not talk shit about Borant. I was finding it very difficult.
“It’s just three boxes,” Donut grumbled. “I don’t see why they had to waste their stupid veto on keeping me, Carl, and Katia from getting an awesome prize.”
Odette cocked her head to the side. “Maybe I should show you the rest of that news report.” She waved her hand, and the frozen scene resumed. It now showed an Asian, half-elf crawler dragging himself into a saferoom after obviously surviving the magical blast that had been meant to kill him. He appeared gravely injured, likely from his own equipment turning on him. The show labeled him as the level 15 crawler Quan Ch, a class called an Imperial Security Trooper. This was the same guy who’d called us assholes in the chat.
“He survived,” Donut said. “I’m glad. I felt kind of bad about what I did.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, I blocked him from the chat after he called us assholes,” said Donut. “You can’t let people in your chatrooms get out of control, Carl. You need to rule with an iron paw.”
The newscast continued as I looked incredulously at Donut. “As a result of surviving the event quest, all crawlers in the initial blast zone were promised a Platinum Quest Box. But as you’re about to see, the survivors received something a little better than that.”