“Are you serious?”
Mordecai nodded. “Oh, I’m serious. The last dungeon Borant managed didn’t have rest areas, and the crawlers were pissing and crapping all over the place. Crawlers lose viewers when they’re shitting in the middle of a hallway. It’s gross.”
“And what does Borant get out of this?”
Mordecai’s demeanor changed. It was a subtle thing, but he stiffened slightly. His voice took on an oddly formal tone.
“In addition to the mining income we already discussed, the Borant Corporation receives advertising dollars, a stipend from the Syndicate government, and a commission on every credit spent by patrons.” He waited a moment, a long moment, before adding, “Also, it should be noted that every time a crawler mentions the name of either the interstellar government or the organization sponsoring the current crawl, the system AI will record the interaction for review. If it is found a crawler is disparaging either of these two entities, especially while on-camera with live viewers, the crawler’s experience may be ‘accelerated.’”
I nodded. “Got it.” I had no doubt that “accelerated” meant nothing good.
We spent the next several minutes going over a few other menu items. I had a health menu like in other games. Overall health was a single green bar, but in the menu, it was a more extensive pie chart. It indicated any active conditions and debuffs plus I could drill down to specific areas. Healing was sped up in the dungeon. I had recently been cured of several issues I didn’t even know I had, like abrasions at the bottom of my feet and on my hands, frostbite, and the start of an infection from when Donut had bit me. Health ticked up on its own slowly based on my constitution level.
Also, if I went down a set of stairs to the next floor, my health points would instantly fill all the way up on their own. Another way to heal myself was via spells, potions, and scrolls. But there was no respawning.
Dead was dead.
After that was my skills menu. This section just went on and on and on. There seemed to be an infinite number of pages. If I didn’t have the skill, I couldn’t read what it said. It was still listed there, but the words were blurred out. Literally hundreds of pages would scroll by before I saw anything. Mordecai had me change the view to skills I did have, and that list was just as long. I had things like Breathing: 3. Walking: 4. Operating a Sony Brand RMVLZ620 Universal Remote Controclass="underline" 1. The list just never ended. He had me uncheck a box, and most of those skills disappeared. What was left was still several pages long. Then another check, and anything with a skill of one or two disappeared. What was left was things like Unarmed Combat: 3, Basic Electrical Repair: 6, Swimming: 4. Nothing was over five other than Electrical Repair. Most everything was three.
“This is a good start,” Mordecai said. “I’m impressed, kid. You’re proficient with several earth weapons, all firearms. But since you didn’t bring any, you’ll want to train with some of the dungeon-based weapons. We’ll see if you have anything good in any of the boxes when we get to it.”
“And you’ll train me how to use them?”
“Nope,” Mordecai said. “Not my job. There are guildhalls scattered around that’ll help you level up the skills—especially magic ones. But the best way is always to practice.”
“Is there a store?” I asked. “The AI thing said something about a store.”
“That’s when you reach the third floor,” Mordecai said. “There’s a structure to the third floor, and random stores will start populating the map after that. You can also trade with other crawlers or friendly mobs, if you can find any. Mobs on the second floor will start dropping gold.”
Next was the magic menu, which was complicated as shit. It was also one of the most surreal parts of this adventure so far. I was given a simple healing spell and a pool of mana points which appeared in my top right underneath the health bar. Because my intelligence was only three, I only had three magic points. The healing spell cost two. Magic points naturally refilled about one every hour.
I had a hotlist of ten spaces along the bottom of my screen, and there I could add potions or spells or other special items. Mordecai had me place the healing spell in spot number one. I could mentally click it to cast it. The spell was only a level one basic healing spell, and it would heal about 20% of my health.
He made me try it, even though my health was already at the top. I cast the spell, and my whole body glowed red, my magic bar went down by 2/3s, and nothing else happened.
“If you were injured or sick, you’d feel much better after that,” Mordecai said.
A voice boomed, interrupting the tutorial. This was yet another speaker. Not the game show host that usually spoke, but a distinctly female voice. She spoke almost casually, like a manager addressing a store filled with employees just before they opened for business.
Hello, Crawlers! The dungeon is now sealed. We have a diverse group joining us this season, and we are very happy to have you here. We had just under 13 million human crawlers make it through the gates and into the dungeon. We are already down to under 10 million. A quick note, the entrances to the second floor will not open up until the introductory episode of Dungeon Crawler World tunnels, which will be in approximately 30 of your hours. Once that happens, the entrances to the second level will populate. There will be no lag time for the appearance of additional levels. On behalf of the Borant Corporation I wanted to thank you for volunteering, and I wish you all good luck and a happy crawl.
Ten million people. It was more than I expected. But still, three million additional people dead in a matter of minutes. The number was so huge, it lost meaning.
The announcement made me think of the way the dungeon was set up. The 5-day countdown timer continued to tick away.
“Do we get five days before they destroy each floor?”
Mordecai shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s usually more each floor down. Later on, it’ll depend on a lot of factors, such as ratings, how many crawlers are left, etcetera. But they usually add about five days each time. So you’ll probably have ten days for the second floor and then fifteen for the third. The countdown doesn’t start until the previous floor collapses.”
“How hard is it to find the staircases?”
“It can be tricky. It’s not too difficult for the first few levels, but you’ll want to focus on finding items or skills that’ll help you find the next entrance down. This first floor is huge, as you can imagine. It’s almost the size of the surface of your planet. They won’t tell you this, but it’s not all connected. It’s not like you can wander about and run into someone from China. That’ll change once you hit the third floor. You’ll see if you survive that long. Starting on the fourth floor, each level will have a random theme and will encompass significantly less area. Entrances will stop populating in random places. They’ll be guarded. You’ll have to complete quests or defeat bosses to get to them. I had barely made it to floor 11. And when I saw what guarded the entrances to level 12… I knew it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“What was it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’ll be different here. It’s different every time.”
From there we resumed the tutorial. We went over the Party menu. If I had been accompanied by a group of people, we could manage our party in this menu. Party members shared experience and were able to access a group chat feature. Anyone who entered the dungeon at the same time as anyone else was automatically grouped together, and as a result, I had a party of two. Me and Donut.
The cat continued to lounge in front of the fire. It appeared she’d fallen asleep.
“So, my cat,” I said. “The system has given her a crawler name and designator. Does that mean she’s getting all these special achievements and loot boxes too?”