She was right. The coal had ignited, and now our only way into the boss chamber was blocked off.
I was relieved. I wanted that map, but not as much as I didn’t want to go in there. I didn’t want to see the dead babies and other goblins. I felt sick thinking about it.
I noticed the line of white dots on the edge of my minimap headed in our direction. The dots wouldn’t be white for long. Donut’s charisma had ticked up to 39 once she hit level eight, but I doubted even that would be enough to save us once they saw what we’d done.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. I plotted out a quick escape, leading us into unknown territory. We’d have to fight through a quadrant we hadn’t explored yet before we could get to another artery. Hopefully it wasn’t filled with slimes or some other mob I couldn’t handle. Maybe there’d be a safe room to rest in, to sit back and figure out all of these new achievements. From there we’d take the chopper and try to find a set of stairs.
“I must admit,” Donut said as we jogged away. “I do like it when you blow stuff up. I like it a lot.”
19
Time to Level Collapse: Two days and 18 hours.
New achievement! You Monster!
You have killed an infant! An infant!
Okay, okay. Unless you’re a complete psychopath, we know you probably didn’t wake up this morning and tell yourself, “Today is the day I’m going to slaughter a child.” Well let us put your mind at ease. All children mobs who die within this dungeon don’t actually perish. They’re transferred to a holding area where they’re safe and treated nicely and gently until they can be reunited with their loving parents at the end of the season.
Feel better? Good.
Reward: These past twenty seconds, when your conscience started to ease? That was your reward. It was also a lie. That baby is dead, and it’s dead because of you. You’re totally going to hell.
You’ve also received a Bronze Asshole’s Box.
New achievement! War Criminal.
You have killed more than 20 non-combatants in a single attack!
Question: What’s the only thing standing between an innocent child and a happy, fulfilling life?
Answer: You. The answer is you.
Reward: You’ve received a Gold Asshole’s Box!
We’d found a safe room halfway through the neighborhood of the rot stickers. The monsters were small and round. They looked like little, black-hued raviolis that ran on the walls and ceilings and suicide bombed themselves against you. All the ones we’d seen so far were only level one and two, but if they managed to stick themselves to your body, they’d explode. Each blast felt like getting hit with a sledgehammer.
The attacks also inflicted Take Down, an effect that was supposed to knock you on your ass. Once you hit the ground, I guessed, they’d swarm at your head and take you out. The little monsters were everywhere. Thankfully my troll skin shirt negated the Take Down effect.
Donut remained on my shoulder, shooting missiles at the creatures. A single blast took out several at a time. So far none had managed to get to her. She was quick that way. Despite all that happened, she was still a cat, able to jump out of the way at the last second. But just in case, I made her drink one of my Iron Skin potions, which upped her natural armor for several minutes. I drank one as well.
The rot stickers usually focused on me anyway, the bigger and slower target. One landed directly on my inner thigh and detonated before I could get it, the effect equivalent to being kicked in the nads by a horse. I did fall down that time. If I hadn’t quaffed the potion, my leg and balls might’ve been blown clear off. I was only saved because of a well-timed missile blast from Donut.
Thankfully the raviolis made a loud, chittering noise when they approached, and it took them about three seconds to detonate once they attached to your body. Once we figured out how they worked, it was easy to smash and crush them before they did too much damage. As long as we didn’t get surrounded by a giant group of them, we’d probably be okay.
This safe room was nothing like the last one we’d entered. This was more like a small waiting area at a dingy bus station or maybe a DMV somewhere. We still had the three screens and the larger bathrooms with showers. Plus a water fountain. A set of five cots with curtains around them lined one long wall. Two empty, curtained areas appeared at the end of the row, and I wondered on that. Had they run out of cots? Or were they privacy areas for those who didn’t want a cot? There was no attendant, so I couldn’t ask.
My eyes immediately moved to the number flashing on the first screen.
3,594,517.
It had slowed its mad descent toward human extinction, but it hadn’t stopped. It made a low, barely audible noise every time it went down. Clink. Clink. Clink, clink, clink, like water fast-dripping from a faucet.
I wondered how many of my fellow people had found a place like this and had given up. They were just hunkering down, eating, sleeping, waiting for it all to end. I shuddered.
The third screen read Limited services at this location. Take an experience cookie. One per Crawler per day. You deserve it.
There was a plate on a table filled with what looked like chocolate chip cookies. Donut jumped up on the counter and picked it up with her mouth. She ate. A +9.8 EXP appeared in the air over her head, rising into the air with an audible ping, 8-bit style. Being partied with her, I received the other .2 experience. She complained about me “stealing” her experience, and she tried to take a second cookie, but her mouth moved right through the plate like it wasn’t even there.
I also ate one of the stale cookies, evening it out.
The 10 experience points were nothing. A single, level two goblin was worth about 50, so this was mostly just a peculiarity of this specific safe room. It seemed every one of these rooms had something different and unique about it, and the weird cookies were this location’s quirk.
Looking at the map, I guessed we had about half a mile to go before we reached the next artery. From there we would pull the chopper out of my inventory and head east in search of a set of stairs.
But first, rest.
We had about six hours before the next episode. We decided to take the opportunity to sleep. Afterward, we would watch episode two, and then we would leave. No more fucking around. We had two and half days.
In addition to the two baby-killing achievements, I received several more including multiple explosive-based achievements, rewarding me with several goblin boxes. We both got another bronze Boss Box. I also got a gold Looter Box for storing more than a ton of weight in my inventory.
I received multiple skill upgrades. All of my combat skills had ticked up thanks to the rot stickers, including my Smush skill. My Explosives Handling, Dangerous Explosives Handling, and Goblin Explosives skills rose to 5. I also received a new one:
IED Skill Level 3.
It’s one thing to take a grenade and toss it. But it takes a set of brass balls the size of basilisk eggs to actually build a bomb. Especially with the unreliable crap you find down here. Every level of this skill increases the damage yield of improvised explosive devices by 10% and decreases the chances of a catastrophic, premature uh-oh by half.
In addition, I received a popup that told me because my Explosives Handling skill was now five, I would receive additional information from all bomb-type devices when I examined them.