Warning: You’ve been infected with the Taint.
“Fuck.”
A blinking, five-minute timer appeared. In a panic, I pulled up my health screen to see what that was.
The Taint.
Having the Taint is like having the giggles. Or like having the time of your life. But instead of it being a good thing, you are balancing on the precipice of death. You may not heal your health using any method while you are inflicted with the Taint.
Receiving the debuff scared the ever-loving crap out of me. I could deal with poison and several other attacks thanks to my armor, but we had no protection against this type of assault. Our heal spells, potions, and scrolls didn’t help. We needed something to ward off stuff like this. In those five seconds before I could read the description, I was genuinely scared I had received something that was going to kill me.
On its own, the debuff wasn’t a big deal. I simply had to wait it out. I suspected it was part of a one/two punch. They first inflicted you with the taint, then they hit you with something else that seeped your health away. If that was the case, it didn’t matter if these guys were only level three. They were dangerous.
“We’re not fucking around with these guys anymore,” I said. “Let me think a minute.”
We’d collected 25 jugs of the moonshine. Donut gave me one, and I examined the large, clay container.
Rev-Up Toilet-Grade Moonshine
Type: Accelerant.
Effect: Highly flammable liquid. Explosive fumes.
Status: Will not activate until introduced to flame.
At 180 proof, this moonshine will take the hair off your chest and then put it back on. The Rev-Up version is distilled using two types of sugars: the slime trails left behind by the passage of the Brindle Grub, and a secretive, proprietary source. Created exclusively on the dungeon’s second floor by the Rev-Up company, jugs of this concoction are highly sought after by the drinking establishments that populate the third, sixth, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth, and eighteenth floors. Drinking a swig (defined as 1.5 ounces) of this “potion” will immediately cause you to gain the Shit-Faced debuff, has a 50% chance to render you Blind for a period of 30 hours, a 5% chance to immediately kill you, and a 45% chance to permanently raise a random stat by two points.
“It does say they’re valuable,” Donut said. “Do you think we can really sell them if we don’t become consultants?”
“That’s what it sounds like,” I said. “Other than that tiara of yours, this is the first time we’ve really seen anything that clues us in about the deeper floors.”
Donut indicated the tattoo of the dagger on my neck. “The Desperado Club,” she said. “Maybe it’ll be on the next floor. I bet they’ll buy them all from us because we’re members of the club! We’ll be rich!”
“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see if we have any jugs left when we’re done.”
“What do you mean?” Donut asked. “What are we doing with them?”
I grinned. “I don’t suppose you have any extra torches?”
Carl’s Jug O’ Boom
Type: Incendiary Tossable
Effect: When lit and tossed, results in a small explosion, followed by burning splash damage over a wide area. Flames will burn for 15 seconds per level of attacker’s level of Incendiary Device Handling.
Status: Inert until torch is activated.
Created by an unstable, pantsless man who talks to a cat, Carl’s Jug O’ Boom takes the bigger-is-better approach when it comes to hobgoblin fire bottles. Burns hotter, bigger, and faster than your normal Molotov Cocktail. The use of a standard torch instead of a cloth wick makes these devices much more stable. Just don’t drop it once it’s lit, lest you find yourself doing a Joan of Arc impersonation.
I received a host of achievements after I finished the bottle. I read the description again and sighed.
“Carl, look, they named it after you!”
“Yeah, Donut. I see that,” I said.
“Do you think everybody will see it like that?”
“I don’t know. I hope not,” I said.
My Incendiary Device Handling skill had jumped up to five immediately upon the construction of the “device.” All I had done was open up the jug, pour a splash or two out until it was about 3/4's full, added a couple ounces of goblin oil from my inventory, and then stuck a torch in the hole. The short, tapered torch fit perfectly into the mouth of the jug, sealing it like a cork. It was almost like it had been made for it.
We tested one just to see if it would actually work. The clay moonshine jugs seemed pretty solid, and I was afraid they wouldn’t break. The bottles had “Rev-Up” written on the side of them.
The cool thing about torches was that I could just look at them and mentally select Activate, and they would start burning. No lighter required.
I lit the torch, grasped the jug by the little round handle, and tossed it high in the air, arcing it toward a group of three, dead clurichauns.
Whoosh! The jug shattered easily. The explosion itself was insignificant, but the angry flames splashed like water over a wide area, crackling and hissing angrily, glowing blue. We had to step back.
“Wow!” Donut cried, hopping up and down. “Would you look at that!”
The flames reached the ceiling, and we had to step further out of the room due to the heat. When it finally died out a minute and fifteen seconds later, all that remained in the room was blackened, crumbly husks of bodies and ash.
“Well, that’s pretty damn cool,” I said.
We sat down and made ten more of the devices. After the fire, the room smelled oddly of whiskey and toast. Most of the jugs were already about 3/4's full, which was good. I didn’t have to waste any of the moonshine.
Out of curiosity, I examined the jugs in my inventory and compared their value to my other explosive devices. The jugs were pretty high on the list, just above the smoke bombs.
The full, unaltered jugs of moonshine were more valuable, however. In fact, they were near the top of my list, just above the Engineer’s Table I still had, the only intact table I had left after our construction of the redoubt.
These things were much less dangerous—to me at least—than the sticks of goblin dynamite. But they were a little too good. We lost the ability to loot the corpses when they burned away, meaning we lost our ability to get more jugs. We moved toward the staircase. We decided to incinerate every other room, which would keep our jug supply stable. We continued our pattern of Donut raising the dead and me practicing with the slingshot which slowed our progress but gave us some much-needed training. My slingshot skill remained constant. However, I received a few other skills, including Aiming and Steady Hand. Donut’s skill in Second Chance ticked up to level four.
We finally came across a new type of mob just outside of the boss room, which was thankfully separate from the stairwell. This room was big, and like the goblin workshop, filled with dozens of the little assholes. There wasn’t any sort of giant machinery, but a tube ran along the ceiling from the far boss chamber to the center of the room, curving down into what looked like a filthy, aluminum bathtub. There were piles of the bottles, both empty and full in the room. The snot-covered level threes were taking the jugs and tipping them into the tub to fill them up. At the far end of the room was a doorway guarded by a pair of small, floating creatures. These weren’t clurichauns, but small, fat fairies who buzzed about with a pair of hummingbird wings. They looked like miniature, winged soccer moms. I peered around the corner and examined their properties.