I was afraid Donut was going to protest, but she didn’t.
We moved to the corner of the room. I pulled the “Rev-Up Smoothies! Invigorating!” banner off the wall. It was made of a cotton-like cloth. I put it in my inventory as I moved to investigate the two stationary bicycles.
A pully ran from the tire to a small, flat platform welded onto the front of the bike. A little, black, segmented wheel, no bigger than a half-dollar coin sat in the middle of the platform. Weird.
I noticed a pair of dust-covered, wooden boxes tucked away in the corner. I picked one up, and the top slid off. I examined the contents. It was filled with empty, clinking glass containers with screw-on lids. The box held twelve of them. Also shoved into the box was another, similar black lid with little blades on it.
I examined the little lid using the tooltips.
“Oh,” I said. “I see. It’s a blender. A bicycle-powered blender. It looks like it hasn’t been used at all.” I pulled one of the glass tubes out and unscrewed the cover. I could screw the bladed cover onto the glass and pop the whole thing onto the platform. If I turned the pedals on the small bike, it’d turn the blades, supposedly blending whatever was in the glass. Then I could flip it over, remove the bladed cover and replace it with the original top, leaving me with a glass bottle of whatever I decided to blend.
Like a smoothie.
We had something similar, though not bicycle-powered, in our apartment.
I peeked in the second box, and this one only held six glasses instead of twelve. The bladed part of the blender was missing. A sheet of paper sat in the box, and I pulled it free.
Rev-Up Immunity Smoothie Recipe.
“Holy crap,” I said. The recipe only required two items. “No wonder they discontinued this. Gross.”
“What, what?” Donut asked.
“This is all game setup,” I said as I started putting all the items into my inventory. One of the bikes was bolted to the ground, but the second wasn’t. I picked it up and pulled it in. “You’re supposed to find this and make the recipe. If you make the smoothie, you’ll have immunity from the Taint debuff and something called the Vigorous Measles. And then you’ll have the proper protection to fight the boss.” I swallowed. “It’s really gross, though. I don’t want to go in there. I think we should just take these…”
I never finished the sentence.
The door to the boss room blasted open. A pair of pink tentacles, each at least fifteen feet long, reached out, swaying into the room. A terrible, ear-splitting screech filled the air, followed by a second screech. Then a third and a fourth.
Each octopus-like tentacle was covered with mouths. Dozens of them. Each mouth was wide, big around as a frisbee, but human-shaped with bright, red, human lips. There were no eyes or other facial features. Just a cacophony of screaming voices, saying nothing. Just screaming.
Familiar music started to play, barely discernable under the constant shrieks.
At the far end of the chamber where we’d walked in, bars dropped down, locking up the room.
“What the hell?” I cried, backing against the wall. “This isn’t a boss chamber!”
A new achievement appeared, and it announced itself before I could wave it into the folder.
New Achievement! Wait, Bosses Can Leave Their Rooms?
Welcome to the second floor, bitches.
Reward: This shit plays great on the recap episode. If you scream loud enough, maybe you’ll make the show.
34
Krakaren Clone!
Level 10 Neighborhood Boss!
First off, this isn’t the Krakaren. This is a Krakaren. For every one that is killed, Krakaren Prime births two more.
Part of a collective mind intent upon destroying any semblance of scientific progress in the universe, the Krakaren is the only communal brain entity in the galaxy who actually gets stupider as time moves on. Consisting of multiple, shrieking tentacles, members of the Krakaren cooperative spend their days birthing their disease-laden minions, creating and selling harmful products, attempting to debate scientific experts, and proselytizing to the weak-minded, all in an attempt to… Well, nobody knows what the hell their end goal is.
Even Eris, Goddess of Chaos, doesn’t want anything to do with these crazy assholes.
The moment the description ended, a portion of wall above the door broke open, and a third tentacle burst into the room from the next chamber over, swinging blindly about.
“Carl, Carl, what are we going to do?” Donut cried, pushing herself into the corner. “It’s huge!”
The first two tentacles retracted, and a pair of clurichaun consultants came out of the door, looking wildly about.
“Shit,” I said. “Keep them away! I need to make a goddamned smoothie!”
“What about the tentacles?” Donut cried.
I eyed the tentacle sweeping about the ceiling of the room. It kept smashing into the pipe that led to the tub of moonshine.
“Don’t attack the boss yet. I don’t think it can see. Focus on those guys.” I pulled a glass smoothie container into my right hand. I pulled a jug of unaltered moonshine from my inventory into my left. Donut leaped onto my shoulder and shot a pair of magic missiles, nailing both of the clurichauns, who dropped dead at the doorway. A third hesitantly peeked out, looking for us. Donut got him right in the head, and he also collapsed.
I pulled the cork with my teeth, and I filled the smoothie container a third of the way with the moonshine. Thankfully it had a little line on the glass. I didn’t know how exact this had to be.
Directly above us, the cinderblock wall broke apart, showering us with rock. A tentacle burst forth, screaming. It scrabbled, swinging at nothing, swaying just feet over our heads.
Above, the mouths dripped with goo. I jumped out of the way as snot splashed near me. Moonshine sloshed out of the glass, and I had to pour a little more in.
Jesus fuck. I tossed the jug toward the entrance, and it shattered, splashing moonshine. A moment later, another tentacle once again burst from the door hole, sending the three dead clurichaun flying.
I pulled the corpse of the laminak from my inventory. I held the limp, naked, wingless body in my hand. It was still warm. Her little, dead eyes stared up in her final shock at having been snatched out of the air by Donut. The sensation was odd, like holding an anatomically-correct doll of a pudgy, middle-aged woman. I didn’t have time to think about it.
I shoved her, headfirst, into the glass container. Her shoulders were a little too wide to fit, so I had to push. The shoulders cracked, and I used my finger to ram her all the way in there, like trying to stuff a Cornish game hen into a thermos. I produced the blender top with the blades, and I had to push hard to get it to screw into place.
“Carl, what in god’s name are you doing?”
“It’s the recipe,” I cried. I screwed the container onto the blender platform. It attached with a click. I sat atop the much-too-small bicycle, my knees as high as my chest. I prayed the bike wouldn’t break. I prayed my spiked kneepads wouldn’t activate, impaling my own chin.
I recited the recipe out loud. “You fill a third of the glass container with moonshine, add one corpse of a laminak fairy, blend until pink, drink warm or chilled. Each smoothie contains ten doses.”
“If you think I’m going to drink that…”
Across the room, yet another tentacle appeared, this one on the ground. The next tentacle to break through would be right here. I spun my legs. The bike protested at first, but it quickly gained steam, spinning like a regular blender. Within the little glass container, the dead fairy stared back at me, spinning until she was sucked away, the concoction first green, then red, and then pink. After a moment, it started to sparkle.