“Goddamnit,” I muttered as I examined them.
Enchanted BigBoi Boxers.
Have you ever read an Incredible Hulk comic and thought to yourself, everything rips off of his body except his pants? No way. Well, spoiler alert. You’re not wrong. Size-altering and were-creatures, such as the BigBoi are required to wear enchanted, self-sizing items lest they wish to turn the dungeon into a nudist colony when they transform. That means everything they wear requires an enchantment. Everything, including their naughty little undies.
+ 2 to Constitution
Wearer may cast a level 15 Protective Shell once every 30 hours.
“Don’t look,” I said, and I pulled my scorched and threadbare boxers off and slipped the new ones on. The old ones fell apart in my hands. The first thing I did was open the spell menu, find Protective Shell, and move it to my hotlist.
Protective Shell
Picture yourself in high school. Now picture all the girls who would never get anywhere near you. It’s kind of like that, but on purpose.
Cost: This is an item-based spell. This spell does not require mana to cast. If you unequip the associated item, you will lose access to this spell. The cooldown will not reset.
Target: a 3-meter radius sphere centered around the right hand of caster + 50 centimeters of radius per level of Intelligence. (Current radius: 4.5 meters)
Duration: 5 seconds + 1 second per level of spell. (Current Duration: 20 seconds.) Requires 30-hour cooldown.
A favorite of frontline tanks and castle guards, the expensive and rare Protective Shell spell shields the caster and anyone within the sphere from a mob’s physical presence or physical attacks. This spell does not protect against magic or against non-corporeal entities. Unlike the more popular Shield spell, this spell does not move with you. This spell’s area of effect remains static once cast, unimpeded by your physical surroundings. So if you use this spell only when you really, really need it, you’re probably only delaying the inevitable by a few seconds.
“I had that spell during my crawl,” Mordecai said. “It saved me more than once. It has a fantastic secondary effect. Since the spell doesn’t move once cast, you can...”
Warning: You may not wield your weapons while in the presence of Admins. Any attempted violence against an Admin will result in your immediate execution.
The stern message came out of nowhere, and it was spoken in a different voice than any one I’d heard before. Like with the boss battles, it wasn’t voiced in my head, but over an unseen loudspeaker.
Donut immediately jumped to my shoulder.
There was a loud pop, and a new creature appeared in the room, standing in a puddle right in front of me.
A kua-tin.
36
All of my menus disappeared. My entire HUD snapped off. It was just like it had been when we’d been transported up to the production boat floating on the surface.
I just stared at the person, uncomprehending for several seconds. Are you kidding me with this shit?
It was a kua-tin. A female kua-tin. An actual representative from the Borant Corporation. I remembered the massive carving of the fish creature on the doors, and I compared it to this beast. Before, I’d seen similar sea creatures in the audience at the taping of Odette’s show. I now knew that those were not kua-tin. Those people were very different. And while the gigantic relief carvings on the doors did an adequate job portraying the aquatic race’s features, it left one important detail out.
This kua-tin stood about two feet tall. She was barely tall enough to reach my knee. I examined the woman’s properties.
Zev – Borant Corporation Assistant Communications Representative.
This is a Dungeon Admin.
That was it. No additional information, no snarky AI talking about mudskippers.
It took me several moments to take in her outfit.
Zev looked like an astronaut from a 1950s sci-fi comic. She wore a round, glass helmet filled with water. A pair of tubes snaked from the back of the helmet to a bulky backpack. The water bubbled like she was in a portable fish tank. The rest of her humanoid fish body was hidden inside of a white, mesh spacesuit. The whole getup was half space-age, half old-school deep diving suit.
“Good evening, ma’am,” Mordecai said, standing straight.
“Hello, Mordecai,” the fish woman said, her voice amplified through a little speaker on her outfit. “It’s nice to finally meet you face-to-face.”
There was something about the woman that suddenly made Mordecai visibly relax, but I couldn’t tell what it was. There might have been an exchange I couldn’t hear. I just didn’t know. Even Donut seemed to notice. The cat kept looking back and forth between the tiny fish and the large guildmaster.
“Ma’am, I must say. I haven’t seen one of these water suits in centuries,” Mordecai said, walking around the woman. “Most kua-tin wear rebreathers around their necks. You can barely see them.”
“I’ve been assured the armor of this device is second to none. If one of my fellow employees wishes to enter this godsforsaken place without any proper armor, then that is on them.”
“Ma’am, I don’t want to sound rude. But can you move in that thing?” Mordecai asked.
“No,” she admitted. “Not really. If you must know, this is my first foray into a dungeon, and I wanted to be safe.”
“So you’re really here,” I said. I resisted the urge to reach down and tap on the glass.
“Yes,” she said, looking up at me. “Other corporations may utilize holos for their training guilds and admins, but Borant prefers a more fins-on approach.”
“You know you’re in no danger while you’re in a safe room,” Mordecai said. “The mobs know not to attack you. And the AI negates all attacks inside of safe areas. Unless you’re planning on going for a stroll, ma’am, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, well tell that to those twelve workers in Site Prep. Did you see this morning’s update? They were swallowed whole! Or that human admin who didn’t realize the no-urinating-in-the-dungeon rule applied to everyone. They said all that was left was splatter on the floor.”
I had no idea what was going on with this exchange, but Zev seemed to realize she was talking in front of a pair of crawlers. She returned her gaze up at us.
“Anyway, I wanted to do a meet and greet with you two,” Zev said. “This will only take a quick crutch of your time.”
“I don’t know what that means, but go ahead,” I said.
“My name is Zev, and I work within the Borant Corporation’s communications department. I am a liaison between Borant and privately-owned and operated programs who wish to ren… borrow crawlers for their shows. We have identified several individuals and teams who have gained early popularity. As is probably no surprise to you, you two are on that list.”
On my shoulder, I felt Donut’s claws sink deep into me. The cat was shuddering with pleasure.
“We’ve already been on one show,” I said. “Dungeon Crawler After Hours with Odette.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am aware. Certain production companies are allowed to pluck crawlers away between stairwells. But if they want to transport crawlers to their sets at any other time, after boss battles for example, they must arrange it through our office. Usually these requests are granted automatically, but once crawlers reach a certain level of notoriety, the number of requests can become a bit overwhelming. We generally don’t want our crawlers to leave the game more than twice a floor. As you’ve already received over two dozen interview requests from this most recent boss battle alone, you have automatically been entered into the Crawler Assisted Outreach Program. In other words, you’ve been assigned a PR Agent. Me.”