“Jesus,” I said.
“Listen carefully,” Mordecai said, looking nervously down at Zev. “We don’t have time to get into the details, but Borant is being forced by their own government to end the game as quickly as possible. You need to be especially careful not to upset them.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, alarm rising. “I thought they started it early to stave off a bankruptcy seizure action or whatever. That’s what Odette implied. Wouldn’t they want to keep it running as long as possible?”
He nodded. “That’s what everyone thought at first. They’re doing a cash grab with the new patron system, but they don’t get that money, or any money, from the advertising or the tourism funds or elite monster sponsorship or anything else until the season is over. They need that cash as soon as possible. But they also first need to raise enough. Their whole system is balancing on a wire. They need the game to be entertaining and profitable, but they also need it to finish much more quickly than usual. The committee has already issued a warning, putting Borant on notice over the ‘bugs’ that keep occurring, like the issue with the bathrooms and the overpowered mobs. One too many violations, and Borant could lose everything. There are protections in place, plus there is push-back within the company itself. But the kua-tin government is working extra hard to get you killed.”
“That’s just wonderful,” I said. Zev looked up at me, as if surprised I was still in the room. Mordecai saw this and took a few steps away.
“I think it’s time for us to get back out there,” I said to Donut. “We need to finish clearing this quadrant out, and then we need to escort team Meadow Lark to the stairs. I want to get it done before the next recap episode.”
“We will talk more later,” Donut said to Zev.
“Or, we can talk over chat!” Zev said. The fish’s demeanor had completely changed. “Tell me you’ve watched Riverdale.”
Donut gasped.
“Nope,” I said, reaching down to scoop the cat up. “You two will talk all night.”
“Wait one crutch. I have to leave before you can,” Zev said as I put my hand on the door handle to the dungeon. “It’s the rules. I’ll ping you regarding the next interview.” And without further fanfare, she disappeared with a pop. Water splashed over my feet as she disappeared.
“There’s more I want to discuss,” I said to Mordecai. All of our menus snapped back on, the HUD flickering like a booting-up computer. I pulled at the door. “But it is getting late. We’ll be...” I trailed off as I glanced at the minimap. Why had the map changed color?
The door opened all the way, and a waist-high pile of grubs fell into the room.
37
Mordecai shrieked in rage. “Out! Out of my room!” He kicked at the monsters, punting them like oversized footballs out into the hallway.
“Gah,” I cried, jumping back. “Why aren’t they teleporting away?”
“They won’t until they attack,” he said. “Not on their own, at least.” He was scooping them up by the armfuls, tossing them back out into the hall. But it was useless. For every two he tossed out, four more got in. Eventually he gave up and slammed the door, trapping several dozen in the room. He waved his hand, and they all disappeared. He wiped his hands on his fur. “There.”
There were hundreds of them in the hallway. Thousands of them. I just stared, dumbfounded. They kept coming and coming.
They’re following us, I realized. Where the hell were they coming from, though? Up until now, it had seemed all the dungeon’s monsters were pre-seeded. Once we killed all the monsters in an area, that was it. The area was safe. These guys were being spawned somewhere nearby. They had to be.
I leaned against the door and zoomed out the map to view the whole neighborhood. Thousands more of them were crawling their way toward us. They seemed to be coming from the south, from a direction we hadn’t yet explored. The hallway with the stairs wasn’t yet infested. But it would be soon.
“What the hell is this?” I asked Mordecai.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, not on the second floor,” Mordecai said. His eyes had gone glossy, which I recognized as him searching through his special menu. “Yup, as I suspected.” He looked at me, his shaggy face looking grim. “They’re being spawned.”
“Yeah, no shit,” I said.
“Every floor has a waste disposal system,” he continued. “So far you’ve seen rats and the grubs. The more dead bodies they eat, the stronger they get. It’ll be something different the next floor down. They’re supposed to home in on corpses, but if none are nearby, they’ll hunt crawlers. That’s what they’re doing. These guys don’t attack, but they’ll still swarm at ya.”
“But why are there so many of them?”
“It looks like the system is spawning anywhere between one to 15 of them when a corpse is created. It usually doesn’t do that unless there aren’t any janitor mobs nearby. You killed a lot of mobs in that last battle, so here they are.”
“We didn’t kill that many! Plus, we’ve been destroying the corpses.”
“They probably had a couple hundred grubs in that cage in the boss room,” Mordecai said. He paused. “Yes, there were 750 of them. All fried. Plus you killed another 85 clurichauns between grinding away and the boss battle. Destroying the corpses only keeps them from leveling up. It doesn’t stop them from being generated. You, my friends, have been set up. You’ve fallen into a trap. Good news is they’re easy to kill. The bad news is these little buggers don’t give any experience. At least not the level-two ones.”
“Wait,” I said. “This even works on themselves? So for every grub we step on, 15 more will appear?”
“Sort of,” he said. “There’s a per-quadrant limit. If you kill all 5,000 of the grubs out there, 75,000 aren’t going to appear.”
“Do you know what the limit is?” I asked, looking at the map. The entire area blinked red, centered on us.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “You’ve already hit it. It’s 5,000.”
Fucking hell. “Is it like this everywhere? Across the whole dungeon?”
“It looks like it,” Mordecai said. “It’s to keep people from camping out in one area for too long. As long as you keep moving, it shouldn’t be an issue.”
Carclass="underline" Brandon, can you see this?
We’d set up the chat, but we hadn’t really used it yet.
Brandon An: Loud and clear. You guys doing okay?
Carclass="underline" We have an issue. It’s not a huge deal yet, but it will be soon. Let’s get your folks moving toward the stairs now. We’ll meet you in the hallway outside this quadrant.
Brandon An: 10-4. We’re on our way. Wait until you see what we built.
They were barely 3/4's of a mile away, but with that crowd, it’d take a couple hours at least for them to get set up.
“Come on, Donut,” I said. “We need to carve a hole back to the other team. At least these bastards are all the level-two grubs.”
Even Donut cringed the moment I said that out loud.
We started by tossing firebombs in the halls, then moving forward, but after a while I realized it was just a waste of good moonshine. The level twos by themselves were literally harmless. I could pick one up and put it on my lap, and it didn’t do anything. They were large with scary-looking mandibles, but they didn’t bite or attack or anything. They just sort of squeaked and wriggled. And for every one we killed, we were just generating another. Plus, if we didn’t properly destroy the body, we were increasing the chance of getting these guys to level up.
The problem was they were so thick in some places, it was impossible not to step on them with my bare feet, crunching them down. I tried my best to avoid them, but for every one I killed, I smeared down with my foot, crunching until the X went away on the map. The moment it died, its friends all turned on it, taking bites from its body. Even when I completely destroyed it, they continued to chew and lap up the remains. I took that as an ominous sign.