We have a few changes to announce.
If you’ve watched the recap episode that just aired, you can see our penalties regarding the bathrooms have been a rousing success. The penalties will remain in place for the remainder of this floor, but I’m happy to announce they will be removed upon the collapse of this floor. Thank you everyone for your cooperation.
The Satan’s Lil’ Hedgehogs mob have been removed and placed on a deeper floor. Their armor-piercing quill attack has been deemed too strong for this floor by the system AI. Apologies to all those affected. We’ve had a few complaints about the proliferation of the grub mobs. This is not a bug and is by design.
Finally, due to the abundance of Crawlers camping in safe rooms upon the collapse of the first floor, we’ve been forced to make a difficult decision. From now on, all safe rooms and safe areas will close one hour prior to floor collapse. Any Crawler who is in a designated safe area will be teleported to just outside that area at one hour prior.
As always, kill, kill, kill!
On the message board, a new timer appeared, just below the Time to Level Collapse timer.
Time to Safe Room Closure. It was one hour faster than the level timer.
I met eyes with Brandon, who looked stricken. At that moment I knew he’d been thinking the same thing as me, that it was time to just give it up.
Donut: Our views! Carl, our views!
Outside, the door stopped bashing itself in. It was oddly quiet. I looked up at the minimap. The mass of grubs had reached the hallway, and the elemental finally noticed them. It left the door and tore through them as I watched. It followed the line of red dots around the corner and disappeared down the hallway. I had a moment to think, shit, we should’ve been ready to run, but it was over in less than a minute. The thousands of red dots were just gone.
The description stated the elemental dissipated after it claimed 666 souls, whatever that meant. I was hoping that the grubs counted toward that number.
They didn’t.
The elemental returned to the door, thrashing and smashing, trying to get back in.
If we had run, it would have followed us. Even if we’d used the Chopper, there was no way we’d have gotten away. Not unless we’d split up and gone in different directions. And even then, it probably would’ve gotten us.
The map seemed to flicker for a moment, and a long line of Xs appeared where the grubs had all died. Already more red dots appeared, moving toward their fallen brothers and sisters.
On the map, near the stairs, just a quarter mile away a group of fifteen red dots sat. I hadn’t noticed them before. I hovered over the icons.
Grub – Pupa Stage.
A counter, currently at just under 10 hours, was ticking away next to their names.
I remembered the scene from the recap episode. The level 93 mob, after sliding down the hall, had been hurt by my boom jug. It’d taken almost a quarter of its life away before it healed itself.
Then, I remembered something else. It was something Rory the shamanka, the one with all the piercings on her face, had told us. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. I looked down at Donut.
Carclass="underline" The plan has changed. We can’t wait for my shield to cooldown.
“Come on, Donut,” I said out loud, pushing a table away in the corner of the restaurant. We were going to need a lot of space.
“What’re you doing?” Brandon asked, standing from his table.
I pulled a bunch of items from my inventory, piling it on the floor. The round free weights clanged loudly as they hit the tiles.
“I need your help,” I said.
40
We still had some cans of Agatha’s spray paint, and I painted “Mother of All Bombs” on the side of the contraption.
It took us about five hours to finish building the launcher. Brandon pointed out MOAB actually stood for “Massive Ordnance Air Blast,” but his brother said, “Don’t be that guy.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brandon said. “The name is still wrong. When they say ‘Mother of all bombs,’ they mean one giant bomb. Not whatever this thing is. You should call it the Bomb Chicken or something.”
“It’s too late,” I said, indicating the spray paint. “I’ve already named it. Besides, I like the name. It’s a play on words.”
“Well, I’m going to call it the Bomb Chicken whether you like it or not,” Brandon declared.
I’d discovered something interesting while building the device. This should’ve been obvious earlier, but it hadn’t even occurred to me. In the safe room, all of my sticks of dynamite were harmless. I could pull them out, and under status they had Inert While in Safe Room, followed by a parenthesis stating their real status. Their status still ticked down while being handled, and I didn’t want to tempt fate enough to find out what would happen when that status reached zero, but I was relatively certain they wouldn’t blow.
Brandon stepped back now, admiring our work.
“Do you really think this is going to kill it?” he asked, suddenly serious.
“Not a chance,” I said. “That thing is level 93. It ain’t going to like this too much, but there’s no way it’ll be enough. The babies will slow it down, though.”
Brandon gave me a sour look. “If it’s not going to kill it, then why are we doing this?”
“It’s all part of the plan,” I said.
“Wait. What, exactly, is the plan?” he asked. He waved at my contraption. “I thought this was the plan.”
“Like I said, it’s part of it, but it’s not all of it. I can’t tell you the rest,” I said, pointing up at the ceiling, which had become the universal gesture for “The assholes are listening.”
Since this scheme involved using a dungeon exploit, I wanted to keep it in my head. Even Donut didn’t know the full extent. Mordecai told us that the viewers couldn’t see our private chats, but Borant and the dungeon AI could. I didn’t want to risk them changing the rules on us at the last second.
Because that would really suck. Not that I’d live long enough to complain about it.
We needed to get safely into the hallway. So the first component of this insane scheme was also one of the most terrifying parts.
My first suggestion was to wait for the grubs to regroup and get close enough for the rage elemental to go hunting them again. But the grubs were painfully slow, and more and more of them were hitting the pupa stage, meaning they were no longer moving around.
Imani came up with a bold solution. “Why don’t we just open the damn door?” she said.
This was hours ago, right when we started building the MOAB.
We all looked at each other. I immediately grasped what she was saying. The idea was horrifying, but she was right. We were in a safe room. Mobs would teleport away. Not far away, according to Mordecai, but they would still be ejected.
“Well, shit,” I said, putting down my goblin riveter. “Maybe we don’t need to build this thing at all.”
So we tested it. We moved everyone to the other side of the restaurant, near the entrance to the sleeping chambers. I didn’t know what was trembling more, me or the door. If we were wrong about this...
I walked up, and I hesitantly reached for the exit. The moment I turned the handle, the door burst inward, and a giant claw raked at me, coming at my face as I flew back into the room.
Thwum. The sound of the monster teleporting away was odd, like that of an electrical generator turning on.
“Holy crap, that worked,” I said, sitting up. My eyes searched the map, looking for it. I didn’t see it anywhere.
But a moment later, my relief turned to dread as I saw the dot rocketing toward us. It’d come from the main hallway. “Shit, it’s really booking it. It remembers where we are.”