That seemed like a pretty useful tool. I put it in my inventory next to my goo-inator 3000.
The sapper’s box contained two items. A Sapper’s table that practically knocked me over when it appeared. It was a table just like my engineering and alchemy table. The description noted that explosive items or traps created at the table didn’t lose stability or couldn’t be prematurely set off.
The second item in the box was a trap-building item. There were ten of them, and each one was nothing more than a tiny black box the size of a dime with a long length of wire attached.
Proximity Trigger
Trigger Warning! Traumatizing content! Using a Sapper’s Table, the highly-valuable Proximity Trigger may be attached to any non-static trap. Allows for the establishment of activation conditions, including countdowns, mob-type triggers, etc.
Sure enough, the moment I put the item in my inventory, it placed itself near the top of the list in terms of value, right behind that ridiculous Fireball or Custard lottery ticket. And I now had ten of them.
After all of that, my level was still stuck at 11. It was near the edge of 12, but it had barely budged since the fight with Krakaren. The plan was, for now, to kill off the kobolds and then move out of the area. I was hoping to be at least level 13 by the time we hit the stairs.
Mukta (Admin): Transferring now.
Before I even had the chance to finish my thought, we disappeared and reappeared.
Donut, who had been sitting on a chair, reappeared two feet in the air. She yowled in surprise and fell. Her metallic crupper clinked onto the boat’s deck. The ground roiled. As always, my HUD snapped off.
We were on another boat, one much smaller than the last one. There were no windows and no doors. There were no features at all other than a pair of chairs that sat cramped together at one end of the room. The place was about the size of a large walk-in closet. I could reach up and touch the ceiling, which seemed to be made of plastic. The room smelled of salt water and was about twenty degrees cooler than the dungeon.
A floating frisbee thing descended from the low ceiling. The jet-black, metallic disk hummed. A single blue light flashed on the edge. It spoke in a soothing female, robotic voice.
“My name is Mexx-55. You are in a rental trailer owned and operated by Senegal Production Systems, Unlimited. This trailer is used by multiple tunnel productions related to the crawl. For this session, use of these facilities has been leased by the program Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem. Sit in the provided chairs and keep your limbs to your side while the table generates. The holo will commence in 60 seconds.”
“No green room?” Donut said, looking around, outraged. “No snacks?”
“Please sit down,” Mexx-55 repeated.
“What’s the host’s name?” Donut asked.
“The Maestro,” Mexx-55 said. Her previously-emotionless voice hinted an air of distaste.
“Death Watch Extreme Dungeon Mayhem?” I muttered, moving to the chair. The moment we sat, Donut’s seat raised up. A table formed out of the wall, grinding in place in front of us. It was only about two feet wide. “That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard.”
“Yeah, wait until you see the show,” Mexx-55 said before rising up into the ceiling.
42
“I’m going to vomit,” Donut said as the floor heaved. “I’m going to puke on television, Carl.”
“You’ll get used to it,” I said. “I think when the holo starts, it stabilizes. Just breathe.”
“I don’t like puking. I don’t want to puke!”
I laughed. “Really? I seem to recall you had a thing for vomiting on my pillow.”
“That was different. I did that on purpose.”
“I knew it! I fucking knew it.”
Donut made a gagging noise. “The last place didn’t bounce around this much.”
“The seas were calmer, and it was a bigger boat,” I said. “Breathe.”
The dark, heaving room flickered, and the lights turned on, revealing an audience. They had no reaction to our sudden appearance, and I suspected we weren’t yet visible to them. The sensation of movement was suddenly much more muted. It was still there, but the holo had some sort of compensation effect.
I looked about the suddenly-bigger room. A table floated before us, much larger than the actual table in the trailer. This table curved, shaped like a smile. We sat in the second and third seat. To our left was a larger, more ornate chair. It was made of a dark wood with what appeared to be red velvet cushions. The arm rests were made of pig skulls. Four more plain, empty chairs appeared to our right, curving along the table.
I looked over my shoulder, and the backdrop was an elephant-like monster with three spike-covered trunks. The animation swung its head back and forth in a loop with the word “Extreme” exploding over and over in the midst of the image.
The crowd suddenly started screaming and cheering. I snapped my attention forward, but I couldn’t see what they were hollering at. Their attention was to my left. I realized the show had started, and the host had appeared, but for whatever reason, we couldn’t see him or her yet. This was a different setup to Odette’s show. I suspected we’d just magically appear when it was our turn.
This went on for several minutes. The crowd started chanting something. It took me a moment to understand what they were saying. “Die, die, die,” they seemed to be repeating. They were watching a video, I realized, their attention focused on the main screen, which for me, still showed the elephant graphic. They burst into screams of pleasure as whatever it was they were watching, died. “Glurp, glurp!” they screamed. “Glurp, glurp!”
I spent a few moments examining the crowd, who continued to laugh and cheer. The audience’s makeup was fairly similar to Odette’s crowd, with a glaring difference that made my stomach sink.
“Oh fuck,” I grumbled when I finally saw it.
I focused on a group of humans sitting in the second row, hooting and screaming and laughing boisterously. There was a cruel air to their laughter. It was almost a tangible thing, like a black, malevolent cloud that embraced the presence of the entire audience. I was reminded of that day when my dad and his friends broke my slingshot. They’d been firing rocks at squirrels, laughing in a similar way.
These humans in the second row were all male, and they were all about twelve or thirteen years old. It seemed the entire audience consisted of young, pre-and early teen males. One of them was wearing a red shirt that said “GLURP!” on it.
“Glurp, glurp!” the audience yelled. “Glurp, glurp!”
“Donut,” I said, talking quickly. “This crowd is going to be a lot different than the last one. They’re all kids. I don’t think they’re the happy, cartoon-watching kind, either.”
“Carl, we’ve gone over this,” Donut said. “You sit there and look angry, and I do the talking. Remember?”
To our left, the host suddenly appeared. There was no warning. He showed up in mid-sentence. A floating note appeared in front of me. ON AIR SOON. BE READY.
“… know you little cunts are gonna love today’s surprise panelists! Your Maestro had to bang some slimy mudskipper tail to pull this one off. But nothing is too good for Maestro’s piglets! Suck it! Suck it good, piglets!”
“Glurp, glurp!” the audience screamed. “Glurp, glurp!”
The host—the Maestro—was an orc. A huge, muscular orc.
He looked a lot like a tuskling, but it was clear this was a different type of the same species. The tusklings were dwarf versions of these guys. Tuskling skin was bright pink, pig-like. The Maestro’s flesh was darker, covered in black, bristly hair. He reminded me of a wild boar. His left tusk was completely gold. He stood about six and a half feet tall, built like a tank. A line of earrings circled his left ear. He wore a hot pink, silken shirt, buttoned halfway up, revealing a hairy, well-muscled chest covered in gold chains. I couldn’t tell for certain, but I had the distinct impression he was only in his early twenties.