I turned to Li Jun and Zhang who sat next to me, mouths agape. I quickly whispered, “Grab your sister and the other guy and run toward the troglodytes and through them. Leave the sword. The lizards are really dumb and slow, and their attention is on the hornets. You’ll only have a few seconds.”
“But,” Li Jun said. “You wanted to trade places…”
The Maestro growled, “You don’t tell me what to do on my own show, meat.” He slammed down on a button on his table, and the two men to my right vanished.
The words “Death Watch Extreme!” appeared on the giant display. The two men appeared back in the scene in the hallway, caught between the hornets and the troglodytes. For a moment, everything remained frozen except the two men.
Zhang reacted first, shouting, “grab your sister!” as he reached down to pick up the fallen third man.
Just as he moved to pick him up, the scene unfroze. The sister stumbled as the sword she was grabbing for was suddenly several feet away. Li Jun grasped her wrist and pointed. “Run!” he cried. The three of them scrambled directly at the crowd of troglodytes, who stood like turkeys, watching the hornets.
The monsters—Brindled Vespas he’d called them—didn’t care who their victims were. Multiple globs of white spit shot out, splashing into the lizards, who in turn raised their clubs and charged at the bugs.
Both groups of monsters ignored the four humans, who managed to slip away and out into the hall. The scene ended with Zhang forcing a healing potion into the mouth of their companion before they slipped into a safe room. The video snapped off to a mix of jeers and scattered applause. The audience’s reaction was subdued, as if they weren’t sure how to respond.
I looked up at the Maestro, a huge smile on my face.
“Glurp on that, motherfucker,” I said.
43
“Uh, let’s now watch how our two guests escaped that safe room,” the Maestro said after the audience’s laughter died down.
The stage went dark as the screen replayed our desperate escape from the rage elemental. It showed the scene from the point of view of the hallway, with the chopper bursting out of the room, screeching around the corner, Donut sitting high on the contraption. The audience roared their approval. Next to us, the Maestro screamed and ranted at some unseen producer. It was all muted. The large orc seemed to be out of breath and enraged.
“Carl, you scare me when you get that angry,” Donut whispered.
I reached over and scratched her head. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not really as mad as I look. I’m just trying to make him angry.”
“It worked. Now he hates us. I don’t like people hating us. Our followers are going to go down.”
I grunted. “Yeah, I don’t think you need to worry about that. Look, Donut. The show isn’t over yet. See those two chairs over there. I think it’s…”
“Do you think it’s Miss Beatrice?” Donut asked. “Maybe her and her boyfriend?” She gasped. “Or maybe it’s Miss Beatrice and Ferdinand.”
“No, Donut,” I said. “It’s not going to be Bea and whoever the hell…”
“Listen here, pukes,” the Maestro said, interrupting. He smiled big, but his words held no mirth. He’d calmed himself, probably after getting some advice from his producer. The audience continued to watch the recap of our escape, oohing and ahhing at the explosions. They couldn’t hear this exchange. “This is my fucking show. You need to learn your place.”
“You were never a crawler were you?” I asked.
He seemed genuinely offended by the question. He laughed with derision. “You savages are all the same. I come from a civilized system. My family has a long history with the dungeon. We were there when the Syndicate created the crawl. We are of gods and royalty.” He indicated the tiara on Donut’s head. “If you pukes make it to the 9th floor, you’ll learn all about what my family can do.”
I looked at Donut’s small, jeweled tiara, trying to remember the exact description. I hadn’t thought about it for several days. The tooltip system didn’t work here, but I recalled part of it. It’s what gave her ability to imbue the Septic debuff. Because she’d put it on, she’d become a royal member of “The Blood Sultanate.” We could only get off the ninth floor if all other members of that family were killed, including the Sultan himself. I had no idea what any of that meant.
I remembered what Mordecai had said. That… That will be a challenge. You can always leave the party. That crown is on her head, not yours.
“Your family?” I asked. “Wait, are you guys part of the Blood Sultanate?”
He laughed again. “Do I look like a fucking Naga to you?” He sat straighter. “My family’s Skull Clan has been victorious six times out of the last ten Faction Wars. Top three every time. The pitiful Blood Sultanate is almost always the first of the nine to get eliminated. You idiots have been dead since the moment she put on that crown.”
I tried to ignore the pit of dread that had formed in my gut. “What about you? Are you going to be on the ninth floor?”
On the screen, Donut and I stood at the edge of the hole to the next floor down. The camera was positioned from the POV of the rage elemental. We looked tiny standing there, a trail of black smoke rising behind us. The entire crowd held its breath as the monstrosity charged.
“I will be there. I was of age last season, but the stupid Squim Conglomerate always plays Battle Royale, which doesn’t have a Faction Wars or Celestial Ascendancy segment. But I will be there this year. I’m on my way to your stupid planet right now.” He pounded his chest like he was a gorilla. “I will be War Leader Maestro of the Skull Clan.”
I nodded. It always astounded me how easy it was to get assholes to talk, as long as they were talking about themselves. “So, if you’re in the dungeon, what happens if you get hurt? Do you guys really die?”
He scoffed. “You think you could actually…”
The crowd went absolutely apeshit as the scene ended, and the lights snapped back on. Donut stood on her hindlegs and raised her two front paws in the air. “That’s how it’s done!” she yelled. “Next time, we’ll kill that thing ourselves and send pictures to his mama! We’ll tell her to… what was it, Carl?”
“Suck it,” I said.
“Glurp, glurp! Glurp, glurp!” the audience cried.
The Maestro was back to his sneering, condescending self. His unseen producer was smart enough to explain that having a tantrum during a live program would make this spiral even further out of his control. I sighed. Whatever happened next, it wasn’t going to be pleasant. Might as well get it over with.
The Maestro waved for the crowd to quiet down. They eventually did.
“So that’s how you did it. You used the dungeon’s rules to save yourselves.”
I shrugged. “That thing was level 93. We weren’t gonna kill it.”
The Maestro grinned. “Nobody, not even me, can say you don’t have the balls of a Taurin. But a lot of my piglets seem to think you have had it too easy. Some say you’ve been stumbling your way through the dungeon, only surviving because you’re the AI’s pet. That happens from time to time, that the dungeon turns a crawler into its bitch.” He reached over and scratched at his hairy chest. His fingernails were disgusting.
He continued. “I have two surprise guests for our VIPs. You have any guesses who they might be, meat?”
I put my hand on Donut before she could say anything out loud. The last thing we needed right now was to give the Maestro ammunition to mock her.
“Can they see us now?” I asked, turning to look at the empty chairs.
“They’ve been watching this whole time,” the Maestro said. “And man, they do not like you.”