Maggie growled. “I am going to find you, and I am going to watch you die. You and the fucking cat.”
“Oooooh,” the crowd said, like we were on an episode of the goddamned Jerry Springer Show.
“Don’t bring me into this,” Donut said, raising a paw in defense. “I’m not the one who went all danger dingo on my own kid.”
The crowd screamed with laughter. I had to hand it to her. Donut was oftentimes caught off guard, but she was highly adaptable. She knew how to read a crowd, that was for sure. But as much as I disliked these two assholes, they weren’t the real enemy. We needed to end this. This bullshit didn’t serve any of us.
I turned to the Maestro. “Congratulations. You’ve reunited us. We all know how she feels about the matter. I’ve said my piece. If that’s all, we’ll be going now.”
“No, no, why so quick to leave?” For the next several minutes, the Maestro attempted to ask us leading questions. So why did you kill your own daughter? Carl, how does it feel to know you’re partially responsible for the death of another human? Maggie said nothing but, “Fuck you.” Frank hadn’t said a word this whole time. Donut would only talk directly to the audience, and I just grunted responses.
It was obvious that the orc wasn’t good at asking interview questions, especially with a group of hostile guests. The crowd grew restless.
Donut started making wisecracks. The Maestro tried to ask her something, and she just ignored him. She looked directly at the audience and said, “I once watched a cocker spaniel lick her own butthole for thirty minutes straight. That was more insightful than that question.”
Eventually, the Maestro threw his large hands in the air and gave up. The orc had a panicked look to him. He knew this entire episode had been a dumpster fire from the start. But then the orc’s eyes sparkled with one last glimmer of hope. I braced myself for whatever bullshit was coming.
“Well, I have parting gifts for each of the teams,” he said. “Are you piglets excited to see what we got for the crawlers?”
The crowd responded half-heartedly. A few of the audience members had already flickered and disappeared from the stream, leaving empty spaces in the crowd.
“Hopefully it’s a door so we can get back to the dungeon,” Donut muttered. The audience laughed. But she wasn’t fooling me. The cat was shaking with pleasure. Even now, Donut couldn’t contain herself. That damn cat loved her presents.
“Let’s give our VIPs their gift first, shall we?”
A box appeared in front of me. This was a literal cardboard box. I hesitantly reached forward, and it was really there.
“This is just a present for Carl. Sorry about that, Donut,” the Maestro said. He leaned forward expectantly. I could feel Donut deflate next to me. I realized I’d been stroking her back without thinking about it. “Carl, I know this is something you want really bad. We paid a lot of money to make sure you have the very best.”
I opened the box. You asshole. I had to laugh. It was a perfectly-chosen gift to troll me. I probably would’ve laughed even if we’d been on another show.
“Carl. You have boots now!” Donut said.
It was a brand-new pair of Bates zip-up tactical boots. They were identical to the service boots I wore on active duty. I picked one up. Sure enough, they were in my size.
“We even got you socks,” the Maestro said. “They’re in the box!”
“Thanks!” I said, pulling the box onto my lap. “These will be really comfortable when I’m in a safe room!” I put the lid back on. There was no way I was going to wear these things.
Now that my soles had fully acclimated, me wearing shoes would put me at a massive disadvantage. I had several buffs and skills that only worked if I was barefoot, and the orc knew it. The gift was just him being a dick. He was expecting me to react, to rant and rave. He should’ve known by now that wasn’t the sort of bait that would snag me. The audience barely reacted at all. They either didn’t understand the intended troll or didn’t care.
“I love them,” I added. I tapped the top of the box, smiling. “I hope they weren’t too expensive.”
The Maestro took a deep breath and gave me his best fuck you glare. He turned to Frank and Maggie. “And now, you two. Frank has a skill called Find Crawler, which shows you any crawlers within five square kilometers.” The Maestro waved his hand. “I don’t think that is good enough.” A potion appeared in front of them. Maggie snatched it up, looking at it. “That there is a Legendary Skill Potion, taken from my clan’s own stock. Either of you drink that fucker down, and it will upgrade your Find Crawler skill to level 15.” He turned to look at me, smiling again. “That means you can put in any crawler’s name, and it’ll tell you exactly where they are, no matter how far.”
“Wait, can I drink this? Frank is the one with the skill,” Maggie asked.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’ll take you all the way to the top level of 20 if you have the right class. But if you take it now, it’ll take you up to 15 no problem.”
I sighed. “So, are we done here?”
The Maestro seemed to be at a loss for words, pissed his gifts hadn’t gone over well with the audience. “Uh, thanks to my piglets. You know the Maestro takes care of you fuckers. You know what to do!”
The audience lukewarmly glurp-glurped.
“Well, we probably won’t be coming back on this show, pork boy,” I said, standing up. Donut jumped to my shoulder and waved vigorously at the audience. “But I imagine we’ll see each other again soon enough. I look forward to kicking your ass all over again on the ninth floor. That is, if you’re not too much of a puss to face me.”
Now that. That garnered a reaction from the crowd.
As the show ended, and the crowd cheered, finally happy to have something to holler about, I turned my attention to the two crawlers sitting next to us. Frank continued to stare straight down, a shell of a man. Maggie clutched the skill potion to her chest, staring at me.
For the first time, the woman smiled.
44
Time to Level Collapse: 3 Days, 14 hours
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“I don’t understand why she killed her daughter,” Donut said after we returned to the safe room. She immediately started opening the loot boxes from the earlier battle. She received nothing new except two “Trap Modules” from her gold sapper’s box. One was called a Spike Module and the other an Alarm Module. These were ready-to-go traps, no tinkering required. We could upgrade and reconfigure them, but it required the use of our sapper’s table, which wouldn’t happen until the fourth floor.
Despite Mukta’s warning that we’d have a discussion after the show, there was no sign of the admin. The program ended, and we’d immediately transported back to the room. I still clutched the shoebox in my hands. I sighed and put it all in my inventory. I pulled out my pedicure kit and started to work on my feet as Donut continued to talk, rapid fire. She’d been like this after the last interview, too. She got some sort of adrenaline rush from being on camera, even when the show was a disaster. “She had a pretty name. Yvette. I like that name. Did you see? She didn’t want to kill people. But then her mom killed her. It’s really sad. But I’m also kind of relieved, you know what I mean? Since her mom killed her, that means you didn’t kill her. It would’ve been an accident, but still.”
“Aren’t you tired?” I asked. I was exhausted. I rubbed the bottom of my foot with the little stone thing. I could just feel the AI watching me. The recap show would air in a few hours, and I wanted to get some sleep before that. Afterward, we needed to head out.