Donut plopped herself on my shoulder, settling in to sleep after I finished with my feet.
“He was kind of a jerk, huh? The orc guy, I mean. But do you remember what he said? We broke the record.”
“Yes, Donut,” I said. I closed my eyes.
“Carl?”
“What, Donut?” I said, trying not to let the exasperation sound in my voice.
“I heard what he said to you, about the ninth floor, I mean.”
“Don’t let that idiot bother you.”
“No, not the orc. I mean Mordecai. When he told you that you should leave me when we get to that floor. I heard him.”
“Let’s worry about getting to the third floor before we even think about something as far away as the ninth. We don’t even know what the hell that is all about.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice small. She finally settled next to me, and she was asleep before I was.
I slept through the first part of the recap episode. I awakened to find Donut sitting on the chair, her attention on the screen. She looked back at me. “They haven’t mentioned us yet. But they showed those guys from Africa, Le Mouvement. They found a city boss. It was a just a see-through blob the size of a house! It killed all of them. There was one guy on the outside of where they were locked in, and now he’s all alone. Everyone died except him. They showed him sitting on the ground just crying for like a minute straight. The blob looked like it was made of Jell-O. They couldn’t figure out how to hurt it. I bet fire would’ve worked. They didn’t have much room to run around, though. The boss room was a series of tubes, like a sewer system.”
“Christ,” I said, looking up at the screen. It now showed Lucia Mar smashing a Brindled Vespa into pieces with her mace. She had some sort of personal, magical shield I’d never noticed before. The hornet spat at her, and the white glob hit the shield, sizzling and floating in the air a good two inches from the side of her head.
“No wonder,” I grumbled.
The last ten minutes of the show were dedicated to our escape. The recap was almost identical to the one they’d showed on the Maestro’s show, but with added music and better production values. They showed close-up freeze frames of the MOAB and spinning, 3D renderings of the individual bombs.
It showed the rage elemental tumbling into the hole, and the oh shit baby exploding right next to it. We watched as the monster’s health bar plummeted, almost hit zero, and then the monster dissolved.
Experience Denied. Slammed onto the screen.
“Hey, that wasn’t fair,” Donut cried. “We would’ve killed it if it hadn’t dissolved!”
“Maybe,” I said. I was suspicious about how easy it was to do damage to the elemental, considering its high level. Either my bombs were overpowered, or the monster was especially weak for its level.
I suspected there was something else we were missing. The monster probably split in two or blew up on death or something equally horrible. It was almost as if the game was daring us to summon another one and to try kill it fair and square this time. We’d probably rocket up a dozen levels if we managed it. I could already think of a dozen ways to summon one and have something waiting for it, something that’d kill it for sure. Once you knew how the monster worked, it wasn’t so difficult. It had to be a trap.
The show ended with Imani pausing at the scorched entrance to the third floor. She looked up into the air and raised a middle finger before going inside.
The show ended, and I suddenly felt very alone. The feeling came out of nowhere. I thought of that last member of Le Mouvement, of being locked outside the boss area, only to find everyone he knew was just gone. What a nightmare.
I looked up at the ticker. 990,303.
We’d gone below one million, and I hadn’t noticed. For every person that ticked away, I felt I was losing a part of myself, a part of my humanity. I thought of what Donut had said before we’d fallen asleep, and of the unspoken question she had asked and of the answer I hadn’t given her.
The announcement came, and even though I knew it was coming, the sudden, booming voice surprised me.
Hello Crawlers,
Keep up the good work. Everything is running smoothly. Now that we’ve reached the halfway point of the level, game guides are now able to instruct you upon some of the intricacies regarding the third floor and how the race and class selection process works. Be sure to visit your game guide prior to descending in order to make the transition more smooth.
Effective immediately, any non-sapient mobs who happen upon a stairwell will not be disintegrated. Yes, we all just watched that rule get exploited on the recap episode. It was very clever and very exciting. But it’s not going to happen again.
The System AI has determined the proliferation of the Brindled Vespas is too aggressive, and we have halved the number of these mobs currently in the dungeon. In addition, the damage from their spitting acid attack has been adjusted down. Slightly. Please note, new Brindle Grubs will continue to generate upon the creation of a corpse, but each one now only has a 50% chance to proceed to the pupa stage.
That’s it for now. Now go out there and kill, kill, kill!
The moment the announcement ended, a message popped up.
Admin Notice. A new tab is available in your interface.
I blinked. That was unexpected. I opened up my interface, and indeed, there was a new section. ACCOUNTS. I clicked on it.
There was only one item:
Creator’s Fee. Carl’s Jug O’ Boom. Royalty: 1 Gold Coin per Kill. Current kills: 4.
There was a button. Cash Out Now. Below that was a very small line that I could barely read. There was no way to zoom in. I had to squint to read it.
Count updates once daily. Two gold coins plus 25% Deposit fee, rounded up, deducted upon cash out. Funds not deposited are subject to forfeiture upon death.
“Twenty-five percent!” I said. “Highway robbery.” If I cashed out now, I’d only receive a single gold coin. If I’d had five coins, I’d still only receive one coin because they rounded the fee up.
“What?” Donut asked.
I waved my hand. “It’s nothing. I’ll explain later. Let’s get going.”
“Are we running? Is that what we’re doing? Hiding from Frank Q and Maggie My?”
“No,” I said. “That was my first instinct, but now that I’ve slept on it, I’ve changed my mind. That woman is hell-bent on hunting us down, and we’re going to have to deal with it sooner rather than later. I don’t know if they’re coming now or not. I’d much rather be ready for her than have her sneak up behind us.”
“But how can we do that? They can track us and go invisible, and we can’t do either of those.”
“Her invisibility is not nearly as powerful as I first thought. We’ll need to take out the local neighborhood boss and get that map. It’ll make our lives much easier…”
Warning: You may not wield your weapons while in the presence of Admins. Any attempted violence against an Admin will result in your immediate execution.
“Shit,” I said, looking up at the ceiling. “Mukta is coming.”
Pop! Water splashed over my feet, and a familiar, armored kua-tin appeared. My interface snapped off.
“Zev!” Donut cried. “Where were you! I was worried.”
“Hello, Carl, hello, Princess Donut. I’m here for your show debriefing.”
“Are you okay?” Donut asked.
“Yes, thank you,” Zev said. “I was censured by the System AI. I was given a suspension because the system determined that I had cheated by warning you of the rage elemental before it appeared. My representative appealed the decision on my behalf, and upon further review, it was determined that you’d noticed the man urinating simultaneously with my exclamation, so the censure was removed from my record.” She sighed, filling her mask with bubbles. “But even though my record is technically clean, it’s not really. Once the AI notices you, it’s difficult to get it to un-notice you, so I have to be extra careful from now on.”