A group of red dots appeared on the map. It was just three of them. I barely had time to bark a warning before we mowed them over.
There wasn’t even a thump or an audible splat. Only a small spray of blood over Hekla and Eva’s faces. I tried not to laugh. There wasn’t even a body. It was like we’d hit a bug with the windshield. We’d completely liquified the mobs, and the train was still accelerating.
Katia: Hey, I got experience for that.
Carclass="underline" Did it hurt?
Katia: It was like a little bee sting. No big deal. There was a head on my spike, but I pulled it into my inventory. Also blood. It lets me add liquid to my inventory if it’s in my scoop. There’s a new tab called “Gross shit.”
My mind started to race with the implications and possibilities of that.
“Coming up on 72,” Eva called.
This was the station where the ghouls were all coming from.
“Faster,” Hekla said. “Speed it up.” She had to shout the words now. The wind whistled through the two open windows of the subway car.
Katia: Whoa. I just got a fan box! It’s for having the most new followers in a 30-hour period. I can’t believe it.
Donut: CONGRATULATIONS.
That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but I wasn’t about to say that now. I swallowed, seeing the wall of the red dots rushing toward us like missiles descending on a target.
There was a constant stream of ghouls coming off the platform. Most were traveling up the line, but a handful were turned toward us. Most of the mobs were now sticking to the right side of the tunnel. They were running, too, running fast. Terrifyingly fast. There was a pile of X’s along the track where the ghouls had barbequed themselves on the third rail. I was worried that the pile of electrified bodies would still be intact enough to give Katia a shock as we plowed through. Hopefully her self-insulation would be enough.
“Here we go,” I said, bracing myself.
“Jesus fuck,” I cried, raising an arm to block the shower of blood. Gore and bits of bone and hair blasted into the engine like it was being sprayed at us through a firehose. A hundred mini, fleeting shocks rocked me, giving me a small amount of damage. The train shuddered, but it didn’t slow as we plowed through the screaming mass of ghouls. We cut through the bodies like a goddamned wheat thresher.
“Katia,” I cried, getting a mouthful of guts.
She’d been fine, but she was suddenly unconscious, and her health was at about 50% and dropping. I put my hand against her flesh and felt a tingle of electricity. She was getting shocked by something. Probably a body part wedged between her and the line.
“Faster,” I yelled at Eva, who was choking on a splatter of guts. Where the hell was that healer? I cast my heal scroll on Katia, and her health returned to the top, though she remained unconscious, and it continued to drop.
Something in the cab hissed, and I turned in time to see a monster head on the floor, growling. It was an almost-human head with green, rotting skin, pulled tight over the skull. I stomped it down with my foot.
There was another, a torso with a head attached. It growled as it reached for Silfa, who had buzzed to the top of the cab, screaming for Hekla to help her. These were different than the festering ghouls. These were the monsters being generated at stop number 72. I quickly examined the creature before I crushed its head with my foot.
Blister Ghoul – Level 20
The thing with the Blister Ghoul is that it is so damn tenacious. This undead creature is created and unleashed into the dungeon using a device called a Ghoul Generator. There are multiple types of ghouls and generators out there, but the bad boy that spits these suckers out is top of the line.
For every non-undead mob that dies within this floor, one of the soul crystal-powered ghoul generators will birth a single Blister Ghoul.
It’s rather unfortunate, then, that every mob on the entire floor is suffering from something that will eventually kill them.
Soul crystals. Goddamn soul crystals. That’s what they’d used to power the swordsmen guards on the third floor, and it’s what Miss Quill had been using to cast her spell. The soul crystal had become overwhelmed and turned itself into a massive bomb. That bomb—now dubbed Carl’s Doomsday Scenario—still sat in my inventory. I hadn’t even dared take it out at my sapper’s table yet. These things were always bad news.
The chaos of this entire floor was starting to form into something a little more cohesive than I’d originally suspected. This wasn’t just a maze. It was an almost-perpetual engine. In the next day, these things were going to be everywhere.
“That group was small compared to the main horde approaching stop 101 where everyone is trapped,” Hekla said. “It has many times more ghouls.”
The mobs had thinned out, but we were still hitting a handful every few seconds. Katia had a dozen heads and other body parts attached to the spikes. Some of the body pieces were still alive. The gore was starting to fill up her scoop. Donut was carefully shooting them through the window while Hekla did the same. Donut was soaked in dripping, steaming guts. Absolutely soaked. Her massive sunglasses protected her eyes, but she had to keep washing the blood away.
Katia’s health continued to move downward. She hadn’t once been healed by the so-called healer.
“Heals, goddamnit!” I yelled at the fairy, who remained at the ceiling, looking down at the blister ghoul’s corpse. I kicked it. “It’s dead. Come on!”
“I’m supposed to wait until she’s at 25%.”
“You will heal her now. And can you wake her up?”
The fairy looked at Hekla, who nodded. The fairy had over two dozen boss kills by her name, but she acted as if this was her first foray into action.
Katia glowed, and the unconscious debuff faded just as she hit another group of ghouls. More blood splattered into the train, soaking Silfa, who shrieked.
Katia: Ow. That hurt. It’s okay now, but I was shocked really bad.
Carclass="underline" Be careful of things getting wedged under there.
Katia: Not much I can do about them now.
I watched as the massive pile of body parts lowered, zipping away into her inventory. She did it again. And again. All that was left was a pile of chattering heads. Donut and Hekla went to work.
Eva sputtered as more gore splattered across her face. “Coming up on 75,” she cried out.
Corpses dotted the tracks here, including a pile of bodies on the platform. As we rushed past, I caught sight of several dead hobgoblins and jackal-faced gnolls. Multiple tracks spread out from the main line here, too, with a long line of small cars sitting idle, ready to hop onto the main track. These were tiny platforms, each about the size of a Mini Cooper. A long group of portals and switches remained here, too.
But the station passed quickly, and I’d only gotten a quick glance. Hobgoblins meant this was where the crash interdiction teams were stationed. They’d been overrun by the ghouls. I knew that gnolls were often used as security. I wondered if they were the transit security forces Madison had been babbling about.
After that, the stations were much further apart. Ghouls remained on the tracks, always jogging forward. We also started seeing other mobs, but only in ones and twos. They shouldn’t be on this track at all since this line only stopped at transit stations. But nevertheless, they were here, all mobs suffering from the DTs. They came and died so quickly I never got a chance to examine them.
But some of these single mobs were bigger and armored, and Katia started losing spikes. We passed through a pair of rhino-sized, metal-clad troll creatures, and her spikes were left all broken and bent. The train bucked, and I thought for certain we’d derail. But we remained on the tracks. Katia fixed her spikes the best she could, but she needed the metal to maintain the scoop’s integrity. Thankfully the monsters died instantly upon impact.