You might want to take this off if you plan on getting busy with someone. Especially if you’re the top.
“Man, we need to stick you to the front of another train,” I said, handing the belt back to her. Her rush ability would also be even more powerful, but I didn’t say that part out loud. She still didn’t want to talk about the Hekla incident.
She was, however, mostly back to her regular self. She was laughing and joking with us. I couldn’t tell if she’d truly recovered from the trauma of the day, or if she was just good at covering it up. I suspected the latter. Either way, she’d grown into one of the most powerful crawlers in the dungeon, and I didn’t think that’d quite sunk in yet.
“That leaves everything except the platinum fan box. I guess they’re voting on it now,” she said. “Do you think we’ll see that Chaco guy again?”
“I hope not,” I said. She would get to open the fan box about 15 hours before Mordecai’s time-out expired. I actually did hope she’d get the prize carousel, so she could pick instead of being at the mercy of the fans. But I wouldn’t say that out loud.
“What should we do with all of this gold?” she asked.
Donut gasped. “Are we going shopping? Do you think if we buy a lot of stuff, they’ll have a shopping montage scene on the show, like in Pretty Woman?”
“Hopefully we’ll have time to ask Mordecai when he gets back,” I said. “We still have two environmental upgrades. I’m thinking maybe a kitchen upgrade to get food buffs and one more buffing item. Some of those cost more than the coupon’s value, and we’ll need the money for that. There’s just so much on that list, I don’t know what the best choice is.”
We also had four free tables to purchase between the three of us, and we needed to buy them quickly since they leveled up on their own when a floor collapsed. That was also something I wanted to consult with Mordecai. When he returned, there would be one day and 15 hours left. Hopefully that was enough time, but just in case, I collected everybody’s free table coupons and left them on his alchemy table. That way he’d be able to buy them for us if we were otherwise occupied.
The recap show came on, and the entire program was a special on the death of Hekla. It was set up like a tribute to the crawler, starting with a scene of her entering the dungeon. She was a much different woman then, and it seemed odd seeing her in street clothes. She’d been fighting with her husband as they came in, a tall, good-looking man who looked like he was twenty years older than her. He’d gotten poisoned by a walking cactus mob, and she left him while he was on the floor, crying for her to come back.
She returned later to find him dead, being devoured by rats. She screamed as she kicked the rats away. One turned and attacked Hekla. She picked up a broken bone—one of her now-dead husband’s exposed rib bones—and she used it to stab the rat in the eye. By some miracle, the jab killed the mob.
That had garnered her a Legendary Grrl Power box for being the first woman in the dungeon to use the corpse of a human male to kill a mob. I assumed that was where she got the crossbow.
We watched a much-abridged summary of Hekla’s rise in power and how she gathered crawlers to her.
During that segment, the show started to also focus on Katia. We got to see her enter the dungeon, clutching tightly to Eva’s arm. They went on to portray how mousy, terrified Katia depended on her friend, how she hid behind her during early battles. It showed Eva killing the man who’d grabbed Katia when Hekla demanded he leave the group.
Eva’s features oddly matched the cobra face of the nagini/orc hybrid she’d become. And Katia’s before-face was also strange to look upon. It was the face she had now in the saferoom, almost, but it was just slightly off from that terrified, bewildered woman who entered the dungeon almost a month ago. She was a different species now, of course, but those human eyes had a deeper quality to them. The thousand yard stare.
The next scene surprised me. Katia wasn’t alone when she got to the third floor.
I should have realized. Everyone who entered the third floor met up with their original game guide. Katia and Eva had the same one, and the two of them entered character creation together. But Eva went first, and she left the saferoom as Katia’s body transformed. By the time Katia was ready to leave, Eva was long gone. It wasn’t clear what happened next, but the next time they showed Hekla, Eva was there with her.
“What happened?” I asked Katia. “How did she find Hekla and not you?”
Katia shrugged. “We were in a small settlement. Eva said she’d accidentally made one of the swordsmen guards angry and had to run out of town. She got on one of the traveling caravans and ended up in a different city and reconnected with Hekla. At least that’s what she’d told me.”
“Caravans?” I asked. “I didn’t see those.”
“They had them. I got on one, and we passed by the circus and then ended up in the skyfowl town where I met you.”
I remembered, then, what Eva had said to Katia in that moment before Katia had tried to kill her. This is why I left you behind on the third floor. That revelation must have hit her hard.
The program continued to showed Katia’s grand return to the daughters and the formation of the plow in front of the train. We watched Katia’s level rise as she plowed through the ghouls.
And then, finally, it showed Katia killing Hekla. They did not show it to be an accident, but an act of rage on Katia’s part once she discovered she was being used.
“That’s not how it happened,” Katia groused. “They’re making me look like a bloodthirsty crazy woman.”
I grunted. “Welcome to the club. When I first…” I paused, my eyes on the screen. The moment the episode ended, the leaderboard changed. All three of us turned to look at the new list.
1. Lucia Mar – Lajabless – Black Inquisitor General – Level 35 – 1,000,000
2. Prepotente – Caprid – Forsaken Aerialist – Level 34 – 500,000
3. Carl – Primal – Compensated Anarchist – Level 34 – 400,000
4. Donut – Cat – Former Child Actor – Level 32 – 300,000
5. Quan Ch – Half Elf – Imperial Security Trooper – Level 38 – 200,000
6. Florin – Crocodilian – Shotgun Messenger – Level 32 – 100,000
7. Miriam Dom – Human – Shepherd – Level 30 – 100,000
8. Katia Grim – Doppelganger – Monster Truck Driver – 37 – 100,000
9. Dmitri and Maxim Popov – Nodling – Illusionist and Bogatyr – 30 – 100,000
10. Ifechi – Human – Physicker – Level 29 – 100,000
“Carl, Carl, we’re in the top five! You’re number three! Katia! You’re in the top 10!”
“Oh, wow,” Katia said. “The list has changed quite a bit.”
“Yeah, Elle fell off the edge,” I said. “Also, it turns out you’re not the highest level in the dungeon, Katia. Quan has you beat.” I regretted saying it as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Any mention of Quan Ch was enough to send Donut into a tirade.
“He’s a cheater,” Donut started to grumble, but then she paused, finding something else to be outraged about. “Hey, why do those two guys get to be in the same spot? That’s not fair! Carl and I should both be number three! Katia, too!”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s also weird they hardly ever show that goat thing, but he’s number two.”
We were interrupted by the start of the daily announcement. It wasn’t anything interesting. They were nerfing the running speed of the blister ghouls but increasing the running speed of creatures suffering from stage three DTs, which was pretty terrifying. The moment the announcement ended a notification appeared.