“Hey buddy,” I said as we entered the Downward Dog. “You awake, Gary?”
Growler Gary didn’t respond. I hesitantly walked to the counter and looked over the edge at the sleeping Gnoll. He hadn’t moved. He clutched onto the same bottle as before, like he was holding a baby. It was now empty.
“We should do it now while he’s still asleep,” Donut said.
I nodded. “Killing a guy while he’s asleep seems like such a dick move,” I said. “But you’re right. If he’s going to just wake up again after we do it, maybe he won’t even notice. Plus I guess it’s not really killing him if he’s just going to resurrect.”
Katia remained in the personal space. She knew and understood what had to be done, but she didn’t want to be a part of it. That was okay. I understood. I didn’t want to be a part of it, either.
She was still desperately trying to form into a gnoll shape that would trick the magical key into accepting her. So far she’d been unlucky, despite getting it to 98% accuracy.
It was painfully clear what the dungeon wanted us to do.
You will not break me. Fuck you all.
Mongo had recently risen to level 23, but the dinosaur was woefully behind the rest of us. We’d decided ahead of time to allow the dinosaur to kill the gnoll.
“Face first,” Donut said. “Then the hands. Don’t eat the hands. Give them to me.”
Mongo squawked excitedly.
The interdiction cart only turned on with a pair of gnoll hands on a magical sensor plate. The two plates were far enough apart that a single gnoll couldn’t do it, but if the hands were no longer attached to the body…
We’d first tried farming a body part from one of the corpses strewn out in the station, but there was absolutely nothing useful. Every single gnoll had been chewed to hell. There was no way that wasn’t on purpose. You fucking assholes, I thought for the hundredth time. Then came Katia’s insistence that she could change into a gnoll and activate the train cart that way. That didn’t work, either, though when she emerged that last time, the system designated her as a gnoll. The skill, when she used it for this sort of thing, was terrifying.
She’d tossed all of her most recent points into constitution, but seeing her as a perfect gnoll made me realize maybe those earlier points she’d tossed in charisma wasn’t such a bad idea. If we continued to work on her self-confidence we’d have the perfect spy on our hands.
“Go,” Donut said.
Mongo jumped over the counter and chomped down on the sleeping gnoll’s head. It killed him instantly. The creature had a single gold coin in his inventory. Mongo quickly and efficiently chomped off the hyena’s two arms right at the elbow, horking them onto the counter.
“Yuck,” I said, picking up both of the hairy, severed arms. I tossed them both into my inventory. “Sorry, Gary.”
The plan was simple, but it wasn’t without risk. It was a “Carl plan” as Donut called it. After talking with Bautista, we learned there were three groups of people trapped at the abyss. Since the colored lines all emptied into the massive pit at different heights, coming into the giant crater from different directions, and since the walkways that circled the pit’s interior were now blasted to hell, these groups couldn’t reach each other. We had to make three separate trips.
We didn’t need to drive the train ourselves. We just had to get it started and send it along.
That was okay. As long as we got the engine and scoop portal turned on so everything it touched went to the trainyard, and we got the interdiction cart on the correct track, it would speed along the line all the way to the end, scooping up everything on the path and sending it to the trainyard. The stranded crawlers would stand on the tracks and allow the train to hit them, thus also getting teleported to the trainyard.
We had a list of almost 200 colored lines to choose from, and after almost two hours of going back and forth, we discovered three lines that would work.
That, at least, was the first draft of the plan. Both Katia and Bautista pointed out a few problems with the idea.
First off, if the track itself was sufficiently busted, the cart would derail, despite the portal, and it wouldn’t make it all the way to the end. We hadn’t tested these things yet, and we didn’t know how well they worked. For all we knew, it’d faceplant the moment it hit something.
Secondly, if we scooped up everything on the path, the crawlers waiting at the end of the line would be tossed face-first into a pile of crashed trains and possibly thousands upon thousands of ghouls and mobs suffering from stage-3 DTs. It’d be less dangerous to just throw them into the pit.
We had ten of the rapid-response trains to work with. After thinking on it some, we came up with an alternative idea.
We’d send two trains down each track. The first would have the portal tuned into the abyss. So the crashed trains and all the mobs and ghouls running up and down the line would be hit by the portal and sent directly into the pit. Fifteen minutes after the first train, we’d send a second train through, but this one would have the portal tuned to the train station. The crawlers waiting at the end of the line would have to get the hell out of the way of that first train. Bautista said the tunnels opened up as they approached the pit, and that wouldn’t be a problem.
This plan wouldn’t work if the track was broken. We had a contingency in place for that eventuality. One I hoped we wouldn’t have to utilize.
“What if there are people on the track we don’t know about?” Katia said. “We’ll send them into the abyss. Also, how loud are these things? Will they even know when to expect them?”
I shrugged. “We’re talking about three colored lines out of possibly thousands. By now most everybody who hasn’t given up has gotten to a trainyard. We’ve spread the word out as much as we can. It’s a risk, but this is the best idea we have. Don’t worry about the trains being loud enough. I already have a plan for that.”
While Bautista and I had spent those two hours playing the telephone game trying to figure out the three lines that would work for our plan, Donut, Katia, and I started the process of moving the train carts out of the way to make way for the rapid-response carts, which were shoved in the back of the parking area. The small carts we simply pushed onto the main track in front of our Vermillion engine. Then we drove the auxiliary carts out of the way. Most of them had just enough battery power to drive. Once they were safely out of the way, I pulled all the batteries. We also started the process of taking apart one of the engines and putting all the pieces into my inventory. Katia led this process. She had a wealth of knowledge about engines thanks to her earth hobby potion. She’d received the “Gear Head” knowledge base, and it was mightily useful here. She was certain we’d be able to reconstruct the engine and put it on something else.
The rapid-response carts wouldn’t budge until they were turned on. I climbed the stairs of the first one now. I pulled one of Growler Gary’s arms from inventory and placed it on the hand-shaped key console. “Here goes nothing,” I said to Donut. I held my breath.
The console glowed green. I relaxed. I had to put a rock on top of the hand to keep it in place while I moved to the second key console on the other side of the small cockpit. It was only about eight feet away, but it was just far enough that a single gnoll couldn’t activate both at once.
I placed Growler Gary’s second hand on the key.
Warning: You must use your left hand to activate the key.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Mongo,” Donut called. “Come on, we’re going back to the bar.”
Growler Gary was sober when we returned. Apparently the act of resurrection did that, which was unfortunate for everybody involved. He was desperately searching through his stash for another bottle when we arrived. He wouldn’t find one. We’d taken the rest.