99,754
We’d fallen under 100,000. This floor had already killed almost half of the survivors of the previous. The numbers were mind-numbing. All of this work, and for what? We were just delaying the inevitable. It was hard not to fall into that trap, not to allow the sheer horror of it all to shatter your resolve.
I thought of Priestly. In the end, he’d been broken by the system. He’d been unable to take it. Seeing that city destroyed as he marched with the bugbear army over the corpses of the NPCs, including the bodies of actors he’d watched perform in a play, had been it for him. He’d finally snapped what sanity he had left. His last entry had been shortly after that and was an incoherent jumble of words.
So much. So little. Stab, stab, stab. If I fall, if I stand. It matters not when the song is done.
A hand fell on my shoulder, and I jumped in surprise. It was Juice Box.
“Hey, are you okay, big guy? You’ve been sitting there looking all tense and angry for a few minutes. You’re scaring the children.”
“I’m okay. It’s just weird being the one who has to wait for all of this to play out.”
She nodded. “Didn’t you just crash a drop bear into a god’s face?”
“That was hours ago.”
“You remind me of my brother,” she said. “You need to be careful. He always had to be moving, always pushing toward his goal. When an obstacle popped up in front of him he couldn’t figure out, he finally pushed too hard. If he had waited, he’d still be alive.”
I had no response to that. Mordecai emerged from the crafting room to look distastefully at the mess. The kids were now watching The Goonies. The changelings were all emulating portly little humans and dancing with their Hawaiian shirts up, exposing their bellies.
Donut remained in her room, glued to the social media board. Her addiction to the thing was starting to worry me. She occasionally popped out to complain about someone who said something mean, but she and Mongo were having some much-needed alone time.
The recap episode came and went. It didn’t show anything about the gods and the Orthrus quest or the folks escaping their bubbles using the gate, but it was clear they were saving it all for the next episode. I watched Li Na and Li Jun battle a crab monster to defeat their final castle. Their world had started with barely any water, but there was some storyline where the waterline was constantly rising the entire time. By the time they defeated the last castle, their entire bubble was submerged. When it popped, water splashed all over the lacuna. Apparently that ended up killing a few crawlers who’d gotten out and were exploring the dark fog that filled the ground there.
Mordecai and Donut came out to listen to the announcement. Katia and the others remained out there, preparing for phase two.
Hello, Crawlers,
What an exciting day! We never expected to have so many gods running around this early. You are all so very spunky, and we really appreciate that. The ratings have never been higher!
After some very careful discussions, some unfortunate litigation that we won, and with the input from the Syndicate, we have decided to allow this method of bubble escape to continue. However, we have been forced to block some—but not all—of the secondary summonings. The feral gods who’ve been escaping are random, and sometimes new even to us. Each feral who appears has a 66% chance to summon a corresponding deity. One of the resulting summoned gods was Ysalte, the Vinegar Bitch. That would have been an extinction-level event for this floor and the next. As exciting as that would be, we still have another floor of sponsorship bidding to get through before we can allow it. We are at 33% of the projected capacity for the sixth floor, and nobody wants that number to go lower than that. So, congratulations. Opening that gate will still unleash a feral god, but the odds of summoning an active god in the process is now much less.
Since so many of you are choosing to descend early, we’ve decided we better get some sixth floor information out of the way.
Many of you have classes that will allow you to specialize and upgrade yourselves upon descent. This process will be similar to class selection on the third floor. For most of you, specialization is optional, but it would behoove you to read through all the provided selections.
In addition, I am happy to announce the guild system will become active on the sixth floor. This will allow you to better organize parties and share personal space upgrades without forcing a person to join your party. The sixth floor Bopcas will have more information. The process will be a bit expensive, but if you sell your unwanted gear on the market, it should be do-able for most crawlers. We highly recommend you take advantage of it.
And finally, some of you may have heard by now that third-party tourists will be joining us on the next floor. And they’ll be hunting you and your gear. Isn’t that exciting?
We have a record number of hunters participating this season thanks to a generous, anonymous sponsor who was willing to pay entry fees for anyone who wanted to join in on the fun. And people from all corners of the galaxy are taking advantage. Isn’t that fantastic?
Now get out there and kill, kill, kill!
I’d been all but certain that Borant would institute some sort of patch to stop this madness, but they’d actually done the opposite. They’d apparently saved our asses.
They needed us to die on their schedule, not ours.
“I’m not surprised,” Mordecai said. “They love it when you guys do stupid, suicidal stuff, but when it involves the entire population, they start to get alarmed. Don’t expect them to cushion your fall once all the sponsorships are done.”
I watched as the number of living crawlers ticked down by one. Then by three.
“I don’t see why Louis and Firas couldn’t just come and pick us up,” Donut grumbled as we brushed ourselves off. A dark fog surrounded us, and the air stank like dead meat. A couple of inches of water sat on the ground, much to Donut’s dismay. Even with her Torch spell, the lacuna was oppressively dark. In the distance, I heard the screech of the goddamned turkey.
It was eerily quiet down here. And damp. I felt claustrophobic, despite the lack of ceiling and walls. It felt as if we’d fallen into a sewer. I looked up at the edge of the bubble we’d just plummeted off. It’d been pretty far.
“I don’t want them leaving 543 and risking the Twister. They’re gonna have to leave in a few days, and if something happens to the balloon before then, it’ll screw everything up.”
“They still have to leave to pick us up,” Donut grumbled.
“Yeah, but we’ll be right there. Come on,” I said as I pulled the chariot from inventory and prepared it. “We’ll be there in less than an hour.”
Phase two was now finished, and we’d managed to save about 1,500 crawlers total. We’d added a few additional bubbles at the last minute. The gate was back in Katia’s possession. Nobody had tried to steal it, much to Donut’s surprise.
I wished that number of saved crawlers was higher, but more and more bubbles were popping on their own thanks to the work of the survivors inside.
A distressing amount of bubbles had gone dark.
There were also bubbles where the people inside had no access to the Desperado Club or Club Vanquisher—which was still closed for repairs. It turned out if you destroyed the entry pub to the Desperado, or the church for the Vanquisher, it removed access to the club. For those crawlers, we could only offer our sympathies and advice.
The only feral gods we unleashed into the lacuna were the giant turkey and what appeared to be a city-sized swarm of insects. Luckily, the swarm remained in the general area of their bubble number 801, way on the far side. It’d eventually dispersed. In addition, we’d summoned five more gods. These gods did more damage but eventually went away. I never got to see any of them.
The turkey was actually the most dangerous of anything we summoned. It was now sitting on top of some random popped bubble and screaming. It had evidently tripled in size after it ate the remainder of the exploded feral god. The thing was
level 150.
I heard through the chat lines that Miriam Dom and Prepotente were attempting to kill it using their debuff method.
After Phase two ended, we waited a few hours for anything else to happen. Nothing did once the five gods wandered off. Donut and I couldn’t wait any longer. After getting the chariot back from Langley and doing some repairs, we decided to make the treacherous journey across the lacuna back to bubble 543. Getting out of our current bubble was the most difficult part. Donut attached herself to me as I did a spiderman impersonation using only my feet on the side of the almost-invisible bottom half of the bubble. Once I found the lip, we both used a half-splat to fall into the dark fog of the lacuna.
The ground here was completely flat. A few red dots appeared on the edge of my vision, but they shied away from us. Donut said they were small, like rats. I used my new Ping spell to see if any weird NPCs or hidden, small-sized gods were out here, and there was nothing.
We didn’t waste time. I revved up the chariot, and we were off. I kept a lookout for the Xs of crawlers, but I didn’t see anything. Even here, there were janitor mobs at work.
The pickup went as planned, and we were soon back atop the bowl, which had broken in half. With the lip gone from the bowl, the world up here had taken on a new appearance. A nearby, closed and glowing bubble dominated the distant horizon, like the curve of a planet as seen from space.
“It’s pretty,” Donut said as we landed.
It was oddly beautiful, until I remembered each intact bubble was potentially a tombstone, a monument to crawlers who’d fallen victim to this fifth floor.
“Welcome home,” Firas said as we landed just outside of Hump Town.
A small crowd of crawlers had gathered to watch us descend. They started clapping as we alighted.
“I thought everyone had gone down the stairs already,” I said.
“Obviously not, Carl,” Donut said, stiffening on my shoulder. She waved. “People know they wouldn’t have been saved without you and me. Now wave at them and don’t look so grumpy.”
A crocodilian stood in the front of the crowd, standing with Katia as we landed. He stepped forward and gave me a fist bump.
“Hello, Florin,” I said. “I’m glad to see you made it out.”
The man rested his weight on his Mossberg shotgun. The modified and now-magical weapon supposedly had unlimited ammo. “I managed to get three of the castles on my own, but that last air one was impossible. Thanks to you and Elle and Katia, I am free.” He looked at Donut. “You, too, pretty girl.”
Donut preened. “Oh, you’re quite welcome.”
He’d been the last rescue of the first phase. He’d gotten access to the Desperado Club because he’d “killed” Ifechi. He had a golden player killer mark over his head, similar to Katia’s. They were the only two marks like that in the dungeon.
“I’m glad to have helped,” I said.
He nodded.
“I’m headin’ down the stairs since there’s no more training to be had, but I wanted to meet you first. I understand you’re going to throw a feral god onto the ninth floor to jumble them up a bit. Good for you, mate. I’m looking forward to hearing about it.”
“That’s the plan,” I said. I looked up. “We’re going to fuck those guys up. We’re going to toss a god right into the camp of the Skull Empire.”
He leaned forward and clasped me on the shoulder with his green, scaled hand. He kept his hand up there, and suddenly it was super awkward. He stared at me with his dark, intense eyes.
“I was done, mate. I didn’t have anything,” he said, suddenly emotional. “You should have met her. My Ife. She was amazing. A ray of light. She was the bravest, kindest person I’d ever met. She gave me hope. I was done until I went into the club, and I met Elle. She told me a story about this man and his cat who’d stopped everything he was doing to help a group of old people in wheelchairs and how this same man was planning on using this artifact he’d found to save people stuck in their bubbles. And it reminded me that Ife wasn’t the only one. That there is good in this world. There is something left to fight for. I might die tomorrow, but it won’t be because I’ve given up. And I want to thank you for that.”
“I’m just doing the best I can,” I said, not sure what else to say. The dude’s claw was still on my shoulder. I reached up and clumsily patted it.
He retracted his arm quickly, as if surprised by my touch. “If you ever need a backup gun, I’m in your debt.” Then just like that, he turned and walked away. We watched him walk away in silence. He went straight to the stairwell, and without turning around, he disappeared.
“That dude is pretty intense,” I said.
“I like him. Still, that would’ve been much more emotional if he wasn’t a disgusting crocodile man,” Donut whispered after he was gone. “He’s really dirty, too. He smells like a dead frog. And how does he get that shirt on with such a giant head?”
“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said through gritted teeth. “Don’t say that shit out loud.”
Time to Level Collapse: 7 hours.
“You know what, Carl?” Donut asked as we sat at the booth at the Desperado Club. She sipped on a nonalcoholic Shirley temple as the Sledge stood unnecessarily nearby. The three of us were the only crawlers here. “I’m worried the ending is going to be anticlimactic. What if this doesn’t work? Then what?”
“Then we go down the stairs, Donut. It doesn’t always have to end with a giant fight or an explosion. We’re alive. We’ve already done enough this floor.”
The last two days had been a blur. My fingertip itched with phantom pain where I'd made my daily blood offering. The mobs were all gone from the air quadrant, so all that was left was to train. I’d also spent time—too much time, really—showing the others how to dominate in the game Frogger.
The large, stand-up video game machine was not the same exact one my father had in our basement growing up. But it was similar. I’d had to rig up a dwarven battery to make it work. It’d been in my fan box. I’d mentioned the game more than once in my conversations with Katia and Donut, and they’d run with it. I wasn’t certain, but I suspected it was an attempt at trolling me or a way to block a better prize. I’d never know. In the end, it ended up being exactly what I needed.
It’d been breathing room, a way to relax. It brought me back to a distant memory of happiness, even if it was just for a moment. I’d only gotten good at the game because I’d always been locked away in the basement while my dad had friends over. Still, you could do that. You could take a terrible situation and still find moments of peace, even joy. I needed to be reminded that was possible, and the game console did exactly that.
We’d ended up performing three more rescues using the gate. Two of the three summoned additional gods, who turned on each other and both disappeared. There was no sign of Chris and Maggie. The general consensus was that they’d gone down the stairs. I wasn’t so certain.
Gwen and Tran and their team had ventured into the now-dry subterranean level and managed to loot the remains of the tomb raiders and unearth the tomb of Anser, which was just a sarcophagus filled with the skeleton of a goose wearing a golden, unenchanted crown. Electrifying the water had triggered all of the traps. Quetzalcoatlus’s corpse contained a partial map of the sixth floor that contained coordinates of multiple locations.
“It does have to end with a giant explosion! I promised Katia it would always end that way.”
Katia sat across from us at the table. She was staring down at her drink, mixing it idly. She hadn’t reacted to Donut’s explosion comment. She was in her own little world.
“Out with it,” I finally said.
She looked up, and she sighed. She’d been quiet like this for a few days now. She took a deep breath.
“I don’t want to mess up the personal space situation,” she finally said.
I just blinked.
“But?” I asked.
“But I think we need to separate the next floor down.�
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“What?” Donut asked. “You’re breaking up with us? What did Carl do?” She looked at me. “What did you do, Carl?”
Katia laughed softly. She reached forward and put a hand on Donut’s paw. “He didn’t do anything. It’s because of Eva. I’ve been talking to her, and I’ve been talking to all the former daughters. She’s trying to gather them back to her. Some are actually doing it.”
I knew she’d been talking to people. But Eva? Eva had tried to kill her. Katia had tried to kill Eva.
“You want to join back up with Eva?” I asked, astounded.
“No, of course not. She has… increased her player killer marks. Do you remember Silfa? The fairy? Used to own a bakery?”
“Yes,” I said. Silfa was an older woman who’d turned herself into a healer. She had two of her own daughters with her. Hekla and Eva had used her as bait, trying to get me to kill her. It seemed so long ago.
“She’s dead, and so are her two daughters. Despite everything, they’d formed a new party with Eva. I tried talking them out of it, but they didn’t listen. And Eva got them killed. A few others are tempted to return to Eva because nobody will take them in. I couldn’t do anything this floor, but the next will be an open world. I need to gather the former daughters and protect them. Before Eva does. Before someone else realizes how vulnerable they are. We shouldn’t have just let them spread out and away. It was a death sentence, and I can’t stop thinking about it. And if Eva insists on pursuing the matter, I need to take care of that, too.”
“We’re a team, Katia,” Donut said, sounding hurt. “We can do this together. We can help you. You can just ask.”
“No,” Katia said. “I love both of you, but the path you’re on right now…. With the ring and the hunters and all of it? You two already have too much on your plate for the next floor. Not to mention that Tsarina Signet storyline. When you’re in the Carl and Donut party, you ride on the Carl and Donut rollercoaster, and once it gets going, there’s no getting off. I need to do this.”
The Gate of the Feral Gods Page 50
