by DoctorHepa
“I need to make a good example for my child, Carl.”
“He’s not your child, Donut. He’s a pet. We don’t put our lives in danger for our pets.”
I regretted it the moment the words came out of my mouth. Donut looked as if I’d slapped her. I suddenly felt like an enormous asshole.
Mongo ripped off the painted skull, revealing the dead lemur’s own skull.
“Ew,” Donut said, looking horrified. The look of hurt had disappeared just as quickly as it had come. “Carl, do you see that? It’s disgusting!”
“Yeah, that’s really gross,” I said, happy for the quick change of subject.
The human skull hat covered a secondary skull with a pair of bulbous, bloodshot eyes. The thing had no fur or skin on its head at all. It looked even more scary without the skull hat than it did with it.
The lemur held a poor lemur skin and a small bandolier containing six throwing knives. Donut took all of them. The knives were each about the size of my hand with little black handles.
“Donut, you should go back up there,” I said. “Slowly and quietly, and look over the street. See if you can spy any more lemurs on the roofs. Also see if you can tell where the main part of the circus is.”
“No need,” Donut said. “I already looked. There’s one more lemur across the street, but he’s asleep. I can probably take him out with a missile and nobody will notice. And a few streets over, you can see the large circus tents. There’s a park, I think. It’s the same direction from where the giraffe came. I could see at least three of the giraffes walking around over there. I didn’t see any of the scary clowns though. Also, if you’re really quiet, you can hear the music from the circus.”
I just looked at Donut. She really was growing, getting more efficient. Again, I felt bad for the pet comment. But at the same time, it was true, wasn’t it? Donut was different. She was more than a pet.
Donut gazed down lovingly at Mongo, who’d eaten his fill.
“You did good,” she said. “You’re almost at level four already!”
The little dinosaur hopped up and down, waving his bloody arms and splattering gore everywhere.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s kill the guy across the street, examine the bodies of those crawlers out there, and then check out the circus. Sound like a plan, partner?”
Donut paused and then nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Partner.”
A note from DoctorHepa
Thanks for reading! I want to take a moment to spam you with an upcoming release for those of you who like audiobooks. My standalone Litrpg/horror novel Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon is coming out a week from today in audio. It'll be available wherever audiobooks are sold or lent, including places like Hoopla (which is free for US folks if you sign up through your local library). It is over 20 hours of bloody, gory, kaiju action. It's not as lighthearted as DCC, but it does feature a pet tapeworm named Banksy. It's about a dude trapped in a game run by a serial killer. It features over 20 different races, and each one of those races has their own magical system. The preorder Audible link is here.
Chapter 53
Donut took out the sleeping lemur with a magic missile. We waited five minutes to see if anything would react, but only silence followed. In those moments as we waited, I could hear it, the distant whisper of a calliope, playing slow and haunting circus music. Once I was relatively certain the watchers were gone, we approached the three dead crawlers.
As we came closer, it was apparent there was enough blood and guts to comprise five or six crawlers. Like with the brindle grubs, the X’s disappeared if the bodies were significantly destroyed. It seemed there’d been a large-scale battle here, and I suspected they’d taken out several of the lemurs, too, but their bodies had already been removed. As I suspected, the three crawlers had been left as a trap.
Of the three I could easily examine, two were human and one was a large, tree-like creature. I’d had that on my list, but I couldn’t remember the name. When I examined the corpse, it didn’t tell us their new races. All three were women.
Crawler Grace Bautista 3. Level 8. Killed by Former Circus Lemur.
All of them appeared Asian, maybe Filipino. All had the same last name. All were level 8. All killed by lemurs. Grace, Nica, and Lea. None of them had any inventory, meaning some of their group were probably still alive.
“That one, the tree lady is wearing an anklet,” Donut said. “And this one has two rings.”
Sure enough, as I examined the corpses more closely, I could tell they’d been looted hastily. Their inventory was gone, and their weapons and armor appeared to have been removed, leaving them in regular street clothes—all except the tree woman, who was naked save for the anklet. Whatever had transpired here had happened quickly. These three were sisters or close family members, and all three had died at the same time. I shook my head. Fuck this game.
The tree creature was humanoid but with a badly misshapen body. She was closer to an Ent from Lord of the Rings than Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. But even that comparison wasn’t correct. Her facial features remained human, but she’d been bent over and hunchbacked with an extra set of limbs erupting from her back.
It took a few minutes to pry the anklet from her ankle, which is likely why they’d abandoned it. I also pulled the two rings off the fingers of the second one, the human named Nica.
Both of the rings were +2 to strength. Since Donut couldn’t wear them, I rubbed the blood off and put them on myself, giving me a total of four rings. And just like that, my strength was back to an acceptable level. I didn’t take any joy from looting the corpses of fellow crawlers, but I now realized how much of an advantage it was to be in an area where other crawlers existed. I could see the allure of being a player killer. This game gave a lot of loot.
I examined the simple anklet. It appeared to be made of wood. It had three little beads attached to it that clicked when I shook it, like seed pods. It wasn’t nearly as loud as Donut’s charm, but anything that made noise was a distraction.
Enchanted Anklet of the Fallen Oak.
Imbues wearer with +1 Dexterity, +1 Constitution, and gives +3 to the skill Double Tap. It’s also an anklet. One would think anklets enhance the beauty of feet like toe rings do, but they are excessive, jangly distractions that make you look too garish.
“Let’s see if it’ll let you wear this,” I said. I suspected it would. She already had one bracelet wrapped around her forward leg. I could barely see it through all the fur.
Donut looked at the anklet with distaste. “Wood?” she said. “What is this, the 70’s? Anklets are for the foot model, not me.”
The AI clearly didn’t want me wearing this thing, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud. “It has a constitution buff. You need it.”
She sighed and pulled it into her inventory. “I’ll put it on my back leg so nobody will see it.”
It appeared in a blink, forming around her rear left ankle. It was a fourth the size as it was before, and it remained hidden in the tufts of fur. She shook her leg a few times with distaste. Thankfully the little beads barely made any noise. If we kept her hair brush buff active, her Constitution was now seven. It was still much too low for my tastes.
“Read the description of that Double Tap skill and tell me what it does” I said.
She shrugged. “It says if I hit the monster twice in a row with the same attack there’s a chance the second hit does critical damage.”
“Okay, good,” I said. “Now let’s get out of the street.”
The closer we came to the edge of the circus, the louder the calliope music. The music didn’t change. It was a slow, haunting oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah of a polka played at half speed. I looked worriedly at the sun, which edged close to the distant rooftops. I hadn’t seen any saferooms since the last one.
We hid inside of a building that overlooked the massive circus tents. We’d killed five sentinel lemurs on our way here. While the lazy lemurs were hard to spot, they also se
emed easy to sneak up on as long as we moved slowly. Donut had killed most of them, usually allowing Mongo to finish them off. The little dinosaur hit level four, and now he was about the same size as the cat. The dinosaur quivered with anger and potential energy every time we approached a lemur, and sometimes the excitement was too much for him. He’d let out a quick screech and then clamp his beak shut, as if he knew he’d messed up.
We came across a sleeping lemur sprawled out on the floor of one building, and it was just too much temptation for Mongo. The dinosaur squealed and pounced, landing onto the stomach of the lemur, who awakened and managed to croak before I could also jump and smash his skull with my foot. A lemur-laden giraffe walked down the street soon thereafter while we hid against the inside wall of the building. But it passed by, not pausing.
Through the hole of a missing window, we now observed the circus. It consisted of three massive tents, multiple wagons, several cages filled with shadowy forms we couldn’t see, and at least a dozen other smaller tents. In addition to the lemurs, giraffes, and stilt clowns, we saw a few other types of mobs, including a group of short, fat clowns and a large, ogre-like creature wearing a leopard-skin leotard. The ogre had a tentacle sprouting from the side of his neck.
One of the tents was flanked by a massive, faded sign that read “Grimaldi’s World O’ Freaks, Admission One Gold Coin. No children or those with weak constitutions allowed.” A line of illustrated, ten-foot-tall images stood on either side of the sign, showing the freaks and other attractions within the tent. One of them was the ogre creature with “The Over City’s Strongest Citizen.” written over it.
The other illustrations were a faded mix of sideshow characters and attractions like “The Over City’s Fattest Woman” and “Garth, The Two-Headed Troglodyte” and “Tiny, The Amazing, Fire-Breathing Gnoll.”
There was one peculiarity amongst the signs. The last of the tall illustrations held an image of a horned, elf-like woman covered head to toe in tattoos. The sign read “Tsarina Signet and Her Amazing Battle Squad.” But someone had painted a large circle around the poster, crossing out the image. “Wanted. Traitor,” was written above the sign. As we watched, one of the round clowns walked by, pushing a wheelbarrow that appeared to be filled with animal skins. He paused at the sign, zipped down his pants, and urinated on the poster.
“My word, they don’t seem to like that lady,” Donut said.
“No they don’t,” I said.
We watched for a few more minutes. The clowns and lemurs appeared to be hard at work, but what were they doing? The entire circus was surrounded by a well-worn, five-foot-high battlement made of rocks, wood, and bones. The clowns started draping animal skins over the barriers. A pair of stilt clowns pulled a wagon out into the street and started erecting what looked like trench warfare defenses. They dumped jack-like wooden structures connected to one another by circling, barbed lengths of wire.
“They’re getting ready for a battle,” I said.
Mordecai: It’s getting late. Are you guys close to the other town yet?
Carl: Hello, Mordecai. How’s your head?
Mordecai: I’ve had no… Wait, what do you mean?
Carl: Where are you?
Mordecai: I’m in my room. Are you two near the town or not?
Huh. He must’ve teleported back to his base the moment we left the saferoom.
Carl: Do you remember anything from today?
Donut: YOU WERE DRUNK AND YOU MOLESTED SOMEONE’S GRANDMA.
Mordecai didn’t answer for several moments.
Mordecai: Where are you right now?
I went on to explain everything that had happened. He didn’t ask any questions and waited for me to finish. It didn’t take long to explain.
Mordecai: Okay. Back the hell out of there and get your butts to that safe room. You are in way over your head. Do it now. It will be dark soon. I will explain just how stupid you two are once you get there.
Carl: Maybe we wouldn’t have been stupid if you hadn’t been passed out in a pile of your own vomit. We were just about to head back. See you there.
Mordecai: Night comes on quickly. You’ll want to hurry.
Mongo growled.
“Down,” I hissed.
Outside, dozens of the lemurs and stilt clowns appeared. They came from all directions, heading back toward the circus. These were the sentries, I realized. They were headed back to home base before it got dark.
We had to remain low and press ourselves against the interior wall of the decrepit building, or we’d be seen by the passing mobs. We huddled as the clomp, clomp, clomp of a giraffe walked by on the wooden slats. Donut jumped to my shoulders and peered over the windowsill while Mongo crawled into my lap. I found myself making “shhh,” noises while I rubbed the rough, half-feathered back of the little dinosaur’s head.
“They just keep coming and coming,” Donut said. “We shouldn’t have come here, Carl. It’s getting darker too.”
“Okay,” I said. “If they’re retreating back to their base, they probably won’t follow us. Let’s give it a minute and run.”
Donut nodded.
We waited until the steady progression of lemurs and clowns started to abate. There had to be a thousand of them. The sun still hadn’t fully sunk below the artificial horizon. Outside, the stilt clowns had finished erecting the barbed wire defenses and were now starting to line up behind the wall. Another group of monsters I hadn’t yet seen circled around a group of cauldrons, like witches stirring a magical soup. These monsters were tall and thin with emaciated arms and fabric robes and masks that hung in tatters, like undead executioners. Except the fabric was bright purple and yellow. On this side of the park there were four cauldrons set up, and each cauldron had four of the brightly-colored robed figures surrounding the bubbling and hissing pot.
A group of the round clowns pushed the large, red and yellow-painted animal cages to the edges of the walls, the doors facing outward. Roars and trills shook the massive pens. Whatever was in there, I guessed they would unleash the monsters on the attackers. I caught glimpse of tentacles and claws reaching outward from one of the cages. I was reminded of the Krakaren boss we’d fought earlier, though these tentacles seemed less octopus-like and more, I don’t know, worm-like. I felt a visceral revulsion at the sight.
“Yeah, fuck this. We’re out of here,” I said. “Let’s go.”
A pair of lemurs and a clown remained on the street as we emerged. Donut hit them with three quick magic missiles as I rushed up at them. I punted the first lemur directly at the clown, who’d fallen backward. The squealing, on-fire lemur ricocheted off the struggling clown’s head, who stumbled again, hitting the ground. While Donut and Mongo quickly dispatched the third lemur, I leaped up on the clown like I’d done before, crushing in his chest and pummeling him in his face, smashing it in. I could feel the extra strength I’d gained from the rings with each punch.
More strength. I needed more strength, and I could kill these things with a single hit.
I looted a second big top ticket and hunk of clown meat.
I eyed a group of ten lemurs one street over. They howled and pointed at us, but they didn’t move to pursue.
“Run,” I said. We turned and bolted down the street, not bothering with the alleys. The saferoom was only four blocks over.
“Did you see,” Donut shouted as we ran. A whistling noise filled the air as she breathlessly talked. “My magic missile can set things on fire now! My spell hit level…”
Wham! Half the street where we’d just been standing exploded, sending us both flying forward. I hit the ground and rolled, coming to a stop. My ears throbbed. Rocks and debris showered over us. Mongo squealed in pain. He glowed a moment later as Donut cast Heal Critter. She rushed to the small, blood-splattered dinosaur, clucking over him worriedly.
“What the hell was that?” I yelled, pulling myself to my feet. “Come on!”
A purple and yellow comet rose into the air from the direction of
the circus. It whistled as it bounced off the ceiling and hurled at us. The brightly-colored projectile was a mortar round, I realized in that fraction of a moment. It’d been fired from the cauldrons. They were firing goddamned magical mortars at us.
“Shit,” I cried. “There!” I pointed at a nearby entranceway, and all three of us dove inside. I covered Donut and Mongo as another, louder detonation echoed. My health plummeted as darkness descended.
Rocks bounced off me as the building collapsed around us. I slammed a healing potion as my health continued its downward arc. The ground cracked, and we fell again. Shit. The ground is made of wood, I thought. We’re falling through. We crashed to another stop, rock and wood falling around us, tumbling and rolling. I couldn’t hear anything for several moments. Underneath me, Donut and Mongo squirmed to get out.
I rolled over, freeing them. Debris and dust cascaded, and I couldn’t stop coughing. My health remained about halfway full, and I cast Heal to bring it all the way back up. We were in murky darkness. Mongo let out a cry of fear.
Light filled the room as Donut cast Torch.
We waited for another mortar round to drop, but it never came. They’d probably assumed they’d gotten us. After the rocks finally settled, I could still hear the distant, haunting calliope music.
“That was most unpleasant,” Donut said. She started rubbing dust off Mongo’s feathers.
We’d fallen into what appeared to be a basement of some sort. I looked about. Above, a dim light shone through where we’d fallen, about twelve feet up. I looked uneasily at the ground, but I couldn’t see it. It was nothing but rubble and wood. This room had been built below the main level of the Over City. I didn’t know that was a thing. Smoke rose lazily through a gap in the wreckage.
The room wasn’t large. It appeared to be about twice the size of Mordecai’s base with walls made of rough stone. There’d once been a staircase leading up, but it had collapsed in on itself. Rotted remnants of barrels lined one wall. The only way out was through the hole we’d fallen in.
