by DoctorHepa
Dozens of responses to my group chat post poured in as I pulled my gear off, including my underwear. I also removed my xistera, just to be safe. Removing the stuff was easy, a lot easier than putting it on. I could just transfer it directly to my inventory. Goddamnit, I thought, reading the messages in the chat. Three different crawlers had given me the same response. The entrance to the back room at the Desperado Club had disappeared when the safe rooms closed off. They were insulating the club from the impending disaster.
That left us with only one escape.
Katia came jogging up, along with a handful of other crawlers, mostly human. I didn’t know any of them. Daniel Bautista was not among them.
“Okay guys,” I said. “If you haven’t already, magical gear off. We have sixteen minutes, and we need to run at full speed. We’re out of time.”
The group just looked at me. Finally, one of them said, “Dude, why are you naked?”
I pointed east. “Go!”
* * *
The next pulse occurred just as we left town. A man near the back of the group exploded, just like that. His name had been Conrad E, and he’d had a Russian accent. He’d been a level-12 Ranger.
“What the hell was that?” I asked as I ran. Ahead, three emu-like mobs appeared, screeching. They were called Ruin Flockers. Donut hit two of them with Magic Missile as another mage hit the third with a lightning burst. That third ostrich didn’t die, but hit the ground. I stomped its neck as we continued running.
“His quiver. All of his arrows blew up, I think,” Katia said. “He’d put his bow away, but he’d forgotten about his arrows.”
“Donut,” I said. “I don’t like this. I think you should take it off.”
Donut remained on my shoulder, despite being faster than me. Behind, someone shouted about another mob. “Leave it,” I yelled.
“I’ll lose five intelligence!” Donut whined. “And my Sepsis debuff. And I really like it.”
“These bursts are attacking our magical gear,” I said.
“But if I lose it, somebody else will get it and put it on. We’ll have to fight them. I don’t want to hurt a person.”
“I know,” I said. I didn’t want that either. I didn’t add that only an idiot would actually put the thing on after reading the description. Anybody still around at this point would know better, so I wasn’t too worried about that anymore. I leaped over a pile of rubble. We were coming up on ten minutes. A pair of dead crawlers appeared on my map, surrounded by the red dots of Street Urchins. We didn’t have time to investigate.
Before, I’d never been the fastest runner. I had good endurance, more so than a lot of the guys who only trained on weights, but I’d never been a speed guy. I’d always hated jogging, but I played a lot of basketball. Not many team sports trained cardio like basketball, except maybe tennis or soccer. And probably jai-alai, too.
Now, I ran through the city with ease, moving much, much faster than I’d ever been able to before. My breaths came in ragged gasps, but my body didn’t slow down. It was an odd, disconcerting feeling. If we survived this, I really needed to push myself more physically, to test my limits. My brain still thought of myself as a normal human. As a group, even the slowest amongst us moved faster than a squad of Olympians ever could’ve. I recalled my poor, long-lost chopper. It wouldn’t have done well on this level, not with all the debris in the streets.
“Well, I’m not taking it off,” Donut said.
“That dude blew up, Donut,” I said. To our left, a group of four more crawlers appeared. They merged with us.
“Are we sure it’s there,” one of them, a shark-headed creature, called.
“It’s there,” another yelled back. “I can see it on my map already.”
I turned my attention back to Donut. The next burst was due at any moment. They weren’t coming at exact five-minute intervals. “What’s going to happen if you permanently lose five intelligence, and then you lose the tiara anyway? Then you’ll be down ten instead of five.”
“But it was my first item,” she said.
“It also might catch your damn head on fire. Besides, remember the description? You’ll still be an official princess.”
“Donut, he’s right. You better take it off,” Katia said.
“Oh, all right,” Donut grumbled.
The Sepsis Crown atop her head crumbled into dust, disappearing like ash.
“Hey!” Donut yelled. To my left, one of the newcomers also cried out. His pants vanished. “It disappeared before I could remove it!”
The second pulse had apparently activated all magical weapons. This third one had destroyed any still-equipped armor.
The fourth pulse ripped through the party just as we pulled up to the small, decrepit building. We’d run the distance in record time.
Chaos tore through the group. A lightning bolt ripped through the party, glancing off a human, who tumbled and hit the ground, almost dead. Another person simply teleported away. Katia’s whole body glowed, and she leaped forward, clipping me in the process and throwing me down. She ran directly into the wall, and blasted through it like the Kool-Aid Man. I bounced off the floor, crying out. Donut hissed and leaped away. I felt my arm break in that moment Katia slammed into me, but it was healed by the time I finished rolling.
You have been poisoned!
It took me a long moment to figure out what the hell had just happened. Normally, I was immune to poison, but that came from my Nightgaunt Cloak. Donut had also been poisoned, but she was also now immune thanks to her Former Child Actor class.
The first two items in everyone’s hotlist had activated themselves on their own. So much for items in our inventory being safe. For both me and Donut, it was a healing potion and then a mana potion. We’d both ingested the second potion before the potion timer ended, inflicting us both with potion sickness. I knew Katia had an active skill called Rush, something she could only do once a day, and that’s what’d happened to her.
The poison effect kicked me in the stomach, doubling me over. Once the fifteen seconds passed, I took an antidote potion and surveyed the crowd. We’d all stopped dead in the street outside the building. Katia returned, a dazed look in her eyes. Her nose had been knocked completely sideways and was now just below her ear. She didn’t seem to have noticed.
“That really hurt,” she said.
Nobody had been killed, but we didn’t know what happened to the guy who’d teleported away. I leaned over the human who’d been cooked with the Lightning spell. He was unconscious. I poured a healing potion into his mouth. This was one of the newcomers who’d met us as we ran here. The Asian man’s eyes fluttered then snapped open.
“Please get your dick out of my face,” he said. I grinned and backed away.
I looked over my shoulder, and through the hole in the wall Katia had created, I could see it. I glanced at the timers up in the corner of my vision. We had three minutes before the big detonation.
We also had two days and 18 hours left before this floor would collapse.
A familiar face appeared, jogging up with a new group. Daniel Bautista.
“I told you it was here,” he said, indicating the stairwell down to the fourth level.
I clapped him on the shoulder. The man nodded and turned toward the stairwell, disappearing down to the fourth floor.
We didn’t have a choice. I was going to just send everyone without Desperado Club access to the stairwell, but with the club closed off, it was either this or death.
“Go,” I said. “Everybody down the stairs.”
We watched as the procession of people lined up and rushed down the hole.
Carl: Mordecai, are you in your room?
Mordecai: I’m safe.
Carl: What’s going to happen to us when we go down early? Or you?
Mordecai: I am going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs for three days. You guys won’t notice a time difference. I’ll see you on the other side. Also, I just peeked out the door. The NPCs are al
l safe, all that I can see. Nobody is on the street except the guards, who reactivated with that second burst. They all only have a single life point. It’s too bad you’re not here, otherwise I’d have you kill as many as you can. It wouldn’t be as much experience when you’re just finishing them off, but it would still be quite a bit.
I glanced over at Katia, who stood at the entrance to the stairwell, waiting for us.
Carl: Are there any guards still in the warehouse?
Mordecai: I don’t know. Probably a few. They’re still moving out to their regular positions. I’m not going over there to look. Now get your asses into that stairwell.
Carl: Okay. Oh, and Mordecai?
Mordecai: What?
Carl: Congratulations.
He didn’t answer. Donut looked up at me, eyes wide. “That’s right,” she said. “He’s free now, isn’t he? We make it to the fourth floor, and he gets to go home once the dungeon is over.”
“That’s right,” I said. I thought of Remex, who was also about to finish his “duty.” I wondered how long he’d been stuck here. I remembered what Donut had said when she learned what he really was. Carl, I don’t want to become an NPC.
And she’d said something else, too. It was heartbreaking, when you thought about it. I know she’s dead.
I thought of everyone we’d met on this floor, of the crawlers and NPCs we’d come across. We’d been on the floor less than a week, but it felt like a millennia. I thought of Signet the half-naiad. Of Quint the possum-faced pharmacist. Pustule the hobgoblin explosives dealer. I thought of poor GumGum the orc. Of Miss Quill. Of little Ricky Joe, the one-armed, child dwarf. I wondered if his mom ever had her baby.
The three of us turned toward the stairwell. Donut pulled Mongo out of his cage, and the dinosaur grunted with annoyance for being stuck so long.
We proceeded down the stairs. I knew from the last time, the floor ended the moment we pulled on the handle. The door at the bottom of the stairs was the same as always, with the oversized Kua-Tin carving, making them look bigger and more menacing than they really were.
You’re not going to break me. Fuck you all.
I examined its properties.
Entrance to the fourth floor.
This is where the real fun begins.
Mind the gap.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
We had 100 seconds left.
“Katia,” I said. “Pull out that detonator I gave you earlier. It has a ten second delay. Wait until the timer is at about 15 seconds, and push it. Then we’ll go in before it goes off.”
“Why?” she asked, pulling the pencil-like detonator out. The thing had a range of ten kilometers, so we were more than close enough. “Won’t that make the bomb go off faster?”
“Yes, but only by a couple seconds. If people aren’t safe by now, they’re already dead. I doubt it’s going to work, since the detonators are magical. They probably got ruined in that first burst. But if it does, I set the dynamite. I let Donut smush a few of the detonator blobs onto the wall. If we get any experience for it, we’ll all share in the spoils.”
She shrugged. Just as the timer hit twenty seconds, she pressed the button.
We turned to open the door.
“Hey, Carl,” said Donut, just as we started to dissolve away. “You probably should have put your pants back on when we still could get into our inventory, don’t you think? Aren’t we going straight to Odette’s show?” She cackled with laughter.
I looked down at the cat, horrified.
“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said.
End of Part Three
A note from DoctorHepa
Chapter 73 is an "Epilogue" (AKA an Odette) chapter.
Over on Patreon, I have a poll up for those with $5 and up tiers that will end in a few days where one can vote on the theme for the fifth floor. The theme for the fourth floor is already set and will be revealed once we hit chapter 74. I also have a second poll up for all Patrons that'll allow you to vote on the contents of a fan box. The current front-runner is a bit surprising.
I really, really appreciate all of you who have stuck with me throughout this. It is now July, and I posted the first few chapters in January. Now that we're getting to themed floors + everything that's going to happen with the Patrons, things are going to really kick off. We have old friends and new ones on the horizon, and I can't wait for ya'll to read it.
* * *
Chapter 73
A note from DoctorHepa
Note. This will appear as an epilogue in Book 2, but for continuity’s sake, I’m keeping it listed as chapter 73
“It looks like we now have definitive proof that sex tape with the late Maestro was indeed a snick,” Odette mused. The audience roared. Donut was on her back, howling with laughter as my cheeks burned.
I never considered myself a shy person. I’d been wandering the dungeon wearing nothing but boxers for weeks now. But the sight of myself up on the screen, running full tilt through the Over City with nothing but a one-armed leather jacket and my nuts dangling free filled me with a strange, almost primal sense of vulnerability. I didn’t know how nudists ever got used to it.
The interview was going well. So far, we’d received nothing but softball questions. I knew that’d soon change. It was still early.
All four of us—Me, Donut, Mongo, and Katia—went through the door and immediately appeared in the green room. There was a slight, odd pop in my brain, similar to the one I’d experienced the very first time I entered the dungeon, but that was it. There was no other sense that two and a half days had passed.
“Whoa,” Katia said, spinning in circles at the sight of the green room. She stopped, putting her hands out to steady herself. “Are we on a boat?”
I didn’t answer her. I only stared. She had changed to a stunning, short-haired woman, about 35 years old. Black haired with pale, light, wideset eyes that sat at an odd angle on her face.
“Katia,” Donut said, “You’re getting really good at the sculpting thing. Plus I like you better with black hair. It gives you more poise.”
She reached up and touched her features. She relaxed. “This is the real me, Donut.”
As Donut explained to her where we were, I immediately proceeded to the bathroom to build myself a loincloth made of toilet paper. My hands shook as I wrapped the paper around my legs.
Holy shit, I thought. Our last few hours on the third floor had gone by quickly and unexpectedly. And now that I had a moment to breathe, my heart couldn’t stop pounding. I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor, my hand to my chest. How is this real? How is this my life?
I knew this respite would be short-lived. After we were done here, we’d move onto the fourth floor, and it would start all over again.
“Carl, hurry up, I gotta wee!” Donut said, barging into the bathroom. She stopped short. Her tail drooped at the sight of me there on the floor. A look of concern flashed across her cat face. She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “You better get back out there. Katia and Mongo are eating all the human snacks. Lexis is in there. She said Katia is going to be on the show, too, but only at the end of the interview. She said it’s a fourth-floor special, and we’re going live just before the floor opens up.”
“Come here, Donut,” I said.
She immediately jumped onto my lap, butting her head against my chest. “Carl, are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. I gave her head a quick pat. It was strange without her tiara. “What about you? We thought we were going to die, and then we weren’t, and it’s been non-stop since.”
“You need to sleep,” she said, also deflecting the question. “Let’s do the interview and find a saferoom and rest. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, sitting up. I put my arms out, revealing my toilet paper loincloth. “So? What do you think?”
“Are you asking me to lie, Carl?”
“Yes I am,”
Thirty minutes later, I sat on the couch in my ri
diculous makeshift loincloth as we watched our last moments on the third floor play out on the screen.
Odette leaned back. “Before I show you what happened next, I want to bring out the newest member of the Royal Court of Princess Donut. Everyone say hello to Katia. And welcome back to the show, Mongo!”
Katia sat next to me on the couch while Mongo padded out and squawked at the virtual crowd, who screamed enthusiastically at the velociraptor. He curled up on the floor in front of Donut. Despite being in his box most of the night, even he seemed exhausted.
After a few initial questions to Katia, which she answered with deer-in-the-headlights, one-word responses, Odette sighed and turned back to me.
“So, guys,” she said. “You were only gone for two days, but a lot can happen in two days. Isn’t that right?” The audience laughed, almost nervously, which made me nervous. “So, what do you think happened after you hit that detonator?”
I shrugged. “I was hoping for an explosion at the warehouse, but I know the hobgoblin pus is a magical detonator, so I suspect maybe it was fried, and nothing happened.”
She clapped, nodding her bug head vigorously. “Smart, smart boy.”
The audience had grown dead quiet. An electric feeling of anticipation washed over me. Uh-oh. What is this?
“Believe it or not, you’re supposed to be dead. You’re right. Hobgoblin pus is a magical trigger. By all accounts, it should have been rendered inert by the initial precursor burst. And if by chance it hadn’t, that second burst, which activated all magical weapons, should have set it off, which would’ve exploded the dynamite, which would have killed Remex the Grand, triggering that final, cataclysmic explosion.”
Remex the Grand? “But that didn’t happen,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “It did not. The Borant Corporation immediately filed an appeal against the AI’s decision to rule the detonator exempt from both of those blasts. Just before you came on today, Borant was overruled by a Syndicate court. In addition, and even more importantly, the court ruled the achievements you received as a result of the explosion are also just, and the rewards must be paid.”
