by DoctorHepa
“No,” I said. “You go ahead and look in Bitches and Penis Parade. But be careful.”
The man at the counter appeared to be drunk. He was missing his right hand. He should have chosen a race like Katia’s, something that would’ve allowed him to regrow a limb. He clutched a drink with his left.
I leaned in and said to The Sledge, “Watch Donut carefully. There might be a woman in here who wants to hurt her. She’ll fill you in on the details.” I turned to Bomo. “Stay with me. This guy is much more dangerous than he looks. Even with only one hand.”
I approached and sat down next to the man, keeping him more than an arm’s length away.
“Hello, Frank,” I said. “It’s been a while. You look like shit.”
* * *
Frank was drunk. Very drunk. He looked as if he was sprouting from the bar. I examined his properties.
Crawler #324,119. “Frank Q.”
Level 17.
Race: Night Elf.
Class: Blood Assassin.
Only level 17? He was seriously lagging behind.
I didn’t know what a blood assassin was, but a night elf was much like a dark elf or a drow from so many games and stories. His rough face was still recognizable in elf form. His skin glowed dark purple in the lights of the club, reminding me of an eggplant. He’d lost his spiked shoulder pads and battle axe. He now wore a flowing, black jacket. He still sported the Seahawks beanie on his head, though now he had long, black hair. It looked out of place above his dark elf countenance. Fanged incisors peeked out from his lips.
The man’s eyes were heavy with deep rings underneath them. It didn’t appear as if he’d slept in ages. He smelled, too, of an odd mix of perfume and stale alcohol.
“Carl?” he said, looking up. He didn’t have a speech bubble over his head. He tried to draw it using his stump, and the spell failed. The badger-headed bartender, with practiced ease, drew it for him. “Carl, is that really you? What the hell is a primal? You still look human. Where’s your cat?”
“She’s here,” I said. “Where’s your wife?”
“Dunno,” he said. “I haven’t seen her since the end of the second floor. She’s around, though. I can see her on my interface. Don’t talk so much. I think she blocked me. Bitch. But I’m glad you’re here. They say you come here sometimes. Now I can get my revenge.”
I tensed. This was either an elaborate trap, or the man had completely self-destructed and was now just talking shit. Based on his low level, I assumed the latter, but I prepared myself.
“You haven’t seen her since the second floor? So right after our appearance on the Maestro’s show?”
He nodded. “And I know you haven’t seen her either, because you’re both still alive. We got into a fight. About you and your cat. My plan after that was to sit at a bar just like this and wait for the end. But I got kicked out of the saferoom an hour before the second floor collapsed, and I wandered into the stairwell. When I got to race selection, that tentacled asshole told me Maggie had already chosen her race and class and left.”
“What did she pick?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Dunno. Is soul-sucking bitch a class?” He grunted at his own joke. “It probably is. I don’t even remember picking this body. I was so drunk. I think he picked it for me.”
This conversation was not going the way I had expected. “But you made it through the third floor, obviously.”
“Yup. Met up with some folks. Maggie used to tell me I was the William Shakespeare of lies. A damn virtuoso. That’s why we got a divorce. But you know what?” He raised his stump, like he was pointing a finger. Bomo lifted his arm, lightning quick, but I waved him away. “Sometimes the truth is worse. I told them the truth, and they ditched me at the end of the floor. I didn’t want to go down. But I’m a coward, and I did what cowards do. I followed the easiest path, and I descended. Stupid. I landed on a train with a bunch of new folks. But they didn’t want anything to do with me, either. These skulls make it hard for people to trust you. Got off at station 101, saw the Desperado Club, and I haven’t left the station since. Gonna be brave this time. And more drunk.”
He pulled out what I first thought was a cigarette, but then I recognized it as one of the highly-addictive blitz sticks. It smelled like patchouli. I still had one in my own inventory. When smoked, the drugs could permanently increase your intelligence, but there were unspecified side effects.
“And,” he added after taking a long drag. “I’m going to do what Maggie hasn’t. I’m going to avenge Yvette.”
Yvette was his teenaged daughter. The one who Maggie had inexplicably choked to death after they’d tripped my dynamite trap.
“How are you going to do that?” I asked. I tensed, ready to jump into action. I had no idea where he was going, and that made me nervous.
“I’m going to give you a present,” he said. “That is how I will avenge my daughter.”
He pulled an item from his inventory. Since he didn’t have a right hand, the small, metal item clattered onto the bar. Bomo leaped between us, pushing me back. Several cretin bodyguards I hadn’t even noticed were suddenly surrounding us, arms raised.
Frank cackled with drunken amusement. “You guys sure are jumpy tonight. Are you really this much of a pussy, Carl? I’m not going to hurt you. Not physically. My fightin’ days are over. My revenge will be via a different means.”
He sat back, leaving the object on the bar. It was a magical ring. Green glass with a red jewel. It glowed with enchantment. I kept my eyes on Frank.
“You see, Maggie, she’s more hot-headed than I am. She wants to fucking kill you and your cat. It’s not your fault. I know that. You defended yourself. You did the same thing I would’ve done if the situations were reversed. But Mags, she don’t see it that way. She’s more biblical with her thirst for vengeance.”
“What is that?” I asked, indicating the ring.
He pushed it forward with his stump. “It’s yours, now. Got it in a legendary box right after we got in the dungeon. It ruined us. Now I’m giving it to you. That’s my revenge. You’re going to take it, because you’d be stupid not to. A jeweler in one of those big towns on the last floor offered me 300,000 gold for it.” He laughed. “It’s like winning the lottery. Of course you take the money if you win. But it ends up ruining you. That’s what this did to us, and that’s what this will do to you. That’s my revenge. It’s all I have left to offer. And it’s all I want. Knowing what happened isn’t enough. You need to understand. You need to feel it. You look down on me. I can see it. But you don’t understand. Fuck you, Carl. Take the ring.”
The dude wasn’t making sense. I looked closely at the ring, examining its properties.
Enchanted Night Wyrm’s Ring of Divine Suffering.
Oooh, that’s scary sounding.
For the discerning Crawler Killer, this magical ring can be one of the most formidable items in the dungeon. If utilized properly, this ring’s wielder can grow exponentially in strength, especially on the deeper floors. But beware. If poorly wielded, this ring will kill you quicker than an exploding rage elemental. Either way, this ring imparts one of the dungeon’s most highly sought-after skills.
The wearer of this ring receives the following benefits:
+5% to all stats.
The Marked for Death Skill
I reached over and picked up the ring. I had to hold it in my hand before I could read the description of the Marked for Death skill.
Marked for Death.
It’s not just Steven Seagal’s magnum opus. It’s also one of the dungeon’s greatest, most infamous skills!
Once activated, you will be presented with a list of all crawlers within your map’s range. Only crawlers with 100% health will be selectable. Once a crawler is chosen, they will be marked. It takes 30 seconds for the mark to fully set and become active. When a crawler with an active mark dies, no matter the cause, you will receive a permanent +1 stat point to whatever that crawler’s current highest sta
t is.
The +1 stat benefit increases by one for every three marks you kill.
Warning. Once a mark is set, you may no longer heal. If you are injured, or poisoned, or if you get a hangnail, you will suffer the ill effects and pain of that injury until the moment your prey is killed. So choose your marks carefully. Don’t let them get away.
You may only mark those designated as crawlers, except on the Scolopendra Lair levels (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18) where you may also mark any non-dungeon-generated combatants. You may only mark one crawler at a time except on the ninth floor. This skill has a five-hour cooldown on floors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8. It has no cooldown on the sixth floor. Also on the sixth floor, marks will form instantly. There is a 15-minute cooldown on the ninth floor, but there is no limit to the number of simultaneous marks. All remaining floors have no cooldowns or delay to mark formation.
Confused yet? Here’s a cheat sheet:
Current Marks killed: 0
Current Mark benefit: +1 Stat Point.
Current floor cooldown: 5 hours.
Marks take 30 seconds to form on this floor.
Happy hunting.
That was an insidious skill. But the risk/reward didn’t seem worth it, even if I was a murderous asshole. I didn’t see why it was that big of a deal unless I became a full-on murderhobo which wasn’t going to happen. Plus it was super dangerous to use. If you marked someone and they got away, you couldn’t heal. You’d be fucked. Still, that 5% to stats was no joke.
“You got this in a box?”
“Yes,” he said. “And now it is yours. Got it for fighting a family member while I entered the dungeon. A legendary ‘That’s the Spirit’ box or some shit like that.”
“Fighting a family member?”
“My ex-brother in law. Not even a real family member, but the dungeon didn’t see it that way. I choked him out, and then we got attacked by rat-kins, these rat monsters that walk on two legs, and they killed him while he was still unconscious. Jesus. Do you remember that day, when it first started? One minute we were outside the annex, fighting, and then the buildings were just gone. What a mindfuck.”
“Of course I remember…” And then it hit me. I trailed off. Holy shit. I remembered the video from the Maestro’s show. Yvette had been injured by the dynamite. She’d been screaming in pain. I looked at the ring in my hand, horror dawning on me.
I waved the bartender over and ordered a drink. “Whiskey,” I said, voice hoarse. He poured, and I drank.
“You let your daughter use the ring before you attacked us?”
“Not ‘let,’” he said. “Made. I made my daughter use it. She refused to fight. She wasn’t going up levels. This was the compromise. She wore the ring. Mags told her which mark to choose. We’d picked you. I figured the cat might get away. Never imagined you would. It was the only way we could make her stronger. She marked you, we waited thirty seconds for the mark to settle, and we attacked. Would’ve had you, too, if you hadn’t been saved by the saferoom.”
That was why Maggie had killed her own daughter. She was in pain from the explosion. She wasn’t going to heal. The pain wasn’t going to stop. Not as long as I was alive.
“She was beautiful, you know. On the inside, I mean. She didn’t have that anger in her. Not like her mother. Or her dad. When she ran away, it wasn’t because she was a bad kid. It was self-defense. Kids aren’t always a product of their parents. But sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes parents can cast a shadow so thick, you can drown in it.”
That poor girl. Jesus, she must’ve been so scared. I felt no sympathy for the man next to me. He deserved all the pain he was feeling right at that moment. But I understood him a little better now.
It was as if he read my mind. He suddenly erupted in anger. “You don’t understand what it means to be responsible for somebody. You don’t have a kid in here with you. You don’t understand what that responsibility means, what a weight that is on your shoulders. And when you fail, it’s like being crushed, constantly crushed, only you don’t die. And the pain never stops. It just keeps coming and coming.”
A silence hung between us for a long time.
“Were you really a cop?” I finally asked.
“Yup,” he said. “Customs Enforcement. Maggie was a detective at Seattle PD.” The bartender refilled my glass without asking and pushed it toward me. “Cheers,” Frank said. “To the end of the world.”
“But you were divorced?” I didn’t know why I was asking this stuff. It didn’t matter, not really. This man didn’t deserve for his story to be told, not after what he did. In a way, people like him were worse than the Syndicate and the aliens who’d destroyed us. He was one of us, and he’d turned against his own.
But we all have that in us, the curiosity. The need to know the truth. And I really wanted to know why someone like him could exist. I understood, philosophically at least, that he was killing people in part to strengthen his child. But that was a choice, not the only path. I felt nothing but revulsion for him.
“Mags and I separated five years ago.”
“But you were together the night it happened. You went into the dungeon together. With your daughter.”
“Yvette ran away. Again. Got picked up by the Pierce County Sheriff. My brother in law was a deputy. He was Maggie’s little brother. Always protective of her. Blamed me for all of Yvette’s issues. He called us to come get her. It pulled me off a surveillance. Two in the goddamn morning on the coldest night of the year, and the four of us were in the parking lot, all screaming at each other when it happened. Yvette ran into the tunnel. Maggie tried to run in after her, and I pushed her, which made her brother mad. He didn’t understand what was happening. He tried to put cuffs on me. We went in fighting.”
“Come on, Carl,” Donut said. “It’s time for us to leave.”
I turned to see her standing there on The Sledge’s shoulder, glaring at Frank. Both her and The Sledge now had pink feather boas around their necks. The Sledge now also wore a cowboy hat. Hanging from the boa on the Sledge’s neck was a giant pinback button that read, “I like my sausages extra-large. Penis Parade. Desperado Club Floor One.”
“Did Maggie ever take that potion?” I asked, standing from my chair. The Maestro had given them a legendary skill potion that would max out the “Find Crawler” skill.
“That’s what we were fighting about. I wanted to sell the potion and the ring. Use the money to buy gear and to train properly, but all she wanted was revenge. She has the potion, but I don’t know if she’s taken it or not. Our guide suggested that she wait until she picked a class to take it. Something that would let the skill rise up to 20, not 15. But I don’t know if she did that or not.”
I suddenly thought of those PVP coupons. I wondered if Maggie had one. I wondered if she’d received extra rewards for killing her own daughter. I shuddered.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry your daughter had to die. She didn’t deserve that. Goodbye, Frank.”
I met eyes with the man one last time. He was no longer a threat. His wife—ex-wife—was dangerous, possibly even more dangerous than I realized, but Frank was done. I had no doubts he wouldn’t be getting off this floor. Maybe not even up from this bar.
The man drunkenly watched me take the ring and slip it onto my left index finger.
“Vengeance is mine,” he said.
A note from DoctorHepa
It's Friday! I hope you all have a great weekend. If the world was normal, I would've just gotten back from Rose City Comic Con in Portland and would be at Crypticon in Seattle right now. I'd also be preparing 20books Vegas, which has also been officially canceled.
Over on Patreon, a certain crawler recently received a fan box. Patrons have until early tomorrow (Saturday) to vote for the contents of that box. There is a bit of a debate in the comments and the Patreon discord on the morality of one of the choices.
Also on Patreon the end-game map was just posted. It would be added here in a few chapters,
but it has some spoilers on it for now.
Chapter 93
The production trailer was a submarine, not a boat. We ended up being late for our appointment, but this time it was because Zev had delayed it. She said my conversation with Frank and my “stunningly controversial decision” to wear the ring along with “Donut’s amazing lap dance” at the male bordello were the top two feeds in the world during that hour. I didn’t want to know what had happened in the strip club.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Yvette, and of her mother choking her until she died. The ring hung heavy on my finger. I was never going to use it, but Frank was right. I’d be an idiot not to take it. A five percent bonus to my stats was too good to pass up. I just wouldn’t ever use the Marked for Death skill. I’d taken it off just to make double sure it wasn’t cursed, though Mordecai had once told us that we couldn’t get cursed items in loot boxes. I put it back on, though I wasn’t fully certain it was a good idea to keep it on my hand. I kept going back and forth on whether I should keep it on there. I’d pulled it off a half of a dozen times until I decided I was being a wuss. I knew some people would probably think I was an idiot for putting it on, and maybe they were right. But I needed every advantage I could get, and if people didn’t like it, they could suck it.
I’d ask Mordecai’s advice once he returned, but for now, it stayed on my finger.
“You weren’t worried about what Frank might’ve done to me?” I asked Donut just before we were teleported away.
“No,” she said. “One look at him, and I could tell he wasn’t going to hurt you. And Sledgie said his wife left him, so I wasn’t worried about her, either. He’s still there at the bar. Hasn’t moved since we left. There’s another crawler talking to him right now, but it’s not a woman.”
“Wait, how do you know that?”
“I have Sledgie in my chat. I showed him how to do it.”
“Huh,” I said. It never even occurred to me to even attempt something like that.
“Anyway,” Donut said, “sometimes you can just look at someone and see that they’ve given up. I’ve been seeing a lot of it lately, even in people who are pretending to hide it. It’s quite scary. But it’s worse in some, and with him it was the worst I’ve ever seen.”
