by DoctorHepa
Behind me, someone cried out in surprise. I turned to see a pair of juvenile Krakaren beasts slinking into the chamber from one of the opposite entrances. They weren’t coming into the room from the newly-opened “escape tunnel” but from one of the main railways. The things had likely been filling the secret tunnels between the tracks, the center of Katia’s “noodle,” and once the hatches all opened, they were being spooged all over the place. If they were also going into the regular, empty stations, then me plugging the hole here was only a temporary fix.
We jumped into action. Katia rolled forward, turning into her sentinel gun. She took out both of the octopuses while the others set up their perimeter defensive positions. Donut leaped to Mongo and rushed to defend one of the chokepoints while I stood sentry over the portal.
Once the defenses were set, Katia returned to her humanoid form and stood next to me and Imani. A few more monsters approached, but it was quiet for now, except for the constant smacking of Krakaren juveniles into the portal. I imagined the giant abyss pit filling up with the monsters, so many of them together that it overflowed. The pit was much too big for that to really happen, though I suspected the majority of these monsters were surviving the high fall from the portal to the bottom of the abyss. These things were squishy and resistant to blunt trauma. The pit was probably a writhing mass of these monsters by now. I wondered if they got along with the hordes of ghouls that lived in the bottom of the abyss. Or with the wall monitor lizards who lived on the edges.
It didn’t matter, I decided. As long as they remained way over there.
In fact, I realized as I watched the constant stream of creatures, it was probably a good thing for everybody if they did survive the fall into the pit. These were living, non-undead creatures, which meant every time one of them died, a ghoul was generated at a nearby ghoul generator.
“Some of these guys we’ve had to kill three times,” I said. “Once when they hit the stage-three DTs, then again when they’re Krakaren babies, and then again if they turn into ghouls.”
“It’s a lot more than that,” Imani said. “The stage-three monsters were each birthing thousands of these octopuses. Octopi? What’s the right word?”
“We got incoming,” someone shouted. A group of red dots appeared on the map, though it wasn’t so many. Maybe twenty of them. I felt the hot whoosh of the flamethrowers even halfway across the room. The mobs were killed in seconds.
“Hey, don’t be an experience hog!” Donut shouted at a crawler at the front defensive position.
“Yo, Donut,” I called over my shoulder. “Play nice. We’re all on the same team here.”
“Carl, I said I had the monster on the left, and he shot him first with the flamethrower!”
“You did not call the target,” the crawler said. “And I am not a ‘he.’” I looked over and saw what the problem was. The crawler operating the flamethrower was a Level-27 Dog Soldier. Her class was something called a Crisper. She looked like a walking, talking German Shepherd. She had a Vietnam-era helmet on her head with little holes cut out for her ears. Her name was Tserendolgor. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how to pronounce that name, nor guess what nationality she originally was. But the fact she was a dog-themed race meant Donut would have an instant dislike of her.
“Goddamnit, Donut,” I said. “Go to a different position and leave her alone.”
“Yeah, go to a different position, cat,” the woman said.
Donut hissed but led Mongo to the other side of the room.
“And I thought she was getting better after all that business with Growler Gary,” Katia said.
“That is better,” I said. “You should hear her talk about cocker spaniels.”
“Oh, I have,” Katia said. “She’s told me all about your next-door-neighbor’s dog, Angel.”
“They’re still coming, but maybe not as many,” Imani said, leaning over the portal to get a better look. “I wish it wasn’t so blurry so we could see into the hole.”
“It’s definitely getting less thick with monsters,” Katia agreed.
“You know,” I said to Katia. “If your whole double-sided track theory is correct, then there’s a straight line through that hole to the other chamber 36, and there’s probably one of those province bosses in there. Super close. That’s what I was originally worried about when you said the tracks were mirrored.”
“Yeah, me too,” Katia said. “If we didn’t have your portal, I’d be worried about it spreading into this room.”
Behind us, another group of mobs approached and were quickly dispatched. Then another. Soon, we had red dots all around us. There were four chokepoint entrances to the chamber, not including the secret one to the employee line, which we kept closed and guarded. The Nightmare was down there, still parked a few stations down. I’d poked my head into the line a bit earlier to see if the train was still there. We’d last used it to ferry Brynhild’s Daughters to sixty, and that’s where it remained.
Donut and I had walked down there earlier to see if Fire Brandy was still kickin’, and she was. We’d found her leaning out of her hole in the cockpit, talking with a pair of dwarven engineers who’d apparently climbed in through the broken side window. One of them had wanted to take the train to I-don’t-know-where, but Brandy had refused. “There’s nowhere to go, you fool,” she’d been saying when we walked up. The dwarf had argued, and I’d thought maybe we’d have a fight on our hands. But they quickly left upon our arrival.
The train was still on and idling. I could tell right away that something was wrong with the demon woman. Her usual, matter-of-fact, southern belle persona had shifted to something more melancholy. She was still giving birth regularly. I didn’t know if we’d get another chance to see her before the floor ended, and I’d wanted to collect more of the sheol rocks. I’d shown one to Mordecai and he’d practically jizzed himself and told me to retrieve as many as possible. I’d asked her if she could part with any, and she allowed me to take several hundred still-burning pieces along with a few dozen that hadn’t yet caught on fire.
“I’d give it all to you,” she said. “But I need to keep the fire burning nice and hot. Keep my babies happy, for as long as it will last.”
“Brandy, are you okay?” Donut asked.
“I talked to that dwarf friend of yours,” she said. “Tizquick. He told me about his daughter. They killed her, you know. Once word spread, they started to get angry.”
“Who?” I asked. “Who is they? And who did they kill?”
“The dwarves and the gremlins. They killed Madison, the human you brought up here. The human resources woman. They built a stand and a noose, and they hanged her. I didn’t see it, but they brought her body to me. I took it into the fire.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Only those mantaur creatures are holding the faith. I guess a few tried to fight the dwarves, but they all got chased off. I don’t know about those guys. There might still be some out there, so be careful.”
“That’s… that’s crazy,” I said. Madison hadn’t deserved that. Well, her character deserved it. That was the thing, wasn’t it? All these NPCs were playing characters, and only a handful were starting to realize it.
And that, I realized, was the problem with Brandy.
“We gotta get back there,” I said. “If I don’t see you, take care of those babies, okay?”
The demon woman didn’t answer. She just nodded and returned to her fire.
* * *
An hour later, and the number of monsters coming through the hole in the center of the room had trickled to a stop, but the mobs were now approaching us from all the other angles. We were starting to see blister ghouls mixed in with the octopus monsters. I moved to stand next to Donut. We let the flamethrowers do most of the work, but I tossed smoke curtains and the non-explosive bangers at the incoming monsters while Donut hurled Magic Missiles at them. She occasionally cast Second Chance on one of the corpses and then Clockwork Triplicate. The zombi
e Krakarens wreaked havoc on their fellow clones for several seconds before they were torn down. Katia returned to her gun form. She towered over the group, choosing to sit high and fire down into the throngs. We stood amongst hundreds of other crawlers all throwing fire at the mobs. We held them back, but sometimes the waves were so thick, so frenzied, I feared we’d be overwhelmed.
Our only respite came when the dead filled the hallways so much, it created a clog. It’d remain that way for several minutes until the acid blood broke down their own bodies, and the corpses started to melt. Sometimes the corpses exploded for no reason, showering acid at the defenders. We lost several people that way.
We’d had to form barriers to keep the caustic liquid from pooling into the chamber, which would in turn burn the feet of the defenders. The acid didn’t burn away with fire, but we found it could be frozen. The acid would eventually melt, but it lost its acidity after that. That became Elle’s job. She zipped from one chokepoint to the next, freezing the pools of acid.
I worried about the others. I sent a message to Bautista, asking him for an update.
Bautista: We couldn’t get back into 72. There are both ghouls and the Krakaren monsters, and they’re coming from everywhere. We’ve fallen back down the line. We got chased to station 60, but we couldn’t get in. There’s a big group of those mantaur things guarding the platform. Each one is a neighborhood boss. They’re super strong. One of them has gotten his hands on one of those alarm traps, and it’s playing some heavy metal song over and over. I think the song is giving them a buff, and it’s making everybody’s ears bleed. We had to fall back. We’re stuck between the two groups.
After that, I started to receive even more dire messages from several other groups. One group was pinned in the area between trainyard E and the monsters all pouring from the tunnels. They’d thought to switch over to the employee line, but they couldn’t get close. And the station mimic at the trainyard was sending pieces of itself out to hit them from behind. They were getting squeezed.
Everywhere, groups who’d stayed in the stations had taken heavy losses, but those who’d fallen back were unable to get back in, and now we had reports of province bosses appearing in the rooms where there hadn’t been one before.
“We need backup!” a voice cried behind me. It was the dog soldier woman. She was falling back. A human to her right abruptly had tentacles wrapped around him. His body exploded into mist. These new Krakaren monsters were suddenly all level 20 to 23 and about seven feet tall.
“Donut, Katia! Ludacris!”
“Mongo, stay!” Donut yelled as she jumped to my shoulder.
We detached from our spot and ran toward the hole in the defenses. “Get back! Let them through!” Elle cried. I pulled the boom jug from my inventory. I only had five of these things left.
“Ready?” Katia asked, widening as she moved. She rotated her riot shield 90 degrees and pushed it forward, like a literal battering ram.
Ahead, the hallway was full of monsters, crammed tight. They screamed and rushed at us.
“Go!” I said.
She activated Crowd Blast. She rushed forward, exploding into the crowd like a wrecking ball. The Krakaren monsters and ghouls rocketed back like bowling pins. Acid misted into the air, and Katia cried out in pain.
I was already running, following her. She’d gone far, all the way to the first intersection. This junction was like a T, going left and right, both with short stairwells leading down, which in turn led to a dozen other chambers in each direction. I made a split-second decision as I ran, and I pulled a second boom jug.
Katia, dazed, but still on her feet, pulled her crowd-control baton and swung it in one direction as the crossbow flipped upside-down and fired in the other.
We came running up.
“Let me know when you’re ready!” I yelled.
“Go,” Donut said. “Counting down from three now.”
I tossed the boom jugs in both directions just as Donut puddle jumped us back to the main room.
Twin fireballs erupted at the end of the hallway. The three of us stumbled backward, having been teleported back into the main room.
Only then did I feel it, the acid burning my face and legs. Donut cried out in pain, also burning.
But Imani was right there, and all three of us glowed. She’d cast something to negate the acid, and a moment later, it was as if nothing had happened. Though my jacket, my only non-magical clothing item, now had a huge hole in the left arm. My cloak and other magical items were unharmed.
The dog soldier and the others quickly reset their defense while Imani shouted for backup at the chokepoints.
“That was pretty awesome,” I said, breathing heavily. “Katia, you okay?”
“I hate that ability,” she said, wheezing. “But wow, it works well. Did you see them all? There were like fifty of them at the bottom of both stairs, and you hit both groups.”
“We just wasted my last Puddle Jump of the floor,” Donut said. Mongo came rushing up and sniffed worriedly at Donut. “I’m fine. Mommy is fine.” She looked over at the dog soldier woman. “You’re welcome.”
The woman just grunted and reset her magical flamethrower.
Boom. We all felt the ground shake. A huge explosion rocked the chamber. A moment later, a second explosion also rocked the walls. Everyone paused, looking about.
I looked worriedly over at the crane, but the device held. The chains groaned, and the cart trembled, but it remained hanging there.
“What was that?” Katia called.
I shook my head. “It was nearby. I think that was maybe the soul crystal over at station 12. The second explosion was maybe the one on the other side of the noodle.”
“Fucking hell, Carl,” Elle said, floating up. “Did you do that?”
“Why is it every time there’s a big explosion, you immediately think I had something to do with it?”
“Because it usually is you,” she said.
“She does have a point, Carl,” Donut said.
“Was there somebody over there? Why did it blow?” Imani asked.
“I didn’t see anybody on the map,” Katia said.
Imani pointed. “Elle, take a team and check it out. Be careful. We might have to fall back to station 12 if the ghoul generators on either side are gone.”
“On it,” Elle said. She shouted at a pair of crawlers, and they headed toward the employee-line exit.
I had a thought. I sent a quick message to Mordecai.
Mordecai: I think you’re right. I’m guessing the soul crystals they use for those ghoul generators are a little smaller than the one you have in your inventory, so they can’t handle so much simultaneous stress. I know this because you’re still alive. Too much local stress, and they pop, like fuses. Luckily when they go that way, they’ll only kill everything in the room and maybe a block in each direction. And not an entire quadrant.
Carl: Holy shit I have a glorious idea.
Mordecai: No.
Carl: You don’t know what it is yet.
Mordecai: I don’t care what it is. If it’s a Carl idea, it’s probably a brilliant idea that’s going to get you killed. Donut told me about how you captured the Nightmare train. I bet you thought that was a glorious idea, too.
Carl: No, that was a dumb idea. This is much better. Though it’s funny you mention the Nightmare.
A note from DoctorHepa
Woohoo! I always like the end-of-arc storylines because I schedule them ahead of time so I can do other things. Like sleep. Next chapter will be tomorrow same time, same place. Tomorrow's chapter ends on what some will consider a cliffhanger, so just be aware. Here's the schedule:
Chapter 105 - Friday, October 30th 6 PM PST (A pretty big cliffhanger)
Chapter 106/107 - Double Chapter Grand Finale Monday, November 2nd 6 PM PST/6:30 PM PST
(If the world hasn't burned to the ground thanks to the US election)
Chapter 108 (Epilogue) - Thursday, November 5th 6PM PST
> Chapter 105
A note from DoctorHepa
Cliffhanger alert! If you are allergic to cliffhangers, I suggest waiting until Monday @ 6PM PST. Chapter 107 is the last chapter of the arc with Chapter 108 being an epilogue.
Time to Level Collapse: 17 Hours
Time to the Opening of the Stairwells: 11 Hours
When Katia had performed her crowd blast, quickly followed by me tossing the twin boom jugs, we’d killed several of the larger-sized Krakaren monsters at the same time. I didn’t know if it was because we’d killed them all at once, or if the constant fighting and killing had finally added up to some lifetime load limit. Whatever it was, soon after, the two closest soul crystals had popped. At least that was what I was gambling on. I suspected the bigger the Krakaren beasts grew, the more of a burden each one put on the crystals when they died.
This was likely all by design. A part of the game. A way to keep everything “fair.” In fact, I also suspected killing one of those province bosses likely had the side effect of blowing every soul crystal in the area.
Elle: First off, there was one of those weird-ass double stack boss dudes on the employee line. A mantaur or whatever they’re called. I thought they were regular NPCs, but he attacked us. We took care of it. But make sure there’s a sentry on that employee entrance in case there’s more. Anyway, station 12 is definitely the one that blew. All the monsters are dead. There’s not even that much rubble, not like the last one. There’s loads of corpses. The crystal is still floating in the middle of the room above the burnt-out generator, but it’s not glowing anymore. It’s tiny, like the size of a marble. There’s a hole in the floor here, too, but nothing is coming up.
Imani: Look through the hole in the floor and see if you can see through to the other room. Don’t go down there. Look quick and then come back.
Elle: I’m walking up now. Yeah. Hey Katia, has anybody called you a genius lately? The hole goes all the way to the other room. There’s about a 20-foot drop, and there’s another door. That room looks burnt-out, too. Weird. It’s upside down. What a trip. Hang on, I’m going to drop a rock in to see what happens.
