Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 2

by DoctorHepa

  Imani: Don’t. Just come back.

  Elle: Oh, unwad your panties. What are we calling the inbetween space? The escape tunnel?

  Donut: WE ARE CALLING IT THE NOODLE.

  Elle: I dropped a rock, and it fell all the way into the room across the way, but then it fell back. It hit the edge of the hole, bounced once, and then it rolled along the interior of the noodle. I thought it would float in the middle, but it looks like “down” is just toward the closest interior wall. You could walk a loop-de-loop in the thing and always feel like you’re standing upright. Like one of those carnival rides that spins really fast. I wonder what would happen if I balanced a rock exactly in the middle. Maybe it would float.

  “Imani,” I said. “I need a team to help us fight our way back to my last interdiction cart.” We’d left it turned on upon the track, plugging the southward hole toward the train station. However, the mobs were coming from all directions now. Hopefully they’d left it alone. “If it’s still there, Donut, Katia, and I are going to jump on and then head toward the trainyard. I’ll need to keep three or four of them with us because we’re going to need to lift the thing up.”

  “What about the mimic?” Imani asked.

  “We’re not going to approach it. But if it comes for us, we’ll just hit it with the portal again.”

  She looked at me dubiously. “All right. I’ll ask for volunteers.”

  But before she even had the chance to ask, Li Jun, Zhang, and Li Na were suddenly there, right by my side.

  “He has his volunteers,” Li Jun said.

  “What about the rest of your team?” I asked. I looked for the others. I recognized their old boss, one of the men we’d saved from the Maestro. He was standing next to the mushroom guy and several of the others, defending one of the four exits.

  “They are needed here. We will help best we can and return,” Li Jun said. “It is the least we can do.”

  “Awesome,” I said, looking at the three in turn.

  I hadn’t had the time to examine, or meet, Li Na yet, but I examined her now. I remembered her as a slight, almost mousy woman. She was taller now, rail thin. Her skin was deathly pale, ghost-like. She still resembled the woman she was, but her face had taken on an odd, demon-like appearance. Her mouth was almost twice as wide as it should be, and her brow was deeply ridged. A short pair of black horns stuck up through her black hair. She wore a flowing, white and red robe with long, wide arms that almost reached the floor. Chains hung from the armholes, and they dragged as she walked, causing her to jingle. I knew from the recap episode that she had at least four different chains she fought with. One caught on fire and another tossed wind blades when she swung it like a lasso over her head. One could keep mobs immobilized. She was level 30, and her race was something called a Changbi. Her class was the ominous-sounding Slave Driver.

  She met my gaze, her dark eyes boring into me. Despite her disturbing appearance, I could see why Zhang had a thing for her. There was something there, deep and alluring. But also terrifying. She had an I-might-murder-you-at-any-moment-but-it’ll-probably-be-fun-for-both-of-us aesthetic.

  She bowed slightly. “Thank you for saving me and my brother. Twice.” She turned to Donut and bowed again.

  “You are quite welcome,” Donut said, swishing her tail.

  “Okay,” I said. “We have a lot to do, and not much time to do it. But the first step is to get to that cart.”

  “Maybe you should tell us the whole plan before we dive headfirst into battle,” Li Na said. “In case you die, then we will know what the mission is and can carry on.”

  Donut: SHE DOES HAVE A POINT, CARL.

  * * *

  Li Na, it turned out, was pretty damn smart. And intense. She reminded me a little of Imani, plus Chris, Brandon’s brother, who was still in the wind somewhere. And Hekla. She did not talk often, but when she did speak, it was usually to point out an obvious flaw in my plan. Both Li Jun and Zhang were too timid to tell me if I was full of shit. Donut wasn’t, but she rarely had an alternate plan. Katia often had good ideas, but she was prone to second-guessing herself to the point of letting me bowl right over her. I could tell right away Li Na would not suffer any fools, and if she opened her mouth, everybody around her paused to hear what she had to say.

  We would never work well together as a party. Not after this, not if we wanted to remain friendly with one another. It’s not that I didn’t want to work with someone like her. In fact, I probably needed more people like her around me. I thought she was pretty cool, but I could tell she was quickly getting irritated with me. That was okay. Small teams that occasionally worked together was still the best way to go. There possibly was a formal way to attach separate parties according to the cookbook, but it didn’t get turned on until the sixth floor. A guild system. It was only mentioned in the 22nd edition of the cookbook, so I didn’t know for certain if it was still a thing or not. That happened a lot, where they tested new features for a crawl or two before they decided on whether to keep it or not. I hoped it remained.

  It was Li-Na’s idea to raise up the Def Leppard cart and then poke at the ass of the province boss on the other side of the noodle. If we enticed it to attack, it’d hit the portal and teleport to the abyss. “It’ll sweeten the pot and give us an additional fall-back point,” Li-Na had said.

  It was a fantastic idea, and I told her so. We couldn’t kill the thing, but we could at least get it the hell out of here. We’d have to do this now before we left. I quickly told the others the plan.

  The monsters continued to come at us in waves from the hallways. It was constant, though less intense than before. About twenty percent of the people on my chat were just gone, which was a devastating amount, but honestly, it was much less than I anticipated. It turned out the Krakaren monsters had invaded all the transfer stations, but the regular, empty stations that weren’t prime numbers or stairwell stations did not have trap doors in them, and those places all had only a single entrance. Bautista and his group were set up at stations 64, 65, and 66, splitting into three groups. Each station had a short, easily-defensible entrance that was at the top of a thin set of stairs. All around the tangle, others were doing the same.

  I warned everyone to keep at least two stations away from either station 12 or 72, the two types of station with soul crystals. We were going to attempt to blow them all at once.

  But there were several things I had to do first, starting with this province boss. As Li Na had said, teleporting this thing to the abyss would just add to the pile.

  There hadn’t been any Krakaren mobs in the noodle for a while now, but we’d had dozens of reports of the boss from the other side seeping its way into the opposite room, thus occupying both. People who had abandoned their station 36 were fighting their way back to find a giant boss in the room, a boss they couldn’t handle.

  The province boss directly across from our room hadn’t attempted to come in our space, likely because of the portal. Li-Na’s idea was to raise up the Def Leppard cart, leaving enough room for someone to lean in and get its attention. We could only lift the cart an additional foot, but that was enough for Donut to carefully stick her head into the hole and peer across the way to the other room to see if there even was a boss there. There was nothing on her map, but that didn’t mean anything.

  “Be careful,” I said worriedly. If even a whisker touched the portal, she’d be zapped away to the abyss. We didn’t dare turn it off. We should have used Katia for this, but Donut had insisted.

  “It’s there,” Donut said as she peered into the escape tunnel. The noodle. “It’s just hair and quivering skin covering up the hole. It’s disgusting. It looks like one of those guys whose pants doesn’t cover his butt. Like when your smelly friend used to come over and play video games while you two lied about your exploits with women. What was his name? Monobrow Sam? Really, Carl. I don’t know why you had such revolting friends.”

  “Okay, pull back,” I said. “Goddamnit, be careful. Watc
h your head.”

  She backed up and looked at me.

  “I got an achievement just for looking at it! At the boss, I mean. Not your friend’s butt. But I should’ve received an award for having to see that, too. The monster is glowing blue. And another color. It’s sparkling.”

  “It’s a province boss. It probably has a million buffs going at once. Can we get on with this? You’re probably going to get another achievement for hitting it with a magic missile, too.”

  “It’s going to be a good one,” Donut said. “I have a full-powered shot stored in my glasses, and I’m going to hit it with a double shot.”

  A group of crawlers detached the chain holding the cart up and held onto it. I threatened each and every one of them not to drop it prematurely.

  Donut leaned in, shot it, then scrambled back. “I hit it! I hit it!”

  The monster bellowed, a thousand mouths suddenly shrieking at once. “Drop it! Drop the cart!” I called. The crawlers groaned, lowering the cart back into place. I locked the chain while I secured the lower chain.

  The moment I did, the whole cart shuddered. I felt it. It had worked.

  “Fuck yeah,” I said. I turned to Li Na and held up my hand. “High five.”

  She just looked at me. “If I touch you with my hand, you will experience excruciating pain throughout your entire body that will cause you to lose control of your bladder and bowels.”

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Moving on.”

  A blast hit the portal, and the whole thing shook.

  Something screamed. Loud and high-pitched, though not nearly as loud as before. Another blast hit it.

  “Shit,” I said. “Maybe we only got some of it.”

  “I knew this was a bad idea,” Imani said. “We should have left it alone.”

  “These portals are pretty stout,” I said. “Nothing can get through it.” I didn’t actually know if that was true or not.

  “Hello? Who’s there?” a voice called from the other side of the portal. He had a nasally British accent, like how a spoiled prince might sound. “Show yourselves, you cowards!” A moment passed, and then he screamed. Each cry was loud and short. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard. “You have deprived me of my prey, and I demand satisfaction!”

  “Carl, it’s another crawler,” Donut said. “Look at the map.”

  I looked over at Katia. “Turn off the portal, but get ready to flip it back on.”

  She nodded and rose into the air on stilt-like legs to reach the controls. The portal flickered and turned off. I leaned over and looked down. Across the way another crawler stared down at me, also standing at the edge of the noodle and looking in. We met eyes over the distance.

  “Carl,” he said. “I should have known such a colossal fuck-up could only be perpetrated by such a colossal dolt.”

  “Hello, Prepotente,” I said.

  The goat creature screamed, suddenly and unexpectantly, causing me to almost jump out of my skin. There was no reason for it.

  “What the hell,” someone muttered behind me.

  Prepotente went on as if nothing had happened. “Oh, hello, Donut,” he said, brightening. “Well met. You are even more delightful in person. I’ve been wishing to meet you for some time now. We are two of a kind, you and I. From what I understand we’re the only two remaining Earth creatures in the dungeon who have gained true sapience. I was so very disappointed to learn you’d obtained access to the Desperado Club and not Club Vanquisher. I do wish to share a brandy with you sometime and to discuss our unique circumstances. Now, Carl. Is that other one with you? The murderer? If so, then there are five of the top ten here all at once. That must be a first.”

  “We have a few former top tens in here,” I said. “Now what the hell are you doing over there?”

  “What do you think? I was about to kill the boss. I had it asleep and entranced, and I was working on lowering its blood pressure enough to initiate cardiac arrest. Another two hours, and it would’ve worked, too. And when it perished, it would have blown multiple soul crystals, thus causing a chain reaction throughout the entire system that would allow our fellows to proceed to the next floor. Instead, I am now looking through a hole in the floor at definitive proof that humans and Neanderthals are related. Where, pray tell me, did you teleport my target to?” the goat asked.

  “To the abyss. Why don’t you come over here and call me a neanderthal to my face?”

  He screamed.

  “Gentlemen,” Imani said, appearing next to me. “Both of you put your dicks away. We don’t need this right now.”

  “I could kill you,” Prepotente said. He said it to Imani. “I could crunch on your bones and glory in the sound that they made when they splintered.”

  “Bitch, what?” Imani demanded, her demeanor changing on a dime.

  He screamed.

  Thwap! The goat bleated in pain as he was smacked in the head with a stick. The attack came from someone standing right next to him. He disappeared from view, but he kept screaming, over and over in short bursts just out of sight. e A new head appeared in the hole. A woman.

  “I want you to sit there and think about what you’ve said, Pony,” she said over her shoulder. This was Miriam Dom. The human shepherd. The goat lady, they called her. She was about forty years old, a little plump and dark-haired. She carried a long staff with a hook at the end like she was goddamned Little Bo Peep. She had a gentle, Italian accent.

  “Don’t you mind him,” the woman said. “He says things like that, but he doesn’t mean them. He was always a little ornery, even before the change. It’s nice to meet you all. Sorry for the disturbance.”

  The goat returned to the hole and screamed once again. I didn’t know how the hell she put up with this. Jesus fuck.

  “I will kill you tonight as you sleep,” Prepotente said to Miriam as he rubbed his head. I saw, then, that he had human-like fingers, though his fingernails were long and curled and black. Whatever change he’d undergone to make him intelligent was different than the one Donut had undergone.

  “No you won’t, sweetie,” she said. She reached over and kissed the goat on the top of the head where she’d whacked him.

  “Do it again,” he said a moment later. “It still hurts.”

  “Only if you’re a good boy. And apologize to those two.”

  He nodded solemnly and looked down at us. “I’m sorry I wanted to murder you.”

  “Good Pony,” Miriam said and kissed the goat on the head.

  Prepotente screamed.

  “I have questions,” I said. “So very many questions.”

  “Maybe some other time, Sweetie,” the woman said. “We need to find a different boss monster now. Ciao!”

  They both departed from view. A new creature appeared, but only for a moment. It was huge and dark and covered with phantom, black flames that flickered with wisps that drank the light. Three pairs of human-like breasts ran down the monster’s underside. This was another goat, transformed. It was the size of a horse. We’d seen this thing before. Mordecai had called it a hellspawn familiar. It made a wet chittering noise, something I felt deep in my bones. The air crackled with heat as it passed.

  I exchanged a look with Imani, and she shook her head. The bizarre exchange told me all I needed to know about that group. We needed to stay the fuck away from them.

  “Did you hear that?” Donut said. “He called me delightful!”

  * * *

  We had to fight our way to the cart. Imani dispatched a crew to help us grind our way down there. There were still dozens of the Krakaren monsters in the halls and on the tracks. I had no idea how the hell the goat team had survived in this. Reports from around the dungeon were that the waves were still thick everywhere. I knew we could be overwhelmed at any moment, so we needed to hurry.

  Both Li Jun and Li Na were ferocious fighters. Li Jun was like a damn kung fu master, flipping through the air and grabbing tentacles and throwing the monsters. Li Na was similar, though she twirled
and wrapped the monsters in her chains, paralyzing them, allowing Zhang to cast a spell called Dirt Clod that pummeled them to death with rocks.

  All three of them, it turned out, had an immunity to acid attacks. After the incident with the Brindle Grubs on the second floor, it was something all three looked for in their respective classes. I didn’t blame them.

  The cart, thankfully, remained where we left it. The monsters had ignored it. It was turned on and facing stop 24, but there weren’t many creatures coming from that direction anymore. Katia set up at the back of the cart, facing backward to take down anything that gave chase. Zhang, Mongo, Li Jun, and his sister stood guard in the middle of the cart while Donut and I took to the cockpit. We had but minutes to get on and get going before a new wave of red dots would descend upon us.

  I hit the throttle, and we were off.

  My immediate worry was station 24. The last time we passed it, we’d been jumped by Krakaren babies. I knew they’d all gone inside to pull their escape tunnel bullshit, but surely there were more hanging out at the station, just waiting for some dumbasses to stroll on by.

  And sure enough, as we blasted past the station, a single Krakaren stood on the platform. This one was huge, a massive octopus thing with swirling tentacles. A neighborhood boss, probably just as big, if not bigger, than the one we’d fought on the second floor. Luckily it was half-slopped onto the track, its giant tentacles casually hanging over the edge of the platform. We hit it with the portal, and it teleported the whole thing away, leaving a wet spot on the tiles as we continued to zoom toward the trainyard. I eased off the throttle after that, coasting to a stop just before we left the tunnel and entered the massive cavern that housed the trainyard.

  We needed to get this cart onto the employee line, facing the deeper levels. In order to do that, we had to maneuver the cart to the entrance of the employee line with the portal facing the opposite direction it faced now.