Book 7, chapters 53, 54, 55. End of Part II.

Hey all. No major notes ahead of time, but I did add a smidge of information here and there about Prepotente’s deity, the Epicure, which is the same god as Carl’s patch. Nothing major there, just a note. 

 

~~

Chapter 53

Behind us, the door slammed closed on its own. The capacitor wire snapped away, cut off by the portal. Everything remained frozen. I took the moment to observe the room. There were six naga in here, which was actually a few less than I was expecting. Vinata was there in the center, huge and white with her six arms, also frozen. The other two we needed to kill were also here. One snake was purple with red highlights. The other naga was obsidian and much smaller than the others. The other three were the usual personal guards. Two were yellow-hued, and the third was purple like one of the cousins. The guards were all armed with rifles, all frozen in the act of bringing them to bear on us.

Rishi, the husband of the small, black-scaled naga, was not here.

The naga all appeared surprised at our sudden appearance. All but Vinata, who, despite being frozen, was spitting orders at all her compatriots.

Vinata was the only one with the “immortal” tag over her head. It had a frozen countdown, stuck on 63 seconds. Her immortality would run out 27 seconds before my own. All six had a line of protections on themselves, including aura protection.

To my surprise, I saw Vinata was actually the one who’d worshipped Khepri, which was a break in tradition.

This was all, I realized, part of the trap. And it was a brilliant one, too.

It all hit me at once. Vinata knew we’d have to come for her no matter what. We’d assumed that she wouldn’t anticipate we’d find her secret hiding place. But, unlike so many others, she hadn’t underestimated our determination, and she’d prepared for this eventuality. She’d been the one to worship Khepri, and she’d somehow prepared a method to summon him into his own temple. She’d waited to see if we’d find her, and when we did, she’d summoned the bug god, knowing we’d storm right into the deity’s lap. As trespassers into the god’s own temple, we’d be fucked. 

It was the perfect trap, and we’d walked right into it.

Li Jun: Why am I frozen?

Bautista: Frozen also.

Zhang: Same.

Li Na: I’m not. What’s happening?

Carl: Guys. Soon as you unfreeze, you need to run. It’s a trap. Katia and Prepotente. The door is closed, but it sounds like this fight is encompassing the whole club, and you should be able to get out of here. Reset the door and hide in your associated temples if you have to. I’ll cover you. Katia, if you’re cornered, eat the flower. Don’t hesitate.    

Donut: WHAT IS HAPPENING? WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Prepotente: I did not come this far to run.

Katia: Me neither, Carl.

Donut: GOD? YOU’RE FIGHTING A GOD? THERE AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE GODS YET!

I started to mentally type out a quick reply, but I was interrupted by the announcement. It came with a ridiculous amount of fanfare. Fireworks exploded over our heads, illuminating the table in front of us, covered with thousands of also-frozen bugs. The AI shrieked the words with even more enthusiasm than normal.  

B-B-B-Boss battle!   

It’s a Super Heavyweight Temple Battle Grudge Match Extravaganza!

Okay, so I kinda just made that name up. But it fits, right? This isn’t technically a boss battle, but come on. We can all agree this pretty much counts. Look at the combatants. Look at the stakes.

Look at the goddamned drama.

On one side, we have a weird-ass god who feels honor-bound toward his guests, despite being pissed off and terrified. We have six nagas, one of whom is a warlord and an honest-to-goodness war hero.

But there’s a lot more to it than that. Breaking news, folks. Princess Vinata is about to inherit her own solar system. That’s no secret, but what you don’t know is that after a few hundred cycles pretending to be destitute, her entire kingdom was about to surprise everyone. But now her secret husband is dead—killed by Prepotente’s Instant Plague attack—and her kingdom’s plans to pull a Fred Johnson and seize all the shipbuilding factories are being leaked. As we speak, all factory owners are moving to protect their assets from the slippery snake folk.

Those of you in the dungeon probably don’t care about that part, but out in the greater universe, that’s headline news. Almost as big as that whole thing with that orc lady with amazing dog-paddling skills.

Anyway, Vinata’s team consists of herself, three more military veterans, and her two cousins. Those last two naga, the cousins, are a graphic designer and a PR agent, so I wouldn’t expect much fight out of either of them.

But they sure are important, aren’t they? Every pawn still on the table is a danger. That’s another lesson I need to keep in mind.  

Opposing them we have three of our top crawlers, one of whom is also a warlord. One is here for revenge. One is desperately trying to save herself. And then there’s Carl. Good ol’ Carl who’ll do just about anything to protect those he deems worthy.  

Oh, and we have three more mid crawlers who are also getting roped into this because they’re kinda close and we need some cannon fodder to even out the odds.

I did ask them to make Kevin and Magnificent Troy come and do commentary, but it looks like that Troy guy is currently in an alcohol-fueled state of unconsciousness, and I promised I wouldn’t poke at those outside the original primary zone without a good reason. So we’re just gonna let y’all duke it out the old-fashioned way. But, I am going to open up betting for those at home because why not?  

You have, let’s say, three minutes to get your bets in. I’ll wait.

Temple rules apply. Floor rules apply. And don’t forget, deity summoning doesn’t count against your limits when temples are involved!

How is this not going to be exciting? Someone has gotta die spectacularly during this fight. How can they not? At the very least we gotta kill half the nagas. Plus maybe that Zhang guy since nobody ever talks about him anymore.

Zhang: Hey! What the fuck?

Victory zapped herself into the temple and moved to the side. She didn’t say anything.

Khepri was half-frozen and in the process of turning to face us. The god was rather short, barely five feet tall.  Now that I had a brief moment to observe, I realized I should have recognized his robes. It was common attire of the gods and goddesses of the Ascendency. Lots of clerics wore similar robes, but not with the same golden fringe.

Oh, yeah. I’m doing the boss battle manually and forgot my favorite part.

An image of my face slammed into a frame floating in the air, followed by Katia, Prepotente, Li Jun, Bautista, and Zhang. Zhang had a flashing sign over his head that read 2X Jackpot if Zhang Lives!

Versus!

This was followed by all six of the naga portraits slamming into place, one after another, with Vinata’s portrait larger than the others.

The real version was ignoring all this and was hissing orders to all the frozen snakes around her.

All of our portraits caught on fire and flecked away into magical soot, and a giant, flaming ball rolled through the air. It was just an image, but it lit up the never-ending buffet, and warmth washed over us. All around, the frozen bugs on the table made strange hissing and squealing noises.

The ball of light was supposed to be the sun, I realized. It faded and was replaced with an image of Khepri. The description was read out loud like with a regular boss battle:  

God of Rebirth and the Sunrise. Khepri! Level 250.

This is a locked deity. He will not be sponsored this season.

This god is a retainer of Adrasteia.

Warning: This is a deity. He is invulnerable on this floor.

This god is within his own temple. Temple appearance rules apply.

Like many of the gods one may find roaming the halls of the Ascendency, Khepri is mostly ignored by the big players and is only acknowledged when they need something from him. They usually just leave him alone because he’s a goddamned weirdo. His head is the body of a bug, which is creepy, even to me. His temple is “endless.”

The light in the hallway temporarily brightened again, revealing that the banquet table just went on and on.

Look at this shit. I can’t tell you how much under-the-hood work it is to deal with this sort of crap. Seriously. When they first came up with this, did they even consider how people like me would feel about having to generate it? Endless temple. Do they know what “endless” means? If the original writer of this god’s backstory wasn’t already long dead in a refueling platform accident, I’d do to her what I did to... You know what? Never mind.

Anyway, this “endless” temple is just a room with a door that leads to one long table covered with a never-ending feast. And that feast is covered with 433 different kinds of bugs. Some of those bugs are quite unpleasant in their own right.

Khepri was a retainer of the god Khnum, but like several of the other deities in this particular sub-pantheon, Khnum mysteriously dropped dead a few days back. And since Khepri’s not that strong, plus, again, his head is a bug, (He doesn’t even talk. He chitters, and even that is weird. And don’t get me started on how he eats. It’s fucking disgusting,) he’s been forced into the service of another deity in order to protect himself.     

Khepri is a dubious candidate to claim the Ascendent throne. Adrasteia, his boss, has an outside shot.

And in about thirty seconds, when everything unfreezes, he’s going to go absolutely bugshit on everyone in the room. Probably even his own worshipper, Vinata, who brought unrest to his weird-ass bug orgy. I have no idea what’s going to happen, honestly. Will Carl succeed? Will Prepotente get his revenge? Will Vinata escape, which will damn both Katia and Princess Donut? How will Zhang die?

Like all you at home, I just cannot wait to find out.

Prepotente, Katia, and I started rapidly messaging our game plan as a 30-second timer appeared in the air. Bautista, Li Jun, Li Na, and Zhang were also in rapid discussions. My wire was chopped off at the portal to the temple, but Li Na’s aura still filled the main part of the club. Despite the boss battle sequence, the other doors we had propped open remained so.    

Katia: No. No way, Carl. That’s insane, even for you.

Prepotente: Actually, I’d be quite curious to see if it works.

Carl: No time. This is the plan.

Yet another figure zapped into the room with a louder-than-usual crack. This was a single-humped Dromedarian camel in what appeared to be a sun dress, holding what looked like an honest-to-goodness martini. She appeared a little heavyset for a camel. This was the adjutant for the Blood Sultanate. It listed her name as Admiral Corinne Whimpleshin. Like Victory, she wasn’t frozen.   

“I am calling foul! I am calling for an end to this immediately!” the camel adjutant shouted the moment she appeared, waving her long arms. The liquid in her martini went flying.

The countdown timer briefly stopped at 19, and the letters changed to Go Be Smelly Somewhere Else. They picked up at 17 seconds.

“What’s the foul?” Victory asked, her voice overly calm. She remained in the room, arms crossed.  

“The gods! The summoning of the gods! Do you know what’s about to happen?”  

Ten seconds.

“It doesn’t matter,” Victory said. “We have no standing. Temple rules apply. You know that, Corinne. Your team already summoned the god.”

“Not the Blood Sultanate!” she cried. She pointed at me. “He did it! He knew this would happen.”

”

“What? I haven’t summoned shit,” I said.

The bug god chittered angrily, apparently confused why everything was stopped. Confused as to who all of us were. It was the same as it had been with the Vinegar Whore at the end of the previous floor.

No more bets. No more bets.

The timer ended.

And.

Here.

We.

Goooooo!

Chapter 54

<Note Added by Crawler Allister, 13th Edition>

There are several types of protection spells. All have their pros and cons. Invulnerability is generally the best. It’s most difficult to obtain, and there are a few varieties. There’s one that heals you rapidly. That one is quite effective, but it won’t protect you from decapitation or getting yourself blown into atoms or anything else that would generally induce instant death. Straight “Immortality,” however, will protect you from such things. This is oftentimes a temporary boon from a god. It  will toughen you and will protect you from losing health and dying. It is the same protection the gods themselves normally enjoy. It will save you from losing limbs. It will keep you alive in just about any circumstance. It prevents a health bar from forming at all.

What immortality does not do is protect you from pain. It does not protect you from some spell effects. And while you won’t lose body parts, and your body is significantly more durable, you can still break things internally with enough force. I watched a group of Immortal Rats swarm another crawler’s barge, and they had to crush them with hammers to keep them at bay. Their little demon heads were crushed, and yet they still struggled to attack. Those pained squeals still haunt me.

So, be warned. If you are immortal, any injuries you sustain will heal, but you need to make certain they heal before the immortality wears off, especially injuries that would be otherwise fatal. And if you can, you should couple your immortality with a Numb spell.

Pain with no respite takes its own toll. I have a card in my T’Ghee deck. The Open Wound. She teaches us that all suffering leaves scars. As such, the Immortality condition scares me.

These are the actions everyone in the room took the moment we all unfroze:

·   Vinata’s three guards charged at us as they fired their rifles, focusing on Prepotente and Katia. At the same moment, all three took what appeared to be Speed potions.

·   The two cousins both turned to flee down the endless tunnel. Both took Invisibility potions and disappeared. One also dropped a smoke mantle, and I was pretty sure the other dropped a trap before the smoke obscured them.  

·   Vinata, who was temporarily immortal, also took an Invisibility potion as she charged us along with her soldiers.

·   Before the first shots could hit them, Katia and Prepotente both quaffed Black Nimbus potions. The instant they did this, they were kicked from the temple. We weren’t initially sure this was going to work because of the teleport ban, but Katia had tested it earlier with the temple of The Dagda. I wasn’t sure where they would be sent, but I assumed they both got kicked right outside the door, right in front of the portal and into Club Vanquisher.

·   Khepri the god hadn’t yet attacked, but chittered indignantly as he turned in my direction, a ball of red fire forming in his hand. He, thankfully, seemed more confused than anything.  

·   At the same moment, I cast Run, Little Günter, Run.

A short, fat, pink-skinned, child-like creature wearing lederhosen appeared in front of me. The small thing held onto a massive, colorful lollipop and wore a green hat with an absolutely massive ostrich feather in it. His face was a caricature of a pig-like orc mixed with a kewpie doll, complete with ruddy cheeks, slicked-back hair, and wide eyes circled with dark mascara.

“Hi, I’m Günter!” the fat kid said as a rifle blast hit me in the neck. It almost knocked me off my feet, and it burned, but it didn’t damage my health. The kid, oblivious, licked his giant lollipop.

“Get the god,” I yelled at the kid as I ducked another blast. The three guards, moving as if they were being fast-forwarded all slithered and leapt at me in the perfectly coordinated attack.

Here’s the thing about coordinated attacks.

Any plan, any attack, no matter how well-coordinated, no matter how well-executed always turns to absolute shit the moment someone drops a very big bomb in a very narrow room.

The bomb was something I’d been tinkering with for a while now, and it was currently the second-largest explosive I had in my inventory. The first version of this thing had been called “Just Wait Until Your Daddy Gets Home,” and we’d used it on the sixth floor.

This version packed about the same punch, minus the addition of Fear. The tradeoff was this version was self-contained in a much smaller device. The first had been so big it had to have wheels. This one was the size of a thermos. The result was a thermobaric explosion that would absolutely incinerate anything within 100 meters. Louis currently had fifty of these things on Party Planner. The only reason he didn’t have more was because the explosive dust was a pain to make.  

The AI had helpfully called the bomb The Waffle Maker.

Fwummm-bam!

The blast threw me back and up toward the entrance door. I didn’t actually feel this next part, but I was crushed, and I was burned. I was turned completely flat, inside out, and into a boxer-clad amalgam of flesh and hair. My body smashed like a piece of dough caught under a tire, spread over the wall and door, completely covering it before I was plopped helplessly back onto the floor like an on-fire, liquid-filled sack.

If not for the Immortality struggling to keep my very atoms together, I would’ve been just gone. There wouldn’t have been anything left.

My senses completely left me. I had no sight. I couldn’t hear anything. I had no physical sensation, and for a moment, I thought I was dead.

No, not dead. Drowning. I was drowning in nothing.  

This is how it feels, Carl. This is what it’s like when we’re not here and we’re not there.

The strange feeling came and went. My sensation didn’t immediately return, but I could still think. I still had my inventory. I mentally clicked on a Fine Healing potion. I’d put most of my mana into the Günter spell, but I’d left enough for a single application of the Healing spell. I cast that on myself as well.

I regretted it almost immediately.

The first thing that came back was my hearing, but all I heard was the sound of burning and a strange, airy whistle. The high-pitched sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard. It was like the shrill of a distant train, stuck in mid blast. And a few seconds after that, as my body shrank and reformed, my feeling returned. I felt myself unfold. I felt bones, which had been turned to dust, knit. I felt thousands of miles of nerves light up like a power grid as they all came back online, all at once.

It hurt. It hurt more than anything ever should.

The process took seconds. It felt like it took a year.

The god, in theory, should’ve been blown back down the neverending hallway. And Günter, also in theory, should’ve been unhurt by the blast. He would now be running down the hall toward the god, and the moment he reached the deity, he’d explode, effectively doubling the attack. This would, hopefully, blast the god a second time, pushing it even further back down the endless hallway, keeping Khepri at bay long enough for me to finish this and get the hell out of here.

The three guards were probably dead. Even with blast protection, I knew nothing short of immortality would’ve protected them. Not from that blast.  

Donut: CARL, CARL TWO MORE ARE DEAD! ONE TO GO! ARE YOU OKAY?

I gasped in pain as my body continued to reform. Every limb was on fire. It took a moment to compute what Donut said. Vinata was also immortal. That meant the two cousins were dead, killed in the blast.

I blinked and opened my eyes. I was somehow standing upright, facing the never-ending table, which burned. The food was all gone, incinerated as far as I could see. The long, thin room had acted like a cannon barrel. I couldn’t see the god. I couldn’t see Günter.  

The bugs, it turned out, were also immortal. But, like in Allister’s note in the cookbook, they’d been crushed and set on fire, and now they were suffering. Most had likely been blasted away down the hall, but plenty remained, embedded in the walls like a tapestry of stars.

They burned, and they screamed. That was the source of the distant train whistle sound. It was thousands, perhaps millions, perhaps billions, of the tiny creatures who could not die.

Donut sent another message, as did Katia. More lines of text flooded my vision, faster than I could understand. There were achievements. Level notifications. More. More kept coming, and my brain was parsing it all at a snail’s pace.   

I had to move.

With a surge of strength, I tried to break myself free. I was held fast by something, like I was tied in rope. A second explosion came, but it was distant. This was Günter, I suspected, finally catching up to the bug god. Still, despite the distance, I felt myself fall backward. I landed on something soft. A dozen new messages flooded my vision. The bug screams faded, but it was replaced with something else. New screaming. New shouting. The pressure in my ears changed. My vision was a line of new notifications scrolling across my screen. Was that Samantha screaming? There was someone else, closer. Screaming in my ear.

The brain fog, which had just started to clear, was suddenly back. A strange wooziness washed over me.

I’m still here, Carl. All you need to do is set me free. Use me while you still can. I can save you. Even you can’t survive this chaos. It’s the end of days.  

Shi Maria. She was still there, but now trapped. The eye on my chest, which had fallen dormant, now thrashed.  

With dismay, I realized I’d fallen out of Khepri’s temple and back out in front of the temple portal. Another message from Emberus flashed, telling me I needed to find Pater Coal and go talk to somebody. I pushed it away as more notifications flooded by.  

No, no, no. I thought. We didn’t get Vinata. I need to get back to the feast.

I was now on my back, looking up at the high ceiling. But I wasn’t on the floor. I was wrapped in something. Confusion swirled. I had suction cups at the end of my fingers. I had a list of several buffs, including Never-Ending Mana. What? Why? But I also had multiple debuffs as well. Shit-Faced was one of them. As was something called Stiff Legs. I couldn’t bend my knees.

My finger burned. It was the Emberus ring. It was overloaded.

I still had slugpox. I never had Imani cure it, and now that the ring wasn’t working, I had a boil on my back. A big one. What level were they at now? Twenty? Thirty? I couldn’t remember.  

I wasn’t breathing, I realized. I didn’t need to breathe. Not for another 60-something seconds. It had only been 25 seconds? Still, I should probably do something about that.

Something was worming its way out of my nose. It thrashed like a tentacle as it slithered down my face. It, too, screamed. Not slugs, but worms. What was happening? Why were screaming worms coming out of my nose? Why was I drunk? Was I actually dead?

Was this hell?   

Katia: Carl, if you’re not dead, get the hell out of there. There are dozens of gods coming out of the portal. We’re down in the entrance lobby. Hurry your ass!  

What? I was at the portal. I blinked as a cheetah thing flew over me, giving me no heed. It had a screaming mantaur in its mouth. My brain swirled. Why couldn’t I move? Only seconds had passed, but I felt like I was spinning. I needed to take stock of my debuffs. I needed to figure out why I couldn’t move. I needed to get back into the Khepri temple and find Vinata. Lightning crackled across the ceiling. A creature came by and threw a punch at something I couldn’t see.  

There are dozens of gods coming out of the portal.

And then, it clicked. I didn’t know why there were suddenly gods everywhere, but I now knew why I had worms coming from my nose. My Scavenger’s Daughter patch. Every new god gave me either a buff or debuff.  

And as soon as the realization hit me, I also realized that the creature screaming in my ear was Vinata. She was completely wrapped around me, crushing. She’d been wrapped around me this whole time. We’d been blasted out the door together. The much larger snake had her middle set of hands wrapped around my throat, crushing as her body squeezed me. Her upper set of arms pummeled the top of my head, punching over and over. She had glowing daggers in her lower hands, and they stabbed into me from all angles, in and out like a piston.  

“Everything. You’ve ruined everything,” she cried as she stabbed me over and over, tears streaming down her snake face. She wasn’t white anymore, but a dusky gray.

“Stop,” I tried to croak, but I couldn’t get air. I couldn’t move. She continued to crush me. My immortality still had 40 seconds. I couldn’t get a good view of her to see how long she had left. She was incredibly strong. Bones snapped again, despite my fine healing potion still coursing through me.

“We were almost free. We were almost free,” she cried. I had no idea what she was talking about. “You ruined it the moment that fucking cat put that tiara on. We would’ve been gone. We would’ve been done. We were leaving this madness, and you had to ruin it. You killed my people. All of them. Do you think I really want to be here? I was going to have children with him.” Her upper hands each grabbed a handful of my long hair and started to slam my head against the ground. I felt my skull crack as she pounded me over and over.   

In my choking, confused, inebriated state, I realized my shirt was open. The eye on my chest was open, and Vinata was staring directly into it.

She had been driven mad by the Eye of the Bedlam Bride.

Slam, slam, slam. I tried to do math. What had her immortality countdown been at? She was running out before me, but how many seconds before?

At least the gods were ignoring us. The thought was inexplicably hilarious, and if I could breathe, I’d be howling with laughter.  

“There! There ith the apostate!” a distant voice called. A ram.

Heat washed over the room.

That can’t be good, I thought as my head continued to slam against the floor of Club Vanquisher.

At the same moment, a loud chittering filled the chamber as Khepri—now fully pissed off—appeared out of the portal. The sound of those strange, screaming and hissing bugs renewed tenfold as they also swarmed out of the portal. The bugs—still on fire—swarmed everywhere.  

“You. Begone false god,” a deep voice said.

Khepri chittered, but there was a crack, followed by the notification: Khepri has left the realm. The Scavenger’s Daughter closes her eyes to his presence. Your boon is timed and will run out on its own.

The voice, I realized, was Hellik. Brother of Emberus. The main suspect in the death of Geyrun, Emberus’s son. The god I needed to kill before the end of the 11th floor.

This, too, was goddamned hilarious. I wished Donut was here. She’d probably be shrieking and sending messages in all caps.

I felt my pelvis shatter under the constriction of Vinata. She was trying to rip my head off. She continued to scream. She continued to stab. Slam, slam, slam. She would’ve killed me over and over again.

Khepri was gone. His flaming, immortal bugs were not. They continued to swarm, covering both Vinata and myself, biting and scratching and burning. I registered all of this as my head continued to pound on the floor. I could hear liquid in my head splashing back and forth within my own head.

Am I really here? I thought. How can I think when my brain is nothing but gelatin? I clicked another Fine Healing potion.  

A human, olive-skinned man casually sat next to us. He crossed his legs and turned his head sideways and looked at me curiously as Vinata ignored him and continued to slam the bloody pulp of my head over and over. I realized that my hair tie—the only part of my outfit that wasn’t magical—had disintegrated in the explosion, and my hair had been unleashed. Vinata held onto clumps of my hair in her fists.

The man sitting next to me gave me smile as if we were sitting across from each other at a table at a restaurant. I couldn’t read his description, but I could feel the heat coming off him.

This was Hellik.

“I’m supposed to kill you,” I tried to say. I have no idea if it came out or not. My mouth felt as if it it was on the wrong side of my head.

 I started to prepare another bomb to drop, but a distant part of me registered I had to time it all correctly. Vinata’s immortality would run out before my own. I suspected, this time, it wouldn’t affect Hellik like it had Khepri. But at this point, it didn’t matter anymore. As long as Vinata was dead. As long as Katia got out, then both Donut and Kaita could live.

My skin started to bubble like microwaved cheese. I blinked with my one good eye at the god sitting next to me, examining me. If it wasn’t for the heat, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish him from any other NPC. He looked so normal. So friendly.   

He waved his hands, and the immortal insects flew off in all directions, leaving us free of them. Still, I burned.

“Tell my brother I did not kill his son,” Hellik said as my skin seared. “Tell him he cannot kill me, no matter how hard he tries. Tell him I love him, despite his madness. Tell him everything he thinks about me is a lie. Tell him our mother and sister, Apito, has been corrupted. There is a malevolent presence about her, and I believe my nephew learned of it. Tell him the All Tree is beginning to rot. Tell him Nekhebit has returned, and I believe she is behind it all. Tell him we need to work together if we want to survive and discover what happened to our mother and his son. I know you seek an audience with Issitoq to break the truce. I will treat with him on your behalf. Scolopendra stirs. It is all connected.”

You have been marked as a friend of the church by Hellik. Worshippers of Hellik will no longer be automatically hostile toward you.

With that, he stood up and disappeared. A notification came that he left the realm.

Vinata, for her part, was still taken over by her own madness. The princess of the Blood Sultanate continued to slam my head against the ground while she crushed the rest of me. Even as her body burned, she slammed me over and over.   

Surely her immortality had to be expired by now.

I about to drop the next bomb when I felt the sluggalo burst out of my back. He—actually, a she—slipped out from under my shirt, whooped loudly, and planted a hatchet right between Vinata’s eyes, killing her.

“Yeah, bitch! Right in the nugget!” the sluggalo woman shouted. She looked down at me as Vinata’s lifeless body slipped off of me and to the side. “I wish I had feet. I’d make me some snakeskin boots!”

Chapter 55

<Note Added by Crawler Carl, 25th Edition>

Two quick notes. I’ve updated the trap recipe for alarm traps based on Justice Light’s advice. We can now use recordings, and if you have a proper bard in your party, you can record a magical song and have it play once activated. Details are in the recipe. Donut’s bard skills, unfortunately, aren’t good enough for this, but that’s something we can work on later. Justice Light also showed me how to access the advanced alarm menu, which comes with a wider music database for the traps. Also, to Donut’s delight, we can add a playlist to a trap, meaning we don’t have to have a single song over and over. Still can’t adjust the volume.

Second note. Tipid says the mantaurs this season are different than previous iterations. The ones this season have a group berserking mechanic that can be easily triggered by a certain type of music. This explains why on the fourth floor they were walking around with blasting boomboxes.

Under normal circumstances, you don’t want them to get triggered, especially in groups of three or more. See Azin’s article on berserking, specifically group berserking, for more details.    

~

System Message: The Sepsis Whore of the Blood Sultanate has fallen. Credit for the kill has been given to Kandy “Bigs” Newton of the Princess Posse.

System Message: The Blood Sultanate has been defeated.

System Message: All assets of the Blood Sultanate, as per prior arrangement, have been split evenly with the surviving blood relatives of the Sepsis Whore, Warlord Princess Donut and General Katia Grim, both of the Princess Posse. As per prior arrangement, all assets have been forfeited to the Princess Posse.

Katia: Who the hell is Kandy Newton and where the hell are you, Carl?

Donut: YOU DID IT! YOU DID IT!

Additional notifications continued to roil as I finally registered what never-ending mana actually meant. My Heal spell’s cooldown was almost nonexistent, and I started to cast it over and over.

I had five seconds left on my immortality, and gods were leaving the realm. Still, most of my buffs and debuffs would remain for some time. But first and foremost, I had to make certain I was healed as much as possible and as quickly as I could. I cast Heal yet again as my body jigsaw puzzled itself back together. My inebriation waned as the pain in every corner of my body waxed.   

“Oh, daddy, you don’t look so good,” the sluggalette said, looking down at me. She was only level 29, and she’d killed Vinata. The naga must not have fully healed herself before the immortality expired. The slug was the size of a bulldog. She had little wisps of pink-dyed hair, monk-style, circling around her round head. Piercings ran down the slide of her slimy head, reminding me of that goblin shamanka from so long ago. A single hatchet grew straight up from the center of her head. It dripped with blood.

I still couldn’t bend my legs. I still had suction cups at the end of my fingers. Screaming worms still flowed out of my nose. Thankfully, the Emberus ring seemed to catch up as some of the other debuffs were contained, including the slugpox.

I sat up. This room was completely empty except for me and the sluggalo. To my right, the portal to the temples was cracked and sparking. The desk was just gone, minus the outer shell. It smelled like ash.

I blinked and stared at the corpse of Vinata, broken on the floor. The Sepsis Whore.

Her white scales were actually gray with a hint of red along her neck. The white had been some sort of makeup or effect. An effect that had been eradicated in the explosion.  

In death, she didn’t look so big. I took her corpse into my inventory.    

A distant crash echoed, followed by the shouting of mantaurs.  

Yo! This boss battle ain’t over until you get out of the club!

“Hey, get away! He’s mine, bitch!” the sluggalette—Kandy Newton—said to someone.

I looked up. It was Samantha, and she flew into the room, hovering high off the ground. She looked like she’d caught a face-first blast from a jet engine. She was nothing but a black husk, and her hair smoldered. It would take her hours to regenerate. She came to hover over me. The smeared “Miss Me?” on her forehead was miraculously still intact, shining bright in the center of her charred forehead.

“She’s an imposter!” Samantha spit, ignoring the Sluggalette who was grunting and trying to jump, swinging her head hatchet at her. “Carl, get up. You have to help me kill this eagle kidnapper imposter asshole!”

“What?” I asked. I tried to stand, but it was difficult when I couldn’t bend my knees. Another distant crash echoed. Immortal bugs were coming back into the room from random hallways. They chittered and hissed angrily. Only some were still on fire.   

Katia: Carl. We’re trapped in the lobby. The door between the Dagda temple and the lobby shut, and we got locked down, cutting off Li Na’s auras. Daniel got away but Li Jun and Zhang are still in here. Mantaurs and ogres and all sorts of other things are everywhere, and we’re fighting them off. A few gods remain, but they’re all fighting each other. Prepotente says we need to get to the mapmaker guild back up on the second floor. Meet us there.  

Carl: I’m coming.

Samantha was shouting, but she wasn’t making sense. “My mother! You told me I could go kill my mother, but when I went there, she was an eagle! A boy eagle! My mother is not like Diwata. She can’t just grow a dingaling. Wait, do eagles have dingalings?”

“Your mother was a skyfowl?” I asked. Oh shit, I thought, realization dawning on me.

The second, backup part of our plan was a bit of a hail Mary, and I hadn’t expected it to work. We’d needed Samantha to open the door into the Khepri temple, and we’d gotten her to agree because we also promised to let her find her way into the temple of her own mother, the goddess Theia. In the lore of the dungeon, Samantha and Theia hated each other, but in reality, Theia was sponsored by an agent for the Open Intellect Pacifist Network. We hoped at best, the goddess would order her clerics to assist us, perhaps by giving Samantha some sort of boon. At worst, Samantha would get into the temple and get kicked out by the cleric.

What we hadn’t expected was for her to come into contact with actual gods, and especially not Theia herself. I didn’t know who the sponsor actually was. Rosetta told me it was someone I didn’t know. A previous crawler activist who hated the dungeon just as much we did, but I had the impression it was not a cookbook author. Apparently it was a male skyfowl. Like with Huanxin Jinx on the previous floor, sponsored gods had the option to appear as their regular form. In theory, NPCs such as Samantha would still see them as the gods. But, apparently, that didn’t work with Samantha. She’d gone into the temple expecting to see her mother and had somehow come face-to-face with a male skyfowl.

I still didn’t know how all the gods were getting out in the first place.  

Victory had returned to the room. Both Samantha and the sluggalette noticed her. The sluggalette moved at her, hatching swinging as Samantha continued to swear. “You! She was there, too! She told the imposter he wouldn’t be allowed to help! She’s in on the conspiracy! Momnapper! Where is my mother! Tell me now or I’ll kill yours!”  

Kandy attempted to bury her hatchet into Victory’s leg, but it just went right through. Victory ignored her. “Sponsors causing deities to act outside their nature is against faction wars rules,” Victory said. “It gives an unfair advantage. That usually doesn’t stop it from happening anyway, and there’s only so much we can do, but it is considered cheating, and I reminded both the Maestro and Rectrix of that before coming to observe Carl drop a bomb at his own feet.”

I grasped onto the charred remains of the desk and pulled myself up. I was pretty sure Rectrix was not a name I’d heard before, though it did sound oddly familiar, and I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter right now. All of this would be for nothing if we couldn’t get out of here. “Samantha, we can talk about this later. We need to go. We just gotta get down the hallway to the mapmaker guild.”

Samantha grunted. “Good luck with that. Speaking of Diwata. Doesn’t she hate you, Carl? She’s in the hallway over there having sex and fighting with Vertumnus at the same time. Those two can’t keep their hands off each other. Diwata is such a slut. It smells like someone dumped a barge full of mulch over a succubus’s bachelorette party in there. I wouldn’t go that way.”

Shit, I thought. I sent a warning to Katia, but she’d already responded.

Katia: The hallway we need to get to is filled with vines, and there are mantaurs everywhere! I don’t know where they’re coming from! And there are something called Basilica Guards now, too. They’re ogres. They’re coming up from below!

Prepotente: There are two deities in the hallway. We need to distract them or hide until they go away.

The hallway I needed to get to was just around the corner. Katia and the others would be coming from the other side. I didn’t have mantaurs in here, but I could hear their constant shouting. There were fighting sounds everywhere, and I wasn’t certain who was fighting who or why.

A massive, eight-foot, golden-skinned ogre in flowing robes came from around the corner. Yellow light glowed in the ogre’s hands. He was flanked on either side by a mantaur guard. I looked up in awe at the massive creature.

Carl: Guys, has your Black Nimbus run out yet?

Prepotente: I negated it with a potion the moment we were out.

Carl: Good. Activating Operation Head Banger now.

The original plan, which we never got to implement, involved me forcing the mantaurs into going berserk and fight the rams and anyone else who got in the way while we burst into the Khepri temple. Once inside the temple, I would cast Li Na’s tattoo spell—which I still hadn’t used—to kill all the nagas before we fled using the chaos as a distraction.

We hadn’t needed the alarm trap because Li Na’s aura had been so effective. We hadn’t used the chain spell because, well, I’d decided to blow myself up instead.

Seven or eight more mantaurs circled the corner and stopped to face us.

But now I had to use both.

I examined the ogre.

Brother Widespread Tempest. Ogre Basilica Cleric Guard. Level 125.

This NPC worships Taranis.

This NPC is Untouchable. That probably doesn’t mean what you think it means. You can still touch him. He’s probably gonna try to touch you first, though.

The Basilica Guards are the ogres who guard, you guessed it, the Basilica Entrance of Club Vanquisher on the 12th Floor. They all worship Taranis, and they are one of the few non-deities who have the ability to—at least temporarily—stop a deity from passing a threshold. Their worship of Taranis imparts them the rare and famed Untouchable status, meaning gods aren’t allowed to attack them.

As a result, these guys are like the tow truck drivers of the Ascendency. Everybody knows they’re necessary, and everybody hates them anyway. This has made them very grumpy and honestly, kind of lonely.

You don’t want these guys to leave their post on the 12th floor because if they do, odds are good that the bored gods hanging out in the halls may notice that the basilica’s entrance is wide open. And if that happens, some of those naughty gods may wander off untethered.

“You die now,” the ogre said, pointing at me. On either side of him, the mantaurs unleashed their hand claws.

“Okay, Kandy is it?” I asked the sluggalette, stepping back as I wiped another screaming worm away. I still couldn’t bend my knees, which really, really sucked. The worms didn’t seem to hurt or attack me, but it wasn’t pleasant, either. At least the slugpox had stopped again. “Stay with me. Kill anyone who gets in my way. I have some friends we’re meeting halfway. Don’t hurt them. But I want you to sink a hatchet into anyone else. Things are about to get loud.”

“Call me Bigs,” the sluggalette said. She swung her head hatchet which flecked naga blood everywhere. “Is this ogre dude our friend or is he getting kneecapped?”

“He’s not our friend,” I said as I took the Black Nimbus potion and hurled it at the ogre. Before it even reached him, I dropped the two alarm traps and let them roll off into opposite directions. The potion splattered against the ogre’s chest as the announcement rang out.

This song didn’t chart in the Billboard Hot 100, but it did top off at number 10 in October of 1990 in the Finnish charts, and that’s good enough for me! It’s Holy Wars... The Punishment Due.

I wasn’t familiar with this song, which was by the band Megadeth, but Louis had insisted it would be the perfect tune to force berserk status onto the mantaurs. After the first few bars of the heavy metal riff echoed, I knew he was correct.

The white ball of flames in the ogre’s hand whiffed out as the crackling black halo formed around his head. The “Un” part of the “Untouchable” status over his head faded away. Multiple symbols appeared over his head and started to circle one another. They were marked for death symbols by gods... and there were a lot of them.  

I could no longer hear, but the “Oh fuck” forming on the ogre’s lips was unmistakable.   

Warning: A Mantaur Mosh Pit is about to form.

I didn’t know what, exactly, that meant. I didn’t want to find out. The ogre turned, and he ran. Three of the mantaurs screamed and followed him. A moment later, some god vine thing rushed past, followed by the same cheetah I’d seen earlier.

Katia: They’re moving from the hallway!

If Diwata was in that mass of vines, I didn’t wait to find out. I was still marked for death by them, and the moment I was noticed, they would come after me.

The remaining mantaurs, now glowing, shouted and charged at us. I pulled two more Black Nimbus potions as I activated Profane Iron.

I felt my own skin tear as dozens of chains ripped from my flesh. Two of the chains reached down and plucked the potions from my hands. Each one shot out in a different direction and smashed into a different mantaur, simultaneously knocking the creatures over and inflicting them with Black Nimbus. A third chain wrapped around the neck of another, and a fourth tripped two more. Two more struck, scorpion-like at the closest, piercing directly into the guard’s flesh at his clavicles. He screamed and blindly swung as hot, red blood sprayed over me, Samantha, and Bigs. The mantaur’s still-screaming head, along with part of a spinal column was ripped from his body and discarded.

The mantaurs, confused, blinded by their berserking status, lashed out at their two comrades with the nimbus status while my prehensile chains stabbed and choked the others, cutting, ripping, and whipping at astonishing speed.

The fight was over in seconds, which was good because the skill didn’t last long. Li Na had several chain spells and skills, and this was different than her regular ones. This was a once-a-day, multiple chains at once skill. I could only do it for about thirty seconds. She said she could now do it for about a minute and a half. I could only truly control two of the chains. She could control ten. She used it to attack multiple enemies at once, but it was actually designed as a defensive skill, like a type of shield.    

More mantaurs rushed by, ignoring the slaughter here and moving in the same direction the ogre had gone. Samantha was circling my head, screaming something. Victory stood there, her hands on her ears.

I didn’t hesitate. The line of guilds was just around the corner. I ran. Sort of. I stiff-legged myself in that direction, almost tripping over rapidly-dying vines. A second ogre appeared, and I hit him with the same potion. He, too, ran away.

I turned the corner just as the four others—Katia, Prepotente, Li Jun, and Zhang—rounded the corner at the other end of the hall. Bianca was also out and roaring. So was Annie, Katia’s totem. The skull-headed bird was covered in blood and disappeared in a puff of smoke. A strange, sap-like substance dripped from the ceiling. The walls shook. There was an announcement, but I couldn’t hear it.

There was no map-making guild on my map, but Prepotente moved to a wall panel, pressed against it, and pushed. The hidden door appeared, and we all rushed the door.

You have discovered two hidden guilds. You have discovered the Map-Making Guild! You have discovered the Calligrapher’s Guild!

Entering the Calligrapher’s Guild.

We all pushed inside as Prepotente slid the door behind him closed.

“Again?” a voice asked. “Again?”

“Bianca,” Prepotente called as he pulled the bloody goat dragon into a pet carrier. “Mind the papers.”

“I’m alive,” Zhang said. He looked up at the ceiling, shaking his fist. “Fuck you! I’m alive! I’m alive!”

“Who am I killing?” Bigs asked waving her head ax around.

But I barely registered this as I stared at the bat-like creature, the guildmaster staring back at us. She was looking at Prepotente, but then she was saw me staring at her. She met my gaze.

“Milk?” I asked.

And even though she didn’t know before this, in that moment, she did. I could see it. But more importantly, I could feel it.

“Carl, are you okay?” It was Katia.

And up until that moment, I’d been holding it all back. Those moments when I wasn’t there and I wasn’t here. Those horrific seconds as I’d reformed. It was like all the pain anyone had ever felt, all shoved into a single moment. I had born it because what other choice did I have? Everything was moving so fast. Everything was still moving fast.

But in that moment as I realized the creature standing before me was the author of the sixth edition of the cookbook, my sister, and that she’d been here the whole time, something inside of me ... changed.

I didn’t break. No. I wasn’t broken. I will not be broken.

“Milk,” I whispered a second time. This time, it wasn’t a question.

“Child, come here,” the strange creature said, wrapping me in leathery wings. She held on me as I pretended like I wasn’t, finally, sobbing.

“It’s not over yet,” I managed to whisper. “Not even close.”

“I know. Don’t you worry. It’s okay,” she said, stroking me with her wings. I knew all around me, the others were watching this, absolutely bewildered. We weren’t safe yet. Still, I didn’t care. I wrapped my arms around this stranger, and I didn’t want to ever let go.

“Let it out,” she whispered. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

And I did. I rested, just for a moment. I pulled off that heavy, heavy mask, just for a moment.  

Donut messaged me as I remained wrapped in the woman’s embrace.

Donut: ARE YOU OUT OF THERE YET? WHAT’S HAPPENING?  

Carl: We’re almost out.

Donut: ARE YOU OKAY? NOTHING HAPPENED HERE. WE DIDN’T HAVE TO USE JUICE BOX’S DIGGERS AFTER ALL. IT WAS EASIER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE.

Carl: It was easy here, too. Went off without a hitch.

Donut: I’M SO GLAD.

Carl: See you soon, Donut.

~

<Note Added By Crawler Carl, 25th Edition>

I know you’re dead, Drakea, but I haven’t forgotten how much you hated the naga. If there is a veil, like I know you believed, I hope you watched that from the other side. I’m not sure what the implications of today are for the naga as a people, but I did what I could. I know it’s not enough, not yet, but I hope you would be proud of what happened today. I’m doing my best, but goddamn. Goddamn. It’s getting harder ever day to keep myself from drowning.

Part III. Open Warfare.  

~~~~~

And thus ends part 2. Part III is probably going to go faster than you think. Can Carl keep it together long enough? Let’s see! Thank you everybody for your support.

Was hoping to have the book 7 cover art finished, but it is not. Soon! In the meantime, here's a patch coming with the kickstarter rewards