Dungeon Crawler You!

"Shit, shit, shit," Taylor said. "Read off your selections."

Taylor: Levi, you still with us? We're on a subway train near station 81 on the 'Acajou' line, whatever that means. Drew has 6 mins to pick a class for this floor.

Drew: Only 18 classes this time, thankfully.

Levi: I'm in a saferoom at station 349, the Charcoal, Lime, and American Orange lines. I'll be teleported to you as soon as you find a saferoom. Hit me with the list.

Drew copy/pasted the list into the group chat and Levi started skim-commenting through them. Taylor waved for Calliope and Moose to stay with Drew while he prowled up the car, counting his steps as he went.

Seventy-five feet long, ten feet wide more or less. With the map fully zoomed out, he could see everything up to the first half of car 15 on his map. It would have been more had they been standing still, but the train was in motion and the faster you moved the less the map showed.

Taylor: Moose, what's your Pathfinder skill got? I can only see up to car 15.

Moose: MOOSE CAN SEE THE WHOLE TRAIN. HE IS, HOWEVER, HAVING TROUBLE FOCUSING ON IT. THE MOTION OF THE CAR IS VERY DISTURBING. IT IS NOT LIKE A PROPER CAR. MOOSE LIKES CAR RIDES. MOOSE DOES NOT LIKE THIS RIDE. MOOSE THINKS HE IS GOING TO BE—

Moose puked all over the floor of the car, barely missing splashing on Drew and Calliope's shoes. Afterwards, the massive dog somehow managed to look both embarrassed and very, very motion sick.

Moose: MOOSE IS SORRY!

"S'all good, big guy," Calliope said, pulling a fluffy towel and a bottle of water out of her inventory. "Stick out your tongue so I can rinse it."

Levi: Banana Whisperer is incredible. Stats out the ass, damage, healing, minions, money...crap, why would you take anything else?

Drew: Really? You don't think it's a little goofy? Might screw up my socials, yeah?

Levi: Depends on how you play it. Lean into it and camp can work. What are your socials right now? Wait, never mind, stay on target. If you don't like Banana Whisperer, there's other good choices.

Taylor: What about Battle Burglar? All the money says that the engine car will be locked. Be nice to be able to take over a train.

Calliope: I'm more worried about punch. Uncle Drew was our big gun on the last floor, but now he's lost all his cool spells.

Drew frowned, cocking his head in surprise.

Drew: Actually, no. Annihilation Dart is gone, but I've still got Shield. It's at level 2. How??? I originally got it at level 6 and then I leveled it to 7!

Levi: Don't talk about that out loud. I think it's a bug. Looks like when you went down a floor you lost the levels that your class had given you, but you kept the skill XP you had earned in the spell. The XP was recalculated; what had been enough to go from 6 to 7 was enough to qualify you for level 2 all on its own.

Taylor: Are they going to let us keep that?

Levi: I don't know. I haven't seen it before, so I think it's another one of the billion bugs that Borant has been having as a result of starting the season early. We'll want to talk about this later, but for now don't use any spells you kept and don't talk about it. Better to look for skills rather than spells. They have strong effects without any visible display, so it's less likely for Borant to notice the issue. Something like Democratic Committee Chairman, which makes ranged attacks on the party less accurate and gives you all a regen effect. Battle Burglar would get you the Dodge skill. Back on topic: If you're looking for punch, this isn't a great list. Much more support and utility than blasting. Septic Tank Cleaner is probably your best option. Acid Stench is an absolutely brutal spell and that class can spam it all day.

Taylor: I would think that Master Assassin would be the way to go for punch, no? Advanced Backstab is a massive damage bonus when attacking from behind, and Blademaster stacks another 50% / level.

Calliope: I'd say Pirate Admiral. It can summon cannons! Cannons! How is that not the high-damage option???

Levi: It's definitely the most damage in one attack, but it conjures actual cannons. They take up a lot of space and they're heavy, so you won't always be able to use them. They're modeling 'age of sail' cannons, so they're going to be slow-firing. And there's a real problem with friendly fire. And it's got a 5 hour cooldown. And the spell costs 20 mana. Drew's got 26 now that he's lost the +20 from Wizard Supremacist.

Calliope: Yeah, but the spell starts at level 5, so the cannons last for 5 minutes. We'll get multiple attacks.

Taylor: Pros and cons about the cannons, fine. There's a better reason to go with Pirate Admiral: check the Plunder skill. Every time Drew gets the killing blow on a mob of a higher level, he receives a loot box containing gold. We're on a new floor and my Sysop powers are active again; I can transfer those boxes from Drew to Leo so that she can level her Rollup skill.

Every eye in the train car went wide.

Drew: Option is chosen and locked in. I'm a Pirate Admiral for the rest of this floor.

Levi: Damnit. I really hope that doesn't bite us. Well, can't be helped. Which of the powers did you get?

Drew paused, eyes flashing as he scrolled through his interface.

Drew: Urgh...not so great. I got the Cannon Cocker skill, the Conjure Cannon spell, the double boss box thing, the 'extra luck if you swing on a rope' thing, and pirates will like me. I missed everything else. Including the Plunder skill.

Calliope: Well, shit.

Levi: Don't worry about it. The double boss box thing will still help you level your Rollup skill and the cannons are heavy damage. He's going to be hurting during the cannon cooldown but that just means more time to practice with the bident. Granted, the 'Attack Me Hearties' spell would have been nice. Summoning pirates makes for extra combat assistance and it's a great way to clear traps.

Calliope: It summons pirates with Find and Disarm Traps skills?

Levi: I said 'clear', not 'disarm'. Moving on. What does everyone have for socials?

Drew: 597 trillion views, 488 trillion follows, 299 trillion favorites.

Calliope: Damn, Uncle Drew, you beat me on views! I'm 582/491/327

Taylor: I think Taylor Gold earned me a bullet bump. 1 quadrillion views, 866T follows, 743T faves.

Everyone looked over at Moose. The big dog had braced all four legs and was hanging his enormous head low, clearly trying not to vomit again.

"Moose?" Taylor asked. "What do your socials look like right now?"

Moose whined a little and looked away.

"Moose?" Calliope said, concerned. She rubbed the big dog's shoulder. "What's wrong, honey?"

Moose: MOOSE'S SOCIAL NUMBERS ARE EMBARRASSING.

Calliope, knowing the historical trends related to Moose's socials, grinned. "Embarrassing because they're better than any of ours and you're feeling humble?"

"I don't know that it's humility," Taylor said in amusement. "I get more of a salt-in-the-wound vibe, if we're being honest."

Moose: MOOSE'S PEOPLES MOCK HIM WHEN HE IS FEELING SAD AND EMBARRASSED AND PUKEY! YOU ARE ALL TERRIBLE FRIENDS!

Calliope snorted a laugh. "Fine, fine. I'm very sorry, Moose. What are your numbers?"

Moose: MOOSE HAS 717.918 TRILLION VIEWS, 689.715 TRILLION FOLLOWERS, AND 469.006 TRILLION FAVORITES.

He hung his head again and whined.

Calliope rolled her eyes and stopped petting him. "So, yah. Better than anyone else except Uncle Taylor. Stop moping, you big baby."

Moose: DON'T YOU SEE?! MOOSE'S FOFAV RATIO CONTINUES TO DECLINE! IT IS ONLY 0.68 NOW, DOWN FROM AN ORIGINAL 0.72! IT HAD STARTED TO RECOVER, MOVING BACK TO 0.69 AN HOUR BEFORE WE REACHED THE STAIRS AND NOW IT HAS SLIPPED AGAIN! ALL THE PEOPLES IN THE UNIVERSE ARE LOSING INTEREST IN MOOSE! THEY DO NOT LIKE HIM ANYMORE!

Taylor pushed a finger hard into the center of his foreheads, trying to preemptively drive away a headache. "Moose, I can't tell if you're honestly upset by this or if you're just hamming it up. Your numbers are fine and they're going to continue to improve. Now let's go."

Levi: Those are some impressive numbers, all of you. Especially you, Taylor. Not top tier in the raw, but still very impressive. Also, your conversion rates are unbelievable. Even some elite crawlers are only in the 20-30% range, followers => favorites. You guys are all above 60%. It's nuts.

Taylor: Thanks. I've got an achievement for being one of the first 1000 crawlers to reach 1 quadrillion views. Huh. It's a Silver fan box. What's a fan box?

Levi: A headache, mostly. You get to a saferoom and open it, it starts a 30-hour timer where the fans get to vote on what to put in the box. Once the timer pops, the box is delivered and you go to another saferoom to open it. It's usually garbage or a joke. I got an apple peeler in my first fan box. Never saw a single apple in that dungeon.

"Ah," Taylor said aloud. "Well, that's not great."

Levi: OTOH, it's a Silver box. That means people had to pay a credit to vote for its contents, which tends to cut down on trolls and botspam.

Levi: Anyway, get to a saferoom so we can connect. I'm sure you've got other achievements and loot to open, and you'll want to have that in hand before you start really engaging with the dungeon. I'm guessing there are saferooms at the transit stations, because the one I'm at has a saferoom, a general store, and a rock climbing gym which is actually a training hall for the Climbing skill. If I had to guess, all the transit stations will be like this.

Taylor: Can do. See you soon.

"See?" Calliope said, wiping up a last bit of puke from Moose's chin hair. "I told you you were being ridiculous." She leaned in, kissed him on the snoot, and ruffled his ears. Moose whined.

"Let's see what else is around," Taylor said, waving the others to follow as he started up the car.

"Whatever it is, it'll be something horrible," Calliope said wryly. She fell in behind her uncle eagerly enough, offering a quick 'hey!' when Moose shouldered her out of the way so that he could take position at Taylor's side.

Taylor paused at the door to the next car, looking at his dog in amusement. "You want to be the first one through, don't you?"

Moose: TAYLOR IS WELCOME TO TRY TO GO FIRST. MOOSE'S FEET ARE FAIRLY CLEAN, SO TAYLOR WILL PROBABLY NOT HAVE TOO MUCH TROUBLE RINSING THE PAWPRINTS OFF THE BACK OF HIS SHIRT.

"You're funny. Fine. Three, two, one, go!" He yanked the door open and pressed himself back and out of the way.

Moose started to jump through, then stopped. The door opened onto a gangway, maybe five feet long and enclosed in flexible piping. Another door stood opposite them. The gangway was only a little wider than a person's shoulders.

Calliope snickered.

Taylor sighed. "After you," he said, gesturing Moose forward. Over his shoulder he said, "Marching order three. Drew, shield up."

Back on the previous floor, the team had worked out a variety of marching orders for various scenarios. 'Narrow tunnel' was number three, and it went: Moose, Taylor Blue, Calliope, Taylor Orange, Drew. Calliope had bitched to no end about being sandwiched in the middle instead of having a more active position. She had subsided when it was pointed out that she could throw her Kruthak Needle over Taylor's shoulder but he could not effectively use his yo-yo over hers. Drew rode drag in the back because his Shield spell made him far more resistant than the rest of the party to attack from behind.

They took their places. Once everyone was in position, Drew slapped Taylor Orange on the shoulder, Orange slapped Calliope, Calliope slapped Taylor Blue, Blue slapped Moose, and Moose burst through the door to the next car with a ferocious growl, the humans hot on his heels.

The car was completely empty.

"Well, that's disappointing," Taylor said with a sigh. "Okay, let's try this again."

They stacked up in front of the next car's entry and once more went through it in a rush. Once again, the car was empty.

"This sucks," Calliope said.

"Probably like this to ensure that we had a safe start," Taylor said. "It would be boring if we got jumped and killed the instant we arrived on the floor. I can't see into car 15 so there will probably be something in there. Moose, can you see anything?"

Moose: NO! MOOSE CANNOT SEE ANY MOBS ANYWHERE ON THE TRAIN! MOOSE DOES NOT LIKE THAT! IT IS NOT FAIR! ALSO, CARS 15, 10, AND 5 LOOK DIFFERENT THAN THE REST! THE REGULAR CARS ARE LABELED 'PASSENGER CAR #WHATEVER', BUT THOSE THREE JUST HAVE A QUESTION MARK! ALSO, THE ENGINE CAR IS BLANK!

"Right," Taylor said. "Onwards."

Cars 17 and 16 were likewise empty. Without a word, the team took position at the door of the unknown car 15. Tension hummed through everyone; there was no way that this car would be empty, and whatever it held would undoubtedly be a threat. That was how the dungeon worked.

"Five bucks says it's a boss room," Drew said from the back of the line.

"Dollars aren't worth anything in here," Taylor said. "Make it five gold."

"Done," Drew said.

"Yeah, like five gold matters when we're each lugging around four hundred thousand," Calliope said, amused.

"It's the principle of the thing," Taylor said. "Drew, when you're ready."

The signal passed up the line and they went through the door in a rush.

"Now arriving, station 81, Oni station!" the loudspeaker blared as the door opened and the train began to slow. "Please be sure to take your belongings with you."

On their maps, the label for car 15 changed from '?' to 'Janitor's Lair' and their maps updated to show the red dots of three hostile mobs. Where the previous cars had been well-lit by fluorescent panels on the ceiling, this car was pitch black.

"Drew, Torch!" Taylor shouted. Before he finished the words, a ball of light blossomed on the ceiling in front of them.

The car was the same size as the passenger cars but it lacked the seats and vertical metal poles, leaving it a long metal box with no windows. Mops and buckets leaned haphazardly against the walls. Piles of junk lay here and there, along with two piles of picked-clean bones and the corpse of something roughly human sized which was in the process of being torn apart and consumed by a trio of mobs.

Jikininki. Level 17.

Of all the types of ghouls one may find in the Iron Tangle Rail System, the Jikininki is the most common, the most well-behaved, and the most insatiable. Their voracious appetite for flesh makes them the perfect janitors. They'll generally leave you alone as long as you're not bleeding, as long as you don't litter, and as long as you don't trespass into their personal space. It's rude.

The ghouls' heads snapped around as the team rushed through the door. The mobs surged to their feet, spreading out and moving towards the party with their claws upraised. They were seven feet tall, dead-worm white, and looked like people who had been stretched vertically and squished sideways. Their arms were too long, hands reaching to their knees, and their heads were too narrow. It was viscerally disturbing.

Moose growled and leaped forward, slamming into the lead ghoul and bearing it down. It raised an arm to hold him off but that just gave Moose a convenient target to bite down on. The Jikininki shrieked in agony and struggled uselessly. Its health bar dropped and then plummeted as Moose's full weight came to bear on its chest.

The other two ghouls went for Moose, only to pull back as Taylor Blue's 1100-gram yoyo smashed the first one in the face and Calliope's thrown Kruthak Needle caught the other in the cheek. The Needle skittered off, causing a painful but mostly harmless wound.

Taylor Orange teleported, appearing a few meters behind the Jikininki that his other self had staggered. Orange's yo-yo flicked out and wound around the creature's throat; Taylor Orange braced himself and yanked, pulling the monster off its feet backwards. It clutched at its throat and fell, smacking its head hard on the floor. Taylor Blue leaped forward and started raining Around the World blows down on the monster's throat.

Moose jerked his head hard and ripped the Jikininki's arm off at the elbow. Blood fountained out of the stump and the ghoul's health went to zero a few seconds later.

At that point, the battle was all over except the shouting. The two surviving monsters were dead in under a minute and the humans stood, panting and checking one another over to ensure no one was too badly hurt.

Moose's head came up, his eyes widening.

Moose: THE STATION IS FULL OF MOBS! LOTS AND LOTS OF THEM!

"Shit!" Taylor said. "How big? How many?"

Moose: BIG! ONLY A LITTLE SMALLER THAN MOOSE IS NOW! TOO MANY TO COUNT QUICKLY!

"Block the doors off," Taylor snapped, sprinting Blue up the car to the forward door. He crossed the gangway, staggering slightly as the platform swayed beneath him, and stopped at the door of car 14. From inventory, he pulled a wooden doorstop and a rubber mallet. He slammed the doorstop into the crevice between the sliding door and its frame, then added two more for good measure, spacing them out so as to jam the door thoroughly. That done, he retreated into car 15 and repeated the process.

Taylor Orange started to do the same at the connection to car 16, but Drew waved him back.

"I got this," he said, pushing the door open and holding it in place with his foot.

"Uh, Uncle Drew? What are you doing?" Calliope asked nervously. "Looks like we're going to be having a lot of company in a few seconds." It was true; the train had pulled fully into the station and now even the humans' maps were sufficient to show the sea of red dots on the platform.

"I got this," Drew repeated, leaning casually against the doorjamb and dragging on his joint.

The train came to a halt and the team watched as the red dots started to stream onto every train car except the engine and the blocked-off cars 15, 10, and 5.

Moose: DREW, IT IS NOT NICE TO MAKE GOOD DOGGIES NERVOUS. YOU ARE MAKING MOOSE VERY NERVOUS.

"Now leaving station 81," came the voice over the loudspeaker. "Next stop is station 82, Jiangshi station, home of the ratkin, in nine minutes. All aboard!"

The train lurched and started forward, first at a slow walking pace but rapidly gaining speed. Within moments it was once more barreling through the tunnels at breakneck speed. Moments later, the handle of the door at the far end of the gangway began to rattle.

"Drew," said Taylor Orange, his voice calm, "you need to tell us what you're doing or I'm going to drag your ass back in here and block that door shut."

"Waiting so as not to waste too much clicks on the timer," Drew said, holding out his hand. "Conjure Cannon!"

On the shifting, swaying gangway a weapon shimmered into existence. The barrel was six feet long with a five-inch bore, matte black steel with a flare at the front and four transverse bands along its length. It rested on a wooden carriage with metal wheels the size of manhole covers. A lanyard stretched from Drew's hand to a curved metal arm at the top of the weapon.

Taylor opened his mouth to shout something—he wasn't sure exactly what aside from horror—just as the gangway door slid open. Framed in the doorway stood a four-legged reptilian creature covered in thick brown mucus; the car behind it was packed with more of its kind. The one in the lead bared its fangs and Drew yanked on his cannon's lanyard.

The basic ammunition for a cannon is the cannonball, and cannons in the Age of Sail were typically rated by the size of their cannonballs. An 18-pounder such as Drew's would fire an 18-pound iron ball. Of course, that wasn't the only thing one could fire from a cannon. Another option, and the one that Drew had chosen to use, was grape shot. A cannon loaded with grape shot was essentially a shotgun six feet long firing iron pellets the size of...well, grapes.

The blast went down the length of car 16 and converted several dozen mud drakes into salsa. It blew out all the windows in the car and peeled sections of the walls and ceiling away, leaving twisted fragments of metal to scream along the walls of the tunnel, throwing sparks everywhere. It hit the far end of the car and blew it apart, converting the door and wall to a slapdash sieve made by a drunken and untalented metalworker. It then continued down the next car, doing the same horrific damage there. Many of the balls went through the thin walls or ceiling of the cars, ricocheted off the stone of the tunnel, and came back in to cause yet more damage. Massive gouges were torn into the floor, through which Taylor could see one set of the train's frantically-spinning wheels.

The sounds of the world disappeared from around Taylor, turning into nothing but a constant ringing drone. His health bar dropped ten percent from the back pressure of the blast, so he quickly mashed down on his Heal spell to bring himself back to full.

Drew: Cool! Level 20, baby!

Calliope: Jesus, Uncle Drew! I'm deaf!

Taylor: And you blew the hell out of the train. I'm a little worried that it may have been critically damaged.

Drew: Eh. It's still running.

Moose: THAT HURT MOOSE'S EARS!

Taylor: The cannon only lasts five minutes, right? And it's got a five hour cooldown?

Drew: Yeah.

Taylor: It's nine minutes to station 82, there will almost certainly be more mobs there, and you just blew the door off that car so we can't block it closed.

Drew: ...Oops. Well, we can still block this one, right?

Taylor: Fuckin' Christ, Drew.

He shook his head, pulled his friend back into the car, and pounded wedges into the door. By the time he was done, everyone's hearing had returned.

"Takes a long damn time to get your hearing back when you don't have Regeneration," Calliope grumbled.

"I'm sorry about losing your shirt," Taylor sighed. "Gold got whacked from behind before he could drop his stuff back into inventory. Even his yo-yo. We're just lucky that Orange spawned in with a new instance of it."

"Oh, hey, speaking of: how'd we do for the shotgun ammo?" Calliope asked.

Taylor grimaced. "Right, forgot about that. The AI was nice enough to spawn Orange with a yo-yo and a copy of my T-shirt and my incendiary supplies, but I guess the shotgun ammo was a bridge too far. Here." He pulled out the shells and returned them to Drew, as promised.

"I guess there's nothing to do except wait," Calliope said, looking at the now-closed door that led to the gangway and then on to the wreckage of car 16. "Think they'll be able to get in?"

"I'd like to think that even dungeon mobs would think twice about stepping into an abbatoir," Taylor said with a shrug.

"What's an abbatoir?" asked Drew the high-school dropout.


In the event, the mobs were in fact smart enough not to step into an abbatoir. Within a few minutes of pulling out of station 81 the mud drakes were rattling at the door at the front of the car, but the rearward door remained unmolested and car 16 remained empty of threats. Which was good, because it meant they were undistracted when the chat message arrived.

Within thirty seconds, Taylor had received twelve more copies of the message, each relayed by other people in his chat list who hadn't known that he had already received it from someone else. The deluge became so bad that he quickly disabled chat from non-party members.

"That's good information to have," Calliope said. "About the stairwells, I mean."

Taylor nodded his agreement. "Unfortunately, that chain system makes chat useless. Probably did more harm than good, since new messages are going to be buried in the spam."

"Now arriving, station 83," came the voice over the loudspeaker. "This is a transit station, connecting to the Sapphire and Coquelicot lines, and to the Flaying Express! Thank you for riding with us today. Please be sure to take your belongings."

The train began to slow and Taylor hurried to extract the wedges from the rear door so that the team could escape onto the platform.

Unlike the prior two stations, station 83 had no mobs waiting for them. Nor did any of the mobs on the train get out; the doors opened, but the monsters only glared at the Terrans. The mud drakes snarled and the ratkin snapped their teeth, but they made no move to debark. Moments later, the doors closed and the train pulled out.

"Oof," Taylor grunted, finally relaxing. "Wasn't sure that was going to pan out."

"Teetee," Calliope said. "I figured they were going to swarm us and we were going to have to fight our way out."

"Let's see what we got," Drew said. He strolled for the stairs that led off the platform. They were on the other side of a line painted on the floor, yellow-and-black stripes sandwiching the words 'DANGER: STAY BEHIND LINE WHEN LIGHTS FLASH'. Twin grooves ran parallel to the message and just in front of it.

"What do you make of that?" Calliope asked, thumbing towards the sign as they crossed and headed down the stairs.

"That we should stay behind the line when the lights are flashing," Taylor said. They had been up for over twenty-four hours and the adrenaline was finally wearing off. He didn't have the energy for a better answer.

Calliope rolled her eyes.

They ascended the (excessively long, to Taylor's tired thinking) stairs to find themselves in a modest atrium with two doors and three other staircases. The staircases had signs above them reading 'Sapphire', 'Coquelicot', and 'Flaying Express'. The signs over the doors said 'Bunkroom' and 'Commissary'.

They shuffled into the bunkroom and, sure enough, Levi appeared with the normal poit of displaced air. The rabbit/manatee man looked around with interest.

"Huh," he said. "Identical to the one I was at, except this one is teal instead of yellow. I wonder if that's significant?"

"Dunno," Taylor mumbled. The exhaustion had fully caught up; alongside the post-combat crash he was starting to sway as he stood still. "Let's rent some rooms, sleep, and figure out the next move."

Levi smiled. "Sounds good, but we've got something to do first."

Taylor groaned. "Levi, I'm beat. Can it wait?"

"Nope. Calliope, shift your Mutable Ring completely to Charisma and then come with me. You need to do some negotiating."

He led them over to where the Bopca waited to rent rooms. Above him where the three expected signs:

Remaining Crawlers: 388,732

Leaderboard will populate after the next recap episode

Welcome to the Safe Room. You are on the Fourth Level.

Rental Rooms currently available: 20
Rental Room price: 180 gold.

Personal locations available for purchase. See proprietor for details.

Food is not available at this location. Please use the commissary next door.

"Oh, splat," Calliope said, her voice hushed as she looked at the first screen. "Three hundred thousand? We started with thirteen million."

"Ignore it," Taylor said, keeping his eyes firmly on the Bopca, whose nametag said Enver. "It doesn't do anything except hurt."

"Hey there," Levi said. "We'd like to buy a personal space, please."

The Bopca, as with all his race, was so hairy it was hard to read his expression. Still, Taylor had the sense that he had been vaguely annoyed when he saw customers arrive. That changed at Levi's words.

"Of course," he said. "A level 1 personal space is 50,000 gold."

Levi: Calliope, bargain that down. Bopca don't like to bargain but they've got 25% wiggle room and they get a bonus for selling personal spaces and upgrades.

Calliope made a show of looking offended. "Fifty thousand gold?! Fuck that. Levi, did you see the prices at that armor store at our last stop? For 50,000 I could get armor enchanted with invisibility and +10 Dexterity. Let's just rent rooms for 180 and save the money for something good."

Levi grimaced. "I know it's a bit much, but I promise personal spaces are useful." He looked at Enver. "I don't suppose you can bring that down a bit, can you?"

"I am sorry, sir, but I cannot," Enver said. "The prices are not negotiable."

"Of course they are!" Calliope said. "What, you didn't read the last update sheet?"

"Newsletter," Levi corrected.

"Update sheet, newsletter, whatever. It said that they were updating the sale policies so that employees were allowed to negotiate prices by up to 50%."

"I did not see this," Enver said, twisting his hands together. "Are you sure about that? I thought I was current on the newsletter."

"Dunno what to tell you," Calliope shrugged. "We saw it in the last saferoom we hit. It was labeled early release, so maybe it hasn't gotten here yet?" She pulled a small stack of coins out of her inventory and set them on the table. "Whatever. I'm not paying those bullshit prices for a personal space. Gimme a rental."

"I could maybe let it go for 45,000?" Enver said.

"Are you kidding?" Calliope responded, her voice dripping with disgust. "I can get invisibility and 10 Dex for just a little more than that."

"Leo, I'm beat," Taylor said. "Let's just get the rental rooms and crash, okay? Stop criticizing."

"Perhaps 40,000?" Enver said, sounding desperate.

"It really would be useful," Levi said. He looked over at Taylor. "Remind me why we let her be the purser for the entire party? She's such a penny pincher."

Calliope glared at Levi. "Fine," she grumbled. "Thirty-five thousand and we'll take it."

Enver's fingers twisted faster. "I don't think I'm allowed to go that low, ma'am," he said. "The last thing I saw said that if I sold a space for less than 37,500 I would need to pay the difference myself."

"Fuck that," Calliope said. She pushed the stack of 180 coins forward. "Like I said, rental."

"No," Levi said firmly. "We'll take it for 37,500. Calliope, stop being a skinflint and pay the man."

Calliope's lips tightened. "Oh for...fiiine." She waved a hand over the counter and multiple stacks of coins appeared. Enver counted rapidly and then swept them into a lockbox behind the counter.

"Thank you very much," he said. "Your personal space is there." He gestured to where there was suddenly a new door against the far wall.

"Hang on," Levi said. "I want a level 3 space as well, and to conjoin them. That way I can get to my personal room."

Enver's eyes went wide with delight.

"No fucking way, Levi," Calliope said. "We just spent out the butt on something we don't actually need. I'm not spending another fifty-kay or whatever just so you can get to your clothes hamper."

"Actually, level 3 spaces are 250,000," Enver said delicately. "And there is a 5,000 gold fee to conjoin two spaces."

"Are you insane?!" Calliope shrieked.

"Calliope, get the damn thing," Levi said. "I promise it's worth it. We'll be able to get some upgrades to go with it, including better beds."

"The cots are fine," Calliope insisted. "We are not spending hundreds of thousands just to get a bed."

Levi sighed and looked at Enver. "Can you drop the price of the space at all?"

"I could...I could go to 200,000?" Enver said.

"No goddamn way," Calliope said. "For that much money we could hit the armor store and outfit the entire party with all the what."

"I could do 190,000?" Enver asked, his voice desperate. "Plus the 5,000 to conjoin the two spaces."

"Jesus Christ, Calliope," Taylor said, allowing the full helping of his exhaustion to sound in his voice. "Take the goddamn deal. Levi isn't going to let us sleep until we get this stupid thing."

Levi: Calliope, tell Taylor he has to pay for it. A given person can only have one space. Taylor, refuse. Drew, you buy it. Be irritated.

Calliope glowered at Taylor. "You're kidding, right? Did you even look at the prices at that armor store? We need to save our money and get back there. I am not wasting a single additional coin on this nonsense. You want it, you buy it."

"You know that's too expensive for me," Taylor grumbled.

"You two are ridiculous," Drew said. "I'll pay for it." He stepped forward and plonked piles of gold on the counter. Once more, Enver counted quickly and swept the coins away.

Calliope growled in frustration. "Fine, whatever. But we're not wasting any more money on this."

Text suddenly appeared over Enver's head.

Welcome to the Upgrade Clearing House.

The following tier-one upgrades are available. Drill down for more details.

• Bathroom Upgrades
• Bed Upgrades
• Crafting Upgrades
• Kitchen Upgrades
• Kennel and Stable Upgrade
• Magic Upgrades. (Empty)
• Quest and Social Upgrades
• Store Access. (Empty)
• Training Upgrades

"We are not—" Calliope began.

Levi leaned forward and tapped at 'Bed Upgrades', causing the menu to transform into a long list of beds. The top of the list was 'Cot, padded' for 500 gold. He scrolled down quickly to the very bottom of the list: Ultra-Stabilized, Size-adjustable, Race-adjustable Alleviating Sleep Apparatus. Allows for full rest after a period of only two hours of sleep. Imparts 30 hours of Good Rest bonus. 250,000 Gold

"I want that one," he said, pointing.

"Levi!" Calliope screeched. "Do you think I'm made of money? We just spent a quarter of a million gold getting a fancy bedroom for you! The saferoom cots are perfectly comfortable. You guys agreed that I make the purchasing decisions and I say we are not wasting any more money on this." She turned for the door to the new personal space and started to stride off.

"Hold up," Levi said, flipping back and forth between the menus more quickly than Taylor could follow. "Enver, I want the bed and a training room. Oh, and throw in one of the 'Personal Cleaning Pod' upgrades for the bathrooms."

Taylor winced. Each of those upgrades was 250,000 gold. After all the gambling and drug-selling they had done on the previous floor, the party had a bit over 1.6 million between them. They could in fact afford everything Levi wanted, but it was a lot.

Levi was still flicking through menus, now looking under 'Crafting Upgrades' at an absolutely enormous list of crafting tables. The list went on for page after page; Levi was flicking through them too quickly for Taylor to read, stopping occasionally to confirm that what he wanted was there. The tables were mostly around 25,000 each with only a few niche things being less. The lowest that Taylor managed to read the price for was the Beekeeper Suit Repair Table, which was 10,000.

"And an enchanter's crafting table," Levi said. "Plus an engineering table, a weaponsmith table, and an armorer's table." He glanced over his shoulder. "How many tables do you guys have?"

"Two," Taylor said. "Arsonist and chemistry."

Levi nodded. "Okay, then we'll need the Enhanced Crafting Studio as well so we have room for six. What does that come to?"

"It would normally be 1,105,000," Enver said. He hurried to say, "I could sell it all for 828,750? That is the lowest I can go, truly."

"Just do it, Calliope," Taylor said, preempting the catgirl's outraged response. He let the exhaustion drip heavy in his voice; he didn't have to exaggerate much. "Christ, I'll pay whatever it takes to get some sleep."

Calliope growled in frustration and stomped back to the counter.


"That was really slick," Levi said as they walked into their new personal space. "You've got a real knack for bargaining."

"Heyyyy," Calliope said, grinning. "Who's got two thumbs and bargains like a champ? This girl!" She pointed to herself with both thumbs. She stopped walking and looked around in dismay. "This is what we spent a million gold on?"

The room was the size of a small aircraft hanger but it was empty, just a concrete floor, couch, and three screens that held the same information as the ones in the saferoom. In the corner, a small door was labeled 'Restroom'.

A message popped up in front of Taylor.

Entering The Conjoined Personal Space of Team Trick Shot

You have upgrades that need to be placed.

Before proceeding further, you must set the entrance to your personal room.

A translucent, blinking wireframe door appeared on the wall. A button above it said Place. The door jumped frantically back and forth between where Taylor Blue and Taylor Orange were looking, fuzzing and flickering in the process. He quickly turned such that both of him were looking at the same spot; the door calmed down. He slid it down to near the restroom and clicked 'Place'. The wireframe disappeared and an actual door faded into existence, the word 'Taylor' above it in a blocky script. Moments later more doors appeared, one for each member of the team and one labeled 'Manager'.

Admin Notice. A new tab is available in your interface.

New Achievement! Welcome to the neighborhood!

You have acquired a home! It's every man's dream to some day own a place where he can fap in peace. No more filthy roommates not doing the dishes or making up excuses as to why they can't pay the rent. No more landlord who shows up without notice and conceals hidden cameras in the smoke detectors. It's all smooth sailing from now on.

Reward: You're a homeowner now. That is the reward. That and taxes and having to deal with Kenneth the megalomaniac HOA president.

Levi sighed. "Thank the Lady. You can't add a manager's room until you have a conjoined space and you can't conjoin two personal spaces unless one of them is at least level 3. If we hadn't gotten both spaces I would have been sleeping on the floor. Now I can get to my stuff."

"I thought you said that you brought all your stuff into the guild hall in case you got to be a manager?" Drew asked. He had been toking heavily as the negotiations were going on and now his voice was dreamy.

"A lot of it, yeah," Levi said. "But I don't have an inventory so it's only the stuff I can carry on me. Now I can get to the rest of it."

"We conjoined a level 1 space and a level 3 space," Taylor said. "What's the difference?"

"Size, mainly," Levi said. "Level 1 spaces are small. All personal spaces have a couch, screens, a bathroom, and a crafting studio that takes up about a quarter of the space, but the ones for a level 1 space are tiny and the bathroom is just the ones that you see in the hallways—toilet, sink, no shower. You can put upgrades in a level 1 but only a couple and only the smaller ones. Level 2 spaces are bigger and can fit more upgrades. Level 3 spaces are bigger still, and you can conjoin a level 3 space with another space of any size as long as it's owned by someone in the same party. Once you conjoin it, everyone in the party gets their own room and the personal rooms all get duplicates of any bedroom or bathroom upgrades you buy. Also, if you have a manager then the manager's personal room automatically gets added." He gestured. "Taylor, you paid for the bathroom upgrade so you'll need to place it. There should be a 'Personal Space' tab in your interface and the upgrade will be under that. Put it on top of the existing bathroom."

Taylor went into his interface and, sure enough, there was the upgrade. He selected it, slid the resulting wireframe over to the restroom, and clicked 'Place'. It disappeared without apparently doing anything.

"The personal rooms consist of a bedroom and an attached bathroom," Levi explained. "They also have the option to add a crafting room and kitchen but there's no reason to when you've bought the upgrades in a conjoined space. By placing that upgrade you've upgraded the bathroom in the common room and also the ones in each of the personal rooms."

"Cool," Taylor said. "Can I sleep now?" He was starting to sway more.

Levi chuckled. "Just one more sec. Drew, Calliope, Moose, each of you should place the upgrades you paid for, then everyone puts the tables in the crafting room, and then you can all go sleep."

Wireframe rooms appeared, sliding around the room like puzzle pieces until their owner clicked 'Place', at which point they shimmered into existence. The Enhanced Crafting Studio took up the left-rear corner of the space.

Taylor yawned. "Why'd you have us pay for things individually instead of putting all the money in a big pile?" he asked, stumbling after Levi as the manager headed towards the crafting studio.

"Stuff needs to be owned by an individual, not by a party," Levi said. "That's just the way it works. If anyone leaves the party, the stuff they own goes with them."

"By 'leaves the party', you mean 'dies', right?" Calliope asked.

"That's one option, yes," Levi said. "But literally leaving the party does it too."

"That's why you had me pay for the level 1 space and Drew pay for the level 3 space," Calliope said. "You're his manager, so if I kick the bucket you and Drew will still have the big space."

"Yes," Levi said, not at all apologetic for the admission.

"Argue later," Taylor said. He stepped into the crafting studio and pulled out his two crafting tables. They clicked into place against the walls like legos snapping together, shifting slightly to the side of where he had placed them in order to be aligned with a notional grid that allowed all six tables to have maximum space.

"Everybody go sleep," Levi said. "I'll see you in a couple hours."


Taylor's room was, as Levi had said, a bedroom and en suite bath. He fell into the bed without even pausing to check the bathroom. The bed was a California king, it had no blankets or pillows, and it looked like it was made of translucent jello. It felt like being wrapped in a warm hug by the love of your life; he was sound asleep two seconds after his head touched the surface.

And then he blinked his eyes open and sat up, with no sense of time passing between sleeping and waking.

New Achievement! Well Rested!

You managed to sleep so well that you woke up feeling refreshed and full of energy. You are ready to take on the world and make some monster's mother cry because her only child was ruthlessly slaughtered by a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed crawler.

Reward: You now receive the Good Rest bonus every time you sleep in this bed. This buff adds 10% to your base stats plus a 10% bonus to experience and skill training for 30 hours.

Wow.

The achievement was right. He did feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. For the first time in days he felt optimistic and ready to take on the world. Team Trick Shot had kicked ass and taken names across three murderous floors of this dungeon and they were going to do it across the next nine as well! Who knew, maybe they would keep going after hitting floor 12. They might be the first team to hit floor 13 and, if they decided to do that, they would make that floor their bitch.

He bounced to his feet and ducked into the bathroom to take care of business. The room was painfully clean with soft and soothing colors, two sinks, and what might as well have been called an iShower—a sparkling white egg large enough for two people, all made with smooth curves and no visible components. A small area to one side held a space-age toilet with dividers around it to provide privacy to anyone doing their thing while others were using the sink or shower.

He started to shuck his filthy clothes off, paused, and then stepped both bodies into the pod with a shrug.

The egg clamshelled closed around him with a faint whirr and the shower came to life. Water that was at the perfect temperature, just barely less than scalding, came from all directions so that neither of him needed to be cold. He turned his heads up into the spray, squeezing his eyes shut...and then opened them at a strange feeling. The sudsy water played across his face but refused to enter his eyes or mouth, even when he tried. He grinned and raised his arms so that the spray could get all parts of both of him. After a moment he remembered to shuck his shoes off and lift his feet so that the soles could get clean as well.

A faint hum started up and invisible fingers vibrated across Taylor's bodies, working the knots out of sore muscles and ejecting every trace of dirt and blood and muck from his skin and clothes. He had worn these clothes while hiking and fighting for twenty-four hours straight; the water flowed black for a solid minute as they came clean. It all disappeared into the floor of the shower with quiet efficiency.

The water shifted, losing the suds and rinsing him clean. He opened his mouths again and this time the water flowed in, jetting across his teeth and then out without drowning him. It left him with minty breath and polished teeth, feeling as though he had just now stepped out of a dental hygienist's chair.

After a few minutes the water switched off and jets of warm air took its place, the combination of sonics and air drying his clothes better than any terrestrial dryer. By the time it was done and the shower whirred open he was left clean, dry, and ready for a photoshoot. Somehow, his hair was even neatly styled and his beard was trimmed exactly the way he preferred it. Neither of him had noticed that happening.

New Achievement! Sparkly Clean!

You are bright and shiny and ready for anything! It'll last about five minutes before you get splattered in blood and guts again.

Reward: You now receive the Zestfully Clean bonus every time you use this shower. This buff adds 10% to your base stats plus lowers your Detectability by 10%!

His clothes were cleaner than anything he had in inventory so he didn't bother changing before rejoining the others in the common area. They were all waiting on the couch, noshing on plates of nachos that Drew had scored in a saferoom back on the second floor.

"Those showers are the what what what, am I right?" Calliope said. She too was sparkling clean and perfectly coiffed. "Best thing about the dungeon so far."

"Dunno," Taylor said, dropping into chairs and gratefully accepting the two plates of still-hot nachos that Drew passed him. "For me it's a tossup between the bed and the shower."

"Focus up, folks," Levi said. He was holding his nachos in his lower set of hands and lifting chips to his mouth with his upper right, upper left scooped under each chip to catch any drips. "Let's talk training. That training hall over there"—he jerked his enormous head towards the room in question—"will let you spend one hour per day training a skill. It trains as though you were using it for real, out in the dungeon. That's a huge deal because you might have noticed that most fights are short, just a few minutes. A solid hour of training might be more than you would get over the course of an entire day.

"Not all skills are trainable, but we're going to focus on the damage-dealing ones. Taylor, I want you to work on your Combat Specialization: Yo-Yo skill. Moose, you'll do Bite. It's at level 9 already so if we can push it to 10 that will help a lot. Drew, you'll do Weapon Focus: Spears. Calliope, you'll do Sword."

"Not Pounce?" she asked. "It gets me 50% extra damage per skill level when I attack from above."

"Maybe tomorrow," Levi said. "After we've seen how much room there is for pouncing. My guess is that most of the ceilings are going to be too low. Plus, it looks like you're going to be dealing with a lot of very close-range fighting on this floor. If that turns out to be wrong then we'll switch you to something else but for now focus on the sword."

"While you were going to parties, I studied the sword," Calliope growled in her lowest and most gravelly register.

Taylor raised his hand, blithely ignoring her. "Levi, I've got two bodies. Is the room going to let me train two skills?"

Levi cocked his head in surprise. "Hadn't thought of that. I doubt it very much—you're only one crawler and you've only got one crawler ID. Still, if it does prompt both bodies then both should choose Weapon Specialization. It's your best damage-booster and it's at 8. If you can train it twice per time block then you can get it to 10 faster.

"While you lot are training, I'm going to do some crafting," Levi continued. "Do you all still have those tables that you looted from the boss back on the first floor? The necromancer guy who was making flesh golems."

"Sure," Taylor said. "We stripped that room to the bare walls."

"Cool. I need a whole bunch of metal and those operating tables were solid steel. I'm going to make you some barricades that you can use to block the doors of the trains so you can control how many mobs can get at you at once. Afterwards, I'll start working on some basic runestones. I don't have the materials for anything elaborate but I can get you some of the fundamentals. We'll want to stop by the Desperado Club as soon as possible; more of the Silk Road merchants should be set up and hopefully I can buy what I need."

For the thousandth time, Taylor thanked his lucky stars that they had taken the Manager benefit.

"Cool," Drew said. He had finished his nachos and was lounging back on the couch, feet up on a battered coffee table that hadn't been there when Taylor went to bed. And, of course, he was toking. He blew a long plume of smoke at the ceiling, then twiddled his fingers at it, using Smoke Form to shape the smoke into a tiny galloping horse. "Hey, wouldn't it make more sense for me to work on Shield? It's level 2 so it should level faster and in these tight confines I can use it to bottle up one direction."

"I don't remember that album," Taylor said. "Was it before or after 'Take Me Home'?"

Drew laughed while everyone else stared blankly at Taylor.

"If we can avoid getting distracted for five minutes," Levi said, his voice a little bit tart and a little bit amused, "then I'll explain. Drew, the training hall only does skills, not spells. You need a different room for spells and it's not available until next floor."

"Oh."

"Right," Levi said, standing up and clapping both pairs of hands. "Okay, get to it. Drop those steel tables in the crafting room so I can get to work, then hit the training room. We've got less than ten days and you don't get seconds back."

Team Trick Shot hurried to obey.

The training hall was a large, empty room with a padded floor and mirrors along the walls, like a dance studio or dōjō. The moment he walked through the door, Taylor was prompted to choose a skill. Sadly, Levi knew what he was talking about because he was only prompted once. He obediently chose Combat Specialization: Yo-Yo.

A two-headed, two-tentacled panther blinked into existence in front of him, a timer over its head reading 1:00:00. The timer began to tick down and the panther lunged at Taylor before he could react.

"Yipe!" both of him yelped as the panther bore Taylor Blue to the ground and closed its teeth on his throat. A painful shock went through him, causing his whole body to spasm, and then the panther disappeared and reappeared in its original position.

"So it's like that, huh?" Taylor growled, teleporting both of himself behind the monster and smashing it with overhand yo-yo strikes.


By the end of the hour, Taylor was drenched in sweat and had red welts across the throat, face, arms, and legs of both bodies where the practice opponent had repeatedly scored on him. He clambered into the shower with a sigh and emerged fifteen minutes later dry, clean, and refreshed.

"That thing was no joke," he said as he settled into chairs around the table with Levi and Moose. Drew and Calliope were still in their showers. "Seriously, those attacks hurt."

"If it don't hurt, it don't help," Levi said as though quoting an aphorism.

Taylor gave him a sour look and then pulled a bag of Milk Duds out of his inventory and tossed three of them in his mouth.

"Things I like about the dungeon," he said, sucking happily on chocolate and caramel. "The bed, the shower, and the fact that I can eat whatever I want without needing to worry about getting fat or blood pressure or whatever."

"Good for you, finding the positive," Levi said, offering him an approving nod. "That's a survival skill down here."

Moose: MOOSE WOULD LIKE SOME MILK DUDS, PLEASE!

"Nope," Taylor said, pointedly looking away. "Mine."

Moose: PLEEEEASE? MOOSE IS VERY CUTE!

Taylor snuck a glance and found Moose making his best ears-down, eyes-wide soulful look. Taylor quickly looked away.

Moose: THE DUNGEON IS A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE! MOOSE BETS THAT TAYLOR WOULD FEEL AWFUL IF MOOSE GOT SEPARATED FROM THE PARTY AND WE NEVER SAW EACH OTHER AGAIN! TAYLOR WOULD GO TO BED EVERY NIGHT THINKING, 'I AM SO SORRY THAT I WAS SELFISH AND LEFT MOOSE FEELING SAD BECAUSE I WOULDN'T SHARE MY MILK DUDS!'

"Chocolate isn't good for dogs," Taylor said, tossing another Milk Dud into his mouth. "It can cause seizures."

Moose: MOOSE THINKS THAT A FEW MILK DUDS IS NOT GOING TO CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR A DOGGY AS BIG AS MOOSE!

Taylor started to refuse again, then grinned as a thought struck him. He shook a half dozen Milk Duds into his palm and held them up. "You can have these—hup! Nope. You can have these if you ask for them like a normal person."

Moose: MOOSE IS ASKING FOR THEM LIKE A NORMAL PERSON!

"No, Moose is 'playing the drongo' as Lucas would put it," Taylor said smugly. "Try again without the dumb dog routine."

Moose studied him for a moment, eyes narrowing slightly.

Moose: Fine. Give me the heckin' Milk Duds.

"Uh-uh," Taylor said, shaking his head. "Politely."

Moose's lips peeled back from his teeth very slightly.

Moose: Give me the heckin' Milk Duds, please.

"Here you go," Taylor said, tossing the candies into Moose's open mouth. "See, was that so hard?"

Moose: IT WAS VERY HARD! TRYING TO TALK WEIRD LIKE PEOPLES IS HARD! PEOPLES' ELOCUTIVE LINGUISTIC PATTERNS ARE VERY HARD FOR MOOSE'S POOR DOGGY BRAIN!

Levi laughed.

The screens on the wall flickered and came to life, four Borant logos whirling in from the corners to slam together and form one giant logo in the center of the screen. A moment later it was replaced with big block letters that read 'Dungeon Crawler World: Earth!'

"Recap is starting!" Taylor shouted towards the personal rooms. "Hurry it up!"

Levi: Seeing as Taylor has forgotten that the personal rooms are soundproof, it falls to me to convey the relevant information: the recap is starting. Get your butts out here.

Calliope: On my way!

Taylor waited for a second message and rolled his eyes when it didn't come.

Taylor: OI! DREW! GET IT IN GEAR! The recap is starting!

No response.

Taylor: Drew? You okay?

No response.

Taylor teleported himselves across the floor to Drew's door and yanked it open.

It didn't budge.

"Can't open someone else's room unless you're whitelisted," Levi said from the couch. "Don't worry about it. He's still on chat as a living crawler and he had a medical cleanup when he entered the dungeon. He's not going to have a heart attack and even if he somehow managed to slip and fall hard enough to knock himself out he would heal from the dungeon's passive regeneration. Chances are he decided to lie down on the bed 'for five minutes' and will wake up in a couple hours."

"We are all whitelisting each other," Taylor grumbled. Putting action to word, he searched through his interface until he found the relevant tab and granted the rest of the party permission to enter his room.

Calliope emerged from her room, toweling her straw-blonde hair vigorously. She was wearing a well-worn gray tracksuit with fuzzy slippers on her feet. The slippers had googly-eyed dog faces on the front.

Moose: MOOSE IS APPALLED AT CALLIOPE'S FOOTWEAR! ABSOLUTELY APPALLED! IT LOOKS LIKE CALLIOPE HAS SHOVED HER FEET UP THE TOOSHIES OF TWO DOGGIES!

"Cute," she said, dropping onto the couch next to Levi and pulling a bowl of popcorn from inventory. "What are you eating?"

Canine jaws are poorly suited for handling drool-inducing foods like chocolate, and their teeth are even more poorly suited for caramel. Nonetheless, the elephant-sized dog was chomping away on the Milk Duds.

Moose: MOOSE IS EATING MILK DUDS! TAYLOR GAVE THEM TO MOOSE! MILK DUDS ARE YUMMY!

"You know chocolate isn't good for him," Calliope said, disapproval strong in her voice.

Taylor shook his head. "Don't even," he said, amused. "He deployed weaponized cuteness and cooperation at me."

"Ah," Calliope said, nodding in understanding. "Yeah, the cuteness is hard to resist."

"Hush!" Levi said. "They're getting to the useful part."

The show had started on the third floor with demons tearing apart person after person. It then shifted to the fourth floor, showing teams of crawlers who hadn't made it to a defensible position before their train pulled into the station and they got swarmed by the waiting mobs. That segment was wrapping up and the screen faded over to a tall gray alien seated at a news desk.

"The Iron Tangle!" the onscreen announcer said. Different shots of railroads and subway cars flashed across the screen, from old locomotives to the more modern high-speed rail trains. This went on for some time. The scenes were an odd mix of real-life footage and passages from movies and video games. They included stills from the animated movie The Polar Express and a bizarrely-long sequence of a beat-up John Travolta riding the subway from the movie Saturday Night Fever while the Bee Gees played in the background. After that, the program went into a detailed history of trains, focusing mostly on subway systems.

As always, the program went out of its way to showcase only the negatives, displaying mass overcrowding, people falling onto the tracks. It presented pictures from the Japanese subway sarin attack, along with dozens of other disasters, making the entire world look like a pit of misery and horror.

On the screen, the show finally wrapped up the history of the earth rail systems. The anouncer started speaking and then he froze. The word REDACTED appeared on the screen.

Levi grunted. "Thought so. This is a puzzle level. There's some trick to it, or tricks. Probably an overall plot line, too. He's explaining it all to the audience and they don't want you to see it."

"What does that mean for us?" Calliope asked. "Is it good or bad?"

Levi shrugged his upper shoulders. "A little of both. Puzzle levels tend to be relatively easy in the beginning because the showrunners want you to have a chance to see enough of the level that you can interact with their puzzle. Then there's some big dramatic and very lethal finale on the last day or two. If we can figure out what that is going to be it'll make it much easier to deal with. More importantly, puzzle levels usually have ways to shortcut major challenges. It lets the showrunners both show off crawlers being smart and laugh at crawlers who walk past a secret room or escape tunnel without figuring out that it's there or how to get to it."

"Looks like everyone started midway between stations 80 and 81," Taylor noted. "Think that matters?"

"Dunno," Levi said. "Not sure if that's important or not, but I've made a note."

Eventually the show came back and started showing crawlers surviving and thriving. The crawlers who regularly made the recap continued to make it:

First, as always, was Lucia Mar, a South American girl about Calliope's age who had spent the first two floors running on walls and smashing monsters with an enormous mace while laughing like a crazy person. She had two rottweilers, Cici and Gustavo 3, who trailed along behind her when they weren't tearing mobs apart. Gustavo 3 spat lightning when he barked. Cici was pony-sized, nearly twice the size of her pack mate.

Moose harumphed disapprovingly when the two dogs came onscreen. He was currently in his preferred elephantine form, eight feet at the shoulder and quite capable of having three humans ride him.

"Don't worry," Taylor said, rubbing his friend's ears. "You're still the biggest and best boy."

Moose: DARN TOOTIN'! SCRITCH HARDER, PLEASE.

Taylor chuckled and obliged. Moose's resulting feeling of contentment echoed back and forth across his empathic bond with Taylor, making both of them sigh and relax, tension leaving muscles that the two crawlers hadn't even realized were tense.

Lucia had changed during path selection. The recap took a helpful moment to explain her new 'Lajabless' race. Half of each day she was a beautiful human woman with double the magical power but half the physical strength. The other half she was reversed—twice the physical strength, half the magical power, and she looked like a Día de los Muertos mummer, with a skull face and an emaciated body. In both forms her left leg was that of a goat and she walked with a clomping limp.

The screen shifted and Florin, the man with the limitlessly-ammunitioned shotgun, was shown blasting a path through fast-moving lizards the size of terriers. His partner, a dark-skinned woman named Ifechi, covered his back. Ifechi threw buffs and heals on herself and her partner while simultaneously shooting tidal waves of leeches out of her staff to reduce opposition to dried and hollowed-out shells. He had transformed into a humanoid crocodile while she had remained human.

The action changed to Joëlle, a compact woman with a full sleeve and neck tattoos. She wore a flowing orange robe as she spun and kicked and punched her way through a mob of demonic murder babies equipped with fangs and claws. She was one of the few recap regulars who traveled alone and the only one who fought barehanded.

Other crawlers came and went, some regulars and some new faces. Among the latter was 'Elle McGib', a tiny blue woman who floated slightly above the ground and fired icicles from her hands while cackling gleefully.

"She'll go far," Levi said, nodding approvingly. "Assuming she doesn't die. Visually distinct, dramatic powers, aggressive, and she sounds like a complete loon."

Drew and his cannon made a brief appearance, the rest of Team Trick Shot in the background looking terrified as Drew reduced two train cars of mobs to pasta sauce in the span of a second.

Eventually the recap ended. The final scene faded away and was replaced by a list:

1. Lucia Mar – Lajabless – Black Inquisitor General – Level 30 – 1,000,000
2. Kalyani – Buto Ijo – Special Forces Operator – Level 29 – 500,000
3. Aisling – Draconid – Fire Saint – Level 27 – 400,000
4. Florin – Crocodilian – Shotgun Messenger – Level 24 – 300,000
5. Heilfrid – Fraiga – Advertising Exec – Level 25 – 100,000
6. Pier – Syvio – Assassin Guildmaster – Level 27 – 100,000
7. Joëlle – Human – Shaolin Acolyte – Level 25 – 100,000
8. Ifechi – Human – Physicker – Level 21 – 100,000
9. Taylor – Multacorpalan – Sysop – Level 21 – 100,000
10. Elle McGib – Frost Maiden – Blizzardmancer – Level 17 – 100,000

"Huh," Levi said. "Two people on the top ten who stayed human. Unusual."

"You're on the top ten!" Calliope yelled, throwing a kernel of popcorn at Taylor. "Great job, Unc!"

"Thanks," Taylor said, distracted. "Levi, what's that number at the end of each line?"

"That's the bounty other crawlers get if they kill you."

"Wait, why—" Taylor broke off as an unseen loudspeaker chimed and a familiar saccharine and highly punchable soprano filled the room.

Hello, Crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor!

We are so very excited to introduce you to what is being hailed a genius feat of engineering. We call it the Iron Tangle. The trick is to find the stairwells. There are a lot of them out there, but where? Let's see how many of you figure it out.

This is important. This is not a permanent change, but it is a new rule for this level only. You may not go down early this level. The stairwells will open six hours prior to collapse, and that's it. Again, you may not go down early this floor. Now have fun out there. These train things are so nifty. We never had anything like it on our world.

Patron bidding is active, and we are very happy with the results so far. You will get a notification when your bidding has concluded. We'll have more info on that later.

You will notice that the leaderboard has finally populated. Congratulations to everybody on the list. As you can see, each member of the top 10 has a bounty after their names. That means hunting season is open! Isn't that exciting? If you kill one, you will receive a loot box containing the reward. If you are on the leaderboard, don't worry, you get to join in on the fun, too. If you survive the floor, you will receive 10% of your own bounty upon floor collapse. That percentage goes up each floor.

Finally, we'd like to address the especially high mortality rate of the third floor. This occurred due to a high instance of group quests gone bad. While the number of crawlers are still in the acceptable range, we are all concerned about early extinction. That does not mean we will be letting up. So quit sucking. It's as simple as that.

Now get out there, ride the rails, and kill, kill, kill!

The voice faded away and Taylor just barely managed to stop himself from saying out loud that he hoped that woman died in a fire.

No one spoke for several seconds.

"Okay," Levi said, "might as well open your boxes. After, you should go down to one of the platforms and do some grinding while we wait for Sleeping Beauty to wake up. I checked; mobs can't get off the train at the transit stations, but you can still shoot or punch them while the doors are open. Easy XP."

"Right," Taylor said. He reached for the 'Open Loot Boxes' button...and then paused.

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Voting is open. There are two votes:

[][Action] Get on the Sapphire line and grind up to the next transit station
[][Action] Get on the Coquelicot line and grind up to the next transit station
[][Action] Get on the Flaying Express and grind up to the next transit station
[][Action] Write in

[][Loot] Open Taylor's boxes
[][Loot] Transfer Taylor's boxes to Leo to train Rollup
[][Loot] Have everyone wait to open until we know what boxes Drew has, then transfer boxes from whoever has the most to Leo
[][Loot] Write in

Note: transferring boxes from one person to another turns off Taylor's class abilities for 6 hours.

Write in plans can include more elaborate actions, such as messaging other crawlers, talking to the Bopca, crafting, waiting in the room for 6 hours in order to transfer two people's boxes before leaving, using other Sysop powers, etc.

Drew is asleep and you don't know what boxes he has. The rest of the team has:


NOTE: Taylor has a Silver fan box in addition to what is listed above. The fan box cannot be transferred and will stay with him if he transfers his other boxes. The next time he opens boxes, the fan box will not open. Instead, a 30-hour timer will start. At the end of that time he will be able to open the box.

As of now, Rollup can produce Gold boxes. Levi thinks it's unlikely that Rollup will advance this session but he expects that Calliope will earn more XP towards advancing it if she hits her threshold (that is, if she has enough boxes to roll up into a Platinum but can't because the skill cannot yet produce Platinum) and the more she exceeds that threshold, the better. As a reminder:

Bronze x2 => Silver
Silver x4 => Gold
Gold x4 => Platinum
Platinum x8 => Legendary
Legendary x8 => Celestial


Voting ends Jun 11, 2022 at 6:30 PM , or when discussion has clearly run its course.

Finally, I would like to note that small portions of this update were copied basically word-for-word from Dungeon Crawler Carl canon, including some of the achievements, some of the recap, and the 'welcome crawlers' speech at the end.

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Old Achievement! Discordian Delight
You are invited to drop by the #dungeon-crawler-you channel in the Quests and Stuff Discord. (That second link is an invite to the server.)